Two

by Gulzar

  There was no one with Soni and Moni. Their real names were Surjit and Manjit and they were probably twins. Both wore kadas on their arms. They were now separated from the group that had brought them to Amritsar. Familiar with Gurudwara Darbar Sahib, they went there and offered prayers, took a dip in the Sarovar and ate at the langar. They hid a roti each in their kurtis. Who knew if food would be available in the evening. Volunteers were distributing clothes, sheets and blankets to the needy. Soni and Moni got dupattas to cover their heads.

  Life in a camp was not easy for two abandoned young women. All sorts of things were happening in the name of Waheguru. A volunteer even took them to the burnt-down house of a Musalman in some secluded lane. He tried to tempt them. ‘People are grabbing up houses. We’ve saved this one. You can take the two rooms on the top floor, our family will stay downstairs.’

  Soni-Moni fled in fear. The house looked like the one on the other side – where they had been locked up. If it weren’t for the truck driver … would they still be alive? Who knows?

  After that episode, the sisters became cautious. But what could they have done when horde after horde kept arriving? With every new horde, the one that had come earlier kept getting pushed out. It was impossible to stay on.

  From Amritsar, trains set out in different directions. Buses too. There were trucks as well, but only for those who could afford them. There were no tickets you could buy, so the trains ran as they wished. People got on whatever train left earlier. Everyone was desperate to leave this city of camps. Get out one way or another.

  After they had been pushed around for weeks, Soni and Moni too got on one such train. They didn’t know where the train disgorged them. Some passengers said, ‘Not here … change the train … we have to go further.’

  They spent some days on that platform and then boarded another train. They kept criss-crossing cities the way trains change tracks. Even after reaching Hindustan, they could not find a place to settle down. Days stretched to months.

  Moni grew sickly. Her face turned pale. Soon, she began throwing up. That was when she realized she was carrying the child of her rapist. There was no way she could abort the pregnancy. No opportunity. The passage seemed endless.

  Moni would beat her belly and cry, ‘This is my enemy growing in my belly. What should I do? It will die only if I die!’

  People started sticking together. They moved in groups. There was another kind of group, of thugs, who were taking advantage of the refugees. Some volunteers would fill up a bus to take refugees from railway stations to camps. Halfway through, they would ask for the fare, threatening to drop them off in the middle of nowhere. Who wants to get off alone on a deserted road? One person would take something out of a secret pocket, another would take off a bangle or two. Sometimes, someone would help his fellow traveller. The homeless have tremendous compassion. But they were muhajirs even in their own land. They were sharanarthis.

  The refugees had set up home in Bundi fort. Volunteers from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were helping everyone. After nine hundred years, a saffron flag flew over the fort. It is here that the matriarch of a Punjabi family, Bebe, recognized Moni’s condition. Her belly betrayed her pregnancy.

  There was no man with them. When Bebe enquired, Soni lied, ‘Our family, including Moni’s husband, was killed on the other side. Moni was with child. We fled. We got on a truck full of refugees.’

  Bebe had nine sons. All of them had managed to escape with their families. They had been able to bring along a lot of their wealth, although all their property, cattle and some other possessions were left behind. Only the grandfather had stayed back. Until the very end, he kept repeating, ‘You will all come back. Wait and see. Allah willing, this calamity too will blow over…’ He used to take the name of Allah in the same breath as he uttered Waheguru.

  Bebe wandered around the fort with a chhadi. The sons sometimes joked, ‘Bebe, in an earlier life, you must have been a maharani here. Was this your fort?’

  She’d pull her dupatta over her head and say, ‘Of course. And these are all my subjects!’

  Bebe was very much like a maharani.

  One day, she landed up at the turret in a corner of the fort’s terrace where Soni and Moni had set up their dwelling.

  ‘How are you, girls? I see you both going down every day.’ There was a basti below, close to the river.

  ‘We go to the village there, Beeji, looking for work.’

  Moni picked up a canister and got up to leave. Soni continued to talk.

  ‘What kind of work?’ Bebe asked.

  ‘Anything. From washing clothes to washing utensils … whatever work…’

  ‘Do you get paid?’

  ‘They are not rich people, Beeji. They don’t need servants. Just a little helping mud plastering or … They give us what they can.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Khorda, Zila Campbellpur. And you?’

  ‘From Dera Khail Khan … not very far from Attock. You know, Campbellpur used to be called Attock.’

  Meanwhile, Moni had returned, her canister filled with water. Her back hurt when she bent to set it down.

  Bebe asked, ‘Have you sprained your back? Come here, beti. I’ll rub it. Don’t lift heavy things.’

  Then she looked at Soni and said, ‘I have been watching her for days. I know she is with child. That’s why I came over to ask about her. Is there no one else with you?’

  Neither of the sisters answered. Moni’s already sallow complexion became paler and Bebe understood it all.

  ‘Nine sons have I produced, beti. I know each and every aspect of motherhood. I longed to have a daughter, but Waheguru willed otherwise.’

  Soni said in a whisper, ‘Do you have your sons with you? All of them?’

  ‘Three of them are with me. Two left earlier. About twelve or fourteen miles away, in Kota, there’s a village. Called Alpha. Named by an Englishman. They have gone to see the land. Back there, we were farmers.’

  Stroking Moni’s belly, she asked, ‘Where’s the father?’

  Moni choked back her tears.

  Soni lied, ‘Killed in Khorda. All were killed. We were saved by … a truck driver who … who was escorting refugees…’

  Leaning against her stick, Bebe climbed down the turret and disappeared into the fort.

  In the late afternoon, she came back. She said to Moni, ‘Look here, dear. If there’s life in the womb, you are still a suhagan. Wear this black thread on your neck. Think of it as auspicious. You are still married and not a widow.’ She left, transforming an unmarried girl into a married one.

  A strange game of hide-and-seek began between Bebe and Moni. When she left the turret, Moni would check if Bebe was around. As for Bebe, whenever she emerged from the veranda across, her eyes rose up to the turret. Whenever Bebe met Moni, she offered some pregnancy-related advice. She’d tell her about home remedies, give her some recipes and ask her, ‘Do you feel like having something sour, puttar? I could ask my son to bring some tamarind.’

  Moni never answered.

  One afternoon, as Bebe sat in the turret with them, Soni asked her, ‘Why do you always ask about something sour?’

  ‘They say if there’s great desire to have more and more sour things, the child will be a daughter. I never felt like having anything sour. Still, I’d send for the kamrakh and tamarind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘See, I gave birth to nine sons, and then these sons had sons too. The family has longed for a daughter. But we never had one.’

  Bebe’s voice choked. She rested her hand on Moni’s shoulder and said, ‘See, Moniye, if you have a daughter, she will be mine. I’ll bring her up. I’ll not snatch her from you, but I’ll be her daadi. And if it’s a boy, he’ll be yours. I have one too many. You can then shower all your love on him.’

  Bebe’s eyes welled up as she said this, and she got up and walked away, tapping her chhadi on the ground. Moni was touched. For the first time, she stroked her belly a
nd smiled. A wave of relief ran through Soni.

  The Englishman Bebe had mentioned lived only twelve or fourteen miles away from Bundi. His house had been set on fire during the riots. Apparently, it was those rioters who had flown the saffron flag on the fort. The Englishman was an agriculturist. He owned some 125 acres of land in Alpha Nagar. His farmers and workers were joint owners of those lands. He himself had formulated those laws and followed them. When British rule was nearing its end, he declared himself a Hindustani. He demanded the right to become a citizen of Hindustan. People say he got up at night and rode his horse around his farms, like the kings of old times gathering news about their subjects. He loved his fields and crops.

  But when the turmoil broke, his workers could not save him. His house, his possessions and cattle … he lost everything. He could not bear to see his fields on fire. Running through the flames, he burned himself to ashes.

  After his death, the land became free but disputes erupted amongst the farmhands. They grabbed whatever land they could get their hands on, sold it and vanished. Punjab was not very far. Farmers and zamindars from Punjab bought the land.

  Two of Bebe’s sons bought a large part of the land and became zamindars. They also took over the dilapidated old haveli in the middle of the fields and called Bebe over from Bundi fort.

  When Bebe got the news, she hurried to the turret. Striking her stick on the floor, she said: ‘The two of you will have to come with me.’

  With the partition, a new system had emerged. Hiring houses by paying ‘pagdi’. By depositing a pagdi at several places in the villages around the farms, Bebe’s family began to settle down. She became the ‘thakurain’. There were enough hands to sow the fields. Everyone found work. Bebe’s sons managed to get a house for Soni and Moni as well.

  No matter what Moni did or where she spent her time, she felt compelled to meet Bebe at least once a day. If Moni didn’t go to her, Bebe would come.

  ‘You will surely have a baby girl! The way you bang your left foot on the ground when you walk, you know…’

  Inch by inch, Moni’s womb was growing. When she felt irritable, she’d say to Soni, ‘I’ll sell her to some dalla.’

  ‘Why not give her to Bebe if you don’t want to bring her up?’

  One reason they had come along with Bebe was that everyone had believed the lie about the child being her dead husband’s. Now, it didn’t matter what it looked like. Who had seen the man anyway?

  Bebe would say, ‘The girl will have her mother’s looks. In fact, she will be more beautiful!’

  The way Bebe stressed the word ‘beautiful’, it seemed as if it were predicted by a holy book. She laughed and said, ‘She will be quite a handful for my grandsons!’

  Bebe sat with Moni the whole night through when she went into labour. They had brought some haggard old midwife from a nearby village. She could hardly see, but her hands were strong and experienced.

  Moni gave birth to a boy.

  Bebe’s heart sank. She said, barely suppressing a sob, ‘Waheguru is still upset with me…’

  Moni’s breasts filled up with so much milk that she forgot she was unmarried. She stared at her son as though he were a miracle. All the anger, disgust and hatred with which she would beat her belly were washed away. All the poison turned to nectar in her breasts.

  Bebe visited frequently. Her love of the baby had not diminished even though it was a boy. She was not as well off as she used to be, but still brought a silver spoon for the boy.

  ‘I’ll organize the naming ceremony for your son at the gurudwara the moment the season’s first seeds are sown.’

  Different names were mentioned every day. One day Bebe asked Moni, ‘What was your husband’s name?’

  Moni was caught unawares. She turned towards Soni, who blurted, ‘Trilok … Trilok Singh!’

  Bebe rattled off spontaneously, ‘You can name the child “Trilok” … there, you’ve found all three worlds, that’s what the word means!’

  They didn’t understand the meaning. But they nodded in agreement.

  To everyone around, the boy was ‘Loki’. He had a heavy crop of hair and dark eyes. He looked nothing like Moni. But with his dense hair, he did look like a Trilok Singh.

  As Loki grew older, everyone grew more attached to him. Moni and Soni used to work in the fields and Loki played through the day, with Bebe watching over him.

  His hair grew longer and Bebe enjoyed plaiting it, tying it into a knot on his head. When he started walking, she would take him to the gurudwara too. She showed him off to her sons, who had cut their hair.

  Once, Soni laughed and whispered in Moni’s ear, ‘Let’s cut his hair. He’ll get lice. All Sikhs do.’

  Moni replied, amused, ‘He is a Gur Sikh. Why should I cut his hair? If I did that, Bebe would cut my head off.’

  But one day, she did something strange. She took the scissors and a comb and cut his hair. She kept combing, parting it this way and that. She stared hard at him. When Soni entered the room, Moni said: ‘Soni, see! His face is like that one’s … doesn’t he look exactly like the one who used to rape us every day?’

  There was a strange madness in Moni’s eyes. It scared Soni.

  ‘Have you gone crazy? Move aside.’ She picked Loki up and went out.

  When Bebe saw the child, she turned her face away and wept. Soni reassured her, ‘God knows what got into Moni. Don’t cry, Bebe, the hair will grow back.’

  ‘No, Soniye … my Waheguru is upset with me.’

  After that day, Moni never came face-to-face with Bebe. But Soni noticed the deepening horror in her eyes. She found her sister staring at Loki like one possessed. The innocent child would call out, ‘Ma … Ma…’ and run towards her.

  And then, one day, God’s wrath fell.

  They discovered Loki’s body in the well. Moni was nowhere to be seen.

  The police came and took Soni away. The senior inspector sahib wrote out the report, but Soni was not allowed to return home. He was sure that Soni’s sister would come looking for her. He was right.

  Three or four days later, some policemen caught hold of a hungry and distraught Moni. They brought her to the police station. Her eyes had the same madness.

  Soni came to meet her, but Moni pushed her away. The policemen dragged her back to the cell. Soni could not stop sobbing.

  The inspector released Soni. But where could she go? When she reached home, the whole of Alpha Nagar seemed alien. No one wanted to be seen with her. Bebe refused to meet her too. When she came back to the police station after two days, the inspector told her that Moni had been sent to Kota Central Jail. She was showing signs of being mentally ill.

  With a dupatta on her head and wearing a pair of jootis, Soni somehow made it to Kota Central Jail.

  A window-sized door opened within a colossal one. Guards were stationed on either side.

  ‘I want to meet the jailor sahib,’ Soni said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My sister is in jail here.’

  ‘Do you have any order or a permit?’

  No one would let her in. She stood waiting outside. Sometimes, she saw the jailor sahib’s jeep come out or go in. She could only guess that he was the jailor. She would approach him, fold her hands and say, ‘Salaam sahib.’ He would simply drive past her. He had been seeing her there for a few days, resting against the wall, listless.

  One day, he sent for her. The jailor sahib’s living quarters were inside the jail. He had a servant in the house. Yusuf. His wife and children lived in Aligarh. When Soni came in, she again wished him with folded hands, ‘Salaam sahib.’ The jailor told her that whenever she called out ‘Salaam sahib’, he thought she was calling him by his name. He laughed. His name, he told her, was Abdul Salaam Quraishi. He sent Yusuf to bring her water and a meal. That evening, sitting in the lawn, he listened to her story. It was heart-rending.

  Moni had been charged with murder. To allow her to meet Soni required clearance from senior officers. ‘Salaam Sah
ib’ took up the responsibility himself. He escorted Soni in his jeep.

  Moni had been locked in an isolated cell. A woman constable went to inform her about her sister’s visit, but she refused to see her.

  ‘I don’t want to meet her,’ Moni said.

  ‘She is standing outside.’

  ‘Let her.’

  Soni heard her.

  The constable came out. Soni approached the cell and peeped inside through the bars. Moni was sitting against the wall. She turned to look at Soni. Then got up slowly and came to the door. The madness had not left her eyes.

  ‘Moni, do you know what you have done?’

  Moni spat out bitterly, ‘Yes!’ And then added: ‘He killed so many Hindus in Campbellpur. So what if I have killed one small Musalman?’

  PART THREE

  Like dry leaves falling from a huge tree in a storm, the refugees kept drifting. At times they would float to the ground, only to be blown away by another strong gust of breeze.

  Decades passed, the refugees kept wandering. It was impossible to say who moved where, fell where. Even time wouldn’t probably be able to recognize them. The roots of the partition were buried deep, its branches reaching out. It was impossible to search for those who had left Campbellpur with Fauji. One leaf drifted a long way off.

  ‘Papa, I’m ready to become a Hindu for Paul. I want to go to Hindustan, to see the place I was born

  in – Rajputana!’

  For a moment George wondered if he too was a refugee from India. In England. He remembered Ramkumar Pushkarna of Rajputana. Jasmine too had stayed back.

  George was quiet for a while. Then he said, ‘I want you to get married in church. Don’t embarrass me in front of my friends, Edna, the few who remain. Especially because the marriage is taking place here, in England. I’d have no objection if it were happening in Hindustan.’