DECEMBER 5
I’ve thought of a means for keeping my mind occupied during the wartime nights, and I’ve put it into practice. That is, while outside dogs are barking somewhere in the distance, I’m sitting wrapped in a quilt, with a lantern before me, writing a diary.
The winter nights are long, and wartime nights are even longer. Now the seasons of war and winter have come together. The wartime day passes in listening to good news of victories and rumors of defeats, and in racing the horses of conjecture. How can the night pass? I come home well before curfew time. Ammi Jan tries to arrange it so that we finish eating before the blackout. This is how it works. We eat dinner before the blackout. Then Ammi closes up the kitchen and comes and sits at her ease in the room. At the same time, the sounds of footsteps cease in the lane outside. No sounds of footsteps, no noise and commotion of children, no cries of mothers calling to their children. Complete silence falls. The sound of the volunteers’ whistles ceases too. Suddenly the neighborhood dogs begin to bark in chorus. They receive encouragement and support from the dogs in distant neighborhoods. At nightfall, they create the effect of midnight. Silence, then siren and whistles, then the quiet, low drone of planes flying somewhere far off, then siren, then silence. The night stretched and stretched. It simply couldn’t be ended.
Abba Jan has thought of a good means for passing the long wartime nights. He spreads out his prayer carpet and seats himself, and stays there far into the night. Following his example, Ammi Jan too has begun to prolong her late evening prayer.
I couldn’t find a way to pass those nights. I couldn’t read a book for very long by lantern-light. Ammi Jan didn’t allow the lights to be turned on. And she was right. The bright electric light always manages to find its way through the cracks somehow or other, and shows outside. Then the volunteers make a commotion, “Turn off the light,” “Turn off the light.” And somehow I like the lantern. How lovingly I remember the lantern era, when electricity hadn’t yet come to our Rupnagar, and inside in the house and outside in the lane there was only lantern light. When I was older, I passed through all the stages of my education by lantern light alone. But now things are such that I can only remember the lantern era. I can’t read a book by lantern light. But I’ve found out today: I can write.
The primary point of writing this diary is that during the long wartime nights it will help me discipline my distracted mind, which suffers from insomnia and wanders restlessly all over; it will help me put my mind on a single track and protect myself from confusion of thought. But now I see another advantage of it as well. I’ll be writing my wartime autobiography. After the war is over, provided I’m alive, I’ll know how many lies I heard and how many lies I uttered and how afraid I was during the wartime nights, how often I trembled. I ought to preserve the record of my lies and my cowardice.
DECEMBER 6
My patriotic fellow citizens are happy, and most of all our patriotic newspapers are happy. Suddenly their circulation has doubled and tripled. Every day comes news of another victory. Every day people fall on the newspapers and snatch them up, and read the news of victory and are happy. But,
London is victorious and the Germans are advancing.*
Still, today there’s news of a powerful, victorious advance onto their soil. Amritsar too has been taken. Khvajah Sahib told us this news so confidently, and ascribed it to such reliable sources, that Abba Jan was forced to believe it. But Abba Jan listens to defeats and victories, both kinds of news, with equanimity. After Khvajah Sahib had told us the news, I watched him carefully. On his serene face I caught a glimpse of satisfaction. When I left the house, from Nazira’s shop to the Shiraz I heard the news everywhere that Amritsar had been taken.
DECEMBER 7
Today’s fresh news: The airport at Agra has been totally destroyed. How? In the darkness of the blackout the marble Taj Mahal glimmered. This revealed the location of Agra, and of its airport, which was then destroyed by bombing.
When people read this news, and heard it with full details from their friends who had contact with informed sources, how happy they were! With this news a fallen reputation was suddenly restored; otherwise, we had already decided that the Taj Mahal, and the history which gave birth to the Taj Mahal, had no connection with Pakistan.
In this city too there’s a building as white as marble. Today when we were sitting in the Shiraz, Irfan said in his sarcastic voice, “Yar, we knocked down the Imperial Hotel and built that pseudo-Taj Mahal,* and now I’m afraid it might take us all with it.”
“How?”
“Yar, coming back from the office I passed through that street and I really felt afraid. That building can be seen so clearly in the darkness of the blackout, it even looks softly lighted! Enemy planes can easily make it out.”
Even in peacetime, I had always objected to the building’s white color. If along with being white a building becomes the Taj Mahal, that’s different; otherwise, whiteness usually detracts from a building’s dignity. Sun, storms, rain, bird-droppings: these four things combine to bestow venerability and grandeur on a building. But our city’s white building is so new and so clean that it will be a long time before it can attain the dignity of buildings that have endured the heat and cold of the seasons.
In any case, now that the Imperial has been erased like a redundant letter from the city’s slate, and Dolly and her admirers are only a legend, and the tawny cat has vanished, this building ought to be preserved. The time will come when its roofs will be black with bird-droppings, and birds will sit tranquilly amidst the immemorial black and white stains.
In this age one harmful effect of war is that it doesn’t allow buildings to acquire dignity. Tall, grand buildings don’t have time to become old before some war breaks out, and the bombers destroy them. After the war the cities are planned all over again, starting afresh, and even taller buildings are constructed. But while they’re still new, another war starts, and before an air of grandeur and mystery comes to surround them, they fall into heaps of rubble.
DECEMBER 8
Last night was the limit. After writing my diary I lay down and immediately my eyes closed, but only a little while later Ammi shook me awake. “Son, the siren is sounding.”
The same thing kept happening all night. I don’t know how many times the siren wailed. I was very much afraid. I was afraid for this city where I had endured so many sorrows, where I had sat and remembered Rupnagar so vividly, where I kept it alive even now in my imagination. If something happened to this city, how could I bear it? I want to remember my sorrows. If a city is destroyed, the sufferings of those who lived there are forgotten at the same time. The tragedy of this war-stricken time is that our sufferings don’t manage to turn into memories. The buildings, the places which hold our sorrows in trust, are reduced to nothingness in a moment by one single bomb.
I can do nothing else for this city, but I can pray, and I do pray. In my mind is a prayer for Rupnagar and its people as well, for I can no longer imagine Rupnagar apart from this city. Rupnagar and this city have merged together inside me, and become one town.
DECEMBER 9
Crossing the street in this city is no longer at all difficult. On the first morning of the war, what trouble I had, crossing the street! But then how quickly the rush of the traffic was diminished. As the days passed, the traffic kept lessening. How much the noise of the scooter-cabs diminished, and people’s calls and shouts. Sometimes it seems that the only transport left in the city is the bus, which moves along from street to street as regularly as before—the only difference being that passengers no longer ride perched on the footboards or standing in the aisles. Few passengers, many seats. There aren’t even any crowds at the bus stands. When the air-raid siren wails and the traffic police, blowing their whistles, move into the middle of the road, then lines of vehicles form on both sides of the road. At such times it seems that only scooter-cabs and taxis are still running in the city.
When evening falls, when I retur
n home as the whistles announce the curfew, Ammi asks me for news of the city, and tells me how things are in the neighborhood: today the people of such-and-such a house went off to such-and-such a city. Every morning Khvajah Sahib knocks at the door, and sits at his ease in the drawing room, smoking the huqqah and telling the rumored reports of some new victory; and every day another house in the neighborhood is locked up. Every day Ammi comments on those who have gone.
Today Ammi seemed especially anxious. “Ai hai, will we be the only ones left in the neighborhood?”
“Zakir’s mother,” Abba Jan said gravely, “Death is everywhere. Where can a man go to flee from it? It is a saying of the Prophet’s that those who run from death, run toward death instead.”
I gazed at Abba Jan with wonder. This was the very thing that Abba Jan had said to Bi Amma when the plague spread in Rupnagar and people were closing their houses and leaving the town.
Two residents have taken leave of our house too. In our courtyard is a guava tree. During the good weather, a pair of bulbuls sniffed out its scent and found it, and settled in and made themselves at home. Ammi was very cross with the bulbuls. “Oh the wretches, they ruin the guavas! As soon as they start to ripen, the wretches stick their beaks in. They might at least let one guava ripen properly!”
“Ammi, birds too have a right to share in food that comes from the trees.”
Ammi stared at me. “That’s a fine idea, that we should do the work and the birds should do the eating!”
But where are those bulbuls now? On the first morning of the war, both bulbuls came flying along and settled on the guava tree. With zeal and enthusiasm, their beaks were exploring the ripening guavas—when a plane passed overhead with a tremendous roar. Both birds, frightened out of their wits, left the guavas and flew off.
Now a lot of guavas have ripened on our tree. Every day Ammi picks them and makes guava salad. Now no guava is ever marked by a beak. Those guests of our house, those sharers in our food, have gone.
Today as I left the Shiraz, evening was falling. When I finished my last sip of tea and came out, there was only a little time left until the curfew. Outside everybody was hurrying along. The vehicles were rushing at full speed. Cars, horse-carts, motorbikes, taxis, scooter-cabs. A sort of tumult had broken out, as if a film were just over. I was very much astonished. All day the streets were empty. Where had this flood of vehicles come from? On what invisible streets had these vehicles been traveling, that suddenly they were drawn to Mall Road?
I called to so many scooter-cab drivers, but no one heard me, no one stopped, although the scooter-cabs were empty. Caught in the traffic, one scooter-cab paused near me. When I pleaded with the driver, he said, “Man, if you want to go to Baghbanpura, I’ll take you.”
“Why Baghbanpura?”
“Because I have to go home, and the siren’s about to sound.”
Then I reflected that it would be useless to waste more time searching for transport. At that hour everyone was looking out for himself. It would be better to set out on foot, and perhaps on the way I’d find some scooter-cab going in that direction, or some kind person in a car would generously give me a lift.
In the twilight, the shutters of the shops were all hastily banging closed. The shopkeepers hurried to fasten the locks, and instantly disappeared, some in cars, some on motorbikes, some on foot. Day and night, no longer owing anything to the favors of electric light, were merging together. Darkness was slowly spreading through the streets and lanes. Somehow the thought occurred to me that in the past, every evening used to come like this. The lampless time of the forest, when hunters, after hunting all day, tried to reach their caves with their prey before evening fell. Then the time when a few towns were settled and lamps began to glow, when the townspeople, after working all through the daylight, headed homeward with long strides as twilight fell, hoping to arrive before the lamps were lit. Then the time when big cities were settled, and walls built around the cities, when caravans endured the hardships of traveling day after day on hot, desolate routes under the fiery sun, and tried to enter the city before nightfall. The caravan that moved too slowly found the gates of the city closed, and spent the whole dark night in the shelter of the walls, unprotected.
The war threw the life of the city into confusion. Inside me, times and places are topsy-turvy. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea where I am, in what place. The day declines, evening is coming, the forest paths are growing silent. I’m heading, with long strides, toward my cave.
DECEMBER 10
In the College, classes and such are not being held; so I put in a brief appearance and then come to sit in the Shiraz. Then Irfan comes. Sometimes Afzal too inflicts himself on us. Salamat and Ajmal are nowhere to be seen, but I’ve heard that after being revolutionaries they’ve now become ardent patriots, and go around collecting gifts for the soldiers. That’s more than we’re doing.
What was I good for when it came to love?*
We sit in the Shiraz and talk. Our talk too is desultory and goes nowhere. Today I said to Irfan, “Yar! I don’t get any benefit out of your newspaper work.”
“What benefit do you want?”
“Yar, you have a curfew pass, there’s the newspaper car, can’t you show me the city in the blackout?”
“I can show you. But it takes courage to see a flourishing city reduced to a desolate condition.”
“I’ve seen so many curfews in this city! By now, surely I’ve acquired the courage.”
“The experience of seeing the city under curfew is one thing. This is an absolutely different experience.”
Afzal interrupted: “Irfan is right. Don’t look. You’ll be scared.”
“Have you seen it, or are you speaking without having seen it?”
“Fellow! When I talk about it, I’ve seen it.” He paused, then spoke as a frightened man speaks. “Two nights ago when Irfan sent me home in his office car, we passed through dark silent streets, and I looked at the houses to the right and left with terror. Every house was silent and still, as though there were no one inside. It seemed to me that these weren’t people’s homes, but mouse-holes. The mice sat fearful and shrinking. I was frightened.”
Afzal has gone me one better. To me, when I go out alone at night into the lane for a look around, the houses in my neighborhood seem like voiceless, noiseless caves, enveloped in darkness.
DECEMBER 11
I’m sitting in a cave. Outside stands the black night, with its jaws opened wide. Siren, whistles, the sound of dogs barking—but human voices absent. As though there had been an Emigration, and people had gone somewhere else. The city held captive in the spell of war. From time to time all the neighborhood dogs bark so furiously that they seem to be entering my cave. Then they fall silent, but the sound of barking continues in the distance. At night, when you’re traveling through the forest, that’s how it is. From unseen, unknown towns, the barking of dogs comes, and keeps coming. It becomes a kind of encirclement, as though the traveler were moving within an enclosure of barking dogs. As though the dogs had surrounded the whole terrestrial sphere. I’m encircled by fear. Deep in the forest, far from my cave. Times and places are scrambled inside me. Where am I going? In what time? In what place? Every direction confused, every place disordered.
. . . Emerging from the forest, I entered a town. But what kind of a town? Not a trace of any son of Adam. Empty streets, desolate lanes, the shops closed, the mansions locked up. My dear friends! For a long time I wandered around in amazement. Finally when I saw a mansion with big gates, I felt some hope that perhaps there might be people in it. I knocked and cried out, “Is anyone there?” No answer. I knocked again with force, and loudly cried out, “Is anyone there?” I heard nothing but the echo of my own voice. Terror overcame me. I said to myself that I should leave the town, for fear that some calamity would overtake me. As I was thinking this, I saw a lake. Its water was partly clear, partly muddy. In the midst of the lake, an elephant and a tortoise were fighting with
each other, but neither of them won, and neither of them was defeated.
I was standing there in astonishment, watching the fight, when a faqir appeared. He approached the lake. Pausing, he cast a sad glance at the elephant and tortoise, and sighed. Then he said, “If only they were devoid of knowledge, and their words were without power!”
These words of the faqir’s surprised me. I came and stood before him with my hands folded and petitioned, “Oh venerable sir, what have you known, and what have you seen, that you have brought such words to your lips?” He replied, “Oh dear son, three things debase a man: a woman when she is not faithful, a brother when he asks for more than his right, knowledge when it comes without hard labor. And three things deprive the earth of peace: an ignoble man when he rises to high rank, a learned man when he begins to worship gold, a master when he becomes cruel.”
When I had heard these words, I stared at the venerable man’s face, and began to try to unravel the knot of his words with the fingernails of comprehension. When I failed to unravel it, I petitioned, “Oh venerable man, explain the point of these abstractions.”
Then he asked me, “Dear son, in what state have you seen this town?” I said, “Venerable sir, I have seen this town uninhabited.”
Then the faqir spoke as follows: “Dear son, the story of this town is that its chief was a man of pure heart and virtuous character. In addition to worldly wealth, he was also rich in the wealth of the spirit. When his life was drawing to a close, he sent for his sons, who were two in number, and embraced each of them. This relieved his soul. He said, ‘Sons! I have divided my knowledge equally between you both, and, oh my sons! after I am gone divide the rest of my property between you in the same way, for I fear the day might come when you would seek for more than your right, and would bring down disaster on the Lord’s creatures.’
Basti Page 15