In the City a Mirror Wandering

by Upendranath Ashk

  The next day, when Amarnath asked in school how he liked the book, Chetan said, ‘Wow, what a book! You yourself truly are the “spring of life”!’ Amarnath was pleased by this, but from that day on he came to be known as ‘Sarchashma-e-Zindagi’.

  *

  Chetan recalled that incident from their school days as he sat on the stoop sipping lemonade, and he smiled.

  *

  After that, for an entire week, Amarnath had gone to all the booksellers in Bazaar Sheikhan and Bhairon Bazaar, but no one was prepared to take even one of his books. Finally, he left some copies at Mahantram’s shop after promising him that Mahantram could take his own commission before giving him his money when they were sold. Mahantram asked for a fifty per cent commission. Amarnath didn’t want to agree to more than twenty-five per cent, but his experiences from the past seven days gave him no choice and he left the books there at fifty per cent (and that too, on loan).

  After this, he brought all his classmates to Mahantram’s bookshop on some pretext or another, and showed them the copies of Sarchashma-e-Zindagi, but although everyone congratulated him, not one of them showed the good sense of purchasing the book.

  Then one day, when Chetan was going to his father’s in Mukerian during the holidays, he ran into Amarnath on the train holding a bundle of copies of Sarchashma-e-Zindagi, trying to sell the books. Along with that, he was also selling copies of some other cheap books. ‘Bhai, the book doesn’t sell on its own. If there are other books with it, it’s easier to sell.’ And he told him frankly that he’d been selling on the trains for a whole month, and he’d sold his own book too—twenty copies in one month . . . ‘Instead of giving a loan of fifty per cent to Mahantram, it’s so much better to sell them to travellers at twenty-five per cent off,’ he laughed, and held out his hand for praise.

  ‘You’re amazing!’ said Chetan, slapping his hand, but to himself he said, ‘He may or may not become a poet or story writer, but he’ll definitely be a businessman.’ He admired Amarnath’s drive and dedication too, and when, after passing the Matric, Amarnath opened a shop on Panjpir Road near a primary school, Chetan was not surprised. He was passing by once, when he stopped on seeing Amarnath sitting there. He’d hung stories from strings tied to nails, and the small glass penholder he’d always used had been washed and set up outside the shop on the platform. He had set out lead pencils, slate pencils, holders, nibs and two boxes of chalk, and inside he’d suspended copies of Sarchashma-e-Zindagi over a rope, just as he had at home. He told Chetan proudly that he’d started the shop with just five rupees. He’d got the stories on credit, and when he sold them, he kept a fifty per cent commission and gave the rest back, then bought new ones.

  *

  Chetan cast one glance at this new ‘Nephew’s Shop’—every nook and cranny, inside and out, was crammed with pictures and books. There were frames of all sizes, mirrors and pictures on the left and right of the counter, and in front of his cushion. Books were stacked to the ceiling inside. Amarnath told him he’d created all this with those same five rupees, and he’d moved from Panjpir to Bhairon Bazaar, the centre of the local book business. First he did book binding. During Diwali, he’d begun to frame pictures, and sell stories and second-hand books, and starting this year, he’d started stocking new books as well. Dina Nath the Bookseller had given his own shop to his sons, and had himself opened up a shop across the way and called it Chacha di Hatti, or ‘Uncle’s Shop’, so Amarnath had put up his ‘Nephew’s Shop’ sign. Uncle’s Shop hadn’t got famous, but Nephew’s Shop had become as famous as the dickens. How? To explain this, Lala Amarnath, aka, Sarchashma-e-Zindagi, aka Nephew Sahib, took out some handbills and posters from the rack to his right and showed them to Chetan.

  On the first was written ‘Nephew’s Shop’ in thick letters and beneath it were printed the details: that Lala Amarnath, bookbinder and framer, had also started to sell second-hand books and that the shop’s name was now ‘Nephew’s Shop’, and that the nephew was ready and waiting to serve everyone at all times.

  The title of the second poster was DON’T READ ME, since a man immediately stops walking and begins reading the advertisement on seeing such a title, and below was an announcement that Nephew’s Shop has opened in Bhairon Bazaar, and that Nephew Sahib not only sells stationary supplies, but also binds books, makes frames, buys second-hand books at a higher rate than others, and sells them cheap!

  On the third was written in thick red letters:

  All our problems have disappeared!

  Nephew’s Shop is open

  Nephew’s Shop is open

  Nephew’s Shop is open

  On the fourth was a verse written by Nephew Sahib himself in red letters:

  Stop, Uncle, look, what is this?

  It’s a shop, a nephew’s shop, and the nephew

  sells books, very cheaply!

  All the posters and handbills basically said the same thing. Lala Amarnath had pasted up the posters with his own hands in every gali and mohalla of the city and he’d handed out all the handbills himself, and now he was the nephew of the entire city.

  Seeing the posters and hearing the tale of Lala Amarnath’s struggle, Chetan said, ‘Your book may or may not be the fount of life, but you yourself surely are.’ And when he held out his hand chuckling, Amarnath placed his own broad hand on his, laughing in the same way.

  ‘But what did happen to those copies of that book of yours? Did they all sell?’ asked Chetan suddenly.

  ‘There are ten or twenty copies left. I haven’t sold them directly, but I have indirectly,’ he said, and he looked around inside and then handed Chetan a large poster. Across the top was written in thick red letters:

  A book full of the valuable secrets of life

  Sarchashma-e-Zindagi

  Free . . . free . . . free . . . free

  And after that were written the conditions for attaining this valuable book: anyone who had ten books bound at once, or five pictures framed, or bought five rupees’ worth of books, would receive this valuable book free of charge.

  ‘You’ve really done it, bhai!’ Chetan stood up and handed back the poster. ‘Everyone should learn how to fight the good fight from you.’

  He shook his hand warmly and, regarding his thick-skulled classmate with respect for the first time, Chetan took his leave.

  12 Wellspring; fountainhead.

  13 A spring of life.

  14 The Spring of Life: From the golden pen of Lala Amarnath Mehndru.

  15 In the language of Sufis, considering every particle of creation a part of the creator.

  37

  Chetan was walking into Papadiyan Bazaar when he saw Shyama of the Jhamans running headlong towards him. His face was pale.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Chetan as he drew near.

  ‘I’m going to get Hansa,’ he replied without stopping.

  ‘What happened?’ Chetan turned and called out.

  But all he could make out from what Shyama said as he ran on were two words, ‘Bhago’ and ‘Amirchand’.

  Chetan continued walking. Up ahead, Hakim Dina Nath was quickly shutting up his shop.

  ‘What’s wrong, Hakim Sahib?’ asked Chetan, laughing. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘There was a fight in the mohalla,’ he said, quickly fastening the lock and slipping the key into his pocket. He picked up his bag of essential medicines and turned his steps towards Chaurasti Atari.

  ‘In which mohalla? Ours or yours?’ Chetan meant to ask in which chowk of the mohalla, Andon ka Chowk or Chowk Chaddhiyan, because Hakim Dina Nath lived near Chowk Chaddhiyan in Gali Bathaiyan.

  ‘Yours!’ said Hakim ji without stopping. ‘Amirchand beat up Bhago.’

  ‘He beat her up!’

  ‘Shyama just told me. I’m going to go see what happened.’

  Chetan thought about what Laloo had said. ‘But she was staying in Mandi; did she come over here?’ he asked.

  ‘They say she just got here.’

 
Hakim Sahib was walking so fast he was almost running. Racing to keep up with him, Chetan asked, ‘So how badly did he beat her? Will she survive?’

  ‘I can’t say. Shyama told me just now. She’s wounded, she could be dying . . . What an idiot that Amirchand is. Now that his brother’s become a deputy, is he going to kill the whole mohalla?’

  In Chaurasti Atari, Chetan ran into his younger brother Shankar running in the other direction.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Chetan.

  ‘Go to the mohalla quickly. Amirchand beat Bhago. She was bleeding from the head.’ And then he said to Dina Nath, ‘Hakim Sahib, please run over there. I’m going to get Parasaram from the akhara.’

  Everyone in Bajiyanwala Bazaar was running towards the mohalla.

  When Chetan reached the chowk of the mohalla with Hakim Dina Nath, there was already a huge uproar. A large crowd had filled the square—spectators were gathering from Khoslon ki Gali, Barhaiyon ki Gali, Chowk Chaddhiyan and Gali Baniyan. There were more women than men. Aunty Purandei stood on the plinth of the well, listing seven generations of Khatris, and cursing them all. Shanno stood on her roof, grimacing. ‘She blackened her face when she went to Mandi—why did she need to come back to the mohalla? This was a respectable mohalla of daughters and sisters, how could such a loose woman live here?’

  And Aunty Purandei was asking why Shanno hadn’t thought of the daughters and sisters of the mohalla when she was getting cosy with her brother-in-law, and giving birth to a bastard son?

  And Pandit Daulat Ram, his braid tied up, a shawl printed with the name of Ram wrapped around his body, his wooden sandals flapping, was sometimes trying to get Aunty Purandei to quieten down and sometimes clasping his hands in entreaty before Shanno.

  And Bhagavanti lay still in the chowk in front of the gate of the Sunars. The women had revived her by sprinkling water on her face. Blood oozed from her head. You could hear her screaming ‘Oh, oh!’ all the way through the bazaar and she writhed about as though she were about to die.

  When Hakim Dina Nath came forward with his bag, Aunty Purandei stopped him at the plinth of the well. ‘Let Hansa come,’ she said. ‘We have to get the police report written first.’

  Chetan’s mother and Chanda were standing in the sitting room with their veils down. Chetan went and stood with them. Ma asked where he’d gone off to; they’d been waiting for him to come home and eat. And she told him that his father had arrived; he’d been asking for him. He’d gone off with Chacha Fakir Chand and would be back that night.

  Chetan made the excuse that he’d run into some friends from Lahore. ‘How did all this happen?’ he asked his mother.

  Then his mother told him that she had been upstairs, and had heard that Bhagavanti had come half an hour before. Bhago had left her things at the family home and asked Aunty Purandei to watch her children; then she’d come into the chowk and sat down at the gate of the Sunars and was chatting, when someone, Shanno, or Rajo, or Pyaru’s mother, who, being Brahmins like the Jhamans, went and told Amirchand that Bhago had come. He had rushed out of the bhuvara shouting, and grabbed her by the braid and dragged her from her seat. He removed his shoe and beat her nearly to death. Blood was streaming down her head. Oh, how he dashed her against the hard floor of the mohalla, that cruel man.

  ‘Where’s Telu?’ asked Chetan. ‘Hasn’t he come?’

  ‘I haven’t heard if Telu has come,’ said Ma.

  Chetan stood silently for a moment, watching the spectacle unfolding in the mohalla below. People were pouring in from the bazaar. The crowd was growing larger. A huge commotion had broken out.

  Chetan watched carefully: there were three or four clear streams in the crowd. Some Brahmin women were on Bhagavanti’s side. They believed that since she had taken a husband, she should stay in her home. They surrounded Bhagavanti and spoke about this loud enough for the whole mohalla to hear.

  Chachi Dayavanti was waving her arms in the air, surrounded by some women, saying that they were under the rule of the British, not the rule of Amirchand; when he comes to power, then tell him (this was intended for those Khatri women who were opposed to Bhagavanti coming into the mohalla) he can pass a law that Khatri girls can’t marry into Brahmin homes.

  ‘Oh, did that happen just today? Didn’t the Kshatriya kings give their daughters to the rishis in the olden times?’ another woman was saying.

  ‘Kings’ and ‘rishis’—Chetan thought of Lala Mukandi Lal and Telu and smiled. Pandit Daulat Ram, hearing what she was saying from the plinth, quoted the saint Shri Ramanand: ‘jāt pāt pūche na ko, har ko bhaje so har kā ho—Don’t talk to me of caste, he who sings to Hari belongs to Him alone!’

  And Aunty Purandei was saying, ‘Sister, Mahatma Gandhi says it’s because of this caste business that we’re not getting self-rule.’

  ‘Then give your daughter to a Bhangi or Chamar, we’ll get self-rule right away!’ shrieked Shanno, and Aunty Purandei let loose a shower of ‘sweet words’ . . .

  There were a few Khatri women with these Brahmin women who were siding with Shanno. Among them, Rajo of the Chowdhrys, her face lined with premature wrinkles, her weeping, dim eyes blinking, was saying:

  ‘Oh, sister, if just a man did it, then filth wouldn’t spread in the home (she was apparently referring to Shanno). She didn’t take up with her brothers-in-law!’

  Hearing this, Pandit Daulat Ram started crying out, ‘Hari! Hari!’ and ‘Radhe Sham!’ loudly.

  *

  The second group was of Khatri women near the doorway of the Chowdhrys; they were not in favour of Bhago entering the mohalla. Principal among them was Anant’s mother, Aunty Lal Dei. Suppressing all other voices with her own, she was saying:

  ‘Oho, if all she wanted was to take up with someone, she could have kept doing it in Mandi. No one was rushing over to find out . . . but it’s not right to rub it in her brother-in-law’s face in the mohalla.’

  ‘Indeed, may your husband live long!’ said Dhanno the Khatri. ‘A man’s honour counts for something too. Mangal’s father (Lala Mukandi Lal) is not like that. If he were here, blood would flow!’

  Two or three Brahmin women who were against the Jhamans were also present. Pyaru’s mother was saying, ‘Oh, this Telu has really gone too far. He goes up to the roof and oils his body and does push-ups . . . Neighbours’ mothers and daughters are one’s own mothers and daughters.’

  Dhanno interrupted her, ‘Oh, Aunty, how can you criticize the men? If a woman herself jumps from roof to roof, what’s a man to do?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of a widowed woman going and setting herself up in another’s home instead of shaving her head. There are ten widows in the mohalla who have spent their widowhood spinning. She’s gone too far.’

  ‘Oho, who knows what caste she is? Khatri women don’t do such evil things.’

  At this, Pandit Daulat Ram placed his hands over his ears and cried out ‘Shiv! Shiv!’

  *

  A group of men, among them Pandit Shivnarayan and Gurdayal, were expressing their disappointment at the fact that Amirchand, being a man, had raised his hand to a woman. If Mukandi Lal had hit her, that would be another matter, since he was the one who’d been injured, but what was this Amirchand thinking to start beating her?

  ‘Why did he beat a woman? Beating a woman is like beating the earth. If he was a man, he should have fought Telu.’

  ‘Oh, it’s his pride over his brother becoming a collector, that’s what it is. You know what they say, “The poor Jat got a dish of water and drank so much he got the bloat.”’

  ‘It’s like they say in the shastras, isn’t it? “Doom approaches and brainpower departs,”’ said Pandit Shivnarayan.

  *

  There was all sorts of gossip being whispered at the fringes of this.

  ‘Which bastard is Amirchand afraid of? Amichand himself has become a collector. Did he kill a police officer that someone’s going to tell his brother? After all we have to live under his rule now.’

>   ‘Whether he’s a collector or a commissioner, right now, it’s the British Raj. Someone who’s beaten up a woman from another family can’t just sit at home. Now that his brother has become collector, is he just going to go around beating up the whole mohalla?’

  And thus, everyone was speaking their minds. Just then the Jhaman boys, Hansa, Shyama and Genda, entered from the bazaar side. They were all carrying lathis. Right from the bazaar, they started shouting out curses, ‘Where is that son-of-a-collector? We’re going to see to his collecting today.’

  But when they learned that Amirchand had beaten Bhago and gone off somewhere, and that his wife had locked the door from inside and was terrified, and there was no one to listen to them right now, they all rushed towards Bhagavanti.

  Aunty Purandei said they should first go and fill out a police report. A boy produced a charpoy from somewhere in the blink of an eye. Bhagavanti was laid upon it, crying ‘Oh, woe!’ and shivering. Then Chetan came up and said, ‘Her head is bleeding; get a certificate from a doctor first, then go and do the police report.’

  ‘Oh, what will we do with a “certificate”? Are the police blind? Won’t they see she’s bleeding?’ asked Pandit Gurdayal.

  ‘Well then, our certificate is Hakim Sahib—he’s right here with us,’ said someone tapping Hakim Dina Nath on the back.

  Hakim Dina Nath seemed suddenly to remember how busy he was. ‘Shyama told me that Bhago’s head had burst open. I’ve brought a first-aid kit. If you need to fill out a report then go and do it. I’ll be at my shop.’