Kamal threw the book back in the basket, and for some moments looked sadly at the dust which clung to his hands. He did not wipe them for some time. These things shall not go anywhere. Let them be taken over by the Government of India and sold to a kabariwallah, he said to himself.
He was about to leave the room when he caught sight of an old group photograph in a corner. He picked it up and shook off the dust—it was his uncle, heavily garlanded and seated in a row of serious-faced worthies. The picture had been taken when this deputy-collector uncle was being transferred from one district to another. District officials sat next to him in the row, stood at the back, and leaned sideways on their elbows on the carpet in front. Under a high-arched veranda in the background stood a number of liveried peons, very erect and solemn. He read the names printed on the grey mount. Mr. L. Saxena, Mr. S.A. Rizvi, Thakur Ram Narain, Masudul Hasan Naqvi.
He remembered some of them. What strange men they must have been—innocent, gentlemanly, civilized, completely unaware of fraud and racketeering. Silly people. They had their own peculiar, old-fashioned illusions, humour and interests. Poetry symposia, litigation, shikar, classical music. What peaceful, uncomplicated lives they led, what a peaceful uncomplicated society theirs had been! He looked at this group for a long time. How did we prove ourselves to be better than them? You poor old things! But I’m ashamed of myself in front of you. That is why I am running away, to hide myself in distant places. Goodbye. He dropped the photograph gently on the floor and emerged from the store-room.
The bird continued to cry in the trees, Main sota tha. Stupid bird, you didn’t lose anything, he muttered, locking the door after him.
1 Sally Begum was also known as Gori Bibi
72. Sudarshan Yakshini of the National Museum
“Hello Laj—I am at the police station,” Kamal airily informed his childhood friend, trying to sound jovial.
“Police station? Whatever for?” Laj was shocked. She had never had a Pakistani visitor before.
“To report my arrival, stupid. I had checked in at the Maiden’s. Let me collect my luggage from there. See, I was not very sure if I’d find you all at home.”
“Where would we go from here, Kim? You remember the address or shall I come over to fetch you?”
“Of course, I know the address!” He had rung off. When he returned to the hotel lobby, he ran into Laj’s cousins who also lived in the vicinity. It was again a cheerful long-time-no-see kind of encounter. They had come in with a group of Texan advisors wearing white shorts and chappals. This country like Pakistan seemed to be overflowing with American advisors. An expansive Sardarji drove him across to the old civil lines. The locality, like the hotel, was still very British although the Koi Hai’s had left a decade earlier. Kamal thought, well the Mughals faded out a century ago but their impact still lingers. Civilizations do not vanish overnight. At the Civil Lines police station the thanedar entered the details of his arrival in rapid Urdu scrawl. This surprised Kamal because everywhere else he had seen a preponderance of the official Hindi script.
The Civil Lines seemed tranquil as ever. A koel sang somewhere in the distance.
Some of the bungalows were inhabited by the sophisticated descendents of Munshi Jeevan Lai, a friend of Ghalib. After 1857 Munshi Jeevan Lai had taught Urdu to the Tommies stationed in Shah Jahan’s fallen citadel, the Red Fort.
Kamal noticed the old name-plates on the bungalows’ gates. He was coming from a country full of displaced people and he was one of them. Here were families living in their houses where they had always lived. He remembered how, as a school-boy prank, he and Hari had jumbled up name-plates on the gates of Dalanwall, Dehra Dun. Now he had exchanged his complete address and identity for a totally different one.
The cab drove up to the potted palms of a pleasant kothi on Bela Road. He found Laj standing on the veranda steps waiting for him. The moment she saw Kamal she rushed towards him and broke down. “Don’t go away, Kamman,” she said tearfully. “Nirmal is dead, Hari is always abroad. And now you have run off to Pakistan.”
They went in and sat down on a sofa. “Why are you crying?” he said slowly. “Don’t cry, please.”
His train was leaving for Amritsar in the evening. Laj had a mental block about Gautam—she didn’t have his phone number. He picked up the directory and went through the Jungle Book of Central Government numbers. He came across two familiar names, Zarina Hussain, AIR, External Broadcasts and Saulat Rehman, Ministry of Education. Then he located Gautam in the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.
Kamal dialled the number. “Hello! So you are here, you so-and-so . . .” he said, trying desperately to assume his old manner. “Yes? Yes. This morning from Dehra Dun . . . Came from Dacca. Stopped over at Lucknow. Tehmina sends you her love. She is fine, happily married to a kinsman who is in the IAS, a deputy commissioner somewhere in U.P., queening it over the district. Quite forgotten her revolutionary zeal.
“Everybody is fine except yours truly . . . Qadeer and Qamrun.
. . My god! You remember them! You remember everything! Everything, you said? Well, you do have an excellent memory! Qadeer went back to Mirzapur after the car was sold. Why was the car sold? Yaar, entire lives have been sold, mortgaged, auctioned off, thrown away, and you’re worried about an old motor car!
“You have not sold yourself, you say. No. No. I was talking about myself . . . I got a good price and market conditions were favourable.
“No, I am afraid I can’t meet you, no time. Very tight schedule. No. What is the bloody use of waiting for me in Alps? Right now I’m going to meet the Custodian . . . P Block. Okay, I’ll try to come, but don’t wait for more than fifteen minutes. I may not turn up at all, may be held up in that bloke’s office. Bye.”
He replaced the receiver. “Okay, Laj, I’m scooting.”
“What should I cook for the train journey, Kim?”
“The same that you always cook,” he replied curtly. Go on, try to trap me in this mushy “Rakhi sister” business of yours, it won’t soften my heart. My steps shan’t falter. I am strong. I’m a world-weary old man, I have attained Restraint and Balance and Peace . . .
In Connaught Circus he mistook a passing woman for Surekha and went up to her, quickly apologised and resumed loitering in the veranda. Standing in the midst of prosperous, happy, self-satisfied human beings, he felt apprehensive. He also remembered that before going to the railway station he had to report at the Civil Lines police station again and inform them that he was leaving India. Clearing out.
The scorching sun of the month of Bhadon beat down on him mercilessly. He wanted to rush back to Karachi and decided that he would never come to India again, even though his sister Talat and a lot of relatives lived here.
“What a pleasant surprise!” he exclaimed with forced bonhomie as Dr. Hans Krammer came out of a bookshop. A young, efficient-looking girl, apparently from the Information Division, accompanied him.
“I am taking the Professor to the National Museum, do come along,” the young woman (who was introduced to him as Kumari Aruna Bajpai by a gushing Dr. Krammer) said to Kamal. He closed his eyes for an instant. Nirmala would have been working somewhere like this if she were alive today.
“We travelled together on the voyage out to India from England,” the good Professor told Miss Bajpai.
They picked up two French intellectuals from the Imperial Hotel and were taken to Rashtrapati Bhawan by Kumari Bajpai in a station-wagon. Dr. Hans Krammer and his colleagues lived in that rarefied little world to which Kamal had belonged not so long ago. They, too, had a larger-than-life outlook and possessed perception in addition to cognition. They had all come to India to attend the Buddha Jayanti, and for the last few months Dr. Krammer had been living in a houseboat in Srinagar, writing a book on Gupta sculpture.
The former Viceregal Lodge had been renamed Rashtrapati Bhawan after Independence, and a portion of the presidential palace had been converted into a museum. “This is only a temporary ar
rangement, you know,” Kumari Aruna Bajpai said to Kamal apologetically. “A proper museum, under construction, will do justice to our glorious heritage.”
Kamal winced at the cliche. “Yes, of course,” he replied politely. Twelve months ago he had been talking to Tom in exactly the same strain, minus the platitudes, bursting with national pride.
Kamal did not think it necessary to tell her that he had belonged to this country, too.
The marble halls of the presidential palace were cool and immensely rest-giving after the blazing sunshine of the outside world. The statues of antiquity stared at Kamal blankly. The foreign visitors stopped at each glass case and exchanged their erudite views in undertones. In the Durbar Hall where the viceroys of India used to hold court with all the glory and splendour of the Mughals, the viceregal throne had been replaced with a colossal statue of the Buddha. A velvet cascade of maroon curtains fell in the background.
Kamal sat down on the steps of the throne. He bent his head and recalled another tranquil Buddha Hall he had visited as a youngster, when he and Hari had accompanied their sisters to Banaras . . . years ago . . . in 1941. The world was young then, because they were young and full of hope and joy. They were all sitting on the marble floor of the Buddha temple when Talat suddenly stood up and started dancing before the bronze image of the Enlightened One.
So what was enlightenment all about, anyway, Kamal reflected with amazement. Once again his thoughts were disturbed by Kumari Bajpai. “Come along, please,” she said, briskly shepherding her flock into another room. “Here is the Dancing Girl of Mohen-Jo-Daro, India’s earliest civilization . . . five thousand years old.”
It’s Pakistan’s earliest civilization, he wanted to correct her officially, but the situation was too funny for words.
They gazed spellbound at the tiny figurine. She looked like any Negroid woman of the Makran coast. In modern Karachi they worked as labourers, so at this moment I have solved the mystery of the world-famous Dancing Girl of Mohen-Jo-Daro. She was merely a Makrani labourer. He chuckled to himself.
They proceeded to the sections marked Chan-ho Daro, Swat Valley, Harappa, Taxila, Ruper.
They moved on to another section till they came upon a lighted glass case. It contained an archaic bas relief of a plump woman with arched eyebrows. “Excavated recently from the ruins of Shravasti,” the caption read, “circa 4th century B.C.”
The lady stood cross-legged. She had a puffy face, arched eyebrows and pointed chin. With one arm she had bent the bough of a kadamba tree over her elaborately coiffed head. She looked strong and earthy. She was bare-breasted and wore heavy ornaments.
“The ancients liked rotund women, and they didn’t wear saris,” Mons. Raoul commented with glee. Miss Bajpai blushed. Dr. Krammer began gravely: “Future theories of India, roop and aroop, form and formlessness, bhav and abhav, took root at this time. This piece,” he addressed the gathering, “is probably earlier than Bharhut and Mathura.”
“The problem facing the sculptors of that age must have been one of communicating pure thought through known symbols. This and the Bactrian-Greece Buddha-heads of Gandhara gave rise to idol worship.” Dr. Moreland spoke in a lecture-room voice.
With whom am I going to talk about my concepts of form and formlessness, roop and aroop, bhav and abhav? thought Kamal. All those theories have proved pointless. This statue has no message for me.
“In the Vedanta, pure aesthetic experience is indivisible like lightning. The beholder becomes one with the creator. What is your opinion?” Dr. Moreland asked Kamal.
“I have no opinion, sir,” he replied glancing at his wristwatch.
“This murti reveals the strength of the earth. It is life instead of beyond-life. A complete fusion of the sense of peace, balance, movement. A Terrible Beauty Is Born,” said Dr. Moreland.
“Wish we knew the name of the sculptor who created this girl under the kadamba tree. But in India history has no meaning. Events are not important. Reality, myth and tradition all get mixed up. Historical time does not exist. The moment is eternal, man remains nameless. His creations get lost in this ocean of eternity. No crisis affects the Indian mind because crisis is also part of time and time has no meaning,” Dr. Krammer intoned. “That is why the artists of the East hardly ever bothered to inscribe their names. You know the artists of Iran left one tiny leaf unfinished because for them only Allah was the Perfect Artist.” Kamal slipped out and entered the gallery.
“. . . the realisation that we are Time itself,” Mons. Roul was saying.
“You can feel the space, you only think about time,” Dr. Krammer’s voice chased Kamal as he hurried out of the gallery.
After seeing the Custodian in P block he didn’t go to Alps to meet Gautam Nilambar. He went directly to Laj’s house and said to her: “In case anybody rings up, please say I am not at home.” After which he bolted his room from the inside and went to sleep till it was time to go to the railway station.
Gautam waited for Kamal for nearly an hour in the restaurant and telephoned him at several places. When he gave up all hope of meeting his friend he returned to his office.
After a while he called his deputy, Kumari Aruna Bajpai, in connection with an important file. He was told that Dr. Bajpai had gone to the National Museum with Dr. Krammer.
“Damn . . .” he muttered crossly. He was vastly depressed since he had missed meeting Kamal.
Gautam was furious . . .
He was furious at this country, at himself, at Kamal, at every thing in the world. He would have eaten Dr. Krammer and Miss Bajpai and the rest alive, if it were possible.
This file was Top Secret and Most Immediate. He got into his car and drove to Rashtrapati Bhawan. Miss Bajpai and her party had already left. He wandered thoughtlessly in the hollow rooms of the museum.
A few pamphlets of the Information Division lay at the base of the statue of Sudarshan Yakshini, which his colleague had probably forgotten there. He picked them up. Then he looked at the statue vacantly. The girl from Shravasti gazed back stonily.
A fine example of archaic sculpture, he reflected. There should be an article about it by Dr. Mulk Raj Anand in Marg and one by Karl Khandalawala in The March of India, he thought as a publicity expert. After which he came out of the museum.
Kamal emerged from Laj’s house at sundown. “You have been roaming in the hot sun all day, a bit of fresh air will do you good,” Jeejaji said to him. They got into the car and drove all the way to the Ridge. New, flourishing localities of post-Partition Delhi glimmered on the horizon. The friends came downhill and proceeded to New Delhi where they drove around aimlessly. A concert by Ustad Bare Ghulam Ali Khan was in progress in Sapru House.
“Our Surekha is playing Heer in the Sheila Bhatia opera tonight,” Laj informed him enthusiastically.
“How nice,” said Kamal.
“And she is also going to play Vasantsena in The Clay Cart from next week. Begum Qudsia Zaidi’s production, directed by Habib Tanvir. But you are not staying even for a couple of days.”
“Must get back to my work in the lab, you know.” Kamal replied tonelessly.
The car slowed down in front of a new temple. Devotees lay prostrate all over the marble floors of the mandir. Kirtan was being sung on the harmonium. Throngs of complacent middle-class men and women squatted in the prayer hall. The idols represented the new Indian kitsch.
It was time to go.
He said goodbye to his host and hostess and got into the compartment. The train slowly came out of Old Delhi railway station. Jamuna Bridge. Citadel walls of the Red Fort. Bazaars, streets, level-crossings. Flat-roofed houses. Flowering trees. He kept looking out of the window. He was going away.
Jamia Nagar, Nizamuddin Aulia. Lodhi tombs. Everything will be left behind. Life shall continue. The falling off of one man does not make any difference. These were different people now, they had been travelling on a separate road. Kamal had nothing in common with them any more. He would have nothing to do with them. T
hey, too, wouldn’t miss him.
The reporters of the world’s press must be drinking hard, as usual, in the Press Club. Surekha Devi must be dancing on the stage of Begum Qudsia Zaidi’s Hindustani Theatre. Pandit Nehru was meeting a delegation of French Quakers at his residence.
Soft winds blew across Roshan Ara Bagh and Bela Road. Roses bloomed in the bungalows of the old Civil Lines and New Delhi.
The train came out into the country. Every journey is symbolic, Gautam had observed once when he used to (according to Talat) converse in the manner of Al-Mustafa of Kahlil Gibran. “The entire symbol of India is the journey. The habit of always travelling, always searching . . .” Spengler had said. Listlessly Kamal picked up S. Radhakrishnan’s paperback that Kumari Bajpai had bought from the railway bookstall and presented to him as a parting gift.
“In Indian philosophy, nobody decrees that you must not do this, or that you ought to do that . . . Here everyone is free to do what he likes.”
Oh, yeah . . . ?
He closed the book after turning a few pages and lay down on the berth.
East Punjab stations passed by. Their walls displayed garish Urdu posters advertising the latest films. The once colourful silk salwars of Sikh women were reflected on the newly washed platform of Jullundur. Hawkers sold hot tea and pakoras.
Morning. The train was approaching Amritsar. Groups of Sikh women were passing by on village paths. Sikh peasants had already reached their fields with their ploughs. Crowds of veiled Muslim women and old bearded Muslim men sat across the bars on the Amritsar platform, waiting patiently for their visas to be checked and cleared. A fat Sikh police officer was asking an old woman, “What is your name, ma-ji?”
“Amina,” she replied plaintively. “This is my daughter, Sakina. She is a Pakistani. I have come from Delhi to receive her. Her father is on his death-bed.”
River of Fire Page 45