There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He would not quiet be.
– John Keats

There are so many memories of those days gone by, that it is almost impossible to be coherent about them. Suffice it to say, that as I was seven years old when Salmaan was born, I ‘brought him up by hand’, as did Pip’s older sister in Great Expectations. He took his first wobbly steps under the supervision of myself and our best friends Bonnie and Deepak Surjit Singh in Simla in the 1940’s, with much applause to accompany the feat…

After that momentous wobble, Salmaan, or Billoo, as he was then called, grew into a chubby toddler with curly hair, luminous sparkling eyes and ‘a cupid’s bow mouth’, as he himself described it. As for the nickname Billoo, he grew to hate it, and eventually got rid of it by refusing to answer anyone unless they addressed him by his given name.

The Simla days saw Salmaan grow from a baby wearing smocked outfits into a rosy cheeked rascal in knickers. He was very much in the company of his aayah from Jammu, Mai Soma by then, as I was going to Simla’s Christ Church School, with scarcely any time for either him or my flaxen haired sibling Mariam, who was also rosy cheeked, but with a belligerent look to her eye, which boded ill for all those who crossed her.

From Simla we moved to Delhi, where our father was now Deputy Director of the Labour Department, after having worked in the Government of India’s Anti-War Ministry in Simla. Once again Salmaan was a little boy who was there but not really there, as he was under the supervision of Mai Soma, that formidable Jamvaal of Rubenesque proportions, which were much appreciated by the male visitors who came to our colonial-style bungalow at 48 Lodhi Road. The more visible and audible member of our trio was Mariam, whose eternal cry was, ‘Main ne bhi jaana hai,’ whenever she saw me leave on one of my excursions with my cyclist gang. She also wormed her way into the hedges in our garden which were hollow, and could be turned into rooms in which to play ‘House House’. But Salmaan remained aloof from all this terrorist activity as he was simply too little. However he certainly made his presence felt when he succumbed to a severe ear infection which would have killed him had it not been for the newly-invented penicillin drug which saved his life.

From Delhi we moved to Srinagar during the summer of 1947, along with our English grand-parents who were on a visit to India to meet their daughters, my mother and Aunty Alys who had married Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and of course their five grandchildren. Salmaan was still the baby of the family.

In October that year we arrived in Lahore, and fairly soon Salmaan became a more articulate member of the family, since he joined St. Anthony’s High School, and became friends with Shahid Rehman, Tariq Ali and Arif Rahim. His dormant naughtiness surfaced in the summer of 1950 when we were sent to St. Denys High School while our parents went to London for two months. Here he managed to make the life of the formidable school matron a living hell, so much so that one evening she punished him by making him stand for an hour in the corridor of the girls’ dormitory, wearing nothing but his shirt. This smacked of a warped sadism of a Dickensian order to my mind…very much a Dotheboys Hall scenario.

In November of that year our father died very suddenly of a heart attack and our world was turned upside down. Our mother had to take up a full-time job in order to support us, and so she was away from the house all day long. Salmaan continued on his naughty way, picking up the most colourful language from the Masson Road hoi polloi, so much so that one day my mother decided to wash out his mouth with Lifebuoy soap. Needless to say this had little effect on the ‘street’ he had learned, from which us two sisters learned a great deal as well.

We cousins used to have a great deal of fun at weekends, when we would spend the day at each others’ homes. When Salima and Moneeza Faiz came over to Masson Road, we often had sessions of playacting, during which Salmaan would perform his favourite comedy turn of being a diva who lip-synced rather than sang, with myself managing the gramophone in the wings. At a crucial moment I would turn off the music, while the diva continued mouthing the words for some time until the fraud was realized and the audience jeered lustily.

I went away to Edinburgh University to study for a degree in English Literature, and when I returned in 1959 Mariam got married and left for Beirut, which made quite a hole in our little family. The following summer Mummy, who was very active in the Girl Guides movement, took her remaining two children as well as Salima and Moneeza and Syed Sibte Hasan’s daughter Usha on a memorable month’s Girl Guides camp at Ghora Gali. Salmaan was perforce the honorary Girl Guide, and he relished the situation a great deal. He circulated the rumour that the sedate Girl Guide lady in charge nourished tender feelings for the visiting Boy Scout master. Actually she seemed rather delighted at the situation.

During this eventful month we gave each other suitable nicknames, taken from Enid Blyton’s classic Faraway Tree books. I was dubbed The Angry Pixie because I used to shout at Usha quite a lot, while she was called Curious Connie since that is just what she was. Salima’s benign countenance earned her the title of Moonface, while Moneeza was called Dame Washalot, as she spent a large part of each day scrubbing away at her laundry. Salmaan was called Mr. Whatisname, because in the tussle about the names Billoo still surfaced on occasions.

One fine morning we were greeted by unexpected visitors from Lahore in the shape of Sohail Iftikharuddin and Shahid Rehman. Sohail was driving his large American jalopy that he had christened The Heap, and he had come to invite all of us to lunch with him at Bhurban’s noted guesthouse which was run by an English lady who provided the most delectable cuisine imaginable. All of us piled enthusiastically into The Heap, but with all the will in the world everyone simply could not fit in, so it was decided to pack Salmaan and Shahid into the capacious boot. Off we went, full of the joys of summer if not spring, when a series of agonized cries for help were heard coming from the aforesaid boot. The lid had got jammed and the two naughty young men were convinced they were about to suffocate. Naturally the car stopped and the lid was propped open for the rest of the journey. Despite this semi-calamity a great time was had by all.

Thus the saga continued. Last November when Salima’s son Yasir got married, Salmaan and Usha, whom he used to tease mercilessly in Government College, were briefly re-united, and he was able to re-ignite the teasing, much to her delight. So the naughty boy of old was still very much alive…

Salma Mahmud lives in Lahore

Source: The Friday Times

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