by Gulzar
‘About twenty-odd years later a group was going from India for a pilgrimage to Panja Sahab. We too felt like going. We had thought of going back to see our home on several occasions over the past many years, but the good lady here would fall to pieces at the very thought,’ he said, gesturing towards his wife. ‘And then we had never quite shed our guilt about not having trusted the zamindar of our qasba. We felt ashamed whenever we thought about it.
‘Anyhow, we made up our mind to go but before leaving I wrote a letter to our zamindar and to his son Ayaaz, and apologized for what we had done. I narrated our flight and described the state of our family and our two lost children, Satya and Sampooran. I had thought that perhaps Ayaaz might not remember us but the zamindar, Afzal, wouldn’t have forgotten. I didn’t post the letter; I thought I would go there and post it. I would be there for twenty to twenty-five days; if he wished to meet me, surely Afzal Chacha would reply to my letter. If he called, we would go, otherwise … What is the point of digging up old graves? What would we find?’
Harbhajan Singh-ji sighed deeply. ‘The letter remained in my pocket, Punni-ji.* My heart refused to listen to me. We returned via Karachi and, on the day we were leaving, I don’t know why, I don’t know what made me do it, but I posted the letter. Without wanting it, I found myself waiting. But as the months passed that too stopped. I got a reply after eight years.’
‘From Afzal Chacha?’ I asked. He stayed quiet. I asked again, ‘From Ayaaz?’
He moved his head slightly and said, ‘Yes, it was the answer to my letter. The letter said that Afzal Chacha had passed away a few years after the Partition; the burden of managing the entire zamindari had fallen on Ayaaz. And a few days ago, Ayaaz too had passed away. When his papers were being looked at, this letter was discovered in a pocket of a shirt. Among the crowd of mourners, when someone who had come to offer condolences read the letter aloud, another man present there said that the girl mentioned in the letter had come all the way from Mianwali to offer her condolences. The girl was called and questioned; she told them her name was Satya. She said she had got separated from her parents during the Partition and now her name was Dilshad.’
The mother’s eyes were still dry but Daar-ji’s voice sounded full of tears again. ‘We took the name of the Guru and set out again. We met Dilshad there, at Afzal Chacha’s house. She remembered everything. But she couldn’t remember her house. We asked her how she had got separated from us. She said, “I grew tired of walking. I was sleepy. I went and lay down behind a tandoor in the courtyard of some house. When I woke up there was no one there. All day long I would look everywhere and then return to sleep in the same place. After three days, when the owners of the house returned they woke me up. They were a husband and wife. They kept me with them thinking someone would come looking for me; but no one came. I became a sort of maidservant in their home. They gave me food and clothes and they kept me well. Then, after many years, maybe eight or nine years later, the master of the house performed a nikah with me and made me his wife. With God’s grace, I have two sons: one is in the Pakistan Air Force, the other one has a good job in Karachi.”’
Writers have the habit of asking strange questions, questions that are not really necessary.
‘Was she surprised to see you? Did she cry when she met you?’ I asked.
‘No, she was not surprised but she did not seem particularly affected either,’ Daar-ji said. ‘In fact, whenever I think about her, it seems as though she smiled every now and then as she heard us, as though we had come to narrate a story to her. I don’t think she felt we were indeed her mother and father.’
‘And Sampooran … was he not with her?’
‘No, she didn’t even remember him.’
And the mother repeated what she had already said a couple of times earlier. ‘Punni, why don’t you believe us? Why do you hide from us? You have even hidden your name! Just as Satya became Dilshad, someone must have made you Gulzar!’
And after a while, she continued, ‘Who gave you the name Gulzar? Your name is Sampooran Singh.’
I asked Daar-ji, ‘Who told you about me? How did you think that I might be your son?’
‘You see, when we met our daughter after thirty to thirty-five years thanks to the Waheguru, our hopes were raised once again and we began to think that He might help us meet our son too. Iqbal read your interview in some magazine and he told us that your real name is Sampooran and that you were born that side, in Pakistan. And he launched his search. Yes, I have not told you yet that his name, Iqbal, was given by Afzal Chacha.’
The mother said, ‘Kaka, you stay where you like. You have become a Musalman … that’s all right but at least acknowledge that you are our son, Punni!’
I gave all the details about my family to Harbhajan Singh and, disappointing him once again, came away.
This happened seven or eight years ago.
It is 1993 now.
After many years, I received a letter from Iqbal and a card for a Bhog with the announcement that Sardar Harbhajan Singh had passed away to his heavenly abode. The mother had said that the youngest one must be informed.
And I felt as though I had indeed lost my Daar-ji.
Fear
HIS NERVES were stretched taut with fear and his knees trembled as he sat as though about to be seized by an epileptic fit.
It had been four days since communal riots had gripped the city. The curfew would be relaxed for a short while in the morning, and then again for a bit in the evening. As soon as the curfew was relaxed, people would hurriedly buy their daily essentials. Some others would quickly do a spot of killing and looting, start some fires, knife a couple of people, drop a few dead bodies and lock themselves in their houses well in time for the curfew. Hot gossip and hot blood flowed in a ceaseless stream in Bombay. Although the radio and television were making constant announcements that the situation was under control and the city was fast returning to normalcy.
To prove that the situation was back to normal, local trains had begun running till late in the night since yesterday. Most of the carriages were empty, but the lights running along the tracks provided for a flicker of movement in the darkness that had frozen for the past four days. The sound of a train rattling past momentarily dispelled the stony silence that had descended on the settlements on either side of the tracks and brought hope of life again. Yaseen could hear the train and when he sat up he could see. Tomorrow it would be five days since he had been missing from his home. By now the family would have given up waiting and must be out searching for him.
The day was about to end when his patience ran out. He reached Andheri station as soon as the curfew was lifted for the evening. The platform was deserted. But the train’s arrival time was blinking on the indicator.
The train approached the station slowly, not in its usual style; it seemed as if it was scared, fearful, being cautious. There were a few people in the train, no more than one or two. He couldn’t decide which carriage to get into. After all, the majority are Hindus. People were huddled in tight bunches of twos and fours. He kept standing on the platform and, just as the train was about to leave, leapt onto one of the carriages. He chose an empty compartment. Carefully, he looked around. There was no one in it. Then he slunk into a corner seat on the last bench. He could see the entire compartment from here. He breathed a sigh of relief as the train gathered speed.
Suddenly, a head bobbed up in the far corner of the compartment. Yaseen broke out in a cold sweat. Once again, an epileptic fit seized his knees. He bent so low on his seat that if the other man were to come in his direction, Yaseen could hide under the bench. Or else, he could stand up to his full height and take a position.
The door was not far. But leaping out of a moving train spelt no other danger save certain death. And even if the train were to slow down, that man … Suddenly, the other man stood up. He looked around. There seemed to be no trace of fear on his face. He must be a Hindu for sure: that was Yaseen’s instinctive reactio
n. The man strolled over to stand at the other door of the compartment. His muffler fluttered in the breeze like a torn flag. He stood there, looking out, for some time. And then it seemed as if he was testing his strength against something. Yaseen could see him clearly from where he sat. The man appeared to be tugging at something, sometimes pressing, then raising, then pulling again. It seemed to Yaseen as though he was wrenching something out when suddenly the rusted iron door slid in its groove and shut with a loud thud.
It was good that Yaseen did not scream out, though the man himself had seemed startled by the loud sound. He had looked all around, and his gaze had lingered a little longer in the corner in which Yaseen was crouched. Yaseen became suspicious: What if the man had indeed seen him? Or else heard him? The man’s strength put yet another fear in Yaseen’s heart: if the two were to come face-to-face, would Yaseen be able to match him?
The man strolled to stand beside the other open door. The train raced through the deserted Jogeshwari station. Had it stopped, Yaseen might well have got off. But since this was part of the curfewed neighbourhood, the train had not stopped. A curfewed area was the safest; at least the police was there. And by now even the military had been called into the city. Khaki-clad forces could be seen in the riot-hit areas, as well as fully armed uniformed military men, their guns and rifles at the ready. But no one was afraid of the police. Crowds would throw stones and empty soda bottles without any restraint, and now even acid-filled bombs. If the police burst tear-gas shells at the crowds, people would cover their faces with damp handkerchiefs, pick up the shells and hurl them back at the police.
When the bakery in Sakinaka had been burnt – the one in which he worked – what had the police done? It had stood in the distance and watched the spectacle. People had fled through the narrow alleys to those garages where battered and broken cars stood with the paint peeling off their skeletal frames. They had run to hide among the cars to save themselves. There were eight or ten men. God bless Bhau; he had tugged the gamchha tied around Yaseen’s waist and pulled him into the shop beside the tea seller’s as they ran. Bhau knew he was a Musalman whereas he himself was a Hindu. Why had he run? Bhau told him that a crowd doesn’t wait to ask one’s religion when it is thirsty for blood. Its thirst can only be quenched with blood or fire. Burn! Kill! Destroy! Its anger is cooled only when nothing remains in front of it.
The rumble at the door startled him. By now, the man had shut both the doors at the far end of the compartment. For a long time, he kept staring in the direction where Yaseen was crouched out of sight. Once again fear gripped his head in its shackles. Why was the man shutting the doors of the compartment? Was he planning to kill him, leave his blood-stained corpse in the compartment and get off the train when it stopped at the next station?
The train was slowing down. Probably it was approaching a station. There was greater self-assurance than before in the man’s gait as he began to approach him with slow, measured steps. Yaseen began to breathe heavily. He felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. He was afraid. His breathing grew laboured; he couldn’t swallow the phlegm building up in his throat. What if he were to gag? What if he coughed suddenly as he crouched beneath the seat?
The train stopped at a station. The man coolly strolled over to stand beside the door facing the platform. He had one hand thrust in his pocket. Surely there was something in there: a pistol, or a knife? Yaseen thought of dashing across and jumping on to the other side. But by the time he could get out of hiding under the seat, the man would surely slash him in the stomach. Or, why the stomach? He could just as well slit his throat so that not a sound would emerge.
Yaseen peered out from the corners of his eyes. The man was looking out. The platform was silent; there wasn’t so much as the sound of a footstep. Yaseen wished desperately for someone to show up. But who could tell who might come? A Hindu? Or a Musalman? Let there be another Hindu. He might be kind-hearted as Bhau was. How he had made Yaseen wear his janeu and taken him from the tea stall to his room. Bhau had kept him for four days. He had said, ‘I am a Maratha; I don’t eat meat every day. If you want, I can get it for you. I don’t know how good it will be. I don’t know about halaal; in any case, things are so bad outside that vegetables are rotting in Andheri but there is no one to sell them. You can carry away as much as you want.’
And the radio was repeatedly saying that the city was slowly returning to normality. Trains were running. Buses too were plying in some areas. In the past four days, he had been very worried about his family. Surely, his family too was worried about him. His one big fear was: What if Fatima were to set out in search of him and reach the bakery? He could see the railway track from the room he was hiding in and he could also see some trains. But Bhau didn’t let him leave.
The train moved with a shudder and Yaseen landed with a thump from the room to the compartment. The man was holding the train compartment’s rod with his left hand and standing with great self-assurance. His right hand was still in his pocket. The train crawled for a bit and kept moving at a snail’s pace. Why was the train not gathering speed? There could be no reason for it not getting the signal. There was hardly any traffic on the tracks. So far not a single train had come from the opposite direction.
The train kept crawling for a long time. And then it stopped on Bhayandar Bridge. The creek was under it, the same stretch of the sea from which, according to newspaper reports, bodies had been fished out.
Yaseen was feeling choked. It was impossible to carry on with that fear. And why was that man not taking his hand out of his pocket? It was clear from the look in his eyes that he was about to attack! What would happen when he did? Would he ask Yaseen to come out? Or would he pull Yaseen by the hair on his head, drag him out and put a knife at his throat? What would he do? Why was he not doing anything?
At that very moment, the man took his hand out of his pocket and once again began to test his strength. He was trying to close the third door too. Yaseen’s escape route was about to get cut off. Beneath them lay the sea. If he were to jump, death was a certainty. His fear was reaching its limit. The cave was about to shut.
Suddenly, Yaseen leapt out of his hiding place. Startled, the man turned around. His hand went back into his pocket. God knows wherefrom the strength came to Yaseen.
‘Ya Ali…’ Yaseen said and lunged for the man. He held the man by his legs and hurled him out.
Yaseen heard the man’s scream as he fell … ‘Allah!’
Yaseen stood in his place. The train moved. Yaseen was surprised. ‘Was he a Musalman too?’ But having escaped from the clutch of fear, he was feeling as though he had returned from the maw of death.
That night he told Fatima, ‘If I hadn’t done so, what proof of being a Musalman could I have given him? Should I have stripped naked?’
Smoke
THE TALK had caught fire very slowly but soon enough its smoke had filled the entire qasba.
The chaudhry had died at four in the morning. By seven, when his wife, the chaudhrain, had regained her senses after a prolonged bout of crying, the first thing she did was send for Mullah Khairuddin. The servant was given strict instructions not to say anything to the mullah. After the servant escorted the mullah into the courtyard and went away, the chaudhrain took him to the bedroom upstairs where the chaudhry’s corpse had been removed from the bed and placed on the floor. A pale white face draped in white sheets, it had white eyebrows, a white beard and long white hair. The chaudhry’s face emitted an other-worldly glow.
The mullah saw him and immediately recited ‘Inna lillahe wa innalillahe rajaoon’ and offered a few token words of condolence. He had barely sat down when the chaudhrain took out the will from a cupboard, showed it to him and made him read it. The chaudhry’s last wish was that he should not be buried; instead, he wished to be cremated and his ashes strewn in the river which watered his land.
The mullah read the will but remained silent. The chaudhry had done a lot of good in the name of religion in th
is village. He was known to give equally to the Hindu and the Musalman in the name of charity. He had had a proper brick-and-mortar building constructed for the makeshift village mosque. What is more, he even had a regular concrete structure erected at the cremation ground of the Hindus. Even though he had been sick for many years now and confined to his bed, he had given instructions to the mosque authorities for the iftari to be made for the poor and the needy at his expense every Ramzan. The Musalman of the neighbourhood were devoted to him and had great faith in him.
Now, reading the contents of the will, the mullah was worried. What if it caused trouble? As it is, things were bad in this country: the Hindu had become more Hindu and the Musalman more Musalman!
The chaudhrain said, ‘I don’t want to have any religious ceremony. All I want is that arrangements be made for him to be burnt in the cremation ground. I could have told Pandit Ram Chandar but I didn’t call him because I don’t want things to take a bad turn.’
But things did take a bad turn when Mullah Khairuddin sent for Pandit Ram Chandar and gave the following prudent advice: ‘Don’t allow the chaudhry to be burnt in your cremation ground, for it is possible that the Musalman of this neighbourhood might create trouble. After all, the chaudhry was no ordinary man. Many people were associated with him in different ways.’
Pandit Ram Chandar assured him that he didn’t want any mischief in his area. Before the news got any further, he too would explain matters to some of his specially chosen people.
But the spark had been lit and before long the smoke began to spread.
‘It isn’t about the chaudhry or the chaudhrain; this is a matter of faith and belief. It concerns the entire community and religion itself. How dare the chaudhrain even consider having her husband burnt instead of buried? Is she unaware of the fundamentals of Islam?’