If someone were to ask me to name the drollest gissa in Urdu literature, I would tell them it is the Qissa Sipahizada. This short narrative is unique for another reason too: it has, perhaps, the only sarapa [a head to toe description] in which male beauty is praised in the idiom reserved for the praise of female beauty.

Our hero, a soldier who is `beautiful, clever and experienced`, nevertheless had a loose understanding of finances and, as he preferred to stay home singing the praises of idleness, he soon burnt up his savings and inheritance and fell upon hard times. Having a progressive sense of self regard, he decides to find himself a job and sets out from home, finding employment as a soldier in a provincial court.

As luck would have it, his master is no less clueless in money matters, and his life is a razzle-dazzle parade of IOUs. When the soldier complains about not having received his wages after several months of service, he is told to bide his time like all the other employees. But our soldier has had enough, and he announces that he is quitting the service and would need his dues paid right then and there, or else he would put up a fine show of violence, the likes of which had not been seen in living memory! Accepting the seriousness of his threat, the master gives the soldier a prize bull in lieu of payment.

Realising that this is all he could realistically get from his master, the soldier gets on the massive beast and heads home, thinking that he was lucky to receive the bull as it would easily sell for sixty rupees (a princely amount for the days when the story was written).

But this was not to be a happy denouement for the soldier. The forest he had to make his way through to get home was infested by a family of vile thugs the brothers Ameera and Muneera, and their venerable old father, whose name remains a secret.

The thugs fall in love with the bull at first sight but, taking stock of the soldier, they realise that they must resort to subterfuge, not arms, to gain possession of the bull. They approach the soldier to buy the bull. Unable to come to an agreement on the price, the parties agree that they should find an arbiter to determine a just price for the bull. The thug brothers cleverly lead the soldier to their home in the forest, where their father announces that the bull must be sold for one tenth of a rupee. Realising that he is in the den of thugs and would lose his life if he resists, the soldier agrees to the sale and returns home, planning his revenge on the thugs.

Deciding to fight subterfuge with guile, the soldier disguises himself as a bride and arrives in the forest where the thugs live, pretending to be an abandoned bride. Doubtless, the thugs had forgotten how a woman looks and sounds, from their long sojourn in the forest and a hard life. Upon sighting this lonely, beautiful woman, both thug brothers offer to make her their bride, but the bride demands that their father should decide to whom she must belong. And, of course, after the fake bride has made sheep`s eyes at the old man, he decides that not his sons but he would make a suitable husband for such a fine bride. The fake bride cleverly keeps postponing the nuptials while she gains the old man`s confidence and learns where all the valuables are kept.

Then, one day, when the nuptial arrangements are being made, after revealing his true identity and delivering a fine beating to the old man, the soldier runs away with a good quantity of the valuables the thugs had gathered from a lifetime of plunder.

Not quite done with the thugs, the soldier next returns in the guise of a healer, promising to restore the old man to full health. Again, the two brothers bring him to their father, and the fake healer quickly diagnoses the kind of beating the old man had received, which naturally gives the thugs great confidence in the fake healer`s diagnostic and healing powers.

Remembering the bride (whom he still missed), the old man tells the fake healer, previously the fake bride: `Who can give an account of his beauty! He was delicate-bodied and the very image of a houri.

His luminous visage put to shame the full moon.

Dark like the night were his locks. When his cheeks dewed it looked as if a rose`s face was drenched with dewdrops. The sight of his spikenard locks alone snared the heart in his love`s trap. His locks were dark and redolent, before which the musk from Tartary was found wanting in fragrance. A heavenly scent wafted from them which perfumed the core of my soul. His forehead was a talismanic silver tablet whose refulgence would even blind the eyes of houris.

The assemblies of heaven were thrown into disarray if a frown creased his brow. When he displayed his forehead`s mirror, the reflecting mirror itself gazed upon it wonder struck. His brows were the opening couplets of a book of wonders, and his ears the shops of excellence. His brows were wondrous, his eyelashes arrows in flight, which every instant sought the heart to make it their prey. None who became their prey survived.

Needless to say, the fake healer restores the old man to full health and vigour with much care and effort, before revealing his true identity, giving the old man another resounding beating that reduces him to a state worse than before, and taking away the remaining valuables.

The soldier had suffered three reverses: loss of savings, denial of wages, and the theft of the bull.

It is only fair that the soldier should return a third time, deliver an ultimate beating to the old man, and finally lead away his bull! And we can be sure that he does! The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.

He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com