चल मनै देआ मौजिया

It happened on a Sunday. Standing at the city-end of the Dhaunthli slope, I fell to wondering: when was this name given, and by whom? I had set out from home with the thought — come, let me take a short ramble today. The cramped life of the city, and then schoolmastering — sitting, and sitting? A man's very joints fuse together.

We masters give the boys less of reading and writing and more of moral instruction — "Idam kartavyam, idam kartavyam": do this, do not do that. And in the same way I too have my well-wishing friends, who fret over my health even more than I do. The moment they meet me, out comes their old diagnosis, recited like a refrain: "All this sitting will be the death of a man — that is why you're in this state. Walk a mile or two now and then, morning and evening, and just see whether your appetite doesn't come back, whether this stiffness of the legs doesn't pass, whether you're not rid of this daily headache." But as the boys take our words in at one ear and let them out the other, so I too had always put off these sovereign remedies of my well-wishers — now laughing them off, now striking, with great gravity, the pose of a man about to act on them at last. That Sunday, though, who knows what spirit got into me, that I truly resolved to spend the whole day rambling about. Into the leather satchel slung at my back I put a book or two, paper and pencil, some biscuits, a loaf of bread, my own bamboo flute, and whatever other odds and ends I needed; and having drunk my morning tea, I set off, bent on going toward Nagrota, an umbrella in my hand. The old saw came to mind: When you travel, set out with a coin, a small pot, a rope, a stick, a knife, and a day's food and drink. But my journey was neither long, nor was I bound for any forest or thicket; so I thought it needless to carry a rope and a water-pot. And as I had to go along the bank of the Tawi, the umbrella served for a stick too — and had its own sharp use besides.

Thank goodness I met none of those "well-wishers" on the way. Else, seeing that scout's satchel at my back, and on my feet — over the woollen socks — the blue rubber-soled "flit" shoes, they'd surely have hatched their plots: "What great campaign is this you've launched? Have you gone out to ramble, or to do some geological survey? How distant is the return? Is there any thought of coming back at all, or will you march 'ever onward' like the Nihangs?"

Well — I gave them the slip and got away; but the moment I gained the top of the slope, it was as though the slope itself had stopped me. A curiosity stirred in me: Dhaunthli — when did this slope come by this name? Why? Who gave it? As I stood thinking, the tale of the exiled Pandavas from the Mahabharata came to mind — how in a forest, the five Pandavas being distressed with thirst, the four younger brothers went one by one to drink water and did not return. Where they went there was a most beautiful lake, but beside it, dwelling in a dense tree, was a yaksha, who said: "I will let you drink of this lake only when you have first answered my questions." Maddened with thirst, they ignored his words and bent to drink — and before the water cupped in their palms could even reach their lips, the poor men toppled over, struck down. At last the eldest, Yudhishthira, came there himself, and to him too the yaksha said the same. But he was a man of patience. He paused, and said: "Ask, then, if you would ask." The yaksha put him many questions, and to all he gave fitting answers. The yaksha was pleased; the four fainted Pandavas came to their senses; and then all of them, well refreshed, drank the cool, clear water of the lake.

As I stood thinking on this and turned to look back, a young forest Guard — khaki shirt and trousers, a sun-turban tied, a fly-whisk staff slung pointed at his side — came and stood beside me and said, laughing:

Guard: "She's a sort of madwoman, sir! She just lies there in the doorway of the temple. She asks nothing of anyone, and never goes anywhere else. Seeing the men come and go to the temple, she guffaws; with the women she speaks less. When the mood takes her she says, 'Give me a chickpea-offering, do!' — and goes to touch their feet, and they shriek and curse her and run off, and she guffaws. So you've come out to ramble today? You haven't forgotten something? Why have you stopped?"

Master: "No, I've forgotten nothing — nor am I looking at this poor beggar-woman. I stopped to wonder: who gave this slope, this little market, the name Dhaunthli? When did he give it? And why?"

Guard: [A ripple of laughter spreading over the simple young man's lips] "Dhaunthli! Why — has the name some meaning too, sir? Dhaunthli!"

Master: "It is the meaning that set me thinking, Guard-raja. Dhaunthli was, in truth, Dharm-sthali — a place of dharma, a place of merit. That same name you and I have worn down to 'Dhaunthli.' Behind a name like this there's always some tale, some story. What is the tale of Dhaunthli? That thought came to me, and I stopped." [The Guard was watching my face; my words seemed to astonish him a little.]

Guard: "What you say seems right. Dharm-sthali — and Dhaunthli! Bravo! Babu-ji, what is your work? Research and inquiry like this, only master-folk do — are you too somewhere…?"

Master: [I said, smiling] "I'm a master, raja! Else, in this world of today, who has the leisure to sit and ponder such useless things?"

Guard: "Today it's all yours and yours, master-ji. If the weft itself gets tangled, what can the poor weaver do? Even the poor Lord must be standing in some corner, watching this snarl of His own weaving. So — what have you thought about the tale of Dhaunthli? I've read up to the eighth or ninth class, Babu-ji. In some book I read that 'Jammu-Lochan,' out hunting, saw a lion and a goat drinking water together at one spot, and took it for a very holy place — and so settled this city of Jammu here, in his own name. That's why it's written that the old elders, to this day, call Jammu the City of Dharma. Why do you smile, master-ji? Is it not true?"

[I halted as I walked, and looking toward the dense thicket, asked him —]

Master: "Guard-ji — this thicket must be your very own preserve? You people come and go in it every day. There are no lions here, but there are leopards, and hill-bears too. Have you ever once seen them drinking water side by side?"

Guard: "No, master-ji — never have I seen it."

Master: "The thing is just this, Chaudhari — it was a very cunning lie, which some clever, self-seeking man put about on purpose, and the simple folk, in their simplicity, took for truth. If it's a holy place, then why is there so much loss of cattle-wealth in these woods? Why do the leopards of this thicket eat the hill-goats? Guard-raja, you must have seen a circus? In that iron cage we have seen the lion and the goat together — the goat standing, poor thing, with its hoofs on the lion's back; but the pounding of its heart could be felt even outside the cage. And the whole wonder of it is in the ringmaster's one hand on the whip and the other gripping the pistol. The lion and the goat in one place? Yes — if some lion had turned ascetic renunciate, that would be another matter. You must have read or heard of that lion who, grown old, would take in his paw a gold bangle he'd come by, and, assuring the travellers passing through the forest that he had become a 'renunciate,' would tempt them with the gift of it — and some greedy man or other would fall into the trap. And that other lion, surely, you've heard of too — penned in a cage somewhere, who, pleading and entreating the passing travellers, swearing a hundred oaths, would cry, 'Get me out of here, and I'll sing your praises all my life' — and on getting out, how he reared up to devour that simple traveller! And in these same tales comes the story of the good-natured (in truth, foolish) lion, who, hearing the petition of the forest beasts, agreed that the beasts should themselves send him, by turns, one creature each from their homes to eat. They call him a fool because a little hare tumbled him into a well. Tell me, Guard-raja — are these stories true, or that one of Jammu-Lochan? And one thing more is worth pondering, my friend: seeing so pure and holy a place, why did it not occur to Jammu-Lochan that he ought to raise an ashram there and do yoga and penance, and so make an end of this round of coming and going, and better his next world? Why did the thought of settling a city there and reigning come into his head instead? What has rule to do with dharma? They are born enemies, the two."

Guard: "What you say is right, Babu-ji. After all, how would some new outsider raise a brand-new city, all of a sudden, in the middle of a thicket? Surely there was a settlement there before — if not a town, then some poor little village or two. And even then, master-ji, it must have been the strong who held sway. We are very simple folk even today; what to say of those days? What a cunning man this Jammu-Lochan was, master-ji! What a false thing he put about, that we fools go on swallowing for truth to this very day. Many a time I've thought — the place ought to be made a tirtha, if it could, where Jammu-Lochan saw that strange sight. He must have spread this among the people too, master-ji?"

Master: "Guard-raja! You people are hunters as well — you know a hundred secrets of the hunt. But the root principle is just one, brother: the hunter deceives his game. Once the game falls for the deceit, take it the matter is done. Jammu-Lochan too had to hunt — to bring these simple folk under his rule and reign over them. And about this new bond, what more beautifully cunning propaganda could there be than that he had seen, at this spot, the lion and the goat drinking water together, and that the place was very holy? His meaning was to reassure the simple folk that the bond of king and subject is just like the bond of lion and goat — 'brother, but my bond with you will be like that of the very lion and goat you saw standing close, drinking water together, in this thicket.' And the people will have thought him some man of God, blessed with the sight of so wondrous a thing — we have lived here for generations and never once seen it. We graze our cattle in the forest, or in the thickets, and the fear never leaves us that the deer may do some harm — and do they not? Hardly a week passes empty: today this one's cow, tomorrow that one's calf. And he was so mighty and fortunate a man that, in this thicket teeming with leopards, he saw the lion — the very mount of the goddess Bhagavati — and that too standing beside a goat, drinking water! Was it the power of the place? Was the lion himself some mount of Durga's? Or was it the marvel of Jammu-Lochan's own great fortune?

"Jammu-Lochan too must have thought that Providence had given him his true game that day: Now, becoming the lion, take your seat on the lion-throne, and, waving your plumes, reign over the goats. The poor goats can hardly have stopped to weigh whether this was good or ill. And the spreading of that false, poisonous tale, too, was done by those simple, goat-like folk themselves. To sit at ease on his royal throne, Jammu-Lochan picked out from among the people the very men he judged both clever-cunning and greedy-grasping. He gave each a pat on the back, a title and a rank, and then, like the germs of some dangerous disease, loosed them among the people. Those bought propagandists — wherever they saw four men gathered, there they would go and sing the king's praises afresh. About him they spread daily new tales and stories, and so carried on the propaganda of the king's miraculous power. It is the working of those very tales that, even centuries on, we simple men — taking that false, deceitful story, which only fastens the bonds of slavery on us, for truth — are eager to dig out, in these thickets, the 'imaginary' lake where, to guard the honour of the goats' clan-grandmother, the lion-clan grandfather, on seeing her, did not so much as stir, but lowered his eyes in respect and stood silent until the grandmother had drunk her water and gone. Bravo! Bravo!

"Men bought with money sacrifice everything to their self-interest — caste and kin, faith and dharma. In the language of politics, Jammu-Lochan was a man of policy; in his eyes those men were buffoons and minstrels, found and taken up. He bought, too, with money, the historians who, for a wage, can carve a false cow into stone as a true one, and a truth into a falsehood. It is these bought-and-sold historians who, in every age, by striving to show the Ravanas and Kamsas, the Jarasandhas and Duryodhanas as generous, honoured, and wise, have cast dust in the people's eyes — and go on casting it even now."

Guard: "What dust are these poor wretches to cast now? People grow wiser by the day."

Master: "No, Guard-raja! Even now there are many who cast dust in people's eyes, and no shortage of dust to cast. As the people grow wiser, Jammu-Lochan too keeps changing his moves and his stances. I have seen the notorious, embezzling official who came to hear the discourse of Nirmal Muni come with great humility and sit among the people on the dirty, torn mat itself — and the poor people would think: if there must be a ruler, let him be just such a one, with neither the pride of money nor of office. There is still a long fight and struggle ahead, Guard-ji, for the people against these dust-casting, cunning frauds."

Guard: "And where was this Jammu-Lochan from, master-ji?"

Master: "Of this, my friend, history has given no clue. There are people's guesses. Some say he was of 'Bhera'; some, no — an 'Aimnabadi'; some say of Gujranwala, some of Gujarat — all places gone into Pakistan after '47. The simple folk say Jammu-Lochan was of this very region: that he came down out of the snowy hills of Bhadarwah; some guess he was a shape-shifting crocodile of the Sarhun lake who took human form and came out this way; some are sure he was a talismanic elemental of the Trikuta hills who slid down through a cave and arrived here; someone says he was a malang-landlord from the Gul-Gulab Garh side who floated down the Chenab to the Jia-Pota crossing at Akhnoor, and from there, following the hunt, came out at that little pool. The true thing is this, Guard-ji: as many mouths, so many tales. Seven blind men examined an elephant; whichever limb each one's hand fell on, by that he framed his picture of the whole. Such is the state of these countless guesses. As a single sun, in a fragment of glass, is found split a hundredfold, so a single Jammu-Lochan too must have seemed to shine, in the mirrors of office, in a hundred forms."

Shah ji: "Not thirsty, master-ji? We've come two miles, two and a half. 'Gullu's enclosure' is behind us now; this is the temple of the Sitlas. Up on the road, the coming and going of lorries and trucks began only ten or twenty years back, master-ji; otherwise this road here ran day and night. The bells at the necks of the mules and ponies would jingle day and night, and all along it the echo of folk-songs rang. In those days these woods and thickets were very dense too."

Master: "These thickets were not only dense," I said. "The forts and strongholds of the worshippers of freedom were here too."

Shah ji: "And who are the worshippers of freedom, master-ji — these deer and leopards?"

Master: "No, not these deer and leopards, my friend. I speak of those heroes who, taking the Dido of Jagti for their leader, with their lives on their palms, made these very thickets their fortress — to guard the freedom of this land, to wipe out the black stains of the marauding tyrants' oppression."

Shah ji: "How is it, master-ji, that in the books our boys read, the false, fabricated tales of Jammu-Lochan are written down, and the name of a dashing hero like Dido appears nowhere?"

Master: "Dido was a true hero. Truth was dearer to him than policy; the dirty craving to win himself a royal throne was not in that pure heart. In it were just two things — the pure love of this land, and the steel resolve to give his all for its honour and glory."

Shah ji: "They say, master-ji, that the enemy trembled at the mere sound of his name."

Master: "Those enemies were the lackeys of a foreign sovereignty — many of those marauding tyrants had come sent by it. Setting up their police-posts here and there, they made the life of the people of this region a torment. Those cruel raiders took themselves for the standard of this land, and dealt out their arbitrary cruelties. Every day the honour, the pride, the dignity of the region was wounded; every day a fire was lit somewhere; every day some bridal joy was looted, some maiden's love trampled underfoot, some tender sprout of a mother's love torn to shreds. It was as though a slaughter of the deer were under way in the woods, and they were playing Holi with the blood of those innocent creatures."

Shah ji: "Master-ji, I've been to Jagti many a time. Go there, and the memory of Mian Dido never fails to rise. But this amazed me — that even there, of that true son of the soil, there's no memorial in his name, no foundation-stone, no tomb nor shrine. The Dogras ruled four generations, and the memory of that true, pure Dogra came to no one in all that time? Was that, after all, our own rule?"

Master: "It's the deceit of history, my lad — the helplessness of the Dogra land. The bought, sold historians did the baseness of branding that self-sacrificing hero a bandit and a marauder. He had not made his peace with that tyrant sovereignty. To them he kept saying just one thing —

'Keep your own land of the Manjha and the Malwa,
and empty this simple land of mine.'

These thickets, these clumps of acacia and thorn, this lovely flow of the Tawi's water, those three peaks of Trikuta — all of them bear witness that Dido was the true hero of this land, the honour-mark of this country. Whenever the true history of the Dogras comes to be written, then the milk will be strained out as milk, and the water as water — and the Jammu-Lochans, and their heirs, will have to stand naked before the court of the people-as-God to take their judgement."

Guard: "And will that day ever come, master-ji?"

Master: "Why should it not come? If you wish it, Guard-raja, and I wish it, and all wish it — who can keep that day from coming? For a hundred years and more a truth has been held down by falsehood; now it strains to fling off the falsehood and rise. That truth's petition the age must hear at last. Some of it you must tell, and some of it I."

Guard: "Master-ji, this I have learned only today — that books too can be filled with falsehood, that history can raise palaces of lies upon the breast of reality! I'll ask without flinching: why did Dido's heirs raise no memorial to that forefather of theirs, anywhere? What did they fear? That their plots of land would be seized? That their petty pensions would be stopped?"

Master: "This question is not to be asked by going to that one village, raja! It is to be asked standing in every crossroads. Before it, you are answerable too, and so are we. The blame for his murder lies not on that one man alone who fired the bullet of his gun into the broad chest on the common-land — the guilt of that murder lies on the whole people who, keeping silent, did not open their lips against the tyranny. Well — let us see what comes of it."

Guard: "Master-ji, I must cross the channel of the Tawi now and go a little beyond. My heart says I'd walk on further with you, but the Ranger sahib is coming to that village — he has an inquiry to make. This day I'll always remember. See the justice of time, on Jammu-Lochan and on Dido! The frauds got the royal throne and the fame, and the true martyr got the hard life of the thickets and forests, and the infamy of a bandit along with it. A fire on this false history! How far have you settled to go, master-ji? Don't go far. There — two men are coming up from the city, with a mule. As far as Nagrota you'll have their company. There's a well of cool water there; sit, eat and drink something, rest a while, and turn back. A tonga's to be had, and a bus keeps coming and going too. Now give me leave. Very well — namaste, master-ji."

Master: "Namaste, Guard-raja." When the two mule-men drew level with me, I asked: "Tell me, Shah-ji — where are you bound?"

Shah ji: "We, sir, are to go a little past Nagrota, up above — the arm of Nanaki. You'll have heard the name? Reckon it just near there. And you?"

Master: "I just set out, idly — it's the 'Come along, O reveller of my heart' sort of thing. It was a holiday; I thought I'd ramble a little way and come back."

Shah ji: "And what work do you do, sahib? Some service, or your own trade?"

Master: "My work is schoolmastering. I teach boys, Shah-ji."

Shah ji: "You're a master? Blessed fortune! The real work, if you ask anyone, is the masters'! And how the times have changed — this city's no backwater now. Once it was all the doings of kings and maharajas. Then came '47, and for those poor wretches the seven-and-a-half years' evil time set in. Master-ji, the higher the treetop, the harder the fall from it. People used to say that those who gave pearls in charity in a past life got the royal thrones — but those poor souls who had to leave the cow and the throne behind, what flaw was there in their pearls, brother? Eh, master-ji?"

Master: "It's the flood of a river, Shah-ji! It sweeps away even green gardens and fields at times. And the flood of time is more terrible, more forceful, than any of these — it swept everyone away. So much, I suppose, stood written in the poor men's fate. And what's to be done, Shah-ji?"

Shah ji: "It's a see-saw thing, the world, master-ji — like the swing at a fair. One end up, and the end that was above comes down."

Master: "No, Shah-ji! The age of the thrones of kings and maharajas won't come round again. That end has, take it, gone clean off the see-saw of the times."

Shah ji: "No — well, you've spoken true, master-ji! Where the sand-roller passes again and again, how is the clover to grow? A lad of our village is a jemadar in the army, master-ji, and he's been about many places. He says the kings and nawabs are in a sorry way — their plumes and thrones gone into the museums, and the poor wretches now in this worry: what trade to take up? Several kings, he says, have gone abroad and started some work, and several here at home; two or three have turned their very palaces into hotels and made themselves the owner-managers. Can such a thing be, master-ji? That the times should turn so far — who'd have thought it? One must step very wisely, Shah-ji — look hard at everything before one moves: wet ground, slippery mud, all of it. The kings and maharajas of our country were very shrewd indeed. To move by reading the temper of the time — that is wisdom itself. And what's so bad about the hotel trade? When did they ever rinse the cups with their own hands? There too they only sit and direct the work. Yes — this much difference there is, that in the palaces they gave the orders, and now in the hotels they must take others'. But there'll be a rain of money too, won't there? And all the honour and dignity of this world is got with money. Isn't it so, Shah-ji?"

Second Shah: "You've spoken true, master-ji. Money is money. This is the Kaliyuga, after all — and it's service alone that bears fruit."

Master: "And another thing, Shah-ji! Those plumes and crowns looked very fine from a distance — but their real comfort, no one ever asked those kings and nawabs about. For one, even a fine, good man feels a little strange in a plume; for another, the headache of it isn't worth it. As the people grew wiser, the heads that wore that plume and royal crown felt it grow heavier and heavier. Now — open hotels, open factories: it's one pleasure on top of another."

[The two Shahs fell to staring and staring at me. The old man asked —]

Second Shah: "May I ask one thing, master-ji?"

Master: [I answered, smiling] "Ask, and welcome."

Second Shah: "Master-ji, I'd heard there was a scheme to build a dam somewhere on this Tawi too — that a long, beautiful lake would form here because of it. They say many dams have been built in the country, many rivers stopped. What became of that scheme?"

Master: [I answered, laughing] "The fate of many a scheme is just that of a creature stillborn, Shah-ji. Give me the chair of government for four months, and you'd see whether the scheme came to fruit or not. But we stayed on at our school's old, rickety, wobbling chair, getting the boys to nail fresh planks onto it again and again — how was a lake to be made from there?"

[Saying this, I gave a loud guffaw, and tucking the umbrella under my arm, set the flute to my lips, drew the note straight, and struck up the strain —]

Master: "Come along, O reveller of my heart — let me take you rambling in the hills!"

[The mule stopped with a start, turned its head, and looked at me. The two Shahs too looked first at me, then at each other, and both gave a jerk of the head. One was saying to the other, low —]

Second Shah: "He's a master, isn't he — some screw's gone loose in the poor man. A while ago he was talking such fine things."

[The two of them left the footpath and climbed away to the left; and I, spying a grassy spot, sat down and gave myself to the joy of my flute. ✥]