Chapter 7

Woh aaein hamaray ghar mein khuda ki kudrat hai,
Kabhi hum unko aur kabhi hum apnay ghar ko daikhtay hain.

The above is a Sher by Ghalib. Its translation is as follows: It is a miracle that he came in our house. In disbelief, sometimes we stare at him and sometimes we stare at our house to ensure that it is for real.

Mr. Naman is a poet and like every poet a big fan of Mirza Ghalib but today he was reflecting upon this sher repeatedly. Lets find out why?

Mr. Naman's father's younger brother's family is visiting them these days. Mr. Naman's uncle has a jolly, good looking wife and two children - a boy of 12 and a girl of 10. It is a ritual in Mr. Naman's house that any guests should see natural beauty of Ugar and other local attractions. After two days of sight-seeing the adults were tired and wanted to rest for the day. But the children wanted to visit the nearby zoo and so it came down upon Mr. Naman to take them out today. When he was leaving home, Mr. Naman's father called him and said "Make sure they have a good time today." Although Mr. Naman is an adult and a responsible adult too but his parents always wanted to ensure that he is sent with appropriate instructions. They always were worried that Naman may get lost in his train of thoughts and forget the task at hand. Mr. Naman was now accustomed to hearing such quotidian things and used to nod to make his parents happy. Initially he did protested by saying that he is no more a child but because of that incident once, he had no say anymore.What that incident was, thats another story.

Mr. Naman did not liked the concept of zoo. Since they used to live so close to actual tropical rain forests, his idea for watching wild animals was to go into the jungle. On reaching there, Mr. Naman was startled to see that there was a queue of people at the entrance. And the number of adults were more than number of children. "What pleasure can they derive by watching animals living in a cave"? murmured Mr. Naman to himself. His only motivation to take this ordeal was the look on the faces of his nephew and niece. Child enthusiasm and innocence is unparalleled in this world and if it can melt stones then surely it can force Mr. Naman to see the zoo.

In order to go through the ordeal, Mr. Naman used to invent psychological games and today's zoo game was to look at each animal and tell whether he is smiling or not. Firstly, Mr. Naman himself was not sure whether animals understood such an emotion and even if they did, is widening of lips the only way to display it. He started with monkeys, after all they are the closest to human kind but they were so busy in collecting peanuts from visitors that it was difficult to judge their expression. Perhaps Mr. Naman thought that after some visitor gives them a peanut, they will show their gratitude by smiling but it was too high of an expectation.

Mr. Naman also bought a pack of peanuts and tried to play with the monkeys. Having made an eye contact with one monkey, Mr. Naman in a gesture of giving him a peanut, he threw the peanut in air but only to land in his own mouth. This clearly brought smiles on his nephews but clearly the monkey was not happy at all and gave one scornful look. Mr. Naman concluded that monkeys do exhibit anger though smiling emotion is still a mystery.

Continuing on, Mr. Naman then visited the cages of several other animals Mr. Naman and kids finally came to the cage of tiger. Tiger, one of the endangered species was clearly one of the main attractions of this zoo and many people stocked to catch a glimpse of it. The tiger there was one of the most mysterious animals at the zoo. He used to remain in a confused state of mind. He used to stare at people at some time and then turned back to look at his so-called cave. It was by looking at this scene, Mr. Naman remembered the Ghalib sher mentioned before and he wondered loudly - "How apt yet how ironic!".

Now the question that has been resounding in Mr. Naman's mind after he had visited the tiger's cave and now on his way back to home is - under what circumstances Ghalib could have written that couplet. Could it be that Ghalib also realized this couplet while visiting zoo? Is it possible. What are the odds? If you know the answer, you can telecommunicate to Mr. Naman.