Yaadish Bakhair: Sadiq Ali

Sadiq Ali of Hussainabad, Quetta

Sadiq Ali (Kaka Sadiq)

"The best things in life are not things."                           Ann Landes

It is early morning in mid-summer in Baleli, some 30 kms out of Quetta City in the direction of Kuchlak, Pishin district. It’s a Sunday and we are all in the middle of the lush orchards in the heart of this Pushtun farming region outside Quetta City. There are more than a dozen of us from Hussainabad, mostly young Hazara men in their early 20s. I am the only one who is not in the same age group. 

The reason why we are here is swimming, to be done in the “pool” which is actually a brick and mortar reservoir that the local farmers use for storing water for agricultural use, a talaab as they call it in the vernacular tongue. It is commonly known as “Panj Foota” by the patrons who have gathered here today. Translated into English, that means a 5 feet deep pool. Brimming with clear, blue (tube)-well water, it is smaller than a standard 25 ft pool but is large enough to function like one. Two have already dived in as the others get ready to jump in. Suddenly there is loud noise, at first not clear but which soon becomes clear as a litany of expletives shouted out by one of the two swimmers inside the pool. He has just resurfaced right in the middle of the pool and is screaming, “It’s shit! It’s real, stinking shit, a big, long lump of turd! ^%#)*&^%#...It’s shit! Yuck, it smells bad! #&^%$#F&…it’s sticking to my ear…!” As he says those words, he disappears underwater and resurfaces again next to us, near the edge of the pool. We all freeze for a few seconds, not sure how to respond to what has just happened. The shouting swimmer springs out of the pool and starts running wild in the orchards, constantly slapping his right ear with his right hand. Suddenly everybody bursts into loud laughter and the guy starts screaming his profanities at us. Upon close observation by the others, it is discovered that somebody had used that pool----the popular Panj Foota talaab----as his private toilet the night before and, given the size, shape and hardness of that lump of fecal waste, he had been constipating for quite some time! Precious Sunday spoiled, all return to the city, dry and without a good day’s swim. On the way, some of them tease the poor guy who had the honor of discovering the smelly brown lump floating on the surface of the water in the middle of the pool. If I am not mixing this particularly memorable day with another Sunday visit to Panj Foota, I was with my uncle Sadiq Ali, my Kaka Sadiq.

Hanna Lake, Quetta

My uncle Sadiq Ali was the second youngest among his brothers, my father being the eldest of the five brothers. Swimming was one of his passions and it was he who taught me how to swim. Apart from the Panj Foota Sundays, he would also take me to Hanna Lake which was the other popular place for Hussainabadi swimmers. He would pull me behind him or swim me on his back to the deeper sections of the lake and then leave me there all by myself to swim back to the shore. That is how many of us boys learned to swim then. In Quetta of those days it was rare, a matter of shame actually, for a Hazara boy not to know how to swim. Swimming and Hazaras were things synonymous.

Sadiq Ali (wearing yellow cap) with friends

But it’s not just swimming that I remember when I think of Kaka Sadiq. First of all, he was a man of many friends, and all very good friends. He always had ample company, be it the swimming excursions, the movies, the picnics in Pir Ghaib or Ziarat, or any other social occasion in the community. Talking of movies, he was also the uncle who often used to take me along with him to watch Hollywood westerns at the iconic Regal Cinema of Quetta. All the well-known westerns and war movies I watched at that cinema with him and his friends: McKenna’s Gold, Shane, High Noon, Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Death Wish, The Poseidon Adventure, to name just a few. 

Kaka Sadiq loved movies, not just Hollywood movies but also Bollywood productions. And what an age it was, the 1970s and early 1980s when Bollywood churned out some of its greatest movies starring superstars like Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachan, Jeetandra, Sanjev Kumar, Dharmendra, Shatrugan Sinha, Pran, Shashi and Rishi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Sunil Dutt, Danny, Amjad Khan, Rakhi, Zeenat Aman, Parveen Bobby, Neethu Singh, Poonam Dhillon, Hema Malini, Mumtaz, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore et.al. When the age of VCR dawned in Quetta, Kaka would have these great movie watching gatherings in the evenings, with half the mohalla (neighbors) seated on the rooftop and in the open backyard of his house on Samad Ali Shaheed Street. The old top-loading, bulky Phillips VCRs that ate the brick sized tapes bootlegged from Germany, Denmark and the U.K. by returning Hussainabadis, needed constant cooling with two pedestal fans running at full speed to keep them functional in the sweltering Quetta summers then. The movies were blockbusters of the day: Sholay, Don, Qurbani, Yarana, Dostana, Lawaaris, Amar-Akbar-Anthony, Qarz, Muqaddar ka Sikander, Anand, Deewar, Zanjeer, Gol Maal, Pakeeza, Amar Prem, Kati Patang and yes, Kabhi Kabhi and Bobby. Those last two movies in the list above were Kaka’s favorites and it was the songs of these movies that were always playing in his Mazda Luce. Songs like “Hum tum ek kamray mein band hon…aur chabi kho jaaye….’ And then there was the Kishore song from the 1975 movie Julie that he used to hum all the time: “Bhool gaya sub kuch, Yaad nahi abb kuch oh ho, hmm hmm, ek yahi baat na bhooli, Julie I love you…” He just loved that song, so much so that he even nick-named his eldest daughter Julie. What a time it was!

                                                     

Oh Yes, the Mazda. First, it was the Mazda Luce 1500cc, and then the navy blue 1800cc one. Those were beautiful cars about which I have written previously on this blog. Although he changed cars later on in his life, he loved those Mazda models the best and would never stop talking about them. My love of cars comes mainly from my uncles Sadiq Ali and Sikander Ali.

Sadiq Ali, his friends and the Mazda Luce

But it was something else----more than the movies, the cars, the Panj Foota and Hanna Lake swimming excursions-----that make up my most vivid and enjoyable memories of my years with Kaka Sadiq: kites, or patang/guddi baazi. Kaka Sadiq was a great kite flyer, a connoisseur when it came to guddi baazi. During the freezing months of late fall and early to mid-winter, I would be on the roof with Kaka, I holding the charkhali loaded with the finest and the most expensive manja of the season and he flying the kites, doing pechaow battles with the master kite flyers---the khaar baaz kite flyers, or the cool dudes----of Lodi Maidan and Tel Gudaam, an old neighborhood off the main Toghi Road. And how exciting all of it was for me. Lips dry and chapped, all the extremities of my body like ear and nose tips red because of the extreme cold weather, fingers with cut marks filled with half-dried, jelly-like blood clots because of the excessive use of razor sharp manja, but none of that mattered as long as the wind was good and the sky full of kites. Kaka had an expert’s eye when it came to manja and kite and his favorite kite was the graceful Paan Chobi, a special type of kite that was made with a seamless, single sheet of kite paper, no stripes, designs or patch work of any kind. The paan chobi had match stick sized, finely cut wooden strips glued to the paan, the bottom part of the kite. This special paper and stick combination in the paan gave the kite stability and strength in strong winds and it was one of the best attack kites in a pechaow, save the split-framed curvy patang.

The Paan Chobi kites

 And then Kaka suffered a terrible stroke. That ended many things for us, including kite flying. The left side of his body became almost completely paralyzed and he had extreme difficulty remembering and doing things. It was devastating for the family, for all of us. Our time together took a new turn: regular visits to Dr. Manaf Tareen’s clinic, the only properly qualified heart specialist and surgeon in Quetta then. I would take him to Dr. Manaf’s clinic twice, and sometimes, three times a week. Kaka’s children, my cousins, were still very young, all of them of school going age. Sadiq Ali also had a unique sense of humor, his satirical remarks were sometimes acerbic and his wit, darkish. At times he would say things that one was not sure what to do in the way of response. One day, on one of our regular visits to the cardiologist Manaf’s clinic, while sitting in the waiting room for his turn, he whispered in my ear: “Is this man really a doctor or is he pretending to be one? I think he is a pretender.” He then turned his face away and himself started pretending, as if he had said nothing and I had heard nothing. He sat there for a few seconds like that, keeping me confused, and then suddenly looked my way and smiled and while he was doing that the buzzer rang: it was his turn. “Lexotonil”, he murmured as we got up to move from the waiting room to the doctor’s room. Lexotonil was the drug (some kind of anti-depressant I think) that the doctor prescribed to him every time we visited his clinic.

Click:  Julie Song Link: Bhool Gaya subh kuch, yaad nahi abb kuch...

Sadiq Ali and friends

I listen to the great Mukesh song Kabhi Kabhi now and then, and often to songs by Kishore Kumar, my favorite singer, and when it is either Mukesh’s “Kahi door jab din dhal jaaye…” (another of Kaka’s favorite from the movie Anand) or Kishore’s “Bhool gaya sub kuch, yaad nai abb kuch…” I cannot but think of Kaka Sadiq. As the great Kishore sings this beautiful song, all the bits and pieces of the images and events of the past flash inside my head, some of which fragments I have tried to put together as sketches here: Panj Foota, Hanna Lake, the VCR Bollywood movies with house-full rooftop, the Hollywood movies at Regal Cinema, the drive in Kaka’s beautiful Mazda Luce with his good friends and then the visits and the long, long waits at Dr. Manaf “the pretender’s” cardio clinic, only to get more of the same drug: Lexotonil. Perhaps Sadiq Ali, my uncle, knew better, after all.

Yaadish Bakhair.

Note: Manja = glass coated kite string, also called dore or taar.

Charkhali = wooden spool with extended support sticks on both sides used for winding kite flying string, called manja or dore

For more, please click:  Cars of Quetta in the 70s and 80s: 
And here: Regal Cinema Quetta: The Old Turkey Buzzard
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