I made, I worshipped, I was conquered
Now Basharat himself can laugh at these childish desires. But things were different then. To a child, there can never be anything more real in all of creation than his toys. Whether dreaming at midnight or daydreaming in the middle of the day, that dream is for that moment the only truth there is. This broken toy. This tear-stained kite for which the child was spanked so many times. This firefly flashing on and off. This taut balloon that in a second will turn into a flaccid blob of rubber. This scarlet fly that tickles my palm. This train made from matchboxes that flies faster than the speed of sound. This soap bubble quivering with the child’s breath. This fairies’ chariot that is drawn along by butterflies. This second. This moment. This is the one and only reality.
And this world is nothing but illusions, spells, and shadows
I Took Some Colours from the Rainbow and Stole Some Light from the Stars
This Story Takes Place Before The Toy Broke
He had just become a schoolteacher and the height of his desire was a black phaeton. In fact, his going to the trouble of wearing a white uniform, a white achkan coat, white shoes, white kurta pyjamas, a white drawstring, and so on was only so that he could match the white horse. Otherwise, only a duck could find such a duck-like get-up attractive. He actually hated churidar pyjamas. But since he wanted to have a white drawstring woven by a beautiful young woman, he was forced to cover his legs with this ‘sitar cover’ (the tight-fitting pyjamas). Each brick of his castle in the sky was formed from the clay of the feudal system and kneaded with bourgeois dreams. And each brick was not only of different size and colour from the others, but each was embossed with his image. Some bricks were even round! He had fantasized about everything so clearly that he had already determined to what degree the white horse could raise its tail in his presence so as to preserve the rules of decorum; behind which window-blinds along his route which wrists would jingle which colour of bangles; which girl would have written his name (along with BA) on her palm; and which kohl-rimmed eyes would watch anxiously from behind which blinds and which fingers would separate the bamboo’s slats to look for the revolutionary prince who will declare
You, my dear, wave the flag, and I will play the drums.
I must add, what could be a safer division of labour? The sweetheart carries the flag into the thick of the battle risking her life, and the poet sits in a marble tower far away playing a period instrument and singing an antedated song (meaning his own). In prose, this situation has been described as persuading others to slip the noose over their own necks; in a Punjabi saying, the same thing is said, but with a little too much clumsy honesty. Look, something quite presumptuous happened from the very first verse (moment). In any event, I meant only that Basharat dreamed at all times of being a schoolteacher, and he never thought of anything else: for only a teacher could a phaeton and a silk drawstring mean so much. Landlords and the feudal elite couldn’t care less. Even after twenty years, he could still feel the fiery slashes on his back where he had been whipped as he ran with the neighbourhood boys hooting and hollering behind a nobleman’s phaeton and its white horse.
At the Crossroads of a Dilemma
He left poetry behind to become a schoolteacher. Then he quit that and became a shop owner. And then he closed up shop and moved to Karachi where he opened another lumber store on Harchandrai Road. It was a new world with a new lifestyle. He had thrust his foot into a new, busy world. But the dream of a white horse and a phaeton never left him. You can break a daydream or a fantasy in only two ways. One, it becomes a reality. Two, at the crossroads of your dilemma, you are granted a reprieve from your obsession and are allowed to go on your way.
Heart-breaker, dream-maker, thank you for the dream!
Then you finally round a bend beyond which no one has ever returned. That is, the family life. And yet this too didn’t cure Basharat. He had sold his lovely house for close to nothing and, according to him, had arrived in Karachi robbed and beaten. Then in the next two years, God rewarded him so grandly that Kanpur began to seem quite paltry. All his dreams had come true. I mean, his house was crammed full of all sorts of useless material goods. There was only one thing missing: God had given him everything but a horse! While he couldn’t have bought a new car, he could have bought a secondhand one. Back in those days, you could get a car for less than what you have to pay to get four tires today. But, to him, a car didn’t have the same aristocratic splendour and feudal elegance as a phaeton or buggy. Horses are beyond compare.
Chivalry Died with the Horses
Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig says that trying to talk sense into an overwrought person is like trying to sow seeds in a windstorm. So instead of trying to dissuade Basharat from pursuing his worthless obsession, he encouraged him. One day, in the way that you would extinguish a fire by spraying it with gas, Mirza mentioned that chivalry, sacrifice, valour, and fearlessness became foreign concepts once horses fell out of favour. Out of all the animals, dogs and horses are man’s first and best friends; they have left behind the natural world for us. Dogs are still around because of their dogged nature, but humans haven’t been faithful to horses. With the departure of horses, the feudal chapter of human history has ended. It was a chapter in which enemies warned before attacking and fought looking their adversaries right in the eyes. Death was a spear’s length away, and both parties held spears. No doubt death still tasted strange, but at least the killer and the victim could recognize each other. Firebombs and atom bombs didn’t rain down on anonymous, sleeping cities. A horse shows cowardice only when its rider does. Galloping horses make hearts race and the ground tremble beneath their hooves. The dust stirred up in their wake, the sparks flying off their hooves, the sun glinting off the spear-points, and the men’s breaths transformed into storms of panting announced the attacking horsemen from miles away. Even today the sound of horses galloping together lights in our blood the savage fire of thousands of years ago.
But, Mirza, just a minute: rein in your rhetoric a little. What sort of horse are you talking about? A horse that pulls carts?
Gulji’s Horses
But I do accept that without horses, we could hardly imagine an age of adventures, conquest, bravery, and chivalry. The horse’s saddle is our imperial throne… The Gaekwads were very proud of their ancient royal motto. It’s said that the Hun horsemen who raped and pillaged their way across Europe never got off their horses. They slept in the saddle, relaxed there, ate there, drank there, and conducted trade there; they even performed their calls of nature there. In England, there was a painter named Stub who only painted purebred horses. (In Europe, people still care a little bit about lineage when it comes to horses, dogs, and royalty.) The apparent reason why Stub preferred horses to naked models is that women don’t have tails. Add to that, horses never demand that their likenesses trump reality. For eleven years, we’ve lived next door to Pakistan’s renowned artist Gulji. I’ve been able to observe his painting habits quite closely. He always paints at night, and that, after midnight. For a long time I thought that perhaps he did so because he saw better at night. But then, when I had to start writing at night because of an ulcer, I stopped being so curious.