Who knows who’s living it up and where?
His love for horses is limitless. He earns hundreds of thousands of rupees from his paintings. Someone once teased him (it wasn’t me) that for the price of one horse painting, you could easily buy three live horses! After that, I noticed that he had at least three horses in each painting. I also noticed that he doesn’t give one hundredth of the love, detail (down to the last hair), and inspiration to the rest of the horse and its rider that he does to the horse’s tail. Not just the horse’s entire personality but that of the rider as well is sucked into the tail. It’s like each and every hair has been stroked by the affectionate hand of the horse’s owner: each hair is unique, becoming, and priceless. If you ask the truth, he would rather paint only the tail. He paints the rest of the horse against his will and only so that he can hang the tail on it. If it should ever come to pass that he has to paint a very beautiful and minutely detailed portrait of some VIP lady, he would be sure to paint her ponytail so well that if a horse saw it, he (the male horse) would start pawing the ground.
A Nightingale Is Only a Voice, a Peacock Is Only a Tail
He also specializes in painting cute camels, though what he has done with them is absurd. That is, he has exported these oils in the dozens to Arab countries. Some of these paintings are so expensive that only banks, Arab sheikhs, foreign diplomats, and Pakistani smugglers can afford them. The rare camels that the United Bank bought from him proved so large that the bank had to construct an entirely new wall in the middle of the hallway to hang them up. After the sheikhs saw them, they were so happy that a handful demanded where they could get the real (meaning identical) camels. The bank was thus faced with a dilemma:
Where can I get one just like you?
In its greed for petrodollars, the bank was forced to find some camels to export (along with their fodder) that kind of resembled these painted camels. When I came onboard at United, one day I timidly asked Gulji, ‘Sir, if you could please paint camels that resemble the camels of this earth, it would make the bank’s job of meeting the sheikhs’ demands much easier. My job’s on the line. And, also, please avoid painting on their backs beautiful women without veils.’ Gulji is a very crafty, hypersensitive, and witty artist. My suggestion pissed him off. He took a moment to compose himself and then spoke in English, ‘Baba, I’m a simple and craftless Agha Khani worker. And I’m obedient. But this will be possible if and only when I mix a debauched camel’s milk with my paints, and if and only when I paint with a brush made from the tail of a virgin mare. This will be worth double. Think about it.’ Then he added in Urdu, ‘Sir, you’re poking fun at us fakirs! Picasso said that painting is a blind man’s profession. An artist doesn’t paint what he sees, but he paints what he thinks he sees.’ I didn’t mind his sarcasm because
Fiery, fumbled words don’t affect wise men.
Also, I read somewhere that the bright, beautiful colours of Rajput paintings from three or four hundred years ago (colours that were brighter than turmeric) were made by feeding mango leaves to a cow continuously over the course of several days and then collecting its urine. This colour was used for ripe, juicy mangos, for cholis, and for the uppity turbans of the kings.
In any event, Gulji’s camels couldn’t match his horses. And how could they? How can you compare a horse’s long, thick, royal-fly-whisk of a tail to a camel’s little stub? It’s not really a tail but a tale of a tail. Mirza says that a camel’s tail isn’t big enough even to cover its privates. But every animal’s tail serves some purpose. For instance, a monkey’s. That’s good for hanging around in trees and for using like a ladder to pluck off half-ripe fruit and female monkeys. A dog’s tail, wagging helplessly in front of its master, was a brown-noser’s tongue in a previous life. (A dog doesn’t use its tongue for that purpose.) An ostrich’s tail is made to adorn the heads of Western women. For many animals, the only reason they have a tail is so that the poor creatures have something to stick between their legs as they run away. A peacock’s tail isn’t for dancing in front of people but for impressing female peacocks in the wild and for sweeping saints’ shrines. If not for that, why would they carry around such an overblown corsage on such a frail frame? Close your eyes and tell me — if a peacock were shaved, wouldn’t it look just like a cowering owl?
The Best Tail
But forget charming the opposite sex with a tail. A camel’s tail can’t express anything — profound or silly. It doesn’t even really hang right. If you ask the truth, only peacocks, birds of paradise and casino bunnies have tails worth mentioning, and when it comes to the last one, the reason I like them is that they aren’t their own and they tickle awake the sleeping, soon-to-be-losing rabbits in men’s souls. A bird of paradise is the size of a red partridge, but, I swear to God, the males have tails a full fifteen feet long! If male birds of paradise are sitting high in some trees with their tails hanging down hoping to attract females, then the females judge their husbandly qualities by the same methods that in a previous age people used to measure Muslim theologians’ knowledge. That is, only by those things that hang: the length of their beards, the loose ends of their turbans, and their retinues. The female puts her beak into the tiny beak of the male with the longest tail. But the most efficacious tail goes to the scorpion. If a snake’s poison is in its fangs, a scorpion’s is in its tail. A wasp has its poison in its stinger, and a rabid dog’s is in its tongue. Humans are the only animals with poison in their hearts. Writing this makes me think about whom I would sting if I were a scorpion. Thinking about all the people I don’t like, I have to say that one lifetime wouldn’t be enough to take care of things. Then again, it would never work because the very first name on my shit list is my own. As far as snakes’ tails go, I don’t like them, but they do fascinate me. And that’s because they have the same virtue that my forehead does: no one can tell where it starts. Setting aside the snake’s hood, I would say that a snake is nothing more than a big tail. But the very best tail must be that one which has already fallen off. It was only after that incident that humankind was dubbed the most noble of all creation and the viceroy of God on earth.
My Means of Conveyance: A Banana Peel
Writing about Basharat’s love for phaetons and horses has brought me far afield. My mentor and master Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig once shared with me a great piece of wisdom: ‘When you slip on a banana peel, you should never ever try to stop yourself or put on the brakes because that will only cause greater injury. Just slip without a care in the world. Enjoy it. In the words of the great poet Zauq, “Go as far as it goes.” When the banana peel becomes tired, it will stop on its own. Just relax.’ So I use this principle not only when walking but also when writing and thinking. But why shouldn’t I go ahead and tell you the whole truth? All my life, the banana peel and the banana peel alone has been my sole means of conveyance. If you happen to notice a youthful spring to my step, it’s due to the banana peel. If my pen happens to slip, then I go along with it happily. I don’t try to control my pen at all. And when it reveals my malice, then I’m like the boy who has had all his secrets suddenly taken out of his stuffed pockets and laid upon a desk. But, that said, the old folks feel even worse than the boy because this reminds them of their forgotten youths and of the current contents of their desk drawers. The day that children begin to keep in their pockets money instead of worthless things is the last day they will ever be able to sleep without worry.