Khan gharaa de band ve: The making of an artist

(Asad Fate­mi)

When­ev­er a folk meets anoth­er, some ques­tions are quite obvi­ous; “what’s your native dis­trict” and again “which town?” and then the sto­ry telling begins. Well, I’m from Jhang, and for Jhang­ochis, I come from Kot Shakir. Here, I use to face anoth­er ques­tion. They ask about the mys­te­ri­ous line from a famous song by Man­soor Malan­gi;

Tere pich­he Kot Shakirchhadya, aap cha malya’i Jhang ve,

Khan gharaa de band ve..

Hav­ing a very lit­tle thought about where to begin from, I flash back to the old­en cor­ri­dors of my high school, a struc­ture found­ed in 1870’s as boys ver­nac­u­lar school, now named as Govt. Boys High School Kot Shakir. The elder­ly peo­ple use to tell about the days from some four decades back, when an entire gen­er­a­tion of icon­o­clast Jaan­gli poets, singers, lovers and sto­ry tellers of our time was liv­ing its boy­hood in the board­ing house of this school. That was a place on a healthy walk­ing dis­tance from the school and the town pop­u­la­tion, sur­round­ed by green fields and the wilder­ness pro­vid­ing shel­ter to howl­ing jack­als, ven­omous snakes and the rebel­lious love mak­ers.

I am talk­ing about the time when Mahr Riaz Budana, Shafqat Khan Sial, Idris Chela and many oth­er stars of Jaan­gli poet­ry were liv­ing at one place. And there was a boy with a har­mo­ni­um, called Malan­gi, son of a Mirasi from a far­ther vil­lage Garh Mahara­ja.

And there was a woman Zohra Khanum, the young wife of an elder­ly folk Muham­mad Khan. She had fare com­plex­ions, lumi­nous eyes and long black curly hair. Khanum nev­er vis­it­ed the board­ing house yet she was per­haps the most obses­sive­ly dis­cussed woman in the res­i­dence. Her seduc­ing body lan­guage made her a bomb­shell among the plea­sure seek­ers and her flaw­less beau­ty made her a quixot­ic inspi­ra­tion for the poets. She was sim­ply an anec­do­tal sweet­heart. Imag­ine that clear dawn when Khanum was find­ing some bare ground in the fields, to sit and defe­cate, with a clay ves­sel in her hand. Idris Chel­la, noto­ri­ous for his extem­pore poet­ry, was descend­ing from a near­by mound. He wit­nessed our Khanum tuck­ing her dress up and sit­ting in the thick crop to prac­tice the morn­ing rou­tine, with her glabrous bot­tom exposed for a moment. The poet­ry genius couldn’t help him­self to stop chant­i­ng his ‘just revealed’ Dohra by its first line;

Pir Raa­je Shah di kan­dak de vich ajj vekhya him chann lah­n­da…

Trans­la­tion: Today I’ve seen the moon set­ting in the wheat field of Pir Raa­je Shah… (this is the name of my grand­fa­ther)

Among all those chasers and the prais­ers of Khanum’s beau­ty, Mehmood Lohar was the only one to earn a for­tune. He was son of a smart black­smith from a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage Aliana who had changed his pro­fes­sion from black­smith to gold­smith and the word Lohar (black­smith) was part of his name, only to clue up his ances­tral caste. Mehmood was a tall boy with broad shoul­ders, strong wrists and a hand­some mas­cu­line face-cut. A boy dumb in Eng­lish and Sci­ence Sub­jects but famil­iar with his father’s gold­smith tools, was about to shine in the school by being our Khanum’s heart­throbe.

The school boys from the oth­er vil­lages are advised to be cau­tious in hook­ing around with women of the town. Whether the gos­sip mon­gers of boys board­ing house were expect­ing Mehmood to go for some adven­ture. A promised tryst on the Riv­er Jehlum (aka. Kis­hangan­ga) bank, in a full-moon autumn night, was the time and place of the bit­ter end of their sto­ry.

They were caught. Khanum escaped the occa­sion, leav­ing her dress on the “crime scene” and Lohar was beat­en up by the invad­ing peo­ple. He was sent back to his own vil­lage, car­ried on a char­poy with his bones bro­ken. Khanum was back to her home and by the dusk of dawn, the scan­dal was trend­ing every pub­lic space of the town. Muham­mad Khan claimed the hon­or of a dis­ad­van­taged hus­band, he man­aged a tra­di­tion­al pun­ish­ment for the crime of his pre­vi­ous­ly escaped wife. He beat him cru­el­ly. Khanum was apple of her parent’s eyes. She sent a mes­sen­ger to her moth­er nar­rat­ing her ver­sion of the case. Her moth­er was a sup­port­ive soul from the city Jhang.A Cou­ple of days lat­er, her broth­ers came to the town and they beat up her sister’s hus­band in revenge. They took their sis­ter back to stay at her mother’s house in Jhang for a very long peri­od.

Mehmood Lohar was not the part of chat­ter­ing in the town, he had left Kot Shakir. He was heal­ing with his bone injuries and keep­ing alive the wounds of his heart. One day he came across the poet school­mate Shafqat Khan, who found Lohar in a piti­ful out­look and a painful agony of defeat. Lohar said to his poet friend;

“You’ve wit­nessed all the accounts of my sto­ry, from lux­u­ry to the mis­ery. You are a poet and you can feel the way I do… write me some vers­es…”

The poet took a piece of paper and appar­ent­ly didn’t take any manip­u­la­tive lib­er­ty in doc­u­ment­ing his feel­ings, he tuned up Lohar’s request into some sim­ple lyri­cal lines, and there was a com­plete song;

Tere pich­he Kot Shakir chhadya, aap cha malya’i Jhang ve,
Khan gharaa de band ve..

(I left Kot Shakir in your love, and you set­tled back in Jhang..
Com­pose me a stan­za, O Khan!)

A copy of the stan­zas was made and tak­en to the board­ing house. Some­body pre­sent­ed the piece of paper to the boy with har­mo­ni­um, in an evening meet up. Malan­gi sang it to the fel­lows, and it bewitched the entire house. The next Fri­day, in the week­ly per­for­mance assem­bly Man­soor Malan­gi was asked to for­mal­ly play the song to the teach­ers and the pupils of his school. Those who lis­tened, went back to their vil­lages and told oth­er folks about the fresh mas­ter­piece. On the upcom­ing crop fes­ti­val, Malangi’s song was the hottest thing to talk about. A true work of art had come up with its deserved appre­ci­a­tion. Malan­gi was famous and he didn’t stop on one song. The ear­li­est audio cas­sette with his very first song on side A, and the sec­ond song “Hik phul motiye da” on side B, has been the trendi­est gift for the youth of entire dis­trict. Noth­ing could stop his voice from pre­vail­ing in the breadth of Pun­jab and the entire world.

The old Kot Shakir is now a shrink­ing town, some­how rear­rang­ing its pop­u­la­tion on the west­ern sand mounds cut apart by Khushab Road. The peri­od­i­cal riv­er floods are increas­ing­ly fre­quent and a big piece of the deep­er cul­ti­va­tion lands is fall­en infer­tile of sali­na­tion. Some new schools were found­ed in the oth­er vil­lages and boys had got faster ways to move to their schools, hence the exis­tence of board­ing house was final­ly chal­lenged. The build­ing is turned to Gov­ern­ment Girls High School, and now it is a new hide­out for the haunt­ing fan­tasies of the boys from lat­er gen­er­a­tions, though the wilder­ness is not its most imme­di­ate neigh­bor any­more.

Mehmood Lohar has now noth­ing to do with the gold busi­ness, he’s again a des­ti­tute black­smith earn­ing his liveli­hood by sharp­en­ing the peas­ants’ reapers in the har­vest­ing sea­sons. He is now an elder­ly man with a grown up fam­i­ly and a nos­tal­gic soul with a pro­found sense of absolute fail­ure in life. Zohra Khanum was late­ly back to her hus­band and she brought forth some five beau­ti­ful chil­dren. She has learned to live hap­pi­ly with her young kids. And today is the day when I am hear­ing the news that Man­soor Malan­gi has died of heart dis­ease. The radios and tele­vi­sions are echo­ing the melodies those are quite famil­iar to the ears. He was touchy about the arrange­ments he sang and choosy about the lyrics he took for his songs. His records have led many instru­men­tal­ists, poets, places and beau­teous dar­lings to the mem­o­ry of eter­ni­ty.

Ustad Malan­gi is dead, live long the two rivers.