“At a very young age,” a report claiming us would write, “the kids were gifted with words they didn’t know the meaning of.” At a very young age -- let me clarify the meaning of young and age and very. There is a school ground somewhere behind the curtain shops at Nursery, apparently called a “quadrangle”, so there is a school quadrangle, that is occupied by grey, uniformed bodies on mornings on weekdays when the school term is on-going. On the backs of their notebooks, especially printed for them by the school, is a poem written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. We did not know the Significance of Faiz, of course, but there was a mosaic painting of him hung at the entrance of the library, which is also incidentally named after him. So we encountered him, unknown man of mosaic, vague name on our tongues, poem at the back of our notebooks. It is not exactly ‘poem’; it is ‘taraana’, that is the title preceding the verses. So, for instance, the beginning is, “Yey dar-ul-ilm sadd-e-rahe-aseb-e-zaman hoga.”
To this date, I only know the meaning of the beginning and the end of that phrase, the middle is a mix of many things, clear your throat, things, you know? So all these words and things crammed in our mouths on mornings and in ceremonies and in prize distributions, and ofcourse it was wonderful, our mouths and tongues champions of difficult language, look at the greatness that we bear, that we hardly understand ourselves. Not that our sense of wonder was ever spoken, or discussed, just orchestrated in sleepy mornings, and everyone’s sleepy voices would eventually pick up the enthusiasm required to sing the last verse, “Jahan main chaar soo ilm-o-amal ki hay amal-daaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa-ri.” Surge of greatness, then snuffed out. Then we all headed to our classes.
Music class slowly turned into a site of practical jokes. By the time we reached 10th grade, we were more interested in singing Aloo Mian than the Sa-Ray-Ga-Ma our music instructors tried so hard to teach us. For one, we were completely off-tune, and secondly, since it was our last year of school, everyone wanted to have fun. So there were made up chipkalis to scare everyone in the room; there were silly rhymes we requested, and the music instructor, sick of our juvenility, resorted to play the tune of Aloo Mian on his harmonium. But sometimes, we’d get to sing Bhar Day Jholi; we didn’t admit it, but we loved singing it, and everyone joined in. We’d be serious enough for five minutes to rise to that occasion.
Before we had turned into a joke, though, we learnt beautiful songs, but in Urdu. Sometimes we would all not manage to sound like screaming banshees when the instructor asked us to sing “Aa-aa-aaaa” in the tune of Sa-Ray-Ga-Ma. Over time, we learnt to correct our lyrics; it was not infact, “Ley Jaa Muddin Kay Darwazay Par”. It was “Nijammuddin kay darwazay par.” Njiammuddin Aulia, Nijammuddin Aulia, follows right after, so it makes sense.
Baba only recently explained me the meaning of, “Hum...taba abad sayy-o-taghayyur kay wali hain.” It’s so much fun to sing and remember, but....okay, I think I should just say it: extremely problematic. Nation crammed into our mouths.
Somebody in the school insisted we needed an English music class as well. The syllabus for that class was extremely strange. Every rhyme seemed to contain sun, moon, stars and mountains, with a momentary appearance of Margalla islands, because it matched the rhyme scheme. “This land was made for you and me!” Mr. Music Instructor Sir, what land? Who is you and me? What are their languages, and how do they intersect? Why is it important to speak this belonging in English? What would you translate this in Urdu as? Who would belong then? Will we learn songs in Sindhi as well? (No, we won’t.)
There is a system of classification of poetry, a canonization and organization, a careful curation of verses only known to Intermediate Urdu (Normal) students. This happens in the form of notes. All poets, all male poets incidentally, lined up on our tongues and notebooks, and we can pull out verses from our mouths about three distinct themes, quite literally organized in headings in black pointer: Ishq, Dunya ki Bey-sabaati and Insaaniyat. Sir Muneer, as part of examination prep, made me recite all the shairs for Meer-Dard-Ghalib, the trio we could rely on, because we could memorize them and them alone, leave the other poets and their verses alone, because everyone knew that if you knew Meer-Dard-Ghalib, you would easily pass the exam. Ms. Qamar dictated us tashreehs in quiet classrooms, and we wrote down, “Aadmi khata ka putlaa hay.” Once, Ms. Qamar asked us to write down a mumaasil shair, a shair you write down as part of the tashreeh because that gives you more marks because the examiner recognizes that you’ve done a lot more memorizing than they expected, so Ms. Qamar dictated to us the first half of a shair, “Kon kehta hay kay tu pyaar na kar…” Quiet classroom, taking down dictation. Ushna took advantage of the silence and said, “Pappu yaar tang na kar.”
Edit: Sir Muneer and Sir Wahid both thought I was some sort of genius, but I was only good at memorizing things. So I remember studying about Angaray, I remember the name Rasheed Jahan, I remember memorizing it as part of a history of the Urdu Afsana, which I have now forgotten. Some days ago, I heard a person talk about Rasheed Jahan as a poet who was a woman; I don’t ever remember memorizing that.
In 8th grade, we attempted to stage a play in school for Northanger Abbey. Hira and I had to learn to dance together as girl and boy. We replicated the dance from the Northanger Abbey movie, and it was strange and stiff, but we had to do what we had to do. So me, Catherine, and Hira, Mr. Henry Tinley, with our sloppy Englishes, we learnt to strangely hold hands and manouvre stiffly through our classmates arranged in rank and file like armies. Apparently that is what dance looked like. Everyone hated studying Northanger Abbey, and they were also a little bit frustrated with me for scoring well on the exam for it. During our English exam, we debated the meaning of the word ‘protagonist’ and ‘antagonist’. We had no idea.
Most of the time, our English teachers had difficulty with English as well. By 10th grade, we were just teaching ourselves. In an undergrad Linguistics class, a teacher pulled up our 10th grade English syllabus as specimen, as something cray and funny. The joke was our exam paper that asked about a poem, which was about a man going on the top of a mountain to meet God, “Where did the man go to meet God?” Ash and I almost cried with laughter, and embarrassment, and later we were overwhelmed with the thought of escaping an education that many people don’t get to escape.
Ammi said innocently about Donald Trump’s election, “The whole world become shake.” We have come to respect the fallibilities of our language and the context in which this failing happens; but still, I caught Hassan Bhai’s eye and we started giggling, and ofcourse he made the strawberry or chocolate shake? joke.
Neither of us has perfect English but that doesn’t mean we don’t get to make fun of each other. Once, my sister said about somebody coming from upstairs, “She’s coming down from above.” Hassan Bhai never lets her forget that.
Baba handles work in emails, and handles emails in English. His signature move is pausing in between eating, walking, or talking, asking me for a translation divorced of all context. But, as is evident, the story can grin from between those words anyway. So one day, he stopped in the TV lounge and asked me, “Is it invincible or invisible?” When you don’t feel seen. I said the latter. He nodded and kept on walking. On another occasion, he said, “Is it hurt or hurted? When I pair it with heart-broken.” Just recently, he asked me, “Can I say I would like to offer you thanks?” I nod in between eating my salad at the dinner table, and don’t need to ask for context because the invisible, hurting issue has apparently been resolved.
Aleeza corrects my English now. I was trying to teach her something from her workbook; I roll my ‘r’ when I say Verb, but she looks at me indignantly and says, “Verb? (It’s) Ve--b!” I’m a little surprised, but I just shrug and say okay. Ammi thinks the kids should learn Urdu, but we’re too exhausted; they can just learn what they learn, and we’ll work with what we have.
