One of them was blind, the others were variously deaf, lame, one-eyed, mute, one-armed, cross-eyed, crippled, hunch-backed, hairless and the eleventh had a stammer. Every one of them suffered from a disability impossible to correct. All of them wore long pherans of the same indefinable color – it might possibly have been white originally, but years of soiling had discolored them to the extent that now it was hard to tell what color they had once been. There was a stream in their village. It was from here that they caught fish, smoked them in a little fire made up of dry grass and kindling, and made a meal of them. There was plenty of fish in the stream and lots of dry grass available, so there was no cause for dispute – they shared neither friendship nor enmity with one another. They were on their own, each one of them contented and free.

God knows what thought prompted Dumb to put his catch aside one day and deck the fish with flowers. But the spot he had chosen for this strange worship was already occupied by Deaf. Astonished at this absurd action, his eyes popped out and he asked what all this meant. But what could the voiceless say or the deaf hear? The matter stood there. Once the ritual of flowers was over, Dumb cast the flowers away, picked his fish up, cut it up into slices. Handing one of the pieces to Deaf, he ate up the rest.

Deaf put the piece of fish in his pheran pocket and wandered off to his other companions and related the incident faithfully to them. They too were taken aback, but Lame remarked, “what is so strange about it? The Dumbo is not crazy, it is we who have failed to understand the import of his action. Just think for a minute – aren’t these fish that satisfy our hunger? But have we ever expressed gratitude to them? He is a far better man than any of us to think of doing it now. He offered flowers to the fish, but I will offer them to him!” And he limped off to shower flowers on his dumb friend and to kiss his feet.

Baldy laughed at this. Patting his bare pate and running his fingers over his smooth face, he said, “What satisfies our hunger is not the fish but his stream. Had it not been here, how would the fish be?” He walked away but was soon back with an armful of flowers of different kinds. He stood silent before the stream, eyes closed, and began to drop the flower-petals reverentially into the stream. Blind was born sightless and knew nothing but darkness. He recognized the raw fish by their smell and slippery touch and the smoked ones by their rough feel and taste. He had no idea of the colors of flowers but could sense them from their different fragrances. Lost in himself, he began to hum a song:-

“There was once a poor old man
Whose sons numbered three,
Two well-off and so in command,
One bereft of wealth and meek,
But he the one who caught fishes three.”

The song was heard by everyone except Deaf, but no one could make sense of it, till Lame appeared to explain its meaning to them, “Oh it is about that man over there – the one who lives on the hill top with his three sons. No one knows his name, but his sons’ names are Nar, Naar and Noor. Do you know, when they went hunting, Nar and Naar were armed with bows and arrows but it was the unarmed Noor who killed the prey. He should have had it for himself by rights, but he shared it equally with his brothers, with the advice that in future they should all work together, not only for their own food but also for others. It is from that very day that every morning Nar shoots arrows at the rocks of the hill, which come down in a shower of fragments and turn into fish as they fall. Naar too stands with his bow and arrow, ready to shoot down any vulture, kite or predatory bird who might eye the fish, while Noor is on the look out for any fish that fall on the ground whom he gently picks up and casts into the stream. So, we should offer flowers to three of them – Nar, Naar and Noor, that is the meaning of the blind one’s song. Even though sightless, he can see everything better than any of us.” Stammerer was irritated by this. How could a man with no eyes claim to see Nar, Naar and Noor and their supposed activities that nineteen eyes had missed? He started to mumble in anger, “Th..th..that…b..b..b..blind..h..h..howc..c..canh..h..he…..?” His stammer provoked such derisive laughter from the others that he was crushed. Cross-eyed squinted at the One-armed and said, “Agreed that we could not ourselves see Nar, Naar and Noor, but how does it matter? Can’t we make images of the three and offer flowers to them? Yes, that is what we will do.”

Stammerer was about to ask how One-armed could fashion images, but his speech impediment and the memory of their laughter made him hold his tongue. Meanwhile One-armed and his companions made several images of Nar, Naar and Noor and their respective families. Now they began to offer the images fish in addition to flowers. The fish became food for the crows and kites of the area, but there was still plenty of fish and enough dry grass and kindling them in, for all of them to satisfy their need for food.

One day it so happened that a twelfth man came to join this band of eleven. He too was dressed in a long pheran, but it was not the indefinable color of the others’, it was black, and he had brought a bundle with him. But still, the eleven thought of him as one of them, familiar. So, he was made warmly welcome, served the meal of fish hot from the fire. His hunger satiated, the newcomer asked, “Do you people know the name of this dish?”

They were not sure of the answer, so none was forthcoming. Their silence told the newcomer of their ignorance, so he began to explain,: It is known as ‘smoked fish’.” This new information thrilled them. Seeing them in that state of excited anticipation, he untied his bundle and took out several black pherans from it. “Look. I have brought all these for you.”

The dirty pherans that One-eyed, Deaf and Hunch-backed were wearing, had been worn threadbare, so they snatched the new ones quickly and put them on. Next came Cross-eyed, One-armed and Crippled and they followed suit. Lame and Mute did not grab the pherans because their own were still good for some time. The baldy too showed no interest because he had a strong aversion to black color. For Blind, color had no meaning, so he too did not take the new robe. Stammerer took the pheran but did not put it on.

“Why are you not wearing it?” the newcomer asked him. “But remember, once worn it can never be taken off.” This made Stammerer at once return the robe. The newcomer picked it up with his left hand and thrust it back into the bundle. Noticing the gesture, the stammerer recalled that the fellow had eaten the fish with his left hand and the bundle too had been untied with the same hand. The fellow was left-handed, obviously, he concluded. This realization filled Stammerer with a sense of satisfaction – the newcomer too had a disability like the rest of them. He was going to give him a hug, but the newcomer drew back. Nonplussed, Stammerer just stood there. Left-handed made a sign to One-eyed, One-armed and Cross-eyed, at which One-eyed threw Stammerer down while One-armed boxed him hard and Cross-eyed slapped him. More than the push, blows and slaps, what shocked Stammerer was the fact that all three of them had used their left hands while hitting him. Unaware of all this, Blind was singing his own song:-

“Wandering on, they reached somewhere,
Where they found pots three,
Two had a bottom, the third had none,
But the fish were cooked in the bottomless one!”

One day, Left-handed made the band of eleven sit down before him and he began to address them in a bid to establish his authoritative knowledge, “Now listen, all of you, there is no Nar, Naar or Noor – none of them exist. As for the fish, they are sent by our king for our consumption. Our king lives all by himself on the other side of these hills and mounds. He is so generous, our benefactor. He is the one who sends this food for us. If we should ever displease him, we will also be roasted in the fires of our hunger like these fish, that is for sure!”

Hearing these words, Stammerer got up and moved away – he did not trust the newcomer and would have contradicted him, but his speech impediment made him hold his tongue.

The stream was teeming with fish and the meadows covered in fresh green turf. Every one of them was content, busy smoking his own catch of fish and eating it, free from all anxiety. But this idyllic time could not last forever. One day something happened which no one had anticipated. The number of fish in the stream grew less and less. It seemed that Nar, Naar and Noor had gone to sleep on their hill or that the king had actually been offended. The community of twelve began to feel the pangs of hunger, till the black-robed ones gathered at the banks of the stream and started screaming and cried out loudly, “Oh Benevolent King, Zindabad! May you live long!”

Though the noise of their outcry struck terror in the hearts of Lame, Mute and Bald, they still gathered some courage and went near the stream in the hope that they might be able to find something in it.  But Cross-eyed stood like a rock before them, barring their way. They were frightened out of their wits. Seeing their plight, Left-handed took pity on them. He gestured to Cross-eyed to move aside, opened his bundle and took out three brand new robes from it. Already brought low by hunger, Lame, Mute and Bald quickly threw off their old robes and put the black ones on. One-eyed raised a slogan, “Long live the King!” at which One-armed shouted, “Now we are ten! All this – the fish, the stream, this land, it all belongs to us now, it is all ours.”

Then they all went to Blind with the bundle and said, “Now you too must change from your rags to this new black robe.” But Blind flatly refused to do so. At this One-eyed winked at the others with his good eye and said to the Blind, “All right, you don’t want to change, don’t, but let me at least dust it for you. You can’t see how mucky it is! Here, take it off for a minute, I will give it a good beating and then you can put it on again.”

“Oh, I never said no to that! Here it is,” and Blind handed his pheran over to One-eyed, who threw it away and quickly gave him the black one instead.

“Is it my old one?” Blind asked.

“Of course, it is,” nine voices replied.

And another roar was heard, “Long live the King!”

They say, ‘unity is strength’. Perhaps that is why the band with miraculous powers now went to the stream and began to look for fish together. They did catch some which were then divided equally among them.

Stammerer, on the verge of collapse with hunger, begged, “D..d..d..o..I  h..h..have…t..t..t…o…d..d..d…ie..of…h..h.hun…g..g..er?”

“There are very few fish, you see, how do you expect them to be divided into twelve portions?”, the newly formed band were quick to reply.

The left-handed chief of the band smiled to himself and began once again to undo the knot of his bundle. “Black robe,” he announced. The sight prompted Stammerer to take to his heels. He wanted to ask what the fish had to do with the color of their robes. The fish were linked to their bellies, whose craving for food they were supposed to satisfy, where did the robe or its color fit in with this? After all, under the robe, black or white, all the bodies were the same, neither better nor worse than one another. Neither the white nor the black robe could hide their disabilities nor make them whole again. But how could he say all this, he asked himself – he would barely have managed to get a word out before they would all be laughing at him, making cruel fun of his stutter. God knows whether the Great King lived alone or with his queen in his palace behind the hills, but in this place Stammerer was the only one who lived alone, completely alone. He had so much to say but he could not utter a word. He was the only one hungry. All the others sat together in a row, eating with their left hands fish which they had now learnt to call by its name, ‘smoked fish’. But still, Blind would sit a little apart from them, removing the bones from the fish with his right hand and singing to himself the song:-

“Wandering on they reached somewhere,
Where they saw rivers three,
Two had water, one had none.
Drowned they were in the dry one,
Into it drowned the humans three.”

Translated from Kashmiri by Neerja Mattoo, Sahitya Akademi publication, 2011.

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