Mulla Nasruddin Modern Tales- 3

It was a smooth touchdown in Kuwait. After a brief wait, he boarded a flight to Delhi. Nasruddin was standing in the boarding queue, a burly man from the airport security team was having an intimate chat with a lissome ground staff. The security guy was from Swat valley, and the girl was from Chennai. He joked that if someday the girl becomes a cabin crew with an international airline, he’ll also apply for a commercial pilot’s license. Nasruddin sighed, ‘everyone loves to fly’.

He slept fitfully thru’ the flight, and booked the same app cab like Istanbul while he deplaned in Delhi & took a long walk to the taxi stand. The cab driver was in his early thirties, his name was Irfan. He took Nasruddin’s bag & put it in the front seat. It took him an hour to reach the old man to New Delhi railway station. Nasruddin Boarded the Ajmer Shatabdi express train. Within an hour of his first ever train travel, he received a decent breakfast which he enjoyed thoroughly.

Nasruddin reached Ajmer railway station in the afternoon. He took an auto rickshaw to the serpentine lanes of Diggi Bazar, where a young boy was waiting for him. The boy took his bag & they walked to a Sufi Khanqah located just next to the Dargah. Nasruddin saw his room, the thin pillow & a rug were spread on the floor. The room surprisingly had air conditioning. The boy switched on the AC, and vanished for a few minutes and came back with a glass of milky tea and a few biscuits. He smiled and blessed the boy with a short prayer.

He took the stairs to reach the narrow lane taking him to a gate of the Dargah. He kept his leather sandals with the shoe-keeper who issued a metal token to him. He smiled again and went ahead. He kissed the door to the entrance and entered the Dargah. A small girl tugged at his Jobbah, he slipped a currency note in the little girl’s palm. Some more kids approached him seeing the girl getting some money. He obliged each one of them. He had reached the sanctum of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.

He kissed the pillars. Entered inside, closed his eyes in a silent prayer for some time and left. One of the Khadims placed a large bunch of keys on his shoulder and allowed him to enter a very small prayer room next to the Saint’s grave where a copy of the holy Qur’an was kept with great care. The Khadim whispered in his ears, ‘this is Khwaja Sahib’s personal copy of Qur’an’. He nodded & went ahead after handing over some cash to the young Khadim.

He had to visit the Saint’s prayer cave located on a hillock next to the Anna Sagar Lake. He continued walking in the hot sun for a couple of kilometers before he reached the Chilla gah of the Saint. He took the stairs to reach the cave. He sat there and performed a zikr for close to an hour lire sur cette page. Suddenly he noticed the affluent looking family taking the stairs to come up to the cave. The man was in his late thirties, the wife was much younger & beautiful. Their son was about ten or eleven years of age. They entered the prayer cave. The man’s eyes met Nasruddin’s. He knelt down before him and asked, ‘can you please tell me where I will find happiness? I’ve visited many Saints, their mausoleums all over the world, made a small empire of my fashion line, got married to this beautiful lady, got an amazingly intelligent son, but I don’t sleep well at night. We keep fighting over smallest of issues and never agree on almost anything’. His wife ducked her head, as if in agreement with her husband. Nasruddin touched both their heads with his palm, and smiled. They looked at his calm face, folded their hands and started praying to the saint with their heads placed on the cold floor. Nasruddin took out the extremely expensive mobile phone from the man’s hip pocket, and hid it below the carpet after carefully picking up the top right corner of the old rug. The man finished his prayer in a minute and suddenly realized that his phone was gone, and the old man sitting behind them was gone too. He frantically looked at his wife, and both of them started scanning every inch of the floor. Suddenly, his wife could feel something on the carpet with her manicured hands. She removed one corner of the rug, and took out the phone like a magician. The man cried in joy and almost gave a lousy hug to his wife when she flashed the phone inches away from his happy eyes.

Nasruddin laughed heartily on his way back to the Khanqah, muttering ‘someone must have found happiness and love together, by now. And love and happiness are never lost, you need to look for them at the right places.’