Peepal of Pir Maidan
Pir Maidan was my paternal grandparents summer abode. Every year when the dry mountains of Pirkhara (Southern Salt Range) would start to heat up, they would pack up, climb on horses and camels and migrate a few hours north to the greens of Buchal Khurd (Northern Salt Range). The Salt Ranges which are my home are as complex and mystifying as the people that reside within them, they range from hot rocky mounaints, to lush green colder mountains, within 50km you can go from thorny desert landscape inhabited by camels and mongoose to green forests, famous for peacocks and flamingos. We visisted Pir maidan often in my early childhood and then slowly not so much.
This ancient Peepal has been guarding the entrance of our familys muhalla since I have been conscious. It holds the place of a most revered, feared, and loved elder in my life. I wonder how many generations of my family it has seen go through life. As children, teens, older men and women. Playing, crying, struggling, laughing, moving away, returning. I wonder if it notices the long absences or misses those who dont come back anymore. How it feels in long times of waiting, constant waiting, does it age it faster as it did me? How many, expressions of love, negotiations or fights has it witnessed? How many decissions were made in the kacheri of old men that would sit in its shade. How many dolis and funeral processions passed by it, taking away people never to return. How many secrets flow through its roots.
The lone lover waiting for hours to see her pass by, secret fleeting glances. Smiles. Years. Tears. Then the shehnaai on that dreadful day, signalling the arrival of doom, her doli passing by, how manys days did he sit rooted in the same spot, grieving, the peepal his only comfort, anchoring him in his grief, preventing him from drowning in it. Then his leaving, never to return. Their initials etched on its bark forever.
How many goodbyes said and unsaid.
How many churails and jinns living on this tree haunted the imagination of kids, invented and weaponised by mothers, spinning long tales to discipline the children, resorting to the supernatural after all else had failed to instil fear. The diffrence between real, unreal, magical, esotoric and profane, vanishing somewhere between its shadows. Papa told me Chacha Wali, used to put swings on it with lengthy ropes on Eid days, then there would be a competition as to whose swing goes higher. There would be two girls or boys on it facing each other in standing position. Both applying force to the point the swings went higher than the branch where they were tied. Peals of unrestrained innocent laughter as the Peepal looked on lovingly.
When I was still young enough to play with my male cousins, I learnt to shoot and hunt in the fields behind the Peepal. We practiced on crows. I remember the thrill of shooting and getting the shot right and being heart broken about the dead crow and being distraught and caught between the two emotions. Frustrated at my inability to experience unadulterated joy as the rest of the kids.
Papa has told me Dada Abu mentioned it as a central figure in his stories. Dada abu spent a lot of time with his maternal uncles resting under the Peepal during summer noon heat. Summer heat. Dada Abu sitting with his mamu. Pir Bahadur Shah. Snatching a letter which commented a case of his cousin Chan Pir Shah. A small battle had ensued. Then settled.
The Peepal is our witness, historian, respected elder and ancient one. Unlike many of us it is not caught between the past and future and is the point where our past, present and future converge. It stands guard, magnificent, formidable. A marker of friendship, generosity, family, loss, and our mortality. It stood long before we came, and will remain after we will be no more.
