LAST week I visited an ailing friend who had recently returned from Canada, after having served four and a half years in solitary confinement!
My friendship with Talmiz Huqqani dates back many years. It was he who one fine morning in 1969 grabbed me and took me to the editor of Sayyara Digest, Maqbool Jehangir, and told him that ‘in front of you stands a young man who has written a marvellous travelogue which nobody is willing to publish’. “Will you publish it?” asked Talmiz. Maqbool Jehangir the famous author of dozens of books on shikaryat (hunting) without ever even touching a hunting gun, did not even look at my manuscript. “Tarar sahib I will publish it but drop this Tarar thing from your name, nobody will take you seriously with this tongue twister name.”
“I don’t want to be a writer if I am not a Tarar.”
“As you wish Mr Mustansar Hussain Tarar,” he was all smiles. “I hope you wont add a Chaudhry in the beginning!”
So began my career; Talmiz had pushed me into the quagmire of literature.
After retiring as a director public relations Wapda, he voluntarily worked with an organization for a few years and then finally landed in Canada where his only son was serving as a senior banker. He had some ailments while he was here, but Canada’s loneliness and aloof society was too much for him. He was an extremely social animal who loved Lahore and his many friends who adored his sincerity, which bordered on insanity. a lost should in Canada, he used to wander through its malls, looking for somebody to talk to and most of the days he, didn’t find anybody.
At times he would talk to my daughter, Annie, settled in Orlando, USA, for hours remembering me and Lahore. Of course he knew her since she was a toddler. It was not that his son ignored him or anything, on the contrary his obedience was exemplary and he provided his father with all the amenities of a luxurious life. But at the same time, he and his wife were a working couple and they could not provide him with what he needed most; friends and Lahore.
Then as luck would have it the son was offered a better deal by an international bank in Pakistan so the whole family packed and left Canada, its winters and its loneliness and came to Lahore.
Although I knew that his sugar level was high, his blood pressure soaring and his heart erratic, still I was not prepared for what I saw. He was totally bedridden because he had broken his hipbone in the bargain too; he was in pain but smiled all the time because he was back in Lahore. He narrated stories of his ailments and how he fainted on the plane on his way to Pakistan and was treated in Alaska with snow bears peeping through the windows. After a while, when it was just the two of us in the room, he whispered, “Mustansar sahib, can you see something on the other side of this glass window?” In front of us was only a blank wall. “Which glass window Talmiz?”
“Don’t tell me you can’t see it either,” he was slightly crossed with me.
“Just a blank wall Talmiz, there is no window I assure you.” “Everybody keeps telling me that,” he sighed. “But at times I see people across this window; they smile and wave their hands. As a matter of fact one of them even came into my washroom and hid there. Do you believe me?”
“Yes Talmiz, I believe you. I sure when your hipbone is operated upon and you can walk around Lahore with friends, these people will disappear.”
“Yes, when they will put curtains on this glass window, they wont be seen, I am sure.”
Was he hallucinating or was it that four and half years of solitary confinement were having their effect?
It is said that no matter how many offsprings, friends or relatives you have around you, it is in your fate, especially a man’s, that eventually you will face an utter loneliness. I remember that in his last days my beloved father was bedridden. Although most of his three daughters and three sons, including myself, were always nearby, it was well nigh impossible that one of us should leave the battle of bread and butter procurement and the family, to sit beside him for twenty-four hours, although one of us was always taking care of his needs.
My mother had passed away a few months earlier and her departure completely shattered this magnificent man. At times I would enter his room and he would just be sitting there, on his bed, staring at a wall unaware that I was there.
It was a beautiful spring morning, bubbling with life, when I with great difficulty placed this big hunk of man on a wheelchair. He hated this exercise. Only a year back he could carry his six footer frame with dignity and could walk for ten or fifteen kilometres with ease and leisure. Now he had to be helped and carried and he hated it; his blue eyes brimming with tears of helplessness and sadness.
As we came out in our small lawn he saw the dahlias blooming and said, “Hum sehra main hain aur ghar main bahar aye hai” (we are in the desert and there’s Spring in the house). He advised me not to over water the dahlias. I wheeled him away to the nearby market; there was great hustle bustle all around him, children running, cars honking, people shouting and he smiled happily, “The world is so beautiful.”
“Abbaji is there anything your heart desires right now?” “I would like to have some juice,” he replied.
With trembling fingers he held the straw, placed its end in his mouth and sipped the juice happily.
“Would you like to have a cigarette abbaji?” I asked. He had been a regular smoker throughout his life, at home he had a huqqa which he prepared himself and out in the world, when in a three-piece or a safari-suit, he would smoke his favourite cigarette. Then, a few months back, some stupid doctor imposed the prohibition: “Chaudhry sahib, no more cigarettes, your age your health...”. There was a marked change in his behaviour after this ban, he felt morose and did not know what to do with his fingers.
“Yes I would,” he said sheepishly.
I lit his favourite cigarette and placed it between his shaking fingers. I had never seen him so happy and smiling.
A few days afterwards he whispered: “Mustansar you should lock the doors properly for the night, there are certain people who come during the night and roam around my bed, harassing me.”
“Yes abbaji.”
“Don’t you believe me?” he asked angrily.
“I do abbaji,” my eyes filling with tears for my beloved. “Rest assured, I will lock all the doors properly tonight.” It was the final loneliness and desolation.
My pretty and doll like mother-in-law, when nearing ninety, faced the same predicament. She had nine children in all, numerous grandchildren and even when her son Aftab, who worshiped her, was with her, she felt utterly alone. At times she would ring up my wife and order her to leave everything and come to her immediately. Mamoona would rush to her mother, bathe her feet, which she loved to do and then after hours would get up to go when my mother-in-law would say: “You are all alike, abandoning me for your children and home, you don’t love me.”
At times she too would raise an alarm that there are people who roam around her bed during the night. Her sons and daughters would gather around her, stay the night with her and she did not see anything. However, the very next day, there was the same complaint; there are people who come and go.
I know Talmiz is not that old and he will be much better when he can walk around, but it worries me. Is it a man’s fate to face the desolate loneliness eventually?
When a death shocks you, when you see somebody’s mental faculties declining and you are hurt and when you witness the last loneliness and you feel a fear, it is not only the milk of human kindness which generates theses feelings, it is your death which shocks, you are afraid that you also might reach the same stage and will be engulfed in the final loneliness and despair.
Since I met Talmiz, it seems that I am also seeing things from a different perspective and at times I hear voices, which I am sure do not exist. I may be imagining it but other day while admiring some potted dahlias and renancluses I positively saw two look alike figures hardly the size of a small finger rollicking in the petals. Perhaps they were twins and they were talking to each other in English. If I am not mistaken one of them was Yajuj and the other was called Majuj. They were smartly attired in three-piece suits with matching ties, wearing joggers to jog on the flower petals. They were conversing on all sorts of local and international topics and if I see them again I have a mind to note down their conversation and report it to you.
You do believe that there are these two Lilliputians residing in my dahlias and renancluses don’t you? If you don’t then I wont tell you what they converse about.
LAST week I visited an ailing friend who had recently returned from Canada, after having served four and a half years in solitary confinement!
