Winter, as it has been for generations now,is a season of indolence for us. Perhaps, because, winter freezes among other things, time as well. No apples to be picked. No paddy to be thrashed. No walnuts to be hulled. No, nothing to be done. Except, maybe, watch icicles melt (that is if they melt at all) drop by drop. The Sun like any pedigreed gormintmulazim makes a brief appearance somewhere around noon (and not necessarily everyday) and leaves soon enough to attend to more important business. All warmth is squeezed to a handful of embers which glow with arrogance in their cozykangris. More so when the grey sky begins to sprinkle cold white confetti of snow. Each flake a cold kiss that makes the Kangri dearer.
As snow piles up all around;men, young and old, gather in mosques where in between the prayers of the day they warm their bones on the hamam and do the only thing that can be done when nothing is to be done-gossip.
On one such cold, winter afternoon I made my way through the cackling snow to our Mosque. There on the hamam, wallowing like buffaloes, sat the parliament of our neighbourhood; the centre of their bemused attention, literally and figuratively, being ‘Lalla’- the archfiend of gossips.
Lord Almighty had gifted Lalla with a mouth that refused to remain at peace; it must need be either eating or babbling. God forbid if it ever should know a moment of rest!Even when the whole universe would sleep away in a peaceful silence it still needed to snore!
If any man ever deserved to be hung from his tongue, it had to be him. But, instead, there he was on the hamam pretending to be some Caesar to his gathered horde of bootlicking courtiers: they worshipped him, these dimwits did; hanging on to every word of his with such disgusting delight. Why they would even lick the spit if it came dribbling out of his mouth!
And all this hackneyed adulation for what?-Lalla’s tall tales and wild yarns! Just plain falsehood and deceit that Devil himself whispered in his ears and he trumpeted them out to these toadies and leeches.What had the world come to? Men worshipping slanderers and Liars on the holy hamam of a Masjid!
It made my blood boil.
But the shameless sycophants kept on chanting ‘Lalla tell us about this. Lalla tell us about that’: as if they could not tell he was making everything up. Had anyone of them ever eaten even a morsel of decent rice they would most certainly have kicked Lalla out of the hamam ages ago and paid their obeisance to some one more deserving. Someone better. Someone upright. Someone who could teach them a thing or two. Someone(if I may momentarily take leave of my modesty) like me who could preach and open their eyes to their idiocy and stupidness. But no, why should these curs have any better sense! For them the vile words of Lalla weremannastraight from heaven which they gulped down greedily as soon as it left the misshapen mouth of that abomination called LALLA.
May hell fire singe their marrow!
The more these idiots wagged their tails around this arch-deceiver, the more it nauseated me. Finally I could take it no longer. I could remain silent no longer. I had to do something to stop these drooling, fawning, lickspittles from degrading themselves even more than they already had, besides saving whatever was left of the sanctity of our holy Hamam. Determined, I walked straight up to the assumed King of these knaves and, as disgustingly as I could, said, “Say Lalla how long have you been sitting on the Hamam? I smell your tail-bone burning. It would do you good and to others as well, if you breathe some fresh air outside.”
Lalla looked at me as if some impertinent fly had dared to buzz around his roman nose, “Now who do we have here? Ah it is you, the Aflatoon of beggars! And here I was wondering why dogs had started to howl.”
There, that was Lalla for you, full of indecent jibes and shameless insults. Not that I could not have replied with something more vitriolic,something like… err… you know… something more clever like… uggghhh… something more insulting… you know… like… well it doesn’t matter. I refuse to degrade myself to his level. So I said politely, “Let Dogs to their howling and barking you tell me how could you call yourself your father’s son. I have heard how he used to swim in ice and sleep on snow and here you are growing roots in a hamam.”
“ Yes, yes you have heard correct. My father used icicles to pick his teeth. But then who could rival him after all he used to have tea with Chill-e-kalan.”
“Ah !” exclaimed I. “ Tea with Chill-e-kalan !” the poor devil was finally trapped in his own words “ See what monstrous falsehood you utter sitting on this holy Hamam. And that too about your father! Have you no shame? You ought to be kicked from here.”
Lalla smirked, “Falsehood and me. Astagfirullah! I would never dare such impudence. My father did have tea with Chill-e-kalan. So he told me and so was he immune to chill and cold.”
I frowned in response and in my most damning voice said, “Have some fear of doomsday day Lalla. You have to die someday. With what face will you face your Lord ?”
“You don’t believe me” said Lalla incredously. “Very well let me tell the whole story. And all of you present here, let you be the judges whether I slander or noton this holy hamam.”
Thus began his tale,
‘It was the time around the great fire which had burned down half of the village, when one night my father (May the Lord Almighty bless his grave) was returning home. The hour was late when he found himself walking by the graveyard. Remember that old walnut tree in the graveyard that we fell last year for our Hamam, something under that very walnut tree caught my father’s eye. He could not tell for sure what or who it was but he did believe he saw something vaguely human. Being a God-fearing type, he said a silent prayer and paced up his walk. There and then a strange cold voice creeped upto his ears ‘Come here.’, it commanded. Father swore that he resisted with all his will but somehow he had lost command over his own body. His legs slowly took him to the walnut tree obeying the voice that stiffened his skin. There he sees a man sitting cross legged on the bare earth. He has a long thin fheran thrown over his body and one could sense he wore nothing underneath. Yet he felt no discomfort whatsoever despite the night being so cold that it froze one’s marrow. As my father’s eyes settled to the dark he could make out a steaming samovar by the side of this strange man.
“Come sit here” says the man to my father. And my father having lost the command of his body found himself doing exactly what he was told to.
“It gets lonely by the night you know. A man ought to have some company.” The strange man says more to himself than to my father as he starts to poursomething hot from the samovar into a clay cup and begins sipping it noisily. Father always had a weakness for tea and out there cold and shivering under that walnut tree, the tea would have been aab-e-kousar for him but the strange man showed no inclination of offering him any and my father dared not ask for some.
“ I know you crave for this tea.” says the wicked man. “But I can’t let you have it. You see this is not some usual drab nun-chaithat every other man gulps down by gallons. No my dear, this here is a brew that boils your blood. One sip and all the chills and colds are gone. One sip and why you even will not dread me!”
At this point the strange man suddenly cocks his brow askance “Do you know who I am?” this he asks to my cold, shrivelling father: what could he say!
The poor soul mumbled a timid no.
“You ignoramus! I am Chill-e-kalan. The winter-Duke of forty days”
This was followed by a rhetorical pause during which my father felt some of his courage returning. The man sitting before him was after all just Chill-e-kalan, not some vile djinn or tasruf-dar. What was the worse he could do? Some chills or a frost-bite or a severe cold: nothing that my father could not handle. Thus building up on his new found courage, my father dared to say, “Forgive my impudence chillasaab but how come that you are in a graveyard under a walnut tree on such a night? I believe your sovereign self deserves better.”
Chill-e-kalan stares back at him- hard and sore. “Who will let me in his house? I am the harbinger of benumbing cold, who would spread a gabba for me ?”
‘Aye that is true. Come to think of it who would bring frost to his own hearth’ thinks my father to himself.
“So here I am. Of all the places under the God’s sky.” Saying so the head of Chill-e-kalan stoops low under the burden of his despondency. He stands there a figure of gloom and wretchedness.
Now one thing that has always ran in the blood of my family, is mercy. We always have been quick to sympathise. My father might not have been this or that but he certainly was a man of pity. One look at the crest-fallen Chill-e-kalan and my father decides that come what may he will spend the night with this miserable creature. Like others of our tribe,thanks to the bountiful Lord, my father too had a gift of gab. He could talk an owl to its sleep. And tonight if nothing else he would atleast cheer up Chill-e-kalan.
Thus there on the cold wintry night in a graveyard under a walnut tree sat my father and Chill-e-kalan talking about husbands and wives, men and animals, rumours and facts; and a thousand more things. The details of which I don’t remember now even though father did tell me all about them. But what I do remember is that between father and Chill-e-kalan the night passed fast. So fast that dawn was upon them and they were still talking. Finally Father stands up and shakes his clothes. He starts to bid farewell when Chill-e-kalan says, “ Say dear friend the night passed well, didn’t it?”
“Yes it did.”
“What if you come again tomorrow night and between us we pass one more pleasant night. What do you say to that, aye?”
Now father would certainly have loved to do the same but for the chill and frost, so he says in answer, “Jinab how much I would love that but alas you see the blood in my veins grows cold and I fear if I spend one more night like this that would be the end of me. So I scarce believe that tomorrow I will be here. A man must value his life above all pleasures.”
“Hmm…” mutters the pensive Chill-e-kalan, “ I think I have a solution for that. Here take a drink from this.” He offers the hot tea from his samovar to my surprised father. Father takes the cup. One sip and the heat of desert noon was released in his veins. And from that moment till the day Malik-ol-mout knocked on his door, as my mother would say, he never knew what cold was.
Next night father returned to the graveyard and he kept going there night after night till the chill e kalan was over. And every year after that,till his grave claimed him, he remained a faithful visitor to the his friend in the graveyard during forty days of winter. Both of them would sit under the walnut tree sipping their tea and talking through the cold nights.”
Lalla stopped and with his squinted eyes summoned all around. “Now good people you tell me who could measure up to this man who drank tea with Chill-e-kalan, even if it be his own son?”
Everybody except me nodded and mumbled, “No one indeed. No one.”
“You judge me-” continued Lalla to his bewitched audience “do I slander then ?”
“No. No.. Of course not.”
I was disgusted with all of them. Wretched sycophants. Toadies and flunkeys. May their bones rot in hell. If they want themselves to be damned let them, why should I care?
I stood up, it was time to call the faithful for Nimaaz.
Lalla, some other day, some other time, I swore to myself.
Shabir Ahmad can be reached at fahad18dupe@gmail.com
