My desire to learn the Urdu language made me undergo a unique set of experiences and feelings which I would like to share with the esteemed readers.
I came in contact with my tutor through an internet website. I had put a query about learning the Urdu language on this website, in response to which some three tutors contacted me, out of whom Syed Meraj bagged the deal.
Initially I had a difficulty remembering his name because I had never heard of this name before. ‘Mirza’ yes but ‘Meraj’ never. I had heard of other unique names in Muslim culture like Khalid and Rizwan which were unusual but beautiful, but ‘Meraj’ was different; it was unusual and difficult to remember. The part ‘Syed’, though, was easy to remember because I had heard the word many times, the most important place being the Indian National Movement fame, ‘Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’.
The course fee of xyz amount per month and timings of one hour every Saturday and Sunday were decided upon over the phone and when the big question of ‘Where would the classes be held?’ came, there was a hurdle. I preferred classes to be held outside my house – may be at the tutor’s place or institute. But this couldn’t come about. He did not take classes at his home and as regards his ‘Institute’, there was none.
That left the only option of having classes at my home. This was a difficult thing to agree upon because I knew my family would have peculiar reservations against this idea. If I had taken the route of seeking permission from my parents-in-law, learning Urdu would have remained a dream. Period.
I thought of an idea – typical of a maverick, reeking of a free-thinking-mind. I said ‘Yes’ to Syed Meraj for holding the classes at my home, and before the appointed date of the first class arrived, I took my husband in confidence.
During the week, one day seeing my husband in good mood, I asked him if he would allow me to take up an Urdu Language Course on Sundays which would require me to be out of home on Sundays for three hours. A liberal minded person that he is, he did not have any reservations against my learning Urdu, though he wanted I should learn some more happening language like Spanish or French or Chinese which would give us a new source of income. However as regards my going out on Sundays for three hours, he did have problems.
He had faced lonely Sundays for the past one year on account of my doing a course on ‘Holistic Living’. The classes for this course were held on Sundays. When that course had gotten over, which was just two months ago, he had felt much relieved and so had I.
On listening to the above request, there immediately appeared a line of worry on his brow. I relieved him of his tension by asking if I could take home tuitions instead – something that would save my time in going and coming back – and therefore would engage me only for an hour. He was reluctant to this too but since it was better than my going out on the weekends, he agreed.
So the Urdu classes began. Within a period of six months, the wonderful tutor taught me enough Urdu to get books issued on my own from the library and read them all by myself. He also taught me how to write Urdu. And, all this while he was very encouraging to me, always saying my progress was going pretty fast. His appreciation of my efforts acted as a booster dose for me.
In the very first class, he asked me why I wanted to learn Urdu. I gave my reasons. I felt the Urdu language would open the doors of the big and vast world of Urdu literature before me and also, I would get a chance to know the Islamic take on life.
He listened carefully; and I doubted if he comprehended the magnetic attraction the word ‘Literature’ had on me, for he was a young boy probably around twenty-five years of age – unmarried, very practical – but one who had not seen life yet.
There were secondary reasons too, which I told him openly. My father could read and write Urdu and I thought by knowing Urdu I could get affection from his soul (for he had left for his heavenly abode a long ago). Another reason was that in my pre-marriage household, our day-to-day language had many words from Urdu and therefore I wanted to increase my stock of Urdu words so as to have a better expression, in terms of richness and depth.
I also told him of a Punjabi author whose autobiography had much interested me. This author had started three to four sections in his book by embarking upon his knowledge of Urdu alphabet and grammar and then smoothly gliding into his deeper thoughts which formed core of his life story. This had drawn me to learning Urdu like anything.
Syed Meraj, after giving me a patient hearing, gave one reason from his own side as to why the Urdu language should be learnt. And this reason took me aback for a moment. He said Urdu language teaches etiquette of speaking. I guessed he was right because I remembered from my meagre knowledge of Hindi movies how much elegance Urdu accorded to the dialogues. However, for a moment I thought he might be hinting that the other languages did not teach etiquette or they were rough or impolite. I looked at his face for any hint of ill-will. There was none and I took my thoughts back.
Here, taking a moment aside, I wish to write that my own mother tongue Punjabi is a very sweet language, rich in idioms, expressions and vocabulary. I learnt it in school besides Hindi and English and even today I read the religious scriptures in Gurmukhi daily.
The first lessons comprised learning letters of Urdu alphabet on a notebook. He made me practise them well and, before moving on to the next topic of forming simple words by joining the letters of Urdu alphabet, he felt that alphabet primers (kaaydas) were required. These could be bought only from area near Jama Masjid in Delhi. I said I would get them by the next weekend but he offered to get them himself, as he thought I would not be able to find them on my own, Jama Masjid being a crowded area full of narrow alleys and by-lanes. I was impressed and what impressed me more was that in the next class, he actually brought two nice kaaydas. He called the second book as Book One. I innocently concluded that if the second book was Book One, the first one must be Book Zero.
One day during the class, Syed Meraj received a phone call from his relative whom he addressed as ‘Chachajaan’. The caller was seemingly worried about the well-being of the tutor and his family. He asked if the elections in his (tutor’s) area had been over. And, when Syed Meraj said, ‘Yes’, the caller asked if there had been any riots. Syed Meraj replied in a full sentence that there had been no riots and that the whole process of election in their locality had been peaceful.
After the phone call got over, our class resumed in the same vigour from where it had been abandoned before the call. Neither I asked him what elections he was talking about nor did he tell me anything about where he lived.
The telephonic conversation threw me down the memory lane when anti-Sikh riots had taken place in the year 1984. They were terrible times. Even after more than three decades of their passing, the gory memories still give me shudders – burning of Sikh men alive with blazed tyres around their necks, police abetting the mob, our school getting looted and set on fire, etc. – I wondered how Syed Meraj and his family lived their everyday lives since the sword of communal riots always hung on their community’s head.
Our classes used to be in the afternoons, a time when my parents-in-law would be in their post-lunch siesta. One day, I do not know what came over my father-in-law – perhaps he was reminded of some work in the Residents’ Association Office – that he suddenly appeared in the living room where the class was going on. He noticed us sitting at the table with books open before us. He did not say anything and, pacing quietly across the room to the front door, went out of the house.
Once he was out, he called my mother-in-law over the phone and informed her verbatim about what he had seen. Within ten minutes of his leaving the house, my mother-in-law (who is called Bibi at home) came to the living room. She stood by us, gave a wide-eyed look to the books and then to me and the tutor, trying to meet my eye to ask, ‘What was this happening?’A tornado of emotions swirled inside me – fear coupled with mortification – however, outwardly I pretended to be calm and did not seem to notice her presence. When she got a cold response from me, she retraced her steps back to her room.
In the evening, when my husband came back from the office, something transpired between Bibi and him about my Urdu tuitions. Clearly, for her Urdu was a language of Jahangir and Aurangzeb who had killed our revered Gurus. I do not know how my husband defended me. But thanks to his tremendous love for me, nothing of their squabble came down to me in any form.
Four months passed. The progress of learning Urdu was pretty much fast. One day Syed Meraj rang up to not only cancel the class but also ask for lending him some money as advance. His father had met with an accident.
It so happened that his father was returning home from his office in the night on his bicycle when a big vehicle came from behind and hit him and ran off leaving him on the road, wailing for help. Some passers-by lifted him and took him to the hospital where he was admitted. He got multiple fractures, the most dangerous being the one on head. It was only fortunate that he had survived the accident.
Under such circumstances, Syed Meraj was forced to a situation where he had to gather money from all his sources wherever he could arrange funds from. In this context he had contacted me.
I melted beyond words on listening to his plight. I had a decent sum of money in my personal savings and was prepared to lend him as much as he would ask, with no time-limit of returning. I asked him how much money he required and insisted that he quantify the amount. He needed only three thousand rupees. I lent the amount quickly. He got the money adjusted towards fees of the future classes.
An incident took place during our Urdu classes which thawed the ice between my mother-in-law and Syed Meraj. One day Bibi and I were waiting on the road by our house for a pedal-rickshaw which would carry her to the hospital for a physiotherapy session on her sprained foot. Despite 15 minutes of waiting, no rickshaw turned up.
Just then I saw Syed Meraj coming down the road on his motorcycle for taking the class. I asked Bibi if she would mind pillion-riding on the tutor’s mobike. She said she would not mind it as the tutor was a God-send in that situation.
When Syed Meraj arrived, I beckoned him to the place where Bibi and I were standing and stopped him short to ask if he would help us by taking Bibi to the hospital which was just round the corner. He not only readily agreed but also helped heaving the old lady up on the rear seat as she had problem putting weight on her swollen foot. After dropping her at the therapy centre, he returned within five minutes and we had our class.
Whenever he came to teach, he occupied a particular chair at the dining table, from where he had a full frontal and close view of our wooden show-case. On one of the glass panes covering the central shelves of the show-case, a Sikh religious symbol of ‘Ek Onkar’ on gilded plastic was stuck. Syed Meraj used to see it and wondered what it meant. Then one day he couldn’t hold it any longer and asked me what the symbol said.
I was surprised he did not know even about Sikhism’s most popular symbol. I explained to him it was a Sikh religious symbol saying ‘Ek Onkar’ – ‘Ek’ standing for one and ‘Onkar’ for the Creator, thereby meaning that God is one.
While reading the books if any sentence contained the word ‘Allah Pak’, he would explain the meaning of the sentence using the word ‘God’, deliberately avoiding the Urdu word like ‘Khuda’. Perhaps the classes were dear to him.
There was an Urdu language book on architecture of Delhi which had references on temples having been broken for their stones and bricks to construct mosques in the 12th century C.E. I found this a revelation. I might have studied it in History when I was a child but that must have been in a cursory way.
The tutor sensed that such topics could lead to sharper situations, and he, very intelligently and articulately allowed me to read the book for five to ten minutes before asking me to leave it, saying it contained difficult words not meant for a learner at my stage. Instead of that heavy-worded book, he handed me over a year 2014 issue of children’s magazine – ‘Bacchon Ki Duniya’ – to read.
This was a nice enjoyable magazine which I liked very much. It had poems on dolls, articles on animals like rabbits and birds and many write-ups of children’s interest.
There was a doubt in my mind about the phrase I had read in a book that by chanting this phrase, one’s religion gets converted. Now since I had a tutor from whom I could clarify my doubt, I grabbed this opportunity.
One day while reading the kaayda, this phrase came in one of the sentences. I was immediately alarmed. I asked him if I would no longer remain a Sikh by reading it. He smiled it away saying, ‘No, never.’ He expounded that just as one doesn’t become a Hindu by saying ‘Vande Matram’, one doesn’t become a Muslim by chanting the above mentioned phrase.
I am reminded of a funny slip of tongue that I made during one of the classes. When my knowledge of ‘Re’ and ‘Dal’ was fairly new, I had a difficulty in identifying these two letters in a flow, and therefore would read the Urdu words with their hidden matras with more or less guesswork. There was a sentence which read, ‘Apni Aadat Badal’ and I read it as ‘Apni Aurat Badal’!
The course got over in six months. Syed Meraj requested me to rate him on the website through which I had found him. I gave him liberal ratings with an open heart and an open mind.
Now the classes are long over. Occasionally when there is a tiff in the family, there is allusion in unpleasant words to their letting me learn Urdu at home. Prejudices and mis-notions are deep rooted, I must say.
What I was interested in was a working knowledge of reading and writing Urdu and what the tutor was interested in was a client and a good rating on the website. It is as if we both took a dip in the vast ocean of knowledge and flew off our ways with our individual purposes filled to the satisfaction by God’s grace. The world could go and take a walk.