A Fine Family: A Novel Page 12

  The servant handed him a freshly laundered towel which he luxuriantly enveloped around his hands. It was white and it smelled of the dhobi ghat. It exuded a familiar cool feeling which he had known for almost fifty years, for the same dhobi family had washed their laundry ever since he had come to Lyallpur. First it had been the father, now the son. His eyes fell on the label of the towel: ‘Manchester’ it said. The irony of using an English towel in a country which was the home of textiles did not escape him. It merely testified to the complete success of British colonialism. This land of ours, he mused, has been too hospitable to the foreigner. We have become accustomed to alien rulers who neither knew our religion nor our language. Otherwise how could we have coped with Turkish Emirs, Afgan viceroys, Mughal tax collectors, and English Sub-Divisional Officers. Now with the British leaving, how are we going to cope by ourselves? We are like orphans—but orphans who are thousands of years old and exhausted—who must suddenly rule ourselves. Not that we cannot do it eventually. Not that we do not have good people, but ruling takes years of learning. We are out of practice (by perhaps a thousand years). We have perfected the art of being ruled; now we must learn the skills of ruling ourselves.

  The foreign rulers brought their full baggage of religion, language and culture. The Muslims built mosques, taught us Persian, and collected taxes. The British built churches, taught us English and collected taxes. We did not understand their religion or their language, but taxes we understood only too well. Because of the dreaded jazia tax many Hindus converted to Islam and now these same converts spit at us and want to divide our country. With this depressing idea he found he had arrived in the dining room, and he was happy to escape from his dreary thoughts. He realized that he had also carried the towel along with his thoughts, and he handed it back to the servant.

  At five o’clock the next morning four Muslim boys armed with daggers, broke into Bauji’s house. Bauji was asleep indoors under a fan. They headed for his room. Finding it locked, they tried to pry it open. Bauji woke up, and opened the door. ‘Good morning,’ said Bauji. ‘Do come in. I’m sorry you dragged yourselves out of bed so early for my sake. I know you have come to kill me. And I am ready to die. But please do sit down. Shall we have a cup of tea before the. . . um. . . event?’

  The boys were stunned. One of them who could not have been more than sixteen began to cry. The others looked visibly embarrassed. They had their heads down. All of a sudden their leader dropped down to his knees and begged for Bauji’s forgiveness. Bauji pressed them again to have tea, but they declined the offer.

  Bauji asked the youngest boy why he was crying. His older companion answered instead.

  ‘He is a cry-baby, sir.’

  ‘I am not,’ protested the youngster.

  ‘Every morning he comes back home and boasts to his friends how many Hindus he has killed. But at night he cries in bed. At least that’s what his mother says. The other day he couldn’t even kill a person properly. We were in Gol Bazaar, and he half killed this old man. The fellow lay in agony and I had to go back and kill him properly.’

  ‘Boys, tell me, why are you killing Hindus?’ asked Bauji.

  ‘Because we will go to heaven. Our mullah says that a Mussalman gets seven beautiful women in heaven if he kills a kaffir.’

  10

  In the half-light of dawn of the twelfth of August, Lyallpur was deserted and forlorn. In the front of the tonga sat a huddled, pitiful figure who could not be recognized as the towering man of yesterday. As he passed by each vomit-coloured house, Bauji saw the refuse of human suffering accumulated along leprous walls. Even the dogs trembled as they wandered in despair for a morsel of human neglect. Once or twice a door opened and the smell of fear spilled onto the street. By this pale half-dead light Bhabo felt the foreheads of her grandchildren for symptoms of malaria. The houses in Kacheri Bazaar were either empty or in mourning. He saw carcasses of men strewn over the street and he heard the wail of widows. He spotted two men on the road who gripped their bodies in shame as they walked with heads hung low not daring to look at anyone.

  His humiliating journey had begun. Bauji was taking his family and a few belongings out of Lyallpur. The tonga was on its way to the railway station. He was vanquished and sore, like the defeated horse leading his tonga.

  On the ninth of August a train of half-alive Muslim refugees had arrived in Lyallpur. They had told a harrowing tale of murder, arson and rape on the other side. The Muslims of Lyallpur had vowed revenge. On tenth August had occurred the great massacre of the Hindus and the Sikhs of Lyallpur, in which two thousand people were killed in twenty-four hours. On the morning of the tenth of August, a meeting was held in Lyallpu’s main mosque where the Muslim clergy called upon all Muslims to kill non-Muslims. Sikhs were especially singled out to pay for crimes in Amritsar, Jullunder and Ludhiana. On hearing this, many Sikhs immediately cut off their hair and shaved their beards, thinking that a less conspicuous appearance might help to save their lives. The barbers of Lyallpur in consequence had been unusually busy that morning. At noon, the sweeper woman brought the news about the mosque meeting to Bauji’s family and it became clear to them that it would be impossible to stay on in their beloved city.

  In the early afternoon, a Hindu mohalla behind Kacheri Bazaar was attacked by a mob, led by a Muslim Sub-Inspector of Police. Around four o’clock the National Guards of the Muslim League stormed Gol Bazaar. Fires soon raged in all major Hindu parts of the town. At six p.m. Bauji could see a huge wall of smoke and flame standing against the sky. Throughout the evening Muslim groups armed with guns, pistols, spears, hatchets, and lathis wandered about the streets attacking Hindus and Sikhs and setting fire to their shops. From the roof Big Uncle reported that he had seen their kirana shopkeeper, at the comer of Kacheri Bazaar, being dragged out by his hair. The official communique stated that twenty-five fires were blazing, of which eight were of a serious nature. By seven p.m. the Civil Hospital had received 856 dead bodies and 1680 injured.

  Prices too betrayed the state of affairs. As the day advanced, panic buying by the departing Hindus pushed up prices higher and higher. The prices of gold, weapons, horses, tongas doubled every hour in the afternoon, while the prices of furniture, clothing, utensils and household goods kept falling equally rapidly.

  At ten o’clock that night, Mr Hamid, the Muslim District Collector, came to visit Bauji. A doubles tennis partner of Big Uncle, he was a good friend of the family. He held Bauji in particularly high esteem. In turn Bauji’s family had been impressed by his neutral and helpful attitude. With his indefatigable energy Mr Hamid had kept lawless elements in check for the past two weeks. Just a few days ago he had vowed that he would not allow Hindus to be harmed. Bauji and most Hindus had believed him and had not so far evacuated. Lyallpur was a prosperous district where most of the capital belonged to the Hindus. Apart from property, Hindu capital was invested in cotton ginning, weaving, flour and sugar mills. The Hindus of Lyallpur thus lingered on, desperately hoping that this madness would pass and peace would soon return. They had to believe in Mr Hamid, and they received his assurances unquestioningly. But the emotional wave of communal frenzy on the tenth of August was proving to be too much for him. The arrival of the Muslim refugees from the East, who had suffered at the hands of the Sikhs had made Mr Hamid’s job near impossible.

  Mr Hamid looked sad and defeated as he sat in Bauji’s courtyard that night. The tragic happenings of the day had overwhelmed him. Seeing him lose confidence—he who had been the source of hope and so much strength all these months—filled them with fear. They began to despair. Mr Hamid informed Bauji that it was no longer safe for a Hindu to stay on in Lyallpur. They must leave immediately. He offered to hide them in an evacuated Englishman’s house in Civil Lines under the protection of a trusted Muslim servant until it was safe to leave the city. He gave them one hour to pack.

  At midnight a police van came for them. As they piled in noiselessly into the van, Bhabo cried, ‘Oh, wait! I forgot t
o lock the front door.’ Bauji roared with laughter.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘At you—locking the Muslims out,’ he said.

  They were transported to an innocent looking house in Civil Lines, where they stayed in hiding until the next night. At four a.m. on the twelfth, the servant knocked on Bauji’s door and informed him that they had been discovered. The Muslim driver of the police van had apparently informed the Muslim League. Their life was again in danger. The servant had got hold of a rickety tonga, which would take them to the railway station before daylight.

  Thus it happened that Bauji’s fear-stricken family was riding out to the station at dawn on the twelfth. They were nine in a tonga meant for five. The tonga was smaller than usual and the footboard at the back was dangerously low. The wheels leaned inward as if their revolutions would make them come off. Each time Bauji looked at the horse, his heart sank. He was small and emaciated and he moved with his head dispiritedly low, almost between his forelegs. His back was raw with sores and harness galls and he breathed as no horse he had known.

  ‘Not much of an animal, is he?’ said the tongawalla. ‘Looks like he’ll die any day. But he’s the best I could do. The Muslim guards stole mine yesterday. They would have killed me too had I not immediately dropped my salwar and shown them my circumcised penis.’

  He turned the horse’s slow feet eastward, and the wobbling carriage bounced into the rutty lane with a jolt that brought a stifled cry from Bhabo. Dark silent houses loomed on either side. The narrow street was like a dim tunnel with the faint red glow of the sky its ceiling. The smell of smoke became stronger. The shadows chased one another in the faint light”. With the hot air, came a pandemonium of sounds from the center of the town, yells, the dull rumbling of a crowd. As the tongawalla jerked the horse’s head and turned him into another street, a deafening explosion tore the air and a skyrocket of flame and smoke shot up in the east.

  ‘That must be the police ammunition dump,’ said Bauji calmly.

  ‘Well, too bad for us,’ said the tongawalla. ‘I thought that by circling around the centre of town, we might avoid the fire and the drunken mob at the clock tower. But we’ve got to cross the tower now to get to the station.’

  ‘Must—must we go that way?’ Bhabo quavered.

  ‘Wait,’ said Bauji suddenly.

  Springing down from the tonga, he disappeared in the faint light. He returned with a small limb of a tree in his hand. He pulled the reins from the tongawalla, and laid the wood mercilessly across the horse’s galled back. The animal broke into a shambling trot, his breath panting and laboured. The carriage swayed forward with a jolt. The girls cried out as they bruised themselves against the sides. As they neared the clock tower, the trees thinned out, and tall flames flew above the buildings. There was a glow of sickly light which cast monstrous, twisting shadows. Bauji felt cold, and he shivered even though the heat of the flames was hot against their faces. He looked back. He would have liked nothing more than to turn back to the refuge of his beloved home on Kacheri Bazaar. In the abnormal glow, his dark profile stood out clearly and beautifully. As they dashed down the street, he applied the whip automatically. His face looked set and absent, as though he had forgotten where he was. His broad shoulders were hunched forward and his chin jutted out. The beat of the fire made sweat stream down his forehead.

  Suddenly they were approaching an angry crowd. ‘Mussalman!’ shouted the tongawalla. Bauji pulled into a side lane, then turned and twisted from one narrow street to another until they were at the Clock Tower.

  They were greeted in the square with the crash of a falling house. The cheering mob’s attention was immediately diverted to this spectacle. As the children and Bhabo began to cough from the smoke in their nostrils, Bauji brought the tree limb down on the horse’s back with a cruel force that made the animal leap forward. With all the speed the horse could summon they jolted and bounced across the square. The glare dazzled their eyes and the heat seared their skin. Ahead of them was a tunnel of smoke. They plunged into it, and abruptly they were in semi-darkness. They came out in a narrow street that led to the railway station.

  But they never reached the railway station. As they approached they heard the sound of bullets and found Hindus pouring out in the hundreds from the direction of the station. Many were fleeing across the railway tracks. They learnt that the Muslim guards had taken over the station under the leadership of the Superintendent of Police, and they were indiscriminately shooting at anyone who tried to get onto a train. Not knowing what to do, Bauji’s family joined the escaping Hindus who had formed into a kafla (foot convoy) and were heading out by the only road leading east towards Lahore.

  After they had gone half a mile, they smiled for the first time as they observed at a distance a six-mile-long kafla of Hindus and Sikhs coming from Sargodha, under the escort of a Muslim Bal-uch regiment. In numbers they felt secure. There must have been more than a hundred thousand people, most of them on foot, but some seated in bullock carts, a few in tongas like Bauji’s family. The Lyallpur kafla waited at the road junction as the Sargodha foot convoy passed and then joined it at the rear.

  Among the refugees in the kafla, Bauji found a friend and a neighbour from Kacheri Bazaar. His name was Dr Des Raj. He had sometimes been called home on an emergency, although he was not their regular doctor. Dr Des Raj was in the habit of writing a diary, which he continued through this troubled time. His diary was recovered from his aunt’s house in Delhi, a few years after his death. He wrote the following account of the Lyallpur kafla.

  After joining the Sargodha kafla, we had gone half-a-mile when we had to slow down in order to pass a railway level crossing at Tarkabad, on the outskirts of Lyallpur. Three-quarters of the kafla crossed the railway line, when the gate suddenly closed. As if out of nowhere a mob of armed Muslims emerged at this moment, and fell upon the portion of the convoy left behind, and began a ruthless massacre. The mob must have been hiding in the fields and planned the massacre in advance. Pandemonium broke out. Screaming men and women and children began to run hither and thither in all directions. The Muslims cut down with axes and chavis anyone who came in their way. They looted the property from bullock carts. Since most of their valuables were carried by the women as jewellery, they stripped the women naked, and paraded them. They abducted the younger and prettier girls, and killed the older women. The Hindus looked helplessly to the Baluch military for protection, but the military merely watched, and in a few cases even opened fire on the scattering Hindus who appeared to be escaping into the fields. The assault continued throughout the morning, and by the afternoon the ground was strewn with dead bodies. The army then asked the able-bodied Hindu survivors to pick up the dead before the civil authorities arrived. They had them loaded into military trucks, to be thrown into the Chenab river.

  Mr Hamid, the District Collector, arrived on the scene in the afternoon. He recalled the Baluch army, and under heavy police guard returned the survivors of the convoy to a refugee camp, which he set up in Khalsa College in Lyallpur. Among the survivors were Bauji’s family and Dr Des Raj. They were alive because they had been far at the rear of the convoy; there were too many people to kill and not enough killers. Mr Hamid wrote a report censuring the Baluch commander and the next day he suspended his own SP for his activities at the railway station. In the confusion he did not see Bauji’s family nor they him.

  Dr Des Raj continued the account in his diary of the Khalsa college camp.

  That night in the college camp the Muslim police in charge attacked the inmates. Sixty cases of rape were reported and another fifty Hindu girls were carried away. The police were observed to instigate the Baluch military to join in the attack. At first the soldiers were reluctant to do so. But later they succumbed to a police inspector’s appeal, who eloquently argued that it was the duty of every Mussal-man to kill the infidel. It was written in the Koran, he said. Killing the infidel was a legitimate way to reach heaven.

&nbs
p; At about midnight, accompanied by the cry of ‘Ya Ali, Ya Ali’, the Baluch military opened fire on the helpless refugees. The refugees, many of whom were asleep, tried to scatter and run away. Some of them jumped in the well of the Khalsa College and were drowned. Approximately eight hundred people were killed and thousands wounded. Bauji was hit by a bullet in his thigh. The bodies of the dead were again loaded into army trucks to be thrown into the Chenab.

  The mopping up of bodies was done carelessly, and the next morning when the DC arrived he found 150 bodies still lying in the camp. He immediately left to wire the Headquarters in Lahore for a Hindu Gurkha army contingent to replace the Baluch regiment. He removed the police entirely from the camp, and had the inspector arrested. He persuaded the military commander to disarm the soldiers.

  In the afternoon, Mr Hamid went to the Lyallpur Club for lunch, where he learned that the attack had been pre-planned. The Muslim Agent of the Imperial Bank told him that he had overheard his police guard boasting the previous evening about a plan to attack the camp at night. Mr Hamid asked the Agent, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t attach much importance to the talk. Besides I think the Hindus deserved it, don’t you? We want to cleanse our country of infidels. Pakistan means “land of the pure”, after all.’

  Disgusted, Mr Hamid left his lunch uneaten.

  Meanwhile, at the camp, Dr Des Raj had survived the attack, and he had been treating the wounded since the morning. He left the following in his diary.