THE
KHAN BAHADUR OF UMRAOGUNJ
- S. A.
Hamid (India)
“This
money is cursed, after all it’s the money of Sheermalpur, the princely state of
debauchees and cruel rulers,” said the Khan Bahadur, attributing his
leukoderma, which he had contracted after his marriage to Rani Riyasat Begum,
as part of the curse, or some conspiracy by them to make him look ugly. He
would take out chewed paan from his mouth and rub it on his chin and
upper lip to color the whiteness, which his younger son, Sadiq, found very
disgusting. Sadiq, who bathed and changed his clothes twice daily irrespective
of the weather, regarded his father a dirty man because he took a bath once a
week or ten days and his face towel was so dirty that he quickly wiped his
shining, polished shoes with them when his father was not looking, to amuse his
wife and friends. He was his mother’s darling, much more handsome than her
elder son Abid, and she had prayed everywhere for a child to be born to him,
which unfortunately did not happen in her lifetime. The Khan Bahadur secretly
loved Sadiq, who was fond of the good things in life; he dressed well, was six feet
tall, well built, visited clubs in the city which was not far from Umraogunj
and, of course, indulged in womanizing with courtesans or sex workers (randibazi,
as they called it in Urdu), which the Khan Bahadur also used to be fond of
before his marriage to the Rani. The only additional habit which Sadiq had
cultivated was his fondness for alcohol, which, being prohibited in Islam, was
shunned by everybody else in the family, including close relatives. Alcohol
was, and still remains, a huge taboo among Muslims, not so randibazi,
which was treated with a certain degree of indulgence in feudal times.
Khan
Bahadur, for all the grandeur that surrounded the titles bestowed upon him by
the British, was not, what one would call, a courageous man. He could not, for
instance, rebuke his elder daughter-in-law, Farida, who had lost her husband
Abid when he was in his thirties, for openly having an affair with a married
Arab man Shahid, husband of two wives, who visited her every morning without
fail. Khan Bahadur would rant and rave behind her back, but when she visited
him, he would offer her tea and engage in friendly conversation. She went to
Shahid’s house every night with her son and daughter, and while the children
played with Shahid’s children, they would fuck in a dimly lit room downstairs,
before going upstairs for dinner which was served by his wives. It was all so
innocent, so Islamic, this zinakari or fornication, and the way in which
the wives were made to serve the mistress. After all, they only fornicated, not
drink wine.
There is an interesting tale
surrounding the marriage of Rani Riyasat Begum to Nawabu Mian (as he was
popularly known before the award the title of Khan Bahadur). On a cold winter
night, Nawabu Mian was going home on a tonga from one of his regular
visits to a courtesan’s kotha (courtesans sang and performed dance in a
hall above the ground floor or on the rooftop, hence the word kotha),
not drunk, because he had chosen only one of the three vices, women; the
second, wealth, a pension of three hundred rupees thathe inherited from his
father for services rendered to the Raja sahib of Umraogunj along with the
title of Nawab was considered quite respectable in the second decade of the
twentieth century. On the way he encountered a beggar shivering with cold.
Nawabu Mian got down from the carriage, a genuine feeling of compassion gripped
him, and made him take off his coat and gift it to the beggar. Sharing Nawabu
Mian’s body warmth with his coat, the beggar was so filled with gratitude that
he prayed to the Almighty to shower unlimited wealth on his present savior,
which, according to the future Khan Bahadur, was largely responsible for the
Rani saheba of Sheermalpur falling in love with him and bringing with her a
monthly allowance of three thousand rupees, considered a fortune in those
times. The Rani saheba was so particular
about purdah that she never got herself photographed or a portrait of
hers painted, but how Nawabu Mian got a glimpse of her and how their eyes met
resulting in her sending a proposal to him in secret, remains a mystery. A
childless, young widow, one of the many wives of the former Raja sahib of
Sheermalpur, who died after a few weak nights with her, this young widow was
not only rich, but very intelligent, although she did not have much formal
education. Nawabu Mian, with much apprehension, sent a formal proposal. After
all he was just a small-time Nawab, a widower himself, fond of music and
courtesans. Perhaps the Rani saheba found in him a fun-loving, grateful and pliant
husband to start a family she longed for and to build an estate for herself, a
separate identity, breaking the confines of Sheermalpur. Nawabu Mian sent a
go-between, a wife of a barber (naavan), who were useful in such
negotiations, having access to the women’s quarters, the zenana, because
of their expertise in body massage.
“Rani saheba, Nawabu Mian is a
simpleton, a person who can be easily spun around your pretty but resolute
fingers, looks handsome, with only one vice: visiting courtesans,” she
explained to the Rani saheba.
“Is he addicted to sex? Does he have
any concubine?” asked the Rani.
“Do you think he can afford to keep
one? His two daughters from his dead wife live with him. His royal pension is
just teen sau rupalli, (a meagre amount of three hundred rupees)” she
replied, smiling.
“Good,” Rani Riyasat Begum replied. Her
sharp mind had already started racing ahead. Dreams started taking shape; of a
pliant, weak husband, one or two sons, a separate estate, moving out of the
stifling confines of the royal zenana, where her late husband’s son was
already vying with his father for acts of debauchery. “Tell him I agree,” she
told the naavan, giving her fifty rupees, a huge sum of money those days
for a person of her class.
The nikah ceremony was performed
with a degree of austerity suitable for second marriages, that too of a rani
with an ordinary nawab, much below her status, but a Syed, direct descendent of
the Holy Prophet. The humble abode of Nawabu Mian was too small for her liking,
and the presence of his daughters irritating. But before getting rid of them,
she had to satisfy the Shavian ‘life force’ raging in her, which Nawabu did
with all the strength and skill at his command. Riyasat, strict about purdah,
but sex starved with an aged, imbecile raja, exploited Nawabu’s talents to the
fullest. “Come, run your tongue over my spine, lick my bums, slowly, ahhh” and
Nawabu would follow her instructions, licking her pussy, and inserting his
semen laden instrument into her vagina when she so desired, “Come you bastard,
push hard, like you did with all those randis” and he could hold it no
longer and burst his semen deep into her, resulting in the birth of two sons,
the main motive behind Riyasat’s marriage.
“Be
of some use to me except fucking” she told him one day. “Buy land, rebuild this
house. Do you expect me to live in this hole forever? Think about the future of
your sons. This income of mine is only till the time I’m alive, understand.”
Nawabu, used to an easy, laid-back existence, was suddenly confronted with much
more than he could handle, but having no options, he set to work. “It’s you who
will be in the limelight, not me,” she goaded him on, “You will be the
patriarch of Hamza estate (Nawabu Mian’s name was Hamza Hasan), people would
line up at your door, address you as maalik (master/owner)” This was the
masterstroke that galvanized him into action. I will be called maalik,
with so many cronies at my beck and call, he thought, and the idea was very
enticing. The result was Hamza Estate spread all over Umraogunj, which Riyasat
Begum, before her death, distributed equally among her sons, leaving the Khan
Bahadur high and dry, again dependent on his meagre pension and a small allowance.
That she wanted Nawabu to be entirely dependent on her was obvious. After all,
now that he had done what she wanted, he could enjoy all the adulation,
squander whatever money she gave him, and feel on top of the world because the
area within the radius of two kilometers of their house was officially named
after him. She had already made him turn out the two daughters from his first
marriage out of the newly extended house, now named after her, Riyasat Mahal,
by providing them separate, though modest, accommodation. With everything so
settled, she could now enjoy, in strict purdah, what Nawabu did best,
fucking. He would sometimes amuse her by playing the tabla, for which he
had earned quite a reputation in the city to the extent that courtesans or tawaifs
as they were called, would pay two rupees to anybody who would bring him to
their kotha to play the tabla during their mujra (dance)
in front of a select group of the aristocracy. Sometimes she would play sex
games with him, dress him as a woman and make him lick her asshole and pussy,
then ride him. She could devise many such games, enact suppressed fantasies
when Internet porn was more than half a century away; a powerful woman living
within the norms of a feudal, patriarchal society. Outside, it was Khan Bahadur
sahib all the way. He would entertain cronies every morning in a room next to
the huge gate, and distributed small sums of money to them as they extolled his
qualities and grandeur.
“Yes Siraj, how are you? Did the
Collector sahib get your work done?”
“Of course, Maalik, how could he
not? The moment he read your letter, he immediately gave instructions for my
work.”
Nawabu Mian immediately took out a
ten-rupee note and gave it to him.
“May Allah shower immense wealth and
fame on our Nawab sahib!”
The
nawabs had a huge weakness for flattery and they nursed their egos to the
limits of stupidity. Five minutes of flattery could earn a person at least five
rupees with a cup of tea as bonus. A certain nawab of Dholakpur had such a
giant size ego, what is termed in Urdu as shaan, accompanied with a very
high degree of stupidity, that one day he decided to make tea by burning
currency notes. The date and time fixed, and a large number of cronies and
other curious people gathered to witness this rare event, Nawab sahib poured
water in a kettle and started burning one currency note after another till the
water boiled and tea could be prepared, burning, in the process, one lakh
rupees worth of currency notes. The resulting brew was then carefully poured
into a silver cup, milk and sugar added and the nawab sahib sipped it with
enormous pride to the accompaniment of applause by the audience. His fame
spread all over and he was subsequently known aseiklakh ki chai waley nawab (the
nawab of a lakh rupees tea fame). Such an amount of money was obviously a huge
fortune in the first half of the 20th century, but in the mind of
the nawab, the resulting admiration and respect, which he thought he had earned
by this moronic act was far more precious than the money literally burnt. Our
Khan Bahadur, however, could not engage in such extravagant behavior, thanks to
the Rani, who let him indulge himself within the reasonable limits of a few
rupees for his cronies every day and the pleasure he felt when he threw a handful
of coins on the road from the window of his car and the urchins vied with each
other for the coins. “May the glory of Nawab sahib shine as bright as the sun.
How thoughtful he is for the poor!” were the phrases of encouraging flattery
that were uttered by the bystanders much to the gratification of Nawabu Mian.
Nawabu Mian, who
was born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, climbed the social
ladder after his marriage to the young widow-rani and establishment of the
Hamza Estate,found ways and means of cultivating the British, resulting in the
many positions and privileges bestowed upon him, including the prestigious
title of Khan Bahadur. He often invited
some Englishmen to dinner and served an elaborate meal including wines, in
which Sadiq, the only member of the family who was fond of alcoholic drinks,
gave company to the Englishmen. His wife, who did not observe purdah and
visited clubs with him, entertained the English ladies. Farida kept away from
such parties because she knew no English, but she had an eye on Sadiq even when
her husband, Abid was alive. She was also jealous of Amina, Sadiq’s wife,
because of her smartness and beauty and the way she dressed in western attire,
while Farida had pock marks on her face which she took a couple of hours every
morning to hide and she could dress only in ghararas, the traditional
dress used by Muslim women consisting of a kurti, dupatta and a pair of
pants that flared from the knees downwards; her husband also didn’t visit
clubs. She had made a few unsuccessful attempts, open ones after she became a
young widow to seduce Sadiq, but to no avail. “She requires half a seer
of powder to fill the holes on her face’” he would remark disdainfully. This
drove Farida in the arms of the tall and well-built Arab stud, who not only
provided her the much-needed sexual gratification, but also looked after her
property issues till her son attained the age of eighteen, much to the
displeasure of Nawabu Mian and Sadiq. “If you won’t fuck me, there are others
who will. You don’t find me desirable, now I’ll go around with this stud
openly, family honor be damned” was the strong message she delivered to Sadiq
to infuriate him. “Had you complied with my desires,” she told Sadiq one day,
“it would have all remained in the family. Now go fuck your ass.” Perhaps Sadiq
had not read what Congreve had so aptly said: “Heav’n has no rage like love to
hatred turn’d/ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn’d.” She set about her
machinations to make life painful for him. The first was to drive a wedge
between him and Amina. She told her that Sadiq made indecent advances towards
her after she became a widow, and, that he called Amina sterile because she
couldn’t bear a child even after a decade of marriage. The seeds of discord
were sown resulting in divorce, although there was a certain gentleman lurking
in the background who Amina had befriended in a club, to provide a viable
option. In addition to this, it is said that Farida’s mother, a widow herself,
was in touch with a certain Bengali tantric who practiced black magic, and her
greed for the property that was divided between the two brothers was such that
she wanted her daughter to enjoy the entire property and this was only possible
if Sadiq remained childless. This ten-year sterile marriage, was, for those who
believe in such things, as many people in India still do, the effect of the
tantric’s magical powers exercised for a certain payment of money. That both
Sadiq and Amina had sons from their second marriages was secretly whispered as
proof in favor of the tantric’s supernatural powers.
Although the nawabs emulated western
manners and dress, but deep inside they were a bundle of contradictions, a
half-baked modernity in the grip of Islam. Sadiq realized the
folly of being too modern by taking his wife with him to clubs and permitting
her to drink the haraam or prohibited whisky. He, therefore, wanted to
marry a woman from a traditional Muslim family, who would bear him children,
stay at home while he visited clubs and fucked around randomly, and gave him a
child that he had longed for. A proposal was given by a family friend of a girl
who belonged to a conservative Muslim family of Bijnor, where the women
observed strict purdah. But Sadiq insisted on seeing the girl before
marrying her and they were convinced by the common friend to let him have a
glimpse from a distance. The curtain was parted a little, showing a very fair
girl around twenty, but Sadiq’s eyes fell on her younger sister, about sixteen,
who, though not as fair, was more desirable to him. He finally had his way
after initial resistance, as her parents were tempted by the social status of
Sadiq, she being half his age notwithstanding.
Coming from a very
protective environment, it was difficult, rather frightening for a young girl
like Samina to live alone with her husband. She had been taught by her parents
to be submissive and serve her husband when he returned from work in the
afternoon from the court in the city where he was an honorary magistrate. She
would lay out lunch cooked by a female servant and when he took a siesta, she
would massage his legs. “It’s the duty of a wife to keep her husband happy,”
her people had told her and this young girl of sixteen, married to a divorced
man of thirty-two, treated these words as gospel. She had little formal
education, but could read and write Urdu, and was fond of reading magazines
like Shama and Biswin Sadi which were quite popular during the
time after the Partition. An Urdu newspaper was subscribed by Sadiq, so that
Samina could cultivate the reading habit. The first thing that Sadiq did was to
prevail upon her to discard her burqa, which she did after much
reluctance, used to as she was to the conservative atmosphere in her parental
house. Moreover, this was the 1950s, when most Muslim women observed purdah but
Sadiq was adamant. Neither his first wife nor Farida, wore burqa and
Sadiq found it repugnant, used to a partly westernized lifestyle, to go around
with a burqa clad wife. In any case, he found his second wife, like his
first, much more beautiful than Farida, despite Farida puffing cigarettes and
fucking around regularly with the Arab. Finally, she could conquer her shyness
and discarded the burqa but she spoke very little to people wherever she
went, and sat quietly waiting to go home. Women tried to draw her into
conversation, but she would answer in monosyllables. It was quite an ordeal for
her, this socializing among his relatives with no such experience in her
parental home. Sadiq set about fulfilling his long-denied wish of a child. His
late mother, who doted on him, requested everybody who was going on a
pilgrimage to Iraq to pray at the holy shrine of Imam Husain in Kerbala for a
child to be born to him. She died with this wish unfulfilled. Sadiq, after ten
years of his first marriage culminating in divorce, had almost given up hope.
He was so disheartened that, although he did not observe the usual rituals
performed by the faithful, he went to the rauza (replica of the shrine)
of Hazrat Abbas in the city which is much revered by the Shia Muslims. With
bowed head and a heart clinging to its last hope, he prayed for that elusive
child, with the mannat (wish) to put up a gold alam (ensign)in
the inner sanctum of the rauza in gratitude for his wish-fulfillment. The
driving force behind this special visit to the shrine was one miscarriage and
one still-born child. Some old and worldly-wise women were sure that it was the
supernatural power of the Bengali tantric at work again, goaded by Farida’s
mother, to have full control of the property in the absence of Sadiq’s child.
But fate had willed otherwise. Samina became pregnant again, and she was confined
to a portion of the house under the supervision of a Christian gynecologist and
a nurse in attendance. Sadiq didn’t want to take chances this time. Farida’s
mother, or any other person, was not allowed to enter her room, or come near
it. Samina spent all the nine months confined and protected from outside
people. Finally, on a hot summer afternoon, just
when the muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer, a not-so-faithful let out
a different kind of cry, marking his entry into this world. Sadiq, who had kept
his fingers crossed all these nine months and had yearned for a child for years
to the extent that in a feudal patriarchal set-up, he didn’t even care whether
it would be a boy or a girl, was overjoyed to know that a son was born to him.
As he took the child in his arms for a while, tears welled up in his eyes and
he looked at Samina, keeping his hand on her forehead as a gesture of gratitude
for giving him a child. The news also reached Nawabu Mian who had not been on talking terms with
Sadiq for a couple of months, but the moment a servant told him that a child
was born to Sadiq, he immediately enquired whether it was a boy or girl and on
being told that it was a boy, he forgot his quarrel with Sadiq and rushed to
Samina with a miniature copy of the Holy Quran enclosed in a gold amulet to
ward off evil machinations and put it around the neck of the infant. The father
and son smiled at each other. It was time for celebration, but strict orders
were given by Sadiq to the servants that nobody would be allowed to meet his
wife without his permission and the entry of Farida and her mother was banned.
It
was almost mandatory to call a courtesan to celebrate an event of such
importance, and Sadiq, who visited the kothas quite regularly, called
the best in the trade for the evening. Close relatives and friends were invited
while a special chef with his team was called to prepare a lavish dinner. As
most of the invitees did not drink alcohol, a separate small room was earmarked
for the purpose in which Sadiq and his select friends consumed scotch that has
the quality to make music more pleasant to the ears and the women appear more
beautiful than they look when one is sober. The Khan Bahadur, beaming from ear
to ear, chaired the ‘session’ with his fondness for music, and also exhibited
his skills at the tabla, much to the delight of the dancing girls, who
considered this a special treat. The event was organized in a large hall that
the Khan Bahadur had erected for special occasions decorated with chandeliers
and a huge mirror from Belgium as well as Persian carpets. The mujra
lasted the whole night with the audience being regaled by ghazals,
thumris and dadras sung by the tawaif while two women acted
out the ash’ar (couplets) through their dance movements. The audience
gave money to them whenever the dancing girls came dancing towards them, but
the Khan Bahadur and Sadiq were more generous especially towards the talented
singer, Sartaj Bai who exploited the occasion to the hilt by repeating “Glory
be to Khan Bahadur Saheb and Sadiq Mian for the new star in the family. May
Allah grant him name and fame!” There was a dinner break and of course several
visits to the small room by Sadiq and his friends to further enhance their appreciation
of music and poetry. In such parties, the womenfolk were not allowed, but they
could hear and peep from behind a thick curtain. Samina was still under the
care of the nurse along with her newly born son and was not permitted to watch
the celebrations, although she abhorred such festivities, because of her shy
nature as well as her strictly conservative upbringing. Farida, the only other
woman in the house, was not too happy at the prospect of sharing the family
property with somebody other than her son and therefore took refuge in the arms
of her Arab lover Shahid, who had sneaked quietly into the house while everyone
was busy in the hall. He sympathized with her but asked her to reconcile
herself to the inevitable. After some discussion he decided to clinch the issue
by giving her a long fuck which soothed her nerves. The gathering dispersed
when the muezzin called the faithful to the morning prayers at the break of
dawn.
Sadiq
named his son Husain Hamza, strangely enough after his father with whom he had
a love-hate relationship, the latter more than the former. Everybody in school
as well as in the University, called him by his surname, Hamza. As time passed,
Sadiq got back to his addiction to wine and women resulting in sale of lands
and jewelry to maintain a dissolute life. Zamindari abolition dealt a blow to
their income considerably, which became confined to the rents received from the
landed property. The Khan Bahadur, to maintain his grandeur, sold his royal
pension in parts whenever he needed money. He was worried about Abid’s son
because he took no interest in girls and was a rather mild, domesticated young
man, obviously under the thumb of Farida, who lorded over him. Khan Bahadur had
developed a special liking for his other grandson, Hamza. He would give him
twenty-five rupees as pocket money when he was studying in the University. The
passion between Farida and Shahid subsided with the decline of their libidinous
energies, but they kept meeting, though not so regularly, for old time’s sake.
Farida got her son, Naqi, married although he could not consummate his marriage
for over a year, much to the astonishment and concern of his wife Nazia and her
brothers. Perhaps her mother’s overbearing behavior and her open relationship
with Shahid, made him turn away from women into the arms of men. Certain fair
and delicate boys, termed chikna in vulgar lingo, were the objects of
his attraction, although after much pressure from Nazia’s family, he could
finally bring himself to have sex with her, resulting in the birth of the next
generation, much to the relief of Nawabu Mian. But this did not deter him from
regular rendezvous with effeminate boys in a room in a far corner of the house.
On the other hand, Hamza wandered in the dark regions of his mind searching for
Hind bint Utbah, jigar-khurba or the eater of liver (In early Islamic
history, Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abu Sufiyan ibn Harb, a powerful man of
Mecca, got Hamza, the foster brother of Prophet Mohammad, killed. She then
ripped open his belly and bit into his liver to avenge her father’s death). The
lines of Ghalib echoed in his ears, “Dil ka kya rang karun khoon-e-jigar
hone tak.” (What to do with the heart till deep desire is crushed
crimson?). The walls reverberated with this desire metaphoric, a yearning for a
more intellectually analyzed and comprehended satiation. Was he a victim of
genetic complexity?
The Khan Bahadur, although in his 80s,
still indulged in his habit of giving money and gifts to his cronies, despite
his declining fortune. The decrease in the flow of income had resulted in the
huge house being managed by its inmates and a handful of servants, with gradual
sale of lands and jewelry to augment it. There were stories of nawabs selling
heirlooms to eat mangoes during the season or spend lavishly on insignificant
customs to exhibit their ‘jhooti shaan’, or false grandeur. This was
common during the 1960s and 1970s, when most of them continued to live in the
past, denying the inevitable doom, and not preparing their progeny for it. The
Khan Bahadur, his son Sadiq and daughter-in-law Farida, were no exception. Only
Hamza, who had developed a strong distaste for the nawabi way of life, being
witness to his mother’s sufferings, was the lone exception. He wanted to study,
to do something useful in life, not exist as a parasite on society,
empty-headed, mouthing platitudes, and be called a nawabzada, dumb and
good-for-nothing. That he could succeed in doing so, despite his background, is
another story altogether.
One
fine morning in spring, when the Khan Bahadur, at the ripe age of ninety, got
up and while trying to squat on the wooden make-shift toilet seat with a bowl
below to receive the royal shit, which he had made his manservant install next
to his bed, his foot slipped. The resulting thud and the painful cry woke up
Hamza. The wailing, though becoming weak, continued and when he beheld the
painful sight, he immediately called Naqi. Both of them lifted him from the
floor and laid him on the bed. The servant was called to clean him. He had
fainted and the physician advised immediate admission in the hospital, because
he suspected brain hemorrhage, which diagnosis turned out to be correct. He lay
helpless, glucose drip by his side. ‘There’s no cure for this,’ the doctor
attending on him said. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’
Both Naqi and Hamza took turns at
staying in the hospital, Hamza during the evenings after he returned from the
University. On the evening of the third day after his admission to the
hospital, there was sudden convulsion in his body. Hamza called the doctor, who
in turn called a nurse who put up the green curtains, asking Hamza to wait
outside. While the doctor and the nurse attended on the Khan Bahadur, he stood
in a corner inside the curtain. There was suddenly a twitching in the toes, a
wave travelled up his legs, up his neck, and ended in a hiccup. The Khan
Bahadur had died in front of his eyes. While tears welled up, Hamza was
dumbstruck. Was that the rooh, the soul or life, whatever you may call
it, that left the body?
A marble tombstone, engraved with his
name and titles, was put on his grave in the local graveyard. Quite a few
people attended his funeral, extolling his qualities. It was the end of an era
in Umraogunj. After a few days it was discovered by Sadiq that the Khan Bahadur
had sold the last part of his royal pension before his death and there were
less than a hundred rupees inside his cupboard; a death perfectly timed. Although he died a pauper, as Sadiq remarked,
he at least didn’t have to ask anyone, which of course meant his family, for
money. That would have been a living death for him. Despite his weaknesses, he
always gave money to the needy, even when he had little; a heart filled with
compassion, a genetic trait that his grandsons inherited in full measure. What more could they have asked for, in a
world full of selfish people?
****