Homage to Muslim dada, the dastango from my past, who knew a bit of magic
Dastangoi, the art of storytelling that was a favourite pastime before the advent of radio and television, has recently seen a revival, largely reinvented by Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain.
When I attended a show a few weeks ago, it brought to life memories of a dastango from my childhood. In the early '60s, when I was a child, my grandfather's family, totalling more than 20 people, used to spend summer vacations at his sprawling house in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur, where he practised law.
During this period, my grandfather used to invite a dastango from his village Gangauli to come and stay at the house for a month or so and tell us stories from Tilism-e-Hoshruba.
According to historian and translator Mushharaf Ali Farooqi, Urdu poet and prose writer Muhammad Husain (who took the pen name Jah) wrote Tilism-Hoshruba (later, there were other writers), which was first published in Urdu by Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow in the late 19th century.
Various volumes of his work have appeared over several years. "Tilism" means magic and "Hoshruba" is an imaginary magical kingdom inhabited by conjurers, sorcerers, jinns, witches and diabolical creatures.
This was a magical fantasy on an epic scale with occult, illusion, transmutation and other supernatural themes. Tilism-Hoshruba's brave and resourceful protagonist is Amir Hamza and his adventures are captured in more than 8,000 pages. Some say the Harry Potter series itself is loosely based on this epic.
Our dastango was nearly 70 years old, his round face studded with a walrus moustache. He was always dressed in a white lungi and kurta with a "gamcha" - a towel used to cover the head - loosely draped around his shoulders. Every evening, after dinner, all the children of the house along with our friends from the neighbourhood - some 15 to 20 of them - would assemble at the large terrace, under a starlit sky, and surround Muslim dada (as he was called).
He would lie on a bolster pillow and recite one episode for about an hour every night from memory, for he was not lettered. He had the complete Hoshruba memorised and the next evening, he would start from the exact place where he had left off the previous night. He kept us mesmerised just like a professional stage actor. His voice modulation and intonations vividly brought a magical world to life.
We would listen to his stories, our eyes and mouths wide open in amazement. He needed no stage, nor the obligatory props of pandaan and peekdan (spittoon) to weave his magic. We could visualise the narration as if watching it on television.
Much later, when I grew up and read the famed novel Aadha Gaon (Half Village) written by my uncle Rahi Masoom Raza, I found that the main character of the book, Phunnan Miya was none other than our dastango, Muslim dada. His life was no less adventurous than those stories he told, though his ethics were more flexible than Amir Hamza's. He was a dacoit, a card sharp and wore many other hats. He specialised in cutting bare farms with standing crop. Along with his accomplices he would sneak up a farm at night and, in a few hours, cut and make away with the crop. He was also involved in other criminal activities about which there were only whispers and none of the elders ever bothered to enlighten us.
Once, when he was returning home late at night with the police in fast pursuit, Muslim dada climbed the wall of his neighbour's house to quickly reach his own.
Alone in the house, the neighbour's wife was very upset and told him that village folks would insinuate that Muslim dada visits her at night when her husband is not at home. He thought for a few seconds, took the woman in his grip, climbed the common wall and put her down in his own house. The neighbour's wife never returned to her husband and the husband dared not ask Muslim dada to make sure she returned. She bore him four children, all out of wedlock. However, she did break her bangles when her estranged husband died.
Because Muslim dada was also a card sharp, gambling was a major source of his income. Once, he won a khakhi overcoat from a daroga at one such game. Later, the daroga offered a large sum of money to take back his overcoat but Muslim dada refused. This angered the daroga and he arrested Muslim dada on a false charge and in custody, as a form of torture, pulled some hair from his moustache. When Muslim dada got out, he and his accomplices surrounded the police station and set it on fire. This was 1942 and the peak of the Non-Cooperation movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi. News spread that Muslim dada burnt the police station down as an act of defiance against the British Raj and he became a local celebrity.
He used to teach us children card tricks during the day and news of the activity reached my grandfather. He was summoned and admonished. In defence, he said that "he was teaching the children whatever skills he had". Though I never showed any inclination to take this up as a future career, my cousins became so adept at playing cards that one day, in a well-planned ambush, they cleaned Muslim dada of all the money he was carrying. He had to buy some items from the town for his home and could not return without funds. For two or three days, Muslim dada was absent from the house and the storytelling came to a pause. Later, we found that he had gone on a gambling spree to recoup his losses and did to a sahukar what my brothers did to him.
Muslim dada was also a professional witness, known to all the lawyers and judges of the Ghazipur district court where my grandfather practised. He charged two rupees for each appearance. One day, he would appear in favour of the accused and on another, against him, in the same case.
My father was very fond of Muslim dada as the two hailed from the same village and had a wealth of stories to exchange from their past. In his old age, the dastango did not have a regular source of income. My father, who was teaching at Delhi University at the time, brought him home and got him the temporary job of serving water in examination halls. He followed it up by starting a side business of distributing the tabiz, the holy pendant, to University staff. His career as a "Pir Baba" had just begun to blossom when father shunted him off to his village.
For me, his illustrious curriculum vitae was a side show and in my frequent bouts of nostalgia, as I grow older, I visit him more often and try to relive the dastangoi. It never fails to cheer me up.