By Z.G.Muhammad
I had bid farewell to a multi-coloured Watanigour willow walker made in Islamabad. I don’t know if a rouht phitrawan (bread breaking) ceremony was arranged on my first step without a walker, as was the tradition.
I had inherited the walker from my elder brother Mohammad Yousf, and it was passed on to my younger sibling Ghulam Hassan. Along with a walnut wood crib, a mace with quartz head, an old lantern, an old gramophone record player, couple of ‘sandal’s, Watanigour was part of the family heirloom that in later years of my childhood had made the loft of our house a place of attraction for me. Before the coloured iron trunk boxes had arrived in the market and had become brides craze for storing vardan, the sandal used to be the most important possession for keeping silver jewellery, shahtoosh, pashmina and ruffle shawls and precious clothes. The sandal used to be deeply carved on the top, and three sides’ rectangular boxes made from deodar wood, with brass or iron strips its corners adding to its strength. One carved boxes blackened with age was stuffed with old story boxes with flashy covers, small booklets on Sufiana Music, and some old Urdu and English novels. As I grew older, I had dug out a couple of novels from one of the boxes- a hive of silverfish. Baroness Orczy historical novel ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ was one of them. The daring hero of this novel, published in 1905, lived in me for many years. The assortment of books in the ‘Sandal’ reflected on the floating literary tastes of my father and his younger sibling.
Saying goodbye to Watanigour was not an ordinary thing in my life; it was as good as losing independence. To the claps of my aunt and mother, I could push my walker in any direction without any hassles. My fall even got me cheers and not jeers. Now things were to change; I was on the threshold of following a schedule that would be with me like my shadow for the rest of my life. Unmindful of where I was going, holding hands of my uncle and brother on a fine morning, I entered the gate of a four-story-high building with its roof in full blossom, just at five minutes’ walk from our home. With lots of children, hundreds of them strolling and running around, vying each other, the compound was cacophonous as a willow coop with hen and dozens of chickens inside at the daybreak. In my ear, my brother whispered, it is your school; I did not react; perhaps I did not understand its subtleties. In the meantime, someone continually hit a giant gong with a massive mallet, at least for half a minute at the entrance of a one-story building coloured red. Suddenly, there was a semblance of discipline, and all boys gathered in long ques on the side of the compound. My uncle and brother conducted me into a small room in the single-story before a yellow turbaned man with a yellowish-red mark (Tilaka) on his forehead. My uncle presented him with an application on plain paper for my admission in the kindergarten. He was particular if my name and date of birth had been recorded correctly in the register. The turbaned man (later on, I came to know was teacher Kashi Nath) enquired from my uncle why my father had not come along with me to the school on the admission day. ‘He is posted in Baramulla and comes home on weekends and spends Sundays with family,’ my uncle informed him. The two got engaged in a long conversation; most of their discussions went right over my head. But, the parting sentence of my uncle got itched on my mind: Pandit Saib, please see his date of birth is recorded correctly.
On Saturdays, after dusk, my grandmother, mother, everyone in the family, without blinking eyes, gazed at the main gate of our home, waited for our father’s arrival. No moment accompanied by robust a bit squint, dressed in khaki’s, turbaned orderly Amir Khan, entered the gate, and there was a lot of excitement in the house. It would be the rarest occasion when he would not have got a big rooster, a waterfowl or a dead flying duck with his neck tucked under a wing called Shikar or fish from Sheera, Baramulla with him for the family. Sheeri fish was famed for its variety, size and taste. One evening Amir Khan to the awe and excitement of grandmother and all others, entered into the kitchen with a bigger than usual fish, weighing at least six to seven seers. Simplicity incarnate as my grandmother was, got worried if it would be safe to cook such a giant fish; in her innocence, she took it for examination by a local medical compounder Damodar Nath. Once, he okayed the fish was cooked for lunch for the extended family.
In a sense, Sundays used to be gregarious days for us because they brought our cousins, all nephews and nieces of my father to our home. On seeing them, my grandmother’s face always brightened, and she looked fresher- they were the only legacy of her daughters. She had three daughters elder to my father; the eldest had died of a heart attack, and the younger two were consumed by tuberculosis. She often attributed their suffering tuberculosis to the maltreatment by their in-laws. Instead of calling our father Mam Jan or Mamu Jan, they addressed him as Baijani and all of us, my sibling, including domestic help, called him similarly. He looked after them very well, made them feel very comfortable by taking care of their needs. In my preschool days, I looked upon my father as a visitor who dropped in at our home on Saturdays evenings with a bag full of gifts.
I don’t have even the dimmest idea; if my father ever took me in his lap, hugged me or kissed my rubicund ‘Glaxo baby cheeks at his weekly arrival. No one, not even my mother, ever told me about it, and I also never inquired about it. Nevertheless, I have inherent confidence; he did not consider me inauspicious, as my grandmother did, for me, having tumbled into the world when Kashmir was caught up in a whirlpool of uncertainties- the uncertainties haunt me even seven decades after. Like rice, flour and tea leaves, the sea salt was rationed through political hoodlums on political considerations; my grandmother had a lot more hate for these goons than she had for the soldiers of the Maharaja. Although my mother was severely sick when I was born, still she saw me as a blessed child because famed Majzoob Nabi Mout, nicknamed Bonigoud, had brought new flannel pherans for my elder sibling and me. And he had told my mother that they are “Lassan Liaq” – they are worth a cherished life. As time ticked on, father, on his Saturday visits, ceased to be a weekly visitor to me; now, he was someone very affectionate person who brought gifts. On the day of his departure for Baramulla, I also joined my elder brother, the family’s darling, inputting demands before the father- the list of his requests was always long. From a bird seller Ama Pawa that often was a stopover for me on the way to school, I had known that partridges in his large cages inside his shop were found in Baramulla. One Monday morning, I also added to his laundry of demands and asked for a pair of partridges. It has faded from memory if it was coming weekend or next to next Saturday when I felt at the top of the world on seeing father’s orderly Amir Khan entering our compound with Kaanew Thup, a pretty big cage made of reddish twigs. On seeing a pair of partridge inside, I wanted to jump over Amir Khan and snatch Thup from him and touch the silky feathers of the partridges and feed them- the sand that I believed was their feed. In the morning, I went to the bird shop in at Khoja Bazar to get wiser a
to be continued……
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
