REPLICA

Mansha Yad’s
“Replica”

Translated from the original Urdu by Avtar Singh Judge
 

We were going from Delhi to Agra.
The Sun of end-December had just arisen. All around, the atmosphere was misty and things at a longer distance were obscured from the vision. But as we moved further and further away from the city, the sun began to scatter its rays and the fog began to disperse and disappear.
I had gone to sleep late at night, because of which my mind too was a little foggy, thus making me doze off again and again. But even with my eyes closed I could see things at a great distance. What I then saw was that time which damages everything had left her untouched. Even if it had wanted to, it couldn’t have done any damage to her. Her lotus face was as soft and fresh as it used to be years ago, and she seemed to be so full of joy, now that her long cherished desire to see the Taj Mahal was going to be fulfilled.
Ever since we had departed from the city of Anarkali and Noorjehan, she had kept on talking about the Taj. Apart from the Taj, she seemed to have no interest in anything else. She didn’t accompany me even to the Mushaira, though there was a time when she could have sacrificed anything at the altar of my poetry, even a real Taj Mahal! But now she interested only in the Taj Mahal and was getting so restless for it that it seemed as if the Taj Mahal had been built especially for her and was now calling her to itself.
Awaiting are the graves.
Like mother wait for their sons.
“It seems as if it is a dream.”
“Who knows it may very well be!”
“No… Had it been a dream there wouldn’t have been so much difference in our ages.”
Perturbed by the fact, when I saw my reflection in the windowpane, I was shocked.
“This face is certainly not mine!” I said apprehensively.
Taking a small mirror from her purse she gave it to me and said, “How come you have forgotten your own face?”
I looked into the mirror. The features of that face that I had seen in the mirror certainly resembled with those of mine. But then, a feature of a model of the Taj Mahal that is sold in the streets too resembles those of the real Taj Mahal. This face was certainly not mine! Eyes, brow, nose and the hair on my head --- none of them belonged to me. But there was a mole which looked extremely familiar. I felt as if someone had stolen and taken away my glowing face while I was asleep and fixed another wrinkled and white-haired neck on my shoulders.
But what about that mole? Perhaps it was to deceive me that someone had pasted it right at the same spot on the lower portion of my right cheek, where I was used to seeing it. I rubbed my face vigorously with a handkerchief and tried to remove that mole. But it seemed that it had been stuck there with some effective adhesive solution. The fact that my face had been stolen in an alien land made me terribly uneasy. It could have created all sorts of problems for me. It was then that I compared the face I saw in the mirror with the ones on my passport and identity card and got completely unnerved. I said to myself, “This face is certainly not mine!”
“You are getting upset over nothing. This face is definitely yours.”
“You are really fantastic! Don’t you know my face?”
“I do. That’s why I am telling you that.”
“Then you are sure that it is the same face that you know.”
“Well, no … It is not exactly the same. But then I do realize this much that after all these years it may have undergone considerable change.”
“Change is there. In fact it is ought to be there. But I can’t be mistaken about my own face. I see it everyday. I can’t be deceived.”
“You did shave this morning. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. But I was in such a hurry that I never gave it a thought. But when I was brushing my teeth in the evening, my glance fell on the mirror. What I saw in it then was my own face.”
“May be what you say is right. But if this thing has really happened, then where has your face gone to? Who took it away?”
“This is exactly what I fail to understand.”
The bearer at the hotel flashed across my mind; then the manager; and then that mysterious person as well, who always kept sitting in the lobby and stared at me with such suspecting eyes.
“Stop the vehicle!” I almost shouted. “I have left my face behind. Perhaps it has been exchanged with someone else’s!”
All the people started turning around to have a look at me. And then the Sardarji sitting next to me took his face in his hand and showing it to me said, “If you like this one, you can take this one and give me yours.”
People all around me burst into a laughter. I felt ashamed of my silly behavior.
And the old man sitting on my back-seat heaved into a cold sigh and said, “Even my face has been left far behind.”
“Well Sir, you too exchange it…” said the Sardarji jocularly while pointing his finger in the direction of a jet black person “with that person.”
Once gain the sound of guffaws arose from all sides.
For a while, symptoms of annoyance appeared on the face of the dark man, but a moment later it came back to its normal expression. Falling under the spell of a pleasing thought, he said, “Sure sir! Change it if you like… You can have it free of charge! When I reach Agra again I’ll get a new one made for myself out of marble.”
Everyone began to laugh again.
“They are our guests and are perhaps under some stress”, said a middle-aged man with a serious face, “you people should not make fun of them.”
“Have you come from Lahore?” enquired Sardarji.
“Yes.”
“You are welcome... being our honored guests.”
“Thank you.”
“”Do forgive me brother”, said Sardarji with folded hands, please don’t mind my joke.”
“It’s all right”, I replied.
“Are you worried about something”, said the middle-aged man with a serious face.
“Yes… Well not exactly… It is just that I remembered something.”
At that very moment, the television was put on, showing some film, and now the eyes of everyone were diverted to its screen…
The heroine entered a shopping center. The salesman started displaying multi-colored sarees before her…
It was then that I quietly got up and taking long strides arrived at Anarkali via Neela Gumbud and started looking for the shop where, seeing the model of Taj Mahal, she had shown a keen desire to buy it. But I had stopped her from doing that saying, “I will present it to you on your birthday.”
Standing there she had kept pondering about the suggestion and then said, “You will be put to unnecessary trouble.”
“In fact it will give me a great pleasure.”
“All right,” she had said, “If it is you who gives it to me, its value would be considerably enhanced in my eyes…”
Soon afterwards I found the shop. The price of that model already been settled. So, as soon as I reached I ordered them to pack it up. But it so happened that when I was coming out of the shop with the packed up Taj Mahal, my foot slipped in the stairs and the package slipped out of my hand and fell on the roadside. There was no doubt in my mind that it had been completely smashed up. People gathered there. Even the shopkeeper left the counter and came out and offered to restore it with some solution. But I was feeling so ashamed and dumbfounded that I left the place in a hurry. I did not have either the courage to open the package and examine the damage or the means to buy another model. I knew that even if it was repaired with some solution it was not worth offering to anyone as a present. And it was certainly not possible to present it to a person who couldn’t stand even a minute stain or patch --- both on things material as well as sentiments. On reaching home I opened the package with a fluttering heart. It had actually gone to pieces; and although the central dome with all the arches and doors was intact, the lower platform which supported the middle part and the minarets had cracked and broken in many places. One of the minarets had broken into two while the other was now in three pieces, and then the filigree stone network in the front and on the sides of the platform had been broken into so many bits and pieces that the task of restoring them to the right places was anything but easy. I stuffed it up with paper strips; packed it up again and pushed the package under my bed. And then resting my head on the pillow I kept pondering for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. Whether I should go to attend her birthday party or stay back; if I choose to go then what present was I going to take for her? On the contrary, if I didn’t, then what possible excuse could I offer to her? While I was still trying to arrive at some decision, my mind perceived the opening line of a poem which reflected the true state of my mind at the time. With some effort I composed the second line and completed the couplet. After that I did what remained to be done. I sat down to complete the poem to offer it to her as a birthday present.
That was the early period of my literary career. The poem, probably, was not up to the mark from the aesthetic point of view, but it truly projected the condition I wan in at that time. It described all I had done to buy the Taj Mahal; the days that I had passed without taking any food; worked overtime and sold some of my books. It also contained the description of how it got smashed up. The incident related to its destruction had been presented in a peculiarly poetic manner. I had said that the Taj Mahal could not stand up to her beauty and comeliness so it broke down before coming face to face with her and thus saved itself from a tremendous disgrace.
She liked the poem so much that she almost forgot about the Taj Mahal. In fact on the very next day she said, “It is a good thing that it broke, otherwise, how could you have written such a fine poem!”
Now, she had said just for the sake of saying, because just three or four days later she came to me early in the morning and said, “Give that model to me.”
“What will you do with it? It is completely smashed up is worse than useless.”
“The thing belongs to me. So, you give it to me in whatever form it is!”
“All right, I will get you another one exactly like this one.”
“Certainly not! I insist on having this one and I won’t leave unless I take it with me.”
I handed over the package to her. Just when she started her car to leave, I said, “It’s a pity, I can’t do what I want to. Had it been with in my reach, I would have presented a golden Taj Mahal to you instead of the one made out of stone.”
“I have no interest in gold. Moreover, you have no right to poke fun at the poor people who happen to fall in love.”
“Oh no! Do you know what my weight is like?”
“How much is it?”
“It is exactly eighty five pounds.”
“Tell me in tolas and mashas. You know it very well how weak I am in math….”
 

“Sardarji, what is the price of gold over here?” I enquired.
“To be paid with what?” Sardarji broke into laughter.
“What am I asking you is the price of gold… I mean gold…”
“I am not sure but I think it is something like three thousand rupees a tola.”
I wanted to convert pounds into tolas and multiply them by three thousand. With this at that very moment a cavalcade of the darling of the Misr (Egypt) appeared on the scene in my mind: ‘There was a commotion all around.’
The broker pronouncing the merits that the youth possessed stepped down from the raised platform. From their palaces the women taking part in the auction through their agents got completely upset. A hush fell on the traders trying to make a bargain. For, who could compete with the king in naming the price!
The king threw a glance at the broker and ordered, “Let the auction go on.”
The broker bowed before him respectfully and ascending the platform once again made the announcement:
“Is there anyone who is willing to buy a handsome, delicate and a jovial Jewish slave who has no equal in this world?”
“Who can buy him when we are here?” The king announced in a spirited voice.
“Ask his master how much he wants for him. We wish to buy him at any price.”
There was a pin drop silence all around.
The master pushed the crowd back and came forward. After paying the respect due to a king he said, “It is only when your excellency gives me the promise to protect my life that I shall open my mouth.”
“Promise given! You say what you want to!”
“Your excellency, can I be offered gold equal to his weight?”
“Why not?” The king once looked at the youth and said, “After all what is his weight as compared to the wealth stored in our treasuries?”
An order was issued to the ministers: Let the royal treasure be brought here and a large weighing scale be arranged. The royal order was executed instantly. The scale was brought there; and carrying large trays full of precious coins and gems, the slaves in their uniforms escorted by armed guards were ushered in. The lad in his early youth who looked withered in an alien land, was made to sit on one scale of the balance while the trays of pure gold and gems were off-loaded on the other. The crowd was dumbfounded when it saw that one by one every tray had been emptied and yet the scale on which the youth was sitting did not move even an inch from the ground. The treasurer broke into a cold sweat. The nobles there began to look disturbed and uneasy. The king who was completely bewildered by now proclaimed: “Let the blessed slave, endowed with such delicate constitution, be given to us. We have lost the bet. We can’t pay the price demanded for him.”
The slave was brought to his palace. He was bathed in rich perfumes and was dresses in clothes made of silk and satin and the Queen of the City of Misr herself waited upon him like an inferior maidservant ever ready to fulfill every wish of his…”
She took away the broken down Taj Mahal and after dusting and cleaning it, placed it on a niche so high that from there it gave the impression of being completely intact and there nobody could touch it.
What she then said about it was, “I will never let it be separated form me.”
But then there is a lot of difference between the word and the deed. Almost as much as there is between the real Taj Mahal and its replica.
The model kept lying where it had been placed; but she herself abandoned it and went away to some other place; perhaps to some bigger and real Taj Mahal. Now my condition too had become like that model which apparently looked intact, but which would have broken into innumerable pieces if anyone had touched it even slightly.
“What is the matter with you,” Sardarji placed his hand on my shoulder and asked me gently, “Why are you crying?”
“No… It is not that,” I hastily wiped my eyes and said to him, “It seems I have caught a cold.”
Sardarji may have tried to solicit more information out of me, but by that time the coach had entered the compound of a midway restaurant and stopped.
By now there was abundance of sunshine. The mist and dust too have disappeared. There was a slight nip in the air. In such an atmosphere I really enjoyed having a hot cup of tea.
After a little while, when the coach left the place, I espied a herd of pigs at a place by the roadside; and within me I heard Muhammad Buta Gujrati chanting his peculiar genre of Punjabi poetry:
“Many who claimed to be Muslim saints actually took to herding pigs for the sake of love.”
Realizing that I was watching the pigs with interest, Sardarji asked me, “Don’t you have them there?”
“We have. But they live away from the human beings, hiding in fields and forests.”
“We have plenty of them. Actually they are bred here.”
“On our side they grow up on their own. And they devastate standing crops and fields.”
“That’s what they do everywhere. I hear that ‘pig’ is a word of abuse in your area.”
“Yes, where we live, people avoid bringing his name to their lips. There they call it ‘outsider’.”
“Why do they call it an outsider?”
“They believe that by calling that animal a pig or a boar their tongue would be defiled.”
Sardarji broke into childish laughter.
“What’s there to laugh about, Sardarji?”
“Your tongue is already polluted,” he said while continuing to laugh.
“Doesn’t matter, I will rinse my mouth with water when I get down.” I too replied to him in a jovial manner.
Sardarji suddenly became serious and said, “You know Sir, actually I feel that it should be called an insider.”
“Yes, all the disorder everywhere in this world is because of this insider.”
“What you say is right.”
“Well Sir, you see it for yourself. These bastards who devastate the crops here and on your side have become so fat by over eating that their bellies almost burst with food.”
The flying coach stopped for a while at the Mausoleum of Akbar the great at Sikandra. As it entered the city of Agra, her face began to glow with abundant emotion. But she didn’t utter a single word throughout.
Though I too was quiet, my inside was strangely in the grip of a severe turmoil, as if something ominous was going to happen.
I forget how long we kept standing in the porch from where one could see the whole Taj Mahal; how the first glimpse of it bewitches each and every onlooker!
What she said at the time was, “All those thousands of masons, laborers, stone-cutters, the members of the staff--- that kept a watch over all of them--- who kept on working here for twenty to twenty-two years and kept raising it bit by bit; I am sure they too must have had their love affairs; each one of them must have had his own Mumtaz Mahal.”
“Yes,” I replied, “Perhaps many of them buried their Mumtaz Mahals right here.”
“You too should …” she started to say something but did not complete her sentence.
It was then that I saw a strange light in her eyes which virtually gave me a scare. I quickly caught hold of her hand and descended the stairs. Standing close to the tanks, water fountains and on the footpath in front of the Taj Mahal we had ourselves photographed individually as also as a pair.
Then we came to a spot where there was a notice board. Photography beyond this point was prohibited. I shut off my camera and taking her with me, proceeded towards the Taj Mahal. We saw the platform which had broken into pieces when the package had slipped out of my hand. We stood there for some time and then ascended the stairs and came to the terrace which provided the foundation for the wonderful central dome and minarets which she had got repaired with plaster of Paris.
“The filigree network in stone had broken here and there,” she said while looking down from the terrace.
“yes, and this particular part of it was completely smashed up,” I said while indicating the area by taking measured steps.
“This was the minaret which had broken into two,” she said.
“And that minaret had broken into three pieces. As you look at it, it seems to be leaning a little.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
My heart was longing to touch the filigree network, the walls and the minarets, but I feared that if I did so, they may come apart and fall.
One day her younger sister was cleaning the room. As she tried to remove the dust on the model, it fell and broke into countless pieces. After that it could not be put together again. Its pieces remained there, abandoned as they were, for quite some time. And then someone picked them up and threw them into the dustbin.
We had come into the hall under the central dome which had the tombstones right over the grave of the king and the queen. We offered our prayers there; saw the filigree network made of the colored stones; heard the echoes that persist in the dome for long; and then came out. I had no desire whatsoever to go near the real graves down below. I felt nervous. But she has always had a great fascination for graves.
She turned to me and said, “Let us go down. We will be back after saying our prayers in a jiffy.”
And then without waiting for my answer she said, “All right, you stay here. I’ll be back soon.”
She descended the stairs and went away. I waited for her for a while. When she didn’t show up for a long time, I went down in search of her. I looked for her walking back and forth in the crowd, but she was not to be seen anywhere. I searched for her everywhere but couldn’t find a trace of her. Tired, I came and sat on the stairs of the porch from where all the visitors have to pass while going in or coming out. Beautiful women; newly wed couples and boys and girls, rather young in years, were coming in and going out. But as far as I could see, there was no trace of her.
I had to reach Delhi the same day. My return ticket had already been confirmed for the following day. So, I came back alone with a heavy heart.
After coming to Lahore, I had the film developed and printed. The pictures had come out really good. But there was no trace of her in any of those photographs.
 

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