Some excerpts from Shaikh Ayaz's, "The World is Merely a Dream" (Jaggu
Mirroyoii Sapno). Autobiographical essays pub. in 1985. These excerpts are translated from Sindhi language by Dr. Gul A. Agha.
In our neighborhood lived a Brahmo Samaji. In his house was a gallery in which portraits of many of the world's important people - such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Tagore, Emerson, Bernard Shaw, Gandhi, etc. - were hung, and in their midst, hung photographs of Brahmo Samaj leader Raja Ram Mohan Rai and his beloved follower Keshab Chandersen. [In Chandersen's] books I read that he termed the Original Reality of the universe as "Mother" [mata], and he called out to trees and flowers, people and [other] animals, in other words, all living things, and all imaginary things, with the name "Mother", "Mother": to this day, the sound of this word rings in my ears.
The earth is my Mother, and it is eternal, but I had yet another mother who gave me birth and who has passed away. When there was a storm in the night and the planks of the doors rattled as though the angels of death were clapping, and I felt terrified, she would embrace me.... and when this Mother, my mom, entered the embrace of the everyone's Grandmother -- the earth, when she became so small that she could fit in the lap of the Grandmother, then I remember the cry of that Brahmo Samaji, "Mother!", "Mother!", "Mother!".
In 1947, my literati friends Kirat Babani [bbabbarnii], Gobind Malhi, Arjun Shad, Mohan Punjabi, Narayan Shyam, and many other good friends, with whom I had great get-togethers in Karachi, had crossed the frontier and arrived at the other side. Now in Karachi, of my literati friends, only two remained. Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo and Sobho Giyanchandani. My class fellow, and my and Narayan Shyam's best friend, Shaikh Abdul Razzak, had left Karachi to become Chief Officer in Sukkur Municipality. The great intellectual genius of that era, Hashoo Kewalramani had been exiled, and I and my Punjabi friend, Monis Hashoo, lived in his abandoned flat...
This is a tale of the time when Sunday was a holiday and that is why on Saturday evenings, the lawyers in Sukkur kept their offices closed. Of them, some went to the movies and some went to the Gymkhana to drink whisky and play Rummy or Bridge. In the winter, I too had my lunch and took my car. I left for the Bagarji. Bagarji is at a distance of 8 miles from Sukkur and there is a forest nearby. I stopped my car at the dam and went hiking in the forest. I found a strange calm in the forest and I loved its birds, trees, and streams. I always felt closer to Thoreau than to Marx, and the hatred with society that revolutions, bloodsheds, and class oppression had produced was contrary to my temperament. Sometimes I hugged a tree with such endearment as I had once hugged Comrade Hyder Bux Jatoi in Karachi Jail, and when I saw a woodpecker pecking at the trunk of bber tree, it looked to me as though [my friend] Narayan Shyam was writing away. [By contrast] I am not particularly impressed by the products of modern technology, rather I dismissively term them, "modern conveniences."...
For fear of robbers, I carried a loaded revolver to the forest... There is a lake in the Bagarji forest which in the shadows of the sunset reminds me of the figure of a Constable. In the winter, hundreds of migratory birds descend on this lake, such as "arriyuun, hinjiruun, niirggiyuun, dragosha, bbuddhrranaa, chiiklaa, bbuuaarra, phaaraavaa, langhaa, ttuvaayaa", etc. I watch these birds with longing, and sometimes reflecting on their names, I came to develop a passion for the ancientness and expressiveness of the Sindhi language. 'Langho' bird was so named because on rising it 'dumpty dums' like a drum...
Like birds, I also love fish and I never tire of talking to boatmen about them; when I was little, I would board a boat and go to the shrine of the 'Living Saint' [zinda pir or udero lal] and ask the people of the river about 'palau' [salmon?], 'ddanmbarini', and other fish. I still remember that a boatman told me that palau eats sand and water weeds, and 'jjirkha', 'siingaariyuun' and 'kakhaa' are predatory fish. Why I became a lawyer, unlike novelist John Steibeck, who was a Marine Biologist, is a story I will relate some other day. I am not irritated by Science, in fact I much admire it. I do not see a conflict between poetry and Science just as Leonardo da Vinci did not find a conflict between painting and Science. But I am not a scientist as Leonardo da Vinci was, and am embarrassed to have compared myself to his name. (It is a different matter that I can compare the beauty of some of my poems to that of Mona Lisa). Though I love Science, I am irritated by every advocate of Science who, like a drummer, climbs on a pedestal and declares that Science can understand and explain every mystery of this Universe.
The human mind is easily distractable. I was started relating the tale of Bagarji and now I am talking of Bosphorous. But I was relating the story of that day, when I had walked quite a ways along the banks of the lake. Incidentally, I had seen no guards at the logging sites that day. There was a stillness all around. All of sudden, there was the sound of gunshots. I saw five birds fall from the air into the water. I braced myself against a tree when I saw at some distance four guys holding guns. One of them put his gun aside, took out a hunting knife from his side and flinging it open and went into the water. After a short while, he emerged with the five birds, three of whom had died due to the gunshots, and two of whom were writhing in pain from their wounds. He cut the wounded birds with his knife. They regard those killed by gunshot also as kosher.
At the sound of the gunshots, many a birds had taken flight, and the skies were filled with their screams, but after only a short while, silence once again descended on the lake. I thought that after the murder of Abel by Cain, such a silence must have also been felt. It had not been a long interim, when a 'valur' came flying to the lake. Two of the guys standing nearby fired at the bird. Five or six birds fell into the water. The guy with the knife once more rolled up his pants and stepped into the knee deep water. The water splashed as he brought these birds too from the water... again there was a firing and some died of the gunshots, some were wounded..
When night descended, and the trees had disappeared in its darkness, I emerged from the shadow of the tree, and walked to another tree which stood some twenty steps from the hunters. The hunters gathered some dry wood and lit a fire, and put iron skewers through a couple of birds and started roasting them on the fire. One of the hunters opened a bottle of whisky and put a measure in each glass, mixed it with water and everyone had a few shots. Then the knife wielding hunter picked up some 'kukrraatta' [birds] and threw them aside, and said, "We must have killed about a hundred birds today, and these are enough, who needs to eat these kukrraatta'! I believe the meat of these 'kukrraatta' is not kosher anyway." All the others hunters agreed with him. Then the knife wielding guy grabbed the 'drighosh' from its legs and hung it upside down. In the light of the fire, the birds revolutionary color looked ever redder. Then the man cut the feathers off the 'drighosh' and started carving him with his knife.
All of a sudden, I could not take it anymore. I fired two bullets towards the hunters that missed them by a short distance and were installed in the base of the fireplace. The guy with the knife dropped both the bird and his knife and his other companions were also frightfully startled and jumped up with a start. I let out a primal scream, "Tyrants!". One of the hunters shouted, "robbers", "robbers", "robbers" and the others followed suit. I fired another shot and they all abandoned the dead carcasses and ran.
After that, I fired my remaining four bullets and before firing each shot, I yelled, "tyrants!". The forest was filled by the ringing sound of "tyrants", "tyrants", "tyrants"... They ran and disappeared in the darkness. I thought to myself I have let them live but if on their way some wild boar gores them or some snake eats them, I will not feel sorry because they are bloodthirsty murderers. In the light of the fire, I looked sorrowfully at ten or fifteen dead 'kuukratta' whose meat no one consumes. Then I saw beside the fire a fallen 'dragosh' [a red bird] whom I picked up and put in my lap, and said, "Shilakov! If they ever come again to hunt you, I will straight away shoot them in their necks."
Then I looked up to the heavens. The moon hung as as an ornamental necklace around its neck. Life experiences have considerably altered my perceptions. If this incident had occured a few years hence, I would forcefully torn the necklace and thrown its pieces back at the heavens.