I’ve forgotten what her real name was. Yes, I think I called her Begu, sometimes Wazir, sometimes Begu. She was from the land of the mountains, her complexion was exactly like a rose’s, and when she blushed her face was like the sun at dawn. Begu was a goatherd. Whenever one of her goats was lost she would bring her hands up to her mouth and call it; the echo of her cry seemed to make the mountains come alive.
This world gets a woman such as this only once. A sharp, long nose. And her eyes? I’ve seldom seen eyes such as hers. They seemed to hold the depths of the mountains in them. Long, thick eyebrows. When she walked past me, a sunbeam seemed to be trapped in her eyelids. Her shoulders were broad, her hands round. And her breasts were like wild mountain fowl. I’m not exaggerating one bit, my brothers, you see beauty such as this only in Pahadi miniature paintings. To describe her loveliness I have no choice but to talk of Radha on a tryst in those works of art. The way she walked the mountain trails, the way she hummed, the way she smiled to herself on the way—she was clearly on her way to meet someone. Of course it was a journey to a tryst.
The first time I saw Begu, it felt like a flash of lightning in the darkness of all these years. For several days I spied on her from my position behind a tree. She would call out to her sheep and goats melodiously, as though she were sending a snatch of a song out on the breeze. Its echoes would burst within me like a waterfall. One day I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. Running up to her, I grasped her hand, and like a terrified doe she put her arms around me. I wanted to kiss her. I even tried to put my arms around her and kiss her. But Begu shook me off and ran away. I never tried to do it again. But one day she came up to me of her own accord and started a conversation. After that we talked for days on end; I do not remember all that we spoke of, my brothers. As you know, alcohol claims the mind first of all, playing tricks with the memory. Things that did not happen appear to be true.
I told Begu of my love for her. She went into peals of laughter. Then, chewing on the edge of her scarf, she said, ‘But you’ll go away from this sarai soon. Will you still love me after that?’
— What sarai?
— This sarai.
— This mountain’s a sarai? An inn? I laughed.
— My grandmother says …
— What does she say?
Begu didn’t continue. I realized that she didn’t have the words for all she wanted to say. But she could feel. I understood Begu much later, Mirza sahib, from a story I heard.
Gustakhi maaf, my brothers, but I must tell this other story now. Otherwise you will not understand that it was indeed in a sarai that we—Begu and I—met.
One day, Ibrahim Ibn Adam was seated in the public stateroom, the Diwan-e-Aam. His ministers and other subjects were present. Suddenly a fakir with a long beard, dressed in a tattered gown, appeared before the emperor’s throne.
— What do you want? Ibrahim asked.
— Let me catch my breath. I’ve only just arrived at your inn.
— Are you mad! Ibrahim said stridently. ‘This isn’t an inn, this is my palace.’
— Whom did this palace belong to before you? The fakir asked.
— To my father.
— And before him?
— To his father.
— And before him?
— It goes back many generations.
— Where are they all now?
— Are they still supposed to be alive? They’re all in their graves.
— If people only come and go, what can this place be but an inn? The fakir disappeared as soon as he said this.
Begu’s grandmother was right. We merely pass a succession of inns as we go forward towards death.
One day Begu said, ‘You won’t remain angry with me, will you?’
— For what?
— The other day …
— What about it?
— I didn’t let you kiss me.
— I’ve forgotten that, Begu.
— Everyone behaves that way with me, you know. They tell me, your eyes are so beautiful; when I see your lips I cannot stop myself from kissing them. What do I do? I don’t like all this. I thought you were like them too.
— Then what am I like?
Begu looked at me, tilting her face against her palm. ‘You’re not like them,’ she smiled. ‘You’re decent.’
One day I found Begu’s kurta pockets stuffed with many things. ‘What’s all this in your pockets?’ I asked.
— Shan’t tell you. Begu smiled, swinging her pigtails.
— Shan’t tell? Just a minute. I grasped her hand. —Show me what you’ve got. You have to.
— Please let me go.
— No, you have to show me.
Looking at me helplessly, Begu fished out one strange object after another from her pockets. Dried chinar leaves, an empty matchbox, a few pebbles, a yellowed photograph clipped from a newspaper, ribbons. But she absolutely refused to show me one of the things she had, holding it tightly in her fist.
— What’s that?
— No, I won’t show you.
— All right. I laughed. —You can go now.
After going off a long way, Begu returned. I was sitting beneath a tree. From a distance, she tossed at me what she had been hiding in her fist, and ran off. Do you know what it was? A lozenge. I was surprised. Why had she refused to show me this lozenge? And why, for that matter, did she come back to give it to me? That was the last time I saw Begu, Mirza sahib. I never saw her again. I bid goodbye to Bataut a few days later. The lozenge stayed in my pocket. When I returned home I put it in the drawer of my desk. My only memory of Begu. But how long do memories last, after all? One day I opened the drawer to discover a swarm of ants having a royal feast with it.
I told Ismat about Begu one day. When she had heard the whole story, she said, ‘What kind of love was this, Manto bhai? I had expected a thrilling love story from you. This is laughable.’
— Why is it laughable?
— A rotten, third-class love story. You returned with a lump of sugar in your pocket and considered yourself a hero. Tchah!
I shut up.
— Well? Say something. Ismat kept prodding me.
— What should I have done, Ismat? What would have pleased you? I should have slept with Begu and given her an illegitimate child, right? That would have made for a thrilling love story, wouldn’t it? I could have flexed my muscles and declared there wasn’t another man in the world like me. Ha! Is this how you want to see me, Ismat?
Ismat took my hand, both her eyes misting over.
17
This heart shows the way to love
This heart is the prophet, the road, the Lord
unirabai left me, I produced the first volume of my Urdu ghazals, making up my mind to write in Farsi from then on. The lustre of the ghazal is not bright without Farsi. But things went wrong, Manto bhai, fate began its games with me. The relationship between my heart and happiness was destroyed; secretly I bled, one drop at a time. Our relationship with joy is usually very strong, isn’t it, Manto bhai? What do we want in life but happiness? But consider the even stronger forces that can break this relationship. One night I told my heart … yes, we can speak only to our heart, it alone is our temple and our mosque, our ibaadatgah. I told my heart, ‘Give me the strength to speak, so that I can go to the Jahanpanah and tell him, I am the mysterious mirror, huzoor, polish me till I shine; poetry is born within me. I want a little rest.’ My heart chuckled. ‘You imbecile, the time for such talk is long gone. If you must speak at all, just say, “I am wounded, give me balm for my wounds; I am dead, resurrect me.”’ I turned into a hand-drawn, colourless nightingale; not even the fragrance of a hundred roses would bring song to this nightingale’s heart.
No, my brothers, don’t go back to sleep with such disappointed faces. Now that you have started listening to the stories of this pair of ill-fated souls, you must take the responsibility of staying till the end. But I do not want to end your hangovers from the tales of our r
omances just yet. And I promise that in the course of this narrative of darkness you shall get patches of light and gusts of breeze—every now and then I will tell you such qissas and hikayats, take you to such dastangos, that life will not appear to be a rock weighing you down. Yes, sit up now, for it’s stories about love that I want to tell you now. To tell you the truth, the deeper I went into dozakh during my life, the more it was the memory of love that let me survive. This life of ours—the act of being born—what is it but ishq? This is worldly love, ishq-e-majazi. And the closer we approach death, the path of divine love, ishq-e-haqiqi, opens up before us. You have to keep ishq-e-haqiqi only for the Lord. You no longer have Begum Falak Ara before you, nor Munirabai, nor Manto bhai’s Begu or Ismat, there’s only he, Alhamdulillah. But how many of us can actually tread that path? Maula Rumi did. Each of us is a moth, whirling around in the trap set by ishq-e-majazi. Have you noticed the irony, Manto bhai? Ishq-e-majazi is worldly love, it’s like loving a picture or a symbol; and ishq-e-haqiqi, which is only directed at Allah, is true love. What does this mean? We are all shadow puppets, spinning about in a symbolic forest of love. Even if we cannot take the path of ishq-e-haqiqi, even this is not insignificant, Manto bhai. It’s no mean achievement to love a picture. That alone makes this earthly life worthwhile. Some people even choose death out of their love for a picture—and does such a death not look forward to the path of ishq-e-haqiqi?
So, my brothers, let me tell you one of Mir sahib’s masnavis. If we have to talk of love, we must talk of Mir sahib over and over again. A man wounded and bent by love was like a caged nightingale to him. As he listened to its lamentations, he felt that he himself was trapped inside the cage. Have you ever read Darya-e-Ishq, Manto bhai? Why do you stare helplessly at me? Don’t worry, I know you haven’t read it. I met many people in Dilli, in Calcutta, who never read any of Hindustan’s own books. White men’s works were the last word for them. I was also quite enamoured by white skin and their civilization, their tamaddun, at one time. I even thought of them as friends, but 1857 opened my eyes. I realized that under the guise of their tamaddun, they were really here to create killing fields in this country.
No, my brothers, don’t get agitated, I will now tell you the story of Darya-e-Ishq. You’re not supposed to be listening to this story. If you’re reborn, you will carry its memory with you. However ill-fated I may have been, I do wish to be born again in this world. Do you know why? We are the Asraf-ul-Makhlakat, the finest creatures of God, Adam; even the Gibrails had to bow before us. When Iblis refused, he was thrown out of paradise. Each of us is a mirror, my brothers, in which the lord sees himself. And love is the shadow hidden deep inside the mirror, which you will never see.
Let me tell you a couple of things first. Don’t imagine that the doddering Ghalib is saying whatever comes to mind. There’s a certain protocol to telling stories too. The first rule is that you cannot tell a story without yourself in it. But in what ways can you be in a story? You talk about the tree in your garden with all your heart because you love it. You are in the story in the form of this love; you aren’t just a flesh-and-blood creature, after all, you are full of mysteries, which are part of your love for the tree. So I thought I’d explain all this. I may not have written Mir sahib’s masnavis, but as a reader I am involved with them in some way, and that is the same as being in them; this is how a poet exists in his poetry. When the falcon flies in the sky, its shadow falls on the ground; to be part of a story is like being that shadow. I’m not in the story, and yet I’m in it, in a different form.
The lover exists in your life in the same way. She is not there for you all your life. Even if she seems to be by your side, it’s not actually her. Only her shadow remains, which you love all your life. This shadow is like blood that oozes out for many, many years; like a young girl in the nude—tender, about to fall asleep.
Darya-e-Ishq is a story of someone who fell asleep this way. Was this the sleep that the boy had wanted when he loved? No one knows. The girl didn’t know either that she would have to go to her love in order to sleep. The boy was so beautiful, my brothers. As tall as a cypress tree, his heart more delicate than wax, love coursing through every vein and artery. Men such as these are born on earth only to die. Or else they’re made to slave in jail, or sent to lunatic asylums to be killed. I often dreamt of Mir sahib in his cell, where he had been imprisoned, curled up like a dog. One day Mehr Nigar appeared before him.
— You? Mir sahib murmured.
— You want to live like this?
— My fantasy, Begum. Khwab-e-khayal.
— Just for me?
— No.
— Well then?
— Mehr Nigar. A name had loved me, Begum. It’s her I live for.
— And what about me?
— You’re no one. You were afraid. You told everyone.
— They wouldn’t have let me live, Mir. They would have sent me to my grave.
— I know.
— Do you hate me?
— No. I can still see Mehr Nigar. She still lives in the palace of my heart. She came into my life a long time ago.
— Tell me that you hate me.
— No.
— Why not?
— You aren’t in my life today, Begum. Only a name remains. A name given by the lord, it’s the name that I love.
Many such names given by the lord are borne away by the river of love.
No, I will not cheat you. I’m going back to the tale of the beautiful boy who drowned to death in the Darya-e-Ishq. His name was Yusuf too. The Lord gave him a wonderful day in his life—his eye stopped at a window of a house he was passing. Who was at this window? Call her fate or call her his lover, it was her face he saw. Like a huntress, a pair of eyes stared at him, Yusuf felt as though he had fallen in love with those eyes only so that he could die. He stood transfixed in the middle of the road. The girl didn’t even deign to give him a second look; covering her face with a veil she disappeared from the window. But Yusuf was by now lost to love, and impatient. Hafiz sahib seemed to have had an inkling of what was going on in his heart.
I shall not give up on my desire if it remains unfulfilled
My heart will either reach my lover, or leave my body
When I’m dead dig up my grave, you’ll find my shroud
Covered in smoke, for the fire is still burning inside
From that day on, Yusuf remained rooted to the spot like a statue, waiting for another glimpse of the full moon. People who passed on the road looked at him in astonishment, convinced that this young man must have gone mad. Some of them felt a twinge of pain too; they asked him, what is it my friend, what sorrow has turned you to stone? Yusuf didn’t speak, only pointing to the window. One day people unravelled the mystery. Oh, this boy has lost his heart to Bilqis. I forgot to tell you, my brothers, that the girl’s name was Bilqis. So her father’s and brothers’ instinct was to have this fellow killed; later they realized that if they were to be arrested for murder they would become pariahs. Do you know what they did? They floated the rumour that Yusuf was mad. After all, there’s no responsibility attached to labelling a person mad. Is there a better method for turning a person’s life into living hell? This man is mad? Very well, spit on him, stone him, chain him, lock him in a cell. But stoning Yusuf served no purpose, for even with blood streaming from his body he remained rooted to the spot.
Even if a thousand enemies conspire to kill me
I will not be afraid if you’re near me, my friend
I’m sure I shall meet you—this confidence keeps me alive
Because you aren’t near, I am threatened by annihilation
Then Bilqis’s parents decided that it would be best to send her off to her chacha’s house across the river. Bilqis was smuggled out in a palanquin, accompanied by her trusted maid. Yusuf seemed to have scented his beloved; he began to run alongside the palanquin, shouting, ‘Have mercy on me my love, talk to me but once.’ Bilqis did not say anything, but her maid�
��s heart was in turmoil. Poking her head out of the palanquin, she said, ‘Wait a little longer, you will definitely meet my daughter.’ The palanquin reached the river. Bilqis climbed into the boat. Yusuf remained on the bank gazing at it; when the boat was in the middle of the stream, Bilqis’s maid tossed a single slipper into the water, shouting out to Yusuf, if you really love my daughter, bring the slipper back. The maid really did want Yusuf and Bilqis to be together; she had no idea that Yusuf didn’t know how to swim. But Yusuf plunged into the water, and was lost in its depths, gasping for breath. From her boat, Bilqis saw Yusuf die. Who was this? Was he a flower from heaven? Did he love her so much? Bilqis wasn’t able to say anything, perhaps she had felt that spring was here, there were even flowers on the boughs, but still, my favourite garden, why did you snatch him away?
Spring and garden. Why does my voice choke when I try to utter these words? When I say these two words, I feel as though rose petals are spreading their wings in my mouth. Why are these two words still shrouded in the fog of death? Bahar and bagh, spring and the garden. Why do spring and the garden only tell me about death over and over again?
Don’t worry, my brothers, I haven’t forgotten the story. But in the telling of a story, some words make me suffer so much that I wish I could take them in my arms and go to sleep. As I was saying, Yusuf died of drowning. When Bilqis had spent some time at her uncle’s house, her parents decided that since the boy had died, they might as well bring her back home. They returned on the same river. Climbing into the boat, Bilqis said, ‘Will you let me see this river, Khanum? I have never seen a river like this.’
— See it, beti, see it to your heart’s content. Once you have seen a river, you will never stop looking.
Dozakhnama Page 15