Who Is This Guy Who Speaks the Same Language as Hazrat Aatish?
There’s no doubt that he cooked up some great poems. There were even some that Mir and Aatish would have praised, and that’s because they were theirs! He claimed to be one among the disciples of God and that his poetry was intuitive. So his disciples kept up the brave front that it wasn’t plagiarism so much as a happy coincidence of inspiration. Once he was reciting a new ghazal in Rudauli when some brat stood up in the middle of the packed festival to say that the poem was Nasikh’s, ‘It’s plagiarism! Pure plagiarism!’ But he wasn’t fazed. He smiled coolly. Then he said, ‘Wrong! You’re completely wrong! It’s Aatish’s!’
Then he took his manuscript to the MC. He said, ‘Sir, please look at this. This verse is in quotation marks in my manuscript and afterwards I’ve written Aatish’s name.’ The MC verified this, and the man who had raised an objection was shamefully silenced.
Because his ‘homeland’ was Jalaun (the Lesser), he was affectionately called Saghar the Lesser. But he claimed connection to the Lucknow School of poets, and, when it came to matters of language, he absolutely hated people from Delhi and Punjab. Thus, he only plagiarized Lucknavi poets.
11.
I Left Your Alley
After the hullaballoo, no one thought about the guest poets. They were left to their own devices. And those that had no devices were left at the mercy of others. In part because of the disgrace of the night’s commotion, and in part because of the lack of proper arrangements due to the lack of money, Basharat was in no mood to show his face to the poets the next morning. The ten rupees of ‘off-the-books’ money that Moli Mujjan had given him had already evaporated, and Basharat himself had had to spend seventy-two rupees out of his own pocket, and so now he couldn’t afford to buy the poets train tickets home. He covered his head with a hand-towel and slipped off into the empty house of the theology teacher. Wellesley went with him. Basharat broke the lock and stayed in hiding all day. In the afternoon, he unchained Wellesley and pushed him outside, saying, ‘Go, son, go enjoy yourself today, wherever you please.’ At first, the furious poets of Kanpur banded together and went door-to-door looking for him. But then they grew tired and so headed off by foot to the station. After they had hardly started, others fell in with them, and soon they had a proper parade. All the area’s half-naked boys, one completely naked crazy man (whom everyone at that time assumed to be a divine and so asked questions of personal and financial fortune), and all the area’s bite-happy dogs dropped the poets off at the station. Rounding out the parade was an ash-smeared sadhu high on opium, and three biting ducks walking like stiff soldiers in a ceremonial goose-step. When the parade came by, the women at home — who had been kneading dough, preparing livestock fodder, stuffing their breasts into their crying babies’ mouths, and cleaning and re-plastering the mud floors — came to the windows to watch, holding their dirty hands in the shape of parrots. Even a juggler, holding the rope on which he had tied his male and female monkeys, stood up to watch the spectacle. The boys and the monkeys made faces, and, hooting and hissing, lunged at one another. It was hard to say who was imitating whom.
The fragile poets who had grumbled on the way to town that they were being given a ride in a bullock cart now complained that they were being chased from town by foot. While boarding the moving train, Hairat Kanpuri told a coolie, ‘Go tell that idiot loser, “Just try to leave Dhiraj Ganj. Come to Kanpur and see what happens.” ’ All the poets paid for their return tickets out of their own pockets, except for the poet who had brought along five groupies. These six men were kicked off the train in the middle of the voyage for travelling without tickets. A group of charitable Muslims on the train platform collected donations and gave this to the ticket checker as a bribe, and so the men were forgiven for their sin. Luckily, the ticket checker was Muslim, otherwise the six of them would have been handcuffed and led away.
The Story of One Night
Not only the disgraced poets but the entire poetic community of Kanpur was after Basharat’s blood. They spread such propaganda against him that even some prose writers were ready to eat him raw. In Kanpur, the news of the festival was on everyone’s tongues. The poets who had gone to Dhiraj Ganj told such tales about their humiliation and disgrace that even if they weren’t totally true the listeners wished they were because the poets deserved such treatment. People wanted all the details, but the problems were too many to count. Take food, for instance. Each poet complained that they were served dinner in broad daylight at four in the afternoon at the farmer’s house where they had been put up. It’s clear that the farmers served different sorts of food, and so for as many types of food that were served, the poets experienced different varieties of upset stomachs. Hairat Kanpuri complained, ‘When I asked for some hot water for bathing, the lady of the house lifted her veil and pointed out the path to the nearest well. She assured me that I could find there cold water in the summer and hot water in the winter! The man of the house even indirectly enquired why I would want to bathe.’ (This was a very common and ugly joke of that time.) ‘And so when I put on my achkan without bathing and made to leave for the festival, he brought out his two-month-old stark naked son, sat him on my lap, and asked me to confirm for him that there was a paternal likeness. What was it to me? I said yes, and then very fondly I patted the boy on his head. This provoked the boy, and he peed on my coat. That was the coat I wore when I hugged the local poets.’
Then he said, ‘I swear, on my honour, I returned from the festival at one. Until three, insects and mice were gambolling about above and beneath the charpoy. At three, a hue and cry was raised, “It’s morning! It’s morning!” ’ Each poet complained that they were forced out of bed at four o’clock, given a little pot of water, and told the bathroom was the other side of the wild-berry bushes. Hairat Kanpuri protested, and so the swaddling of a newborn baby was ripped from beneath it and given to him. He was told, ‘If you’re shy, then cover yourself!’ The poets claimed to have awoken the roosters and asked them to crow in their sleep-drunk state the day’s beginning!
Some complained that they weren’t given solid food for breakfast. They were given a salty yogurt drink in a gigantic glass to wolf down on an empty stomach and then told to go on their way. One poet said that there had been a goat tied to the foot of his cot, and it had taken a shit all night long. Then when it was still dark, it had been milked, and this milk had been presented to him. He thought that even a buck goat couldn’t take such treatment! Kharosh Shahjahanpuri said that they had started up the hand mill near the head of his bed at two thirty in the morning. It had been two girls, and they had giggled while singing a song about the flirting of in-laws, and this had ruined his sleep and aroused his libido. Aijaz Amrohvi said all sorts of birds had started to make a racket at four in the morning, and that with such noise, no respectable man could sleep.
Majzoob Mathuravi complained that he had been asked to sleep in the mud-plastered courtyard beneath a jamun tree and a cloud of mosquitos. All night long, with each delightful gust of the east wind, jamuns rained down on top of his head. When he complained the next morning, the son of the man of the house who had failed his final high-school exams said, ‘You’re wrong. They aren’t jamun. They’re phalainda. I’ve heard them called “phalainda” in Lucknow.’ Majzoob Mathuravi said that there was a female water buffalo tied to a stake near his charpoy and that it had bellowed all night. Then, early the next morning, it had given birth, and the calf would have fallen right on top of his chest if he hadn’t thought quickly and grabbed it as it came out. Even in his state of disgrace, Shaida Jarchavi found something to brag about. He claimed that the humiliation he had suffered was without precedent for a poet anywhere in Asia. Rana Sitapuri and Kakorvi had a doozy, too. He said that the house at which he had been sleeping — or, rather, staying awake — a stubborn baby kept crying out for his mother’s milk all night long, and the baby’s father kept crying out for his wife. Akhgar Kanpuri, the successor to Mayal Dehlvi, said that his farmer-host kept getting up every half hour to ask, ‘Sir, is everything all right? Are you sleeping OK?’