Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: THE evening programme begins at the village hall after the skies have cleared their throat with uproarious thunder. A mayor beams with local pride and national generosity. Foreign policy mandarins give speeches to a warm audience and awards to each other, joyous MCs chase protocol out of the hall with enthusiastic élan, and a splendid local quartet ends formal proceedings with mellifluous buoyancy, even as they startle me with two Hindi film song hits, one from 2017 which I had never heard of, and another from 1960 which I will never forget.
Lata Mangeshkar would have been pleased to be in Rusnė in July 2025 to hear the fast beat and Lithuanian accents in the European recreation of her immortal lament from the film Dil Apna aur Preet Parai: Ajeeb dastan hai yeh, kahan shuru kahan khatam Yeh manzilen hain kaun si, na voh samajh sakey na hum
Addressing uncertainty
I am reluctant to mix politics with music, but there is a simile somewhere in the lines that could address the uncertainty enveloping the region as war devastates Ukraine and hovers over the Baltics. Go on the wrong side of the lapping waters around Rusne and reach Russia. History is a strange story in which light and shadows chase each other. Yeh roshni ke saath kyon dhuan utha chiraagh sey… Why did this smoke arise out of the flame? I was suddenly reminded, from some unconscious layer of memory wrapped in vague context, of that whimsical old poem learnt once upon a time: Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there/ He wasn’t there again today. I wish I wish he’d go away./ When I came home last night at three,/ The man was waiting there for me./ But when I looked around the hall/ I couldn’t see him there at all.
Russia is the man upon the stair, flitting through every hall in the consciousness of Eastern Europe.
There are some memories in which the 20th century is a mere modern blip. Some 16 km from Vilnius is the village of Forty Tatars, born in the late 14th century when the Tatar Tokhtamysh Khan (Khan means leader of a tribe or clan), a warrior of the Golden Horde, took refuge here with his remaining followers after being defeated. This is where the advance of the Mongol Golden Horde into Europe ended. The Grand Dukes had only one demand: military service. They knew the core skill of the nomadic conquerors who once ruled the land from the coast of the Pacific to Central Europe.
The word horde and Urdu/Ordu, the Indian language, come from the same root: ord, meaning camp and denoting people who live in tents. When the Mongol advance terrified the Europeans, the cry would go up from their watchtowers: The ord are coming! The Mongols became the dreaded hordes.
Legend is the popular version of the past, and legend tells us that the then ruler of Lithuania gifted land to the Muslim Tatars and encouraged them to increase their numbers. One Tatar had 10 sons each from his four wives, and they settled down in the village of Forty Tatars on a small hill, built in the manner of steppe settlements with irregular streets and sporadic homes, all of them destroyed by Soviet uniformity in the communist definition of progress. The original name of the village was Kyrk, or forty. In 1939, it became Keturiasdesimt Totriy.
Our hosts were Fatima Buinovska, Zita Milkamanovic and Adas Jakubauskas, who are the doyens of the village. They showed us the mosque, on the site of the first one built in 1430; Napoleon’s Army destroyed the mosque on its way to Moscow, where the Russians destroyed the French in their usual strategic sequence of defeat, retreat, replenishment, resurgence, and eventual victory.
Guardians of tradition
Communists shut down the place of worship since Karl Marx was their preferred god. It was reopened in October 1993. It is the only mosque in Lithuania with a mihrab or niche showing the direction of Mecca. The Tatars are Sunni Muslims but respect their Shia brethren by extending the list of first Imams to Hasan and Hussain, the children of Hazrat Ali. Fatima and Zita are guardians of tradition in Tatar robes, hats and purveyors of ancestral food. Zita is also a great rider on a motorbike, entering competitions and events. Adas gently suggests that we must finish the delicious repast of samosas and pastries that they have prepared before 1.30, when Friday prayers begin.