He said, ‘What on earth are you up to? Go back at once and do not come out of your house. The rioters are killing Muslims in Connaught Circus.’ I hurried back home.
I had barely got to my quarters when I ran into my Sikh neighbour. He began to reassure me. ‘Shaikhji, do not worry! As long as I am alive no one will raise a hand against you.’ I said to myself: ‘How much fraud is hidden behind this man’s beard! He is obviously pleased that the Muslims are being massacred, but expresses sympathy to win my confidence; or is he trying to taunt me?’ I was the only Muslim living in that block, perhaps I was the only one on that road.
I did not want these people’s kindness or sympathy. I went inside my quarter and said to myself, ‘If I have to die, I will kill at least ten or twenty men before they get me.’ I went to my room where beneath my bed I kept my double-barrelled gun. I had also collected quite a hoard of cartridges.
I searched the house, but could not find the gun.
‘What is huzoor looking for?’ asked my faithful servant, Mohammed.
‘What happened to my gun?’
He did not answer. But I could tell from the way he looked that he had either hidden it or stolen it.
‘Why don’t you answer?’ I asked him angrily.
Then he came out with the truth. He had stolen my gun and given it to some of his friends who were collecting arms to defend the Muslims in Daryaganj.
‘We have hundreds of guns, several machine guns, ten revolvers and a cannon. We will slaughter these infidels; we will roast them alive.’
‘No doubt with my gun you will roast the infidels in Daryaganj, but who will defend me here? I am the only Mussulman amongst these savages. If I am murdered, who will answer for it?’
I persuaded him to steal his way to Daryaganj to bring back my gun and a couple of hundred cartridges. When he left I was convinced that I would never see him again.
I was all alone. On the mantlepiece was a family photograph. My wife and children stared silently at me. My eyes filled with tears at the thought that I would never see them again. I was comforted with the thought that they were safe in Pakistan. Why had I been tempted by my paltry provident fund and not gone with them? I heard the crowd yelling.
‘Sat Sri Akal . . .’
‘Har Har Mahadev.’
The yelling came closer and closer. They were rioters—the beares of my death warrant. I was like a wounded deer, running hither and thither with the hunters’ hounds in full pursuit. There was no escape. The door was made of very thin wood and glass panes. The rioters would smash their way in.
‘Sat Sri Akal . . .’
‘Har Har Mahadev . . .’
They were coming closer and closer; death was coming closer and closer. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. My Sikh neighbour walked in—‘Shaikhji, come into my quarters at once.’ Without a second thought I ran into the Sikh’s veranda and hid behind the columns. A shot hit the wall above my head. A truck drew up and about a dozen young men climbed down. Their leader had a list in his hand—‘Quarter No. 8—Sheikh Burhanuddin.’ He read my name and ordered his gang to go ahead. They invaded my quarter and under my very eyes proceeded to destroy my home. My furniture, boxes, pictures, books, druggets and carpets, even the dirty linen was carried into the truck. Robbers! Thugs! Cut-throats!
As for the Sikh, who had pretended to sympathize with me, he was no less a robber than they! He was pleading with the rioters: ‘Gentlemen, stop! We have a prior claim over our neighbour’s property. We must get our share of the loot.’ He beckoned to his sons and daughters. All of them gathered to pick up whatever they could lay their hands on. One took my trousers; another a suitcase.
They even grabbed the family photograph. They took the loot to their quarters.
You bloody Sikh! If god grants me life I will settle my score with you. At this moment I cannot even protest. The rioters are armed and only a few yards away from me. If they get to know of my presence . . .
‘Please come in.’
My eyes fell on the unsheathed kirpan in the hands of the Sikh. He was inviting me to come in. The bearded monster looked more frightful after he had soiled his hands with my property. There was the glittering blade of his kirpan inviting me to my doom. There was no time to argue. The only choice was between the guns of the rioters and the sabre of the Sikh. I decided, rather the kirpan of the old man than ten armed gangsters. I went into the room hesitantly, silently.
‘Not here, come in further.’ I went into the inner room like a goat following a butcher. The glint of the blade of the kirpan was almost blinding.
‘Here you are, take your things,’ said the Sikh.
He and his children put all the stuff they had pretended to loot, in front of me. His old woman said, ‘Son, I am sorry we were not able to save more.’
I was dumbfounded.
The gangsters had dragged out my steel almirah and were trying to smash it open. ‘It would be simpler if we could find the keys,’ said someone.
‘The keys can only be found in Pakistan. That cowardly son of a filthy Muslim has decamped,’ replied another.
Little Mohini answered back: ‘Shaikhji is not a coward. He has not run off to Pakistan.’
‘Where is he blackening his face?’
‘Why should he be blackening his face? He is in . . .’
Mohini realized her mistake and stopped in the middle of her sentence. Blood mounted in her father’s face. He locked me in the inside room, gave his kirpan to his son and went out to face the mob.
I do not know what exactly took place outside. I heard the sound of blows; then Mohini crying; then the Sikh yelling full-blooded abuse in Punjabi. And then a shot and the Sikh’s cry of pain ‘Hai.’
I heard a truck engine starting up; and then there was a petrified silence.
When I was taken out of my prison my Sikh neighbour was lying on a charpoy. Beside him lay a torn and blood-stained shirt. His new shirt also was oozing with blood. His son had gone to telephone for the doctor.
‘Sardarji, what have you done?’ I do not know how these words came out of my lips. The world of hate in which I had lived all these years, lay in ruins about me.
‘Sardarji, why did you do this?’ I asked him again.
‘Son, I had a debt to pay.’
‘What kind of a debt?’
‘In Rawalpindi there was a Muslim like you who sacrificed his life to save mine and the honour of my family.’
‘What was his name, Sardarji?’
‘Ghulam Rasul.’
Fate had played a cruel trick on me. The clock on the wall started to strike . . .one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . The Sikh turned towards the clock and smiled. He reminded me of my grandfather with his twelve-inch beard. How closely the two resembled each other!
. . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . we counted in silence.
He smiled again. His white beard and long white hair were like a halo, effulgent with a divine light . . . 10 . . . 11 . . . 12 . . . The clock stopped striking.
I could almost hear him say: ‘For us Sikhs, it is always 12 o’clock!’
But the bearded lips, still smiling, were silent. And I knew he was already in some distant world, where the striking of clocks counted for nothing, where violence and mockery were powerless to hurt him.
Fiction
A Bride for the Sahib
‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’
Mr Sen asked the question without looking up. He pushed the cleaner through the stem of his pipe and twirled it around. As he blew through it, his eyes fell on the rose and marigold garlands in the hands of his callers. So they knew that he had been married that morning! He had tried to keep it as quiet as possible. But as he had learned so often before, it was impossible to keep anything a secret for too long in his nosey native land.
He screwed on the bowl to the stem and blew through the pipe again. Through his lowered eyes, he saw his visitors shuffling their feet and nudging each o
ther. He unwrapped his plastic tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe. After an uneasy minute of subdued whispers, one of the men cleared his throat.
‘Well, Mr Bannerjee, what is your problem?’ asked Mr Sen in a flat monotone.
‘Saar,’ began the superintendent of the clerical staff, ‘Whee came to wheesh your good shelph long liphe and happinesh.’ He beckoned to the chaprasis: ‘Garland the Sahib.’
The chaprasis stepped in front with the garlands held aloft. The Sahib stopped them with a wave of his pipe. ‘Mez par’—on the table, he commanded in his gentle but firm voice. The chaprasis’ hands came down slowly; their fawning smiles changed to stupid grins. They put the garlands on the table and stepped behind the semi-circle of clerks.
‘If that is all,’ said Mr Sen standing up, ‘we can get back to our work. I thank you, gentlemen, for your good wishes.’ He bowed slightly to indicate that they should leave. ‘Bannerjee, will you look in later to discuss the redistribution of work while I am away?’
‘Shuttenly, Saar.’
The men joined the palms of their hands, murmured their ‘namastes’ and filed out.
Sen joined his hands across his waistcoat and watched the smoke from his pipe rise in a lazy spiral towards the ceiling. A new chapter in his life had begun. That’s how Hindus described marriage—the third of the four stages of life according to the Vedas. It was alarming, he reflected, how his thought processes slipped into cliches and how Hinduism extended its tentacles in practically every sphere of life. His father had not been a particularly orthodox Hindu and had sent him to an Anglo—Indian school where the boys had changed his name from Santosh to Sunny. Thereafter he had gone to Balliol. He had entered the administrative service before the independent Indian government with its new-fangled nationalist ideas had made Hindi and a vernacular language compulsory. His inability to speak an Indian language hadn’t proved a handicap. As a matter of fact, it impressed most Indians. Although his accent and mannerisms made him somewhat of an outsider, it was more than compensated for by the fact that it also put him outside the vicious circle of envy and back-biting in which all the others indulged. They sought his company because he was an un-Indian Indian, because he was a brown British gentleman, because he was what the English contemptuously described as a wog—a Westernized oriental gentleman.
Sen’s main contact with his country was his mother. Like an orthodox Hindu widow she shaved her head, only wore a plain white sari and went about in bare feet. He was her only child so they both did the best they could for each other. She ran his home. He occasionally ate rice, curried fish and the sticky over-sweetened confections she made on special occasions. Other times she had the bearer cook him the lamb chops and the shepherd pies he liked better. She had converted one of the rooms into a temple where she burnt incense and tinkled bells to a diminutive image of the black-faced, red-tongued goddess, Kali. But she never insisted on his joining her in worship. Although he detested Indian movies, he made it a point to take her to one every month. She, at her end, did not object to his taking his evening Scotch and soda or smoking in her presence. She never questioned him about his movements. They got on extremely well till she started talking about his getting married. At first he had laughed it off. She became insistent and started to nag him. She wanted to see him properly settled. She wanted to fondle a grandson just once before she died, she said with tears in her eyes. At last he gave in. He did not have strong views on marriage or on whom he would marry. Since he had come back to settle in India, he could not do worse than marry one of his countrywomen. ‘All right, Ma, you find me a wife. I’ll marry anyone you want me to marry,’ he said one day.
His mother did not bring up the subject again for many days. She wrote to her brother living at Dehra Dun, in the Himalayan foothills, to come down to Delhi. The two drafted an advertisement for the matrimonial columns and asked for insertions in two successive Sunday editions of the Hindustan Times. It read: ‘Wanted a fair, good-looking virgin of a high class respectable family for an Oxford-educated Bengali youth of 25, drawing over Rs 1,000 p.m. in first class gazetted government service. Applicant should be conversant with H.H. affairs. C and D no bar. Correspond with horoscope. P.O. Box No. 4200.’
The first insertion brought over fifty letters from parents who enclosed not only the horoscopes of their daughters but their photographs as well to prove that they were fair and therefore good-looking. A fortnight later the applications were sorted out and Sunny’s mother and uncle triumphantly laid out nearly a hundred photographs on the large dining table. Their virginity and capacity to deal with household affairs had, of necessity, to be taken on trust. But despite the professed indifference to C and D, the applicants selected for consideration were of the same caste as the Sens and those whose fathers had made offers of substantial dowries. Now it was for Sunny to choose.
This was the first time that Sunny had heard of the matrimonial advertisement. He was very angry and acutely embarrassed as some anxious parents had travelled up all the way from Calcutta, bribed the clerks concerned at the newspaper office and called on him at the office. He told his mother firmly that if it did not stop, he would call off the whole thing. But as he had given his word, he would accept anyone chosen for him. His mother and uncle quickly settled the matter by selecting a girl whose father promised the largest dowry and gave a substantial portion of it as earnest money at the betrothal ceremony. The parties took the horoscopes of the affianced couple to a pandit who consulted the stars and, having had his palm crossed with silver, pronounced the pair ideally suited to each other and the dates that suited the parties to be most auspicious. That was as much as Sunny Sen could take. He told them quite bluntly that he would be married at the Registry or not at all. His mother’ and uncle sensed his mounting irritation and gave in. The bride’s parents made a nominal protest: the cost of a wedding on the traditional pattern, which included feasting the bridegroom’s party and relations, giving presents and paying the priests, could run into thousands of rupees. The registrars fee was only five rupees. That was how Srijut Santosh Sen came to marry Kumari Kalyani, the eldest of Srijut Profulla and Srimati Protima Das’s five daughters. Mr Das was, like his son-in-law, a first class gazetted government servant.
The honeymoon also created difficulties. His mother blushed as if he had said something improper. The Das’s were outraged at the suggestion that their daughter should go away for a fortnight unaccompanied by a younger sister. But they resigned their daughter to her fate. Her husband had been brought up as a Sahib and she must follow his ways.
Sen’s thoughts were interrupted by his colleague Santa Singh bursting into the room. The Sikh was like the rest of his race, loud and aggressive: ‘Brother, you think you can run away without giving us a party?’ he yelled as he came in. ‘We insist on having a feast to welcome our sister-in-law.’
Sen stood up quickly and put his hand across the table to keep the Sikh at arm’s length. Santa Singh ignored the preferred hand, came round the table and enveloped his friend in his arms. He planted his wet and hirsute kisses on the Sahib’s cheeks. ‘Congratulations, brother, when are we to meet our sister-in-law?’
‘Soon, very soon,’ replied Sen, extricating himself from the Sikh’s embrace and wiping his cheeks. And before the words were out of his mouth, he knew he had blundered: ‘As soon as we get back from our honeymoon.’
‘Honeymoon!’ exclaimed Santa Singh with a leer; he took Sen’s hands in his and squeezed them amorously. ‘I hope you’ve had yourself massaged with chameleon oil; puts more punch into things. You should also add crushed almonds in your milk. Above all, don’t overdo it. Not more than . . There was no stopping the Sikh from giving unsolicited advice on how to approach an inexperienced virgin and the proper use of aphrodisiacs. Sen kept smiling politely without making comment. When he had had enough, he interrupted the Sikh’s soliloquy by extending his hand. ‘It was very kind of you to have dropped in. We will call on you and Mrs Singh as soon as we are back in
Delhi.’
Santa Singh took Sen’s hand without any enthusiasm. ‘Goodbye. Have a nice time,’ he blurted and went out. Sen sat down with a sigh of relief. He knew he had not been rude. He had behaved with absolute rectitude—exactly like an English gentleman.
A minute later the chaprasi raised the thick curtains to let in Mr Swami, the director of the department. Sen again extended his hand across the table to keep the visitor at arm’s length; the native’s desire to make physical contact galled him. ‘Good morning, sir.’
The director touched Sen’s hand with his without answering the greeting. His mouth was full of betel saliva. He raised his face to hold it from dribbling out and bawled out to the chaprasi: ‘Hey, spittoon lao’.
The chaprasi ran in with the vessel which Sen had ordered to be removed from his room and held it under the director’s chin. Mr Swami spat out the bloody phlegm in the spittoon. Sen opened his table drawer and pretended he was looking for his match box. The director sat down and lit his beedi. ‘Eh, you Sen, you are a dark harse. By god, a pitch black harse, if I may say so.’ Mr Swami fancied his knowledge of English idiom. ‘So quietly you go and get yourself hitched. My steno says “Sir, we should celebrate holiday to celebrate Sahib’s marriage!” I say, “What marriage, man?” “Sir, Mr Sen got married this morning.” “By god,” I said, “I must get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth right from the harse’s mouth—the dark harse’s mouth.”’ The director stretched his hand across the table. ‘Clever guy you, eh?’ he said with a smirk. Sen touched his boss’s hand with the top of his fingers, ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘What for thank you? And you come to the office on the day you get married. Heavens won’t fall if you stay away a few days. I as your boss order you to go back home to your wife. I will put in a demi-official memo. What do you say?’
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 31