An Epic Player.

It was a mischievous night, mischievous because destiny played a prank on his unplanned trip. It's the raw beauty in the irony of nature that plays along with the most playful man. He was a legend known for two habits. One was of pulling others’ chain and having lively fun; the other was of surprising us with his teenager spirit by executing spontaneous road trips that always turn out to be the most adventurous, as the odds also played along to tease this exuberant man of late 50’s.

This night too, was a segment of the epic trip into the wild landscape near Keenjhar Lake. As expected this unpredictable road trip included the constants in his company, those who added fuel to his spirit unlike other old aged minds of the family that is to say unlike his wife and sisters and brothers. This constant company comprised his nephew; a lad of mere 18 years of age and a twin girl cousin (that’s me), his niece’s son and my two younger siblings.  His wife who was once included in his company of constants for vacations had now grown old in her mind to be a part of such a trip, though she’s seven years younger than him.

That night he drifted into deep sleep with his stomach hungry and his mind angry on forgetting his chopped chicken at the hen farm. The chicken that was addressed earlier in the day by him in these words, “Your fate for today is to get you into pieces. My kids will give your pieces a bath with soap in such a way that all the stains of your murder i.e. all the blood stains will be washed and then without guilt, I’m going to make Chicken Karahi. You will give your morning crow in our stomachs and in heaven.”

As he lay on the bench under the lamp post in his sleep, his bald scalp shimmered under the moonlight as if though not a single hair once existed on that smooth surface. We sat at enough distance with our empty stomachs, so that his sleep might not get disturbed while our digestive tracks roared for dinner. His nephew whispered to us that he often wondered how this man used to have such long hair like Amitab Bachan and now his head doesn’t even have a microscopic trace of hair growth. My sister continued this conversation by adding what our mother used to say that this long silky hair which you see in your man’s old pictures was not his actual hair, he had long curly hair and he used her hair dryer a lot to make his hair look straight. No wonder he lost all his hair with extensive use of the hair dryer. I interrupted them while exchanging our helplessness about the morning crow that chicken will definitely give in heaven but from the looks of it, it was definitely not happening in our stomachs anytime soon. To deny our defeat in the face of nature's irony, we decided to practice our car drift in the mud ground so that we could pass the night.

He had an old Daewoo Racer of the year 1993, and my cousin and I had loved and learned driving this car since we were twelve. For the whole road trip we took turns to drive but still, our hearts just didn’t want to rest. Besides every activity, our most favorite one was to learn car drift in this Daewoo Racer. Although we had the car keys with us we were afraid to start the engine in the dead silence of the night near his sleeping head. Therefore, we pushed the car away from him and spent the rest of the hours trying to make a perfect car drift and racing the engine against those muddy paths.

When the hours of morning prayer approached, we parked our car near the lake to make our ablutions there and prayed under the naked sky. As the black night faded into the dawn we saw a boat nearby standing still, two fishermen checking their nets hoping they would be fortunate enough to pull a heavy catch. There were indeed more fish in their net than we could imagine and so we bought two small fish from them with all that comprised of our pocket money.

The excitement of buying fish and our hunger made us run all the way back to him leaving the parked car behind. We had assumed that he would finally fry those fish with salt and pepper but to our bewilderment, he made Fish Karahi using that Shan Karahi Masala. I knew for the fact that every time when mother was not home he used to cook chicken karahi because he didn’t know how to cook any other dish but that doesn’t mean he’ll do the same with the fish. Everyone swore that fish karahi was damn difficult to swallow however, with the pangs of hunger getting stronger by the minute now we somehow managed to finish that morning meal. His niece’s son just said, “Thank God! We only bought two small fish or else we would have to eat more.” 

There was a local man living nearby who complained to him in front of all of us in the morning that your kids were racing all along the night. You should have control over them. We are glad that our man’s action speaks more than his words; he waved at the local man and replied, “They’re just kids.”

He was born and raised in the countryside by his father and a stepmother. I don’t think he ever remembered his own mother’s image because as he had described it to me, he was only 3 years old when his own mother passed from this earth to heaven. The stories of his childhood, teenage years and early adulthood gave me the image of a young small heightened kid like man, who loved teasing everyone in the village and then the same kid who was tied up with the donkey by his father as a punishment.

His upbringing in the village and his evergreen adolescent spirit may be the reason why our vacations were spent mostly in the wild looking out and chasing the jackal’s calling under the dark night rather than spending it in an exotic farmhouse. He loved the peaceful wild rather than the socializing urban human forest. There were instances when we faced jackal’s glimmering eyes and God knows what other creatures whose names I can’t even remember, because every time he mentioned those creatures’ name they were in his native language, Sindhi.   

Being a girl I really feel glad that despite him being raised in a rural setup surrounded by their contextual mindset, he never limited either me or my sister cycling around on the streets of our neighborhood, he never stopped us when we requested to sleep outside under the naked sky. He never stopped us when we requested to sit on the van top, to feel the powerful wind against our face. He never stopped us driving alone into the open landscape. He never took the car keys from us even when the fuel was low and we were wasting it all in having a perfect drift. He really didn't care about what the people around him thought of us. He just made us learn that we should live free because it has the greatest worth. He never forced us to wear a dupatta because of people but he asked us to wear dupatta out of respect for a holy place and for our own dignity. He is the man who himself lived as if he was not-out till the end of his life, and wanted us to live the same way. He was an epic player. 

Sheliza Hyder.