As I was saying, I was without work. There was a small cocaine business still running which got me a little money. At the time of the Partition when thousands of people from here went there, and those from there began to pour in here, I, too, thought of leaving for Pakistan. If not cocaine, I could begin some new venture. So I left, and after doing several odd jobs along the way, I eventually reached Pakistan.
I had left with the intention of starting some lucrative business. So the moment I reached Pakistan, I began to study the situation there closely. I chose the business of ‘allotments’. I was an old hand at greasing the system and saying the right things to the right people. I befriended some people and managed to get a small house allotted in my name. I made a neat profit on this and decided to travel to different cities, scout for homes and shops and get them allotted in my name. No matter what the work, a man has to work hard. I had to do my share of running around to make money in allotments. Some flattery here, some greasing of palms there, invitations to dinner, to evenings of song and dance and…. What I mean to say is that there were endless headaches. I would toil all day long, sniff around deserted mansions, scour the city in search of handsome homes that could yield the maximum profit after allotment.
A man’s hard work never goes waste. Within a year, I had amassed several lakh rupees. I had everything a man can ask the Good Lord to provide — a wonderful house to live in and countless maal-pani stashed away in my bank.
Forgive me again. I have used a slang from my Kathiawad. But never mind, Urdu must take in more words from outside — as I was saying, by the grace of God, I had everything — a fine house, plenty of servants, a Packard car, two-and-a-half lakh rupees in the bank, besides several shops and factories. I had all this but somewhere along the way I had lost my peace of mind. It is true that while I was in the cocaine trade, I had felt an occasional burden on my heart. But now it was almost as though I had no heart. Or maybe, the burden was such that my heart had quite disappeared under it. But what was the burden that so weighed my heart?
I am a clever man. If a question arises in my mind, I invariably find an answer for it. With a cool heart (even though I didn’t quite know where my heart was), I tried to think my way through — what was the reason behind my unease?
Women?…Yes, maybe. I had no woman of my own. The one I had to begin with had died in Kathiawad, Gujarat. But there were plenty of women belonging to other men. For instance, there was my gardener’s wife. There is no accounting for tastes, my dear sir! To tell you the truth, for me, a woman just needs to be young; it is not necessary that she be educated, or be able to dance. Any nubile woman will do — as we say in a piquant, difficult-to-translate way in our Kathiawad, Gujarat.
So there was no question of a woman and money was certainly not an issue. I am not a greedy man. I am happy with whatever I have. But then why had this matter of the heart arisen?
I am a clever man. I try to get to the bottom of things. My factories were flourishing, so were the shops; money was rolling in practically on its own. I went off on my own and tried to think carefully till I came to the conclusion that my unease stemmed from the fact that I had not done any good deed since I had come here.
I had done countless good samaritan acts in Kathiawad, Gujarat. For instance, when my friend Pandurang had died, I had installed his widow as my mistress in my house. This way I kept her from peddling herself for over two years. When Vinayak’s girl broke her leg, I bought her a new one. That cost me a cool forty bucks. When the ‘heat’ got Jamuna Bai, and the bitch (forgive me) didn’t know what had hit her, I was the one who took her to the doctor. No one ever came to know. I got her treated for over six months … But I hadn’t done any good deeds since I had come to Pakistan and this could be the only reason behind my uneasy heart. For everything else was just fine.
I thought: so, what should I do? I thought of charity but I spent one day roaming around the city and found that every man was a beggar. Every other man was either naked or hungry. How many could I feed or dress? I toyed with the idea of opening a public kitchen. But what good could one kitchen do and where would I get the rations? The thought of buying from the black market immediately led me to ponder the merit of buying from the black market on the one hand, and doing good deeds on the other.
I spent countless hours listening to people narrating their tales of woe. To tell you the truth, the world seemed full of sad people — those who slept on the uncovered stoops of shops as well as those who lived in high-rise mansions. The man who walks about on foot worries that he doesn’t have decent shoes to wear. The man who rides the automobile frets that he doesn’t have the latest model car. Every man’s complaint is valid in its own way. Every man’s wish is legitimate in its own right.
I had once heard a ghazal by Ghalib recited by Ameenabai Chitlekar of Sholapur — God bless her soul — now I remember just one couplet from it: Kiski hajat rava kare koi (Whose wishes should one satisfy). Forgive me, perhaps it is the second line of the couplet, or maybe it is the first.
Yes sir, whose needs should I satisfy first when of any given hundred people all hundred are needy. I also thought that giving charity was not such a great idea. You might not agree with me but I had gone to several refugee camps and seen things at close quarters and come to the conclusion that charity had made nincompoops out of the refugees. They would sit idle all day long, or play cards or do jugar (forgive me, jugar means gambling or rolling the dice) or use bad language or loll about eating phoket, meaning free, meals. How could such men make the foundations of a strong Pakistan? So I reached the conclusion that giving charity was by no means a good deed. But what was a good deed?
Men were dying like flies in the refugee camps. It was cholera one day; the plague on another. There wasn’t an inch of space left in hospitals. I was overwhelmed with pity. I almost thought of getting a hospital built but when I thought some more, I abandoned the idea. I had the ‘scheme’ almost worked out in my head. I would have invited tenders for the building, collected money through applicants’ fees, set up a spurious company of my own, and had the tender passed in its name. I thought of allocating one lakh on building costs. Obviously, out of that I would have had the building up in seventy thousand; the remaining thirty would have gone into my pocket. But I had to abandon the entire scheme when I thought that if I ended up saving more, people what would happen to the exploding population? How would I help in lessening the numbers?
If you think about it, the real lafda is one of numbers. By lafda I mean problem, the problem that has the connotation of nuisance, though that does not, by any means, provide the exact shade of meaning I wish to convey.
Yes sir, the entire lafda is due to a booming population. If the numbers keep increasing, the earth won’t expand to keep pace, neither will the sky stretch, nor will more rain fall, nor more grain grow to feed more and more people. And so I reached the conclusion that constructing a hospital can not be regarded as a good deed. Then I thought of having a mosque built. But then a sher I had once heard sung by Ameenabai Chitlekar of Sholapur — may God bless her soul! — came back to haunt me: Naam manjoor hai to faij ke asbab bana. She used to pronounce ‘manzoor’ as ‘manjoor’ and ‘faiz’ as ‘faij’. (If you want your name to live on, build bridges, build tanks and mosques and such like.)
But which poor sod wants name and fame? Those who have bridges built to earn a good name don’t do it out of the goodness of their heart. What rubbish! So I said to myself — no, never, this idea of getting a mosque built is all wrong. It does the common weal no good to have several scattered mosques; it divides the people.