Mohsin Mohalla

Ashfaq Ahmed
No one could remember when Master Ilyaas had begun to rent the small room in
their neighbourhood. However, everyone seemed to know that Master Ilyaas was an
immigrant and that he came from some part of Ambala; the dialect he used was spoken
around Ambala and Patiala. Master Ilyaas lived in the rented room, and the boys from the
neighbourhood came to him for help with their maths and multiplication tables and to
practise their writings on wooden slates.
Master Ilyaas owned two fighter quails and one purebred rooster. The quails
remained locked up in their cages, but the rooster stayed just outside the door of his
room. Master Ilyaas had put a copper ring on one of his legs and tied a strong string to it;
the other end of the string was tied to a nail he had hammered into his doorframe. Master
Ilyaas was respected by everyone in Mohsin Mohalla and they never failed to greet him
when they passed his door. They were sure Masterji worked, but no one knew exactly
what he did. Perhaps he was bookkeeper for tradesmen in the vegetable market in another
neighbourhood, or he laboured for daily wages in some factory or the other; whatever it
was he did, they knew he barely managed to get by on what he earned.
As it happened, Master Sahib was a simpleton who didn't know how to look out
for himself in a metropolis like Lahore. His plain looks inspired little love or compassion,
and his manner of speaking little confidence. Since he did not lie or cheat or exaggerate,
or boast or try to bully others, no one believed what he said, and his speech was so full of
grammatical and linguistic errors that his listeners would abandon his company in
frustration. So guileless, so undemanding was he that he did not appear to belong to the
human species. And because no one likes to associate with such people, he did not have
any friends. His presence had become a burden to the neighbourhood and to its societal
structure. And, ironically, that is precisely why ,the people of the mohalla respected
him; bowed and said their 'salaam’ before moving on when they passed by his door.
One winter evening, Master Ilyaas's landlord castigated him loudly. Using harsh
language, he threatened to throw out all his belongings if he didn't pay the rent he owed
him for the past six months within three days. Masterji froze with fear; he didn't have the
required one hundred and eighty rupees. He had only forty rupees. Heattached to it a ten
rupee note from his wallet to add it up to fifty. Up until now, the landlord had accepted
the twenty, thirty, forty or fifty rupees that Masterji handed over each month and had
extended the rent deadline. This time, however, he appeared to be adamant about getting
his money. Flinging the fifty rupee bundle, tied with thread, in front of the rooster, he
shouted: 'Bugger off! I will not accept this. Give me the full amount; the one hundred
and eighty rupees you owe. Master llyaas picked up the' bundle of notes from the floor
and put it in his pocket. Since he was unaccustomed to showing his emotions, he was not
able to weep. He went to his charpai and sat down on it despondently.
At the end of three days, the landlord removed Masterji's belongings from his
room; heplaced Master Sahib's charpai behind the two transformer poles near the
sidewalk and the rest of his possessions around it. He clamped a new Chinese lock on the
door and, climbing onto his scooter, rode away. The landlord's house was at some
distance from this mohalla, but he visited it each month in order to collect the rent due to
him from the rooms he had let out. Master Sahib managed somehow to pass the night
under the transformer. The next day he went to the haveli of Sheikh Karim Nawaz to
request a loan of two hundred rupees. Knowing him for the simple and docile fellow he
was, Karim Nawaz brushed him off; lending money to the likes of him was not a good
idea. Then Master Sahib went to Ismael the merchant and, reducing his request to one
hundred and fifty rupees, asked him for a loan.The merchant, too, turned him down.
Master Sahib approached everyone: the barber, butcher, doctor, lawyer, baker, but was
disappointed by each in turn. They all told him the same story; faced with inflation, they
did not have anything leftover to lend him.
Master Ilyaas spent eight nights in the open, beneath the flimsy shelter of the
transformer, before going to the homeopathic doctor to have his pulse taken. The doctor
examined him with his stethoscope and announced: ‘Jabbar’s bakery to buy hot milk. He
drank the milk and, showing his racing pulse to Jabbar, begged the baker to loan him two
hundred rupees. Jabbar began to laugh: nobody in his right mind would lend such a fool a
rupee and here he was asking for two hundred! The thought was so preposterous that
even Jabbar, who rarely laughed, could contain himself.With a quilt wrapped around his head
like an igloo, Master Ilyaas sat on his
charpai for three consecutive days. Those who passed by greeted him and remarked:
‘Getting some sun, Masterji?’ and from inside his quilt, in a muffled voice, Masterji
would reply, ‘Yes, I am feeling a bit cold.’
On the fourth day, at dawn, around the time of Fajr prayers, Masterji died. Every
inhabitant of Mohsin Mohalla was deeply grieved by his death. After breakfast, they
gathered outside and, wrapped in silence and sadness, stood in the sun. Masterji’s quail
were given a bowl of birdseed and his rooster was fed flour and sugar balls. Sheikh
Karim Nawaz Sahib came out of his haveli to sit under the transformer. A big rug was
spread on the ground and somebody placed two or three newspapers on it. People
gathered around the rug.
Sheikh Karim Nawaz took out two hundred-rupee notes, and giving them to Saeed
and Bilal, sent them off on their scooters to arrange for the grave. He gave three hundred
rupees to Babu Jalal to go with Rehmat to arrange for the white burial shroud, incense,
rose water and flowers. Jabbar the baker prepared a big pot of tea and served it to the
gathering of mourners. People started collecting money for the Qul ceremony and before
long the residents of Mohsin Mohalla had collected eight hundred and eleven rupees to
hand over to Sheikh Karim Nawaz.
Translated by Shaista Parveen
Glossary
Quails: a small or medium-sized New World game bird, the male of which has
distinctive facial markings.
Guileless: devoid of guile; innocent and without deception.
Charpai:Urdu word for a traditional woven cot.
Haveli: Urdu word for a mansion
Comprehension Questions
1. Why were the people of Mohsin Mohalla reluctamt to loan money to Masterji?
Was this act of theirs contradictory to the feelings they had for him?
2. Comment on the irony in the story.
3. Elucidate the contrast in the behaviour of the people before and after Masterji’s
death.