Tired and dispirited, I was preparing to go on the Haj pilgrimage when God Himself showed me the way. There was a public function in the city. By the time it ended, there was a stampede. Thirty people died in that mad scramble. When the newspapers reported this incident the next day, we learnt that those thirty people had not died; they had become martyrs.
I began to think. I also began to consult religious leaders and thinkers. I learnt that those who die in sudden accidents reach the level of martyrdom — above which there is no other station. I began to think that it would be wonderful if people were to become martyrs instead of dying ordinary deaths. Those who die ordinary deaths, obviously gain nothing by dying. It is only when someone becomes a martyr that it means something.
I began to examine this distinction more closely.
Everywhere I looked, I saw broken-down dilapidated human beings. Wan-faced, sunken-eyed, dressed in rags, weighed down by worries and anxieties, besieged by the fear of earning their daily bread, there they were — dumped in some poky shack-like discarded railway goods or wandering aimlessly around shops and markets like ownerless animals with upturned snouts. Why are they alive, whom do they live for and how — no one has the answers. Thousands die every time there is an outbreak of some disease or the other; if nothing else, they die slowly, painfully, dissolving bit by bit, due to hunger and thirst. In winter they freeze to death; in summer they dry up. Sometimes someone sheds a tear or two at their passing away; most die unwept. So they didn’t make much of life … hat is all right. It gave them nothing … that too is all right. But as Ameenabai Chitlekar of Sholapur — may God bless her soul! — used to sing so soulfully: Mar ke bhi chain na payaa to kidhar jaayenge (where will we go if death brings no respite.) What I mean to say is this: if things don’t improve significantly after death, then what the hell is the point of all this! I thought why not do something for these wretched souls, these down-at-heel miserable creatures who have never known any pleasures in this life? Why not do something that will give them a special status in the other world when those who don’t even wish to look at them in this world, will swoon with envy when they look at them there. There was only one way to achieve this, that they should not die ordinary deaths; they must be martyred.
The question then arose: would they be ready to become martyrs. I thought: why not? Show me a good Muslim who does not want to become a martyr! In fact, the copycat Hindus and Sikhs too have devised a special category of martyrs. But I was in for a surprise when I asked a frail, half-dead man: ‘Do you want to become a martyr?’ And he said: ‘No.’
I couldn’t figure out why that man wished to live on or what he hoped to achieve by living some more. I did my best to convince him. I said, ‘Look here, old man, you can’t expect to live for more than a couple of months. You don’t have the strength to walk. The way you double up when a spasm of coughing catches you, one would think you are going to fall down and die right now. You don’t have a paisa to call your own. You haven’t known a moment’s happiness in your entire life, neither are you likely to in the future. Why do you want to live any more? You can’t enlist in the army, so you obviously can’t lay down your life fighting for your country in a field of honour. So don’t you think it would be far more appropriate if you make preparations for your martyrdom — either here in the marketplace or in the night shelter where you doss down for the night?’
He asked: ‘How can that be?’
I answered: ‘You see that banana peel lying over there? Suppose you were to slip on that … obviously you would die. And you would become a martyr.’ But he couldn’t understand the simple logic of my words. He said: ‘Why would I step on a banana peel when I can see it lying over there … do you think I don’t care for my life?’
It made me sad, sadder still later when I heard that the wretched old man, who could so easily have attained martyrdom, coughed and coughed till he died on a rusty iron cot in a charitable hospitable.
There was an old woman — a toothless old hag — counting her last breaths. She filled me with pity. She had spent her entire life in poverty and misery, worrying and anxious all the time. I picked her up and took her to the railway pata (forgive me, where I come from, we say pata for the railway tracks). But believe me sir, she heard the sound of the approaching train and jumped off the track and bounded away like a wound-up toy.
It nearly broke my heart but, still, I didn’t give up. The son of a Bania, they say, is the persevering sort. I did not, for a minute, allow the straight and narrow path of virtuosity that I could see gleaming ahead of me disappear from my sight.
A large, derelict compound, dating back to the Mughal times, was lying empty. It had a hundred and fifty-one tiny rooms. They were in a terrible state of disrepair. My experienced eyes sized them up and figured that the first heavy rains of the season would bring the roof crashing down. I bought the compound for Rs 10,500 and settled a thousand of the homeless and very poor. I collected two months’ rent — at the rate of a rupee a month from every tenant — and as I had calculated, within three months the first heavy downpour brought the roof down, killing seven hundred people including young and old alike, martyring every single one of them.
The burden on my heart lightened somewhat. Seven hundred people were removed from our land; moreover, all seven hundred became martyrs — the scales were tipped in my favour.
I have been doing this ever since. Every day, according to the fitness of things, I manage to make at least two or three people drink from the cup of blessed martyrdom.
As I have said before, no matter what the work, a man needs to work hard. May god bless Ameenabai Chitlekar of Sholapur who used to sing a sher which — forgive me — is actually not entirely appropriate in this context. Be that as it may, what I mean to say is that I have had to work very hard. For instance take the case of the man (whose existence was as meaningless as the fifth wheel of a horse-drawn carriage) for whom I had to spend one entire day chucking banana peels on the road so that he could drink from the cup of martyrdom. But, as far as I have been able to understand, there is an appointed time for martyrdom, just as there is an appointed hour for death. That man eventually gained martyrdom on the tenth day when he slipped from a banana skin on a hard floor.
These days I am having a huge building constructed. One of my own companies has got the tender — worth two lakh rupees. A clear seventy-five thousand will go straight into my pocket. I have bought all sorts of insurance policies as well. By my reckoning, the whole building will collapse like a house of cards by the time the third floor goes up, because of the materials I have used. Three-hundred workers would be at work at the time. I have complete faith in the House of God — all three hundred shall become martyrs. However, perchance, if one or two remain alive it can only mean that they must be scoundrels of the first degree and God does not — cannot — accept their martyrdom.
SHARIFAN
When Qasim opened the door to his house, he could feel the searing pain of a single bullet, the one embedded in his right calf. But a film of crimson blood blinded him when he entered his house and saw his wife’s corpse. He was about to pick up the axe used for chopping firewood and go and unleash blood and mayhem on the streets and bazaars outside when he suddenly remembered Sharifan, his daughter.
He began to call out loudly, ‘Sharifan … Sharifan!’