by Amrit Chima
~ ~ ~
A voice caused Baba Singh to stir in the middle of the night.
“Will she be there?” the voice asked hopefully. “Can we come?”
Hot, Baba Singh kicked off his blanket and was again pulled through a dark tunnel back into sleep.
Minutes later—or so it felt—he suddenly woke in a sweat. Something was wrong. Dawn lit the room with a dull ginger glow. There was a sound. Someone calling out.
“Kiran?” he heard Desa from the hallway. “Avani?”
Khushwant woke suddenly, disoriented. “What is it?” he asked Baba Singh, flinging off his blanket.
Desa called out again. “Kiran? Avani?”
Baba Singh went to the door. “Desa, what’s wrong?”
Her eyes were big, alert with fright. “I don’t know where they are.”
Looking at her, he was also afraid. “They are probably somewhere close,” he said, trying to keep calm as Khushwant pushed past him. “They must be searching for her again.”
Desa held up Avani’s elephant as if to say, without this? Her eyes were red, like she had been crying, the delicate skin around them swollen. “I think Avani dropped it.”
“You didn’t hear anything?” Baba Singh asked.
“No. I was…” She hesitated and bit her lip. “I was tired and fell asleep. They are always awake, and I can never get them to close their eyes, to stop talking and walking around.”
“They cannot have gone far,” Khushwant said, pointing into Ranjit’s empty room. “They must be with him.”
Relief softened the jagged-edged worry on Desa’s face. “He didn’t tell me,” she said. “He should have woken me.”
Khushwant pulled a sweetmeat from his kurta and flicked it at his sister, smiling when it hit her directly on the nose.
Startled, she opened her mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. She gathered her loose hair and tied it back, bending to retrieve the candy before glaring at him and leaving to prepare breakfast.
“What was that for?” Baba Singh asked.
“She is too worried all the time,” Khushwant shrugged, returning to his charpoy. “It is much better if she is mad at me.”
In the washroom, Baba Singh splashed water on his face and scrubbed his armpits. He wanted to wash away his dream. That same ominous dream he could never remember. Drying his face, he went into the lobby to wait for Ranjit. He chose his mother’s reed chair, sitting in the silence of that empty room without moving, trying to feel her. He could not say how long he sat there. He was so drowsy. Perhaps he slept.
“Baba?”
Baba Singh started when he heard Ranjit’s voice. His brother was kneeling in front of him.
“Baba, you were daydreaming.”
Rubbing his eyes, Baba Singh took a deep breath, trying to orient himself. “Just a bad dream,” he mumbled.
“You need to sleep. Come.”
“Did you put Kiran and Avani to bed? Are they finally sleeping?”
Ranjit frowned. “No.”
“They must be tired.”
Desa came rushing down the hallway from where she had just delivered a plate of food to Lal. “Baba,” she called out. “Bapu is not in his room either.” She froze when she saw Ranjit. “Where are Kiran and Avani?”
“They aren’t with you?”
“We thought they were with you.”
Ranjit motioned for them to stay calm. “Then they have to be with Bapu.”
“But Bapu is in no condition to—”
“Perhaps he is finally feeling better.
“Where were you?” Baba Singh asked his brother.
“No place,” he said. “I could not sleep.”
Baba Singh was uneasy. He could almost remember something important, but the details were hazy.
“Go,” Ranjit told him. “You should not sit in here like this, afraid for nothing, staring into space.” He smiled so warmly and with such calm that Baba Singh began to relax. “Go,” he said again, “you have already missed too much work at the doctor’s.”
Amarpur was already beginning to warm in the late morning sun, and people were moving about. Baba Singh, however, did not go to work. Instead he paced the town, peeking into shops along Suraj Road to search for his father and sisters. At midday, he heard the train pull into Amarpur with a violent discharge of steam, like a beast exhaling. Peering down the road toward the station, he saw Dr. Bansal and Yashbir walking toward him, the doctor waving. He felt a sudden pang of guilt at missing so much work, and also at the thought of last week’s package, still on his bedside table.
“We were on our way to see you, Baba,” the doctor said. “I have been worried.”
“Thank you,” Baba Singh mumbled.
“We have just seen your father,” Yashbir said, laying a sympathetic hand on the boy’s shoulder and pointing to the train station platform behind them. “Nalin was delivering his package and found him up there with your sisters.”
“My sisters?” Baba Singh asked, relieved that Ranjit had been right.
Dr. Bansal nodded. “Yes, they are there. But, Baba, your father is not well, and the girls would not come with us. We were hoping they would listen to you or Desa or Ranjit.”
The train’s whistle pierced the air, and the train began to move slowly along the platform. The click clack along the tracks quickened, and they could smell black coal smoke.
Behind them, at the end of the road, a man stumbled down the station’s platform staircase. “Bapu?” Baba Singh called, sprinting past the doctor and Yashbir who quickly followed. Lal was a disheveled and forlorn mess of hair and wilted limbs. “Bapu, where are Kiran and Avani?”
“They had more courage than I,” Lal replied. “The conductor told me to go home. Get on or go home.”
“We just saw them,” the doctor said. “They were up there.”
“Get on or go home,” Lal said again. “They made their choice. Brave girls. They are brave girls.”
Lal stumbled and Yashbir caught him by the shoulder, twisted him around. “Ji, did you send them away?”
“No,” Dr. Bansal said. “Not possible. The station master would never allow it.”
“Unless he did not see,” Yashbir replied. He looked at Lal. “Tell us what happened?”
Baba Singh stared in sudden horror at the departing train receding in the distance. “What did you do?” he asked, his voice rising.
“I do not have to explain myself,” Lal said, shrugging Yashbir off and standing unsteadily.
“Ji,” Yashbir said firmly. “Where are they?”
Lal began to sob. He sank to his knees. “They are gone. I kept thinking that I should go away, too, that it was too much to look at you all every day, that it was too much to think of it all the time. But when the train finally stopped I could not get up. I just watched it. Where would I go? What would I do?” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, squinting beseechingly upward.
Baba Singh gaped at the train, now a dot on the horizon, a pencil prick. He launched up the stairs three at a time, crying out, running, waving his arms in vain.
~ ~ ~
Yashbir tore away toward the telegraph office, Baba Singh close behind, shouting for help. The blacksmith burst through the door, startling the operator. “We need to send an urgent message,” he said, “to the Amritsar train station.”
Two young girls. Stop, the old man dictated. Unattended, coming from Amarpur. Stop. Please hold them. Stop. We are coming. Stop.
Minutes later the operator read the grim return message: The train station serves thousands of passengers in one day. Stop. We will try, but there is very little possibility of locating them. Stop.
“Get your brothers and sister,” the blacksmith told Baba Singh, tossing aside the message and shoving the boy outside. “Bring them here. Quickly.”
Wasting no time, Yashbir had a tonga waiting for them outside the telegraph office when Baba Singh returned with the others. “Up, up,” he said, already prodding the horse forward as t
hey scrambled to get on.
They crossed the train tracks and Baba Singh saw his father, still weeping, leaning heavily on Dr. Bansal, who escorted him toward the hotel.
“I knew,” Desa said. “As soon as I found the elephant.”
Khushwant held her hand.
“They will search for her,” she mumbled. “They will search for Bebe everywhere.”
Ranjit had a haunted look about him and did not speak.
The afternoon was hot as they plodded through the open plains toward Amritsar. They moved too slowly. The light was already changing, their shadows moving position. Baba Singh slumped. His eyes were open, but he could not focus on his surroundings. He pictured his father stepping up to the train station platform, Kiran and Avani following closely. The hanging oil lamps were lit, dimly illuminating the uneven wooden planks in the darkness before dawn. The girls began their search, peeking behind benches, laying their little bodies down, their heads hanging over the platform to check the dark tracks where Harpreet might be hiding. They called out, “Bebeji?” There was no answer. Avani began to cry, terrified without her elephant, begging for it as Kiran dragged her to join Lal so they could wait for their mother. They waited until the sky grew less dim and the train station master came and he tipped his hat and went into his small office. And then they waited more. Avani fell asleep. She slept until the train came. Kiran pulled at her and they jumped down off the bench. They glanced at Lal, who drooled and wept and covered his face, and then they went to search without him. They boarded the train, and Kiran asked the passengers questions, pulling Avani through the cramped cars, bodies pressed against each other, fighting dog-like for space. The whistle blew a shrill blast and the train began to move.
Baba Singh jerked out of his daze.
“It’s okay, Baba,” Khushwant whispered to him. “We will find them.”
The city was dark when they arrived at Amritsar’s train station. It smelled of auto fumes and greasy, fried foods. Baba Singh looked into the crowd with a sick feeling, at the moving rickshaw and car traffic outside the main building. He had never been to the city before, and though he had imagined it larger and more bustling than Amarpur, he was not prepared for the enormity.
“Stay close,” Yashbir said.
The movement and flow of people inside the station was a gargantuan swell. Coolies in white dhotis followed the well-dressed wealthy with suitcases atop their heads. A million conversations in the chattering crowd melted into one colossal roar of activity. Families wailed and bid farewell as one of their own handed paper tickets to a conductor, who validated boarding passes with practiced efficiency. Train windows were flung open and a thousand hands waved desperately to their families.
“Excuse me!” Yashbir shouted, waving down an official. “Excuse me!”
“Yes,” the man replied, his eyes wide with impatience.
“We are looking for the train from Amarpur.”
“From where?”
“From Amarpur, ji.”
The man frowned and began to flip through some papers. “Amarpur,” he muttered. He paused, then looked up. “Already gone to Calcutta.”
“Did you see two little girls?” Desa asked, indicating how tall they were. “One of them four, the other seven.”
“I have not,” the official said, then pointed off to the left. “For lost luggage and persons, the superintendent’s office is that way.”
But the superintendent had not seen them either and suggested they buy tickets to Calcutta.
“But what if they got off?” Ranjit asked, frustrated.
The man gave him a blank look. “I do not know what you want me to do.”
“Help us,” Desa said, reaching out to the man. “Please.”
“The ticket booth is there,” he replied, ushering them out and shutting the door to his office.
They weakly looked around.
“I will go,” Ranjit finally said. “If they are in Calcutta, I will find them.”
Yashbir shook his head. “You cannot go alone.”
“One of us has to,” Ranjit replied, already stepping away from them and into the crowd toward the ticket booth. “Stay here. Look everywhere.”
“Wait!” Desa shouted, thrusting Avani’s elephant at him. “Take it.”
Ranjit took the wooden toy. “I will find them,” he said and disappeared.
The rest of them stayed in Amritsar until morning, until Yashbir told them they had to go back. They had no leads that could take them from the station into the city.
Desa refused. “They would not have given up,” she cried. But when she stepped outside into the madness of morning traffic, she relented with dismay. Everywhere was simply too vast. She bent her head, and Yashbir led them home.
At the hotel, opium smoke lingered in the air. Lal was in his room.
Lying on his charpoy, Baba Singh was unable to sleep. Across from him, Khushwant was in a similar state, staring blankly and unblinkingly at the ceiling. Without a word, he turned on his side to face the wall.
Dr. Bansal’s undelivered brown-paper-wrapped package still rested on the bedside table. Baba Singh picked it up and turned it over, touching the Calcutta address. He pulled on the strings and unwrapped the brown paper to reveal a greasy box crammed tightly with ladoos. Inside there was a note that read: Mother, please forgive me. Your son, Nalin
A Coconut & a Sword
1911–1914
Family Tree
There were coconuts, and there were swords to slice them open. That is what Dr. Bansal had said about Calcutta. “They thrive in the city. Coconut wallahs sell them from their street carts. ‘Fresh coconut, refreshing, fresh, fresh drink!’ they shout while lopping off the tops with machetes. Right there in front of you.”
The doctor palmed the hard, green coconut that rested in the center of the counter. He lifted it and affectionately began to pet it, like trying to mold its crown into a cone. “A man visiting from Amritsar was here recently and gave it to me. Have you ever tasted one, Baba?”
Baba Singh mutely shook his head.
“Climate here is not good for it. Too far north. But better to ask. Better never to discount the possibility.”
Baba Singh regarded the coconut dispassionately.
“Would you like to try a piece?” Dr. Bansal asked, then abruptly put up his hand without waiting for an answer. “No, you do not have to speak. Of course you do. All children are curious about the undiscovered. It is what makes them healthy. Stronger than adults, I say.” He tossed the coconut gently in the air and caught it with both hands, nearly dropping it. Still, he looked satisfied, blinking and smiling. “Let’s open it up.”
He stepped outside for a moment, propping ajar the door. Banging the coconut against a large rock outside, he grunted with the effort. There was a crunching sound, like stepping on loose gravel, and he returned in a hurry. “Oop, oop, oop!” he said as coconut juice dribbled down his hand to his wrist. Rushing the coconut over to a small bowl, he poured out a whitish liquid. “Machetes are much more efficient. Almost lost all the water.”
The doctor split the coconut, now leeched of its juice, open into two halves and sat in his chair. He paused to push a platter of ladoos toward his silent young friend, like offering a balm intended to aid healing, then began to scrape out the innards of the coconut with a small knife. “Did you know that coconut is the most complete food?” he said. “It is life and survival. Meat, milk, water, and oil.”
Baba Singh wordlessly watched him, absently taking one of the ladoos and pressing it between his thumb and forefinger until it crumbled into a pile of bits on his plate. They had received a telegram several days after Ranjit went to Calcutta. He told them not to wait at every train, that he would let them know when he was coming. After Calcutta he had gone to Hyderabad. Then Bombay. Then Jodhpur. Udaipur. Jaipur. They did not know how he lived, how he managed to pay for food, train tickets, or his telegrams. Perhaps he would search forever. Maybe he would never come back.
<
br /> The doctor laid his knife on the counter with a clink and offered up a jelly sliver of coconut meat. “Try a piece,” he said, shoving it at Baba Singh, who feebly waved it away.
“Take it,” Dr. Bansal said. “It is life. Survival and all that. It will help.”
When Baba Singh did not reach for the piece, the doctor set it on the plate next to the ladoo crumbs. He seemed to want to say something more, but hesitated. He glanced awkwardly at the burlap sack resting on the lower shelf by the entrance. “Baba,” he said finally, “the train station master came by to see me.”
More alert now, Baba Singh’s eyes flitted guiltily to the sack. Preferring to keep the bag with him, he usually left it there when he came in; with all the rubbish in the doctor’s office, he had assumed it would be overlooked. It contained a number of brown-paper-wrapped packages, all for Dr. Bansal’s mother in Calcutta. He had been hiding them away, including the one he had opened and meticulously repackaged so many weeks ago. One for every week his sisters had been missing. After returning to work he had begun to collect them for luck, amassing apologies until Kiran and Avani came home. He had become convinced that sending the bulk of them together would mean more, that in greater number they would have more of an impact. A mother would not be able to ignore them like that. She would have to forgive her son.
Dr. Bansal pretended that he had not noticed the sack and continued scraping. “He was worried. I do not think he knows how to ask you directly. It is never easy to ask about loss.”
Miserable, Baba Singh lowered his eyes.
“You should absolutely not blame yourself,” the doctor went on. “For any of it. I know you think you could have stopped it, that you should have watched Kiran and Avani more carefully, especially after losing your mother. You think it is what she would have expected. Maybe you think that you should never be forgiven. But you should be. You certainly should be. Most importantly, you should forgive yourself.”
He paused.
Baba Singh looked at him, then tentatively reached forward and took a piece of coconut. He put it on his tongue and closed his eyes, tasting the dull sugary-ness of it before swallowing it whole.