LIFE (A LAND OF ONE'S OWN)

A LAND OF ONE’S OWN 

By: Nasser Yousaf 

It is only when one gets down from the motorway into the vast swathes of Charsadda’s low lying fecund fields that one is tempted to reflect how not quite long ago the strip on which the motorway has been built was an indistinct part of this same land mass. 

Time moves on; taking its course, not waiting for our whims, likes and dislikes. The land on which the motorway has been built continues to serve as our bread-basket in a different way, and in fact, of a larger body of people than in its previous life. 

In the years before motorway was conceived and built, this piece of land, watered by River Kabul, gave us sugarcane, wheat, corn and a cornucopia of vegetables and fruits. We come to realise this more profoundly only when we land onto the fields straddling both sides of the state of the art road. 

Otherwise, seized with our mundane chores, frivolous appointments to keep and materialistic pursuits to indulge in, we tend, or perhaps prefer, to stay aloof. Oblivious or apathetic even as we keep noticing thousands of butterflies and moths striking against our windscreen and being squashed to death. A life too ephemeral even to reckon coming to an end as thousands of wheels keep churning and turning at dizzying speed! 

These butterflies and moths, notwithstanding their transient existence, (or do they consider it superior to mere existence?) contribute to Nature’s scheme of things that keep feeding us till, sooner or later, our own existence also comes to an end. Perhaps, these moths and butterflies that keep hitting our windscreens are waging a nighttime war against forces inimical to their life on a land that was their exclusive territory. 

One’s journey to Charsadda on the penultimate day of this last October too had primarily something to do with an ending, a disappearing into the valley of death. The end of a good life, not a mere existence, of a dearest friend was the cause of the unscheduled journey. It indeed was a life as it never stopped laughing, and sharing, even in the face of untold miseries and mishaps. 

The deceased had been born and lived on one of the most fertile and yet idyllic pieces of land in the heart of Charsadda’s countryside. If truth be told, the whole of Charsadda, save a part of the main bazaar, is basking in the glory that Nature bestows on its favourite children. 

Every single day of his life that he woke up in his village he found Nature serenading to his needs, requirements and demands. One recalls how once, even before the entire stretch of the motorway from Islamabad to Peshawar had been opened for traffic, we got on to the tarmac of the newly laid road from Nisatta, quite late in the night, from his village and reached Peshawar before we could even consult our watches. Our friend was jubilant. ‘See it has taken us just nine minutes,’ he informed us with a big smile on his face. 

The solemnity of the occasion and the deep grief that one felt at the loss of a soulmate aside, a journey into the countryside of Charsadda never ceases to be reinvigorating. A rutted road and a pall of unremitting dust, gotten worsened by a prolonged dry spell, would do little to dampen one’s spirits. 

So it was this time on this saddest of the days. Sugarcane crop in the fields had reached its maximum height and peasants were busy harvesting. Bulls and oxen driven carts, with their frail wheels screeching and creaking under enormous weight, were transporting sugarcane to the market. Smoke was billowing from the traditional mud-built ‘ganrais’ (mills) where sugarcane was being crushed and boiled in massive cauldrons to produce ‘gur’ (jaggery). 

At one such mill, a young man named Abdullah was feeding dried molasses to the fire burning inside the mud-room under the cauldron. There was another villager, named Abdullah, older than his namesake, who appeared to be in charge of this small establishment. 

This second gentleman was asked if it was possible to have that sticky substance called ‘jaula’ which is one of the many specialties of the jaggery producing process and is presented as a souvenir. ‘Not now,’ he politely informed while adding that it could be made at the time when the sugarcane juice is boiled to its maximum point. 

Perhaps the only symbol of the olden times that was found amiss in the setting was the oxen-driven wheel. Mechanical contraptions had replaced the same. 

Charsadda is known for many traditional handmade products. Among these are what has come to be known as ‘Peshawari Chappal,’ ( a misnomer by all accounts as it appears to be taking the credit away from Charsadda). Charsadda’s homespun cotton cloth makes one’s favourite clothing in winters. 

This fabric was popularised by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (aka Bacha Khan) and his illustrious sons to a degree that people would shop for it with a reference to the revered family. 

One holds a strong belief that there is something of a preternatural serenity and tranquility about the central districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and in which Charsadda occupies a central place. It was for this reason that Buddhist monks during a time scale that stretches back to more than one and a half millennium selected this land for their meditation.