Anwar Hussain
“….It was my fault. It was all, my fault. I should have listened to her!” words failed Hassan and tears made their way into his swollen eyes. And he drifted into a sleep, a long overdue sleep.
“Don’t keep screaming like a fool,” chided his elder sister. He was screaming as he had missed an episode of Shaktiman. “It is so irritating. How I wish you were dumb!” She added.
“Roqayya, Ltasmetmazer,” his mother chided her in return.
Hassan, who had just turned nine, lived in the town near the ash-colored building of the Bank with his family of four which included his parents and his elder sister Roqayya.
The cow that his family had, for as long as he remembered, was about to give birth to a calf which meant that he won’t be bothered with the tumbler of milk every morning.
One morning as he woke up, his mother gave him a bowl of Qarsi – A special dish made from the first milk of the cow – for his breakfast. He loved it, finished the Qarsi in one large guzzle and swirled his tongue over his lips. When he went out he was thrilled to see a beautiful but slender calf which was given birth to by their cow the previous evening. From that day onwards he would love to be with the calf. His mother often found him talking to it. He loved the touch of the tender and delicate hide. He kept stroking it gently every now and then. The calf was lovingly called therChespa Beto.
The year had started well for Hassan. He made his first Ski this winter, complete with PVC pipes stuffed with wood and a pair of hand held brakes. He had got a beautiful rChespa Beto for company at home. He had skied to his heart’s content in the chilling cold months of January and February, over the glistening thick layered ice that had frozen over the top of the nearby Suru River, much to the annoyance of his mother. “This year,” her mother told him, “It snowed like when we used to be children. We used to stay indoors for weeks at length and you can’t even sit in the house for an hour. I warn you, one day the Jinn of the Mi-zos rGyamtso will gobble you up and take you with him to Skardo”
The year was 1999.
Ever since his school started after the three months long vacation, he had been roaming in the streets with his gang of friends which included the fellow with the running nose known to everyone as Snub-ltur Abdul, the guy with curly brown hairs whom everyone called Maggie Hussain andFandil Mali – Mali being a contracted form of Mohd Ali and the adjective derived from the fact that he was the chubbiest of all.
This gang of friends was always thanking some neighboring country called Pakistan – The name they heard everyone speaking of – for the frequent holidays that they would get apparently due to the acts of the latter. A BOOM in the higher reaches of the mountain, the smoke from which they could see from the school ground, was enough to call it a day at the school. Everyone trembled at each BOOMing sound and the teachers would strictly instruct them to go straight to their homes whenever the school was called off. Hassan and his friends were never afraid of these petty Broong Brungs. They would sing aloud:
A Broong Brung a day, keeps Master Ali away!
Master Ali was the school principal and a strict disciplinarian.
“It seems like someone is cracking up a very big Bam-Fatika. Like the one we fired at the weddingof Achey Banoo,” said Hussain, combing his curly hairs with his fingers, referring to the firecrackers that they had fired at some wedding the previous autumn.
“Leave that man, you just give me some Maggies,” joked Fandil Ali pointing towards Hussain’s curly hairs and the other two joined him in the laughter.
However Hassan, the naughtiest of all, would often silently pray for those faint sounds to keeping continuing and for his school getting called off every other day. Hassan never liked going to school and hated the sight of books. He relished all those extra-off days he got on account of the faint BOOMing sounds.
An idea struck Hassan, he asked Fandil Mali – his most trusted lieutenant in the gang – to bring a Bam-Fatikathe next day. His own part of the job was to steal away a box of matches from his house. Equipped with the loudest of the firecracker the duo reached the empty water tank of the school the next day during the lunch break. He trimmed off a bit of the string of the fire-cracker, a trick which gave them some time to run away from the spot before the cracker bursts. They set it to fire. Then very carefully, threw it in the empty tin tank. They ran away and few moments later there was an explosion, an explosion that guaranteed holidays till further notice. Hassan was happy that his trick was successful. However his happiness was short lived as the school authorities got to know about the explosion being a mischief by someone.
“This mischievous lot would make Qiyamat befall upon us. Such acts of Ltasmetwill surely bring some misfortune.” Hassan heard his mother lamenting without knowing that it was her own son behind the mischief.
Master Ali was enraged when he learnt the truth. He vowed in front of the entire school that he won’t spare the culprit.
Luck came to Hassan’s rescue when three days later the faint sounds of explosion in the mountains became more frequent and louder, his parent didn’t send him to school. He was strictly instructed not to leave the house on that particular day. The day he will try to forget till his last breath. He stayed at home in the company of his calf who had by now become an extended member of the gang consisting of Snub-ltur, Maggie, Fandil and Hassan.
“LarChespaBeto, you know these explosions are taking place up there in the high mountains. There is no danger that I see in going out. However I am happy that Master Ali has not been able to discover that it was Fandil and I. It was fun though!” Hassan said, with a wink, to the calf gently stroking its shiny hide. He spent the entire day with his rChespaBeto, his dear calf feeding her fresh grass.
It was dark that night. Hassan found himself being carried away in the dark by his mother who was crying hysterically. A series of ear-piercing explosions had shattered all the window panes of their house. He woke up to the chaos in the dark and unable to understand anything joined his mother and sister in crying his throat sore. Everyone was running helter-skelter.
“No, don’t light up the lights!” his father cried as someone dashed towards the sole switch which lighted up the entire house.
“Run to the store room! They are a bit safer!” the father commanded as loudly as he possibly could.
Just as they entered the store room in the basement of their house another explosion took place, this time somewhere very near as none of them could hear anything except a whistling sound after that. They found themselves thrown up into the air and then falling to the earth one over another with a thud. His sister collided with the wooden pillar that stood in the center of the room.
So terrifying, puzzling and chaotic it was that Hassan could not hear the shriek that came out of his mouth involuntarily at the top of his voice. With a long whistling sound ringing in his ears and profusely sweating Hassan’s vision faded out into darkness.
Lives of the people Hassan knew changed – forever – from that day.
Hassan regained consciousness and found himself in an unfamiliar setting. He wanted to call his mother but only a wisp came out of his mouth, he tried again but only to find the same results. He tried to draw the attention of Roqayya by clapping his hands but she did not turn to him. He tried everything but she just kept looking blankly out of the window. When his mother came to the room where he was put to sleep,she found him weeping profusely. The eyes of his mother welled up as she saw her son who would never be able to speak a word. And her daughter who had had her eardrums ruptured that fateful night would not be able to listen to any of Hassan’s irritating screams.
Nobody knew where Abdul had gone and his mother, now, had regular bouts of fainting. Fandil Ali would wake up in the night with a start and would keep on crying till morning as those dark and violent sounds kept resounding in his ears. Maggie Hassan now talked only when talked to. He was too shocked to speak much.
After two months when the Indian army won the war Hassan returned to his home. He badly wanted to see his rChespa Beto. He found his father digging a small pit in the field. He saw his father and one of his neighbors lowering down his rChespa Beto into it. He freed himself from his mother and clung to her and wept a helpless, voiceless cry – tears flowing down his cheeks until his father forcefully took him away. His father started to put earth over the rChespa Beto of his son with moist eyes.
Later that evening Hassan kept looking from the window of the Glassroom at the place where his rChespa Beto was buried. “It was my fault. It was all, my fault. I should have listened to her!” words failed Hassan and tears made their way into his swollen eyes. And he drifted into a sleep, a long overdue sleep.
(The author is presently working as a Contractual Lecturer at Govt. Degree College, Beerwah (Kashmir)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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