As the paanwala’s hair turned from crude oil to grey, at a rate much slower than the rest of his generation—he was in the habit of drenching his hair in coconut oil after his bath—he accounted that none of the people who had enquired about Dara Kosh Pathan had returned with any news of his whereabouts, in Herat, in the dry, cold mountains of Khorasan, or anywhere else. Since no one had reached Dara’s milestone, the newer participants turned devotion to discontent and discontent to discovery. Each time the paanwala and Enumerator A attempted to prevent an unusual innovation or to disqualify a participant—there was one fellow who needed to slap his right ear, another who blocked his nose, a third who had drilled a hole through his cheek, a fourth who claimed the hole was congenital, he had not drilled it—they always referred to the game’s first ancestor.

‘But he did not say this.’

‘But he did not do this.’

‘But this was not his original intention.’

Slowly and steadily the commandments of the game were written and expanded. Over the years the only innovation that was permitted, unrelated to anything the founding father had said or done or intended, was a change in the criteria of measurement:

Everything else being equal, the taller you are, the further you can spit. Hence, with the blessings of Dara Kosh Pathan, we replace the raw measure of spitting distance with a more appropriate measure of a distance to height ratio.

Some whispered that it was a way to keep the pathans out. Eight of the first ten records were held by pathans. They were very tall. There were protests.

‘Come, all you eight-foot giants, with your drilled cheeks, distended jaws, opiate mixes, devices screwed into your throats,’ shrieked a poster of the underground movement that refused to abide by any rules.

‘Gumnaam log, Gumshuda shabd, aur peek auzaar ban gaya (Anonymous Men, Lost Words, and Spit Became Weapon).’

Among them too no one surpassed Dara Kosh Pathan.

‘It’s a lie. It’s humanly impossible. No innovation can help. That record is fake,’ they shouted from the top of everything they could climb.

~

A scientific community, operating in twenty odd countries, with various treatment and control groups, with mouths, jaws, and orthopaedic devices of all shapes and sizes, tried to surpass Dara Kosh Pathan’s record. Jointly, they issued a scientifically worded public statement with the appropriate disclaimer in the footnote: ‘To the best of our knowledge, it is humanly impossible to exceed 2.14, which is 0.36 less than Dara Kosh Pathan’s record.’

Meanwhile, the orthodox had come together and named the street, the one which was stained with red betel juice, Dara Kosh Pathan Street. A man who claimed to be a distant relative of Dara Kosh Pathan said he was surprised Dara was even there. ‘It is very unlike him to participate.’

The winner for that year overheard the conversation.