In the City a Mirror Wandering

by Upendranath Ashk

  *

  He and Harasaran had been studying together in Class Eight when Harasaran’s father had retired and started a small bicycle shop in Rainak Bazaar. There had been only a couple of bicycles there, apart from a fairly large number of tyres hanging up in the shop, and Harasaran’s tall, hearty father, with his long moustaches and thick convex glasses, sat and repaired bicycles wearing only an undershirt and undershorts. After just a year, he had taken over the large shop next door, and Chetan saw that Harasaran’s elder brother, who had had a job as a clerk somewhere and who might not have been quite as tall as his father, but was just as hearty, and whose moustaches were not quite as long, but still very thick, and who wore the same thick eyeglasses, was seated outside the shop fixing tyre punctures. Harasaran was strongly built like his father and brother, but a bit rougher around the edges. He had smallpox scars on his face and thick glasses as well—something about the composition of the faces of the two brothers and their father always seemed coarse and dishevelled to Chetan. There was nothing fine or elegant about them. But nonetheless, Harasaran had been quick in his studies. He always came fourth or fifth in class and had wanted to study to the MA level.

  But work at the shop increased so much as he approached the Matric that his father demanded he stop studying any further and come and work with him. Chetan was going to a rally with Anant at the Town Hall one day on their way home from college (they’d decided to attend the rally when they’d reached Imam Nasiruddin, so from Bazaar Sheikhan, they’d come straight out towards Rainak Bazaar), when he saw Harasaran on one side of the street next to Hoshiarpur Cycle House, hands and face blackened with grease, repairing a puncture. He’d just called out ‘Hello’ to him from his cycle, but in his heart he pitied his friend who had sacrificed his glowing future to fix punctures in cycle tubes.

  But over the past five or six years, Hoshiarpur Cycle House had spread to the shops around it—they’d knocked down the dividing walls and made one large fancy shop, in which hung the shiny frames of bicycles, handles and tyres, and ready-made cycles. Although the father had stopped fixing punctures and fitting out cycles, both the brothers still put bicycles together with their own hands. They hired boys to fix the punctures, inflate tyres and make small repairs. And they themselves didn’t hesitate to do this work either when necessary. ‘So that’s why they’ve made so much progress so quickly,’ thought Chetan, as he watched Harasaran for a moment fitting together a bicycle. Harasaran’s kameez stuck to his back with sweat, there were black spots on his face from wiping the perspiration with his grease-covered hands and the hem of his kameez—and he felt respect for his friend and thought about how he had no right to pity him. Had Chetan really accomplished anything amazing by finishing his BA? He himself didn’t make more than fifty rupees a month . . . he passed his days in profound want and was trying to feed his ego by puffing up his own accomplishments, while all his friends were making great strides and coming out ahead of him.

  *

  As soon as he saw Chetan, Harasaran left off fitting the cycle and jumped down from the shop. Wiping off his filthy grease-covered hands with the equally filthy hem of his kameez, he held out two fingers with embarrassment and said, ‘Yaar, my hands are dirty.’

  ‘Well, at least they’re dirty from labour and sweat, not from the blood of your brothers.’ Chetan was thinking of Amichand’s hands, which were about to commit untold atrocities against his fellow men at the behest of the English. He grasped Harasaran’s hand warmly.

  Harasaran felt pleased by his praise. The sparkle in his eyes was not visible through the thick lenses of his glasses, but a wave of joy ran across his coarse peasant face.

  ‘This labour is all that’s written in my fate. God hardly gave me the sort of brilliance that you have,’ he said smiling, and told Chetan that since they belonged to the Congress Party, they subscribed to Bande Mataram, and he had read all of Chetan’s stories in the weekly editions, and not just he, but his brother and father all liked them very much.

  He turned and called to his father, who was inside the shop counting newly arrived frames; then, bursting with happiness, he introduced Chetan to him.

  Harasaran’s father was even more pleased than him and, pulling forward a chair for Chetan, he said, ‘Harasaran is always singing your praises. We’re so fortunate to see you today. Come in . . . come in . . . Purify our shop for a few moments with your presence!’

  He laughed happily, his clean teeth sparkling in his dense moustaches, and with that, all of Chetan’s feelings of inadequacy, gathering since morning, all his depression, his shame, his listlessness, his sense of failure, his feelings of ill fortune, evaporated into a mist in that fresh breeze.

  Let Amichand and Hamid and all his friends become officers, let them earn thousands of rupees a month, he would be satisfied with his own poverty a thousand times over! He was an artist, and they all appeared downright impoverished in comparison—a bunch of elephants plodding about in small circles! By contrast, he was free—a tiny bird soaring through the expanse of the sky as he sang. Sure, an elephant in captivity gets his belly filled, and the bird has to peck among the seeds to assuage his hunger, but how could the trudging of an elephant bound in chains compare to the soaring of a bird? And he felt electrified by ineffable bliss. He decided that he would sit a few moments in Hoshiarpur Cycle House and tell Harasaran and his father about his experiences; he’d tell them his dreams, his techniques, his ambitions and the possible obstacles in his path; he’d tell them of his firm decision to remove those obstacles and arrive at his goal. He could have stopped there, but he didn’t; his own sense of self-importance grew manyfold. ‘I’ll come again,’ he said. ‘Punjab’s famous poet Hunar Sahib and his other friends are with me right now.’

  ‘Invite them too . . . invite them too!’ said Harasaran’s father, beaming, and he called out to the servant to set out chairs, and told Harasaran to bring four glasses of shikanji, and he again courteously urged Chetan to invite his friends . . . ‘We’re just uneducated folk; it’s not often that we get to see great individuals such as you! What can we do for you? Of course it will be as insignificant as Sudama’s grain of rice was to Krishna . . .’

  And he laughed.

  Chetan decided to call Hunar Sahib, Nishtar and Ranvir over. That way, the topic of his stories published in Bande Mataram could be brought up in conversation as they drank shikanji, and then Hunar Sahib, Nishtar and Ranvir could learn how far his fame had spread and where all his fans were . . . But he didn’t have to take the trouble to call them. Before he could turn around, Hunar Sahib slapped a hand on Chetan’s shoulder from behind, and said, grinning, ‘Arré bhai Chetan, introduce us to your friends as well!’

  Chetan started and introduced him to Harasaran and his father, and since this could only augment his own importance, he praised Hunar Sahib fulsomely, forgetting all his hatred for him. Hunar Sahib came in and installed himself upon a chair. He seated Nishtar and Ranvir to his right and left, and began narrating a steady stream of entertaining anecdotes . . . When Harasaran brought the glasses of shikanji, Hunar Sahib was reciting his simple translation of the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita to Harasaran’s father. He took the glass without slowing his pace in the slightest. He’d recite a couplet, then take a sip.

  Chetan was waiting for him to finish talking so he could bring up his stories published in Bande Mataram, but that auspicious moment never arrived.

  *

  Hunar Sahib might have sat and recited poetry to them until evening, but Ranvir and Nishtar were both extremely hungry, so suddenly, he stood up. Just then, he remembered Chetan. So he fulsomely praised Chetan’s artful short stories and said that he had the potential to really do something in the field of poetry as well. If Chetan hadn’t left Jalandhar, or if he himself hadn’t come back from Lahore, that potential would already have been fulfilled. He thanked Harasaran’s family for their hospitality and their love of literature and, promising to visit them again soon, Hunar Sahib clasped his hands to
gether and pressed them to his forehead.

  ‘Vande Mataram—hail Mother India!’ he said as he stepped down from the shop.

  Chetan tried to say something in an indistinct voice about how it had got late and now he’d go home, but Hunar Sahib wrapped his right arm around him and pulled him forward. He wrapped his left arm around Ranvir and Nishtar together, and set out on his way.

  As they started walking, he suddenly recollected himself and turned his head to thank Harasaran and his father, and assure them he’d be back to see them soon.

  *

  They had only just turned on to the big road towards Zila Kutchery from the intersection of Grand Trunk Road, when Chetan saw the three goondas, Debu, Jagna and Billa, installed outside the Khalsa Hotel. Chetan was perplexed: How was it possible that all three of them were in the same place at the same time, with no fighting?

  Afternoon

  16

  Of those three goondas, Debu and Jagna were from Chetan’s own mohalla, and Billa lived somewhere inside Khingra Gate, in Naiyon ki Gali or ‘Barbers’ Gali’, a lane which had become known throughout the city on account of Raja Khairayati Ram. In Jalandhar, a barber was known by the title ‘Raja’, and his wife was known as ‘Rani’. Khairayati Ram was the barber for the most important Khatri homes in the city. In his boyhood, he had even shaved his own patron, but the advent of the safety razor had deprived him of that occupation. Now it was his job to deliver the news of weddings, deaths, festivals, feasts, or mourning to the friends and relations of his patrons. But this task was usually handled by his Rani on her own. Instead, Khairayati Ram had opened a school just outside Khingra Gate, where the sons of all the city’s moneylenders came to study. The school only went up to Class Four, and history, geography, Urdu and English were not taught there—Khairayati Ram only taught moneylending. Moneylending is the language of ledgers, and in just five years, Khairayati Ram brought the students to such a level in their arithmetic that a young man sitting for maths at the BA level couldn’t compete with a Class Four-pass boy from Khairayati Ram’s school. In ordinary schools, on reaching Class Four, boys can remember up to ten times ten with some difficulty, or if they’re really advanced, up to ten times twenty, but in Khairayati Ram’s school, Class Four-pass boys memorized up to one hundred times one hundred, and could add, subtract, divide and multiply enormous sums. Khairayati Ram gave them formulas to memorize such that any boy who passed out of his school and went to sit at a shop would have no trouble keeping a ledger book at all. For this reason, those shopkeepers who wanted to seat their sons with them at their shops always sent them to Raja Khairayati Ram’s school.

  Khairayati Ram was a solid-looking man of medium height with salt-and-pepper moustaches and a drooping left eye. His ample frame tended towards fatness, and he wore too-short pyjamas, a kameez, a thick coat of checked cloth, and a low-wrapped turban. But he was the guru of moneylending and the city’s businessmen knew this, so they accorded him respect. Instead of calling him Raja Khairayati Ram, they called him Master Khairayati Ram. Khairayati Ram only went to important patrons’ homes on special occasions to give out invitations. Although his Rani would take the entire ceremonial gift, he considered it an obligation to his patron to fulfil his duty as barber in this observance himself. For this reason, the more the fame of his school grew, the more he cut himself off from his patrons.

  Then one day, word got out that a rally of all the city’s barbers had taken place under the chairmanship of Master Khairayati Ram, and that they had passed a resolution that only barbers who cut hair had the right to call themselves ‘Nai’ or ‘barber’. Those in business could be addressed by the title ‘Lala’, and those who taught could be addressed as ‘Pandit’. According to Arya Samaj philosophy, one did not become a Brahmin or a Khatri by birth, but rather through occupation, and since Master Khairayati Ram worked in education, he announced that he was now a Pandit. There was much rage over the barbers’ proposal in Sanatan Dharma circles and the Sanatan Dharma Khatris and Brahmins even threatened to challenge their barbers, and declared they’d have to wash their hands of their patronage. Some poor barbers even grew fearful and decided to stick with the title Raja, but Khairayati Ram left his patrons and didn’t leave off calling himself ‘Pandit’.

  Khingra Gate used to bring to the minds of city dwellers Master Khairayati Ram’s school and the barbers’ movement, but in the meantime, ever since Billa had entered adolescence and earned his stripes among the goondas of the city, it was his name that first came to mind at the mention of Khingra Gate. Master Khairayati Ram had grown old and the new crop of boys didn’t even know about his movement, and every second or third day, Billa’s name was heard in connection with some conflagration or other.

  Billa (whose real name was Hari Kumar and whom people used to call ‘Hariya’) was about two years younger than Chetan and of a similar build to Chetan’s younger brother Parasaram: he was hearty, handsome and muscular. Chetan recalled that years ago, when Hariya studied in Class Five or Six, he’d been skinny, pale and delicately beautiful, with eyes like a cat’s—a bluish brown. That’s how he’d ended up with the nickname ‘Billa’, or ‘tomcat’. Chetan had also liked him very much when they were small. Once or twice, on the pretext of calling for Khairayati Ram, he’d also tried to go to Billa’s house, but goonda boys would always surround him, and in those days, getting close to him was tantamount to getting one’s head bashed in. Also, for some reason, he never had liked his tawny eyes. Ma’s saying that you should never trust someone with cat’s eyes had always made Chetan wary of him. Hooligans from every school in the city used to circle by Khingra Gate. Once, on the road going to Adda Hoshiarpur, right in front of Khingra Gate, there was a huge showdown over Billa between two bands of goondas that resulted in two stabbings and two busted heads; the police had come and the case had dragged on for months.

  Then, as Chetan watched, skinny Billa began going to the akhara in the company of a wrestler boy from school, and in just two or three years, he became so muscular and such a powerful fighter, that instead of being followed around by boys, he was the one doing the following and he was the one bashing in heads. He failed his exams two years in a row in Class Eight, and did the same for Class Nine. When he couldn’t get through Class Ten in two years, he quit school. Now he ran speculation games and paid the police copious bribes. He did get caught, but he was released every time. He was getting fat and he was the most notorious goonda in the city.

  *

  Jagna lived right near Kallowani Mohalla. He was the son of the priest at the dharamshala in Chaurasti Atari. There was a Shiva temple in the dharamshala, to which worshippers came for daily darshan. They’d make offerings, complete a circumambulation, round their lips and make an ‘ololo’ sound with their tongues, call out ‘Bum bole!’, ring the bell and press their foreheads on the threshold, and go home contented. Many offerings were made on Shivaratri, and contributions were gathered for the dharamshala at every shop in the bazaar. Next to the temple there was an old two-storeyed house made of medieval bricks. In the upper storey lived the priest and his family—two girls and a boy. There were four rooms in the lower storey, where grooms’ parties stayed during weddings. There was a garden next to that, with an akhara. Quite a bit of income came from the dharamshala. The priest was not very educated but he certainly wished for his only son to read the shastras and to carry on in his place. Because the priest himself was uneducated, the atmosphere at the dharamshala was not conducive to study. The mohalla’s layabouts played cards, chess and chaupar on the wide front terrace of the dharamshala all day long. One group would go, then another would come, and from morning to evening, this sequence would be repeated. Then, during Diwali, there would be gambling, but only under the patronage of the priest. Once, when Chetan had gone to get his father, he’d seen men gambling with cowry shells in the light of a hurricane lantern in the downstairs room at the back.

  Mohalla enthusiasts (principle among whom was Pandit Shadiram) commissioned
performances of the Raslila in the dharamshala and waved money at the boys dancing in the roles of Krishna and Radha as though they were prostitutes dancing at a mujra.

  What with this atmosphere, Jagna wasn’t able to study past middle school despite his father’s best intentions, and even at that young age, he’d already adopted all the ‘good habits’ of smoking, drinking, theft and gambling under the patronage of Kallowani’s most famous goonda, Pyaru. He’d been going to the akhara since he was a child—and cards, chaupar and gambling were a regular affair in his home. Since childhood he’d acted as a representative for his father at the Diwali gambling gatherings—that is, when the priest had smoked too much ganja and fallen unconscious, he’d stay up all night and keep the bank open. In the morning, he’d give half the money to his father and with the other half he’d go to the cinema with Pyaru and Debu and other friends, or they’d feast on roghan josh or shahi korma at one of the hotels on Station Road. And it was at these hotels that he’d become addicted to carousing at a young age as well.

  It had already been three years since he’d failed middle school, when his father, the priest, passed into the next world. He’d married off his elder daughter before his death, so Jagna assumed his father’s post with the help of his younger sister and mother. His mother and sister were in charge of cleaning the temple, and he took half of the offerings from them. During his father’s time, there had only been gambling during the days of Diwali, but under Jagna’s rule, there were gambling parties day and night. The residents of Kallowani Mohalla and Chaurasti Atari had earlier used the dharamshala jointly to hold meetings. Harlal Pansari took donations and had bathing taps installed there. The people of the mohalla went there to bathe in the mornings, and a curtained area had been set apart for women. This was why they went to the temple—both to bow their heads before the deity and to bathe. Those who didn’t have extra room in their homes would spread out dhurries and mats there for visitors who came for weddings or to mourn the passing of a relative. The women would come there to bathe after performing the funeral rites. When, under Jagna’s rule, the hooligans of the city began to frequent the dharamshala twenty-four hours a day, it became a cause of great hardship for the people of the bazaar and the mohalla. Someone harassed someone else’s mother or sister, and then the mohalla people stopped giving donations. When that had no impact, the leaders of the mohalla and the bazaar held a meeting and passed a proposal to expropriate the temple and dharamshala from them. They raised donations in the bazaar and filed a complaint in court. Since the case was underway in those days, Jagna went with his four friends and hung about the courts, and since everyone was boycotting the dharamshala, he turned it into a centre for gambling and carousing.