HAJI TABARAK

(Today is Jashan’s 15^th birthday. Zeina Glo was conceived on this day last year. I write for her a story of her home.)

Nawab Nagar was reborn in the 1950s with a large heart. The farmers from Jatwar and their women worked tirelessly. Wilderness, disease, injury, loneliness, toil and hardships were the order of the day. Blaming the circumstances was unheard of, and the adversities only served to fire a driving need, a passion to create something better.

The elders faced countless challenges, and a host of children were tucked away in boarding schools to help them get a good education and keep them from the social ills that threatened every growing man and woman. Accidents, killings, tigers, hyenas, lawsuits, disease and death did their worst. Alongside, honesty, integrity, toil, labour, kindness, sharing, compassion and courage did their best. Nawab Nagar soon metamorphosed into an industrious workplace and a safe haven, with an ingrained spirit of sharing its wealth.

A lot of people from the surrounding area were closely involved in the miracle of Nawab Nagar. Many a family was helped to set up a small business, many a relative got refuge as part of the family in adverse circumstances, many a hospital, school and place of worship were aided silently. Men and women came from far and near to work at the farm, drive the tractors, help out at the homestead, tend the cattle and even to just be around. Not a soul went hungry if the women could help it. The fare was simple, but the meal was always forthcoming.

All the little things that make a locality easier to live in gradually came about in Nawab Nagar; a flour grinding ‘chakki’, a cane juice extractor ‘kolhu’, a gurudwara (the neighbouring farmers asked for a loudspeaker to be put on the roof so that they could hear the morning and evening prayers), a little stall selling tea and sweets, and a workshop for repairing farm machinery.

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My earliest memory of Tabarak is of a straight, tall, sturdy man with eyes that were not black or brown, towering over the huge metal bowls where the cane juice was boiled and cleaned and re-boiled to yield ‘gur’, jaggery. It was an exciting world of heat and vapours and danger of scalding as the workers hurried from tub to tub of boiling liquid and large flat tabs made to cool the sticky hot jaggery. Tabarak moved in the melee with long strides, a formidable man sparing nary a glance at us little ones picking at the solidifying stuff and licking up the fresh ‘gur’ with our fingers. I may have been six to eight years old; there was one streak of grey in his handsome beard. He always wore a black cloth cap with straight sides.

His job was to get the sugarcane from the fields to the crusher. He had a fleet of bullock carts and the creaking of their wooden wheels, the labouring breath of the oxen and the click-clacking and cursing of their drivers was very much a part of growing up in Nawab Nagar. As we grew older, Tabarak’s fleet of bullock carts took on various tasks, like carrying husk from the rice sheller and transporting sugarcane to the sugar factory weighbridge about 3 kilometres away. We would follow on our bicycles and have every cart weighed, unloaded and weighed again, and then get the receipts from the factory and government clerks who always seemed to be cheating us and mocking us for being literate and polite.

Tabarak had a number of sons who drove the carts. They were hard working and fun loving young men who would often josh around and race bicycles with us. Tabarak, like all elders, minded his work and seldom spoke to us children.

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School took us away. Tractors and trailers and metalled roads sent him away. Bullock carts on season-long contract became a thing of the past. But Tabarak and his sons were honest and hard-working, and they went on to prosper in their home town.

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Bappuji, our father, died when I was nine. The kids grew to become men. Marriages and children happened. Chachchaji, his younger brother, grew old, as did our mothers.

Greed, ambition, avarice, insecurity, envy, jealousy, cheating, pomposity, bullying, exploitation and all their cohorts conspired against the land and the family. The innocence was shattered. Brother became enemy to brother, one generation bullied the other, parents forewent morals, children lost respect.

The rape of Nawab Nagar was not pleasant to witness, and some of us ventured out, having lost our bearings and left with no sense of direction. I joined the army.

The army days were great fun and very fulfilling for a young man, but they could not cure the pain of the plunder of Home. I chucked my job and returned after six years to join the battle of Nawab Nagar.

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It may have been twenty years; one day Bebbe, mother, sent word for me. I went out to see her standing under the old Neem tree (See older post ‘Three Trees (Nawab Nagar)’), talking to a tall greying man wearing a familiar black cap with stiff sides. Tabarak!! He had called for me, and those grey-green frontier eyes were not rheumy, they were moist with emotion.

Tabarak had just lived out what I believe is every Muslim’s ultimate dream; he had been on the holiest pilgrimage, the Hajj to Mecca.

He had brought back gifts for us, his family of Nawab Nagar – trinkets mostly, some small thing for everyone; a special necklace for Bebbe, and something for Chachchaji and Chachchiji. My cynical old mother talked to him gently and received his gifts and blessings with grace. Then I got a caress on my head, and he put a blue and green silky cloth over my shoulders. It hung down to my waist; the pictures on it seemed to be of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina and the Ka’aba in Mecca.

I was the youngest of the boys of our generation, and I was overwhelmed to think that all these years I had held a special place the affections of this silent big man who came back after so many years with blessings from his God in Mecca.

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Another twenty years have probably gone by. My generation has crossed over to the age of grey. Ambitions have been lived out. Disease and death have come and gone. Good times have been celebrated. A lot of young people have joined the family, and all their folks behind them. We, the elder ones, live with our troubles and mistrusts buried below the surface, ridden over now by optimism and hope as we see our youngsters grow. Our surviving elders live to smile and bless and bind us together by their presence. The kids retain the spirit of love and caring and joy at each other’s being. The sun is out, God is in his heaven, and all is well with the world.

Parts of Nawab Nagar have been ruined; the aftermath of battle. Some bits have been sold. Each one who moves on carries a part of Nawab Nagar to far off corners of the world.

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Haji Tabarak, and so many of his kind who toiled and built and wished everyone well, live in the deepest recesses of our hearts, where only love and grace can reside. Their benevolence and goodwill still helps us from inside and out.

In my closet in Nawab Nagar lies a reminder of the spirit of the place and the men who walked this land; a cloth of green, orange and blue; on it a picture of a desert shrine where long ago a weary traveller lay down to rest, unmindful of where his feet were pointing; blessings brought home from Mecca by an old man to a child he loved.

TAMAM

29 October, 2014                                       POST SCRIPT

I asked friends today and got this information. The ‘cloth’ is a prayer mat, a ‘Jaam-e-Mamaaz’. It is adorned with a picture of a mosque that indicates the side a person should face and lay his forehead while offering Namaaz. In the middle seems to be a cluster of tents in a camp. The bottom, where the person’s knees or legs would rest, has a chandelier hanging from an ornate arch.

One family told me that the picture shows the Prophet’s Mosque at Medina, the Ka’aba at Mecca, and a chandelier which they think is just an ornamental design. Another friend says that it may be any mosque and an encampment in the desert. All tell me that it is a prayer mat, made of especially light cloth, to be carried during travel.

I am humbled.

I have put up a picture of what Tabarak brought for me from his Haj. I respectfully invite all those who can throw more light on its significance to enlighten us with their comments.