I lived in a wonderfully vibrant neighborhood, growing up in Karachi. My house was one in a row of six houses. Across the street from these houses was a huge mass of land we referred to as the “ground.” It had concrete pitches where boys would play cricket, a rickety, rusty playground where everything squeaked threateningly when moved, and a huge stretch of grassless land where people and children walked, biked, played, ran, etc.
Down the street from my home was what we called the “store” which wasn’t really one store, but many shops mingled together. There was the chemist shop where the kindly uncle behind the counter (we always call adults “uncle” or “aunty”) would hand you whatever you needed, silently, with a slight look of boredom on his face. There was the “coke shop” which lined a long corner of the street where stacks of crates filled with glass bottles of coke, pepsi, fanta, bubble-up and seven-up were waiting to be sold. Mr. Ghani, the storeowner was a young man with a ready smile and a generous heart always willing to give us a free, icy cold bottle of coca cola, if we asked nicely.
Next to the “coke shop” was Abu Bhai’s shop, a constantly evolving store front where Abu Bhai was always adapting to what he perceived were changing market trends. My earliest memory of that shop was it being a general store where you could find notebooks, crayons, markers, stickers, all kinds of candy especially tamarind candy and a strangely named Japanese bubble gum that was amazingly soft to chew. Abu Bhai would carefully weigh everything on old fashioned weighing scales and somehow figure out the price from some arbitrary measurement he had in his head. That shop saw many permeations. The most exciting one was when it was transformed into a video game arcade! Abu Bhai—he was a man beyond his times.
There were many more shops tucked away in side streets: a bakery, tailor shops, butchers, a café where they made the best tandori naan, locksmiths, cobblers, etc. As with any public place in Karachi, this area was flooded with people. And it wasn’t just people. There were stray cats who kept a watchful eye on scraps of food thrown out by the fishmonger, stray dogs who knew just where to hide to get bony bits of meat thrown out by the butcher, occasionally a donkey cart pushing a load of freshly laundered clothes to be delivered somewhere, and little herds of goats being led by young goatherds who kept their herds together with long sticks. It was a beautiful coexistence of humans with animals and as long as every living creature was focused on his or her own survival, things remained harmonious.
One day, I was outside the coke shop with my older sister when I noticed a strange man across the street, just standing quietly and staring ahead. He had long dreadlocks that had been bleached to a light brown, by the sun. His mustache and beard hadn’t seen trimmers for a very long time and blended, completely, into his scraggly hair. He wore a long maxi which was probably black once but now a faded dark grey. Around his neck were layers of colorful beaded necklaces. What struck me the most about him, aside from his quiet demeanor, was his feet. He stood barefoot and his feet were large and amazingly flat. I am reminded of the Mountain pose in Yoga where my Yoga instructor says “plant your feet firmly on the ground as if you are putting down roots.” This man’s feet were firmly placed on the ground, and they seemed deeply, deeply rooted almost as if they were a part of the ground itself. His soles were thick and could obviously walk on dirt or asphalt effortlessly. I didn’t think feet like that would ever be able to fit into a pair of shoes.
I started seeing him everywhere or perhaps he had always been everywhere but now I noticed him all the time. I sometimes saw him miles and miles away from my house. What was strange about him, though, is that he never said anything at all. He was often standing and staring gently ahead. He was obviously homeless like the throngs of beggars around him, but he stood above them all with a certain dignity and quietness that made him seem very different, somehow.
I started calling him “the hermit” and excitedly pointed him out to my parents and sisters. They thought I was crazy to get so excited about a silly homeless man who had nothing to say for himself and they told me he was probably crazy. Every now and then I saw him sitting at the “coke shop” drinking an icy cold coca-cola slowly. When he looked at me (I was often staring at him), I would feel a strange sense of peace come over me. Then eventually time moved forward, I left Karachi to go to college in the States and I only saw him when I was back on my summer breaks but there was never much time to even think about him. I was just always aware of his quiet existence.
It was years later, one day, when my mom was visiting me that we started to wonder about "the hermit” again. My mom said she still saw him every now and then and that he looked exactly the same. By now we had read a lot about spiritual mystics and enlightenment and we both suddenly wondered if he was actually someone who had voluntarily shed all his worldly possessions and just wandered the earth with no attachments to anything. It all made sense…he never begged for money, he had a certain sense of peace about him, he never seemed to need anything at all. My mom said, in her determined voice “next time I see him I am going to ask him!”
Apparently she did run into him again one day when he was walking and she rolled down her car window and asked “who are you?” He stopped, looked carefully at her for a moment and then continued walking down the street. That was about five years ago. No one has ever seen that hermit again. When I was in Karachi last summer, I asked the shopkeepers about him but no one seemed to know who I was referring to.
I was secretly happy he never responded to my mother’s question. What could he possibly have said that would explain who he was? Maybe he was a crazy man who had been shunned from society or maybe he was a highly enlightened man who had voluntarily given up everything including his attachment to his ego. In the end, did it really matter? In either case you are freed from your thoughts. You are either too crazy to care about them anymore or you are so enlightened that you have removed yourself from being held by them. In both cases you live outside of society, not really concerned about how you are perceived.
I like to believe there are many people like him who walk this earth. Maybe we tend to dismiss them because we don’t understand them or maybe they are so much a fabric of our everyday lives that we don’t even notice them. To just walk through life, needing nothing at all…exuding peace…always calm…maybe they are wiser than any of us could ever aspire to be.
Down the street from my home was what we called the “store” which wasn’t really one store, but many shops mingled together. There was the chemist shop where the kindly uncle behind the counter (we always call adults “uncle” or “aunty”) would hand you whatever you needed, silently, with a slight look of boredom on his face. There was the “coke shop” which lined a long corner of the street where stacks of crates filled with glass bottles of coke, pepsi, fanta, bubble-up and seven-up were waiting to be sold. Mr. Ghani, the storeowner was a young man with a ready smile and a generous heart always willing to give us a free, icy cold bottle of coca cola, if we asked nicely.
Next to the “coke shop” was Abu Bhai’s shop, a constantly evolving store front where Abu Bhai was always adapting to what he perceived were changing market trends. My earliest memory of that shop was it being a general store where you could find notebooks, crayons, markers, stickers, all kinds of candy especially tamarind candy and a strangely named Japanese bubble gum that was amazingly soft to chew. Abu Bhai would carefully weigh everything on old fashioned weighing scales and somehow figure out the price from some arbitrary measurement he had in his head. That shop saw many permeations. The most exciting one was when it was transformed into a video game arcade! Abu Bhai—he was a man beyond his times.
There were many more shops tucked away in side streets: a bakery, tailor shops, butchers, a café where they made the best tandori naan, locksmiths, cobblers, etc. As with any public place in Karachi, this area was flooded with people. And it wasn’t just people. There were stray cats who kept a watchful eye on scraps of food thrown out by the fishmonger, stray dogs who knew just where to hide to get bony bits of meat thrown out by the butcher, occasionally a donkey cart pushing a load of freshly laundered clothes to be delivered somewhere, and little herds of goats being led by young goatherds who kept their herds together with long sticks. It was a beautiful coexistence of humans with animals and as long as every living creature was focused on his or her own survival, things remained harmonious.
One day, I was outside the coke shop with my older sister when I noticed a strange man across the street, just standing quietly and staring ahead. He had long dreadlocks that had been bleached to a light brown, by the sun. His mustache and beard hadn’t seen trimmers for a very long time and blended, completely, into his scraggly hair. He wore a long maxi which was probably black once but now a faded dark grey. Around his neck were layers of colorful beaded necklaces. What struck me the most about him, aside from his quiet demeanor, was his feet. He stood barefoot and his feet were large and amazingly flat. I am reminded of the Mountain pose in Yoga where my Yoga instructor says “plant your feet firmly on the ground as if you are putting down roots.” This man’s feet were firmly placed on the ground, and they seemed deeply, deeply rooted almost as if they were a part of the ground itself. His soles were thick and could obviously walk on dirt or asphalt effortlessly. I didn’t think feet like that would ever be able to fit into a pair of shoes.
I started seeing him everywhere or perhaps he had always been everywhere but now I noticed him all the time. I sometimes saw him miles and miles away from my house. What was strange about him, though, is that he never said anything at all. He was often standing and staring gently ahead. He was obviously homeless like the throngs of beggars around him, but he stood above them all with a certain dignity and quietness that made him seem very different, somehow.
I started calling him “the hermit” and excitedly pointed him out to my parents and sisters. They thought I was crazy to get so excited about a silly homeless man who had nothing to say for himself and they told me he was probably crazy. Every now and then I saw him sitting at the “coke shop” drinking an icy cold coca-cola slowly. When he looked at me (I was often staring at him), I would feel a strange sense of peace come over me. Then eventually time moved forward, I left Karachi to go to college in the States and I only saw him when I was back on my summer breaks but there was never much time to even think about him. I was just always aware of his quiet existence.
It was years later, one day, when my mom was visiting me that we started to wonder about "the hermit” again. My mom said she still saw him every now and then and that he looked exactly the same. By now we had read a lot about spiritual mystics and enlightenment and we both suddenly wondered if he was actually someone who had voluntarily shed all his worldly possessions and just wandered the earth with no attachments to anything. It all made sense…he never begged for money, he had a certain sense of peace about him, he never seemed to need anything at all. My mom said, in her determined voice “next time I see him I am going to ask him!”
Apparently she did run into him again one day when he was walking and she rolled down her car window and asked “who are you?” He stopped, looked carefully at her for a moment and then continued walking down the street. That was about five years ago. No one has ever seen that hermit again. When I was in Karachi last summer, I asked the shopkeepers about him but no one seemed to know who I was referring to.
I was secretly happy he never responded to my mother’s question. What could he possibly have said that would explain who he was? Maybe he was a crazy man who had been shunned from society or maybe he was a highly enlightened man who had voluntarily given up everything including his attachment to his ego. In the end, did it really matter? In either case you are freed from your thoughts. You are either too crazy to care about them anymore or you are so enlightened that you have removed yourself from being held by them. In both cases you live outside of society, not really concerned about how you are perceived.
I like to believe there are many people like him who walk this earth. Maybe we tend to dismiss them because we don’t understand them or maybe they are so much a fabric of our everyday lives that we don’t even notice them. To just walk through life, needing nothing at all…exuding peace…always calm…maybe they are wiser than any of us could ever aspire to be.
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