Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali

Author:Ahmed Ali
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9788129112514
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2008-06-28T18:30:00+00:00

He who makes my woes for me

Will think about my woes.

My brooding over them would be

A greater woe than those.

Guided by this principle, his life was really happy, full of love and affection, as he himself was full of sympathy and understanding. With his arrival it seemed that the central pivot had come, and everyone hung around him.

Then all the men and children dressed themselves in new and fine clothes and went for the Eed prayers. In the midst of his sons and grandchildren, Mir Nihal felt happy. He had put on a turban with the tightly tied folds covering part of one eye. And in his muslin coat, tight-fitting paijamas, his fine shoes and his white majestic beard he looked magnificent. As the children flocked round him the skin on his cheeks quivered and his eyes sparkled with joy.

At the Eed-gah, there were thousands and thousands of people, all elated and happy, with attar on their bodies and collyrium in their eyes. The noise of people talking, vendors shouting, children crying, filled the air. All along the roads and in the open ground near the Eed-gah, toy-sellers had coloured the earth with bright earthen toys. Vendors went about selling delicacies, and many sold whistles and bugles and trumpets, and deafened the ears with their noises and cries.

Then the prayer began. They all stood in rows, one behind the other. There were so many people that they had to form rows outside the enclosure of the Eed-gah. As the shout of Allah-o-akbar3 went up, a sudden quiet descended upon the earth. Everyone became silent as if no one was there at all. Only now and then a child began to cry, frightened by the sudden silence, perhaps, or at being lonely in the midst of that huge crowd. One could hear a horse neighing or a kite shrilly crying as it flew in the sky. When the prayer ended, they all began to embrace, falling on each other's necks, pressing the chests together warmly. All those who knew one another went through this show and expression of affection. And the lovers found the opportunity of their lives. A middle-aged man quoted these lines to a young man with arms open for an embrace, just where the whole family of Mir Nihal were embracing and waiting for the crowd to thin so that they could go out:

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