Land of Five Rivers (12 page)

s
aadat

Yashpal

        T
his has been my sitting-room for six years now. Its red floor is used to all sorts of footmarks, but it retains no trace of them to remind one of the people who have been in it. Still, just near the door leading into the house, two paws of a cat are imprinted for ever. They will last as long as the floor itself, because they were left there by a cat when the floor was being laid. Whenever I see these marks I cannot help thinking of incidents from my early childhood — that tender age when one acquires impressions that last a whole lifetime — when I hadn't even joined a primary school.

My father was an official in the Forests Division. At times he used to take us — that is mother and the children along with him on tours.

It was a hilly terrain. Our camps were pitched near a well on the roadside. Cars, trucks, horses, tongas and a perennial stream of pedestrians — in short, all the things that are associated with the idea of a road, were missing there. A comparatively broad ribbon of a footpath wound up hill and down dale. Occasionally
pahari
men and women passed in groups. Usually women carried small bundles balanced on their heads and men carried bundles on their backs. Another picture of that period well-preserved in my mind, is that of a man following his two or three mules, carrying a thick stick on his shoulder, and singing in a high voice, with a hand on his ear and his face upturned. This was all the crowd that the road was accustomed to.

I don't remember the number of days we lived there. But I had memorised many songs I frequently heard on the road and at the well. I have forgotten school and college lessons in History and Chemistry, but I can still recite a few haunting lines from those songs:

‘Goriye da man lagya Chambe di ghati

Kunja jai paiyan nadaun,

Thandhe pani te banke nahon,

Pal bhar bahi lain, ho dayara.'

(The belle has fallen in love with the valley of Chamba

‘The
kronch
birds alight on the Nadaun river;

The dandies bathe in its cool water;

O
devar,
let us sit here awhile.')

And on a slope near the well, the breeze played through thick pines and their needle leaves, in a sound that was half song, half sigh.

There was a grave beneath one of the trees, and nearby were two huts inhabited by some people. They had a pair of big, bear-like, black dogs and some hens. We — that is my younger sister and I — used to play with the dogs and the hens. Most of the time we were at the huts.

And of all these memories, the centre, the heart, is Saadat. Even after the passage of so much time and after so many revolutionary changes in my life, her figure is very distinct in my memory. She held her
duppatta
between her thumb and forefinger and touched the ground to
salaam
our mother. In our mother's presence she always sat on the bare ground — not like a sophisticated city girl. She sat with her feet outstretched and her knees played together ceaselessly. Her eyes, blue-grey, and her fine lips smiled always, setting aglow the peach-gold of her complexion and accentuating the proud line of a delicately chiselled nose.

She addressed Sita, my younger sister, as Munni. Sita too was very fond of her. Saadat lived with us in our camp. She talked to mother and helped her do odd jobs. But first and foremost she was a baby-sitter. She was there to look after Sita. Once with her, Sita forgot everyone else, even mother.

After that, during my childhood, I often heard mother telling her friends and acquaintances: ‘I have seen beauty but once. Oh, she was a jewel in that rubbish heap.'

There is a saying that a woman is never charmed by another woman's beauty. But here a woman's beauty had charmed another. ‘I have seen beauty but once,' mother would say, ‘On the road from Kangra to Nadaun is the Tomb of Pir Chamola. There, in the family of the caretakers Saadat was a new bride. No queen ever dreamt of possessing beauty like hers. One glimpse of her could make one forget both hunger and thirst. And, oh, she was so sweet-tempered that neither of the children ever wanted to leave her...Yes even children can recognise beauty; even they sought her company...'

In my boyhood, stealthily, I often heard my mother say: ‘Ah, if I could get such a beautiful bride for my son, I would pick her even off the dust.' And I would smile to hear her.

After that, whenever I read beauty described in stories and poems, or tried to imagine the beauty of Shakuntala or Zulekha, a clear image of the fair Saadat came to my mind. Whenever my parents talked of my marriage, I could not help remembering Saadat.

Perhaps they had forgotten all about Saadat, but to me she became more and more real every day. To me beauty meant Saadat. And at the same time I laughed at myself, because I knew Saadat's beauty to be a thing of the past. I knew twenty long years must have snatched away her charms.

With a university degree and a doctorate, I got a job as a lecturer. I earned my living for the first time and felt manly, self-confident. Now I, myself, began to think of marriage. I dreamt of a home of my own, of my future wife and of our child. And then, I felt transported, eager to meet the future.

Well, that was all inevitable, I thought. It would come about as surely as the seasons return. Meanwhile I decided to visit a hill station in the summer vacation.

Something in my mind was always dragging me towards that shrine of Beauty, of which Saadat had been the only symbol for me, for so many years. But reason mocked at my heart. Would she be the same after twenty years? Wasn't it a hopeless quest? Is there a flower that doesn't wither? What can stay firm and unaltered under the fatal wheel of time? I knew and understood all this, yet it was there that I knew I would go.

I reached Kangra. There was a road now, leading from Kangra to Nadaun. Buses plied on it. I alighted from the bus at Ranital. The small lake on the shoulder of the hill, amidst cypress and pine trees, looked familiar, like a place seen in dreams.

I had no hope of seeing Saadat. But I was eager to see the place which had given me an ideal of beauty, where I came in contact with beauty unattachedly and for the first time in my life. Moreover I wanted to see the caretakers of Pir Chamola, who had had beauty incarnate live among them. The association of the idea had elevated beauty in my mind to a place higher than that of a mother; beauty, for me, had become something to be worshipped, revered and idolised; it was almost a faith with me.

I inquired my way up to the Tomb of Pir Chamola. Whispering pines on the mountain slope, red withered needles of pines strewn on the earth, lush verdure of turf underfoot, and mango groves below in the valley — all was like a familiar dream come true. The white-washed Tomb of Pir Chamola beneath a cluster of pines lay ahead. The huts of the caretakers stood behind the Tomb. Around me, the pines soared much higher than any I remembered in dreams.

I recognised the well at once. In fact it was a spring of fresh water, flowing down in a clear stream. The green scrub around the spring was thicker now, and shy violets grew in its shade. I thought, all is just as it was before, only I am not the same. And nor are the people who lived here once. Saadat will not be here and even if she were, she would be like the dry and scentless petals of a rose preserved only for the sake of happy memories. Why is human beauty so transitory?

Below, near the spring, sat an old man, wearing a blue loincloth. He had a small
hookah
under his armpit and nearby were two clay pitchers. Smoking his
hookah,
he filled a small vessel with water and emptied it into the pitchers.

I left the footpath to come down to the well. I wanted to speak to the caretaker, but before I could do so, he himself broke the silence.

I was startled. I could not believe my ears. The next moment the hermit called out again! ‘Saadat, O S-a-a-d-a-t.' The sound echoed from the hills.

Now I will see Saadat, I thought. Saadat too must be like this old man, decayed and worn and tattered. They will pick up one pitcher each and take it home.

But she is still alive! She — the relic of beauty. The very fact of being able to see her again brought an upsurge of emotion, constricting my throat.

‘I am coming, father.' In another moment the hills reechoed the answer.

I raised my eyes in the direction from where the answer had come. I could not see anybody on the mound of the Tomb, but the thrill and youthfullness of the voice was unmistakable. The voice had the spring-time sweetness and the melody of a
koel's
song. Is this the voice of Saadat? I asked myself. Is Saadat a goddess of eternal beauty, like Menaka and Urvashi? Is she an imperishable image of the abstract idea of perfect youth?

Then a damsel came down a footpath from the mound of the Tomb, gliding with the effortless grace that is mountain-bred. She was wearing dark-blue and an empty pitcher was balanced on her head, upside down. I watched with delight the freedom and lightness of her movements.

The beauty of Saadat was before me, in flesh and blood. Pearly skin, wide blue-grey eyes, a fine-drawn nose and laughing lips. Exciting breasts, more exciting in the rhythm of her swinging gait. She looked towards me, full of curiosity, and then probably my eager and ardent stare made her shrink back and turn away.

She put her pitcher down lightly on the platform around the well. She whispered a few words to the old man. Then, smiling radiantly, she lifted the filled pitcher gently with both her hands. She threw another glance at me, and started climbing the hill, leaving me trembling with joyous excitement.

I moistened my dry tongue, and
salaamed
the old caretaker. ‘I don't see much water in the spring today,' I casually remarked. Indeed, the quantity of the water flowing from the spring was very small and a pitcher could not be plunged in it.

The old man touched his forehead and replied, ‘Yes, sir. We have to face this shortage almost daily during the summer.'

Now I thought it fit to remind him of our acquaintance of twenty years ago. He surveyed me from head to foot, with his rheumy eyes. ‘Yes, indeed, sir,' he said at last, ‘A Hindu who was an official in the Forests Division, camped here for about two months, twenty years ago. He was very kind.'

‘My mother tells me of one Saadat
Bibi,
who lived here. She wanted me to
salaam
her on her behalf,' I tried to reinforce my failing courage.

‘Yes, sir,' he answered calmly, ‘She is the mother of this lass. She is very old and infirm now. Neither of us can carry a pitcher of water up the slope any more. This daughter of ours is a great help to us. She too is named Saadat.' Fondly he added, ‘She looks just like her mother did when she was young!'

The young Saadat was gliding down the slope once more. On seeing me talking to her father, she lost her shyness and came up to the second pitcher. Ah, that lithe young form as it lifted the pitcher! An invisible arrow pierced my heart, leaving me mute and helpless, overwhelmed by her loveliness.

I went up to the hut with the old man, to see the first Saadat. When he told her who I was, the old woman caressed me with affection. She asked me numerous questions about my mother and reminisced gaily over my childhood in that summer long ago. The new Saadat watched me with wide, curious eyes, bashful when I met her glance. She offered me figs and strawberries and milk.

She sat opposite me, just as once her mother had sat opposite my mother, like a doe, innocent of fear of the hunter. Much as I wanted it, my eyes would not rest on her. Perhaps I had no courage to look at her as I longed to. For all the things that my mother used to wish for in her future daughter-in-law were echoing and re-echoing in my mind; and a knowledge of the impossibility of it all, of my own helplessness, was freezing my heart.

I had to return to Kangra by the afternoon bus. So I said my farewells and left. I walked back, downcast and miserable. I had gone there that day with no hope of seeing the beauty I had idolised for so many years. I had looked on it as a pilgrimage to a shrine. It was the unexpected reality that had disturbed my equilibrium. Beauty was no more a mere idol to worship; it was a tangible, living source of heartbreak and longing.

I have not been able to forget Saadat and her beauty, though the passionate longings are long since dead. I know now that the beauty of a woman is not mortal like her human form. It is something as eternal as truth itself.