"Talashnama" by Ismail Darbesh

Ramzan was the month of divine mercy and blessing. The Koran was revealed during this month in the cave of Hera. Ikra bismi rabbikallathi khalak. Read, in the name of your Lord, Who created. That’s why Muslims read. They read poems and songs in praise of the Prophet. But did the Koran speak of school, college and university education? No, they were neither interested in that, nor did they want to believe in it.

They had heard from the maulana that the worldly life was not the real life. Real life was in the afterlife. That’s why they learnt about and studied religion. The learning that enabled them to cross pul-sirat, the bridge that everyone must cross on the day of resurrection and set foot in heaven.

At the special prayer at night during the month of Ramzan, the Hafez Saheb recited from the Koran very speedily. The thirty paras of the Koran had to be completed by the twenty-seventh of the month. He had to keep that in mind. The Prophet of Allah did not like excessive speed. He had counselled for the middle path to be resorted to in every sphere. But perhaps such patience did not suit the people of Sadnahati. They liked a speedy hafez.

None of the musulli understood the recitation. It was only other Hafez Sahebs who understood. The hafez of the Koran, who stood behind the imam during the prayers at the mosque, often detected errors, especially if his relations with the imam were strained. Otherwise, he merely thought to himself, would it be appropriate to sully the dignity of a believer? He could simply tell him later, that such-and-such ayat of the Surah Al-Baqarah was wrongly recited by you.

The shoytan, Iblis, the eternal enemy of the sons of Adam, was bound during this month. But if the knot was improper, it was of no use. And thus the shoytan merely laughed. After all, man himself had to take responsibility to bind the seed of devilry that had been planted in the human mind. But how would they take up that responsibility? They had become slaves to a deathly shoytan called nafs, who wandered within the human mind, driving it to folly.

Maruf had woken up under the assault of Alam Chacha’s ghazal. There was a long time to go for sehri. As soon as he woke up, he remembered the nafs-e-ammara, the tendency towards evil. Was it possible for people to control this? Nafs dwelt inside people, so controlling that was their own responsibility. After having studied texts on Sufism, it occurred to him that tasawwuf was a body of knowledge which, if adopted, did not allow the follower to engage with the routine of quotidian life. If everyone embraced this path, the earth would become heaven. But if the earth was turned into heaven, where worldly greed, lust, desire, jealousy and so on didn’t exist, why would people hope for heaven in their afterlives? The path and method that the Sufis had prescribed for restraining all these passions of the human mind was not a bad one. It gave one gooseflesh to think about it. Maruf had heard a story about a Sufi man from his grandmother, his Dadi. It was the story of Mastan Baba. As Maruf woke up, he also remembered this story.

The real name of Mastan Baba was not known. It happened a long time ago. He lived in a room with a tiled shade in the bamboo grove at the end of the village. People used to visit him to receive blessed water. Because of his strange ways, people thought he was half-mad. But despite that, people feared him and also had faith in him. Every now and then he would disappear. Whenever he entered the village, he either did zikr of Allah’s name, or cursed the folk. Naughty boys quite enjoyed the cuss words. That’s why they loved provoking him. No one knew why he was called Mastan Baba. He had never hurt anyone, and never indulged in any hoodlumism.

Sometimes he donned saffron garb, kept his hair long like women, hit people on the chest with a pair of kitchen tongs and said, ‘Haq Allah, Haq Allah.’ Everyone from little boys to old folk were startled by that. There was an amazing earnestness visible on his face. Everyone was then scared to joke about Mastan Baba.

After being missing for a few months, he was suddenly spotted one day, looking like a Buddhist monk with a shaved head. There was an outbreak of cholera in the village then. Just like for Hindus, cholera seemed to be the wrath of a god, similarly, for Muslims, it was a divine curse. Mastan Baba was observed running around in every hamlet of the village with sparks of fire and incense smoke. What was the matter? Mastan Baba replied, ‘I’m driving the affliction away, my dears. An affliction has entered the village.’

There was also another tale. Mastan Baba suddenly craved fried hilsa fish and badshahi pulao. An expensive affair. He begged for alms from here and there, and collected the money. It was not to be cooked just for one person, there were massive arrangements. A cook had been specially called, and the food was being prepared. Curious folk crowded around Mastan Baba’s lair in the bamboo grove. Many delectable items were cooked from morning till noon. He informed everyone, ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday, my dears, I’m going to feast today.’ ‘Will you eat all this food?’ He replied, ‘Am I human, my dear? I’m turning into an ogre day by day. Here, look at my lolling tongue.’ And with that, he stuck out his tongue. Mastan Baba laid out all the food on plates. People were eager to know when he would eat. But Mastan Baba then began shouting obscenities at himself, at his soul. He cried out, ‘Stop! How can I feed this pig so easily? It’s been greedy for a long time. I’ll make him watch me gorge on the food today.’ People wanted to know who would watch and who would do the eating. But he didn’t say anything. And soon after, he called out to all the dogs of the village, ‘Come! Come! Hey, come!’, and fed them. He flung the food items at them, saying, ‘Eat now, you dog-body! Let’s see you squabble with those dogs for food, shoytan, you’re craving for it, aren’t you? You won’t get a morsel, you bloody bastard body! I’ll starve this body for three days!’ The curious folk laughed at the madman’s antics.

When that half-mad man was alive, no one accorded him any worth. After he died, everyone was stunned to see the crowd of people at his funerary ceremony. Many people claimed that Mastan Baba was their Pir, that they were his murids. He had asked them to come to this address on this date. How were they to know that he had in fact invited them for his funeral? It was beyond ordinary folk to comprehend the ways of Allah’s auliyas.

Mastan Baba’s majar was in a village that was fifteen or twenty kilometres away from Sadnahati. That was where Maruf’s Dadi’s father’s house was. Dadi had only heard the story, she had never witnessed anything herself. But Maruf knew that based on just such ludicrous, fabricated stories, thousands of paeans to Pirs were in currency in village after village in Bengal. However, he kept remembering Baba’s novel method of controlling passions. It appeared that tasawwuf was a discipline that was so mysterious that perhaps it could not be obtained through books. He didn’t know why he had suddenly remembered this story that he had heard in his childhood.

It was the first day of fasting today. Maruf had resolved inwardly that he would not indulge his nafs-e-ammara in any way. He would mount a fierce resistance. He would practise meditation. On the first day of fasting, the mosque was packed with musulli. It occurred to Maruf that the shoytan’s neck had really been chained. He was pleased. Young and old alike had turned up. If only the mosque was full of worshippers like this all year round, a definite way forward towards Muslim unity would be found.

Once the fast was begun, there was no difficulty as such in the morning. By the time of the Zuhr prayer at noon, it was quite bad. This was the time of hunger and thirst that one was habituated to. The stomach moaned in hunger. As time went by, one felt weaker. After the Asr prayer in the afternoon, there was a withered and feeble look on one’s face. Some people lined their eyes with surma. Meanwhile, one got terribly annoyed over extremely trivial matters, one became grumpy; there was no restraint on one’s tongue. There was still an hour to go before iftar, the small repast that could be consumed to break the fast. The relationship between Ramzan and telebhaja, those deep-fried snacks, was an important one. Shops selling items for the evening iftari had come up around the mosque. Fruit stalls, telebhaja shops, the Bihari Rustam Bhai’s halim shop. Buyers and sellers thronged the mosque environs. The worst place in the world was the marketplace, and the most exalted place was the mosque. These polar opposites were cheek by jowl in Sadnahati.

The iftar invitation for the first day of fasting came from Nasir Sheikh’s house. The imam of the mosque, the Hafez Saheb, as well as many other musulli were invited that evening. Maruf had come to supervise the iftar proceedings. Various things were being purchased from shops. Just then, the ghazal singer, Alam Miya, came and stood beside him. He figured that Maruf was an educated man. Uneducated folk only heard the tune, they did not think about the lyrics. Alam Miya wanted to hear Maruf’s praise. He asked him, ‘Nephew, did you hear the ghazal at dawn? Can you tell me how it was?’

‘It was nice, Chacha.’

‘It’s a new song I wrote. I’ve written some more as well. I’ll sing them for you one day.’

But Maruf was preoccupied right then. He didn’t pay heed to what Alam said. As it is, his sleep had been disrupted in the dead of night by his ghazal. Maruf had felt offended at that. He said, ‘Not now, Chacha, I’ll hear it after Eid. Please don’t mind, but can I tell you something? It’s not right to use the mosque’s mic to sing your ghazals at that hour. You’ll be a big sinner if you do this.’

Alam Miya sensed that Maruf was disregarding him. Creative people were very sensitive in this respect. Alam was a bit offended. He got a little angry. He said, ‘I made a mistake talking to you. You just go on and on about what shouldn’t be done and what should be done. I ask you, have you become more educated than the Maulana Saheb? Why, the two scholars in the mosque didn’t say anything!’

‘Why do you get angry, Chacha? I only told you about what’s not right.’

‘Is it only you who knows what’s right and what’s not? Don’t we know anything? Everyone in the village knows you for what you are. You’ve planted the seed like the shoytan, and now you’re watching

the fun!’

Maruf had been speaking so far with a cool head. But what Alam Miya just said sent the blood rushing to his head. He said, ‘What are you saying, my dear Chacha? What seed have I planted like the shoytan?’

‘Haven’t you? Who campaigned first that Kalu Miya’s land belongs to the mosque?’

‘Don’t talk rubbish! I’m not involved in any of that. Why would I campaign about that? I only said what I saw in the mosque’s deed.’

The Muslim populace of Bengal were an inquisitive lot. They participated with gusto even in trivial matters. Look at this crowd at every shop. Actually, it was not a crowd of buyers, it was a crowd of spectators. They were watching how the eggplant slices were being fried in chickpea batter. As if they were seeing this artistry for the first time. All those people were delighted to hear what sounded like an argument between Maruf and Alam Miya. One by one, they began to gather there. A group of interested listeners surrounded the two of them.

Someone shouted out, ‘What happened, Alam Bhai?’

‘What’s to happen? Is there any end to trouble in the village created by munafiqs?

Had Maruf, an educated and knowledgeable man, failed in the nafs-e-ammara examination? There were two words that Muslims could not stand – those were kaffir and munafiq; the latter was quite inflammatory. And so, with an unfed body and mind, Maruf suddenly lost his patience. There was a flask of tea in his hand. He hit Alam hard with that. The crowd of people raised an uproar. Alam Miya was utterly bewildered at the sudden assault. He, as well as the horde of spectators, had never imagined that Maruf would hit him.

The flame of violence had erupted in Sadnahati at iftar time on the very first day of fasting. The shackled shoytan was perhaps laughing in glee. Maruf had walked away shamefully and sat down inside the mosque. There was a tumult of loud voices outside. This tumult would not subside until the muezzin’s azan sounded.

Once the muezzin called out the azan, the crowd began to thin. Everyone remembered that it was the first iftar today. This time of day was extremely important – any pious wish would be granted. Everyone rushed away towards their respective homes. Alam Miya didn’t go, he just stood there without moving. Rajek Sheikh called out to him to come for iftar, but he didn’t go. He was forcibly fed dates from Medina, and when a glass of water was offered to him, he whispered pitifully in humiliation, ‘I did not fast, Rajek Bhai, you people go for iftar.’

Rajek Saheb was dazed to hear Alam Miya. Wasn’t this man singing a ghazal last night describing the majesty of fasting? It was he who was waking everyone up from their sleep to observe the fast!

The iftar concluded after everyone stuffed their mouths somehow or the other. They were worried. After the Maghrib prayer in the evening, there was a small crowd inside the mosque compound. Maruf was coming down the steps very slowly. He felt scorched with regret. He ought not to have raised his hand against a middle-aged man! He was remorseful, but he wasn’t afraid. He knew that the Miyas didn’t have the wherewithal to launch a counter-attack. In matters of quarrels and disputes, they depended on those of the Sheikh bloodline. In Sadnahati, there were two groups of Sheikhs. Maruf’s family and Abid’s belonged to separate strands. The North Sheikhs and the South Sheikhs. Maruf’s family were North Sheikhs, their homestead was in the north of the village. The Miyas, the Mirzas, and a few Mallick households lived in the same hamlet. The Khans and Lashkars were considered to be members of the South Sheikh group.

There used to be only a single maalat earlier. Now there were two. The maalat was an informal organization, set up in Muslim localities, with a few hamlets or households. The people of the maalat would definitely be invited for weddings and feasts. Even if one forgot to do that, it didn’t matter, and if they were informed on the day of the ceremony, they were not supposed to be offended. After all, didn’t they belong to the same maalat! How can you be so sensitive?

A part of the meat of the animal sacrificed on Bakri Eid was given over to the maalat. The meat collected was distributed among all the families. One part for those who sacrificed animals, and two parts for those who were unable to do that. The rules of the maalats differed across villages.

In some villages, all the animal hides were sold together. A baytul, or charitable fund, was set up with that money. Money was donated to the poor in times of distress and need throughout the year. In some places, people sold the hides themselves and gave the money to the destitute.

In Sadnahati, family-love had an amazing kind of influence. Within the same family, someone was a CPI(M) man and someone Trinamool Congress, someone was Furfura, while someone else was a Tablighi, or something else. Despite these differences in allegiances, their unity was expressed in certain spheres. During fights with other families, or when there were marriages or deaths, they set aside their differences. Everyone then got together and created an alliance that brought to mind ‘aiyyam-e-jaahiliyat’, or the era of ignorance before the birth of the Prophet. Blind family-love. It was on account of this

family-love that Maruf would get support, even though he was regarded as a Vibhishana by this family. Would he have gone against the mosque committee otherwise? After all, Maruf was the son of a wealthy man belonging to a Sheikh family in this maalat.

Stepping outside, he observed there were a lot of people there. Rajek Sheikh was beside Alam Miya. Rajek Saheb was Maruf’s chacha. He shouted at Maruf, ‘Hey boy, why on earth did you raise your hand at Alam?’