Between Clay and Dust
Page 12
The water level had receded a few inches as a result of the trainees’ and Ustad Ramzi’s efforts, but his knees had been hurting so badly that by the middle of the next day he was bedridden and unable to put his weight on his feet any longer. The hakim had been called and he prescribed Ustad Ramzi medicine for the inflammation of the joints.
He woke up the next morning early as usual, but lay in bed, marshaling all his energy against the lingering exhaustion that was compounded by a sense of helplessness. The medicine offered little help. The skies were again overcast, and the sandpipers and rain crows circled overhead, clamoring for more rains.
Ustad Ramzi was still in bed around ten o’clock when he heard loud voices in the enclosure, and the noise of some heavy vehicle driving in. Limping out of his room, he saw the municipality truck parking along the cemetery walls. He forgot all about his pain and for a few minutes stood watching dumbfounded.
“It was the matter of a cemetery’s sanctity,” he muttered to himself.
The contingent of municipal workers quickly got down to work. Later in the afternoon, a supervisor also dropped in to see how the work was progressing. In two days the cemetery was completely drained. It had showered a little during this time, but the sky was beginning to clear up, as a strong westerly wind picked up.
In the coming days Ustad Ramzi remained bedridden, but he received clan members who came individually and in small groups to congratulate Ustad Ramzi on his resourcefulness. He sent them to see the cemetery and its newly whitewashed walls that the trainees had painted with a double coat of lime after the weather dried up. They also saw the bathed gravestones and the rose-stocks planted some days ago with the help of Banday Ali. The clan had collected a donation for laying a new pipeline that would eliminate the risk of future flooding.
Ustad Ramzi had not visited Gohar Jan for many days. He felt anxious and his nerves were strained, but his kneejoints had gotten worse. It was easier for him to move around with the help of a walking stick, but he experienced sudden spasms of pain. Walking more than a few steps was impossible for him.
Ustad Ramzi’s condition deteriorated again when he contracted malarial fever. He was bedridden for a month and his diet was radically altered. Banday Ali visited him a few times during his illness, but Ustad Ramzi did not hear any news of Gohar Jan.
He slowly recovered, although his movements were still restricted.
Strife
Ustad Ramzi saw that the wild roses had made an appearance on one bough in the bushes planted in the cemetery. He smiled as he softly caressed the straight-petalled wild roses. Despite his careful pruning and the continuous grafting, one of its branches had escaped his notice. Nature’s gentle strife had obviated his efforts.
In a spot from where a dead root had been removed, Ustad Ramzi planted another stock and sat down to make a few scions. The banyans and cypresses that lined the eastern boundary wall had extended their shade as the sun climbed up, and taken the edge off the hot gusts that had started circulating.
There were times when Ustad Ramzi thought about the life he had given up: not with any feelings of regret, but with a desire to learn how, if at all, it might have changed him as a man. When reflecting on the choices he had made, and the existence he had bartered away, he often felt a curiosity about how life might have been different if he had chosen differently. There were many areas of his life in which these fancies at best remained incomplete pictures and half-realized emotions, and he increasingly felt that someone had lived inside him whom he had not fully recognized.
Sustained by a light diet in which milk had been replaced with water separated from curdled milk, his bodily powers had ebbed close to decrepitude. Now that his aggressive humors had quieted down and he no longer needed an outside influence to control them, Ustad Ramzi missed the evenings at Gohar Jan’s kotha more than ever. He felt a desire to visit Gohar Jan’s kotha and wondered why it was so.
Having ever held himself above succumbing to emotions, he was disturbed by the discovery of this longing in his heart. It put his own self-control and resolve in doubt and made him angry with himself.
In the same way that his careful grafting had still missed one rose bough, one association had brought to naught all his probity and care in the calibration of human relationships.
Once he ventured to Gohar Jan’s kotha but, unable to climb the staircase for the pain, he returned.
He recalled the evening when he had visited Gohar Jan after Tamami’s death. He had wanted to share his grief with someone, but his pride had not allowed the notion to take shape in his mind. He remembered that Gohar Jan only had sad reproach in her voice as she recalled her sister. Perhaps she pitied him for his inability to realize his own tragedy.
Ustad Ramzi no longer knew if it was grief he wanted to share or some guilt that he wished to confess to lighten his heart’s burden before her.
Passage
Some time passed. The bark on the trees became drier. In the kotha the sills of the windows and the lintels of the doors became loose. The steps on the stairwell splintered and broke; Banday Ali had to repair them himself.
Gohar Jan had survived a long bout of typhoid fever. She was convalescing when she received the notice from the municipality requiring them to vacate the premises within ninety days. The entire stretch of buildings was declared uninhabitable. Other kothas received similar notices.
Banday Ali asked Gohar Jan what she planned to do.
“We will find some other place,” she said.
“But what about seeking the mayor’s help,” he reminded her. “It is still not too late.”
“I have asked the last favor of him,” Gohar Jan replied.
Instead of arguing with her, Banday Ali went to see a lawyer of Gohar Jan’s acquaintance to file an appeal on her behalf. The appeal was turned down, but the lawyer managed to get the court to grant a concession: an extension of ninety days in the final date to vacate the premises. Meanwhile, the residents had the option to demolish and rebuild.
When the builders came forward with their offer Gohar Jan accepted it, even though it was far lower than the property’s value.
New Reckonings
Ustad Ramzi had requested Banday Ali’s help in pruning the rose bushes. He sat close by and filled up small flowerpots with manure from a wheelbarrow. Their conversation drifted towards the deteriorating living conditions in the tawaifs’ enclave where the water supply had been stopped. Apparently the water board had not been informed that the deadline for vacating the kothas had been extended. Acting on the earlier notice they had cut off the supply.
“I suspect it is the builders’ doing. They may have bribed someone to ignore the new notice. Another trick to get us out of there sooner,” Banday Ali sighed as he pulled out a dead root. “There’s nobody to protest to.”
“But why didn’t Gohar Jan call on the mayor to help her in the matter. It is common knowledge that the buildings are not as decrepit as they are made out to be. Surely the mayor could have helped her. At the minimum he could have ordered an inquiry and stayed the evacuation.”
“There is no arguing with Gohar Jan,” Banday Ali said. “I can no longer even understand her. She told me she had asked the last favor of the mayor.”
Ustad Ramzi, who had not been able to solve the mystery behind the municipal help he had received, stopped in his work and looked at Banday Ali.
“At her age, too. To be without any anchor,” Banday Ali was saying. “But this is life.”
Ustad Ramzi scrutinized Banday Ali’s face again and realized he could not know about the last favor Gohar Jan had asked the mayor.
Ustad Ramzi was at a loss for words. He kept staring at Banday Ali.
“She never got any consolation from her art. Even though she remained true to it, giving up even her morning riyazat so that she could…” Banday Ali suddenly broke off.
“Gohar J
an gave up her morning riyazat?” A startled Ustad Ramzi asked. “When?”
“She had given it up years ago.”
“Years ago?” Ustad Ramzi looked at him.
“It caused her too much effort to sing twice a day,”
Banday Ali said after a brief silence. There was now a clear hint of a reproach in Banday Ali’s voice. He returned to the pruning.
Ustad Ramzi knew of Gohar Jan’s devotion to her art and the importance she attached to her morning riyazat. He wondered if what Banday Ali had implied was true.
Why did she do it? he asked himself. She could have ended her evening recitals instead.
He looked blankly at the peacocks strutting about among the rose bushes.
To hide his trembling hands, Ustad Ramzi vigorously broke the lumps of clay in the pot.
❖
Ustad Ramzi began walking up to Gohar Jan’s place every day. As he could no longer climb up, he sat at the foot of the stairwell where Banday Ali put out a chair for him.
“Ustad Ramzi is here,” Banday Ali would inform Gohar Jan when he arrived. Then Banday Ali would come down and join him.
They talked mostly about her condition.
The evacuation deadline was looming, but the exertion of moving things and her unspoken grief at the loss of her home caused Gohar Jan to relapse into illness and become bedridden. Ustad Ramzi learned this from Banday Ali when he came to see him a week before the deadline.
Her eyes had sunk into her face and she needed Banday Ali’s support to move around the room. He cooked her light meals recommended by the doctor.
To make him happy Gohar Jan sometimes requested a special dish. On such days Banday Ali would be particularly restive, rushing into the kitchen every now and then to stir the food, adjust the heat, or add water or spices. He would decorate even the simple dishes of rice and lentils to make Gohar Jan feel that she was not on a convalescent’s diet.
“Who would care for you if you fell ill?” she often said to him.
Passing
It was a few hours to sunrise when there was a knock at Ustad Ramzi’s door. He had not slept well. He found Banday Ali with the enclosure attendant. Banday Ali muttered an apology for disturbing him and said, “Gohar Jan has passed away.”
“May God rest her soul,” Ustad Ramzi said softly. “When did it happen?”
“About an hour ago. The evacuation deadline is tomorrow. Because I could not sleep I was making arrangements for the move when I heard her call out something. When I went into her room to enquire, she had already breathed her last. I must go back now to attend to the funeral arrangements.”
❖
Around midday, when Ustad Ramzi arrived at the mosque, he was told that the funeral procession had left. Ustad Ramzi took a tonga and went to the municipal graveyard. Arriving there he found its gates closed. When he enquired from the flower-sellers at the gate they told him that only the funeral procession of an old man had come there that day. Ustad Ramzi reprimanded himself for not finding out the details from the mosque and for not visiting Gohar Jan’s place first. He also felt angry with Banday Ali for delaying the burial in hot weather.
When he entered the tawaifs’ enclave he heard that Banday Ali was searching for him. He found him outside the kotha. He had just returned after making a second trip to Ustad Ramzi’s quarters in search of him.
“I have run into a problem,” Banday Ali said, looking troubled.
Thinking that he had run out of money, Ustad Ramzi took some money out from his pocket and asked, “How much more is needed?”
“It’s not a matter of money,” he told him.
Gohar Jan had a plot reserved in the municipal graveyard. The gravedigger only needed to prepare it, and, early in the morning, Banday Ali had given him the instructions. When he went to see if it was ready, the caretaker took him aside and told him that members of the funeral procession that had preceded Gohar Jan’s had learned through his inadvertent remarks that the other grave he had dug close by was Gohar Jan’s. Someone recognized the tawaif’s name and immediately told the caretaker that they would not allow a prostitute to be buried with their kin. The caretaker had tried to reason with them, but he had stepped back when they threatened his safety. They filled up the newly dug grave, and a couple of them had stayed to keep an eye on things.
When Banday Ali arrived there, the caretaker regretted that he used Gohar Jan’s own name. He told him the tawaifs were usually buried under assumed names for that purpose.
Returning in disappointment from the graveyard, Banday Ali thought of soliciting the help of Maulvi Yameen. He had agreed to say the funeral prayers, but he did not show up at the mosque as he had promised. At his house Banday Ali was told that he had to leave the city to deal with an emergency.
“The funeral prayer has not been said yet,” Banday Ali said. “Gohar Jan did say once that in this world a tawaif ‘s identity is the only one allowed to women like her. Yet she bestowed more dignity on these people than they are willing to claim for themselves. In her life she had provisioned for all eventualities. The only one she trusted to human charity was denied.”
❖
Ustad Ramzi continued sitting long after the shovels were put away, and the trainees and few neighbors had left the cemetery in Ustad Ramzi’s enclosure where all the graves had been filled.
When Gohar Jan’s bier was brought there and Ustad Ramzi stepped forward to lead the funeral prayer, most of the trainees of his clan lined up behind him. A few men who had thronged the gates of the enclosure to watch the spectacle and gossip quickly cleared out at one look from him.
After the burial, Banday Ali pressed Ustad Ramzi’s shoulder for a while quietly before taking his leave.
He was left alone in the cemetery.
He remained there in the growing silence, as darkness fell over the inner city.
About the Author
Musharraf Ali Farooqi was born in 1968 in Hyderabad, Pakistan. His previous novel, The Story of a Widow (2009), was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He is the highly acclaimed translator of the Urdu classics Hoshruba (2009) and The Adventures of Amir Hamza (2007), contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed’s volume of selected poetry Rococo and Other Worlds (2010) and Urdu writer Syed Muhammad Ashraf ‘s novel The Beast (2010). His fiction for children includes Tik-Tik, The Master of Time (2012), The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories (2011), which was shortlisted for Comic Con India’s Best Publication for Children Award, and the picture book The Cobbler’s Holiday Or Why Ants Don’t Wear Shoes (2008). You can visit him at www.mafarooqi.com
Colophon
Copyright © 2013 Musharraf Ali Farooqi
First Published by Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, India. Digital edition published by Restless Books 2013.
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ISBN: 978-0-9899832-0-4