A Place Within

by M G Vassanji

Upon receiving news of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in protest handed in his knighthood to the British government. And after Operation Blue Star, the celebrated writer Khushwant Singh, hardly a separatist, handed in his Indian decoration, the Padma Bhushan.

  In the middle of the night, in our room at the university guest house, the air-conditioning—the surest way to keep mosquitoes at bay—goes off; in the morning our three-year-old is covered in red spots. Fortunately he will not catch malaria; the recommended quinine tablets, which have been administered hidden deep inside laddoos, must have done their work.

  And at breakfast, who should come and greet us but Professor Balwinder Singh. We had just about given up hope. He is of medium height and reserved manner, wears a red turban. He has been in communication with Nurjehan’s father, having met him once in Vancouver, and knows exactly where the family lived. And so off we go to Loha Mandi, in the walled city.

  Parking the car near the Golden Temple, we walk into the warren of streets of the old city and finally arrive at a street devoted to copper and silverware. At one such store, which has a wide entrance, an elderly man acknowledges our guide. Tall and close shaved, a mild smile on his face and reserved in his nature, he is introduced to us as Mr. Chaddha. This is not an everyday event for him; we are reminders of the past, we are memory emerged from the sidewalk. Ghosts. Yes, he says, and points, that one is the old shop. We turn to look across the narrow street at a dilapidated two-storey structure, padlocked. The building next to it, the Sindhi Club, has been demolished.

  The story is that the reluctant family had been convinced to leave after a day during which the rioters had prowled around; the family asked Mr. Chaddha’s father to lock them inside their shop and keep the keys, so that when the thugs came around he could tell them, “They are gone, the Muslims.” It was April 1947; Amritsar was under curfew, the British were nominally in charge, trying to control the violence. The family finally decided to leave on one of the crowded trains departing for Bombay, with a bag in the older boy’s hand and perhaps a few smaller belongings. There were the two parents, the three sons, and three daughters. On the way, someone took the bag from the boy. It was never seen again. The family arrived in Bombay with almost nothing.

  We are shown the Chaddhas’ home, see the courtyard, the upper floor with a balcony overlooking the courtyard, the stone carvings decorating the walls…surely the abandoned home across the street would have been similar. We climb up to the roof terrace, observe the street. There is some nervousness about taking photos from here; some of the properties must still be under dispute, I understand later. It is hard not to imagine the happy life of a child in such a neighbourhood. My father-in-law has some sweet and delightful tales about his boyhood here.

  Back in the shop Mr. Chaddha, now warmed to us, tells Nurjehan, Why don’t you call my sister Madhu? She was a friend of your aunt Sheru. A phone call is made from the shop. Past the greeting and How are you, I am so-and-so’s daughter, the conversation gets emotional, Nurjehan weeps and we can tell that on the other side Madhu is doing the same. Madhu and Sheru had known each other since they were toddlers, had been inseparable friends. Madhu had never heard again from her friend, didn’t quite know where she had gone. If it was India, they would have communicated, so she must have been in Pakistan, whose border was some ten miles away. Lahore, once the great city of all Punjab, is less than thirty miles away. Pakistan TV can be received and is watched here, as we saw people doing at our guest house. Now it is the niece who brings the two childhood friends together.

  On our way back we take a detour to pass by a small warehouse from where sacks are being carried out. This, says Balwinder Singh, was the old khano, the prayer house, where Nurjehan’s grandfather was mukhi, the presiding headman.

  In the afternoon we visit Madhu and her husband at their apartment in a suburb. We have tea with them. The city cricket ground is next door, and from their balcony you can watch the matches being played. The previous week one of the World Cup games was played here. Madhu and her husband have two children, a boy and girl, both in the United States. She giggles when told that her friend produced twelve children. Finally we exchange addresses and depart.

  What happened to the family exiled from a city where they had lived for centuries? To support the family the older son traded between Hyderabad, a Muslim princely state still, but not for long, and Bombay, prone to communal violence. Finally they caught the last ship to Karachi, Pakistan. The three sons and the parents did not last long there, they turned up in East Africa, from where the young men dispersed. Ultimately two of Nurjehan’s uncles ended up in London, one to become a business tycoon, his daughter to marry the son of a Scottish baron. The third uncle, Sherali, ended up a hotelier in Nairobi and is now in Vancouver and runs a hotel in Seattle. Two aunts married in Pakistan, one in Muscat, one in Africa; their numerous children are in Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States, more or less successful. Thus, one Partition family’s fate. Successful, but scattered across the globe.

  Back in Toronto one Sunday morning, having sent a holiday greeting card to Madhu and her husband, we receive a friendly phone call from her daughter in Los Angeles. Madhu is visiting her. Subsequently we inform Nurjehan’s father and uncle in Vancouver about her; perhaps they should give her a call. Uncle Sherali, we learn later, took a flight to Los Angeles to meet her, whom he had not seen in more than fifty years. He took extra care with his dressing that day, his wife says. How exactly the meeting went we never find out.

  It seems morbid, impolite, to ask about the Pakistan border—just a few miles away on the Grand Trunk Road—the creation of which was a cause of so much killing, and which over the years has come to symbolize pain, hatred, and suspicion. Three wars have already been fought between the two neighbours. Newspapers go on about Pakistani infiltrators and agents; Bollywood superheroes perform marvellous feats against them in defence of India’s honour and safety. Both countries have tested nuclear weapons. Mutual threats are uttered. But when we ask about the border, to our great surprise we are told, Go see it, it’s not far, lots of visitors go. There’s a parade every day at six. The border, at a place called Wagah, is apparently a tourist attraction.

  When we arrive at Wagah, it is crowded with parked cars; vendors come to sell snacks and tea, but there is no milk for the tea. The air is almost festive, though there’s a strange, expectant quietude around all the same. We follow others on foot, come to a halt some ten feet from the gate. The area is farming country, a pair of barbed wire fences cutting through it, dividing the two nations. Along this route, from the other side, came the Turks, the Afghans, the Mughals.

  As I look at the border, a story by Manto comes to mind. In the story—comic and tragic at the same time, for in Manto rage finds form in the bizarrely comic—at the time of Partition a transport of non-Muslim lunatics is to take place from the new Pakistan to India. Among them is one Sikh fellow, called Bishan Singh, who wants to return only to his village, called Toba Tek Singh, but nobody knows whether it has been allocated to India or to Pakistan. The last scene of the story takes place at the Wagah border where we now stand. The Pakistani guards have given up attempts to push Bishan Singh to the Indian side, and allow the old man to stand where he is, frozen to one spot in between, where after a full night he gives a scream and collapses to the ground:

  There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.

  I am reminded also of two men I worked with some years ago in Ontario, one an experimental physicist, the other a theoretical physicist. They had been born in the same town, but one had come from India, the other from Pakistan. This fence has cut deep.

  Meanwhile a show is about to begin. We are kept at bay by a handsome soldier, tall and starched, in a plumed hat and smiling. He chats with the people, allows the kids to stand with him and be photographed.


  Suddenly he steps aside, and our crowd rushes forward and abruptly stops. Before us on our right to our great surprise there are bleachers packed with more people, craning their necks to see; in front of us are the Indian soldiers. Before we know it, there is heard a series of commands, loud and crisp, each followed by the thumping of feet as soldiers, one by one, go marching forward towards the Indian tricolour at an open gate, perform a salute and return to their positions. Each impressive soldierly performance is followed by applause from the crowd. And to our amazement, an identical, almost mirror-image display is taking place on the other side of the gate, impressive-looking Pakistani soldiers in darker uniforms and plumed hats marching, thumping their feet in exact synchrony with the Indians. Each side approaching its flag, the two flags within a foot or two of each other. Finally the last pair approach the flags and, facing away from each other, lower them exactly together, fold them, turn, and smartly bring them back to their sides. The crowd cheers.

  There’s more.

  The gates are closed, but the people are now free to go, and they rush forward to the gates on either side to get a look at, stare at, drink in, each other’s faces. What has come between us? I try to imagine what they might feel; surely not hatred. They all, we all, look so ordinary. A Gujarati man waves, is told by a soldier to behave. The rest seem to be Punjabis on both sides, similar to each other in features—if there is Turkish blood, it’s hard to say on which side it predominates.

  In Amritsar the temperature has been over a hundred degrees. In Shimla, when we get back, hail has fallen, the ground is white. It is night and desolately silent. We put on our sweaters, turn on the heaters. Cards, jigsaw puzzle, books to entertain us.

  Bombay Getaway: The Distant Uncle and the Bohra Rebel

  And when they know what old books tell,

  And that no better can be had,

  Know why an old man should be mad.

  W. B. YEATS, “Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?”

  YES, my father-in-law confirms in a letter, the famous writer Mulk Raj Anand is a cousin of his. I should try and see him, Nurjehan suggests. I am skeptical. How real and how strong is this connection? There are cousins and cousins. My father-in-law’s name is Hakim Abu Aly. A cousin to Mulk Raj Anand? But the possibility is intriguing—it’s exciting—for it promises to cast a light on a past that some of us in modern times would rather forget, or suppress if necessary.

  Without much of a social life in the beautiful high aloofness of the Institute, the family back in Toronto, my friends back in Delhi, it seems a reasonable idea to find an excuse to travel out of station. And so I write a letter to Anand about the possible family connection and ask him if I could come to Bombay to talk to him. The reply comes quicker than I expected, inviting me to come and have my chat. He gives me the address and the time.

  The Himalayan Queen from Shimla stops at New Delhi railway station; I proceed to the university guest house, where a reservation has been made for me. It is a dingy place whose redeeming features are the cheap, decent meals and its closeness to Connaught Place. Otherwise, the bathroom is wet, a tap dripping constantly, the light is bad, mosquitoes are many and eager. The following afternoon I go to the New Delhi station to catch the fast Rajdhani Express to Bombay. There is something about train names, which are known to all Indians, that makes every railway journey special; the train has a name, and you have a seat on it. But it is the monsoon season and my Bombay Rajdhani is late. Night has fallen, no one can tell me when the train will leave, beyond “early next morning.” The platform clearly is not the place to spend the night, you become an easy target. Already touts hover around me like vultures. Somewhat hesitantly I call up Pabby, Krishan Chander’s troubleshooter, who has helped me before, and put my quandary to him. Immediately he takes off with his wife in the Delhi traffic to come to my rescue. It is one of those instances of extraordinary kindness that makes you bewail the formality we have assumed after moving to the West, where time has become so precious it has to be hoarded. It turns out that the railway station has its own guest house, where Pabby finds me a room, decent and private. They’ll come and call you when the train is ready to depart, he says. Which is what they do.

  The Rajdhani duly leaves for Bombay; there are delays on the way, and it appears that we will arrive late in the night. A reservation has been made for me at a Parsi club, but now I learn from my fellow passengers that there is a taxi strike in Bombay. Will there be rickshaws? Not really. It seems that this trip has been jinxed from the start. How will I get to the club? My fellow passengers have made their own plans, no one offers help, a ride to my destination, for example. I am told something will come up. But what?

  Nervously I walk out from the station when the train arrives, watch the other privileged passengers of Second AC, Rajdhani Express, being met and disappearing into the night. How dependent one is on the simple conveniences, the habits, of city life. A simple taxi strike, and here I am, stranded in big bad Bombay in the middle of the night. As I prepare to walk back to the station, suddenly a man walks up to me and asks furtively where I want to go. It turns out he’s a scab, runs a private taxi operation, and he looks as nervous as I feel. My fellow passengers must have known about the likes of him: Something will turn up, they said, and it has. There are a few others he’s collected, including a woman, which is reassuring, and we pack into his small car, parked some distance away. He does not quite know the place I am headed for, but drops me off in the vicinity, from where I make my way to the club, wake up the caretaker, and am taken to my room.

  Mulk Raj Anand is one of the most renowned Indian writers of the twentieth century. He was born in 1905 in Peshawar, now in Pakistan. Although the family trade was in copper and silver smithing, his father was in the Dogra Regiment and Mulk was educated at cantonment schools. He did his B.A. in Amritsar, and after earning the wrath of his family for participating in Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaign as a teenager, for which he was jailed briefly, and later for falling in love with a Muslim girl, he left for England in 1925, where he attended Cambridge and completed a Ph.D. in philosophy in London. He returned some twenty years later to an India on the brink of independence. He started writing in London, and his first novel, Untouchable, was rejected by nineteen publishers before being published in 1935 after E. M. Forster, whom he met while working at T. S. Eliot’s The Criterion, agreed to write an introduction. It is now considered a classic. He himself comes from an upper caste, and although the biographies and novels published more recently by writers from the “Untouchable” castes are more powerfully immediate and visceral, Anand’s novel made a large impact when it came out, for it held up a mirror to Indian society to reveal perhaps its worst evil. The caste system was a subject not discussed in polite society, and it is still a subject best avoided. Even now, Untouchable remains one of the very few well-known novels on the subject. And obviously, the subject of untouchability has hardly been embraced by Bollywood, that exotic fairy-tale mirror of Indian society. Anand’s second novel was Coolie (1936), which depicts the desperate life of a coolie called Munoo. These two novels are, in the words of a critic, “India seen third-class,” without the romanticism. In total, Mulk Raj Anand has published dozens of books, of art, criticism, and fiction, and he is actively involved with social causes.

  In Coolie, Munoo leaves his home in the Kangra hills to seek a better life in a city in the plains, whence he continues to Bombay, where he becomes one of the faceless millions of toilers in the factories:

  Shivering, weak, bleary, with twisted, ugly faces, black, filthy, gutless, spineless, they stole along with unconscious, vacant looks; idiots, looking at the smoky heavens, as they sighed or murmured “Ram, Ram” and the other names of God, in greeting to each other and in thanksgiving for the gifts of the Almighty. The boy recalled how his patron Prabha in Daulatpur used to say that everything was the blessing of God, even Ganpat’s ill-treatment, the beating the police had given him, and the fever of which he nearly died.
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  Finally Munoo is taken back to the hills, to Shimla, by a kindly English memsahib. There, he enthusiastically takes her around in a rickshaw, along the Mall, on the Jakhoo road, to Christ Church, everywhere the English socialized in their summer capital, all the places that the tourists now delight to visit. One Friday evening he takes her to the Hotel Cecil on Chaura Maidan for dinner, after which he races up the hill along with dozens of other coolies to drop her off at the ball at the viceroy’s residence. Amidst the strains of exotic Western dance music, as the sahibs, the memsahibs, and the occasional Indian maharaja and princess waltz around on the polished oak floors of the ballroom of the Viceregal Lodge, Munoo collapses and dies on the steps outside, awaiting his mem.

  By a curious coincidence, it is from the former Viceregal Lodge that I have come to meet Munoo’s creator in Bombay.

  I am a little wary about meeting a writer with such a reputation. He knows nothing about me, and my knowledge of him is superficial. My only interest at this point is to take a look at him, and to confirm the family connection, hopefully find out more about that.

  He lives in an elegant white building on Cuffe Parade, a wealthy area, in a ground-floor apartment; the entrance is from the side. A woman opens the door, asks me what I want, then lets me in. I find him in the large front room, apparently a study: books on shelves, and more books, magazines, papers, in piles on the floor. He is a short, somewhat stooping man, not thin; bald, white hair at the sides, wearing a white kurta-pyjama, sitting on a chair looking abstracted, lonely.

  What does a writer do at this stage of life, his energies spent, his vogue diminished?

  He takes up an aggressive posture at the start: What does writing a novel (as I have told him I am doing) have to do with the Institute of Advanced Study? He has spent time at the Institute and perhaps feels that I do not quite qualify to be there. I tell him defensively that I am also conducting research for a book about “returning to India.” What’s so special about returning to India? he asks. He should know, he returned having missed a crucial part of its history, but I keep quiet. He calms down. He’s quite deaf, so it’s easier to let him talk, and he has much to say that he’s most likely said many times but I have not heard before. He talks about Nehru, Muhammad Iqbal, Gandhi. But his life in London, where he fraternized with the literati of the time, including the Bloomsbury group, he remembers with pride, speaks of with confidence. It’s the favourite soundtrack. Virginia and Leonard Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Malraux, Forster, Orwell—he’s known them all. And this to my great surprise: he fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Clearly he was one of those young Indians who set out to conquer the world: writers, scientists, at least one mathematician.