‘She heard these words and fell down dead in the middle of the Chowk.’
YAZID
The riots of 1947 came and went. In much the same way as spells of bad weather come and go every season. It wasn’t as though Karimdad accepted everything that came his way as God’s will. No, he faced every vicissitude with manly fortitude. He had met hostile forces in a head-on collision — not necessarily to defeat them, but simply to meet them face to face. He knew that the enemy outnumbered him but he believed that it was an insult, not just to him but to all mankind, to give in when faced with trouble. To tell you the truth, this was the opinion others had of him — those who had seen him take on the most savage of men with the most amazing courage. But, if you were to ask Karimdad if he considered it an outrage for himself or all mankind to admit defeat in the face of opposition, he would no doubt fall into deep thought — as though you had asked him a complicated mathematical question.
Karimdad knew nothing of addition-subtraction or multiplication- division. The riots of ’47 came and went. People began to sit down and calculate the loss of lives and property. But Karimdad remained untouched by all this. All he knew was this: his father, Rahimdad, had been ‘spent’ in this war. He had picked his father’s corpse, carried it on his own shoulders and buried it beside a well.
The village had known several casualties. Thousands of young and old had been killed. Many girls had disappeared. Several had been raped in the most inhuman way possible. Those who had been afflicted sat and cried — they cried over their own misfortune and the heartless perpetrators of these crimes. But Karimdad did not shed a single tear. He was proud of his father’s valiant fight to the finish. His father had single-handedly fought 25–30 rioters who were armed to the teeth with swords and axes. When Karimdad had heard that his father had fallen down dead, after bravely fighting off the attackers, he had only these words to say to his dead father’s spirit: ‘Yaar, this isn’t done. I had told you to always keep at least one weapon handy with you.’
And he had picked up Rahimdad’s corpse, dug a hole beside the well and buried it. Then, he had stood beside the grave and by way of prayer said only this: ‘God keeps count of vices and virtues. May you be granted Paradise!’
The rioters had killed Rahimdad barbarically. Rahimdad, who was not just Karimdad’s father but also his dear friend. Whoever heard of his brutal murder cursed the savages who had butchered him, but Karimdad never uttered a word. Karimdad had also lost several ready-to-harvest crops. Two houses belonging to him had been burnt earlier. Yet, he never added these losses to the loss of his father. He would simply content himself by saying: ‘Whatever has happened has happened due to our own fault.’ And when someone would ask him what that fault was, he would remain quiet.
While the rest of the village was still grieving after the recent riots, Karimdad decided to get married — to the dusky belle, Jeena, on whom he had been keeping an eye for a long time. Jeena was grief stricken. Her brother, a strapping youth, had been killed in the riots. He had been her only support after the death of her parents. There was no doubt that Jeena loved Karimdad dearly but the tragic loss of her brother had turned even her love into heartache; her once ever-smiling eyes were now always brimming with sorrow.
Karimdad hated crying and sobbing. He felt frustrated whenever he saw Jeena looking unhappy. But he always refrained from admonishing her because she was a woman and he thought his rebukes might hurt her aching heart even more. One day, he caught hold of her when they were both out on their fields and said, ‘It has been a whole year since we buried our dead. By now even they must be weary of this mourning. Let go of your sorrow, my dear. Who knows how many deaths we have to see in the years ahead. Save your tears for what lies ahead.’
Jeena did not like his words. But because she loved him, she thought long and hard over what he had said. In solitude, she searched for the meaning behind his words and, at long last, came around to convincing herself that Karimdad was right.
When the subject of Karimdad’s marriage to Jeena was first broached, the village elders were against it. But their opposition was weak. They had grown so weary of the constant state of mourning that they no longer had the conviction for carrying on with any sort of sustained opposition. Therefore, Karimdad was duly married. Musicians and singers were called. Every ritual was performed. And Karimdad brought his beloved home as his legally wedded wife.
The village had turned into a vast graveyard a year after the riots. When Karimdad’s wedding procession wound through the village amidst shouts and cries, some villagers were initially scared. They thought it was a ghostly parade. When Karimdad’s friends told him about it, he laughed loudly. But when Karimdad laughingly narrated the incident to his new bride, she shivered with fright.
Karimdad took Jeena’s red-bangled wrist in his hand and said, ‘This ghost will haunt you for the rest of your life … even the village sorcerer will not be able to rid you of me with his witchcraft.’
Jeena put the tip of her hennaed finger between her teeth and mumbled shyly, ‘Keeme, you are scared of nothing!’
Karimdad licked his brownish-black moustaches with the tip of his tongue and smiled, ‘Why should one be scared of anything?’
The sharp edge of Jeena’s grief was becoming dull. She was about to become a mother. Karimdad saw her blossoming womanhood and was pleased. ‘By God, Jeena, you have never looked so ravishing! If you have become so beautiful only for the sake of my about-to-be-born baby, then he and I will never be friends.’
Jeena shyly hid the bump in her middle under her shawl. Karimdad laughed and teased her even more, ‘Why do you hide it? Do you think I don’t know that you have taken all this trouble with your appearance because of that son of a sow?’
Jeena grew suddenly serious and said, ‘How can you call your own child by a bad name?’
Karimdad’s blackish-brown moustaches began to quiver with a smile. ‘Karimdad is the biggest pig of ’em all.’
The first Eid2came. Then the second one3. Karimdad celebrated both festivals with fervour. The rioters had attacked his village twelve days before the last Eid when both Rahimdad and Jeena’s brother, Fazal Ilahi, had been killed. Jeena had shed copious tears in memory of both. But in the company of one who resolutely refused to harbour any trace of sorrowful memories, she could not mourn them as much as she would have wanted to.
Whenever Jeena paused to take stock of her life, she was amazed at how quickly she was forgetting the greatest tragedy of her life. She had no memory of her parents’ death. Fazal Ilahi had been six years older than her. He had been her mother, father, brother all rolled into one. Jeena knew well enough that her brother had not married for her sake. And the entire village knew that Fazal Ilahi had lost his life trying to save his sister’s honour. Clearly, his death was the single-most tragic accident of her life. A calamity had befallen her, quite without warning, exactly twelve days before the second Eid. Whenever she thought about it, she was struck with amazement at how far she had drifted away from the shock and sorrow of that fateful incident.
By the time Muharrum4came around, Jeena made her first request to Karimdad. She was dying to see the famous horse and taaziya during the procession. She had heard a great deal about the procession from her friends. And so she said to Karimdad, ‘Will you take me to see the procession if I am well enough?’
Karimdad smiled and said, ‘I will take you even if you are not well … and this son of a sow as well.’