‘ISN’T IT TERRIBLE, Chaudhryji? We must reflect upon this. We all have our sisters and daughters to worry about. Incidents like these can create absolute havoc. We’ve lived here all our lives and never had to deal with such irresponsible behaviour. He acted like he is the only one to claim the license of youthful indiscretion!’
A small village, surrounded by the hills of the Pothohar highlands—a place known for its natural beauty. A village whose charm was enhanced by its location in a wide plain surrounding a phalanx of huge, irregularly shaped cliffs. A community nestled around the small Soan river whose shallow, crystalline waters magnified every pebble on the riverbed, whose constant flow created its own music, whose banks were drenched with the ballads of true love. Like a poet once said about another river, ‘Must be something magical in the love-soaked waters of the Chenab/Playing on its banks turns kids into lovers.’
In a somewhat similar fashion, the Soan too was considered the younger sibling of the mighty Chenab when it came to the history of colourful romances. Its verdant banks had heard the young maidens of the village tell many a tale—of letters written by lovers who had gone off to distant lands, or of heartless men and their uncaring attitudes.
Like the music of Ranjha’s flute, the restless waters of the Soan seem to have this magnetic energy that can swell the turmoil of an expectant lover into the turbulence of a volcanic eruption.
These days, it is winter and the waters of this blessed river have receded a fair bit. And yet, there is something maddeningly attractive about its mildly intoxicated, swaying flow—something that impels a passer-by to approach its banks for a closer look. Standing on the silky sands of its banks, the visitor can see miles of lush green fields cradling a nascent crop of wheat. The hills that frame the luxuriant farms add their own charm to the village and its surroundings in a way that is bound to tug at one’s heartstrings.
Although the terrain is hilly, there is an abundance of wells and their waters allow the farmers to grow a wide variety of crops. The local population, as a result, is fairly prosperous.
This village called Chakri is located on the unpaved road that links Rawalpindi with Talagang. It is about thirty miles from Rawalpindi and abuts two railway stations—Dadhiyal and Fatehjung.
As the warm rays of the afternoon sun in early December provide some much-needed succour and as the planting of the wheat crops in the farmlands gathers momentum, a small group of elders and notables starts to gather for a meeting in a largish, prosperous-looking house that stands in the middle of the village.
The village has a large majority of Muslims, many of them affluent landlords who control sizeable estates. There is a relatively smaller number of Hindu and Sikh families, who are broadly called ‘Khatris’, because of their preponderance in trade and finance. They are also fairly well-to-do and several of them have expanded beyond their traditional occupations to become landowners.
Bhane Shah is a wealthy businessman whose family has enjoyed prosperity over several generations. Affectionately known as Baba Bhana for his age and wisdom, he is not only regarded as the head of the Khatri community but also held in high esteem by the Muslims of the village. It was in Baba Bhana’s sprawling haveli that the Muslim and Khatri elders had assembled.
Around seven or eight Muslims sit at a short distance from their Khatri brethren, possibly to avoid bothering them with the smoke of their hookah. The hookah’s pipe is passed around and a wreath of smoke carrying a distinct whiff of tobacco and jaggery wafts towards the open door behind them. They appear to be waiting for someone, but amid energetic puffs on the hookah, an animated conversation is already underway.
Baba Bhana is around seventy, but his respect amongst the denizens of the village transcends his age, experience and wealth. He heads the village panchayat, acts as a last-resort lender, functions as the local hakim, helps out with writing deeds and legal documents, produces some perfumes, and contributes to much else. But his special status in the village stems from yet another attribute. His knowledge of Urdu and Persian languages makes him indispensable for anyone who needs to submit an application or engage in any kind of official correspondence. Let’s admit that his proficiency in Persian may not stand the test when compared to someone with a formal education in the language, but that did not diminish his standing in the village. His people looked up to him as a man of letters.
Baba Bhana didn’t have the privilege of studying in any government or private school. In the era when he was growing up, even the towns and cities in these parts rarely had a proper school. Education in villages was usually provided through the local mosques and both Muslims and non-Muslims sat together for their classes.
The Baba had studied under the tutelage of the Moulvi at the village mosque. But he hadn’t stopped there. He had also borrowed some books on traditional medicine from the Moulvi, in particular, the Persian classics Tibb Akbari, that focused on the treatment of infectious diseases, and Ilaj ul Ghuraba, that dwelt on the therapeutics of rare conditions. Urdu and Persian were considered the most useful languages in these parts and acquiring a working knowledge wasn’t too difficult. People used to say that if you had read just two books—Sheikh Saadi’s Gulistan and Bostan—you were deemed proficient in Persian. Or to put it another way, one’s study of Persian started with Gulistan and culminated with Bostan. Studying these two books was mandatory for all students at the mosque and it applied equally to Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The Muslim students, however, also received additional classes on the holy Quran.
It was a far cry from the formal education provided in today’s schools. Classes were limited, and so was the curriculum. Mats, usually long and narrow, would be spread out in the courtyard or the verandah of the mosque and the Moulvi would have the students line up in two separate groups—a Persian class for general students, and an Arabic one for those pursuing the holy Quran. And that’s where the students sat from morning to evening, imbibing the Moulvi’s tutorials, their torsos rocking gently as they tried to absorb his words. The classes would wind up in the early part of the evening with one final ritual—each group would stand up and recite from memory whatever they had been taught during the day. A couple of the brightest students would usually be placed in the front row to lead the rest of the class in a melodious recitation of verses from Gulistan…
O save me, my Lord, have mercy on me
I am trapped in a web of desires
To appeal for help, I have none but You
For You alone can forgive me for my sins.
This would be followed by sonorous notes echoing across the courtyard of the mosque from the Arabic class as the students recited the siparah from the Quran that they had learned during the day:
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Universe
The most Merciful and Compassionate
Sovereign of the Day of Recompense.
At the ripe old age of seventy, the Baba smiles fondly when he thinks of the Moulvi, his first mentor. And even now, when he wants to give an example to illustrate some particular aspect, he often starts off by saying, ‘And as our Moulvi sahib used to say…’
You couldn’t call the Baba a religious fanatic in the way some zealots are. And yet, he was an ardent believer in his own special way. He could be heard chanting something before he went to bed, when he woke up in the morning, when he took his bath, before he had his meals, when he left his home, and so on. He had learned a few shlokas in Sanskrit from the Gita, some verses from the Sikh scriptures and a mishmash of sayings attributed to poets of the Bhakti movement. Together, they constituted the essence of his prayers and meditation, with the mantra, ‘Sri Namo Bhagawate Vasudevaya’.
His family had lived in this village for several generations. He hadn’t travelled much, but thanks in part to his reading habits and in larger measure to the experiences acquired over seven decades, he managed to sound knowledgeable on most matters. He was also known for his acumen and integrity when it came to running his own business.
When we look at our towns and cities today, we have this notion of the municipal commissioner being called the father of the city. But to compare this modern city father to our old man would be to compare a trinket with something made of pure twenty-four-carat gold. Baba Bhana could be called the father of the village in the truest sense of that expression. This was reflected in the respect that he received from the residents of the village, Hindu and Muslim, the elderly and the young.
He may not have the formal training of a hakim but pretty much everyone in the village agreed that he could not merely diagnose your ailment but also dispense the right medicine to cure it.
For any function in the village—a birth, a wedding or a funeral—the Baba was the first to be invited by the family. This wasn’t just out of respect for his stature but also because he was the one who could guide the family on the appropriate rituals and ceremonies for both Hindus and Muslims. What gifts should be given when the husband comes to take the bride from her parents’ place in the village? How should a family conduct a nikah ceremony? Without the Baba’s counsel, the families would be in sixes and sevens.
If it were time for a bride to be given a formal send-off in her palanquin, the Baba could be seen coming down the path with his walking stick. He would dip into his waistcoat and place a rupee in the bride’s palm, stroke her head and say, ‘May your husband live long; may you enjoy the cool breeze; don’t you forget us when you go to your in-laws.’ His face would crinkle up in a serious expression when he said that last sentence. When the palanquin was lifted for the farewell, one of its four poles would rest on the Baba’s shoulder. Despite the remonstrations about his age by friends and family, he would rely on his walking stick for support and insist on escorting the palanquin to the edge of the village. Once the kuhars took charge of the palanquin for the remainder of the journey, the Baba would go across to the bridegroom sporting the scarlet turban and accost him with the solemn message, ‘Listen carefully, young man! Make sure you treat our daughter like the petals of a rose. Look after her because she is the goddess Lakshmi of our village. Lakshmi, do you hear!’
When a new bride was received in the village, it was customary to first stop at the Baba’s haveli. The bride would kneel her head at his feet to seek his blessings, prompting the Baba to hurriedly pull his feet back, lift the girl’s head and place a rupee along with a piece of coconut in her wedding dupatta with the words, ‘May you enjoy the luxury of bathing in pure milk; may you have many sons; may you live a long and happy life with your husband.’
The village’s Khatri community was fairly small in comparison to the Muslims. But their lives were closely interconnected in so many different ways that neither community could imagine a life without the other.
Baba Bhana lives in a fairly spacious home, easily one of the finest in the village. His son and daughter-in-law are the only other residents of the house, giving it an empty sort of a feeling. There are times the Baba misses the vibrant presence of grandchildren, but he pauses to admonish himself. What am I complaining about? Aren’t all the sons and daughters-in-law of the village like my own offspring? And all their children are like my own grandchildren! The thought brings a reassuring smile on his face, particularly as he reflects on the small family of three that lives in an outhouse behind his home. The affection that he feels towards them, the special bond that he shares with them makes them an extension of his family. Indeed, their presence next door substantially makes up for the small size of his own family.
The good lord made the Baba wait for many a year after his marriage before he was blessed with offspring. A son and a daughter, that’s all he had to be content with. But the good lord turned out to be even more miserly than that. Fate snatched his daughter from him at an early age, leaving Boote Shah as his only surviving child. If that weren’t enough, Boote Shah too is still without child though he must be over thirty years old and has been married for quite a while.
People like to say that their sons are more precious than their daughters. But for the Baba, the death of his daughter Krishna was a tragedy larger than the loss of seven sons. He was so utterly devastated after her passing that he may not have survived long if another girl hadn’t miraculously appeared to take Krishna’s place. That’s what his friends and neighbours avow.
The Baba’s home—made largely of expensive hardwood and fine stone—was built around five or six years back. Boote Shah, in fact, spent a fair bit of money on the façade and also on the aesthetics within the house to give it a pleasing appearance.
Baba Bhana’s old house was located behind this new building. It’s low ceilings and elaborately carved wooden doors are testimony to the stature of its previous dwellers. It is now occupied by a middle-aged widow and her young daughter.
The elders of the village had by now been sitting for close to an hour, making small talk and puffing on their hookahs even as they awaited the clack of the Baba’s walking stick heralding his arrival. A few of them were also beginning to show their impatience over the prolonged delay.
Passing the pipe of his hookah to Deena the gardener, Chaudhry Fazal Karim stroked his henna-tinged beard as he spoke, ‘I must say that Babaji is running pretty late today. I have to go to the tehsil office, and I also had to pass by the fields where the seed-planting team is waiting for me.’
Juma the carpenter piped up, ‘Relax, Chaudhryji. The tehsil office isn’t going to run away. It’s important to settle this festering issue today. Fortunately, all of us are here today. And if it comes to our errands, I’ve probably got the most pressing one. The wedding of the Haqqanis’ daughter is just around the corner, and I still have to finish their bed and couch. I’ve been working on the lathe since the Fajr prayers and was just about finishing the legs of the couch when I got your message.’
The Chaudhry turned towards Bhagta the brahmin and asked, ‘Ojhaji, why don’t you go inside and check where exactly Babaji has gone? Is it a long way off? I can’t see Boote Shah at home either.’
Bhagta was still tugging at the elbows of his old wool jacket and beginning to get up when they heard the clack of the walking stick in the adjacent room, accompanied by the murmur, ‘Sri Namo Bhagawate Vasudevya.’ He returned to his seat as the attention of the visitors gravitated towards the door.
One hand on his waist and the other holding a stick that seemed somewhat taller than him, Baba Bhana hastened towards the group and exclaimed, ‘Welcome! Welcome! I hadn’t gone very far but you know how it is. You visit someone and it ends up taking a little longer than you’d thought.’
Baba Bhana was of average height but seemed a bit shorter because of a small hump in his back. His ruddy countenance, framed within a neatly trimmed, silvery beard seemed to place him at some intersection between the young and the elderly. Imagine him with a black beard and you’d have to say that he was actually in pretty good shape.
A simple tunic of hand-spun cotton, a waistcoat with faint, thin stripes that looked a bit like a Nehru jacket, and a brownish coat with a Kashmiri trim added to Baba’s impressive appearance. He wore a white dhoti, again made from crisp homespun cotton and a closer look at his walking stick revealed an interesting contrast: the bottom part was frayed from prolonged contact with the ground, while the area where he gripped the stick was smooth and burnished, revealing the small depressions that his fingers had created over the years. From the tidy locks that spilled on to his neck, an elegant silver mane was discernible under the folds of his turban.
‘Babaji!’ Gulab Singh Kohli remonstrated with a hint of a smile. ‘I thought we would grow old waiting for you. What kind of errand kept you so long?’
The Baba, meanwhile, had set his stick aside to take his customary seat in the room. His fingers were subconsciously engaged in twirling his luxuriant moustache and keeping the gravity-defying tips of the whiskers pointing upwards. ‘It wasn’t any errand, my brother. The mother of Safi the potter has been feeling under the weather for a while. The old lady is pretty frail now; has been bed-ridden for over a month and a half. I thought I must go and see if we could do something.’
Changing the subject, he turned towards the Chaudhry and said, ‘What brings you to our humble abode, Chaudhryji? Hope everything is okay?’
‘What’s okay, Babaji?’ the Chaudhry exclaimed. ‘To be honest, I wonder if one should continue staying in this village much longer.’
A worried frown crept across the Baba’s face. His head seemed to sink a bit lower under this new burden and he was on the verge of posing a question to the Chaudhry when Bhagta the brahmin piped up. With his index finger determinedly scratching his clean-shaven chin, he spoke, ‘It’s absolutely dreadful, Babaji! I’ve never heard anything like this since the day I was born. Haven’t we all seen our own youth? But we never saw such appalling behaviour. The fellow has neither any concern for a daughter nor any respect for a sister’s honour.’
‘But who are you talking about, Ojhaji?’ the Baba asked a trifle testily.
‘We are talking about that ruffian,’ Mir Baksh Bhatti responded. He seemed to have applied some fresh butter to his unruly hair and his hand worked tirelessly to suppress a few wayward tufts. ‘That Yusuf, son of Langa the blacksmith. A classic case of good parents, bad kids. The father has never done a wrong in his life and look at the conduct of the son. Biting the hand that feeds him!’
‘He was a rotten apple to begin with,’ Heera Singh Kochchar commented as he tried to adjust his precariously perched turban. ‘Now these added airs of a policeman’s uniform have turned him from bad to worse. He is simply insufferable. If I can be candid, Babaji, your leniency is partly responsible. After all, he claims to be the blood brother of Boote Shah. Had it been anybody else…’ Realizing that he may have gone too far in the presence of the Baba, he froze mid-sentence.
It was Chaudhry Fazal Karim who stepped in to provide the Baba with a detailed account of the incident. The Baba’s anger mounted as he heard the facts, his flushed face acquiring the hues of heated copper. As a matter of principle, he had always treated every girl in the village like his own daughter when it came to protecting their honour. But when the name of the girl involved in the unfortunate incident was mentioned, it pierced his heart like a bullet. A wave of rage surged through his body. His eyes appeared bloodshot and the veins in his forehead started to throb on their own volition. He took a deep breath to bring his runaway emotions under control. When he finally spoke, his voice gave no indication of the tumult within him. ‘Is there anyone who actually saw this or are we depending merely on hearsay?’
‘Hearsay?’ Niaz Gakhkhar spoke as one hand emerged from the pocket of his khadi kurta to tug at the hookah’s pipe. ‘The eyewitness is sitting before you. Ask him to take a solemn oath before he tells you what he saw.’ He looked to where Allahditta was seated.
‘Allahditta!’ the Baba addressed him with a quiver in his voice. ‘You are a Muslim, right?’
‘Praise be to Allah! I am indeed,’ Allahditta replied with a touch of fervour.
‘Take your oath then!’ the Baba ordered.
Allahditta brought his hands together, palms facing his chest and recited:
La illahalilallah
Muhammadurasoolallah
Eyes closed in devotion, he moved his fingertips from his forehead towards his lips.
‘So, tell us truthfully what you saw. Remember that you are answerable to the Prophet and to the Almighty,’ the Baba said sternly.
‘Babaji,’ Allahditta lifted his eyes with reverence. ‘May I burn in the fires of hell if I utter a single word that is untrue.
‘It was last Thursday that I had gone to my mother’s place in Kauliyan. My nephew had been unwell, and I’d gone to see him. I left Kauliyan before dawn today and it was still pretty early in the morning when I was approaching our village. I was passing the grove near your place when I heard some voices. It seemed like some altercation. My first reaction was that it must be Ida your gardener having an argument with his nephew. The two of them are always at each other’s throats. I decided to pass through the grove and see what was going on, just in case someone was injured and needed some assistance.
‘The voices were coming from the direction of the cowshed within the grove. I looked inside and—Allah is witness that the scene I beheld left me boiling with fury—Yusuf had locked Naseem in an embrace and the poor girl was shouting curses, scratching and biting him and tearing his clothes as she tried to free herself from his clutches. Before my eyes, Naseem slapped him a couple of times and bit him so hard I could see his arm bleeding.’
‘And then?’ the Baba quizzed breathlessly.
Allahditta paused for a moment before responding.
‘Yusuf let go of the girl the moment he saw me. Naseem took advantage and ran out of the grove towards the village. That left this upstart free to confront me. I swear by the thirty siparahs of the Quran that all I did was to tell him, “What’s going on, Yusufa? Aren’t you ashamed that you are forcing yourself on a young girl?” And he turns on me and shouts, “Get lost or I’ll rip you apart.” You would agree, Babaji, that all of us are nourished by the same kernel of grain and I also have the same blood running through my body. How could I remain unmoved by the sight of a girl being molested? And now, the villain was trying to browbeat me! So, I rolled up my sleeves and said, “Fine. Let me teach you a lesson or two.” I gave him a couple of solid blows and you could see that his guilty conscience had sapped his strength. Within moments, he was pleading at my feet, saying, “Allahditta, for God’s sake help me bury whatever happened. You are like my brother, aren’t you?”
‘I was enraged, I must confess. So I caught him by the throat and shoved him to the ground. “Let me show you what your brother is like,” I told him. By now, the lout was beside himself with fear and he was again imploring, “Allahditta, please do what you can to save my honour.” I responded, “You bloody rogue! You think your honour is more important than the honour of a daughter of this village. You thought this girl doesn’t have the protection of a father so you can do whatever catches your fancy? I swear I’ll gouge the eyes of anyone who casts a dirty look at our daughters and sisters.” That put him in his place, and I swear by Yusuf’s mother there wasn’t a peep out of him after that.’
‘Who says,’ the Baba crackled, ‘that the girl doesn’t have a father’s protection while this old man is still alive? How dare anyone call her an orphan?’
‘It is true, Babaji,’ Fazal Karim hastily intervened. ‘You have done more for her than any father could have done. Everyone in this village acknowledges this fact. Who knows what terrible fate awaited mother and daughter if you hadn’t been around to protect them! To be very frank, you’ve managed to pull the family out of the abyss. You are no less than a father to all of us too, Babaji. That’s why we are so restrained in bringing up a subject like this in your presence. I still can’t believe that a tramp like Yusuf would have the guts to accost her like this. He must have been instigated by someone.’
‘Instigated by someone?’ the Baba’s eyes were burning with the intensity of fresh embers. ‘And who might have instigated him?’
‘Let’s keep this matter under wraps, Babaji.’
The Chaudhry’s reticence only added fuel to the fire raging within the Baba. But he maintained a calm demeanour as he replied, ‘This panchayat is a representation of the Lord Himself. We can speak freely here and don’t have to keep anything under wraps. Please don’t hesitate to name this individual.’
‘Babaji,’ the Chaudhry spoke. ‘I don’t know how to allow my lips to utter something like this. To be honest, my own heart insists that this cannot be true. But the facts speak otherwise.’
‘No, no!’ the Baba spoke in a commanding tone. ‘This is no time for soft pedalling or beating about the bush. It would be a sad reflection on all of us if incidents like this start to occur in our own village. I won’t pardon the offender, no matter who it might be. I won’t care if it is my own son. Now go ahead and name the fellow who instigated Yusuf to act like this.’
‘So, Babaji,’ the Chaudhry whispered softly, ‘what if this actually turns out to be about your son?’
‘In that case...’ the Baba’s lips quivered, and his pitch increased as he spoke, ‘in that case, I would immediately disassociate myself from him and I … I…’ By now, the Baba’s voice had risen so high that he started to sputter.
‘So, forgive me, Babaji,’ the Chaudhry spoke diffidently. ‘It was Boote Shah who took Naseem to the grove around the time of the Fajr prayers. This much I saw with my own eyes.’
‘What?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Boote Shah accompanied her?’
‘Yes.’
For once, the Baba was lost for words. He seemed to have lost the power to speak, or even to raise his eyes and look at those sitting around him. He shut his eyes, denying them the opportunity to peer into his emotions. They could only see his frame trembling with rage.
A suffocating silence pervaded the room, hanging heavy over the heads of the participants. No one had the courage to break it and who knows how long it might have continued if it hadn’t been for the intervention of the one whose name had caused it. Hearing the sound, the Baba lifted his head and opened his eyes. He leapt towards the door from which he had entered the room to retrieve his walking stick and roared, ‘Bootey! Oye Booteya.’
A voice came from the other side.
‘Yes, Babaji. Coming!’