A Life Like A Story

Syed Shamsul Huq
(Translated by Khademul Islam)

All of us meet every day at Hanif Bhai's sweetmeat shop on Station Road. We've been having addas there for a long time now. So much talk, so many arguments -- there's so much to see on the street outside the shop. So many different kinds of people pass through there on railcars -- both known and unknown. We get to know some of them, and become wrapped up in their lives -- lives that have so many different measures, surprises galore, so much pain and frustrations. Just like the roots of a tree draws nectar from the soil, so too in our addas at Hanif Bhai's we draw life's nectar, or poison, more poison than nectar, though, from morning till noon, and then from afternoon till evening to even late at night.

That day we left after watching a play on the television set which stood on shelf at Hanif Bhai's. The play's title had been 'Life Like A Story'. I don't remember the plot, and I've forgotten the faces of the young actors-actresses who lived in palatial houses in the country's capital city - their lives sank without a trace after the play came to an end.

Why was that?
After watching the play a question arose in our minds, deep within our breast like drops of dew the issue frolicked and spread. We had heard for long the phrase about stories being life-like, but a life like a story was something that we failed to grasp. A life that was like a story aroused expectations of a lovely life, a life where a wish-fulfilling wind blew through it, where at every moment all desires were met.

A life where there was no sorrow, misery, wounds or insults. But did we know of such a life, could it possibly be true?
Arguing among ourselves, we set down the path.

We had among us one who was a very reflective sort. He said, “Listen, a life that will never come into being, a life that is spoken of only in dreams, that is what is called a life like a story.”

After a pause somebody else said, “But why call it a life like a story?” “Why not call it instead a life like a dream? Stories and dreams are not similar things.”

We nod our heads. Rightly spoken! How can a story and a dream be the same?

In a low voice the same reflective friend said, “But then why not? Stories are narrated by men, and so are dreams.”

We head for the Aadhkosha River.

One has only to place one's feet on the road to get ahead. But conversation is not as easy. The contours of speech twist and bend; within talk are many hidden pathways. Just as we think, our talk is proceeding apace, we find out a little later much to our surprise, whither now? -- why, we have simply tracked back to where we were! And then there are mazes -- within the same conversation we keep circling back, and back again, to the same starting point, never able to get out.

And so our differences on issues never get resolved; arguments keep piling up. Our feet keep on walking, but our destination, we don't speak about it. Simply keep on walking ahead.

So, truly speaking, there is so much talk, but do we really desire to resolve anything? We arrive at Kashem Chacha's teastall by the riverside.

Our feet these past few days in the afternoons have been pulling us towards the riverside.

These last few days we have foregone Hanif Bhai's brightly-lit sweetmeat shop to spend our afternoons at Kashem Chacha's far more modest teashop by the riverside. One cannot even call it a proper shop. It is a thatch hut, a temporary structure by the river.

The riverbanks are under construction; flower beds are being laid on these reconstructed banks. It seems the government has nothing better to do. People can't put food in their bellies. A doctor has gone on leave from the public hospital, and there is no effort to bring him back. Nothing is done about the trains which now as a rule arrive late at the station. In the name of setting up a bus stand the Razakar's Abdur Rahman's eldest son Abdur Razzak illegally grabbed Ghosh Babu's mango garden, yet no justice has been dispensed there. In fact, the goon squad belonging to Abdur Razzak has laid claim to Baba Qutubuddin's shrine, set up shops there, set up a druggie haven right beneath the stairs, the billowing smoke clouding the shrine, yet no steps are taken against them. The government is blind to all these.

But the government has suddenly turned its gaze to the riverbank. Had it focused on the riverbank erosion it would have been something, but it has instead turned it towards the riverbank, towards its beautification, so that city folks could stroll here in their leisure time! As if people's souls were full, as if everywhere their backs were not being broken by want and deprivation, as if their happiness would not be complete if they could not walk by the riverside.

So fortify the riverbank. Lay down flowerbeds.

And not just flowerbeds. Colourful, showy beach huts with thatch roofs were also being put up. Contractors have put men to work, the riverbanks are being re-constructed, and flowerbeds are being laid beside them. It was here to one side that Kashem Chacha had put up his shop, a tea stall.

We have known him here in Jaleshwari since we were born. There were days when he sold peanuts by the mosque. Whenever the village drama troupes came by he would light a fire in his stove by the platform stage and fry aubergines and jelepis in the hot oil of his frying pan. Then we didn't see him for a long time. People suddenly disappear from their surroundings, then just as suddenly re-appear. It is not a surprise when they leave -- or when they come back. It's simply one's of life's rules.

For a long time there was no news of him. Had he even gone to his grave, we would not have been surprised. And when one day we unearthed him sitting in his little tea stall by the riverside, we were not surprised.

Kashem Chacha's shop was a modest one. The fine sand by the riverside covered its earthen floor. A thatch roof overhead. On three sides were bamboo-latticed walls, with one side open facing the river. Inside were wooden benches. If one drank tea there one stood by the riverside, and if one's legs were tired then one sat down on a bench. The river's water was like glass. The light from the sky fell down on the river and was reflected twice over, just like in a mirror. Even in the afternoon's wan light Kashem Chacha's teashop by the riverside would be brightly lit up.

It was not in the morning, but in the evening when the stall would open. Even when the evening deepened into night the shop would remain open for some time. Then after putting everything away Kashem Chacha would head home. The tea glasses and kettle, the biscuits in their container, the tin of milk, rolling disk and pin and frying pan. The earthen stove would also be left behind in the shop. As would be the small water pitcher, along with the firewood for the stove. Who was going to steal those? Though the biscuits didn't sell much in Kashem Chacha's teastall. The magic of his hands lay in the lentil puris. After we discovered the lentil puris he made we went over there every afternoon.

Kashem Chacha did not make more than fifteen-twenty lentil puris. Around these parts that amount sufficed. The contractor's labour of course did not eat them - if at all they would be consumed by the contractor and the court clerk.

Kashem Chacha would come in the afternoon and start to knead the flour. The boiled lentils he would bring from home. By the time we would come in Kashem Chacha's flour kneading would be finished. Seeing us coming in regularly and hearing praises for his lentil puris from our lips, it seems as if Kashem Chacha now waits for us to turn up. Only after we have come does he start to roll the lentil-dough on his pan.

We sit down to watch him rolling the dough. A little while later he would raise his hand to say, “Well, making the puris is going to take a little more time. What about a glass of tea?”

If we answered “Okay,” then he would immediately lift his hands from the rolling pan. But, ah, would he then instantly put the kettle on boil? Kashem Chacha took his time. He would set about the tea taking his own good time.

This is something we have noticed about him - he went about his tasks in a leisurely manner. This slowness was not out of laziness - it was just the way he was. Just as folk singers very carefully extract the do-tara musical instrument from its case, slowly caress the instrument, as if it were a loving wife or an old friend, then pluck a few exploratory notes on the strings, survey the surroundings from time to time by lifting dream-heavy eyes, speak a few words in low asides to the people sitting beside them, and only then lift their voices into song, Kashem Chacha's work mode seemed to be like that.

Kashem Chacha would lift his hands from the rolling pan. Then he would very slowly wash his hands with water from the pitcher. But would he start as soon as he finished washing? No. He would delicately shake the water from his fingers like a bird shaking rainwater off its feathers. Then would come the tea kettle.

Kashem Chacha would open the mouth of the kettle, which would make a little ringing sound. It was as if the sound came not from a kettle, but that of a gold ornament box being opened. Inside there were jewels! He would inspect the inside of the kettle once, as if every time he waited with bated breath for precious materials hoarded inside that was worth lakhs of takas.

Then there would be the gurgling sound as water was poured from the pitcher into the kettle. The river water did not make any sounds, the waves were silent, waves which would break out in an angry rhythm only during the rainy season when the upstream waters crashed down, but otherwise on silent, still afternoons by the riverside there was only the gurgling sound made by the water being poured from the pitcher. It would soon be joined by the flames of the stove.

The wood would catch fire with a crackling noise that would sometimes be loud, and at other times soft. And still later the water in the kettle would boil up noisily. The kettle's cover would teeter and ring as if it wanted to shed its husk and fly, as if it was a silver anklet on a maiden that had stepped spell-bound onto a field to dance. As if the vapour from that maiden's breast was steaming forth from the kettle's open mouth. And only then would the water be ready for making tea.

The water would be ready, yet the tea was still far away. Gently opening the bag Kashem Chacha would pick up tea leaves with his fingers, as if he was lifting a handful of flower petals. As if the petals were in the maiden's fist, as if the maiden would take those flower buds in her hands and close her fingers, press on them, wait, open her fist a little while later and one would see flowers in full bloom, spreading their fragrance.

Lifting the kettle cover Chacha would slowly release the tea leaves. He would put the lid back with what seemed to be the maiden's grace. When he later would lift the lid to peek inside the kettle, the fragrance of the tea would spread over the riverside.

Sugar crystals would drop inside the tea glasses like tiny diamonds, and on top of it would fall heavily a teaspoonful of condensed milk from the tin. Holding the kettle high over the tealeaf strainer, bringing it down and then lifting it up, Kashem Chacha would pour the tea, the kettle mouth a liquid red, and no sooner would it fall into the glass than it turned deep rose.

But is it still ready to be put into our hands? Let the river air play with us a while longer, the sounds of human activity die down in the distance, and only then. By now we long greatly for the tea, and all the world's noise has to be banished from our hearing. Chacha meanwhile arranges the tea glasses on a chipped enamel dish as if it was bound for a royal house, and only then will get the tea.

That tea we will take, the warmth of the glasses dancing on our palms, as if those palms had encircled a young woman's breasts, exuding desire - a desire that banished the hermit.

We take the first sips facing the river. A comfort spreads through us the moment the gentle warmth touches our lips.

By that time Chacha has returned to his rolling pan, and taking a soft ball of dough dips his finger into it to make a small depression, then dabs in a drop of oil taken from the bottle. Then he presses down with three fingers, and in a flourish of magic the dough disappears within the palms of both hands to be re-moulded into a new ball which is lowered onto the rolling pan. Now there is no delay, the magic is suspended, and in the blink of an eye the ball of dough is transformed into the circle of a new moon.

Then on the frying pan that moon slowly inflates as it receives the heat from the stove. Under the urging of the wooden spatula in Chacha's hand it will further inflate and begin to dance, as if somebody is tapping a young maiden on her arm and she's leaping backwards. The next moment she falls into one's lap, dangling on the end of Chacha's spatula. In one of Chacha's hand is the lentil puri, and in the other - nobody knows when he picked it up - is a scrap of newspaper, on which it is brought down, caught in front of us. This way the puris are placed in our hands, and from our hands to our mouths. Within our mouths spreads the taste of nectar!

While we are ecstatically silent, Kashem Chacha is not. He continues to talk. Every day he holds forth on one subject: “Razzak's name you folks have come to know recently. Everybody in Jaleshwari knows him now. The age has come whereby the father becomes known for his son. You all know the story of Razzak's father Abdur Rahman - he is now a big merchant in Jaleshwari bazaar. Has made a pile of money, rides about in a jeep, breaks bread with the judge. Ministers stay at his house when they visit Jaleshwari. Do you know, that Rahman Merchant is also my mother's son, my own brother?”

Then a small sigh would escape from his lips, followed by a long silence. The dough balls would keep transforming themselves into moons under his hands. Those moon-like maidens would suddenly giggle, inflating no sooner they hit the frying pan.

When the monologue first begins, then the hot rise of the lentil puri seems a boil on the skin of mankind. The water would gurgle noisily in the kettle. Then the kettle's lid would seem not to be a maiden's silver anklet, but the sudden thin cry of a starving child in a mother's lap during hard times.

We feel his pain, and are also duly distressed. How can we daily forget this talk, forget this sore or the child's cry? The next moment we again think of the maiden, see the full moon, hear the bell-like silver anklet. As if that boil or that child is no longer in this country or in our universe.

Every day when Kashem Chacha resumes talking after this preamble, there seems to be a disconnect. As if that was casual conversation. As if that was a silent prayer that suddenly erupted due to a continual urging from deep within him, and then the sudden desire to take the conversation elsewhere.

Kashem Chacha would say, rolling the dough, “But all of you should know something. This Aadhkosha River, let me tell you about it overflowing and breaking its banks. This was before you people were born. One time there was a terrible rainfall. That time the waters from the Himalayas came downstream in a huge rush. Cold ice water - when ice melts the waters come down like a wall. The rush of the waters smashed something that had been standing on the banks, standing from British times, the redbrick jailhouse. In a moment it sank into the river. It fell with all its inmates inside, and all met with a watery grave.”

He would then pause for a while, as if there was nothing else to add. But there would be. He would lift the lentil puris from the pan and place them in our hands, all the while smiling like a loving mother, giving us not just plain food but like a mother in a frugal household delightfully lifting into her children's hands choicest bits of food. We too would eat with equal delight. When we tore the puris the hot air inside would escape with loud sighs.

Steam too would escape from Kashem Chacha's chest, but we were not aware of it then. It was only gradually that we became aware of the story's conclusion.

Kashem Chacah kept on talking, “Now I have a question with regard to the jailhouse. You too think about it. It's in the Prophet's sayings, the mosque's imam too has said in his sermons, that those who die by accident they go to heaven. A thousand of his sins will be forgiven, for he has met his end in an accident. If that is so, then all those murderers and thieves in that jailhouse, the dacoit leader, are they also going to go to heaven? Are they forgiven time in hell? Like my brother Abdur Rahman has been forgiven his sin, the sin being that he has not taken care of his own brother? I am a brother of his, his one and only brother, both from the same mother - he makes a living selling tea, the thatch hut of his roof leaks water. And his brother? He sleeps in a golden palace, eats off a plate of gold!”

We remind him, “Aray, Chacha, first he has to die in an accident, and then the forgiveness! He's still alive. An accident is yet to befall him!”

Following this, we are startled by what Kashem Chacha says, “Which is why even though I've wished to kill him all this time, I haven't done so. What if then all his sins are forgiven because he met with an accident?”

It is now that we fully realize the heat within Kashem Chacha's breast. Even though he has said his words in a light-hearted way, nevertheless we hear beneath them the noise made by the flood-mad, onrushing waters of a river in spate.

We are locals. There are so many people in this area. Known faces, familiar names. We are conversant with them. We have knowledge of things and people, intimate knowledge. Knowledge that stacks itself in the bazar like pomegranate stupas - information that is sold, that passes from hand to hand.

From one ear information travels to everybody else's ears. We know about Abdur Rahman. We also know about his brother Abdul Kashem. The two spines of wealth: one a mountain and the other a ditch. If Abdur Rahman was astride a mountain, then Abdul Kashem was lying in the ditch. People made stories about them. If life were like a story, then this too was life, and a story about life. So if a life which was like a story could be coloured brightly, then a story on the other hand could also covered in darkness!

Our arguments about life being like a story buzz within our heads like so many bees. This afternoon we reach Kashem Chacha's teastall by the riverside only to discover that we are late.

Chacha says, “I was done with the kneading such a long time back and have been waiting all this while for you all, don't know whether you are going to come or not, seeing that it's getting late was making me fidgety. Come in, sit down. Let my fry them fresh, you eat your fill. Or do you want some tea first, say what?”

One of us said, “Tea first. But before that something we have to talk about.”

“Say it.”
“Do you really want to kill him?”
Kashem Chacha didn't understand the question. Startled, he asks, “Kill? Who?”
“Who else? Your brother?”
After a momentary silence Kashem Chacha bursts out laughing: Ho ho ho.
“Why are you laughing?”

Kashem Chacha begins to pour water into the kettle from the pitcher. A gurgling sound arises from the water falling from the mouth of the pitcher. He says, “If you say something funny how can I keep from not laughing? If I killed him that would make for a hell of a tale. Brother has killed brother. Why has he killed him? Because he did not look after his brother. He has grabbed his brother's property. Then his greed knows no bounds, so he sees his brother's wife's a beauty, he grabbed her too.”

This we did not know. We are startled. Among the multitudes that populate this world, suddenly within the blink of an eye this man seems different, strikes the eye, leaps out at one. As far as we can remember we have always seen him as a solitary figure. So is this the reason that he was single, by himself? Every man then within himself carries the burden of such news about his own self.

Chacha keeps on saying, “There's more, this was before you all were born, during the war. This brother of mine joined hands with the enemy. So many young women he procured for the Pakistan army. And so many houses he looted. Yes, yes, brothers, to kill him was of no account. Everything would have finished just like in a story, heaven would have come down to earth and settled here.”

In the play we saw today titled 'Life Like A Story' there were houses like palaces, women like princesses, intricately embroidered shalwar-kameezes on their bodies, motor cars like sailing swans -- saw the very picture of happiness. Lives in a story. Life like a story. We are confused, fried lentil cakes with boils on their skins by the river side, the mouth of a kettle filled with the thin cries of a spiritless starving child, all dreams of land wiped away like women of a household forced into dishonour, which story's life was this? Or was it an anti-story, its narration?

artwork by anisurzzaman sohel