The New Law

Ustad Mungu, the tonga-wallah, was considered a very wise man at the tonga stand. Although his educational status was zero and he had never even set foot inside a school, he was still a well-informed man. All the other tonga-wallahs who were eager to stay abreast of the goings-on in the world were keenly aware of Ustad Mungu’s vast knowledge.

Recently, upon hearing a rumour of war breaking out in Spain from one of his passengers, Ustad Mungu had patted Gama Chaudhary on his broad shoulder and sagaciously predicted, ‘You’ll see, Gama Chaudhary, in a few days war will break out in Spain.’

When Gama Chaudhary asked him where Spain was located, Ustad Mungu solemnly replied, ‘In Britain, of course. Where else?’

Then the Spanish War broke out. When this became common knowledge, all the young men, while drawing on their hookahs at the tonga stand near the railway station, inwardly acknowledged the greatness of Ustad Mungu. At that time, he was driving his tonga on the shiny surface of Mall Road and was exchanging opinions on the recent Hindu-Muslim riots with his passenger. Later that day when he returned to the tonga stand, unusual excitement showed on his face. As the hookah went around, the discussion turned to the riots. Ustad Mungu took off his khaki turban and, pressing it to his side, ponderously said, ‘This is a consequence of a holy man’s curse that every other day Hindus and Muslims have daggers drawn against each other. I have heard from my elders that Emperor Akbar once hurt a saint’s feelings, who then cast a curse upon him, saying, “Begone! May there always be unrest and discord in your Hindustan!” And as you can see, since the end of Emperor Akbar’s reign, Hindustan has known nothing but turmoil upon turmoil.’

Saying this, he sighed deeply. Then, taking a puff of the hookah, he continued, ‘These Congress-wallahs want to liberate Hindustan. I say, even if these people cry themselves hoarse for a thousand years, nothing is going to change. At best the English will leave and some Italians will come in their place. Or maybe that Russian fellow, who is said to be a very strong man. But Hindustan will always remain enslaved. And yes, I forgot to tell you that the saint’s curse also doomed Hindustan to be forever ruled by foreigners.’

Ustad Mungu had immense hatred for the British. He claimed that the reason for this loathing  was that they ruled over India unlawfully, committing all manner of atrocities. But the real reason was that the goras of the cantonment tormented him mercilessly and treated him like a wretched dog. He also intensely disliked their complexion. Whenever he saw their pink faces, he would feel nauseous. ‘I don’t know why,’ he used to say, ‘but the sight of their red and wrinkled faces always reminds me of a corpse shedding its rotting skin.’

Whenever he had an altercation with a drunken gora, it left him gloomy and sullen all day. In the evening, while smoking a Plow brand cigarette or a hookah at the tonga stand, he would tell the gora off to his heart’s content.

After roundly abusing the British and tossing his head and loosely tied turban, he would say, ‘They came to our house asking only for some fire. And now look, they’ve taken possession of the whole house. These monkeys have made our lives hell. They lord it over us as if we’re their slaves.’

Still, his anger would not subside. As long as he had an audience, he would continue spewing such invective, ‘Have you seen his face . . . looks just like a leper, doesn’t he? Or a decaying corpse. He wouldn’t have survived even one of my blows but was carrying on as if he was going to kill me. I swear, at first I considered smashing his skull to smithereens. But I changed my mind at the thought that killing this miserable wretch would be beneath me.’ Saying this, he would fall silent for a while. Then, wiping his nose on his khaki shirt, he would start muttering again, ‘As God is my witness, I am sick and tired of mollycoddling these bloody sahibs. Whenever I see their accursed faces, my blood begins to boil. Only a new law can free us of these people. Mark my words, only then will we be able to breathe a little easier.’

One day, Ustad Mungu picked up two passengers from the local courts, and learnt from their conversation that a new constitution was about to be implemented in India. His joy knew no bounds. The passengers were Marwaris who had come to the court in connection with a civil case, and were pontificating about the new constitution, that is the Government of India Act.

‘I have heard that this new law will come into effect in Hindustan on 1 April. Will everything change?’

‘Not everything will change. But they say that a lot will, and Indians will gain freedom.’

‘Will the law governing interest change as well?’

‘Good question. We’ll ask a lawyer tomorrow.’

The Marwaris’ conversation filled Ustad Mungu’s heart with indescribable joy. He was usually wont to abuse and whip his horse without restraint. But that day he kept casting backward glances at the Marwaris. Twirling up the tips of his overgrown moustache with a finger, he loosened the reins on the horse’s back and affectionately coaxed, ‘Come on, my boy . . . let’s see you soar with the wind.’

After dropping the Marwaris, he made his way to Dinu’s sweetmeat shop in Anarkali Bazar where he proceeded to down half a litre of lassi. Then he belched loudly. As he chewed and sucked on his moustache, he suddenly burst out, ‘To hell with you!’

When he returned to the tonga stand in the evening, surprisingly he did not find any of his acquaintances there. A strange storm began to brew in his breast. He had big news to share. Very big news indeed. He couldn’t wait to spread the word, but found himself without an audience. With his whip pressed to his side, he paced restlessly under the iron roof of the tonga stand for about half an hour. Happy, optimistic thoughts flooded his mind. This new law had opened up a whole new vista for him. He was entirely focused on this bright new law which would come into effect on 1 April. The Marwari’s question (‘Will the law governing interest change as well?’), which had been shot through with apprehension, echoed repeatedly in his ears and made waves of joy course through his body. Bursting every now and then into knowing laughter under his thick moustache, he cursed the Marwaris.

‘Bloodsucking ticks that have crept into the bedding of the poor . . . The new law will be like boiling water pouring down on them.’

He was overjoyed. He was particularly pleased to think of how the snouts of the goras (or the white rats, as he liked to call them) would disappear forever in their burrows as soon as the new law came into effect.

When bald-headed Nathu, with his turban tucked under his arm, entered the tonga stand, Ustad Mungu went up to him, took his hand in his own, and said loudly, ‘Here give me your hand and let me give you some news that will delight you. It’ll even make the hair grow back on this hairless head of yours.’ Mungu began to joyfully discuss the new law with his friend. He gleefully slapped Nathu’s arm several times during the conversation and said, ‘Just you wait and see. Mark my words, this King of Russia, he’s definitely going to do something.’

Ustad Mungu had heard a great deal about the socialist reforms in the Soviet Union. He liked their new laws and other new activities so much that he had conflated the ‘Russian King’ with the India Act, that is to say, with the new constitution and the changes that were going to be made to the old system on 1 April. He considered them all to be a direct result of the influence of the ‘Russian King’.

For some time now, the Red Shirt movement had been active in Peshawar and several other cities. In his head, Mungu had first jumbled up this movement with the ‘Russian King’ and then with the new legislation. What is more, whenever he heard that some bomb-makers had been arrested somewhere or some men were being tried for sedition elsewhere, he would take all these events as precursors of the new law. His chest would swell with satisfaction.

One day, two barristers were loudly discussing the new constitution in his tonga. He quietly listened in on their conversation. One said to the other, ‘The second part of the Act relates to the establishment of a federation in India, which I still do not understand. No such federation has ever been seen, much less heard of in the history of the world. From a political point of view, too, this federation business is complete nonsense. Rather, it should be said that it isn’t a federation at all!’

As the barristers’ conversation was heavily peppered with English words, Ustad Mungu could only partially understand what was being said.

‘These people don’t want the new law,’ he surmised. ‘They don’t want their country to be free.’  Then, looking at the barristers with contempt, he silently swore, ‘Toadies!’

Whenever he called someone a ‘toady’ under his breath, he was pleased no end at the thought that he had used the epithet advisedly and that he was quite capable of distinguishing between a gentleman and a ‘toady’.

Two days after the incident, when he was taking three students from Government College to Mozang, he eavesdropped on their conversation.

‘The new constitution gives me hope. If Mr . . . becomes a member of the assembly, then I’ll definitely get a government job of some sort.’

‘In any case, many other vacancies are bound to open up. Perhaps this chaos will work in our favour.’

‘Yes, yes, why not?’

‘All those poor unemployed graduates who are knocking around … at least there will be some reduction in their numbers.’

This conversation further heightened the importance of the new constitution in Ustad Mungu’s eyes. He began to perceive it as a bright, shining ‘thing’.  ‘A new law!’ he would remark wondrously to himself several times a day. ‘A new thing!’

This reminded him of that ornament that he had bought for his horse two years ago from Chaudhary Khuda Bakhsh, after examining it closely. The new ornament was studded with brilliantly sparkling, nickel-plated iron nails; wherever there was brass work, it had glittered like gold. It seemed obvious to him that the ‘new law’ had to be just as bright and dazzling.

By 1 April, Ustad Mungu had heard much, both in favour of and against the new constitution. But the impression that he had formed initially about it remained unaffected. He believed that on 1 April, as soon as the new law came into force, all confusion would be swept away. He was convinced that the changes that the law would bring about would make for a very satisfying sight indeed.

At long last the thirty-one days of March were behind him, and only a few quiet hours of the night remained before the start of April. The air was fresh and the weather unusually chilly. Ustad Mungu rose early in the morning, went to the stable, harnessed the horse to the tonga, and trotted out. He was in an extraordinarily cheerful mood; he was about to see the new law in all its glory.

He wandered through many wide and narrow streets in the cold morning mist. But all seemed old and unchanged to him, just like the sky. His eyes yearned to behold new colours. But except for the plume of multicoloured feathers that was affixed to his horse’s head, everything else appeared old and grubby. He had bought this plume from Chaudhary Khuda Bakhsh for fourteen and a half annas on 31 March especially to mark the arrival of the new law.

The clip-clop of his horse’s hooves, the black tarmac road and the electricity poles placed at short distances along it, the shop signboards, the bells jingling around his horse’s neck, people in the bazaar: was there anything new about these sights and sounds? Not in the slightest, but Ustad Mungu had not yet lost hope.

‘It’s very early in the day, and all the shops are still closed.’ The thought comforted him. ‘Work in the High Court starts only after nine o’clock. How can the new law be seen in action before that?’ he reasoned.

As he approached the main gate of Government College in his tonga, the college bell stridently struck nine. The students streaming out of the gate were smartly dressed; but, for some reason, their clothes looked dirty and unwashed to Ustad Mungu. Perhaps this was because his eyes were yearning for a truly wonderous sight.

Turning his tonga to the right, he was soon back in Anarkali Bazaar. Many of the shops had now opened, with people milling everywhere. Customers crowded the sweet shops and the bangle-makers’ shiny wares displayed in glass cabinets invitingly beckoned passers-by. Several pigeons squabbled on the electric cables overhead. But Ustad Mungu had no interest in any of these things. He wanted to see the new law as clearly as he could see his horse in front of him.

When his wife was expecting, Ustad Mungu had spent several months in a state of intense anxiety and agitation. He was certain that one day or the other the baby would arrive, but he could not bear the suspense of waiting. He wanted to catch just one glimpse of his child. After that, as far as he was concerned, the baby could take its own sweet time to come into this world. Driven by this irrepressible desire, he had tried on many occasions to learn something about his child by kneading his pregnant wife’s stomach and by putting his ear against it, but to no avail. Once, he had become so sick of waiting that he had cursed his wife, ‘All you do is lie there like a corpse. Get up and walk about. At least get some strength in your body. Nothing will be achieved from lying around like a stiff plank all day long. Do you really think you’ll be able to give birth to the baby just by lying there?’

Ustad Mungu was by nature an exceedingly impatient man. He was achingly curious and painfully eager to witness the final outcome of everything all at once. Seeing his restlessness, his wife Gangavati would remark, ‘The well has yet to be dug, and you’re already dying of thirst.’

Be that as it may, given his nature, Ustad Mungu was not waiting as impatiently for the new law as he could have been. He had left home to see the new law in the same spirit in which he used to go out to see Gandhi or Nehru at their political rallies. He always gauged the greatness of political leaders by the tumult at their rallies and the flowers adorning their necks. If a leader was laden with garlands of flowers, then, in Ustad Mungu’s eyes, he was a great man. And if two or three disturbances broke out at the rally, the leader would rise further in Ustad Mungu’s estimation. Now he wanted to assess the new law in the same way.

He left Anarkali. While driving his tonga on the shiny surface of Mall Road, Ustad Mungu found a passenger near a car showroom who wanted to be taken to the cantonment. Once the fare had been negotiated, he cracked his whip and thought, ‘This is good . . . Maybe in the cantonment we’ll learn something about the new law.’

Upon reaching the cantonment, he dropped the passenger off. Taking a cigarette out of his pocket and pressing it between the last two fingers of his left hand, he lit it. He then went and sat in the back seat. When Ustad Mungu was not looking out for a ride or when he wanted to reflect on a past incident, he would usually abandon the front seat and sit contentedly in the back, the reins of his horse wrapped around his right hand. On such occasions, after a little whinnying, the horse would start walking very slowly as if he had been given some time off.

Both the horse’s gait and the flow of his thoughts were sluggish. New hypotheses about the law slowly arose in his mind, matching the pace of his horse’s steps. He was wondering how one would go about getting registration numbers for tongas from the municipal committee under the new law. He wanted to delve further into this weighty issue, and was immersed deep in these thoughts, when he sensed that a customer was calling out to him. He looked back.

A gora was standing near the electric pole on the far side of the road, beckoning to him.

As mentioned earlier, Ustad Mungu harboured an unlimited hatred for goras. When he saw that his new customer was white, his heart welled up with loathing. At first he thought of ignoring him, but then it occurred to Ustad Mungu that it would be foolish not to take his money. The fourteen and a half annas that had been spent needlessly on the fancy plume ought to be recovered from the gora’s pocket. ‘Yes, let’s go,’ he resolutely decided.

Flicking his whip, he turned the tonga expertly on the deserted road. He was by the electric pole in the blink of an eye. Pulling at the reins, he stopped the horse and, still lounging in the back seat, asked the gora in a mock English accent, ‘Where does Sahib Bahadur wish to go?’ The question was steeped in sarcasm, and his mustachioed lip sagged as he pronounced the words ‘Sahib Bahadur’. The faint line on his cheek that ran from the nostril to the upper part of his chin deepened with a tremor, like a groove had been carved with a sharp knife in dark sheesham wood. Laughter contorted his whole face as he imagined reducing the gora to ashes in the fires of hatred burning bright in his heart.

When the gora—who had sought shelter from the breeze behind an electric pole in order to light his cigarette—turned and began walking towards the tonga, his gaze met Mungu’s. Suddenly, it was as if bullets had been fired simultaneously from opposing guns and then rocketed skywards, forming a fireball upon collision.

As he unravelled the reins with his right hand and prepared to alight from the tonga, Ustad Mungu kept glaring at the gora as though grinding every particle of his being to dust with his eyes. Meanwhile, the gora, in an attempt to shield himself from Ustad Mungu’s fiery gaze, was busy flicking away non-existent lint from his blue trousers.

Swallowing the cigarette smoke, he said in his broken Urdu, ‘Are you coming or are you going to make trouble again?’

‘It’s him.’ These words took shape in Ustad Mungu’s mind and reverberated in his broad chest. ‘It’s him.’ He repeated the words to himself. He was certain that the gora who stood before him was the same man with whom he had had a quarrel last year— an unnecessary spat which had clearly gone to the alcohol-addled gora’s head. It had been a humiliating experience for him. Ustad Mungu would have told the gora off, even smashed him to bits, but had expediently kept quiet: he knew that in such cases the ire of the court was usually directed against the tonga-wallah.

With his mind firmly on their previous altercation and the new law, Ustad Mungu asked the gora in an anglicized accent and a piercingly sharp tone, ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Heera Mandi.’

‘Five rupees,’ said Ustad Mungu, his moustache aquiver.

The gora was shocked. ‘Five rupees! Are you . . .?’ He screamed in outrage.

‘Yes, yes, five rupees.’ Ustad Mungu’s hairy right hand was clenched into a heavy fist. ‘Do you want to go, or are you going to waste my time with idle talk?’ His tone grew even sharper.

Recalling how his last interaction with Ustad Mungu had unfolded, the gora decided that he need not worry about his formidable physique. He concluded that the tonga wallah was simply being his prickly self again. Encouraged by this thought, he arrogantly stepped towards the tonga and, with his cane, gestured to Ustad Mungu to get off. His thin, polished cane tapped Ustad Mungu’s hefty thigh two or three times. Ustad Mungu stood looking down at the short white man like he intended to crush him with the force of his gaze. Then his fist shot up like an arrow from a bow and, in a flash, landed right under the gora’s chin. He shoved the white man away roughly and upon alighting from the tonga, began to pummel him hard.

Gobsmacked, the gora tried to dodge Ustad Mungu’s forceful punches. Noticing his opponent’s eyes flashing with anger and sensing that he was in a state of frenzy, the gora screamed. His shouting and wailing caused Ustad Mungu’s arms to work even faster. He proceeded to beat up the gora to his heart’s content, all the while saying, ‘The same old cockiness even on 1 April . . . even on 1 April . . . it’s our rule now, sonny!’

People gathered and with no small effort, two policemen freed the gora from Ustad Mungu’s grip. Frothing at the mouth and broad chest heaving with breathlessness, Ustad Mungu stood between the two sepoys. He glanced at the astonished crowd with his smiling eyes and panted, ‘Those days are gone when you could do whatever you liked . . . Now there is a new law, sonny . . . a new law!’

His face now disfigured, the poor white man gaped like a fool, sometimes at Ustad Mungu and sometimes at the crowd.

The sepoys took Ustad Mungu to the police station. On the way, and even once they were inside, he kept screaming, ‘The new law, the new law!’

But no one paid any heed to him.

‘New law, new law. What the hell are you jabbering on about? The law is the same old one!’

Then he was locked up.