Retired judge Mian Abdul Hai was absolutely confident that things would return to normal soon, which was why he wasn’t worried. He had two children, a boy of eleven and a girl of seventeen. In addition, there was an old servant who was now pushing seventy. It was a small family. When the troubles started, Mian sahib, being an extra cautious man, had stocked up on food…just in case. So on one count, at least, there were no worries.
His daughter, Sughra, was less sure of things. They lived in a three-storey house with a view of almost the entire city. Sughra could not help noticing that, whenever she went on the roof, there were fires raging everywhere. In the beginning, she could hear fire engines rushing past, their bells ringing, but this had now stopped. There were too many fires in too many places.
The nights had become particularly frightening. The sky was always lit by conflagrations like giants spitting out flames. Then there were the slogans which rent the air with terrifying frequency – ‘Allaho Akbar’, ‘Har Har Mahadev.’
Sughra never expressed her fears to her father, because he had declared confidently that there was no cause for anxiety. Everything was going to be fine. Since he was generally always right, she had initially felt reassured.
However, when the power and water supplies were suddenly cut off, she expressed her unease to her father and suggested apologetically that, for a few days at least, they should move to Sharifpura, a Muslim locality, where many of the old residents had already moved to. Mian sahib was adamant. ‘You’re imagining things. Everything is going to be normal very soon.’
He was wrong. Things went from bad to worse. Before long there was not a single Muslim family to be found in Mian Abdul Hai’s locality. Then one day Mian sahib suffered a stroke and was laid up. His son, Basharat, who used to spend most of his time playing self-devised games, now stayed glued to his father’s side. All the shops in the area had been permanently boarded up.
Dr Ghulam Hussain’s dispensary had been shut for weeks and Sughra had noticed from the rooftop one day that the adjoining clinic of Dr Goranditta Mal was also closed. Mian sahib’s condition was getting worse day by day. Sughra was almost at her wits’ end. One day she took Basharat aside and said to him, ‘You’ve got to do something. I know it’s not safe to go out, but we must get some help. Our father is very ill.’
The boy went, but came back almost immediately. His face was pale with fear. He had seen a blood-drenched body lying in the street and a group of wild-looking men looting shops. Sughra took the terrified boy in her arms and said a silent prayer, thanking God for his safe return. However, she could not bear her father’s suffering. His left side was now completely lifeless. His speech had been impaired and he mostly communicated through gestures, all designed to reassure Sughra that soon all would be well.
It was the month of Ramadan and only two days to Id. Mian sahib was quite confident that the troubles would be over by then. He was again wrong. A canopy of smoke hung over the city, with fires burning everywhere. At night the silence was shattered by deafening explosions. Sughra and Basharat hadn’t slept for days.
Sughra in any case couldn’t because of her father’s deteriorating condition. Helplessly, she would look at him, then at her young, frightened brother and the seventy-year-old servant Akbar, who was useless for all practical purposes. He mostly kept to his bed, coughing and fighting for breath. One day Sughra told him angrily, ‘What good are you? Do you realize how ill Mian sahib is? Perhaps you are too lazy to want to help, pretending that you are suffering from acute asthma. There was a time when servants used to sacrifice their lives for their masters.’
Sughra felt very bad afterwards. She had been unnecessarily harsh with the old man. In the evening, when she took his food to him in his small room, he was not there. Basharat looked for him all over the house, but he was nowhere to be found. The front door was unlatched. He was gone, perhaps to get some help for Mian sahib. Sughra prayed for his return, but two days passed and he hadn’t come back.
It was evening and the festival of Id was now only a day away. She remembered the excitement which used to grip the family on this occasion. She remembered standing on the rooftop, peering into the sky, looking for the Id moon and praying for the clouds to clear. But how different everything was today. The sky was covered in smoke and on distant roofs one could see people looking upwards. Were they trying to catch sight of the new moon or were they watching the fires, she wondered.
She looked up and saw the thin sliver of the moon peeping through a small patch in the sky. She raised her hands in prayer, begging God to make her father well. Basharat, however, was upset that there would be no Id this year.
The night hadn’t yet fallen. Sughra had moved her father’s bed out of the room onto the veranda. She was sprinkling water on the floor to make it cool. Mian sahib was lying there quietly looking with vacant eyes at the sky where she had seen the moon. Sughra came and sat next to him. He motioned her to get closer. Then he raised his right arm slowly and put it on her head. Tears began to run from Sughra’s eyes. Even Mian sahib looked moved. Then with great difficulty he said to her, ‘God is merciful. All will be well.’
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Sughra’s heart began to beat violently. She looked at Basharat, whose face had turned white like a sheet of paper. There was another knock. Mian sahib gestured to Sughra to answer it. It must be old Akbar who had come back, she thought. She said to Basharat, ‘Answer the door. I’m sure it’s Akbar.’ Her father shook his head, as if to signal disagreement.
‘Then who can it be?’ Sughra asked him.
Mian Abdul Hai tried to speak, but before he could do so Basharat came running in. He was breathless. Taking Sughra aside, he whispered, ‘It’s a Sikh.’
Sughra screamed, ‘A Sikh! What does he want?’
‘He wants me to open the door.’
Sughra took Basharat in her arms and went and sat on her father’s bed, looking at him desolately.
On Mian Abdul Hai’s thin, lifeless lips, a faint smile appeared. ‘Go and open the door. It is Gurmukh Singh.’
‘No, it’s someone else,’ Basharat said.
Mian sahib turned to Sughra. ‘Open the door. It’s him.’
Sughra rose. She knew Gurmukh Singh. Her father had once done him a favour. He had been involved in a false legal suit and Mian sahib had acquitted him. That was a long time ago, but every year, on the occasion of Id, he would come all the way from his village with a bag of sawwaiyaan. Mian sahib had told him several times, ‘Sardar sahib, you really are too kind. You shouldn’t inconvenience yourself every year.’ But Gurmukh Singh would always reply, ‘Mian sahib, God has given you everything. This is only a small gift which I bring every year in humble acknowledgement of the kindness you once showed me. Even a hundred generations of mine would not be able to repay your favour. May God keep you happy.’
Sughra was reassured. Why hadn’t she thought of it in the first place? But why had Basharat said it was someone else? After all, he knew Gurmukh Singh’s face from his annual visit.
Sughra went to the front door. There was another knock. Her heart missed a beat. ‘Who is it?’ she asked in a faint voice.
Basharat whispered to her to look through a small hole in the door.
It wasn’t Gurmukh Singh, who was a very old man. This was a young fellow. He knocked again. He was holding a bag in his hand of the same kind Gurmukh Singh used to bring.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, a little more confident now. ‘I am Sardar Gurmukh Singh’s son Santokh.’
Sughra’s fear had suddenly gone. ‘What brings you here today?’ she asked politely.
‘Where is Judge sahib?’ he asked. ‘He is not well,’ Sughra answered.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Santokh Singh said. Then he shifted his bag from one hand to the other. ‘Here is some sawwaiyaan.’ Then after a pause, ‘Sardarji is dead.’
‘Dead!’
Sughra was so moved that tears came to her eyes. She opened the door a little. The young man pushed the bag towards her. ‘May God rest his soul,’ she said.
‘Is Judge sahib not well?’ he asked. ‘No.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘He had a stroke.’
‘Had my father been alive, it would have grieved him deeply. He never forgot Judge sahib’s kindness until his last breath. He used to say, “He is not a man, but a god.” May God keep him under his care. Please convey my respects to him.’
He left before Sughra could make up her mind whether or not to ask him to get a doctor.
As Santokh Singh turned the corner, four men, their faces covered with their turbans, moved towards him. Two of them held burning oil torches; the others carried cans of kerosene oil and explosives. One of them asked Santokh, ‘Sardarji, have you completed your assignment?’
The young man nodded.
‘Should we then proceed with ours?’ he asked.
‘If you like,’ he replied and walked away.
Translated by Khalid Hasan
Two-Nation Theory
THE FIRST TIME Mukhtar saw Sharda was from his rooftop, where he had gone to grab a kite that had landed there. It was only a glimpse. She lived in the house across the street, which was lower than theirs, and he had seen her through the open window of the bathroom where she was washing herself, pouring water on her body from a pitcher. This was a surprise. Where had this girl materialized from, because no girl lived in that house. The ones who used to had all been married off. The only female now left was Roop Kaur, with her flabby husband and their three boys.
Mukhtar picked up his kite and stole another look at the girl. She was beautiful. A shudder ran through him. The water drops on the golden down of her body were shimmering. Her complexion was light brown, but it had the glow of copper. The tiny droplets of water that sparkled on her skin were making her body melt, drop by drop, or that was how it appeared to him. He was watching her through one of the eyeholes in the low brick wall built on all four sides of the open roof. His eyes were glued to the body of this girl bathing herself. She was no more than sixteen and there were water drops on her small, round breasts, lovely to look at. But he did not feel aroused. He just kept watching this young, beautiful, naked girl with great concentration as if she were a painting. There was a large mole in the corner of her mouth, which just sat there, soberly, as if it was unaware of its being there, but others were aware of its existence and knew that it was exactly where it ought to have been.
The golden down on her arms was studded with sparkling water drops. Her hair was not golden but light brown. Perhaps her hair had refused to go golden. Her body was full and supple but no lascivious thoughts came to him. He just kept looking at her through the eyehole. She soaped her body and he could smell its aroma spreading over her light brown, copper-hued body. The foam on her skin looked lovely. When she poured water over herself to wash it away, he felt as if she had removed her foamy covering with one calm, smooth move. When she was done, she dried herself with a towel, put on her clothes unhurriedly and, placing both hands on the window sill, stood up. She blushed. Her eyes, Mukhtar felt, had taken a dip into a lake of shyness. She closed the window shut and, involuntarily, Mukhtar laughed.
Then she threw open the window and looked towards him angrily. Mukhtar spoke, ‘Please don’t blame me but why were you bathing with the window open?’ She said nothing, cast another angry look at him and shut the window. Four days later, Roop Kaur came to their house, accompanied by that girl. Mukhtar’s mother and sister were excellent knitters. Many girls from the neighbourhood would come to them to learn how to knit and do crochet work. This girl was fond of learning how to crochet and that was why she had come. Mukhtar stepped out of his room into the courtyard, smiled and left. She drew herself together when she saw him. Mukhtar learnt that her name was Sharda and she was Roop Kaur’s cousin, daughter of her uncle. She lived in the small town of Chichoki Malyaan with her poor relatives, but Roop Kaur had asked her to come live with her family. She had finished high school and she was said to be very intelligent. It had taken her no time to learn how to crochet.
Several days passed. By now Mukhtar knew that he had fallen in love with her. It had happened gradually, from the moment he had first seen her through that eyehole to this point where her thought never left his heart for a moment. It occurred to Mukhtar several times that falling in love was wrong because Sharda was a Hindu. How could a Muslim dare fall in love with a Hindu? But the fact was that he just could not bear the thought of not being in love with her. Sharda would sometimes talk to him but somewhat diffidently. The first thing that would come to her mind on seeing him would be the memory of the day he had seen her through that eyehole taking a bath naked. One day, when Mukhtar’s mother and sister had gone to offer condolences at a family friend’s home, Sharda walked in, carrying the small bag she always did. It was about ten in the morning and Mukhtar was stretched on a cot in the courtyard reading a newspaper. ‘Where is Behanji?’ she asked, referring to his sister. Mukhtar’s hands began to tremble, ‘She has gone out.’ ‘And Mataji?’ Sharda asked, which was what she called his mother. Mukhtar got down from the cot. ‘She…she has gone with her.’ ‘All right then,’ she said, looking worried. Joining her hands in a namaste, she was about to leave when Mukhtar said, ‘Sharda!’ ‘Yes?’ She looked like someone who had just received an electric shock. Mukhtar said, ‘Sit down. They will be back very soon.’ ‘No, I am leaving,’ she replied but kept standing.
Picking up his courage, Mukhtar pulled her towards him by the wrist and kissed her on the lips. It all happened so quickly that Sharda was taken by surprise. By now both of them were trembling. ‘Please forgive me,’ was all Mukhtar said. Sharda kept quiet but her copper complexion turned red and her lips began to quiver as if they were complaining about having been teased. Mukhtar drew Sharda close to his chest and she did not resist. But there was a look of astonishment on her face. She seemed to be asking herself, ‘What is it that has happened? What is happening? Should it have happened? ls this what happens to others as well?’
Mukhtar made her sit on the cot and asked, ‘Why don’t you speak Sharda?’ Under her dupatta, Sharda’s heart was beating fast. She did not answer him. Mukhtar felt bothered by her silence. ‘Please say something Sharda, if what I have done has offended you, as God is my witness, I’ll apologize. I will never even raise my eyes towards you. I would never have had the courage but I don’t know what came over me. The fact is, the fact is that I am in love with you.’ Sharda’s lips moved as if they were trying to form the word ‘love.’ Mukhtar began to talk animatedly, ‘I don’t know if you understand the meaning of love. I don’t know much about it myself. All I know is that I love you. I want to hold all of you in one hand. If you want, I can place my life in your hands. Sharda, why don’t you speak?’
Sharda’s eyes became dreamy. Mukhtar began to talk again. ‘I saw you that day through that eyehole. I saw you and that is a sight I will not forget till judgement day. Why are you so shy? My eyes never stole your beauty. They just beheld a splendid scene. If you can bring it back, I will kiss your feet.’ And he kissed one of her feet.
She trembled. Then she rose from the cot and said, her voice quivering, ‘What are you doing? In our religion…’ Mukhtar said excitedly, ‘Forget religion. All is right in the religion of love.’ He wanted to kiss her again but she leapt aside and, still smiling, she ran out. Mukhtar wanted to run up to the roof and jump from there into the courtyard and start dancing. Some time later, Mukhtar’s mother and sister returned and so did
Sharda. Mukhtar slipped away, his eyes to the ground. He did not want his secret to get out. The next day, he walked up to the rooftop. She was standing by the window, combing her hair. ‘Sharda,’ Mukhtar called out. She was startled. The comb fell from her hand, landing in the street. ‘You are so timid; look your comb has fallen.’ ‘Why don’t you buy me a new one then; this one has fallen into the gutter,’ Sharda said. ‘Now?’ Mukhtar asked. ‘No, no, I was only joking.’ ‘I was also joking. Could I have left you to buy a comb? Never.’ Sharda smiled, ‘How am I going to do my hair?’ Mukhtar slipped his finger through the eyehole from where he was watching her. ‘Use my fingers.’
Sharda laughed. Mukhtar felt that he could happily spend his entire life under the shade of that laughter. ‘Sharda, by God, you laughed and I am in ecstasy. Why are you so lovely? There is no girl in the whole wide world who is as lovely. I want to smash these curtains of clay that stand between us.’ Sharda laughed again. Mukhtar said, ‘No one else should hear you laugh, nor even watch you when you do. Sharda, you must only laugh for me. Whenever you want to laugh, just call me. I will raise protective walls around you with my kisses.’ ‘You know how to talk,’ Sharda said. ‘Then give me a reward, just a look of love from across there. I will save that look in my eyes and I’ll keep it hidden.’ He noticed someone’s shadow behind her and he moved away. When he returned, she was not at the window.
They came close in the days that followed and whenever they got a chance they would talk the sweet nothings that lovers do. One day, Roop Kaur and her husband, Lala Kalu Mal, were out of the house. Mukhtar happened to be walking past when a pebble hit him. He looked up and saw Sharda. She motioned him to come up. They were completely alone and they talked intimately for a long time. Mukhtar said, ‘I apologize for what I did that day. And I want to do the same thing today, but this time I won’t apologize.’ Then he placed his lips on Sharda’s quivering lips. ‘Say you are sorry,’ Sharda said naughtily. ‘No, those are not your lips, they are mine. Am I wrong?’ Sharda lowered her eyes, ‘Not only those lips, all of me is yours too.’
The Dog of Tithwal Page 20