The Hands of Zahid Dar

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Nelson Richardson
5 years ago
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1 Zahid Dar had always been the stuff of dreams for me. I had heard endless stories about him. I had read much about him. I had seen some of his pictures. I had never thought that I would really see him, talk to him or touch him. I am in Lahore for a whirlwind of a trip who knows maybe I came to meet him without knowing it. It is one of those rare, beautiful moments of serendipity I don t think it is déjà vu rather a rush of memories, a flood of images and sensations that are not really mine but are borrowed and then owned through imagination. Like reliving a story, I had read many, many times as familiar as the back of my palm and as unknown to me as someone else s touch. My friend Farah Zia, whose interview of Dar was one of the pieces I have read and reread, also happens to be with me on this fateful day. We are about to enter Readings and there he is, like I have imagined so many times, sitting on the chair outside, smoking a cigarette. Farah introduces us, I am rapt as I look at him, while we wait so that he can finish his cigarette. We walk inside and he asks me again, Kya naam hai. 1 Farah tells me that they will sit and chat in the café and I can take a look around at the books and then join them when I m done. So I try, more than half my heart and head following them into the café. I am not interested in the books 1 What s your name? 32

2 on the shelves. How would I be, when all I am really thinking about is the man who embodies all the best books in the world. Zahid Dar, I had heard, had read much more than anyone could possibly read. Zahid Dar, I had heard, denied everything else in life because he wanted to read. Zahid Dar, I had heard, was the writer who stopped writing so that he could read. How could books even stand a chance against him! I pick up a few collections by Asad Mohammad Khan, Anwar Sajjad and a copy of Aakhri Sawaariyaan and rush into the café to sit beside the enigmatic legend. Kaun si kitaab li? 2 Like in the stories I had heard so many times. Every time someone meets Dar sahab, his first query is regarding the books they hold in their hands. I show him my frugal selection and he doesn t say much. Probably he doesn t approve. Perhaps he has read them all. He did not complete his formal education because he did not like the books in the syllabus, because he wanted to read. He tried working at a factory once but fell ill and gave up the thought of working because he wanted to read. On being asked why he never married, he says that every time such an opportunity would present itself, the woman in question would ask him to work and as Farah writes, all he ever wanted to do was read. He doesn t travel, he refuses to leave Lahore. In this city, he has found all the books he wanted to read. He asks me where I have come from. Delhi, I say, but that I am from Calcutta. He wants to know what kind of a place Calcutta is. 2 What book did you pick up? Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 33

3 I fumble and try to say that it s an old city in many ways like Lahore. Like you have a Pak Tea House, we have an Indian Coffee House. Like Anarkali, we have College Street. And that maybe he would like it. Would he like to see it? Aisa kaise ho sakta hai? Aap chalein mere saath. Mai ek baar gaya tha, border paar, bina passport ke. Phir mujhse poochha gaya ke mujhe kahaan rehna hai. Maine kaha Lahore. 3 Another friend, Irfan Aslam, joins us. We get coffee and tea and Farah asks for some lemon cream biscuits that are special due to nostalgia. I want to say so much, ask and hear so much, but I fear time falling short in the face of this meeting. So I decide to chitchat passively and let him say what he wishes to. Zahid Dar is after all a rebel in his own right. I try to soak in everything about him as the conversation drifts around the table. The intensely turquoise shalwar kameez perfectly reflects the detached curiosity in his eyes. His wrinkles testify to a thousand unslept dreams. And his hands, witnesses to a pile of unwritten books. I keep gazing at his hands perhaps because for me, Zahid Dar has always been a writer. Perhaps because I am obsessed with all that, that could have been. I had first read his nazms on the Rekhta website and was overwhelmed by their stark simplicity juxtaposed with such force and depth. Then I came to know that he likes to think of himself as a reader more than a writer. 3 Is that for real? You should come with me, to see for yourself. I ve been there once. I crossed the border without a passport. I was asked, where I wish to live. I said, Lahore. 34

4 Staring creepily at his creased, elegant hands, I think of Escher s Drawing Hands. The Reader is a living sign for every writer to sit back and think about the entwined processes of reading and writing, the real, palpable attachment of pleasure and pain to literature. He begins to fiddle around with his cigarette box and complains to Farah that they don t let him smoke inside anymore. Also that his friend is not coming to meet him anymore. Ab wo mujhse khafaa ho gayee. Ab dosti nahin rahi. Kyun? Ek din hum baithe they aur uske haath pe maine apna hath rakh diya. To who khafa ho gayee aur uthke chali gayee. Haath pe haath rakh dene se kya hota hai. 4 We break into an uncontrollable bout of laughter. Farah asks why he did such a thing. He says because he wanted to and then asks Farah if she would mind if someone would keep their hand on hers. She says yes, she would mind a lot and would never talk to him again. He then asks me if I would mind and I say that it would depend upon whose hands they are. At this point Irfan Aslam offers his hands but Dar sahab says he is not interested in his hands and we laugh again, as Dar sahab s dost walks in and decides to sit at another table. Seeing her, he continues to complain loudly about how she stopped being his friend. We ask him what her name was and he couldn t remember. Then sheepishly he takes out a page 4 She was estranged from me. We are no longer friends. Why? We were sitting one day, and I placed my hand upon hers. She was cross, and left. Tell me, what if someone places their hand on yours? Is it so forbidden? Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 35

5 from his pocket and shows it to us. It was a name not written but almost drawn. I offer him a passport size photograph that I am carrying and ask him to remember me by it. He keeps it standing on the table, against a biscuit packet in front of him and looks at it now and then as he drinks tea. Kahaan thehri ho? Model Town. Udhar to main bhi rehta hoon. Mujhe saath le jaana. 5 Farah tells him that she will drop us together and we begin to leave. He wants us to wait as he wants to smoke a cigarette. We tell him he can smoke in the car. I offer him the few Classic Milds I had carried from Delhi. He takes them and gives me my photograph back, saying Main ise kahaan rakhoonga? Tum rakh lo meri yaad mein. 6 In the car I tell him that since I have given him all my cigarettes, he should give me one of his Morvens. He does so, saying Aapke haath se mera haath lag gaya. 7 As we drive past the wide roads of Lahore in surprisingly pleasant weather, he asks Kya Dilli mein bhi aisi sadkein hai? 8 5 Where are you staying? Model Town. That s where I live, too. Take me while going. 6 Where will I keep this? You take it, for my memory s sake. 7 My hand has accidentally touched yours. 8 Are there streets like this in Delhi, too? 36

6 We keep chatting, with me mostly in a trance and soon we have reached Model Town. We cannot seem to find our way to the right address and I am in a strange phase of joy the longer we take to find the address, the longer I get to be with him. Dar sahab is sitting in front of me. My hands are holding the sides of the car seat in between us and I try to steal this moment to remember for the rest of my life. We are now in front of the gate. Dar sahab begins to open the door of the car and I tell him to keep sitting inside and give him my hand. He takes it and says nothing. I do not want to go inside but nothing can stop this separation. Nothing more can happen at this frozen point. I smile and hug Farah and go inside. I try not to wash my hands for the longest time, until I have to eventually take a shower. For the next two days I am in Islamabad, where I keep thinking of Zahid Dar, reading his poems again and wanting to see him again. On my return to Lahore, which also happens to be my last day in the city, after a beautiful and busy day, I rush to Readings, hoping against all hopes that I will catch a glimpse of Zahid Dar and hold his hands again. Of course, he is not there. I ask the people at the counter if Dar sahab had been to Readings that day. They tell me that he had come the previous day and had fallen ill. He could not walk properly and has not come in today. I want, very badly, to get in touch with him, somehow, visit him perhaps. But then I remember that he doesn t let anyone go to his house and that he is only seen in public when he wishes to be seen and that like real writers, he is, at all times otherwise, unavailable. The evening begins to crouch in on me. Desperate, I begin to loiter around Model Town for a Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 37

7 while, not knowing really what I am hoping for. Perhaps to be able to read a story I had begun to re-live. Perhaps to talk a little about reading, writing and being lost. Perhaps to ask him how to deal with the fear that his hands had transferred onto mine and inflicted my dreams. Aur ab khwaab daraate hain mujhe Aur main sochta hoon Jaane kis khwaab mein kis khwaab ne kis khwaab ko dekha hoga Log jis vehm mein hain, main bhi hoon 9 is a doctoral scholar in Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University 9 Now the nightmares threaten me And I keep wondering In which of my dreams, a dream may have seen a dream. The delusions of the world, are mine too. 38

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