River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  Pakistani Sakina stood on the other side where Pakistani passengers had to wait. She was looking at the police officer with frightened eyes, separated from her Indian mother by the iron bars. “Her papers are all right, beta?” Her mother asked the police officer hopefully . . .

  A Pakistani officer of the Border Police climbed into Kamal’s bogey.

  The Express moved. The soldiers of both countries boarded the rear compartment. This was the usual Indo-Pak armed guard which travelled back and forth with the trains.

  Kamal had been mustering his courage all these days to remain intact. He broke down finally when the train crossed the border and he saw, for the last time, the grinning, jovial face of a Sikh soldier who stood alert with his gun under a telegraph pole.

  Suddenly, the other country began. The gun-toting Sikh soldiers were left behind.

  I am in Pakistan. I have come from India. Refugee. Muhajir. Displaced Muslim from Uttar Pradesh . . . how terrifying. . . . Refugee . . . displaced . . . homeless . . .

  Abdul Mansur Kamaluddin wept.

  After a few moments he realised that his fellow passenger, the Pakistan Border Police officer who was returning to Lahore from Amritsar, was looking at him intently.

  Kamal was crestfallen. He felt as though the police officer was saying : “You still stand at the cross-roads of conflicting loyalties, don’t you?”

  The eyes of the whole world were glued on him. You are an Indian Muslim . . . Indian spy . . .

  The train’s wheels seemed to be repeating the same refrain—traitor . . . spy . . . traitor . . . spy . . . traitor . . . spy . . .

  He opened his eyes, trembling. The train was slowly entering the barred portion of Lahore railway station. His heart beat faster.

  In the evening he boarded the P.I.A. plane from Lahore’s Walton Airport and began flying towards Karachi.

  Now his new life lay before him. He took out his morocco-bound notebook. What a lot of things he had to do when he got back to the Federal Capital. First thing, Uncle Nazir had to be asked to dine with him at the Gymkhana Club. This influential relative could help him purchase cement, etc. in the black market. He was going to build his house in a posh locality of Karachi. Cousin Munne has married the daughter of the Minister of Industries, must remember to invite them, too. Tell me, where can I go from here? he asked himself. How can I avoid becoming a part of the system?

  A beautiful Pathan air hostess brought him coffee. She was impeccable in a green uniform designed by Pierre Cardin. He gave her an appreciative once-over. For a moment he felt good and self-assured. For a brand new people we are not doing badly at all, thank you. He tried to shun his very negative thoughts and picked up The Dawn. Soon he was engrossed in the political news of his country . . . Crisis in the Cabinet. The Prime Minister resigns. The new Prime Minister addresses the nation in Jehangir Park . . .

  After a while he looked out of the window. The sky was overcast. Soon it would start raining. The clouds need no passport. He drew the window’s green curtain, stretched his legs and leaned back in his seat.

  73. The Highway to Shravasti

  They had crossed the Gulwa Ghat bridge over the Sarju and entered Behraich. The government jeep shot forward, emitting a black cloud of exhaust fumes. A sturdy lad was driving his bullock-cart on the main road and shouted at the chauffeur of the station-wagon which overtook the jeep. “Hey, Mister! Can’t you be more careful? You have upset my bullocks.”

  The American journalist photographed the gesticulating boy who did not seem to be at all in awe of the big saheb-log.

  “India’s new democracy!” the American said to Lady Nilima Banerjee, the Supreme Culture Vulture who had accompanied the VIPs on the Buddha’s trail. Why does she still stick to her British title, he wondered.

  Lady Banerjee was talking to a Japanese professor of Indology. The lorry behind them carried ordinary pilgrims—Buddhist men and women from the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Cox’s Bazaar, East Pakistan. They were going straight to Sahat Mahat, the present-day name for the ruins of Shravasti. The dusty yellow bus was followed by limousines carrying more Buddha Jayanti delegates.

  “I would like to get off here and walk home,” Gautam said to Miss Bajpai. “There is a short-cut through the fields.” During the three-hour drive from Lucknow and the crossing of the Ghagra by steamer, he had been listening to Dr Krammer’s discourse on Zen. He wanted a little respite. “See you early tomorrow morning, sir, at the Circuit House. And then we leave for Shravasti. Excuse me, Mons. Raoul.”

  The Sikh driver stopped the car, Gautam got out and stretched his legs. The vehicles disappeared behind a clump of blazing gulmohurs. He looked around and inhaled the fresh country air. Flame-of-the-forest was in flower, wild frangipani was laden with red blossoms. The entire woodland seemed to be on fire. Dark clouds rumbled in the sky and a drop of rain fell on his nose. He turned towards a forest path and walked on. As a youngster he often used to paint these wild flowers. He remembered how he had once made a water-colour of the young Prince Siddhartha standing under a mango tree looking mournfully at a dead bird shot down by a hunter’s arrow. Gautam had insisted that he be sent to Santiniketan. How long ago it all seemed today. How did that young dreamer turn into a hard-headed diplomat? He walked on. It started raining and he took shelter under a huge banyan. The moist easterly breeze hit his face. The trees had turned into an orchestra of wind instruments. They are playing ragas Malhar, Des and Gaur Sarang, he mused.

  As suddenly as it had started, the downpour stopped. He heard the faint roar of a tiger. Oh, my god! He looked back at the mud track and realised that he had lost his way and wandered into a dense forest. His fine Italian shoes were covered with slush. Kadamba flowers glittered like little red lamps, a lone peacock danced under a laburnum. Cranes stood about gloomily by a lake, soaked in rain. Beyond the woodland, Gautam recalled, lay the vast complex of the shrine of Salar Masud Ghazi, the culture hero of the region. That must be many miles away, too. Leaping across puddles and rippling brooks he found his way back to the main road. His expensive trousers were splashed with mud.

  He sat down on a milestone, waiting for a passing lorry. I could be eaten alive by a tiger and that, he thought sorrowfully, would be a grotesque end to a distinguished career. He tried to think of something pleasant and recollected his boyhood days when his father would take him to the hunting lodges of the rajas of Nanpara and Pyagpur, the biggest feudal lords of this district.

  The tiger roared again. Just then a tractor appeared at the far end of the road. It was heading for the city—he ran up and shouted for a lift.

  The tractor was overloaded with a wedding party which welcomed him heartily and made him sit next to the bridegroom. Gautam chatted with them in dialect, feeling gloriously at home and happy. The baratis dropped him right at the gate of Nilambar Bhavan, Civil Lines, Behraich.

  His father was away in Lucknow. Lady Nilambar stood on the front lawn, talking to the gardener. She was not in the least surprised to see her son and heir arriving in a tractor full of singing peasants—he had always done such crazy things.

  “Look at you! Have you been wallowing in mud?” she chided him. “Did you wade through the rivers on the way?”

  He grinned sheepishly and touched her feet.

  “Oh, Mummy, my suitcase has gone in the car to the Circuit House.” He rushed upstairs to his room and fished out some old clothes from his wardrobe. “How is Aunt Damyanti?” he shouted through the half-closed door of the bathroom.

  “Fine,” his mother replied from the veranda. “Are you all right, beta? Happy?”

  “Yes, Mummy.” The soap got into his nostrils. “When is Pushpa getting married?” he yelled again.

  “Next Sahalak1 . . .” came the answer.

  “Has Uncle Prakash built his house?”

  “No. Do you remember Khan Bahadur Mohammad Hussain, the retired judge? He went away to Pakistan. His bungalow was being auctioned, so Prakash bought it. For a song.”

  The wo
rd Pakistan reminded him, he would have to explain the Kashmir case next morning to the western visitors.

  “I’ll have a little snooze,” he said to his mother after lunch and went back to his room. She had lovingly preserved his boyhood things in his dressing-room—roller skates, paint brushes and sketchbooks. Sheets of graded music, stacks of Boy’s Own and Film Fun were lying heaped in a corner. Whenever he came home he looked at these things with nostalgia.

  He lay down on his bed but remained wide awake. After a few minutes he got up again and went into the treasure trove of his dressing-room. He picked up an old copy of Film Fun, sat down near the window and looked at a cartoon captioned: Doing the Lambeth Walk—

  The wind had dropped and the room was stuffy. There was no electricity. Gautam felt suffocated. The magazine fell from his hand. All of a sudden he was seized with the fear of Being. He stood up and went across to his mother’s room.

  “Mummy, I’m going out for a drive,” he said, slightly shaken.

  She regarded him with concern. Something was troubling him. What was it?

  “You’ve just come all the way from Lucknow by car, shouldn’t you take a little rest?”

  “I’ll go up to the highway to Shravasti and see if it is motorable. All these VIPs, you see—I’ll be right back.”

  He took the Plymouth he had brought from America for his father from the garage. He drove fast on the road to Gonda, and remembered the tiger’s roar as he passed the heavily wooded regions and caught a glimpse of the river Sarju sparkling through the mahua trees. He was twenty-five miles out of Behraich town. Little stupas erupted on the landscape. An intensely hot sun emerged from behind the clouds, and the air was warm and humid. He spotted the yellow lorry of the East Pakistani pilgrims in the shadow of a brown stupa. Little men and women were busy picking up dry wood-apples as holy objects. The Enlightened One had walked on this ground.

  He drove on and came to the bend of the road. Shravasti was not far now. He parked his car under a tree and strode down towards the river which encircled Behraich district. He reached the grassy bank and looked around for some place to sit, then noticed a mound of stones on a riverside knoll. It looked like a shrine. A deer darted out of the shrubs. No leopards, hopefully, he thought and approached the grotto. It was probably dedicated to some totem or goddess of the adivasi Bher tribes who had given this district their name. Out of curiosity Gautam climbed up the stair-like stones and peered in. The walls were covered with the soot of oil lamps that had burned through the centuries. He could not see the face of the goddess, perhaps it was an uncut stone pasted with red sindhur. In the Beginning there was no image, just the idea. Perhaps aboriginal shrines like this inspired the idol worship of the early Aryan settlers. He leaned against the stone wall. All was very quiet. He wanted to be perfectly devoid of all thinking. For the first time in his life, it occurred to him—if only Nirvana were possible. Fear, the sense of being alone, grief, defeat, despair, hatred, anger, the wish to escape, the concept of space and relativity—Nirvana, which is beyond life, death, sleep and wakefulness, love, compassion, dispassion, and yet is the ultimate reality . . .

  He heard a footfall.

  “Who are you up there . . . ?” a voice from below asked.

  “I . . .” for an instant he was unsure of his identity: who the hell am I?

  The other young man climbed into the rough stone enclosure.

  “Hi—” Hari Shankar shook his hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world for them to meet in a rainforest in the middle of nowhere on a humid evening.

  “How . . . ?” Gautam asked briefly.

  “Laj trunk-called. I rushed to Delhi, but Kamal had already left. Phoned your office, they said you were out on this junket. Came to Lucknow to see my parents. Thought I may as well look you up, too.”

  “That was nice of you.” Perhaps Hari had forgiven him for Nirmala. This was the first time they were meeting, and in the unlikeliest of places, after that dismal morning in December 1954 when he had been seen off at Heathrow airport.

  Hari Shankar sat down on a brick and regained his breath. “It has been a helluva wild goose chase. First went to Behraich Circuit House where one Miss Bajpai said, go to Nilambar Bhavan. Lady Nilambar said he has gone towards Shravasti to inspect the road. He has joined the PWD.

  “So I took this route, saw your automobile on the roadside. This is dangerous tiger country, yaar, let’s get the hell out of here. Quick.” But he kept sitting.

  The wood burst into birdsong. “They’re coming home to roost,” Hari observed rather pointlessly.

  “Yeah.”

  They looked down at the flowing stream. “I am told the Sarju is a crystal clear river. You throw a coin in it and see it shining at the bottom.”

  “Yeah.”

  Hari took out his wallet. A coin slipped into his hand. He grinned. It was a silver dollar. He threw it in the water. It lay gleaming on the grey sand of the river-bed.

  “Amazing!” he exclaimed.

  Both fell silent again, too depressed and world-weary to speak. The sun was going down, the river turned amber in the twilight. After a while Hari said, “Yaar, Gautam . . .”

  “Bolo.”

  “Kamal has deserted us. Betrayed his friends, gone away for good and let us down. Together, we could have challenged the galaxies.”

  “We have all betrayed one another,” Gautam replied quietly. Can these western visitors to Shravasti understand the pain in our souls? In India’s, in Kamal’s, in mine?

  They watched the river ripple past. Words were temporary and transitory. Languages fade away or are forced into oblivion by new tongues. Men also come and go, even the river and the jungle are not eternal. After fifty years a jungle of concrete may spring up here. The river may dry up or shrink or change course, just as human beings disappear or change the direction of their journeys.

  Ghazalen, tum to waqif ho, kaho Majnun ke marney ki,

  Diwana mar gaya, aakhir ko, veeranay pe kya guzri2

  Hari recited softly. The dirge mingled with the rustling of kadamba leaves.

  “You are being over-sentimental. Kamal is no Siraj-ud-Daulah, he’s very much alive and at this very moment must be dancing with some lovely begum in the Karachi Gymkhana,” Gautam remarked cynically.

  “You don’t understand him, really. I have known him since my childhood,” Hari retorted, exactly in the manner of his sister Nirmala, who had rebuffed Gautam all those years ago in the Koh-i-Noor restaurant in Cambridge—“You don’t know Champa Baji, really, we have known her since our childhood—” He was felled by a sudden wave of agony. He grasped the crag near him, assailed by the feeling that he was alone in the cosmos, alone against the galaxies. In the enveloping black void he heard Hari Shankar’s melancholy voice: “Kamal was over-sensitive, an incorrigible, fanatical idealist. He was let down by a relentless world. Something within him has died, otherwise he would not have avoided meeting you and me so scrupulously. It is his new incarnation in the other country, dancing in the Karachi Gymkhana. At this moment.”

  “You make it all sound quite eerie,” Gautam came back and answered, trying hard to sound casual. A peacock fluttered its wings and flew up to the sprawling jack-fruit tree in order to settle down for the night. Hari looked at his watch. “Let’s go. By the way, Kumari Aruna is hosting a dinner tonight at the Behraich District Club, and has especially invited us eminently eligible, though slightly jaded, bachelors.”

  “Caste no bar?” Gautam asked lightly.

  “We have been abroad far too long, yaar. Indian society has changed,” Hari Shankar replied and clambered down. “This cave is so spooky, even the adivasis have deserted it.”

  Gautam followed him out. They began to walk towards the highway where they had parked their ears.

  A petite female figure in white appeared at a short distance. Hari stopped dead in his tracks. He had turned quite pale. He rushed forward but returned at once. “That . . . that woman over there . . .” he stamme
red, “didn’t she resemble Nirmala . . . ? Same face. Same gait and height. For one wild moment I thought my kid sister had come back. How foolish of me.”

  The woman walked briskly ahead on her clodhoppers.

  Moments later Hari said, “I attended an Indo-Pak Conference in Lahore last year, after which they took us to Taxila.”

  “Oh, you have been to Taxila!” Gautam exclaimed. “I want to see Taxila very much.”

  “Over there, in the museum, I came across this Gandhara frieze depicting the Mirade at Shravasti,” Hari continued. “You know, Lord Buddha performed a miracle to convince the haughty Brahmins of his Buddhahood . . .

  “Well!” he laughed bitterly, “there are no blessed miracles in Shravasti today. For a second I thought my sister had come back, but how can she? Poor Nirmal is dead and gone forever.”

  Gautam kept quiet, stoically. He could hear his heart beat. His legs trembled—just a little.

  More women in white materialised carrying bamboo sticks and lanterns. It was like a procession of will-o’-the-wisps. They were on their way to the stupas. A band of ochre-robed bhikshus from Cox’s Bazaar followed the women.

  “Pilgrims from East Bengal,” Gautam commented in a toneless voice, “on their way to the site of Jetvan Vihara.”

  The yatris’ wooden sandals produced an awesome, rhythmic sound on the cobbled path. Slowly the clip-clop, clip-clop receded in the depth of the primeval jungle.

  The silence became absolute.

  1 Season of weddings.

  2 Gazelles of the desert! You know how Majnun died. Tell me, what happened to the wilderness after the Crazy Lover was gone?

  Copyright © 1998 by Qurratulain Hyder

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