Of Eid and childhood memories

Festivals are enjoyed to the fullest by kids .. for them it is only pure joy and celebration with no burdens whatsoever.

This eid was spent remembering my childhood days. I used to roam about our small town along with friends. The day started with going to the Idgah along with dad. Walking towards the Idgah was an experience of its own.. hundreds of people going to offer namaz, everyone wearing new clothes .. the smell of attar filled the air. Even now everything is same, but to enjoy eid as an adult you need religious fervour which somehow i lack.

Ive had many friends in my childhood. When I try to recollect, there are many events imprinted on my memory back from days when I was too small, many of my friends from that time are not in contact with me now.. i dont remember faces of many of them , what i remember are the events associated with them .. some of the events are as fresh as if they occured yesterday. The farthest ones are those where i dont remember faces or names but just events. It would fill a big book if i have to write about all my childhood memories.. A list of a few my friends from past with memories associated with them.

Maulana:

first partner for playing marbles... my first student :-), he dint go to school so i took upon my self to teach him english alphabet. Being a shepherd's son he was more interested in taking me to new places he discovered outside the town while taking his sheep rather than sit and draw what he felt as stupid lines on a black slate. There was a lake (must be extinct by now) with lots of greenery around, he found out a jamun tree there and we often went to pluck the fruits. he knew of many good places outside our town where we used to trek around trying to find new places. I dont know his whereabouts now .. it was soo long back that i think i will not recognise him if i see him now.

Benjamin and Ehtesham Husain:

These two were from my school, they stayed at the school hostel. Both were from hyderabad and would come to my home for eid. Ehtesham never went home for eid , he was a child of a christian mom and muslim dad. I still remember how Ehtesham and Benjamin stood besides me during namaz at the Idgah and were imitating my actions as they dint know the sequence of actions that forms namaz. Both of them left the school during eigth class and no contact since then. I have tried a lot to find about them , with no success.

Sardar:

He is friend from time of which I remember almost nothing..at a very young age. I dont remember his face, only memory i have of him is this... It was evening time .. he came to our home .. he came to me and said 'hamare chacha mar gaye yaaro'... . That time i didnot understand what mar jaana meant .. so i said okay and looked at him. He told me when someone dies all people cry..and said that ... whenever someone comes to you and tells you that someone has died you are supposed to cry.. he asked me to cry then... childhood and its innocence.

Sardar is no more now.. i came to know from my father that he died few years back in an accident.

F:

My cousin F. She is the only one amongst my relatives whom i treated as a friend. Not in contact now.. she is married with two kids and stays somewhere in Arab country. My first date .. :-) . I took her on my cycle (that time i had just learnt to ride a bicycle) to a lake which was a few kilometers from our town. This lake was full of wild lotus flowers and being from hyderabad F had not seen such a sight earlier and was very excited. The lake was famous for wrong reasons .. that something is there in it which sucks anyone who enters the water, so we never entered the waters.

I realise that ive ended all my posts with some poem .. so a few couplets to end this post

by Allama Iqbal (a part of a very nice ghazal... my translation may not be as good)

Kabhi aye haqeeqat-e-muntazar nazar aa libaas-e-mijaaz mein

ke hazaaron sajde tadap rahe hain meri jabeen-e-niyaaz mein

O Truth , for once unveil urself in Form

For in waiting are thousands of prostrations from my
forehead.

and a persian couplet by Imami

Yak ruz bud 'id be-yak saal be-yak baar

Hamvaare maraa 'id ze didaar-e to hamvaar.

We celebrate the day of festival but once a year,

A constant feast day is the seeing of you, dear!