For quite a while, Qibla luxuriated in the praises of his good character. The glacier was beginning to melt. He smiled at his secretary and said, ‘Many untrained poets have trouble rhyming this sound or that, but he can’t rhyme anything. From A to Z. It’s so discombobulated it’s like praying at Eid when no one knows what to do.’
When people heard of Basharat’s temerity, they were shocked. They thought the volcano was about to erupt. If Qibla took mercy upon Basharat’s family members and didn’t murder them all, then surely he was going to break all their legs. But nothing like this happened. Qibla accepted Basharat as his son-in-law.
4.
Why Was Ravana Killed?
It’s hard to choose just one anecdote of Qibla’s salesmanship. Examples of its disastrous consequences are so many. If a customer so much as insinuated that he had a problem with Qibla’s prices, then not only this man’s honour but also his physical person would be at risk. Once Qibla was in a hurry. He immediately stated the price to be ten rupees. The customer, who was from the countryside, set his own price at nine rupees seventy-five paise. Qibla swore nastily at him and chased him out of the store, incensed that this yokel had dared bargain. There was a broken-down charpoy in the shop. The shop’s carpenters had the habit of stealing its ropes to use to light their hookahs. When Qibla wanted to attack someone, he would take a leg of the charpoy and chase his enemy, meaning, the customer. He often stroked this piece fondly, saying, ‘It’s real tough. It’s as solid as ever. Only cowards and the debased carry bludgeons. And only butchers, vegetable sellers, goons, and the police wield billy clubs.’ After using his weapon, he would give it first aid, that is, wipe it down neatly with a hand-towel then refit it into his pathetic charpoy. He probably put it back so that in going to retrieve it he would have time to cool his heels a little. Also, it allowed the object of his displeasure to gather his wits and take advantage of the fact that he had legs. An ancient Chinese saying goes that of the three hundred and seventy means of fighting that wise men have laid down, the most effective remains fleeing! This is confirmed by Hindu mythology. Ravana had ten heads and twenty hands, yet he was killed. The only conceivable reason for this was that he could run only as fast as his two legs could carry him. Before attacking, Qibla would huff and puff for a while so that if the opponent wished to save himself, he could flee. He said, ‘Not once have I not warned my enemy by swearing at him first.’ What is that couplet? Oh, yes,
You can learn about chivalry from mosquitos
Before they suck your blood, they warn you.
I’ve never met another person who took such pride in being mosquito-like. Professor Qazi Abdul Quddus, MA, BT, was so impressed by Qibla’s thinking that he made up outlines for two sophic, if not solipsistic, lectures, entitled ‘The Place of Mosquitos in the Poetic Traditions of the East: The Objective Perspective in History’ and ‘A Comparison of Mosquitos and Falcons.’ Thank God my readers are intelligent. There’s no need to state which one won that one.
I Deserve to Be Punished, but for a Different Crime
Everyone was scared shitless of Qibla, except for the shopkeeper whose shop was just to the right. He was from Kannauj. He was arrogant, violent, dishonest, and rude. Twenty years younger than Qibla, he was still young and headstrong. In fact, he had recently retired from professional wrestling. People called him Mr Wrestler. One day a customer was just entering the zone in front of Qibla’s shop when Mr Wrestler grabbed him and dragged him into his own, leaving on Qibla’s lips the words, ‘Sir! Sir!’ But when Qibla entered his store to repossess the customer, Mr Wrestler uttered the one curse that Qibla himself was famous for. That was going too far. Qibla went back to his store, ripped out his special weapon — meaning, the leg of his charpoy — and raced back barefoot into Mr Wrestler’s store. The customer tried to intervene, but he lost a tooth in this impulsiveness and so retired from his peacekeeping efforts. The impudent Mr Wrestler took to flight, sprinting out of the store. Qibla followed hot on his trail. But when Mr Wrestler was crossing some railroad tracks, his foot got caught and he fell facedown right there. Qibla caught up. He hit him so hard with the charpoy’s leg that it broke in two. God knows if this blow was what injured him or if it was his falling, but Mr Wrestler lay unconscious for a while, and a pool of blood grew around him.
His leg was fractured in several places, and because gangrene developed, the leg was amputated. Qibla was brought to trial since Mr Wrestler had paid the authorities handsomely. The police charged Qibla with attempted murder and held the motive to be longstanding animosity. Then they added whatever else they could from the Indian Penal Code. After listening to the rap sheet, Qibla said, ‘It’s not his leg that’s broken, but the law.’ When the police came to take him away, his wife said, ‘And what now?’ He shrugged his shoulders, ‘We’ll see.’
In court, both the peacekeeping customer’s tooth and the murder weapon — the bloodstained charpoy leg — were presented as formal exhibits. The case went to the Sessions Court. Qibla had already been in custody for several days, but now he was put in jail alongside hardened murderers, robbers, pickpockets, and recidivist criminals. That said, after a couple fistfights, they accepted him and began to call him ‘uncle.’
One of Kanpur’s best lawyers, Barrister Mustafa Raza Qazalbash, took up Qibla’s defense. But the two of them couldn’t agree on a single thing. Qibla swore that under oath he would say that the plaintiff had lied about his parentage — he didn’t resemble his father but rather one of his father’s dissolute friends. His lawyer wanted to argue that the man in question had got injured falling on the railway track and not because of Qibla’s bludgeoning. When it came time for Qibla to enter the courtroom, he wanted to walk in casually like lawyers do in the movies; and when he took the witness stand, he wanted to bang on its iron bars and announce, ‘I’m a soldier’s son! I don’t need my store to give me a sense of dignity. Anyway, it hasn’t been profitable for a long time. As a soldier and a man, it was wrong for me to hit him on the legs. I really should have bashed in his skull. So if you have to punish me, don’t do so for what I did to his legs. Punish me for hitting the wrong part. I deserve to be punished, but for a different crime.’