Festival of Eid: Premchand Story For Kids

Festival of Eid: Premchand Story [2]

Ameena is sad. Other boys are going out with their fathers. She is the only ‘father’ Hamid has. How can she let him go to the fair all by himself? What if he gets lost in the crowd? No, she must not lose her precious little soul! How can he walk three miles? He doesn’t even have a pair of shoes. He will get blisters on his feet. If she went along with him she could pick him up now and then. But then who would be there to cook the vermicelli? If only she had the money she could have bought the ingredients on the way back and quickly made the pudding. In the village it would take hr many hours to get everything. The only way out was to ask someone for them.

The villagers leave in one party. With the boys is Hamid. They run on ahead of the elders and wait for them under a tree. Why do the oldies drag their feet? And Hamid is like one with wings on his feet. How could anyone think he would get tired?

They reach the suburbs of the town. On both sides of the road are mansions of the rich enclosed all around by thick, high walls. In the gardens mango and leechee trees are laden with fruit. A boy hurls a stone at a mango tree. The gardener rushes out screaming abuses at them. By then the boys are a furlong out of his reach and roaring with laughter. What a silly ass they make of the gardener!

Then come big buildings: the law courts, the college and the club. How many boys would there be in this big college? No sir, they are not all boys! Some are grown-up men. They sport enormous moustaches. What are such grown-up men going on studying for? How long will they go on doing so? What will they do with all their knowledge? There are only two or three grown-up boys in Hamid’s school. Absolute duds they are too! They get a thrashing every day because they do not work at all. These college fellows must be the same type – why else should they be there! And the Masonic Lodge. They perform magic there. It is rumored that they make human skulls move about and do other kinds of weird things. No wonder they don’t let in outsiders! And the white folk play games in the evenings. Grown-up men, men with moustaches and beards playing games! And not only they, but even their Memsahibs! That’s the honest truth! You give my Granny that something they call a racket; she wouldn’t know how to hold it. And if she tried to wave it about she would collapse.

Mahmood says, “My mother’s hands would shake; I swear by Allah they would!”

Mohsin says, “Mine can grind maunds of grain. Her hand would never shake holding a miserable racket. She draws hundreds of pitchers full of water from the well every day. My buffalo drinks up five pitcher. If a Memsahib had to draw one pitcher, she would go blue in the face.”

Mahmood interrupts, “But your mother couldn’t run and leap about, could she?”

“That’s right,” replies Mohsin, “she couldn’t leap or jump. But one day our cow got loose and began grazing in the Chaudhri’s fields. My mother ran so fast after it that I couldn’t catch up with her. Honest to God, I could not!”

So we proceed to the stores of the sweet-meat vendors. All so gaily decorated! Who can eat all these delicacies? Just look! Every store has them piled up in mountain heaps. They say that after nightfall, Jinns come and buy up everything. “My Abba says that at midnight there is a Jinn at every stall. He has all that remains weighed and pays in real rupees, just the sort of rupees we have,” says Mohsin.

Hamid is not convinced. “Where would the Jinns come by rupees?”