In my prime youth, fresh off my 10th-grade triumph, I was on cloud nine—except for one cruel twist of fate: my face was erupting with pimples. Ugly, persistent, and shamelessly returning, no matter how many creams I smeared or prayers I muttered. I had resigned myself to this tragic fate until one day, a local electrician working at our house offered me a beacon of hope.
“Why don’t you visit a peer sahib (faith healer) for this?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
I scoffed. “I don’t believe in peers!”
But the electrician, shaking his head wisely, said he didn’t either—except for the “real ones,” the true saints of this earth. Apparently, there was one such real peer in the downtown area, affectionately called “Babb.” According to him, Babb neither smoked nor charged money.
What? Doesn’t smoke? Doesn’t charge money? These two sentences alone shattered my scepticism. This was the jackpot I had been waiting for. I immediately imagined my future self: face gleaming, pimples gone, twirling around hills like a Bollywood star, singing songs of triumph: “Tu ne o rangeelay keisa jaduu kiya, Piya piya bolay matwala jiya, bahoon me….”
The next morning, armed with Babb’s address, I decided to visit him before college. I was buzzing with hope. My face would soon be flawless, and I’d leave science textbooks behind to embrace Bollywood scripts. Navigating the bustling streets, I asked shopkeepers for Babb’s address and finally found myself standing in a relatively bigger but overcrowded room.
Inside sat the mighty peer sahib, a frail old man surrounded by women, a teenage boy, and an elderly man. I parked myself in a corner, eagerly awaiting my turn for the magical treatment. Kehwa with kulcha was served—free of cost. The kulchas were probably brought by mureeds (followers). This really must be divine intervention, I thought.
Meanwhile, I listened closely to the interactions between the peer and his mureeds. Women complained about their husbands and children while the peer scribbled taweez (amulets) and offered instructions they followed with religious intensity.
Then came a mother’s turn. She complained about her 12-year-old son, who preferred playing cricket to studying. With visible frustration, the peer tested the boy’s knowledge of math.
“How much is 2 into 4?” he asked sternly.
“Eight,” replied the boy, confident as a champion.
The peer’s expression darkened.
“How much is 5 into 9?”
“Forty-five,” the boy said promptly.
Now the peer’s fury exploded. “Moron!” he roared. “In 8th grade, and he can’t answer these simple questions? What has happened to this generation?”
I sat bewildered. What answer was the peer expecting?
Turning his attention to me, he asked, “And you? What class do you study in?”
“11th,” I replied confidently. “Medical” bragged about my subjects.
“How much is 3 into 1?” Peer Sahab asked.
“Three,” I answered without hesitation.
The peer stared at me with disdain, as if I’d just committed blasphemy. He turned to the boy’s mother and said, “See? Even the older ones are clueless!” Then, proudly recalling his own academic achievements—having studied only up to class 2 or 3—he claimed he could solve these problems far better than us.
The room erupted. An old woman lectured me on my dullness. Another sarcastically wondered aloud what kind of doctor I would become. A younger woman—perhaps the only educated one—tried to defend me. “Peer sahib’s mathematics is from another world,” she said.
But a lone man, who I thought was my only hope there, disagreed. “Mathematics is the same everywhere,” he declared.
My face turned red as if everyone in the room were criticizing me. My legs became numb with shame; otherwise, I would have left the place promptly.
At this point, I realized I was in the land of lunacy. Like the man from H.G. Wells’ Country of the Blind, where a person with eyes was declared an idiot and unfit by blind people, here I was the odd one out—an unwanted truth amidst blissful ignorance.
The peer decided to demonstrate his brilliance. “3 into 3 is thirty-three,” he declared. “And 4 into 5 is forty-five.”
My jaw dropped, but I decided to play along.
“Now I understand, peer sahib. Ask me anything.”
The peer smirked. “How much is 9 into 8?”
“Ninety-eight!” I replied shamelessly.
“How much is 4 into 8?” he asked again.
“Forty-eight,” was my superfast reply.
The peer nodded approvingly. I had cracked his code. Seeing this, the boy laughed and asked peer sahib to test him. “Tell me, how much is 5 into 5?” “fifty-five,” was his rapid-fire answer.
The peer asked a few more questions, and the boy answered like a genius, giving the expected “answers.” A miracle occurred: the previously “dull” boy now excelled at math. His mother wept tears of joy and kissed him, the other women gossiped about the miracle they had just witnessed, and the peer basked in the glory of his magical powers.
Finally, it was my turn. The peer handed me broken clay chips, instructing me to mix them with curd and apply them to my face before bed. I accepted the “cure” respectfully, left the house, and promptly tossed the clay on the roadside.
As I walked to college, I felt pity—not for myself, but for what I had witnessed. A peer with “magical math” and a room full of believers. I had journeyed into the Country of the Blind, and just like in Wells’ story, a man with eyes had no place among them.
While walking, muttering a sad song with distorted lyrics, expression more serious than Raj Kapoor ji: Math math na raha peer peer na raha, zindigiiii hamayy teraa ……..
The writer is a senior consultant, Anesthesiology at the Amandeep BR Medicity Srinagar
By Dr Amir Nazir
am***********@***il.com