His Master’s Voice – A short story

“You are a swing and I am a shadow, I wish to surge with you”.

When Jawaid saw that record lying in the shop of a dealer in the old wares, he recalled the scattered memories as if someone had put together the pieces of broken glass with a gum. He picked up a record, dusted it, and took it out of the cardboard box. It was fifty years old but had no bruises whatsoever on it, was as black and shiny as long hair of a virgin revolving in the middle of her head, like an orifice revolving in the middle of a record. Around the orifice, was a red circle demarcated by a line between the black shiny plastic and the red paper wrapper. A white dog sitting on the wrapper seemed to gratify itself by the sound pouring out of the gramophone horn. When Jawaid rotated the middle orifice of the record on his middle finger, the dog sitting on the gramophone record started rotating, too. The rotation of record started awakening some melodious sounds sleeping in Jawaid’s mind, which his mother used to make by singing with the song pouring out of the gramophone horn. He, at once, started looking himself in the mirror of memories. He saw vividly his own misty reflection in his lost memories. He immediately put the record in the cardboard box and left the shop paying the demanded cost without haggling over the price. Having found the cardboard box, he felt as if he had had a huge wealth. He would pick up the cardboard box after every two or three days and would look at the black shining record remorsefully as if the cardboard box were the small packet of his memories. He would wait impatiently that someday he, hearing the record, would cling to his mother’s memory to his chest as a mother used to embrace him with her chest. In the daytime, he studied the pharmaceutical and in the evening worked in the Nadim Medical Hall. The song, the record of which he possessed, he had listened for several times on the tape-recorder and the radio, but yearning to hear the song on the gramophone, winding it by key-handle and tightening the needle in the gramophone beak, used to connect him with his memories. Whenever he got himself relieved of his duties at the Nadim Medical Hall earlier, he used to visit the Hall Road in search of record playing tape-recorder at the electronic shops. The new style of electronic machines was available in all the shops. He, under the pretext of purchasing the machine, would hear the same record necessarily. Though the new style machines would produce clear sounds, the absence of the creaking sound of the needle struck up in the gramophone beak, which would harmonize with the song, could not arrange to cause Jawaid’s meeting to his memories. Apart from that, he had not enough money to purchase a complete machine. So, he would come back taking his envelope of memories very carefully. When the last days of pharmaceutical studies approached, Jawaid’s teacher informed him that American visas are open to people seeking to work in the pharmaceutical field. Not long after flying to the United States, he got an opportunity to work as an apprentice in a big pharmaceutical company. There were new ways in the new world. Being an educated person, he was pretty much familiar with the English language. He brought with him a bag of essential stuff and a pouch of his memories. Maybe, he would be able to get that gramophone whereby he may hear the worn-out sound, which could connect him with his memories. The pharmaceutical firm, wherein Jawaid used to work, had several stores spread throughout the country. His hardworking and diligence provided him an opportunity to work in the head office. Jawaid frequently happened to pass before the firm owner’s office. The owner’s name was inscribed outside the office as the President and underneath that was written the rank of vice-president and the officeholder’s name. But the president was always seen getting out of his office room along with his dog. Jawaid had never seen the vice-president. He always sought to see him somehow or the other. One day, he asked his colleague. Hearing the answer, Jawaid under the spell of amazement and anger, could not understand anything, but the honorary vice-president of the firm was the dog of the owner of the company, who could keep pace with him majestically like Prince Jahangir with Akbar the Great.

The dog halted with the halting of the owner. Along with their speed, the speed of Jawaid’s anger also halted. Jawaid considered that attitude as a disgrace for the whole human race i.e. his own race. “Curse be upon this life, I have to serve dogs”. Jawaid consoled himself. “Take it for granted that the owners are mostly dogs”. As such he developed hatred against the dogs. So, he started them imprecating:

“What type of these dogs are, why don’t they die”

According to Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, the dogs were created only to complete the articles of Pitras Bukhari or for an Italian firm Emer Todi. “The owner is never liked, what to speak of a dog. What oppression is it”? The agony of Jawaid was like the agony of the President’s wife. She also cherished hatred against the dog. Perhaps, the President had more love in his heart for business partner dog than that for his better half or she was herself desirous of the office of the vice-president. According to Karl Marx, “If the path is one, mental harmony is there”. The hatred against owner-dog brought Jawaid near the owner’s wife. The owner’s wife kept imprecating the dog and Jawaid showed his hatred against the dog keeping in view the religious viewpoint and the culture. “It is said that the house, where the dog resides, the angels do not make ablution with water of that home, rather they perform their Friday prayer in the mosque of the fifth locality”. “The man bitten by a mad dog loses his life upon seeing the resplendence of water or by the sight of the blue color. If medical aid is provided in time, fourteen injections are injected in the belly and if a swine is bitten by a mad dog, two little horns at its forehead and a diabolical tail protrude in the middle of two parts of hips. The time went on, both the co-thinkers, i.e. the bitter poison of Jawaid’s hatred and that of the firm owner’s wife’s, remained to change into the sweet honey drops of friendship, and Jawaid got immediate promotions. The business of one of the several shops of that American firm was entrusted to Jawaid and his financial condition started becoming better. While dusting his despondence poverty, one day he also dusted his record; he desired to tight the knot of the waistcloth of his memories vigorously. He started visiting the gramophone-record companies at the Fifth Avenue of New York. But no firm had the machine, which could produce the dancing sound of encircling the circles as was on Jawaid’s record enabling itself to throw the pebbles in the stagnant water of Jawaid’s memories. But Jawaid did not lose heart and continued his efforts.

“We are from Allah and to Him, shall we return”.

The owner of the company, the owner or Jawaid’s master, passed away. The whole firm observed the black day. The owner’s wife dressed up in black. Everybody, along with the dog, was aggrieved. The dog was deprived of its abode. The business owner’s wife endured the presence of the dog for several days, but the sneezes she had had were so vigorous that she had to consult the doctors. It was advised that she had allergies from the dog, therefore, getting rid of the dog is the only recipe for relief from the sneezing. The owner took Jawaid with her to arrange the recipe. Both rather three of them left for a slaughterhouse of cats and dogs, where people would get rid of them by having them administered poisonous injections. In the West, the word ‘killing’ is not used for dogs rather it is called ‘put to sleep’. All the three set off towards the slaughterhouse. When they happened to pass the Broadway and 29th Street, the dog would see towards the antique shops again and again and bark. Jawaid intended towards the showcases, too, and saw the gramophones decorated therein, which rubbed an unknown matchstick of his memories. Three of them reached the slaughterhouse. Jawaid and the owner completed the necessary papers. Jawaid’s grip became stronger over the dog’s rope. The dog, raising its face, tried to tell Jawaid with sorrowful eyes that it had become known that its death warrant had been stamped. Despite that, it was waving its tail. When the slaughterhouse servant called him making a sign, the dog once again gazed at Jawaid with helplessness. A light scream came out of the dog’s throat with an oooon and it went inside. After a while, the dog’s dead body was handed over to them, which they buried. But the dog lit the spark of memories could not be put out, which blazed up in Jawaid’s mind upon seeing the antiques’ shop. The next day, he went there. He asked for the information from the shopkeeper about the gramophone, and then he came to know that seventy years old gramophone had nothing like it’s working. Its key-rotating handle and its sound-box needles were also available. Jawaid’s overwhelming was crossing the limits of anxiety. He immediately reached home; upon finding no place suitable he placed the gramophone on the floor, put the speaker in a hole on the right side, moving the key with a small handle strengthened the gramophone, bowed down the sound-box head by moving the gramophone neck, put a needle in the sound-box beak, fetched the record out of the cardboard envelope with a full tilt and wiped it with his shirt. He anxiously entangled the record on the fat nail protruded in the middle of the gramophone, moving the gramophone head put the needle on the record, and horridly sat in front of the speaker. He was longing to melt every word of his memories in his ears; he wished to collect the words in his soul. When he observed minutely at the gramophone record, there in the middle was a picture of a dog, sitting in front of the speaker, sketched on a red paper; it looked exactly as if he had been sitting there in front of the gramophone in the form of a dog. The scene of the dead dog started revolving in his mind like a moving record. Unintentionally, his hand touched the gramophone head; such a scream came out by rubbing the needle entangled in the sound-box beak as the dog screamed lightly with an oooon before dying. The round paper on the record caught Jawaid’s sight, on which it was inscribed “HIS MASTER’S VOICE”.