THE SHEPHERD
PART(II)
Meanwhile, he would come softly up the stairs. Seeing the cot I was fashioned out of sticks half concealed under my notebook, he would say to Bibi , “Qurrat, my child, you shouldn’t tease him. I’ve had quite a time bringing this genie under control. If he slips out again, there is no way I can bring him back in line.”
Unmoved, Bibi would reply, “Just pick up notebook, Dauji, and see for yourself.”
I would glare at Bibi, but she would gather the firewood and go back downstairs, leaving Dauji to reason with me. “All this that Bibi says, it is for your own good. Why else would she bother to tell me?
Whether you pass of fail, make no difference to her. But she has your best interests at heart. She wants you to succeed.”
I just couldn’t understand Dauji’s logic: How could she have my best interest at heart by complaining about me? By squealing on me?
Those days, my routine went something like this: I’d leave Dauji’s at about ten in the morning for home, eat my breakfast and then go to school. My lunch would arrive from home at midday recess. After school I’d return home, fill my lantern with Kerosene and come over to Dauji’s, where in time my dinner would arrive from home.
When the courts weren’t in session, Dauji came and sat in the school playground waiting for me. On the way home I had to face a gale of questions. He asked me the details of all that I had been taught at school that day. He escorted me to my house and then took off for his evening stroll. The judge set up his court in our qasba for ten days a month; the other twenty days he presided at the districts court. Those ten days Dauji regularly sat outside the courthouse.
Now and then someone came along, Dauji wrote out the petition for him, and thus earned a couple of rupees. The rest of the time he spent reading books—even there.
Bebe’s work, on the other hand, was steadier, and her stitching and socializing with the neighbourhood women produced a more profitable result. For some years now the major part of the household expenses was covered by the money she earned from stitching. As a result, she had come to dominate Dauji even more.
One day, contrary to the routine, I went to the courthouse to meet Dauji. Court was over for the day and Dauji was lounging on a bench inside the thatched shed of the baker’s shop sipping tea sweetened with jaggery. I quietly reached down and picked up his mat and bag, and then, throwing my arms around his neck, said, “I’ve come to fetch you today. Let’s go.”
He downed the remaining tea in a few big gulps, took an anna coin out of his pocket gave it to the baker, and quietly walked out with me. A streak of mischief danced through me and I said, “Just wait until we get back. I’ll tell Bebe how you help yourself to tea on the sly.”
Dauji smiled slightly in embarrassment and said, “He really brews excellent tea. Besides, tea with jaggery relaxes the nerves. And he gives a full glass for just one anna—not bad! But please don’t tell your Bebe. She’ll kick up a huge fuss. She’ll become more violent with me.” And then, somewhat fearful and sad, he added, “She can’t go against her nature.”
I felt a surge of tenderness well up in me for Dauji that day. I felt I wanted to do something for him. Indeed, I wanted to do a whole lot. But at that time, the promise that I wouldn’t tell on him was already a whole lot. When I told Amma about the incident, she began to have me or the servant carry milk, fruits, sugar etc., over to Dauji’s every now and then. But poor Dauji, he never saw any of these things himself. It did catapult me in Bebe’s regard, though, and she started treating me somewhat more preferentially.
I vividly remember walking into Dauji’s with a pitcher of milk one morning. Bebe had gone away with her friends to bathe in Baba Sawan’s pond, and only Dauji and Bibi were at home. Spotting the pitcher of milk, Dauji chuckled, “Let’s make some tea. I’ll go and get some jaggery from the shop. Meanwhile, you put the kettle on.”
Right away Bibi started to get the fire going. I went and brought water in a pan. The two of us sat down on the chauka and started chatting. Dauji promptly returned with some jaggery and said to us, “You go and do your work. I’ll make the tea.”
So Bibi started to work the sewing machine and I busied myself with the direct and indirect speech exercises. Dauji kept blowing into the fire and, as was his habit, instructing me loudly, ‘Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun. It was Galileo who discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. Make sure that you don’t write “revolved” around the sun.’
The water had come to a boil. Dauji was happy, joyously swaying his head back and fourth and repeating the song he’d just improvised. ‘O Golu! O Golu! Don’t forget what Galileo said, what Galileo said, O Golu. . . ` He added the tea leaves to the boiling water. The pan was still on the fire and Dauji, like a small child, was trying to synchronize his “Golu Galileo” with the gul-bul, gul-bul of the boiling water. I was laughing as I did my grammar exercises, and Bibi quietly smiled as she worked the sewing machine. The three of us were very happy in our small home; it was as if the joys of the whole neighbourhood, indeed, of the entire qasba, had alighted on our house like fairies with large, colourful wings.
Just then the door opened and in walked Bebe. Dauji turned around and, instantaneously, his face blanched. Steam was rising from the boiling pan, in which small bubbles were furiously chasing each other. The old man was caught red-handed at this forbidden game. Bebe took a few steps towards the hearth, and Dauji, rising from the chauka, mumbled apologetically, ‘It’s just tea.’
Bebe gave him a whack and thundered, ‘Have you lost all shame? May you be damned! May you be damned! May death take you away! You really think you can drink tea at your age? I wasn’t home, so you thought you could take advantage. You couldn’t care less if I died, indeed, you’d rather I died today, so that you could be happy, make all your wishes come true, Damn the woman who brought you into this world! Damn the fate that’s stuck me to you. Why don’t you die? Why would you. . . ’
Frothing and foaming, Bebe jumped over the chauka like a shewolf, picked up the pan with a piece of cloth, and threw it on the floor. Boiling tea splashed over Dauji’s legs and feet, and he fled like a child, to seek refuge in the sitting room, screaming, ‘May God help you, may God help you!’
Bibi and I couldn’t help but break into laughter at his departure, rather at the manner in which he had fled. We laughed so loudly that, for a second, the whole house resounded with it. I somehow escaped Bebe’s wrath, but Bibi had to bear the full brunt of her assault. She pounced on her, grabbed her by the hair, and screamed, ‘My saut, tell me what you think you’re doing with this old codger? Come on, out with it, or I’ll strangle you this minute! Why did you give him the keys?
Poor Bibi started to sob. I got up and slinked onto the sitting room. Dauji was ensconced in his favorite chair and was slowly rubbing his feet to soothe the pain of the scalding. He looked so comic that I again started to laugh, but I stuck my head into the closet to muffle the sound. He beckoned me to come over and said, ‘Shukre kirdgar kunam keh griftram ba musibati na keh ma ’siyati!’(Thank the creator that though I’m in trouble, I haven’t sinned.) After a brief pause he added, ‘I’m lowlier than the lowest of His slaves, He on whose blessed head the old hag of Mecca used to dump her garbage.’
When I gave him a perplexed look, he explained: “Should I, the meanest slave of Aqa-e-Namdar, complain about a few splashes of hot water, may my life be cursed. May God save me from the fires of hell through His love of the Prophet Muhammad. May the God of Ibrahim grant me strength. May the God of Ayyub bless me with the gift of patience.”
I asked, “Aqe-e Namdar—who’s he Dauji?”
This pained him, but he said with his usual affection, ”Jan-e-Pidar, that’s no way to ask. Don’t make the spirit of my ustad, my hazrat angry with me. He was not only my aqa, he was also my father and my teacher. In fact, he stands in the relationship of a grandfather to you. Your grandfather teacher.’ He quickly folded his hands over his chest in extreme reverence.
Iowed my very first exposure to the phrase aqa-e-namdar and the compound kotahqismat mujajawwizah to Dauji. He took his own sweet time relating the incident in which these occurred, following up every sentence with Farsi couplets extolling the Prophet of Islam, again and again sending the reward for them to the soul of his dear departed ustad.
After he was done with narrating, I asked him with great politeness, “Dauji, why do you love your ustad so much? Why do you always join your hands when you say his name, and why do you call yourself his servant?”