AS THE ELDERS left the scene, the boys saw that their own bonfire, sustained by the last few dung cakes and twigs, was on its last legs. They quickly moved across to capture the real estate vacated by the elders, whose bonfire was still going strong. As their conversation picked up, they were oblivious of the recent developments around that bonfire, unaware why their elders had come with so much joy and excitement but departed with twice the disappointment.
A mocking voice came from the girls’ side, ‘Look around, girls. The boys have retreated from their bonfire … stolen goods, you know … stolen stuff will never prosper … look at our Lohri bonfire, in contrast … if it doesn’t continue till dawn, you can change my name.’
The girls had been speaking in subdued tones while the elders were around, and this was the first strong voice that had emerged from their section. Their timidity, it seemed, had left with the departing elders and they had rediscovered their voices.
The younger kids took advantage of the space vacated by the older boys to form their own little party. A few of the more enterprising ones managed to forage around for some dung cakes, twigs and just about anything else that could revive the fire. Satisfied that they now had a bit of their own bonfire going, they sat around it and started telling the kind of stories that kids love. One had started, ‘And so the thief quietly returned home … He opened the sack he was carrying and spread out its contents before his wife. The thief’s wife was flabbergasted. She had never seen so much jewellery, so many currency notes of twenty, forty and eighty-rupee denominations…’
As the story came to an end, another kid suggested, ‘Let’s play Cops and Robbers.’ The others nodded in agreement and one of them offered to be the policeman. Soon, he was strutting around the group with a stick on his shoulder, stamping his feet on the ground as he circled the bonfire, shouting:
Silent goes the night
My gun’s ready for a fight.
Let the thief come, I say
Bang, and a bullet goes his way!
As he spoke that last line, he brought the stick down from his shoulder, pointed it at an imaginary thief and shouted ‘bang’ at the top of his voice. The other kids reacted as if a gun had really gone off in their midst.
Meanwhile the older boys, mostly Muslims along with a handful of young Khatri lads, seemed to be getting bored of sitting around and chatting. Now that the elders had left, a few of them started getting devious ideas.
Tomfoolery and youthfulness tend to go together, one could even say that the process of growing up is incomplete if it doesn’t include the occasional pranks. A couple of them turned their attention towards the rival camp and were stung by the sight of the girls’ bonfire, its vibrant flames leaping towards the sky, making their own bonfire look even more anaemic. Roused by a sense of envy, one of them got up and yelled at his compatriots, ‘He who doesn’t bring firewood for our fire … he … he is the son of a pig!’
The gravity of that curse was enough to stir the somnolent group into action. They scooted out of the haveli and were seen returning in ones and twos a few minutes later. One had managed to pull three or four poles from a farmer’s fence while a second had clambered onto a neighbour’s terrace to retrieve a heap of dung cakes. Firewood, bamboo, dung cakes, twigs—they picked up anything they could gather and hauled it back to the haveli. One enterprising fellow who failed to find anything substantive snuck into a neighbour’s courtyard and returned with two pieces of an old charkha, the frame of the wooden spinning wheel making a handy contribution to the kitty. None dared to return empty-handed and soon, the flames from their own bonfire were rising higher than the boundary wall of the haveli. Their rejuvenated fire infused a fresh burst of energy and a lusty voice started the first of several songs.
The girls’ camp, in contrast, had a more subdued air about it. The vigour of the boys’ bonfire had come as a rude shock. But there was another, possibly more potent reason. The girls were desperately waiting for the boys to leave so they could sing and dance without inhibition. The sight of the boys settling down for a session of their own was stretching their patience to its limits. The boys knew this well and felt that their own Lohri would be incomplete if they didn’t have the chance to witness the girls dance with gleeful abandon.
The boys were under the impression that, as usual, the girls would break into song and dance soon after the departure of the elders. But the rivalry between the two camps this year had been a bit too intense for the girls to start their merriment while the boys were still around.
Let’s start with our songs first, the boys reasoned. Maybe that will goad the girls into following suit. One said that he would try his hand at verse and began:
Those lovely eyes, I do submit
Unleash arrows straight, my heart is hit…
Others tried their hand at improvised verses of this kind for half an hour or so before someone suggested they move on to the more refined tones of the Urdu ghazal. One of them began:
To the killing fields she sauntered
Deadly intent, and dagger in hand
Ardent lovers dash ahead, gather in advance,
Each ready with his head for a sacrifice grand.
Lest stains of blood reveal her lover true,
A layer of henna on her palms, she’s planned.
A few of the girls stole a glance towards the boys’ camp, silently enjoying the ghazal. They kept their eyes lowered, careful to hide their emotions from their friends, putting on a show to the boys that they couldn’t care less about their singing. A few, in fact, were whispering, ‘Such louts … aren’t they ashamed of themselves … utterly shameless … so cheap and inappropriate, their songs…’
The boys’ ploy didn’t work because the girls simply refused to respond. Desperate, they tried another gambit to lower their veil of reserve. Hoping that the girls would find it hard to resist the challenge of a tappa, the short verse that seeks a response from the rival team, one of the boys began:
Like the flower of a pomegranate,
I am most handsome among the boys.
Now, who’s the loveliest among the maidens?
The tactic worked. Like an arrow that finds its target, the tappa created a stir in the girls’ camp. The pent-up frustration of being unable to sing on the much-awaited occasion of Lohri was now threatening to explode. The challenge thrown at them so brazenly by the boys was the last straw. Angry eyes glared at one another, each trying to provoke the other to respond to the verse. The group was buzzing with a heated discussion, mostly conducted through impassioned whispers. Each one wanted to fire the gun from someone else’s shoulder. One of the more brash girls turned to address the group, ‘Didn’t he say who is the most beautiful among us? So, let the fairest one respond?’
‘You are right! Absolutely!’ There was a tremor on many a lip, but their eyes had turned towards Naseem. It wasn’t just her beauty that made her the obvious candidate to take up the challenge. She was also considered something of a wizard when it came to the back-and-forth banter of tappas.
‘Come on, Seema,’ their eyes seemed to implore. ‘Our reputation now lies in your hands.’
The boys were also looking at them, eagerly awaiting a response to the arrow unleashed by them.
Tappas are quite popular across Punjab and are particularly delightful when one side poses a question and the other side sings its response. It takes both hands to clap, and the boys waited anxiously, their plans stuck until one of the girls picked up the baton.
The response finally came, but in a form that made it impossible to continue the chain. In fact, it made sure that the chain ended then and there. A melodious and somewhat nervous voice arose from the girls’ camp. It overcame its initial diffidence and picked up strength as it travelled towards the boys.
Stand in the corner, miserable pervert
I’m like your sister, don’t forget
Go find a harlot if you want to flirt!
The boys were stunned into silence. It looked like someone had placed an invisible seal on their lips. They looked at each other, anxious eyes asking the same question, ‘How do we get out of this predicament now?’
Weighed down by their own silence and tormented by the muffled sounds of victorious laughter from the other side, they pondered their next move. Finally, one of the smarter ones summoned the others close and whispered his plan. This brought back some cheer to their faces and one of them announced, ‘Come on guys … it’s pretty late now … time for us to be heading home.’ The boys got up and started to leave the haveli.
Seeing that the field was now clear for them, the girls left their own diminishing bonfire and moved to the much larger ones the boys had vacated. As they gathered around it, they went up to compliment Naseem for her courage. She had managed to fell a powerful adversary with just one blow.
There was no stopping them now. The hours of restraint evaporated in seconds, and popular Lohri songs resonated across the haveli’s courtyard. After a while, the songs gave way to tappas and after that, it was time for the giddha dance. Within minutes, dupattas were flying askew to reveal bare heads and the combined rhythm of the girls’ feet was shaking the very foundations of the haveli. The rapid movements were also kicking up a fair bit of dust which had now blended with the smoke from the bonfire to create a pinkish cloud that hovered above their heads.
An hour went by, then another, and yet another as the girls danced the night away. Their legs were aching, and their tightly braided hair had shaken loose, swaying from the back to the shoulder and from the shoulder to the forehead as they danced to the rhythm of the claps. The faint twilight of dawn was making its appearance when one of the girls cried, ‘Enough! I don’t think I can lift my foot to take another step.’ Other voices immediately rose in protest, ‘Just one or two dances more, please. Lohri doesn’t come every day. We waited a whole year for these moments.’
A new song started and the girls were getting ready for another dance when a deep voice intruded upon their merriment. The girls froze in their tracks, the words of the song stranded mid-sentence in their throats. Like a volley of bullets, a dozen or so boys shouted in unison, ‘Assalamu alaikum!’
‘A plague on all of you,’ the embarrassed girls cried in dismay. ‘So, you were hiding behind the wall to watch us, you rogues?’
‘What else could we do?’ the boys replied as they entered the courtyard and joined their group. ‘You were refusing to sing and we didn’t want to leave till we’d heard your songs.’
‘Worthless rascals … should be ashamed of the way you were spying on us…’ the girls continued to curse the boys as they retreated towards their own bonfire.
‘What’s the problem?’ one of the boys queried. ‘You were listening to our songs and now we’ve heard yours. The skies haven’t come crashing down on our heads, have they?’
‘When did we listen to your songs?’ one of the girls pouted in a patently fake display of anger that did little to conceal a mischievous smile.
‘You had your ears turned towards us when we were singing, didn’t you?’ another one piped up.
‘Okay, maybe we heard you,’ another girl responded. ‘But not like thieves hiding behind a wall.’
‘There is no crime in stealing from a miser who wants to share nothing,’ one of the boys responded.
‘No crime in stealing, says he,’ a diminutive girl pushed her way forward to confront him. ‘And who are you to be issuing these fatwas?’
The arguments might well have continued for a while but the same melodious voice that had previously vanquished the foe rose once again to make its presence felt.
‘He leers at his own, the scoundrel’s habit is bad.’
The other girls quickly picked up Naseem’s line and the chorus rose to a crescendo:
He leers at his own, the scoundrel’s habit is bad.
He leers at his own, the scoundrel’s habit is bad.
‘Okay, sisters,’ one of the more mature boys spoke in a respectful tone. ‘The Lohri is over, so how about making peace now?’
‘Make peace with my jutti,’ the same diminutive girl shouted as she pointed at her foot. ‘With Allah’s blessings, we will get our revenge at next year’s Lohri or you can change my name!’
Who could have known that an evil djinn had been secretly observing the revelries and getting infuriated? The girl’s comment about getting ‘revenge at next year’s Lohri’ was perhaps the last straw. The djinn told itself, ‘How dare this girl make such brazen promises about the future? If I allow these people to stay together till next year, I don’t deserve to be called a djinn.’
One of the girls had heard the djinn’s ominous words. That same girl, the one who had been called the fairest one, the same gentle Seema. She stepped forward to restrain her aggressive compatriot and chided, ‘Be quiet, Santo.’ Turning towards the boys, she said, ‘Let bygones be bygones, my brothers. Who knows which one of us dies and which one survives until next year’s Lohri!’
Her measured words were spoken with a genuine warmth and the boys respectfully lowered their eyes. There was no trace of the mischief that they had displayed all evening.
As the two groups began to make their way out of the haveli, one of the boys—the same one who had initiated the tappa ‘I am the most handsome…’ turned around and shouted, ‘Boys! Join me as I say, “May our sisters…”’
‘Live forever…’ roared the boys in unison.
Naseem responded with the call, ‘And may our brothers…’
‘Live forever…’ cried the girls in one voice.
They exchanged cordial Lohri greetings and headed for their respective homes.