Холера и сон

One year a terrible epidemic of cholera came to Delhi. Nasuh caught the cholera and thought he was going to die. In his despair the thought of the reckoning of the hereafter took hold of him. The doctor had given him a sleeping draught. When he slept, that same thought appeared to him as a fearful dream.

Some while ago, one year, cholera raged so fiercely in Delhi that from Hakim Baqa's lane alone thirty or forty people were being carried off every day. One market, the market of death, was certainly brisk; otherwise, wherever you went, silence and desolation; wherever you looked, dread and distress. Bazaars where until midnight you were jostled shoulder to shoulder lay so deserted that one was afraid to walk through them even at noon. The clink of the water-sellers' cups had stopped. The cries of the hawkers had ceased. Meeting and visiting, company and calls, coming and going, inquiring after the sick, returning visits, hospitality and entertaining: people gave up every one of these customs. Each man was caught up in his own plight, gripped by misfortune, despairing of life; alive in name, worse than dead. No courage in the heart, no strength in the hands and feet. Either a man lay at home with his head in his hands, or nursed some sick person, or wept a little as he remembered some friend who had died. Sudden death, in truth, was the death of those days. Without warning, without a thought of it, a man walking about quite well would suddenly feel his stomach turn, and at the very first retching his five senses would fail. Unless, by God's will, someone here and there pulled through, there was the nausea, and then the irrevocable decree, with no time even to make a will. In a quarter of an hour the illness, the medicine, the prayers, the death agony and the death were all over. In short, it was so universal a plague that there was weeping in every house.

For about two months, or a little less, the calamity stayed in the city, but in that short time the city was half emptied. Hundreds of women were widowed. Thousands of children were orphaned. Whomever you asked, a complaint; whomever you heard, a lament. But there was one Nasuh, whose story we are going to write in this book: the world complained, and he alone gave thanks; the world cried out, and he alone sang praise. Not because the calamity had done him no harm. In his own house too three people died of the plague, one after another. The whole household had gone to bed and risen in the morning in perfect health. Nasuh had already begun his dawn prayer. His father, sitting by him, was making his ablutions. While cleaning his teeth he retched. Nasuh had not yet finished the two obligatory rak'ats; he ended the prayer with the salutation, and what did he see? His father had died. When he came back from burying him, there was a relation, an aunt of sorts, and he found that she too had yielded up her life. On the third day the maidservant of the house departed. But Nasuh's thankfulness had quite another cause. His saying was this: in those days people's natures had been set very much to rights. There was a tenderness and humility in men's hearts that a whole lifetime of discipline would find it hard to produce. Heedlessness had been dealt such a smarting lash that everyone was zealous in performing his religious duties. People who had not prayed even in Ramazan were the first to arrive at the mosque at all five times of prayer. Those who had never so much as bowed their heads in prostration by mistake did not miss even the sunrise and the midnight prayers. The instability of the world and the impermanence of life's ties were engraved on every heart. Men's breasts were filled with the light of peacemaking. In short, the life of those days was a pattern of that pure, holy and unselfish life which religion teaches.

Nasuh was faint-hearted in any case. When he first heard how the cholera was raging, he went cold and his colour turned yellow. He took every outward precaution there was. He had the house freshly whitewashed. He urged his neighbours to keep things clean. He had the corners of the house fumigated with benzoin and camphor put in the niches. He told the cook to keep the salt a little sharp in the food, and to send onion and vinegar to the table at both meals. Rose-water, coco de mer, aniseed, tamarind, sikanjabin syrup and the other medicines that Greek-school physicians use in this disease he laid in, a little of each, so that, God forbid, nothing would need to be searched for when it was needed. Nasuh went so far as to procure English medicines too. He got cholera pills from the kotwali right there; he sent money to the Allahabad Medical Hall and had cholera mixture sent; through a friend in Agra he bought two bottles of chlorodyne. He read in a newspaper that a Bengali doctor had a treatment and had claimed the reward of ten thousand rupees promised by the government; he wrote a letter and sent for his medicine too. Nasuh had one other comfort: a skilled physician lived next door.

Though there was so plentiful a stock of remedies against the black-faced cholera, in the end Nasuh's house could not escape the angels' eye; escape it could not. When his father's hour came, the medicines stayed where they were; there was no time even to give them before the old man began to gasp. The aunt held on for a little while, but she was somehow so weary of life that she was slow to let anyone know herself. So she too never got her medicine. The maidservant, it is true, gulped down medicines of every kind, English and Greek; but her life was over.

At first Nasuh had leaned a little on his precautions; but when the plague grew very fierce and in his own house three deaths came one on top of another, he could do nothing but resign himself to fate and sit down in patience and thankfulness.

In short, a full forty days of hardship and misery passed over the city. Who knows how many houses were destroyed, how many families brought to ruin. At last Nawab Umdat-ul-Mulk caught the cholera. Two or three hours after sunrise the news spread through the city, and after the Friday prayer people saw his bier set down in the courtyard of the Jama Masjid. Thousands of people had perished in the city, but Umdat-ul-Mulk's death weighed on everyone more than all. First, there was no nobleman in the city to equal him; second, the poor received a great deal of help from him. There was mourning for his death in every house; but people also said, "Now God has cooled the fever," for the common people believe that a plague does not leave without taking some great nobleman as its offering. Well, whatever people thought, the disturbance had in any case largely subsided and peace was returning. People began to open their shops, and the business of the world started up again.

In those days Nasuh said to his wife, "For two months we've been longing for rice. Now God has shown His grace. Have some zarda cooked today. But mind you tell them to see the rice isn't left hard." In the evening the zarda was cooked, and the whole household, young and old, ate it and went to sleep as usual. There may have been a watch of the night left when suddenly Nasuh woke. He woke with a fire burning in his belly. As he got up his stomach heaved several times. Bareheaded, he hurried out into the courtyard and began to walk up and down. He bound both arms tightly. He smeared soot from the griddle on his throat. He held a scented swab to his nose and tried to turn his mind to other things. But it felt as if something were filling him up to the throat. He fought it hard, he put it off as long as he could; at last he vomited violently. The whole household woke. Seeing Nasuh sitting there like that, everyone's heart stood still. Someone ran with water and gram flour. Someone made a pan with cardamom and came and stood by him. Someone began to fan him. They brought Nasuh and laid him on the bed, and then everyone began to offer an opinion. One said, "It's nothing, it was the food." Another said, "The ghee in the zarda was bad." Another said, "It's the scrapings from the bottom of the pot." In short, the verdict was that it was not the epidemic cholera; give him rose and fennel water; there's nothing to be alarmed about; by morning he'll be quite all right.

Well, so much for the nurses. Nasuh had grown weak from exhaustion, but by God's grace his senses were all in their place. He heard everyone's advice and suggestions and drank whatever medicine they gave him. But the moment he vomited he had said, "Well, my friends, God keep you. I too am taking my leave. I have often vomited from a full stomach, but something is sinking inside me and a numbness is creeping into my hands." After saying this Nasuh fell into another train of thought, and understood that he was now leaving the world. As morning came on, every sign of the disease appeared: cramps all over, weakness, nausea, purging, thirst, each at its worst. In the dark before dawn a man was sent running to the physician. The physician himself was of a nervous temperament and fled for miles at the very word cholera. But neighbourliness and long acquaintance brought him, willy-nilly; he came, stood there, gave a cursory look and left. The sick man had no strength even to speak or say a word. In just one watch of illness he was bedridden. The women

[Page 280 of the book is missing from this copy.]

took heart, and thought to himself: "Go I must, there's no putting it off now; so what is the use of fretting, what is gained by agitation? If I am to die, why not die like a man, and give up my life with fortitude?" No sooner had this thought come into his mind than a gloom settled over all the things of the world. Now whatever he looked at seemed worthless and of no account.

This was the time when the doctor had given him a draught and had him left alone to rest. Detachment brought a certain calm to his heart, and on top of the exhaustion of his worsening illness came the medicine, which was a sleeping draught by nature; and the crowd of nurses had thinned. He lay down and a doze came over him. His eyes had no sooner closed than Nasuh was in another world. The thoughts that had been before him a little while earlier all filled his brain. Now his imagination mixed them up with earlier and later fancies and set them before him in a new form. What does he see? A very fine and magnificent building; and since Nasuh himself had once been a deputy magistrate with criminal powers, he took it to be, as it were, the courthouse of the High Court. But the judge of this court is of such awe that, though hundreds of thousands of people are gathered there, everyone sits silent and breathless, as if no one had a tongue in his mouth. And whoever had need to speak or say anything did so so softly that not even the ear beside him would hear.

So great a court, and not a pleader or a lawyer to be seen anywhere. The officers of the court are so upright, and so afraid of their judge, that they will not let any litigant or party to a case come near them. In short, no one dares win his cause by underhand advocacy, or the lure of money, or getting someone to put in a word for him. Though, for his justice, his understanding and his omniscience, the awe of the judge lies over high and low alike, yet of all the accused, petty or grave, none despairs of his mercy. His powers are so wide that there is no appeal from his judgement and no revision of his order. His way of working is so good that each day's business is cleared the same day. However many cases may be pending, it is impossible that they should not be decided on the appointed date. Nor is any case dismissed with a hasty, cursory ruling. No: every order is passed only after every excuse has been answered and every argument cut short, after the accused himself has been convinced and the sinner made to confess his fault with his own mouth. In short, every ruling is well grounded, every judgement reasoned, every opinion final and certain, every order the milk the milk and the water the water. In the matter of witnesses such care is taken that only the evidence of the just, the trustworthy and the truthful is admitted, and of such as know the facts and saw them with their own eyes; indeed, of the accused's own companions and intimates, his confidants, helpers and abettors.

Then what does he see? Each accused has been given a copy of the charge sheet, one by one, and is reading it, and understands every charge laid against him, and thinks over the grounds of his defence. The thought of a court led Nasuh on to the lock-up, and he saw that each person was confined in a separate place. Each, according to the kind of offender he was, was kept in the lock-up with severity or with ease to suit his case. Beside the lock-up is the gaol; but it is a terrible place. Hard labour, cruel toil. Those caught in it long for the gallows and beg for the noose.

At the sight of this dreadful place Nasuh turned on his heel. He came out and was again among those awaiting trial. Thousands of these people were strangers; but here and there people of his own city and neighbourhood could be seen too, but only those who had died. Seeing all this, Nasuh, still in his dream, was amazed: "O God! What city is this? Whose court? Where have all these accused been arrested from? And what crime have my fellow townsmen committed that they are held? And how did these people die, that I see them here answering charges?" In this bewilderment he was looking about him as he went, when from a distance he saw his own revered father sitting among these prisoners awaiting trial. At first he thought his eyes deceived him; but he looked carefully and recognised that, no, it was really he. He ran and fell at his feet and said, "Sir! We are all desolate without you. What are you doing here?"

The father: "I am held to answer for my sins. This place you see is the House of Recompense. God Most High, glorious and exalted is His majesty, is the judge of this court."

The son: "Sir! You were so God-fearing, so devout, so devoted to God, so virtuous. And you, charged with sins!"

The father: "And not one or two sins, but hundreds, thousands. Look, this is my record of deeds, full of what disgrace and shame, and looking at it again and again I am in great distress as to what answer I shall give and what grounds of defence I shall plead."

This was the paper Nasuh had seen in everyone's hand and, as the world thinks, had taken for a charge sheet. When he saw his father's record of deeds he trembled. Associating partners with God and unbelief and disobedience, ingratitude and rebellion and faithlessness, pride and arrogance, lying and backbiting, greed and envy, hurting people, hypocrisy and show, love of the world: there was no charge that was not in it. Since worldly ideas were echoing in Nasuh's brain, he began looking in his father's record for the section and clause of the Indian Penal Code. But instead of sections of the Penal Code, the references were to suras and verses of the Quran. In astonishment he asked his father, "Sir! Then have you committed all these crimes?"

The father: "Every one."

The son: "Have you confessed before the judge?"

The father: "There is no room for denial. The evidence against me is so plentiful that even if I denied it, it could not be accepted."

The son: "Sir, who are these people so set on testifying against you?"

The father: "First, there are two persons, the Noble Recorders, of such a kind that no act of mine is hidden from them; whatever they say is to the point, and indeed they have been writing the diary of my whole life. Now when I look at it, I find it correct and accurate, letter for letter. Second, these very limbs of mine, hands and feet, eyes and ears: not one of them obeys me; all have turned against me, all have deserted me, all are set on opposing me and bent on disgracing me."

The son: "Do you understand at all why?"

The father: "I mistakenly took them for my helpers and supporters, my confidants and keepers of my secrets. But in fact they were all God's spies. They have treated me so that they have left me nothing."

The son: "How are you faring?"

The father: "Ever since I left the world I have been in the lock-up of the grave. My heart is oppressed by loneliness. I do not know how it will end. Night and day I lie wasting away with this anxiety. In the lock-up I suffer so much that I cannot describe it. But every morning and evening, going and coming, I have to pass by the gaol. That is Hell. Seeing the torments there I lose my wits even more, and count myself lucky, and think: if only the order were given for me to stay in this lock-up for ever!"

The son: "Then your case has not yet come up?"

The father: "God forbid it should. Every day that passes in the lock-up is a mercy. When I first came to the lock-up my record of deeds was handed to me. I do nothing but look at it and dread the end. I can think of no way of deliverance."

The son: "Can we be of any use to you in this trouble in any way?"

The father: "If you pray for me with humility and sincerity, it may well help. Just now a man next to me was released. There were many, many charges against him too. But just as there is perfect justice in God Most High, His mercy too is beyond all bounds. That man's survivors wept and pleaded for him a great deal, and two or three days ago he was called and told: 'Your deeds, such as they were, are no longer hidden from you. But several of Our servants are imploring Us in Our presence for your pardon, and they are your own wife and children. This one thing of yours pleases Us: that you sowed the seed of goodness and honesty in your family. We have forgiven your offence.' Son, tell me truly, have you people ever prayed for my good?"

The son: "Sir, after your death there was a great deal of weeping and lamenting. Even now it goes on as fiercely as if you had only just died. And this weeping will last as long as we live. As long as we live we shall remember your kindnesses and your affection. According to the custom of the world, we have distributed food in your name among the brotherhood. People may have said it to flatter me to my face, but they said that, in these dear times, I did my father's feast handsomely. As for prayer, how can I tell you an untruth? We did not see to it. After you died such quarrels arose over the inheritance that they are not settled to this day. But tell me, you were so strict in fasting and prayer: did your deeds and acts not help you at all?"

The father: "Of course they did. It is thanks to those very deeds that you see me in this state; otherwise many are in far worse torment than I. In the lock-up there is torment like the gaol's. But here sincerity of intention is the condition of our deeds. When I came and looked at my deeds, most of them were like false pearls and counterfeit rupees: the prayers said without presence of heart went for nothing, and the fasts, since I happened to keep them only as a matter of custom, were counted as mere hunger."

The son: "Then has influence or intercession no place in this court?"

The father: "God forgive us! Nobody asks after anyone. It is every soul for itself. Everyone is caught in his own calamity, gripped by his own misfortune. How should anyone get another set free? Let him first come off with honour himself."

The son: "But sir, God preserve us, how comes this charge of associating partners with God and of unbelief against you? Never mind us, the whole city believed in your piety. Did you not believe in God?"

The father: "I believed in Him, yes, but not from the heart."

The son: "Sir, all your outward deeds showed that you had a most firm devotion to the gracious God."

The father: "It turned out that all that devotion was from the lips only. When my statement was first taken, the first question I was asked was, 'Who is your Lord?' Since at the time of death I had been prompted with the creed, I answered, 'God, alone, without partner.' Then I was cross-examined on it: 'Well, when you were dismissed from your post in the Deccan and came home and sat idle for a long time, and all you had brought back from your service was spent, and you went about here and there in search of a post, in want even of your night's bread, and prayed to Us in your distress; and We, to try your patience and perseverance, kept your wish in suspense; and every English district officer too, who was Our servant like you, promised at Our prompting to provide for you, but We did not let Our prompting appear to you, and you thought it was the result of your own efforts: tell Us, was it that Englishman's spoken promise you relied on, or Our written bond, "There is no creature on earth but its provision rests with God"? If you knew Us from the bottom of your heart to be present and watching, hearing, seeing and all-powerful, how did you dare to sin? You never by mistake jumped off a mountain, you never put your hand in boiling water, you never took a blazing fire in your fist. But you committed sins most boldly. It must be either that you did not believe Our word that the punishment of sin is the fire of Hell, or, if you believed it, that you thought it less than the fire of this world.

"'Whatever ease, whatever pleasure and comfort We gave you in the world, without your deserving it, purely of Our kindness, did you not always put it down to your own good management? Whatever trouble came to you in the world, though you always took the axe to your own feet with your own hand, did you not lay the blame on Our Being, in whom all perfections meet? O ungrateful one! We did you hundreds of thousands of kindnesses, and you could not even acknowledge them with your lips. O thankless one! We gave you countless blessings, and they did not even move you so far as to mention them. The more We did for you, the more you girded yourself to oppose Us. The more indulgence We showed you, the more insolent and wicked you grew. On the strength of this unstable life you grew so proud that you meant to take yourself out of Our dominion. On the strength of this life of a few days you were so arrogant that you wished to put yourself outside the circle of servanthood. We brought you from nothing into being and honoured you with the robe of humanity. Whatever you needed, We gave you. Whatever you were in want of, We provided. In every state We were your guardian, in every condition your protector. Was it for this, that you should never by mistake turn to Us, and always keep your own separate mosque of a brick and a half apart from Us? When you were a lump of flesh, weak and witless, ignorant and foolish, so weak you could not move, so ignorant you could not tell your own from strangers, We had you nursed and made you strong; and Our servants who had every kind of precedence over you, your mother and father, We appointed to serve you, and put love for you into their hearts, so that at Our command they reared you and brought you up, and day by day you grew lively and prosperous.

"'Then We made reason your counsellor, so that with its help you might provide every means for your lawful comfort. The beasts and birds of the world, animals, plants and minerals, We made them all obey you, so that you might rule over them and dispose of them. Was it so that you should never even by chance turn your face towards Us, and always keep running from Us? Your life was a mere existence without substance. Had you lacked air to breathe for two moments, your breath would have stopped. One day and night without water and grain and you could hardly have lived. You breathed in maunds of air and never thought it was by Our grace. You stuffed in heaps upon heaps of grain and never understood it was by Our bounty. In your life you must have emptied several wells, but you never once thought it was by Our favour. And not only water and air and grain and food: where did you bring all the things you needed from, where did you get them? From Our public storehouse. But on top of it you had this arrogance, as if We were in your debt or owed you something. You ate and denied it. You took and forgot. In worldly matters your reason was very sharp; but you deliberately played the fool with Us alone. With eyes in your face, you were blind. With two ears, not one, you were deaf. Earth, sky, moon, sun, stars, forests, rivers, plains, trees of every kind, flowers, fruit, choice dishes to eat, robes of every colour to wear, precious jewels, silver and gold: We provided the whole world's goods for you and supplied all this for the sake of your single breath. So dear were you to Us, and you turned from Us. So much did We regard your honour, and you deserted Us. Had We wished, the smallest ant would have been enough to destroy you. Had We not protected you, there was such matter of corruption in your own body that the slightest ailment would have been enough to make an end of you. But We befriended you, and you were Our enemy. We showed you favour, and you rebelled. Was this the return you made Us? Was this the reward We got from you?

"'When We sent you into the world We charged you: "Look! The soul is a subtle essence, and very dear to Me. Do not go into the world and spoil it. It is My choice trust and precious deposit. See that you guard it with all proper care and keep it as it deserves. As clean, clear, bright and shining as you take it from here, so I shall look for it." And today, O black-faced one, you have brought it, but made worse than a rag and less than a potsherd: defiled, unclean, dark, lustreless, dull, ruined. As you were leaving We told you not to set your heart on the world, and to live there like a traveller at an inn. You went there and became one of its own, and you stretched out and slept so long that you woke only when you came to the grave. You were a traveller, and you set up as a resident. You were a wayfarer, and you became a settler. Did you not spend your whole life in the world piling up wealth, and did you not build solid buildings in the belief that you would live in them for ages? Is that the business of a traveller? Is that the way of a wayfarer? You knew that you had to come back here. Then why did the mere word death frighten you to death, and why did you balk at the news of departure?

"'First, you hardly ever happened to worship Us; and whenever you were busy in worship, out of shame before people, or for show, or following custom, it was in such a way that your heart was in one place and you in another. Was there one prayer of yours without a prostration of forgetfulness? Worldly things forgotten for years came back to you in prayer. And what you did was not praying but cutting grass. Neither were your postures balanced, nor your standing upright correct, nor your sitting right.

"'All year you stuffed the hell of your belly with any rubbish. We commanded you, once a year, to fast for a single month, so that you might value Our blessings; so that you might feel pity for your fellow men in misfortune; so that your bodily health too might benefit; and so that the praiseworthy quality of lowliness and humility, which pleases Us greatly, might be born in your temper. Now, in the work and business of the world you would go all day without food or water, with no complaint, no grumbling, fresh and cheerful. But since the fast was at Our command, a hundred times a day you complained of thirst, and to whoever came you told the tale of your weakness and exhaustion. "I'm parched!" and "I'm starving!": those were your two litanies. You broke your fast and collapsed on your bed in such a daze that there seemed no life in you. Though you ate two days' food in a single night, still the thought that you must fast again tomorrow left your ox-like hunger unsatisfied. You waited for Id as a prisoner waits for the day of his release. Had you had your way, you would have kept Id not on the twenty-ninth but on the nineteenth. Is it for fasts like these that you hope for a reward and expect a recompense?

"'We sent you as a man so that you might sympathise with the afflicted; but you took to such ease that, far from giving comfort, you did not scruple to get your own comfort by causing others trouble. Your neighbours, Our servants, went to sleep hungry at night, and you, busy treating your indigestion, cared nothing about providing for them. There were people in your neighbourhood who spent the long winter nights till dawn warming themselves at a fire, while you slept at ease with your feet stretched out under a double quilt on heavy mattresses. The blessings, the wealth and riches We had given you, you wasted on idle refinements and needless things of show, and those who were in dire need of it were left longing. We know all your vileness. You had given helplessness the name of God. As long as you hoped to succeed by effort and contrivance, you never cared at all that God was anything or had any part in the order of the world. But when you were helpless and at your wits' end, then you remembered God. If Our divinity and kingdom had depended on your obedience, you spared no effort to overthrow it. You dishonoured Our commands, which must be believed, and slighted Our ordinances, which must be respected; and by your bad example you led astray Our other servants too, your own children. Every day you saw and heard of people dying. Should you not have understood that one day you too would die? How many changes came in your own state! From a boy you became a youth, from a youth a feeble old man. Your hair turned white. Your teeth fell out. Your back bent. Your powers failed. In short, seeing you asleep, We sprinkled you again and again with cold water and many times lifted you up and sat you upright. But your fortune was sunk in such a sleep that you never so much as turned over.
All your life you slept in heedlessness;
What did We lose? It was you who lost.

"'Severity is not Our way; and on whom should We be severe? On Our own servants, whose death and life are in Our power at every moment? But only if the servant is a servant and regards Us as his Master, and is not like the man who, when We give him salt, says, "May my eyes burst!" Is there anyone more forgiving than We, who for a single apology have wholly forgotten the sins of a whole life? But let someone at least show repentance, ask forgiveness, express remorse and regret. Our mercy looks for a pretext, Our compassion seeks an excuse, and how many, many times it welled up! But We were given no chance to spend it. Had the servant kept his relation of servanthood with Us sound, We would have thrown dust over a hundred thousand of his faults. Our great complaint is just this, that he never took Us for the One he worshipped. Living in the world of causes, he became a worshipper of causes. And then, when We look, Our commands were not hard either. We did not stop you eating. We did not forbid you sleeping. We did not keep you from the enjoyments of the world. Then, if you did not obey them, We can see no reason but your own ill fortune. O man! Salvation, which you now desire with such longing: if only in life you had cared for it as much as the white speck on a black lentil! The little losses and petty harms of the world used to make you anxious and restless, though what is the world, and what is the world's loss? What is the sparrow, and what is the sparrow's broth? But of the ruin of your faith you never had the least idea. If only the missing of a prayer had grieved you as much as the breaking of an old earthen cup! We know that now you are very remorseful; but that remorse yields nothing, because this is the House of Recompense, not the House of Deeds. We see that you cannot answer a single point. But to complete the proof against you, We give you time. Go, look at your record of deeds, and think it over well, and tell Us something, provided it is reasonable and acceptable.'"