He

Gulshan Majeed

Like the tall apparition of will-o’-wisp, the hornet’s nest……..his sunken deep like the mouth of an oven, he made his appearance a frightened shriek escaped me.

We were playing hide and seek. Our cow-shed being the appointed spot where I awaited to be called, with my eyes shut over tight with my hands. I did not like playing with others and was for this called a raged mother's child. The fairies, the small ,olden sparrows, and parrots of her tales alone caught my fancy. But when sometimes she got transported to seek into unknown dreams and fairy-lands with the rhythm of her spinning wheel and a flood of tears rolled flown her eyes, I too took to crying. She would then drive me out with numberless kisses and caresses. "Go and play deary, yes, you the apple of my eyes. Cheer up, and go!" This was, in fact, what I wanted, and I would go out to seek my play-mates.

"What is there in your eyes"? "A golden egg". "A mole shall, prick your eyes if you try to see this way". We played.

"Come, O come", and there appeared before me the wraith of the will-o'-the-wisp. A shriek left my mouth, "O my mother ....!"

The next morning, everybody taunted me at the river bank. I heard all about the incident amidst the bursts of

laughter’s. "Where is he now'? "He is staying at Swani Chacha's". How pitilessly he had beaten him yester evening, and then feeling repentant, he took him to his home. I too felt for him. Not for nothing am I a raged mother's child. Had I not been so cowardly, that poor beggar might not have got so much hidings. He used to say that he hailed from a far off village in those distant woods, that was quite as big village as our village was, and that once, no one knows why, he felt lost and alone there.

It was Sunday. All of us rushed to Swani Chacha's where a number of people, young as well as old, had thronged around him. I could not make out a single word of what he said. It was only when the village elders burst out laughing at something, I too, taking a queue from my playmates and joined their laughter. Sometimes my laughter came of itself. That smallish head, as big as that of bird, a woolen cap reaching as far down as his ears, deep sunken eyes, moustaches shaven off, black beard, a face like a dark winter night.

In the evening, I probingly enquired of my mother about him. She said to me, "He says that he has come from a far off village to seek some antique articles, but until now, he has come by no such thing and that is why he is tirelessly wandering”

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I took pity on him. "Would that he comes by those articles in this village of ours. It might well be, he is Taj-ul Malook who had taken upon himself to rid his father of his blindness! He is than a prince. Who knows who he is?" I remained thinking. Soon a doubt assailed me that he might be seeking old lamps forth new ones... he ought to be a wizard. I got much provoked. After two days, he came to seek permission to live in our old cow shed. Summoning up my outage, I asked him warily, "Are you seeking old lamps for the new ones"? He looked at me and burst out laughing. I looked towards my mother, who was laughing. "Stop talking you fool"! Go and take your calligraphy exercise. "I caught hold of her pheran, a child after all, who takes for truth whatever he is told at his age". she said. So it means that my mother tells me mendacious tales, I felt small like a Cole plant. I started wistfully at her face. Hoonh! Can my mother tell me a lie! How does she know that man from the jungle? My mother forsooth has heard the wails of Hiymaal at Hiymaal's spring many times over. Is this too a lie? I felt myself far more old than he.

He did not work at all, save roaming about all day, staff in hand, ridge after ridge, house after house. He had no worries at all of providing himself with meals. The horse too he came mounted on and loaded with a raggy bundle of his clothes etcetera, was wild and ravaged others' things. But that horse was devoured by a lion in the hut. This affected him least. "The horse was there and was devoured by the lion, I shall hail it if it can devour anymore", he did. His sweet simple talks, full of love enabled us pass the days swiftly. He was liked by everybody. While talking, his limpid and shapely eyes sought something in everything and everybody. "What is that something”? Everybody took stock of himself and his whereabouts and then looked at him. Seeing his plight, everybody got perturbed inquisitive. "What trouble overtakes him? He would feel less burdened where he to reveal it to us". They thought But he kept his trouble to himself. They respected him and asked for his opinion in everything, taking their own counsel in the long run though.

In the beginning, he found himself thronged about and fussed upon, but meanwhile other engagements became more urgent. and this left him forlornly alone; having nothing to do himself The farmers returned home late in the evening, weary and tired and felt asleep. Gradually the elders where replaced by us, the children. Then as soon as we went out to play, he would call us to listen to his fascinating tales. At times we would rush away to mend the dikes, and he would smoke a while. As time passed, it took us more time in mending the dikes and would play there at throwing water at one another, stealing others traps, and had many other playful skirmishes, mimicking him, playing out what he said and did. As we were always late, he too accompanied us one day. That day all felt pleased. We taught him how to mend dikes and set basket traps to catch fish. He said that in his native village there were no such streams as could be plodded through; the waters there came splashing down the rocks and was ice-cold to touch.

People now paid little heed to what he said, pretending not to have heard him, even when he called them, their hands being so full all the day long. They could find no time to listen to his tales, hard pressed as they were. "How he simply eats without working for it! Has no worry at all. Then it is no use expecting any sense of these hilly-bellies, absolutely none. He perhaps takes himself for a saint", They said. Unmindful of all the references, he would mend dikes for us, he would prepare the basket traps splendidly well. The children were no doubt pleased with him. He, too, on his part, got thick with us.

Then the work reached a stage when it was to be done at home, and got confined to indoors. Then once again the willow copses came alive with festivities. Distance between him an us widened. In the beginning, though, he looked askance at our fairs and customs, but gradually these grew agreeable to him. He turned his flyswatter into a lute, and would dance around in our midst He remembered numberless songs which men would wonder at, which made men oblivious of their heart and home; a strange love and affection sprang within ourselves to listen to them.

That winter it snowed ceaselessly, so much so that people had to clear it off their roofs thrice. He was adept at shoveling it down the roofs. He lent his helping hand to everybody, but in the long run fell victim to it. Then as spring came with its urgent demands for working at the farms, he had taken to crutches and would not be able to take a step without a support. His eyes had sunk deeper. They would bring him tea and meals there in the beginning, but then he would of himself announce his presence with a knock at meal times. They had almost forgotten him now, or that might as well mean they had come to regard him as of their ilk, or like one roofless vegetable plant of their village.

The approaching examinations were getting on our nerves, and we had no time for him. There remained only my mother who fed him well. He, on his part, would also admit to it that he was there solely for that sister of his or else he would have left the place. His movement was now confined from the cow-shed to our house and back to the cow-shed. The village people forgot him, and he, too, washed them off from his memory.

That year there was an untimely and ceaseless snowfall in spring, as if winter had a new beginning. Everyone took himself to indoors. And one morning early he came at our door, calling my mother. Both of us, mother and son, came out. It was snowing hard, and he had drawn his woolen cap far down his ears ready for his departure.

"Well, sister, allow me, I am leaving". There was a gleam in his eyes, and he had given up his crutches.