Those Fateful Days

Or, as in the case here,
Merely three

Scene 1

n December 1906, twenty-eight men traveled to Dhaka torepresent U.P. at the formation of the All India Muslim League. Two were fromBara Banki, one of them my granduncle, Raja Naushad Ali Khan of Mailaraigunj.Thirty-nine years later, during the winter of 1945-46, I could be seen marchingup and down the only main road of Bara Banki with other kids, waving a MuslimLeague flag and shouting slogans. No, I don’t imply some unbroken trajectoryfrom my granduncle’s trip to my strutting in the street, for the elections in1945 were in fact based on principles that my granduncle reportedly opposed.

It was Uncle Fareed who first informed me that Naushad Ali Khan had gone toDhaka. Uncle Fareed knew the family lore, and enjoyed sharing it with us boys.In an aunt’s house I came across a fading picture. Seated in a dogcart anddressed in Western clothes and a jaunty hat, my granduncle looked like aslightly rotund and mustached English squire. He had been a poet, and one of hiscouplets was then well known even outside the family. Sadly, I cannot correctlyrecall it. And so I offer only an improvised version.

Khair se bagh-i-jahaN meN surat-i-shabnam rahe
Ek hi shab go rahe lekin guloN meN ham rahe

I lived in the world’s garden like a drop of dew,
For only a night, but among roses.

A grand-aunt always said it was a perfect epitaph for her brother.

Posterity, in the form of Professor Francis Robinson, tells a bit more.Robinson writes,