My Kabuliwala

It’s a dark monsoon afternoon and I have just read Kabuliwala, Tagore’s beautiful, haunting story again.  When I first read it in school,  I remember,  I had sat there by the window, staring out onto that street in Indiranagar, lost in thought.  The story was moving and filled with imagery, and as the mind saw what the eye could not, I felt goosebumps and a moment of thrill.  For those images in the mind were from that magical childhood in Digboi.  

Because in Digboi we had our Kabuliwala too.  I see him now, as I peer through the sepia-tinted mist and look back in time, a tall, slim man with a scraggly beard, sitting on the floor of the portico of  Bungalow 75, my beautiful, immaculately British home.  Behind him is the circular driveway, with the large banyan in the middle, against which he is silhouetted on this bright day. 

He has come a long long way with others from his land, walking for days on end, jostling for space for himself and his sack in packed, claustrophobic train compartments, marking town after town and language after language to get here,  and those worn, compressed Pathani slip-on shoes have borne the travel with forbearance.  His dress – the Pathan’s trademark kurta-pyjama – was once white, but now wears a brownish-cream hue, as indeed does the cloth sack which has now been opened out on the floor.  He brings out one tin after another and opens each up for view, in front of Mum and me.  He takes his time, for human endurance is but a prelude to patience.  

All agog with excitement, I eagerly sniff into each tin,  which are filled with mystery and enchantment.  The most fascinating smells emerge from these tins: of spices – clove, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg - and dry fruits – walnuts, dates, badam and raisins, which he calls ‘kishmish’, with a certain flourish.  Yet, beyond those strong fragrances of spices and dried fruits, enticing enough for a child to be wide-eyed and snuffling, is the smell of that old sack itself.  It is the odour of experience, of a World-weary traveller who has lived the rough life and walked the earth.  If you close your eyes and breathe with depth and discernment, there is the resonance of blood and sweat and a thousand stories that speaks the history of this man, the Kabuliwala.  The smells tell you that he has walked the highways, slept on logs being transported on goods trains and in railway stations that reek of compacted humanity, tussled with those who harassed him, starved in difficult times and eaten where he could afford to.   

Yet the man is hardly the weary sort; he has a smiling, hesitant countenance that laughs easily and speaks in a Hindi-Urdu combine that is comical, oddly sing-song, but effective enough.  When the child in front of him laughs at this unfamiliar language with its expressions and intonation, he joins in too.  Is that grace or innate simplicity, unable to understand that some aspect of his manner is being laughed at?  I see this man's face and figure in Gurudev's Kabuliwala: one that speaks of honour and dignity and an extraordinary physical strength that will be used to protect these oddly anachronistic values.  

The Kabuliwala hasn’t come to sell us his wares alone; he is a halting, shy story teller too.  In every new house that he visits, the questions must be the same: Where are you from?  How did you come here?  Whom have you left behind, back home?  Religion isn’t a question, for, as I see through that mist, those are liberal days.  Mum’s questions are more familiar, as the man has been here earlier:  What is it like there now?  Where will you go next? Questions of work and detail, rarely one of learning, for the Itinerants are the World's real teachers.

He knows that these conversations draw customers in; the more time he spends telling a story, the easier the sale.  These customers are the negotiating sort though, so his bargaining is good-natured and gentle and appealing, and he is in no hurry to move on.  He looks at me with a kindly eye, and it helps that that’s the way to a good sale too; ‘Baba, please try the kishmish,’ he urges, and, of course, I oblige, taking a handful and popping them in, hygiene fears be damned.   

When Mum gives him the money, he brings out, from the recesses of the kurta, an old cloth pouch with a drawstring and shakes out the contents - lots of coins -  on a cloth. My excitement is now at its crescendo, for the coins, which smell strongly of cardamom, are, in themselves, a revelation; I ask him for the old brass-coloured, flower-shaped ten paise coin, in exchange for a more modern one that I have,  and I do a couple of more investigations and trades, examining all the coins with fascination, in particular the 1-paise and 2-paise ones, before Mum holds me back.  But the Kabuliwala doesn't really seem to mind at all.   We watch him pack up at leisure even as the conversation flows, and the fragrances dissipate into the warm air; he requests Mum to recommend another home that he could go to. 

And then he stands up, this tall, gaunt, yet powerful figure and, in a smooth motion, hoists the sack onto his back.  He is off, walking down the driveway in a long and easy stride. I stand by the portico, jingling the coins in my hand, and watch till he has turned the corner - beyond Bulbul Auntie's home - and is lost to view.

The mists of memory recede away, a reluctant lift of nostalgia on this cloudy, gloomy afternoon.  There is a whiff of cardamom in the air, a memory that has lingered for the last fifty years, preserved by Gurudev’s abiding genius. 

It is time to close the mind's book and return to the present that awaits with impatient expectation.  There is work to be done.