This was more or less the state of affairs in Cooper Ganj, as well, and Qibla’s store rested in the very heart of this. Usually the lumberyards were just behind the stores proper. To entrap customers, Qibla and a couple of other overly aggressive shopkeepers built small wooden cabins on the road. Qibla’s cabin was outfitted with a bolster pillow, a hookah, a spittoon, and a switchblade. In fact, the cabins were like blinds from which the shopkeepers hunted customers. They lured them in hoping they would not leave empty-handed and heavy-pursed. As soon as a likely customer walked by, the shopkeepers near and far would try to wave him over, crying out, ‘Sir! Sir!’ During their struggles to win them over, shopkeepers exerted so much energy that their turbans fell off. They quarrelled over customers so much that eventually they held a community meeting at which they decided that a shopkeeper could shout out only when a potential customer was directly in front of his store; if the customer left his kill zone, he was to say nothing. And yet discord only increased, and so the shopkeepers drew lines in chalk on the pavement to mark their property. This changed everything. The game changed to kabaddi. Some shopkeepers hired goons, thugs, and wastrels on a part-time basis. Their job was to forcibly round up customers. Business was at an all-time low. During the day, these men pressured customers into buying defective wares at the lumber market, and at night they did the same in the red-light district. Some prostitutes hired these men as pimps in order to get more business, and thus to save their dishonourable honour. Qibla didn’t hire any such bully because he could bully people well enough with his own arms. Sawing to size was still a part of the lumber’s price, but now he, like everyone else, added the expenses of physical coercion.
Bloodletting Tools: Leech, Cupping Horn, Police Baton
Qibla’s anger never relented. Before going to bed, he made sure his mood was foul enough that he would wake up mad. Three furrows permanently creased his brow. The purest sort of rage is that which doesn’t rely upon any provocation or that which flares up at the slightest thing. By the time his anger subsided, he couldn’t remember why he had been angry in the first place. His wife didn’t let him fast. It was probably 1935. One day he was praying to God — nay, imploring God — to end his everlasting problems. But then he thought of a more recent problem, and he became incensed. He addressed God, ‘You didn’t take care of the old ones, so I’m sure you can’t do much about the new one!’ That night he folded up his prayer mat for the final time.
That reminds me of when ear-cleaners used to roam the neighbourhoods. You could get a lot done in those days without leaving the house, not just ear cleaning, but practically everything. You could buy vegetables, meat, household goods. You could get your hair cut or get an education; you could give birth too. You could get your stools fixed, your charpoys fixed; you could even get yourself fixed without stepping one foot outside! The wives of barbers would come to the homes of the well-off to give massages to the ladies of the house, as well as to cut their nails. Lady tailors came to the houses to sew these ladies’ clothes so that outsiders would have no clue what size they wore. This was actually unnecessary because those specimens of women’s clothing from that era that I’ve seen were no better fitting than clothes measured around a mailbox. But the point is that everything was done at home. Even dying. There was no need to go out in order to get run over by a truck. If you suffered from boils and welts because of ‘bad’ blood, or if perverted thoughts were afflicting your mind even during daylight hours, then you could have your blood let at home. In order to drain some perverted, pent-up blood, there was no need to put your head beneath a police baton, either at a political function or during a demonstration against the government. In those days, batons weren’t used as bloodletting instruments. Kanjari women made daily rounds with their leeches and cupping horns.2 If hakims looked into the minds of today’s youth, not one young man would escape the cupping horn. As far as us, the older generation,
Whoever we speak to, we give them advice…
If hakims were still around, they would be sure to apply leeches to our tongues.
One summer day Qibla was taking a nap in his cabin after having eaten a lunch of qorma and cantaloupe. Suddenly, at the cabin’s door, an ear-cleaner shouted out quite loudly, ‘Ear cleaning!’ God knows if Qibla had been deep in sleep, or dreaming a beautiful dream of customers buying lumber for triple its real rate, but he awoke flummoxed. He stared ahead, befuddled. Then he grabbed a piece of wood lying nearby and began chasing the ear-cleaner. The gall of that man! He had yelled out so loudly from a metre away — no, a metre close! It wouldn’t be right to say that Qibla ran after the ear-cleaner because his anger was so great that at times he overtook him. The ear-cleaner entered a maze of alleys and disappeared. Qibla continued running in the direction that his sixth sense told him to go; unfortunately, that was in the direction that a man in control of his first five senses and brandishing a stick above his head would never go — i.e. the police station. In this mad dash, Qibla eventually lost his stick, and the ear-cleaner lost his turban and ear-cleaning instruments, each of which was folded into one pleat or another of his headgear. This included a little can in which he kept earwax. When you weren’t looking, he would take a pinch of this and show it to you, saying, ‘Look how dirty your ears were!’ He would point out big black flies and say the buzzing sound in your ears was due to them. But it was true that he would twist and turn his swabs so carefully through your ear canals that it felt as though he was digging out your guts and would soon present them to you for your inspection. Qibla took this turban and put it on a pole outside his cabin, as in olden times an impatient successor would cut off the head of the emperor (or if one of those wasn’t available, then that of an enemy) and put it on a spear for everyone to bear witness. This struck such fear into the hearts of carpenters, charpoy weavers, bloodletters, and Ramadan morning announcers that they all stopped walking by his shop. Added to that, the tone-deaf muezzin from the neighbouring mosque started using the back alley.
Bronze Pots, Teenage Girls, and Scraggly Beards
Qibla loved showing off his lumber. I say ‘love’ because even though he watched his customers as a lion watches its prey, he stroked his lumber with great affection. From memory alone, he could have traced out the grain of each teak board in stock. He was the only shopkeeper in the lumber market who made his customers memorize the family tree of each and every post and beam. (His own family tree was longer than that of any piece of wood. He hung a copy of it over a photo of his grandfather.) He would point out a good-looking four-by-four, ‘It’s a quarter inch over thirty-nine feet. It’s from Gonda. It’s too bad that Asghar Gondvi’s wonderful poetry has made people forget about its wood. Now no one will believe you if you say that Gonda was famous first for lumber. Before Asghar Gondvi, you got beams so straight that if you put a big ring around the top and let it fall, it would slide straight down all forty feet and hit the ground with a resounding clatter.’ Each piece in his store was an original and descended from noble heritage. They were like purebred Mughals or Rohilkhand Pathans: they ripped the clothes of everyone, and would hardly, if ever, submit to being sawed.