by Arnab Ray
And just then the train pulled into the station. Which was when the fighting started, for there were too many and there was only so much a train could take. Arjun held his father’s hand and pushed and shoved through the crowd, taking blows to the chin and the head, and yet jostling through. He would not remember much of those few minutes in the years that would follow, except a fleeting image of the old man in the white suit, lying on his stomach on the platform, his right leg splayed at an angle and his temple split and bloodied, crawling like a wounded cockroach towards the train that had started to move.
Arjun did not care. All that mattered was that the train was leaving Lahore and that he and his father were on it.
They sat on the floor in the dark compartment, their breaths squeezed out by the pressure of the shoulders and arms and legs of the people all around them. Shyamprasad Bhatia sobbed for a while, he was not the only one, and then he fell quiet. Arjun sat frozen, thinking of what he could do once the rioters stopped the train and entered the compartment. Should he slide under the bodies and play dead? But they would burn the train after they had killed, so maybe he should try to make a run for it, dodge between their legs, for he was small, and try to jump out on to the side of the tracks. No. That sounded much like death too. The heavy breathing on the side of his neck told him that his father had fallen asleep, and he was glad for it for that meant his father would not see them coming when they did, or would realize it too late to feel much terror. There was a woman pressed to his right side, who kept weeping and telling her husband, ‘Kill me first before they take my honour. Promise me you will.’ Then she turned towards Arjun and said, ‘If they kill him first, promise you will kill me before they take my honour.’ Arjun said yes, even though he did not know what she meant by ‘taking honour’ and even though he knew that there was no way he or her husband would be able to kill her. There was nothing to kill her with.
The train clanked to a halt. It was pitch-dark outside. Arjun closed his eyes, and waited for death. A man close by said, ‘Just a line-crossing. Nothing to worry about.’ No one believed him. Some prayed, some sobbed, some clung together. One second coalesced into another, like water at the tip of a tap, forming a gigantic, throbbing water drop of terror, waiting to burst the moment footsteps would be heard outside. But they never came, the men with the torches and the swords, and the train chugged forward and gathered speed into the night…
When they finally arrived in India, Arjun’s fever had sweated out. The horror remained though, hidden in the recesses of his mind, and he knew, even as he walked out on to the platform, holding his father’s hand, that he would never ever be rid of it.
2
It took Arjun years to realize that along with the rest of his family, he had lost his father back in the rubble of Model Town. The Shyamprasad Bhatia that had been on the train with him – eyes red with tears, lips sealed dry – had been a husk, a hollowed-out shell of what had once been a living, breathing person.
After the train journey, they had been herded together into a refugee camp near Purana Qila in Delhi, housed in massive tents. For days, Shyamprasad sat in a corner, making no attempt to get food for himself or for his son. Arjun had put this down to shock, hoping that he would come out of it. The little boy had wandered from tent to tent and kindly hands had sometimes fed him, and sometimes shooed him away. When the aid trucks came, he would stand and fight for dried chapattis and watery daal with the rest of the orphans. His father had stayed away from it all, curled up in a ball, staring into nothingness. Arjun would bring back some food, his father would refuse it for a while, mumbling incoherently to himself, but then hunger would finally get the better of him and he would gobble a bit down before pushing it away again.
Arjun had suggested going to Bombay, where his mother had wanted them to go. Her sisters were there and they were well-off enough not to begrudge two extra mouths. But his father would have none of it. He would not even write them a letter. He gave no reason for his decision, and fathers were not obliged to explain their actions to their children, no matter how devoid of reason they were. Many years later, he had tried to explain his actions, while looking vacantly out of the window of their house in Lajpat Nagar. ‘They took everything from me. My money, my house, my honour. Who could I show my face to? Not to anyone I had known before, definitely not to her sisters. For what is a man without his honour? An animal.’ Arjun knew what ‘taking honour’ meant by then and he understood why his father had done what he had, but it did not make him understand his decision any more. It was foolish, he told himself, to let pride win over prudence.
It was foolish to stay aloof as his father did.
There was a great deal of activity at the camp. Refugees were organizing themselves into militia, making speeches, knocking on doors. Grand plans were being made, of marching back to wherever they had come from to get back what was theirs. Some, the smart ones, scoured the city looking for places vacated by Muslims, so that they could set up shop. They did, in Connaught Place and in Karol Bagh and any place where people needed things to buy. Money was scarce but they borrowed and begged and sometimes they stole. They occupied plots of land and started building their little structures, hovels of bare brick and cement and asbestos roofs, and they heckled and hassled the babus to give them water and to build them roads.
And in all this, Shyamprasad Bhatia stayed away. Even when men sought him out for advice and for leadership, for he had been well known in Lahore, he had shooed them away with silence, and with waves of his hand. When he finally came out of his tent, it was because the government was clearing out the camp and they had to move. The rulers were kind to him, and a small plot of land, smaller in area than their rose garden back in Lahore, was allocated in the place then called Cheap Colony, which would over the years, come to be known as Lajpat Nagar. Even though Shyamprasad was now better than he had been at first, in that he ate by himself and would utter the occasional sentence, he never built like the rest. Here too the Bhatias were bailed out by helpful strangers who took time off from making their own houses to volunteer to help with theirs. Arjun did a lot of the work, carrying cement and bricks on his head, and learning how to lay them together and then how to install an asbestos roof. He had had a late growth spurt and at thirteen, he no longer looked small and weak. He had not had his fever and chills again, and as the years passed, he realized that what Dr Muhammed had once called a ‘weak constitution’, was something that he had, like his family, left behind in Lahore.
The gold and the money they had been able to bring had run out long ago. But while Arjun carried bricks and cement for others and did odd jobs for food, his father was content making daily rounds of government offices, especially the one that dealt with missing and displaced persons, filling up forms and re-filling them, looking for Ram and Laxman.
They grew apart over the years, father and son. Back in Lahore, Arjun had looked up to his father in the way that little boys do, without question. It wasn’t what he would call love because they were never close, for fathers were not supposed to be friendly. They were figures of authority, and children were trained to speak quietly in their presence, not go up to their rooms when they were in the house and never to sit in their chairs or touch their desks and tables. Now thrown together by fate, he saw the man behind the father. And what he saw was not what he had expected. And then one day Arjun finally lost his temper and did what he would have thought unimaginable once.
He argued with his father.
‘You have to get some work. You just have to, daddy. For my sake.’ Arjun referred to his father not as papa or babuji, but as ‘daddy’, because that is what their Anglo-Indian governess had taught them to say. It seemed to him now rather strange but he continued, from force of habit.
‘I need to find my sons.’
‘I am your son too. And I am here and I am alive.’ He had felt guilty being brutal with his father, but the truth had to be told.
‘They are alive too. You believe tha
t as well, you told me yourself.’
‘That was years ago. I said that then because you needed to hear it. I didn’t believe it then. And I believe it even less now, not after all the stories we have heard.’
‘You are giving up on them? Your own blood?’
‘It’s better to give up on fairy tales than on responsibilities.’
His father had looked at him with disappointment.
‘You have changed, Arjun.’
‘You should too. If you want us to live.’
The argument ended there but Shyamprasad finally found a job. Or rather he was handed one. One of the small retail merchants from Lahore, a man by the name of Satish Malhotra who once used to supply to the Bhatias, employed him out of pity. His job was to oversee Malhotra’s shop at Connaught Place while the latter opened another one closer home in Cheap Colony. So that’s what Shyamprasad did: he woke up every morning, went to Connaught Place, pulled up the shutters, swept the floor, managed the front, kept the accounts and rolled down the shutters late in the evening. Then he would come back home and once again step into silence. It hurt Arjun to see his father reduced to this, but it hurt him even more that it did not seem to bother his father as much. He seemed to be strangely content serving others, and whenever Arjun brought up the subject of opening a business themselves, like everyone else was doing, his father’s responses were predictable.
Where would he get the money from? These shops were all illegal and could be demolished any day. There were already too many shops.
Arjun realized soon enough that these were just excuses. His father did not want, like the other fathers there, to live. He wanted only to subsist.
As the days rolled along, and Arjun understood that his father would never be convinced to start afresh, they talked less and less, avoiding each other’s gaze when they were in the same room. Once, only once, had they truly fought, with voices and tempers raised. This was in 1961. Arjun had come back after a matinee show of Gunga Jumna. Someone had told his father that Arjun was hanging out with the ‘wrong crowd’. His father had shouted at him, and Arjun had acted the part of the contrite son for a while, but there was only so much he could take. Finally, he let it all out.
‘Who are you to tell me what’s wrong and what’s right? Who are you to tell me anything for that matter? And don’t give me that “I am your father” lecture. So you are. My father. But you are also a fool. A big arrogant fool. And I am sorry for being so blunt but there it is. You let daadi die, you let my brothers die, you let ma die, because you…you would not listen to her when she told you to leave Lahore. Idle washerwoman gossip. That’s what you said. Remember? The only person you listened to was Iqbal Malik – the one person you should not have listened to. You had your chance, daddy. You could have left with everyone, maybe even with our money. Then we could have had a life here, like the Singhanias and the Mehtas…but no, no…no…you had to close your eyes to everything going on around you. Even after that, even after killing everyone, what did you do? You would not let us go to Bombay because, God knows, it would hurt your pride. But it didn’t hurt your pride to see your son pushing bricks and cement for others or standing outside people’s houses, hoping they would have mercy and give him a chapatti. No. No. Why would this hurt your pride? I am just the son who should have died like the rest but didn’t.’ He stopped just to swallow back the spit. ‘Even if I could forget what happened in Lahore, what did you do after? You moaned and you groaned and then you spent your time trying to find the dead. And the world passed by. People who came with us and stayed in the same filth at Purana Qila now own shops. Not one. Not two. Five. They have two-storeyed pukka houses, and don’t even pretend you don’t know who I am talking about. It’s not that I don’t love you, daddy, it’s that I don’t respect you. It’s just that I don’t respect your opinions. Because I don’t respect fools. Fools are the most dangerous people in the world. They get others killed.’
Shyamprasad did not reply, and Arjun couldn’t remember him saying anything after that, till a year later, he clutched his chest and slid down to the floor, sweating and out of breath. As Arjun rushed towards him and took his head in his hands, Shyamprasad said, his eyes fixed on his son’s, ‘I need to go to the hospital. Get Yunus to bring out the Buick. Tell your mother not to worry, there is nothing wrong with me. Just a little flutter.’ As Arjun rose to call for help, Shyamprasad gripped his arm tightly with strength that far belied his wasted frame. ‘Don’t forget to take your tonic and your barley. You need to grow as strong as your brothers.’ Then the bony fingers loosened slightly and the eyes closed. Arjun sat with his father’s head on his lap for a long time, brushing the dirty white hair back from his forehead.
Lahore, he knew, was finally gone. Delhi was all that remained.
Stepping into Howrah Station, he felt like he was stepping back into time.
It was 1947 here.
All over again.
The Bangladesh war had happened a year ago. Pakistan had surrendered. Dhaka had been liberated. The government propaganda machine, that reached out to the population through newsreels compulsorily screened before every movie, had hailed it ‘new India’s triumph’. New Delhi had been delirious and the dailies had glowed orange, white and green with nationalistic prose. But down here at Howrah Station, closer to where the war had been fought, one could see the cost of the triumph – huddles of humanity, sleeping, defecating and reproducing on the platforms, with no place to go. In 1947, when the refugees had streamed over the eastern border, they had been swept to the side of railway tracks and roads. Yet more had come, spilling over into parks and open spaces, occupying them with plastic sheet and rope and little brick structures with tin roofs. Then 1971 happened and the final tidal wave of refugees had washed over the city, human flotsam from Dhaka and Rajshahi and Barisal, flowing into whatever cracks and crevices still remaining in this, the once-great metropolis of the east.
Calcutta always reminded Arjun Bhatia of his father post-1947, frozen in pain by the memories of a better past. Maybe that’s why he hated it so much.
Arjun’s thoughts were disturbed by a tug at the sleeve of his shirt. A boy, not more than ten, stood at his side, snot running down from his nose, his hair matted with dirt and mud and smoke. ‘Ten paise…’ The boy touched his fingers to his lips. ‘Ten paise…’ Behind him were two others, one boy and one girl, both the same age, in tattered clothes covered in days’ worth of dust, their palms extended. The girl had a bruise on her left brow. Arjun reached into his shirt pocket, brought out three shiny one-rupee coins, gave them in turn to the three children, and quickly trotted down the road, because he knew that once word spread, there would be more after him.
Safely away from the train station, his thoughts turned to recent events.
Bangali, Bangali…madarchod. Why did you have to do it?
It had been two weeks since he had put a bullet through his head. Two weeks he had felt this hollow inside.
Nothing good ever happens to those who are fools. Nothing.
He wanted to forget, to move on as he had wanted his father to have done, to tend to the living and forget the dead. Yet Bangali’s laugh still came back to him loud and thunderous, with that ‘salaaaaaa bokachodaaa’ rolling off the tongue with loving relish.
Arjun had made up his mind. He was out of the business. For good. He would not run guns again. The margins were not worth it any more. There was now but one thing left, which is what he had come to Calcutta to do.
Tell Bangali’s woman that her man was dead and then hand over to her Bangali’s share. He could then go back to Delhi, to his wife and his children, and move forward. The books would be balanced and closed and everything would be all right.
He was wrong.
Arjun got her name from a postcard that Bangali had not lived to send. Nayantara Banerjee.
Bangali had mentioned her a few times, but he had forgotten the name, only remembered it started with N. For if he had to remember every woman that B
angali bragged about bedding, he would have little room in his brain for anything else. Bangali had never been shy of talking about his romantic escapades, particularly to Arjun, for he knew it would make Arjun feel embarrassed. So he would get into progressively gratuitous details till Arjun would say ‘enough’ or his ears would turn red, at which Bangali would howl with joy.
‘You do not enjoy chudai, Arjun Bhatia-jeeee. You don’t even think about it. Your lund is your wallet. As long as that gets big, you are happy. Live a little. Thodi aish kar, gandu, aish kar.’
‘No thank you. You do enough aish for both of us.’ ‘Sahi hai. Main tere liye aish karoon, tu mere liye cash karein.’ He would then break into a vulgar parody of some song and then try to plant a kiss on Arjun’s cheeks and Arjun would push him away with a ‘chal haat, gandu’ and Bangali would thump his thighs and laugh even louder.
But this woman had apparently been special. This Nayantara Banerjee. For some reason Arjun had never figured out why Bangali had married her. It had been five years ago, when he had given Arjun the news.
‘Kutta se ab aadmi ban raha hoon. But no regrets. No regrets at all.’ Arjun had sniggered, for seeing Bangali in love was a bit too much for him to take. That, and his Bangla-accented Hindi.
‘So that means no more women?’
‘Don’t need any. I love her, I really do.’
Arjun had sniggered again.
‘You have no idea what love is, do you?’ asked Bangali in his faux-serious voice.
Of course Bangali had gone on with his philandering, though he would talk less openly about his adventures. One day, Bangali had brought a box of sweets and announced the birth of a son. This name Arjun remembered, because he had liked it.