Mehmood Pathan: Book blues

Ahmedabad, July 28: He has been declared out, but Mehmood Khan Pathan won’t leave the crease in a hurry.

Irfan Pathan’s father says it’s not cricket ? he claims he has been sacked as caretaker of Vadodara’s Jumma Masjid by officials jealous of his son’s success.

He has now filed a caveat in a local court against his dismissal and the management’s order that he vacate the one-room tenement on the premises where his sons grew up.

The mosque’s managing committee has, however, appointed a new muezzin (caretaker who also announces the time of namaz) ? Mehmood’s own cousin, Majid Khan.

Pathan was sacked after a copy of the Quran ? which the mosque management claims to be the biggest in the world and 265 years old ? was found to have been damaged by seeping rainwater.

It’s the muezzin’s job to protect and look after the holy book, which is kept in the room above his tenement. Mehmood was in England with sons Irfan and Yusuf ? who were playing county cricket ? when the Quran got damaged.

The Pathans no longer live in the tenement, anyway. They moved to an upmarket flat about a year ago, but some of their belongings are still in their old home.

Pathan alleges that the Quran is just an excuse: he is being victimised by those who cannot stomach his enhanced social status.

The trust that runs the mosque counters with a bouncer: it wishes Irfan well but Mehmood, who had always been “arrogant”, had become insufferably so after Irfan made good.

Managing committee chairman Hanif Daymakumar alleges that Mehmood had gone off to England leaving the tenement locked. Since the muezzin had not handed over the keys, the trustees could not move the Quran to a safe place when rainwater began seeping in.

But Pathan claims he had handed the keys to one of Irfan’s friends, who had passed it on to Daymakumar.

The mosque job was worth only Rs 1,200 a month to the Test cricketer’s father ? peanuts to him nowadays ? but he doesn’t want to lose it. The room, too, evokes strong emotions.

“My father worked here for 50 years and I have swept the premises as a boy. I am emotionally attached to this place,” Mehmood said. He had offered the management Rs 1 lakh for repairs ? if it retained him as muezzin ? but the committee turned him down.

Daymakumar sees the offer as another sign of Mehmood’s arrogance. “While we are happy for Irfan and proud of him, Pathan (Senior) was always arrogant. Things only worsened after his son’s success,” he said. The chairman said the trust had sacked Mehmood once 10 years ago but had then taken pity on the man and relented. “I believe that was a mistake,’’ Daymakumar said.

The 80-year-old chairman, who has been heading the mosque since 1967, said that when he asked Mehmood to vacate the room, he “threw” the keys at an official. Later, he allegedly said he would not vacate the room as long as he lived.

Daymakumar said the committee needs the room because experts have advised that the Quran be brought downstairs.

Every day, visitors throng the mosque to see the world’s largest Quran, a mosque official said. “The breadth of a single page is about three feet and a half. And 700 pages of the book are written in golden ink,” a source said.

“It has been at the mosque since 1912, when the Gaekwad family, which earlier possessed it, handed it over to the mosque.”