وہ کاغذ کی کشتی وہ بارش کا پانی Wo Kaghaz Ki Kashti Wo Barish Ka Pani — That Paper Boat, That Rain Water

Take this money. Take this fame as well. Snatch my youth away from me if you want it. Only give me back the monsoon of my childhood, that paper boat, that rain water.

An offer, laid out like one, with the price on the table before anybody has asked. And what he wants back is not a period of his life but four inches of flooded street. Savan is the monsoon month, when the rain finally comes and the whole country changes temperature, so the thing being requested has a date on it as well as a shape.

دولت daulat

wealth

ساون savan

the monsoon month; the season the rains arrive in

کشتی kashti

a boat

The oldest landmark the neighbourhood had: that old woman every child called grandmother.

Nishani is a landmark or a token, the sort of thing you give directions by, so a person is being described the way you would describe a building. And nani is specifically your mother's mother, which is not what she was to any of them. Every child in the street had borrowed her.

محلہ mohalla

a neighbourhood, the few streets you grow up in

نشانی nishani

a landmark; a keepsake or token

نانی nani

your mother's mother

The whole encampment of fairies that lived inside her talk. The turning of centuries in the wrinkles on her face.

Dera is a camp, somewhere a travelling group pitches and stays, so the fairies are not visiting her stories, they have settled in them. Then the second line ages her past any human span. A child looking at an old face sees something older than a person, and the poem says it in a breath.

ڈیرا dera

an encampment; somewhere people pitch and stay

پھیرا phera

a turn, a circuit, a going round

Try as you like, nobody can forget it. Those short little nights and that long story. That paper boat, that rain water.

Short nights and a long story is the exact arithmetic of being a child kept up past bedtime, and the two halves of the line contradict each other. The night was too short because the story was too long, and both of those were the same good thing.

کشتی kashti

a boat

Walking out of the house with the sun standing straight overhead. Those sparrows, that bulbul, chasing butterflies.

Khadi dhoop is sunlight standing upright, which is what noon looks like in north India and what every adult in the house would have forbidden. Going out in it is the small transgression the whole passage is built on. And the bulbul is the nightingale of a thousand ghazals, appearing here as a bird a child is trying to catch.

کھڑی دھوپ khadi dhoop

standing sunlight; the sun directly overhead at noon

بلبل bulbul

the nightingale of Urdu poetry; here, just a bird

Fighting and falling out over a wedding between dolls. Coming off the swings, and catching yourself on the way down.

A doll's wedding is a real event in a north Indian childhood, with sides and a guest list and a great deal at stake, and the poem gives it the same weight it gives everything else. The second line is the better one. Falling and recovering in the same movement is what a body can do at eight and stops being able to do later.

گڑیا gudiyon

dolls

سنبھلنا sambhalna

to steady yourself, to catch your balance

Those lovely little presents of brass rings. That keepsake made of broken bangles. That paper boat, that rain water.

Brass, not gold, and the rings are given as though they were gold. Then a keepsake made of bangles that have already broken, which is a thing kept for its own sake by somebody who has not yet learned that objects are supposed to be worth something. Nishani returns from the second passage, and it has come down in the world since.

پیتل peetal

brass

چھلا chhalla

a plain ring, without a stone

Going up sometimes onto the high sand dunes. Building the little houses, and having built them, rubbing them out.

The one thing on the whole list that is knowingly pointless, and it is remembered as a pleasure. Gharonda is a toy house, a nest, a small model of the thing everybody spends their adult life trying to secure. A child builds one in order to flatten it. An adult reading the line knows exactly what it is a picture of, and the poem does not stop to explain.

ٹیلا teela

a mound or dune

گھروندا gharonda

a toy house; a nest

That picture of our own innocent wanting. That estate of dreams and toys, and it was ours.

Jageer is a granted estate, land held from a ruler, and it is a startlingly grand word to put next to toys. That is the joke and the ache together: it really did feel like property, and it really was held at somebody else's pleasure. Both lines end on apni, ours, which is the only claim of ownership anywhere in the poem.

چاہت chahat

wanting, affection

جاگیر jageer

an estate granted by a ruler and held at their pleasure

There was no grief about the world then, and no ties of relation either. It was a very beautiful life. That paper boat, that rain water.

The last passage finally names the two conditions the whole list depended on, and the second one is the surprising half. Not just no sorrow about the world, but no rishte, no ties of relation, nothing owed to anybody. That is what he is offering to buy back with the money and the fame, and it is the one thing nobody can sell him.

رشتہ rishta

a relation, a tie of family or obligation

بندھن bandhan

a binding, a tie

زندگانی zindagani

life, living