I bless my
school years for some of the most fantastic & unbridled pieces of
literature I have read. Thanks to the compulsion of scoring better grades in my
subjects, reading became a compulsion & I thank those times that gave me
some of the best reading material I came across.
Kabuliwala
is one such piece. A short story, possibly first written somewhere between 1910
– 1920, Kabuliwala is a deeply moving & emotional story, where simplicity is
the key & it just stuns its readers & remains with them for long.
Kabuliwala
was a popular term coined for Pushto
(Afghani) vendors in pre-Independence Era (India got its Independence in 1947
from British Raj, so roughly before that time). At that time lot of Pushto
vendors used to come to India for trade & used to sell wares like dry
fruits, spices, dates, plums & other sweet meats in India. They were
excessively poor & had to peddle the good quality wares of Afghanistan in
India to make their living. Therefore they used to leave the rough climes of
their native land & travel all the way in the heart of India to make some
money & send it back home. Some even went to the extent of getting Afghan
weaves, materials & handicrafts all the way to the country & then go
door to door selling them. Since time immemorial, Kabuliwalas have been highly
romanticised figures in India, with Indian director Raj Kapoor even honouring
their memory with a song of the same name.
Coming back
to this story:
Kabuliwala
revolves around a regular upper middle class Bengali family, who have a lovely
daughter named Mini, aged 6 or so. The story’s narrator is Mini’s father, a
regular Bengali patriarch who lives in Calcutta with his wife & daughter.
His wife is a god-fearing & everything fearing soul; having rarely stepped
out of house, she feels Calcutta or rather whole World is full of touts or
thugs, who are there to ruin her household.
The narrator
notices an Afghan kabuliwala who frequents their neighbourhood; his name is
Rehmat. Like most Afghans, Rehmat is tall, well-built person which itself is
very intimidating to many Indians, especially the narrator’s wife, who
immediately becomes suspicious of him.
The
narrator’s 6 year old daughter, however, finds Rehmat very intriguing & slowly
a lovely bond develops between the two.
The
kabuliwala comes to their door every day, much to the mother’s chagrin, & calls
for Mini by a nickname “lalli” (a nickname lovingly used for daughter) &
they talk inane stuff that makes Mini laugh, and then he gives Mini handful of
sweetmeats everyday as a parting gift. Our narrator (at first a little
apprehensive, thanks to his wife’s hyper imagination), finds this bemusing
& alluring at the same time. Amongst their jokes, there was a common one:
Rehmat:
Lalli, tu ek din sasural jaayegi (Daughter, one day you will go to your in
laws’ place)
Minnie: Tum
bhi sasural jaaoge??(Will you also go to in your laws’ place?)
Rehmat:
Haan, aur hum sasur ko ghoonsa maarega (Yes, & I will punch my
father-in-law)
This inane
talk would make Minnie go into peals of laughter, which Rehmat used to wait
for.
Throughout
this tale, the narrator, often tries to give Rehmat some money which he refuses
to accept.
Then, one
fateful day, Rehmat is taken into prison for a murder he had committed in the
heat of the moment…and that is the last Mini sees of Rehmat.
Years later,
the story shifts back to narrator’s house. Rehmat is a faded, almost lost
memory. Mini is grown up, & getting married that day; the whole house is
filled with chaos of the wedding preparations, and the narrator comes to his
study for an important work…when he sees a very old & crumpled Rehmat
standing in the doorway, just asking to see his “little lalli”, Mini…
What
follows, is such a simple yet heart-warming tale of human emotions. Where emotions
are generally reserved for mothers (especially in Indian stories) when it comes
to their children, Kabuliwala is a beautiful story of how one father connects
& understands the pain of other; Of how an uneducated & ruffian vendor
also has a heart full of pure love; of how a father’s love for his daughter
will be the same irrespective of geographical boundaries, climes, class, creed
etc.
I got a link
of an English translation of the story…it will not be anywhere close to reading
the lovely Hindi version, but then something is better than nothing J
Do not
expect over emotion in Kabuliwala; the beauty of this short story is how it
leaves a lump in your throat & a smile on your face with just a simple
plotline.
Despite
being a 4-5 page short story, it was so compelling as a script, that two
feature films have already been made on this story so far in 1957 (Bengali
film) & 1961 (Hindi film starring
the brilliant Balraj Sahni as Rehmat), and still this story continues to stay
on with the readers.
Recently it
was announced that another on screen adaptation is being planned for the story,
with Indian actor Amitabh Bacchhan essaying a pivotal role. Such is the charm
of this simple short story…ages pass away but its sublime charm never dies.
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