Doom of the Jinn

Much earlier in my life, like when I was 6 or 7 years old, I saw a play on television titled “jinn ka zawwaal”, which literally means “Doom of the Jinn”. The play was symbolic and had the following plot.

A funny looking lean guy is sitting in his room with a lamp in his hand. He rubs the lamp and all of a sudden a giant, scary looking, really big, black man with horns in his head and a painted face appears in front of the lean guy and asks in his rather loud voice. “What can I do for you my master”. Clearly, he is a jinn. The owner of the lamp, at first, gets frightened at his sudden appearance and shivers. The jinn tries to calm him down and somehow convinces him that he is his subservient as he owns the lamp and would do anything he demanded of him. After a while, after regaining composure, the gaunt guy, due to lack of a better idea, asked him to iron the clothes. The jinn got confused a little but then fulfilled the wish and disappeared.

As the play progressed the gaunt guy found an interest in the utility of the jinn and kept on rubbing the lamp again and again. And every time the jinn appeared before him and asked for his command, the gaunt guy told him to do trivial things, such as washing the clothes, polishing the shoes and doing the dishes. After a few episode breaks and after a few appearances the jinn started shrinking in size. By the end of the play he stood in the corner of the room having a size of a midget, pale and melancholic, ironing the clothes. The play subsequently ended. At that time it was more funny than horrific.

The play was probably symbolic in nature, as I latter thought about it as I grew older, like in the mid twenties. To me the jinn was probably synonymous for other things, such as mental faculties. As opposed to doing things such as polishing the shoes, the jinn expected to be building castles with in the blink of an eye, or to aid in long distance traveling in a really short period of time. As the gaunt guy was using him for trivial things such as polishing the shoes, the jinn not only got depressed, he also started shrinking. Such is probably the case with human expansive abilities.

At that time scripts for plays and drama serials were written with much creative vigor by people who used to obtain formal training in poetic and prosaic literature. The play was cast on Pakistan Television.