The artwork in our English premier thrilled me the most. It gave flight to my imagination. The graphics of quill pen made me dream to have one. And waxed me lyrical: “Everyone asks who inspires your hand? My quill pen; feIlow poet”.
The illustrations in the English premier were vibrant, vivacious and pulsating, every moment I looked at them they came to life as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Scooby in today’s animated cartoon films. In class four, when we started reading English premier, I remember we cried full throat in chorus C A T ma-nay Billi, RAT ma-nay chouhi pahanday main hai- we cried so loud and hoarse that it drowned the ferocious noise of the shuttles of hand ant power looms in the back lanes of our school.
The clacking sounds from the moving shuttles from a shawl weaving factory hardly ten feet from our classroom fell on our tender brains like a Goshaper on freshly cut tender mutton on finely chiseled limestone used for pounding combine of mutton and suet to aIl suppleness for making Goshtaba.
After crying at full strength of my vocal chords, QUILL ma-nay par ki kalam , I often suddenly stopped and looked at the illustration on my book; a quill pen dipped in the inkpot on a small desk And l started dreaming;if one day I would actually have my a quill pen. Often, my imagination ran wild and I started chasing black kite in the skies and pulling out a flight feather from her wings and making a pen out of it. I had learnt art of catching birds like bulbuls, common hoopoes and rock pigeons but it was really a wild goose chase, even thinking of netting a kite and pulling out longest flight feather from her wing for making a pen.
I was mortally afraid of kites that we often called as eagles. I had seen many times kites perching on the minarets of the hospice or atop the towering Chinars,diving like F:8 Sabres and snatching the bag containing mutton from boys near butchers shops in our MohalIa. The bud with sharp eyesight with high speed would not even spare elders and deprive them of their carry bags. Our neighbour Muhammad Amin a carpenter, we were often told had lost his one eye to an attack by the kite when he was buying meat at a butcher’s shop. This story had kept me away from chasing them oven after seeing them lousily sitting with their wings spread basking in the sun on the lawns of the Jamia Masjid or on brown boulders of hillock in our neighbourhood.
I was not only one dreaming about having a quill pen; many other friends of mine also yearned for having feather pens. The Flight feather of kite was not only long and strong but had its own grandeur .The dark brown feather with light streaks and strong hollow white shaft that acted as ink reservoir made it also aesthetically beautiful.
During my primary school days looking for a strong primary flight feather discarded by kites during their annual moult on the lawns of the martyrs graveyard was my regular taste. The hunt for a long feather would also continue on the lawns of the Jamia Masjid during Zohar prayer break. It was always exciting to find a naturally shed quill on the green turf of the mosque laced with white daisies. Often , I adorned the feather in my hair – for a minute I felt I am the king – a mughal in my own right.
How to make an efficient pen out of it. That would match one used by a much sought after religious person Mama Peer outside our school for writing verses from the holy book on cups and saucers.
Every time, I found a Flight feather of a kite, I experimented with making a pen out of it for writing on my four line Urdu scribe note books-that were then used for improving Urdu handwriting of students. Having Scene graphic profile pictures of maestros of Persian literature Sheikh Sadie, Jalall-Ud-Din Muhammad Rumi and Firdausi holding a quill pen in their hand or in the inkpot on their desk, for a minute,I believed,I had joined the great tribe that had influenced life of our ancestors for centuries. Notwithstanding language of these maestros during our chiIdhood having lost ; throne still reigned supreme in Masjids, Khanqahs and Astanas. It continued to dominate religious and mystic discourses. And continued to be seen as the language of spirituality and mysticism. Persian poetry continued to be sung along with Kashmiri poetry. Most of the mehfils whether mystic or otherwise started with a couplet or two by some great Persian poet. Old generation elite had a craze for this language and counted people who had not mastery over the language as a semi-literate.
I don’t remember having seen picture of Milton or Marlow during my childhood but the pictures of the great Persian poets had left indelible imprints on my mind. Most of the,works of these great masters were sold by smalI time book vendors’ outsides Masjids and Astana. I have even seen the Beasaties-trinket and bangle sellers selling some popular Persian works to women along with cheap jewellery. Most of the works carried picture of the poet reclining against a bolster with quill pen in his hand, an inkpot and half written parchment spread on the writing desk in the middle.
Notwithstanding, having gained proficiency in writing Mashaq – with a reed pen, I continued to dream to write with the Quill pen. And graduating from reed pen to holder was in itself a phenomenon.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
