Nahal - Silent life: memoirs of a writer

C RITICAL A CCLAIM FOR C HAMAN N AHALS F ICTION

Silent Life

ROLI BOOKS

This digital edition published in 2014

First published in 2005 by
The Lotus Collection
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Copyright Chaman Nahal, 2005

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eISBN: 978-93-5194-066-1

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TO

THE UNKNOWN FRIEND
WHO EVER WALKS BESIDE ME

Contents

ONE

Bejewelled City

I was born in Sialkot, a small town which is now in Pakistan and lies only a few miles away from the state of Jammu & Kashmir. It has been my good fortune to travel a great deal in life, but this town continues to remain at the heart of my consciousness. Its freshness, the expanse of its fields, the cluster of huge trees that adorn its countryside, the hustle and bustle of its streets, its music and dance, the sanguine ambience that greets one as you get up in the day, have not been duplicated by anything that I have known anywhere else.

The year, I am told, was 1927, the month August. That makes me a Leo, if it means anything. All Leos cant be lion-hearted, forthright and aggressive. Even though such astrological summings-up are flattering, they take the zest out of living if I have to be one of a type. Each individual on this earth is unique and virtues that are bestowed on us collectively diminish the glory of our existence.

My father was a jeweller, a profession which unfortunately carried a stigma in those times. Goldsmiths, by what permutations in our history I dont know, were not regarded as too high at the social level. Our father made light of this and pointed out what a gifted trade it was, requiring tremendous skill and care. He had a towering personality and no one could directly insult or attack him. But every now and then, we children continued to be reminded of our humble status.

As a child I must have watched these artisans so often, and if later I became a writer, I believe I owe the gift partly to my class origins. Every gold ornament has to be cut, moulded, soldered, set with precious or semi-precious stones, washed and polished with absolute precision. Nowhere have I seen such a collection of small hammers some of them smaller than gravel as in a goldsmiths cluster of tools. Holding the gold nugget in one hand, with these hammers and his other implements, such as tweezers and teeny-weeny blowpipes into which he blows through his lips to divert the flame before him on that nugget, the man would transform it to shapes beyond the realm of probability his shoulders bent, his legs crossed, his feet tucked under, his eyes focussed in line with the length of his nose. If gold is precious, a gold ornament is even more so, for it is altogether the brainchild of the artisan. Isnt that what a work of art is, too?

My father never made those ornaments himself. He might have at some earlier stage, but now he only accepted orders and had them executed by his workmen who sat in another building. He was so highly regarded in his profession, people often visited him to have their ornaments evaluated. He rubbed them on his black stone and could instantly tell where they stood, how much of real gold was in them and how much just impurity such as copper. He made only a small scratch, longitudinally or horizontally, held the stone at arms length and knew. Often he made several scratches close to each other and made me point out the best one, I invariably making the wrong choice. Youll never get anywhere in life, he said with disgust.

He also acted as a banker and many people pawned their valuables with him. Local banks used his services too, to assess the ornaments and gold pawned with them. As he rose in status, he added the suffix Saraf to his name, meaning a jeweller only but a dignified one, to set himself apart from the common run of goldsmiths. The word Lala he had assumed years ago as a prefix, which was merely the Indian equivalent of a mister or sir. His full title, thus, became Lala Gopal Das Saraf, which seemed formidable enough to us children. If anyone asked us what our fathers name was, and we inadvertently left any part of it out, and if perchance our father came to know about the lapse, we were in for a severe reprimand from him which could even include corporal punishment.

All this might give the impression that we were rather well off; actually we were not. We had all the necessities, but not many luxuries. We lived in a rented house, where for a number of years we had no electricity; I remember reading by the light of a hurricane lantern initially. TVs had not yet arrived on the scene, but we had no refrigerator, no geyser, not even a petty radio or any other electrical gadget. We had a grandfather clock on one of the walls, but just one for the whole house, which my father personally wound up once a week, using a rickety stool to stand on and glaring at us if our hold of that rotten platform became shaky. My father walked to his shop on foot and walked back. If he had to go and see a dignitary which included several Englishmen posted in Sialkot he took a tonga.

We were not poor, either. We had always enough to eat and clothe ourselves. There was a telephone at our shop which took a formidable amount of time to acquire in those days, eight to nine years at the least. Then a telegram arrived at our house each morning from Bombay, giving us the latest current and future rates of gold and silver in many varieties. My father dealt in forward trading; he and many of his clients bought now and sold later, or bought in anticipation at some time in the future but paid at the present price. Called sitta in the local language, it was our equivalent of the stock exchange. People made quick profits lost as well in these deals, and my father had to have the newest rates before the market opened everyday. My father made a good deal of money this way, I understand.