Long story short, their complaints outstripped the number of poets by far. Each poet complained as though he had been personally tortured due to an organized conspiracy. But the truth of the matter was nothing like that. What happened was only that these city-dwelling disciples of God had seen country life for the first time (and that just for a couple of hours) and they had started whimpering. For the first time, they had seen how people lived just several miles beyond the city limits. And, if they had to live like that, they couldn’t figure out why they bothered living at all.
Remove the Caesurae!
After a few days, the rumour was going around that those who had stuck to the misra-e-tarah that Basharat had given had resolved that if they couldn’t find the line in the work of a classical poet, they would never again use any preordained line as the basis for their own versifying. Two poets started consulting Saghar Jalaunvi for poetry help. On the other hand, the poetic practice of Akhgar Kanpuri, the successor to Mayal Dehlvi, thrived. Now dozens of new students arrived every day to sit respectfully at his feet and absorb his special way of correcting their poetry. All he did was get rid of the hitches in the middle of their lines in the way that a weightlifter might help you get rid of your lower back pain by kicking you there straight on, or in the way that you ask the neighbour boys to jump up and down on the rope charpoy after it has gotten twisted out of shape due to the rain. (If it does get straightened out, you’ve also given the boys a taste for jumping up and down on others’ charpoys.)
My Dear Maulvi Mujjan!
Somehow the day passed for Basharat. That evening he made off for a nearby village where he went underground at the house of an acquaintance who had helped him find an orphan several months previously. He hadn’t even made himself comfortable when he began to plan how he would inform his friends about his undisclosed, extremely secret location. He had spent fifteen hard months in Dhiraj Ganj. In the countryside, time itself rides in a bullock cart. His stick-to-itiveness had surprised him. When all avenues to advancement are blocked, gradually the unacceptable becomes acceptable. There wasn’t one school that he was familiar with in all of north India where he didn’t write to enquire about jobs. He even wrote unsuccessfully to a Muslim school in Assam about an open PE teacher job. He went for a handful of interviews that resulted in nothing. With each failure, he saw new flaws in society — ones that could be set right only by a bloody revolution. A friend had intervened on his behalf at Sandela High School, and when he got a letter announcing that he had won a job there, then he suddenly thought, ‘Hey,
What’s so bad about this bad world?’
After reading the letter a dozen times (and finding a new pleasure each time), he wrote his resignation letter on four-lined paper in fancy cursive and sent it to Moli Mujjan. He flung his fetters to the ground in one bold stroke. When writing the letter, he was out of his mind with the explosive intoxication of freedom, and so the ‘r’ in the word ‘arz’ [request] arrogantly punctured the following ‘z,’ and in the word ‘istifa’ [resignation] the final letter swung its leg back like a bully. After earning his BA, he had begun to sign his name quite floridly. But now, by the grace of God, its bouquet grew even headier. Moli Mujjan wouldn’t need to read the letter to discover its contents because its every flourish spouted rebellion, its every dot dripped arrogance, and its every circle spoke of resignation. Basharat sealed the envelope with his bitter saliva in such a way that it seemed he was spitting on Moli Mujjan’s face. After he signed the letter, he broke his inkpot in two. Instead of addressing his benefactor and boss Maulvi Sayyid Muzaffar as ‘Your Honour, Munificent, Dear and Exalted Sir,’ he addressed him in his Urdu letter in English as ‘My Dear Maulvi Mujjan,’ and with this, the bile that had been lodged in his soul for over a year rose into his gorge and then suddenly was gone. Now he was surprised that he had put up with such an abominable man for so long! What had come over him? Probably Moli Mujjan felt this as well. Because when he went to entrust him to God’s care, which is to say, to say goodbye to him, Moli Mujjan shook his hand but couldn’t look him in the eye. For his part, Basharat’s ‘goodbye’ was filled with a thousand curses.
Basharat had thought a lot about one thing. He didn’t have anything to give Nazo. He couldn’t think of anything, but when it came time to leave, he took off his gold ring and gave it to her. She said, ‘My God! What will I do with this?’ Then she went into her room, and when she came out several minutes later, there was a lock of her curly hair tied to the ring, which she gave back to Basharat. She was crying silently.
You’re Not Even as Tall as a Sword!
Everything at Sandela High School was good, except for the several problem boys in the tenth grade who were a little older than Basharat. These boys had been taking a several-year breather between each year of high school, and yet they weren’t half as embarrassed about their age as Basharat was. As soon as he overcame his initial fear, and he began to feel at home, he sent a legal notice through his friend (who had just earned an LLB from Lucknow) to Maulvi Muzaffar stating that his client should be paid his ten months’ worth of unpaid salary by money order, otherwise legal action would be taken in which all the school’s irregularities and illegalities would be inevitably exposed.
Maulvi Muzaffar’s response came two weeks later via registered mail in the form of a notice from his lawyer, stating, ‘You fled without clearing the accounts of the “off-the-books” money and miscellaneous amounts given to you over time in connection with the poetry festival. Deduct your back pay from this and send the rest back to my client by money order. Send the accounts for the poetry festival, as well as all receipts, by mail. Please include all receipts for the poets’ stipends, daily allowances, and travel expenses. Otherwise, please explain why a case against you shouldn’t be filed in the appropriate court. You will be responsible for all fees. Also, during the welcome ceremony for the poets, you instructed the orphanage band to play a ghazal of yours that has several obscene couplets. Moreover, because you selected a line with a broken metre, the school’s reputation, as well as the moveable property of the citizens of Dhiraj Ganj, has suffered harm, and so the executive committee reserves the right to collect full and just compensation.’ The notice also threatened that if the money was not returned, he would be forced to tell Sandela High School, as well as the Department of Education, the full details of Basharat’s criminal breach of trust.