Sufi - The Invisible Man of The Underworld

by Aabid Surti

  I thought for a while and said, “I remember seeing a tree to your left. At least for a night we can sit awake under it, if not sleep there.”

  Before we could grapple with the situation, we saw a torch light approaching from the opposite direction. It raised some hope. Some unfortunate guy like us must be going on foot somewhere. The next moment suspicion flashed through me. Could it be a robber or a bandit?

  I did not even have any weapon on me to defend us. There was nothing, except for the painting materials in the rucksack on my back. There was no road to run and no place to hide. We were also not aware of directions because of the total darkness around us.

  We stood there for a while hugging each other when suddenly we were lit up under the torch light. Our hearts throbbed together. It was not possible to see the face of the stranger. He came close and we started breathing normally again.

  From his features, he appeared to be a tribal. In one hand, he held a torch and in the other a spear. He was wearing a khadi jacket and a piece of loincloth wrapped around his waist. He had a folded blanket on his shoulder too. We were looking at each other in wonderment.

  Composing myself, I explained. “Our torch has failed and we want to reach Bhavali.”

  He thought for a while before replying, “You can’t go anywhere from here without a torch. If you wish, you may come with me to the town.”

  I looked at Suraiyya. She was staring at me. What would we do in the middle of the night in the town? Where would we spend the night? We were considering such questions when the tribal handed me his torch and placed the spear by his side and lit up a bidi.

  An idea struck me. “Brother!” I said returning the torch to him, “Can you give us a matchbox?”

  After a momentary hesitation, he responded positively. We thanked him and were just about to proceed on our way when he asked, “Do you have any weapon on you?”

  “No, why?”

  “What if a cobra surfaces? There are also wild animals lurking in the dark.”

  “But this is a pucca road?”

  He smirked at my folly, “The road may be pucca but it passes through hills and forest.”

  “Has any wild animal ever attacked a traveler?”

  “Such mishaps occur often, particularly when the traveler is unarmed.”

  I had Suraiyya on my arm, youthfulness and courage too. I decided to go forward in the direction of Bhavali. Before parting, the tribal made a freezing announcement, “Be careful, there was a rumour about a tiger being sighted around here a few days back.”

  We stared at him as he headed in the direction of Nainital. Darkness descended and engulfed us again. In fact it was a boon to me, particularly because I did not want Suraiyya to see the drops of sweat forming on my forehead.

  Suppressing fear and worry, I started walking with Suraiyya. I had noted under the light of the tribal’s torch that the road ahead was straight up to a point. My plan was to keep lighting a matchstick at intervals and proceed slowly in this manner.

  “Suraiyya!” I said in an effort to dispel the lingering uneasiness, “What would Anil and Lubayna be thinking about us?”

  “They would have presumed that we have stayed back in Nainital.” Expressing her suppressed anger, she added, “They shouldn’t have left without us.”

  I lit the first matchstick and the light brightened a limited area. We had nearly reached up to the bend. We crossed the bend keeping the matchstick alight. We could now take a few steps in the dark without worrying much.

  Suraiyya was saying, “Was it not their duty to give us company?”

  “But...”

  “No one deserts a friend like this.”

  “But you just said they must have presumed that we have stayed back in Nainital.”

  She kept quiet.

  I lit another matchstick while walking and continued, “You are forgetting one thing, Suraiyya. There is a vast difference between their nature and ours. We appreciate light classical music like thumri, dadra and ghazals. They like popular Hindi film songs. We look for beauty in flowers, butterflies and hills; they look for it in the concrete jungle. The subject of our discussion is the works of director Satyajit Ray and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, while they spend hours discussing the love affair of Raj Kapoor and Nargis.”

  “What do you want to say?” Suraiyya asked.

  “We shouldn’t expect the same emotional response from others.”

  The matchbox was half-empty by now. The night too was half over. It was almost 1 o' clock and there was a perceptible change in the darkness. Its intensity was cracking gradually. Now we could see the shapes of trees in the form of shadows. The thin crooked outline that separated the hills from the sky had also started emerging. By this time, we had become carefree. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly we had begun to enjoy our midnight walk. Arm in arm and cheek to cheek, we lit up like a pair of Diwali lamps.

  I said, “Janoo, I feel like singing.”

  She laughed. “You mean croaking?”

  “No kidding, I’ve a deep urge to sing loudly.”

  “Go ahead,” she said mockingly, “I assure you, you won’t be bombarded with rotten eggs and tomatoes here.”

  “Is my voice that bad?”

  “To put it mildly, you sound much better when you are not singing.”

  Suraiyya too was in great form.

  “All right,” I said, accepting her sarcasm, “I shall not sing, but if you don't mind, I will recite a ghazal ( a romantic poem in Urdu)!”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Ahmed Hamdani.”

  “I haven't heard the name.”

  “He is originally from Meerut, but settled in Karachi after the partition.” I enthusiastically offered some more information. “Recently his collection of ghazals titled Pyaasi Zameen (Thirsty Earth) has appeared in the market.”

  “Irshaad (Please go ahead)!”

  “If you don't like the opening lines, you’re free to stop me from reciting it further.”

  She gave me the green signal by raising her voice, “Irshaad!”

  Main raahen na kya kya badalta raha,

  Magar saath Sahaara to chalta raha

  (I changed so many routes, but misfortune continued to escort me.)

  As Suraiyya's knowledge of Urdu was limited, I told her the meaning of the difficult word Sahaara, which means desert. “I know that much Urdu,” she quipped.

  Diye to bahot kuchh jalaye magar,

  Mere ghar mein ek khauff palta raha.

  (I lighted many lamps, but fear continued to breed in my house.)

  “Vaah!”

  Ghata aayi hai to baras jayegi,

  Yun hi umr bhar main bahalta raha.

  (Since the clouds have gathered, it is bound to rain, thus I beguiled myself all my life.)

  This time, Suraiyya was ecstatic and said, “Vaah, Vaah! Khoob!”

  Tere lutf par bhi koyi kya jeeye,

  Ye suraj to har roz dhalta raha.

  (Who can live just on your charm, this life is fading away every day.)

  We didn’t need the matches any more. As the night became brighter, we could see the road clearly. Putting the matchbox in my pocket, I continued with the ghazal:

  Gila kya kisi ka yahan har taraf,

  Bas ek aag thi jisme jalta raha.

  (No one to be blamed, there was a raging fire all around in which I burned.)

  She jumped in frenzy. “Aabid, please say these couplets once again.”

  I repeated and recited the concluding lines:

  Bujha dil to kuchh zakhm ki lau badhi,

  Mein kuchh is tarah bhi sambhalta raha.

  (When the heart cooled down, the flame of the wound leaped up. I managed to survive this way too.)

  I don’t know if Suraiyya savoured this couplet or not, but surely a tiger roared from somewhere in appreciation, shaking us to the core. We froze in the middle of the road. In the dead of the night, the echoes of the roar reverberated in our ears for a few moments.

  Fr
om the ferocity of the thunder, it was evident that the tiger was hiding somewhere nearby. It was a matter of a few seconds. This game of life and death would be over in no time. We needed to think fast to take whatever security measures we could. And…we did not have anything to think or do.

  My situation was worse. I could not even shudder. Fear had made Suraiyya grab me like a goblin. We could not even run for our lives until she released me. If released, how many steps we would survive was a different matter.

  Isolating her with much difficulty, a brainwave hit me like a bolt from the blue. I remembered that animals keep away from fire. I immediately took out the matchbox from my pocket, lit one matchstick and put afire the dry leaves on the ground.

  Now, Suraiyya had recovered somewhat. “I’m keeping the bonfire alight.” I gave her a task to distract her mind, “You get some dry twigs.” She also got busy. I collected some more dry leaves from nearby and put them on the fire. Suraiyya added some dry twigs.

  Flames leaped up from the bonfire. At the same moment the tiger appeared across the road atop the hill. Forgetting everything, we just fixedly looked at this rare sight. The grace with which this full-grown tiger was standing atop the hill with its neck held high mesmerized both of us.

  Now the tiger moved its neck and cared to look at us. We realized the seriousness of the situation. We were safe until the bonfire was on. The fire was our life. The moment the blaze died out, we too would die.

  I made Suraiyya sit near the fire and picked up a few thick twigs from the nearby thicket. The tiger too appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere and sat down at the same place it had been standing earlier. Its two eyes focussed on us were glowing like burning coal in the dark. Our eyes too were fixed on it.

  “It seems we will have to sit here till the morning,” I told Suraiyya softly.

  “Can’t we shoo him away?”

  “It’s not your pet.”

  “What if we throw burning twigs at it?”

  “It might move away from our sight for a while, but we won't be able to move from here freely. It’s also possible that this cunning beast might hide somewhere in the hill and pounce on us the moment we move away from the bonfire.”

  Suraiyya looked at me steadily. I added, “It's not safe for us to even take a single step from here. Nevertheless, if you wish you may draw a few sketches. No tiger is going to pose for you again.”

  “Mmmmy hands are still ssshaking,” she said, a little abashed, looking at the tiger.

  Battle lines were drawn for both the sides. The messenger of death was not willing to move from the spot on the hill where he was sitting, while we were not in a position to budge even an inch from where we sat.

  I looked at my wristwatch. It was two in the morning. By this time, there was a significant change in the pitch blackness of the night. The darkness was opening up like a moonlit night. Now, we could roughly see the tiger’s colour and the stripes on its body.

  After 3 o’clock, the tiger got up suddenly and roared. We trembled. The next moment, I got up. I had a burning branch of a tree in my hand. Suraiyya froze where she sat. Her eyes staring at the tiger remained wide open. She was also clutching my leg with both her hands. It seemed the tiger would climb down any moment from the hill and, heedless of the fire, devour us.

  It stood still for a while looking at us growling, then turned and slipped behind the hill. Had it lost hope? Had it got tired of waiting and left?

  I did not have to wait much for an answer. I heard the whirring sound of a truck coming from a distance. The tiger must have heard it before us. Perhaps, it might have even seen the headlights from the hilltop.

  It understood that luck did not favour it today. So it roared to express its displeasure and disappeared in the woods behind the hills.

  We first saw the headlights around the curve and then the truck. I ran and stood in the middle of the road. I opened my arms signaling to the truck to stop. I still had a burning branch in one hand.

  The truck slowed down and stopped near me. Suraiyya lit up again. I threw away the branch, held her hand and both of us boarded the truck.

  On reaching Bhavali at four in the morning, we came to know that Anil and Lubayna had not yet returned from Nainital. It would not be surprising if, like us, they too had missed the last bus.

  I couldn’t help laughing. For a while the laughter quivered in the predawn sacred air and I paused to relish that quiver. “Now, tell me, what would they be thinking about us?” I asked Suraiyya.

  Some moments of silence followed. Then she filled the void. “Cursing us for leaving them in the lurch at Nainital.”

  Chapter 24

  Iqbal was ready to leave the house. He stuffed the five hundred rupee notes in his wallet when Gul Banu asked, “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve a job to finish.” He pondered for a moment...Why did mother, who never enquired, question him today?

  “Someone had come to see you last night.”

  “Did he give his name?”

  “He said people call him Bhadak.”

  He had sent a message to Hamid Bhadak two days back; he wanted to meet him at least once before taking any action on the murder case. “Okay, I’ll first go to his house,” Iqbal told his mother.

  After half an hour, he entered the 'Do Tanki' locality near JJ hospital and walked along Tinkar Lane. This was the same lane where the so-called don of Bombay, Dawood Ibrahim, lived with his four brothers.

  He had not yet taken a serious step in the world of smuggling. He had yet to cross his teens. Of course, he used to buy a few contraband watches or a gold biscuit to sell it at a small profit.

  “Did you know him?” I interrupted Sufi who gave me some stunning details.

  “He used to work under me.”

  I got interested. “What work?”

  “Sometimes, we got fabric from Japan. Dawood used to buy a piece or two from me…”

  “Then?”

  “He used to sit with a basket on the footpath of Musafirkhana lane to sell the fabrics.”

  The Musafirkhana lane near Crawford Market is well known in Bombay for its retail outlet for smuggled goods. It was a launching pad for upstarts, optimists hawking their wares. Many young lads like Dawood used to eke out a living by selling contraband goods kept in baskets. Once a year, the police used to carry out a couple of raids for the sake of its records and it still does. For those who are crazy about foreign goods, these are openly available even today.

  I asked him again, “How was Dawood in those days?”

  “Like any other tapori.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was also one of the boys working under me.”

  “Was there anything special about him?”

  “Yeah, he was a coward by nature,” Sufi replied and added, “I’ve seen other boys bashing him up. But, I don't recollect having ever seen him beating anyone.”

  In those days, and in that very 'Do Tanki' locality, Ayub Lala was the great guru of a gang of pickpockets. He did not want another thug to raise his head in his territory.

  Dawood had entered the field of smuggling with much hesitation and fear. To curb his progress, Ayub Lala never missed an opportunity to insult him. Dawood too, on sighting him, changed direction and vanished down byelanes. In case of an accidental meet, Lala would deliver a couple of slaps and rob his entire day's earnings. Dawood was not to forget this insult.

  Iqbal climbed up the stairs of a dilapidated building and knocked on the closed door to his left on the first floor. While waiting in the passage, a question cropped up unexpectedly - Is it fair to save a murderer from the gallows?

  He would have returned had the door not opened the next moment. Hamid's middle-aged wife Salma was standing gingerly before him with a doleful face. Iqbal announced his name. She gave him way. He went inside.

  The building had the chawl system like that of Iqbal's Abbasi Manzil. A family lived in each room. Hamid's family had two rooms. One could call it a small t
wo-room flat.

  There was not much difference between the interior of the flat and a museum. The first room looked stuffed with a cheap sofa set, chairs, two cupboards and one showcase. To add to the cramming was a rectangular aquarium. The colour of the walls was pink.

  As soon as Iqbal settled down in a chair, Salma switched on the fan. “What will you have – tea or a cold drink?”

  He always felt a bit hesitant while talking to women, so he asked, “Is there no one at home?”

  “The boys have gone to school. The elder had morning college today. My husband has gone to meet the lawyer. It will take him some time to return.” As an after thought, she added, “Didn’t he visit you last night?”

  “I wasn’t at home.”

  She started to leave for the other room when Iqbal stopped her and said, “I’ve just had my breakfast.”

  “But you have come for the first time.”

  “Can I have a look at Hamid's photographs?” He asked, skirting the formalities and coming to the point.

  Salma nodded.

  After a while, she returned with a glass of Rooh-e-Afza sherbet in one hand and an album in the other. “In it are photographs of our marriage ceremony,” she said, placing the frosted glass of sherbet on the coffee table and offering the album to Iqbal.