The First Majlis: Atu-ji, Mahmooda Begum and Maryam Zamani

The First Majlis

A conversation between Atu-ji and Mahmooda Begum, her mother, and Maryam Zamani Begum

Mahmooda Begum: Atu-ji [1]! *Adab* (my respects).

Atu-ji: Bless you, my dear, and may you stay a married woman into old age [2], Begum! And who is this with you?

Mahmooda Begum: Why, Atu-ji! Don't you know? She is my dear friend.

Atu-ji: Oh, who is it? Maryam Zamani?

Maryam Zamani: Hazrat! *Bandagi* (my humble greetings).

Atu-ji: Bless you, child, a long life to you; may your husband live and your children live. My dear! Where have you sprung from?

Maryam Zamani: I have only just arrived.

Atu-ji: Come, my dear, sit down. Tell me, are you well?

Maryam Zamani: Hazrat! Thanks be to God.

Atu-ji: Are the children well?

Maryam Zamani: They all send you their prayers.

Atu-ji: Do letters come from the Mirza?

Maryam Zamani: Yes, one comes every ten or fifteen days.

Atu-ji: Have you put Ahmad Mirza into the *maktab* (the elementary school)?

Maryam Zamani: Yes, it is a long time now since he started at the maktab.

Atu-ji: My dear! God keep him, how old will he be now?

Maryam Zamani: At the new moon he will enter his ninth [3] year.

Atu-ji: Well, my dear! May God keep your lap cool, and may you live to see your child's happiness! By now, God keep him, he must be taking up his Persian and Urdu letters quite nicely?

Maryam Zamani: Atu-ji! Heaven help us. What age is he yet? Never mind Persian and Urdu, he hasn't even finished the *Qaida-e-Baghdadi* (the first Arabic primer).

Atu-ji: My dear! Why is that?

Maryam Zamani: Hazrat! You know how a *mulla* teaches.

Atu-ji: Yes, my dear, you speak the truth. And you, Begum, what have you studied?

Maryam Zamani: Hazrat! If I had studied anything I would tell you.

Atu-ji: Alas, good people! How the daughters of the gentry have given up reading and writing. What ignorance has fallen over these houses. What a topsy-turvy age has come upon us. Mahmooda Begum! It is something to think about. Among the Hindus and Muslims of our country who are called *ashraf* (the well-born gentry), the custom has come down from of old that whether or not they teach their daughter anything, they always have their son taught. Poor or rich, everyone makes an effort, according to his means, over his son's education. But I don't know where the blessing of this country has flown off to: whenever I have looked I have seen the same thing, that out of a hundred children two or four who happened to be lucky and promising read and wrote their way into being something, and the rest stayed as dull as they were. Yes, lately there is certainly more reading and writing in the government schools, but something like humanity does not take root [4] there either. There is nobody to look and see why these children do not all learn to read and write alike, why their habits are not mended, why they do not learn to be human beings. If anyone asks, the answer is: "Sir! Everyone has his own fate. The one whose stars were good made something of himself; the unlucky one was left behind." Good sir! Who is the wretch who doesn't know that? You say it once, we say a hundred times, that everything in the world goes by fate. But understand this much: the man who sits waiting on his fate and does not do his work as work should be done, how on earth will he reach what he wants? I would believe it on the day someone did not drink when thirsty and his thirst went away of itself, or did not eat when hungry and his belly filled of its own accord. Well, my dear! Am I telling the truth or a lie?

Mahmooda Begum: Hazrat! Who would be fool enough to call these things a lie?

Atu-ji: Well then, my good lady! What is it that will not let even the shadow of humanity fall on the children here? Bari Begum! Did you hear what I said too?

Bari Begum: Atu-ji! I am listening to all of it.

Atu-ji: My dear! Can you make out what the secret is?

Bari Begum: Atu-ji! I will only say again that everyone has their own fate. Then there is this too, that not all children are alike. One has a sense of shame and never forgets a single scolding all his life. Another is so shameless that the more you beat him and pound him, the more of a greased pot [5] he becomes day by day. In the same way one has a good mind and another a poor one. One is mischievous and another meek. One is a playful scamp and another a hard worker. In short, just as God Almighty has made creatures of every kind, so they bring every kind of fate along with them. Nobody has a monopoly on that.

Atu-ji: My dear! Granted. But just answer me this: is this ill fortune [6] peculiar to this country, or is the whole world the same? They are our brothers too, in whose country, from man to woman and child to old man, nobody is without reading and writing. Look at one and he is a bookworm, look at another and he is a very image of learning. Did all of them come down into the world with the same fate? Are their children never slow, or mischievous, or playful? Oh my dear! Heaven help us, think before you speak. You will say to yourself that the woman has lost her wits in her old age, but if you ask me, it is this: God is avenging the daughters. The parents thought that they had a share in their sons' earnings and had nothing to get [7] from their daughters. "Come, let us teach the sons as much as we can, so that tomorrow they will be of use to us too." God was displeased at this, and made the sons worse even than the daughters. The daughters were at least women and stayed unlettered; these were men and stayed ignorant.

Bari Begum: Atu-ji! You have said the very thing that is in my heart. My lady! I make a promise to my God that if my grandson and granddaughter live, and in my lifetime come to the age for it, then as for the boy his parents may teach him or not as they please, but the girl, as far as I am able, I will not leave unlettered.

Atu-ji: Bari Begum! What are you thinking of? I said that in jest and you took it for truth. Does God really take vengeance for daughters? Oh my dear! He is most forgiving and merciful. If He took vengeance for such things in this world, how could the world go on? People kill their daughters outright, and even then He does not avenge them; why would He avenge such little things? But there is certainly this fear, that on the Day of Judgement He may ask us: "Why did you deprive your daughters of the wealth of knowledge? Why did you not hold them as dear as your sons? Why did you not show them the path of faith? Why did you not make them aware of the good and evil of the world? We did not make them to be reared like cats and dogs in their parents' house, and to live out their days like slave-girls in their husband's house; to leave the world as ignorant and unknowing as they came into it, neither knowing God nor understanding their own nature nor gaining any fruit from coming into the world. No, We created them so that they too, like men, should put their own minds to some use and get some benefit from their humanity; understand their own good and ill; be mindful of their world and their hereafter; know the rights of young and old; bring up their children; hold their husbands' hearts in their hands; put a ruined household in order; bring honour to their parents' name in whatever house they marry into; be dearer to their parents-in-law than their own children; be mistress of the house as the husband is its master; have the telescope of learning to their eye within the four walls of the house; have the book for their dearest friend, and paper, inkpot and pen for their companions."

What a pity that they have paid all their dues to the world, and the world has paid them none of theirs. So long as they stayed unmarried in their parents' house, they ate whatever they were given to eat, wore whatever they were given to wear, sat where they were told to sit, and slept where they were told to sleep. Kneading dough, baking bread, grinding spices, putting the pot on the fire, spinning at the wheel, carding cotton, minding their brothers and sisters, serving their parents: in short they shirked nothing and turned up their nose at no work. Then when they were married and reached their in-laws' house, there quite other troubles awaited them. One day the mother-in-law is angry, the next the sister-in-law is fed up. The younger brother-in-law's wife never speaks a civil word; the elder brother-in-law's wife picks a quarrel at every turn. There is no pleasing the husband's temper. The children are eating them alive besides: one has sore eyes, one has a pain in the ribs, one has a cough; one is held up on the shoulder, another lies in the lap, a third clings to the waist. In short they bore thousands of troubles like these, yet never said "ah", and so got through the days of their life somehow or other. And this is how the world treated them: on the day they were born, either the whole family was celebrating in hope of a son, or at the very mention of a daughter a gloom came over every face. Parents gloomy, brothers and sisters gloomy; father's sister, maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, kin and stranger, everyone who came or went heaved a cold sigh on hearing it. If someone puts on a show of happiness outwardly, one can say nothing, but of real happiness there is not a trace for a hundred miles. Then when they were a year or eighteen months old and began to win everyone's heart with their sweet innocent faces and charming chatter, then the love [8] of mother and father, mother's sister and father's sister, was stirred a little; but even now they were not as dear as the sons. When they spoke of the sons even in anger, they took care to add "God keep him, amen"; when they called the daughters even in love, it was "you wretch", "you death-deserving thing", "may you perish". Then when they came of age and were ready to become human beings through their parents' training and learn the good and evil of faith and the world, their parents began to take service from them, and did nothing for them that would have made them grateful. They were taught to cook so that no cook would have to be kept; they were shown how to sew so that no tailor would have to be paid. Every celebration from the sixth-day ceremony to the *Bismillah* (the child's first lesson), and from the betrothal to the fourth-day wedding rite, was held for the family's own name; whatever was given in the dowry was given for show. Reading and writing was one thing that would have been of use to them in this world and the next, and their parents did not let them so much as catch the breeze of it, thinking: in the first place we gain nothing by teaching them to read and write, and in the second, if they are busy reading and writing, who will do the housework?

Then when they were married and fell into the hands of a stranger, they had to suffer even more there than in their parents' home. Getting through a whole life was out of the question; getting through a single hour became hard. The mother-in-law either had been longing [9] for the day the bride would come and her son's house would be filled, or, the moment the bride arrived, she became just one more stranger among a hundred strangers. The sisters-in-law either told their beads all day in their brother's wife's name, or grew sick of the sight of her. The husband's heart too was not won as it should have been, for in the first place what longing for marriage does a lad of fourteen or fifteen have? Secondly, he saw his mother's and sisters' eyes turned away from his wife. Then he found in his wife no quality that would make him leave everyone and be hers alone. In short, nobody valued another family's daughter. That leaves the children; and a mother whose standing in the father's house is like this, what respect, what dignity, what honour will she have in her children's hearts? Bari Begum! These are things whose very thought [10] makes the heart rise into the mouth [11]. Well, the greater part of your life and mine is over, and the little that is left will pass somehow, well or badly; but this new generation [12] has God alone for its keeper [13].

Bari Begum: Atu-ji! Who does not know that reading and writing is a great thing, and who is the wretch who would not want his children's good? Ask the humblest woman who grinds corn for a living, and she too will be wishing that her children might learn every skill in God's creation. But I am one who speaks plainly: only God can see to it that a poor man's children learn to read and write, and for daughters it is harder still. Yes, those whom God has given a few coins' worth of means can do as they please.

Atu-ji: Bari Begum! These are cities, God keep them; hundreds of well-off people of means live in them. And yet, whenever we have seen their wives and daughters, we have seen them unlettered. Oh my dear! What wealth, what means? Here it goes like this: you did something, I did it seeing you, four more women [15] took heart from imitating [14] me, and so little by little it spread through the whole town. Then nobody looks to see whether the thing is good or bad, or whether we can afford it or not. Even if a fortune is reduced to dust, the thing must be done one way or another. After all, you see it yourself: the expenses that are fixed for weddings and feasts and festivals everyone has to meet. The rich man met them according to his means, the poor man according to his circumstances [16]. You will never have seen even the poorest brother send his daughter off with a bowl of sherbet and a few dates, or a house, however needy, where no *halwa* was made on the fourteenth of Shab-e-Barat. When people stand by [18] such worthless [17] things so firmly, why should they not stand by good ones? Let it only come about in a town that people think it a disgrace to leave their daughters unlettered, and then let me see which house has girls who don't study. The neediest of the needy will have his daughter taught a few letters. And my dear! All these difficulties only seem so now; afterwards they will all become easy. Once all the girls of the community have been educated, they will educate their own children themselves.

Bari Begum: Atu-ji! Heaven help us. The girls will learn from their mothers then, and from nobody else? In the first place, where will the poor mother find so much leisure from her household chores to sit down and give the young lady her lessons? And even if she leaves ten tasks to teach her, what effect on earth will it have on the daughter? Children's learning all runs on fear [19], and where would fear come from here? Why would a mother lift her hand against her darling daughter? Why would a mother's heart be like a heartless [20] schoolmistress's? In short, whichever way you turn it, she will have to be handed over to a schoolmistress, and once a schoolmistress has to be kept, the girls of poor homes will be left out again.

Atu-ji: Bari Begum! What have you said? Oh my dear! If children's mothers were fit to educate their own children, the fortunes of this country would turn at once. Perhaps you have not heard that in the country of the *Farangis* (the Europeans) you cannot find an unlettered person anywhere for the looking. What is the reason? Are the literate born from their mothers' wombs there? Or have they some holy man's blessing, so that as soon as a child comes to his senses his heart [21] opens of itself? Nothing of the sort. It is only this: the custom of teaching girls has come down among them from of old. Those same girls, when they married and had children, began to teach their children themselves. That is why among them all the women among women and the men among men are cast in one mould. You speak only of daughters; to my mind, son or daughter, nobody can learn humanity without a mother's teaching.

People think, what great thing is it to teach *alif, be, te* and the *Karima* [22] and the *Khaliq Bari* [23]? Any mulla teacher we ask will show the child a few letters. My dear! That is great foolishness. In gardening the hardest thing of all is raising young plants. If the gardener's hand is not true, no plant of his will ever thrive [24]. In the same way, in teaching, the hardest thing is teaching children. If the children's teacher is not accomplished, they will never learn to read and write. Think of a child as a green stick just broken off. At this moment it has a suppleness; whichever way you bend it, it will bend. If you want it to grow straight and well-shaped, give it to a craftsman, so that he can test it well and take out its kinks. Otherwise in a few days all its suppleness will be gone, and then it will never be straight till Judgement Day; and if anyone forces it too hard, it will break.

In a teacher of children it is not only seen what learning he has, but also what his habits are, what his temper is, whether he teaches children with real care or not, whether he understands children's natures or not. If the teacher's habits are not good, the pupils' habits will become worse than his. If the teacher's temper is not good, the pupils will run a hundred miles from his name. If the teacher does not teach children with care, they will never learn a single letter. If the teacher does not understand children's natures, he will start driving them all with one stick. That is why the people of old said that teaching a child is like treating a sick man: just as a physician is bound to know the patient's constitution, so a teacher must understand the child's nature. Such a teacher, my dear, the rich too probably find only by good luck. If one waited in search of such a teacher, how would the child ever learn? Neither will there be nine maunds of oil, nor will Radha dance.

And if you put him into the maktab the moment his fifth year begins, you have lost the child to both worlds. On the very first day he will be so frightened by the whole day's confinement that on the second day the mention of the maktab will give him the shivers. Until he has had a few slaps and a few kicks he will never turn his face towards the maktab. Then when he arrives at the maktab weeping and whimpering, and the teacher sees the boy has come in this state, he gets up and starts carding him like cotton. On the first day his heart only quailed there; now he begins to see death before him. What reading, what writing? Now all he can think of is when evening will come and when he will be free of this torment. When evening came he took his leave and came home, played and romped for an hour or two. He had not yet had his fill of play when the worry of tomorrow climbed onto his head again. The day passed in that misery, the night in this anxiety [25]. Now his blood begins drying up moment by moment. What strength does a child have? In ten days he has dried up to a thorn. Ninety-nine times in a hundred, these are not the signs of learning; and the one boy in a hundred who reads and writes his way into being fit for something, what use is he? Heart, brain, vigour, strength, mind, memory, whatever he had in his purse was all sacrificed to the maktab. What on earth will such a person gain from his learning? In short, put in the maktab or not put in it, either way the children are ruined.

Yes, if their parents are educated and know the value of learning, and know well what becomes of children left unlettered, then certainly they can do whatever they like. But then, if you ask me, even the father cannot carry this burden. Where does he have so much leisure from his business outside to keep his eye on every single thing the child does from morning till evening? This can be done, if at all, only by the child's own mother: the mother whose scolding the child thinks better than others' love, whose blows he values above others' caresses; before whose eyes he stays all day, from whose side he is not parted all night. When he is hungry he asks for bread, and when thirsty for water, from no one but her. In all the world he sees no one but her who cares for him and values him. In pain and trouble it is her he calls; in fear it is her he remembers. In short, the bond that a child has with its mother, or a mother with her child, is a bond nobody in the world has with anyone.

Now if the mother has the further good sense not to waste this God-given love in petting and spoiling, but to spend it on things that will benefit her children, then from God's grace we may hope that the mother will become an angel of mercy for her child, and her company will nourish the child like its mother's milk. When he has lived in his mother's company like this for two or four years, and learned the manners and rules of everything, and become a little acquainted with matters of learning, and from hearing his mother day and night has also come to know that there is no wealth equal to learning; and has tasted what it is to keep still for a while, and taken to the habit of reading and learning his lessons, and slowly lost some of his love of play: then he is like a lamp with the oil and wick all ready, only waiting to be lit; or like a house whose foundation [26] is laid and only the walls remain to be raised. Just as a scribe first rules his paper and then sits down to write, and his pen never strays, so whoever teaches him now will have no trouble. What once was hard to get done with beatings will now be done with a nod. What once was hard to learn in years he will now learn in hours. The teacher's love will never be wasted; whoever he goes and sits before with his book open will gladly be ready to teach him.

Bari Begum! Take what I have said as the truth. At first I too used to say as you do, that once a child's fifth year has begun he has no business at home and must be sent to the maktab somehow. But my dear! From the day I heard the story of Zubaida Khatun I have been sure that the maktab is all name and nothing comes of it. And why go so far? Maryam Zamani Begum here was just saying in front of you that the mulla has kept the poor child's enemies dangling for three years, and to this day the Qaida-e-Baghdadi has not been finished. Tell me, my dear: if she herself were educated today and taught her own child, would he still be swinging about among his writing-boards?

Bari Begum: Mahmooda! Did you see how Atu-ji brushed the matter aside?

Mahmooda Begum: Mother dear! I understand her ways very well. What call was there to bring in Maryam Zamani Begum here? Nothing at all; Atu-ji wants somehow to avoid telling that story and to get us onto other things. Now I won't get up until I have heard that story.

Atu-ji: My child! You too have gone over to Bari Begum. Bless you, I will tell you not one story but ten. Now get up and say your prayers; the time for the afternoon prayer is running short. I have my prayers to say too. If God keeps us well, you can hear it some time tomorrow.

Mahmooda Begum: Atu-ji! What harm would it do if you told it now?

Atu-ji: My child! Is a story some morsel to pop in the mouth? You talk of now; to my mind, if it is finished even in eight or ten days we may count ourselves lucky.

Mahmooda Begum: Very well, then at what time tomorrow will you tell it?

Atu-ji: Whenever you say; but to my mind night-time would be best.

Mahmooda Begum: Very well. Mind you don't put it off like this tomorrow as well.

Atu-ji: My child! Do you take your Atu for a liar? Rest assured, God willing I will certainly tell it tomorrow. Now go and say your prayers, or the time will pass.

Notes

[1] *Atu-ji*: glossed in the printed footnote as "ustani-ji, i.e. schoolmistress".

[2] *burh suhagan*: glossed in the printed footnote as "a blessing meaning: may you not be widowed until old age".

[3] *an-gina* (the uncounted): glossed in the printed footnote as "the ninth".

[4] *jami jam*: glossed in the printed footnote as "not (i.e. it does not take root)".

[5] *chikna ghara* (a greased pot, off which everything runs): glossed in the printed footnote as "shameless".

[6] *bakhtawari*: glossed in the printed footnote as "fate".

[7] *lahna*: glossed in the printed footnote as "hope of gain".

[8] *mamta*: glossed in the printed footnote as "love".

[9] *chao*: glossed in the printed footnote as "eagerness".

[10] *tasawwur*: glossed in the printed footnote as "thought".

[11] the heart rises into the mouth: glossed in the printed footnote as "one feels boundless grief".

[12] *tanti*: glossed in the printed footnote as "generation, line".

[13] *beli*: glossed in the printed footnote as "guardian".

[14] *rees*: glossed in the printed footnote as "imitation".

[15] *janiyon*: glossed in the printed footnote as "women".

[16] *bisat*: glossed in the printed footnote as "financial condition".

[17] *wahi tabahi*: glossed in the printed footnote as "useless, idle".

[18] *pach*: glossed in the printed footnote as "partisanship, stubborn attachment".

[19] *dahshat*: glossed in the printed footnote as "fear, awe".

[20] *jallad*: glossed in the printed footnote as "merciless".

[21] *hiya*: glossed in the printed footnote as "heart, courage".

[22] *Karima*: glossed in the printed footnote as "the elementary Persian primers".

[23] *Khaliq Bari*: glossed in the printed footnote as "the elementary Persian primers".

[24] will never thrive: glossed in the printed footnote as "will not grow, will not flourish".

[25] *udher-bun* (unpicking and weaving): glossed in the printed footnote as "worry".

[26] *neo*: glossed in the printed footnote as "foundation".