I shouldn’t have, but I went there one hundred times
I was so weak I hugged the wall at times
Without any bread, I was close to starving at times
Not seeing any way out, I was going mad at times
I had a weak soul, but I was still patient
I went to flatter at the door of every fool
I lost my self-respect begging from fools
Getting nothing in return, I too become a fool
When she rejected me, I became the king of fools
Now in the city, I’m the infamous patient
Basharat says that when his father recited ‘I was so weak I hugged the wall at times,’ he would act as though he was leaning against the wall with his right hand and stumbling forward like the line said. But his lifeless left hand told its own story. He didn’t need to expend any extra effort in painting a picture of helplessness. Throughout his life, listening to Dagh’s ghazals would send him into ecstasy. He had never heard a prostitute sing either Fani’s or Mir’s ghazals. In fact, back in those days to request a hot dancer or musician to perform one of Fani’s or Mir’s ghazals was like asking to have some lemon juice mixed into your liquor! Forgive my impertinence, but after drinking such a ‘man-conquering concoction,’ a man would be able to play only the tabla! His father had always detested Fani and Mir. But in old age what consolation he could find came from their verses alone. He had always been a strong, brave man. Basharat said he could never have imagined seeing him cry. But then he did. With his own eyes. A lot.
In Karachi, he wasted half his time thinking about his long-lost friends. The other half was wasted by his new good-for-nothing friends.
Aladdin the Eighth
Basharat’s father’s diseases were numerous and infectious. The worst of them was old age. One of his sons-in-law returned from England having just received his FRCS in surgery. At his in-laws’ house, no one’s appendix was safe. If someone was suffering from eye pain, he took out their appendix. The surprising thing was that their eye pain went away. Throughout his life Basharat’s father had suffered from GI tract pain, but he put his hand on his stomach and swore to God that he had never let any doctor touch his appendix. He had been bedridden for quite a while, but his disability was still incomplete. I mean, he could walk, if he had something to lean on.
So he performed the inauguration of the horse like this: he had a red ribbon tied to his bedroom door (from which he had not emerged for several months) and then cut it with his shaky hand. Then, after distributing laddoos to the children who had clapped during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, he prayed two rakats in thanks. Then he hung a marigold garland over the horse’s neck. The horse had a big whorl on his forehead. He dipped his finger in saffron and wrote ‘Allah’ on it, muttered some prayers and blew on it. Then he smeared vermillion paste on the horse’s four hooves and the cart’s two wheels and intoned the blessing that they should race forward at full speed for as long as they lived. He had Rahim Bakhsh open his mouth, and he stuffed in one laddoo. For himself, he slipped a silver-wrapped paan between his jaws. He wrapped himself in his old Kashmiri shawl and sat in the cart’s backseat. Then he had his 20-year-old harmonium put in the front seat, and he set off for Master Baqar Ali’s shop to have it repaired.
Basharat’s father gave the horse a new name — Balban. He told the driver, ‘I don’t like your name Rahim Bakhsh at all. From now on, I’ll call you Aladdin.’ Since his memory had started to go wonky, he called all servants by this name. This was Aladdin the Eighth. His predecessor, Aladdin the Seventh, had a big family. He had been fired for stealing hookah tobacco and bread. He had tied warm bread to his midriff and was walking out when his clumsy gait gave him away. Basharat’s father called the current Aladdin, meaning Rahim Bakhsh, just Aladdin. But if there was something special to be done, like massaging his feet or refilling his hookah at some unusual hour, or just out of love and affection, he would call him Aladdin Mian. Only when he cursed him out would he call him by his real name.
Half-Mast Whip
The next day the kids were taken to school in the cart. Then Basharat was taken to his shop. For three days, this continued. Then on the fourth day, the driver was very upset when he came back from dropping the kids at school. He tied the horse to the gate and went directly to find Basharat. He was holding the whip like in bygone eras standard bearers carried flags into battle. In fact he had his hand raised to the very last possible centimetre like the Statue of Liberty does in New York (thus keeping the torch of freedom high). Later, Basharat learned that if Rahim Bakhsh had to relate some misfortune or break bad news, he would come carrying his whip like that. Seeing the whip raised horizontally would unsettle Basharat like Hamlet seeing his father’s ghost:
Here it cometh, my lord!
When Rahim Bakhsh got to Basharat, he lowered the flag to half-mast and asked for fifteen rupees. He said, ‘I’d just got to the corner of the alley by the school when I was suddenly stopped and given a ticket. The horse’s left leg was limping. As soon as I left the school, the Cruelty Cops1 swooped in. With a lot of cringing and begging, I got off with a fifteen-rupee ticket. Otherwise, boss, you too would have been in for it. Right in front of me the Cruelty Cops whipped a donkey-cart owner all the way to the police station. And that donkey wasn’t even remotely as lame as our horse.’ Rahim Bakhsh mentioned the donkey’s trivial lameness with such contempt, and he exaggerated their horse’s serious disability with such pride that it incensed Basharat, and so, with a quivering hand, he thrust the fifteen rupees at him just to shut him up.
A Lion’s Intentions and a Goat’s Intelligence Fall into Question
He immediately called in a veterinarian and showed him the horse. When the vet rubbed its left shin, the horse flinched. He diagnosed it as being an old injury. So then the whole thing started to become clear. Probably — no, most definitely—this was the reason why the horse had been disqualified from racing. Horses like this are always put down on the spot so as to prevent them from being yoked to a cart and condemned to a wretched life of disgrace. But, at the same time, the vet gave him the hope that the horse’s condition would improve if the horse was massaged with heron oil. The price of this oil was five rupees a day, which meant 150 rupees a month. That would be 900 rupees in half a year. The horse cost 900, and now the massaging would cost the same! It was like stitching a burlap quilt with patches of brocade! Just recently he had hired a man to massage his father’s feet for eighty rupees a month. This meant that he was going to have half his earnings confiscated by income tax, and a third eaten up by masseurs! He had never imagined that so much of his hard-earned money would be legally embezzled by such riffraff! At four in the afternoon, he yoked the horse to the cart and set off to confront the businessman. Before leaving, he made sure to put on heavily tinted sunglasses so that he wouldn’t hesitate to speak harsh words and in order to give a mysterious expression of bloodthirstiness. He had gone about halfway when someone grabbed the cart’s yoke and stopped them cold. The man said, ‘Your horse is limping badly. You’re going to get a ticket.’ Basharat was shocked. The Cruelty Cops were cracking down. Every corner had one on the prowl. And they were giving tickets for each and every little thing. When the inspector didn’t relent, Basharat started to split legal hairs: ‘I just got a ticket this morning. You can’t get ticketed for the same offense within seven hours.’ The inspector added this to his charge sheet and said that things had turned much more serious. When Basharat didn’t see any way out of it, he said, ‘OK, baba, you’re right. Take ten rupees and let’s call it over with. It’s a brand-new horse. I bought it three days ago.’ But this sent the inspector into a tizzy. He said, ‘Look, mister, you seem nice enough, despite your sunglasses. You should know you might be able to buy a lame horse but you can’t buy off a person.’ So Basharat got a ticket.