A Fine Family: A Novel Page 16

  It was the late afternoon of 20 August 1946. Arjun was in his mother’s dressing room, watching Tara comb her hair. It was a rectangular room whose windows opened on to the veranda on the second floor. From the open window, Arjun could spy a potted palm. Beyond the veranda was a railing in the form of a grille made out of bricks from where one could look down on the courtyard. The chick blinds had been raised, which meant that the evening was approaching. Tara was sitting at an ornate and heavy dressing table made out of Burma teak, with an oval mirror. Its legs were carved in the shape of tiger’s feet, which Arjun found amusing. Arjun was standing near the low table, absorbed in examining the toilet articles—combs, brushes, oils, etc. Tara was applying oil to her long, dark hair with the help of a maid.

  Suddenly there was a sound of footsteps outside. They were quick and urgent steps coming up the small staircase. It was Bauji. It must be important, because he never came to this part of the house. He burst in and announced in an excited voice that Mountbatten had been appointed the last Viceroy. The British were finally going to leave India, he said. The British Raj had come to an end! Tara nervously dropped the bottle of coconut oil.

  ‘Look what you made me do!’ she said to Arjun. She turned to her father and she asked, ‘At what cost, Bauji? Is the partition of Punjab going to be the price for our freedom?’

  3

  Tara was crying by the banks of the Sutlej river. She was seated inside a tent beside her four-and-a-half-year-old son. She asked Arjun if the sound of shots could still be heard. He went outside to check, but she called him back immediately. It was only the sound of thunder in the monsoon sky, he said. It had been an especially rainy month. The killing had been heavy too.

  It was the historic evening of 14 August 1947. At midnight, India would become free. Seva Ram, Tara and their families had become refugees like fourteen million others as a result of the British decision to divide the Punjab. But unlike many others, Seva Ram and Tara were fortunate to have found asylum at the ashram, where the guru had set up a camp with tents and makeshift kitchens for the refugees. Since it was in East Punjab, the ashram found itself in India according to the boundary line drawn by Mr Radcliffe. When the partition was announced in July, Seva Ram and Tara had been living in Lahore. With Anees’ help they had escaped and they now felt safe and relieved to be at the ashram. But their journey was not yet over.

  Tara had been crying the whole day. She had been thinking of Bauji, Bhabo and the rest of the family. She had had no news about them for two weeks. In the last letter from Lyallpur, Bauji was reported to be stubbornly insisting on staying on in Pakistan. She wondered if they were still alive and where they were. Seva Ram had gone to Jullunder, the nearest town and railway station, to enquire about their whereabouts and about his transfer order from the government.

  When she first started weeping, Arjun would also cry. Now he began to resent her constant sighing and crying. He sat ona wooden box wondering if she would ever smile again. After a while he got up and went outside the tent. He looked into the darkening August evening, full of scared voices, monsoon thunder and the smell of the bloody night. His mother’s bangles jingled softly and he went back into the tent. Her deep eyes appeared deeper in the light of the kerosene lamp. Soon she got up, and went to the stove with a towel in her hand. Suddenly she turned around, for someone had entered the tent. It was the guru. He stood tall and erect, his handsome face glowing in the strange light of the monsoon evening. Tara was startled. She pulled down the end of her sari to cover her head, and tightly clutched the towel in her hand. She felt confused in the presence of her noble host, but Arjun was delighted to have someone to talk to.

  ‘When is my rather coming?’ Arjun said.

  ‘Tonight,’ replied the guru.

  The child clapped his hands with delight, and the holy man put his hand on the boy’s head. Tara, feeling more at ease, allowed herself a faint smile.

  ‘You have been crying my child?’ he asked her.

  ‘My family, I have been thinking about them.’

  ‘Don’t worry, child. We all have to die one day, but only when our time has come. Neither before nor after. The time is predetermined,’ he said.

  ‘All this killing and death! I am frightened,’ she said.

  ‘Do not be afraid of death, my child. Learn to die when you are still alive.’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘Learn to meditate and you will die every day. During meditation, concentrate your attention at the point midway between your eyes, behind your forehead, where your soul resides. With practice your soul will catch the sound of the Infinite, and leave your body at the moment of death. Thus you will conquer death.’

  She continued to look confused. He smiled again.

  ‘Ask Seva Ram and he will explain to you why the initiate is not afraid of death,’ he said.

  ‘I am angry with all religions, guruji,’ she said suddenly, picking up courage, ‘because they divide people and turn one person against the other.’

  He laughed as he realized that she had a mind of her own. He liked her pluck.

  ‘A saint comes into the world,’ he explained, ‘to show people the way. He does not come to create a religion. After he leaves, people turn his message into rites and rituals. They convert his teachings into an organized religion. They become bigoted, start quarrelling with one another. The real message of the saint is soon forgotten. This was the fate of the Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Nanak and others. Saints do not ask us to go to temples, churches, and mountains to seek the truth. The truth is within us, within our own body.’

  Before she could say anything he had turned and disappeared into the sea of refugees sprawled out in the wet night.

  Tara’s mood was completely changed by the visit. Instead of crying, she began to hum happily as she prepared dinner. It occurred to her that she had not thanked the guru for giving them shelter. She was amazed by his calm manner. He did not appear burdened or harried by the task of organizing for two hundred thousand refugees. She felt deeply moved that in the midst of all his responsibilities he had allowed himself the time to talk to her and to console her.

  Soon there were familiar footsteps outside. A lightly built man entered. With a cry, Arjun jumped up and rushed to his fathe’s arms. Tara too went up to him and greeted him with her eyes. He took the boy in his arms. Bursting to ask him a thousand questions, she could only say, ‘You must be hungry. Dinner is ready.’

  He sat down and quietly waited for her to lay out the food. She, however, could not contain herself any longer.

  ‘What is happening?’ she almost screamed in anger. ‘I thought we had accepted partition as the price for communal peace. Once Jinnah got his Pakistan, there was supposed to be no need for killing Hindus. Oh God, how could Nehru and others have been so out of touch with the people? Did they really think they would buy Hindu-Muslim peace by agreeing to partition?’ After a pause, she sadly said, ‘We lost either way—we lost our homes and the killings didn’t stop.’

  ‘True’, he said. After a pause he added, It is sad, Tara, that for thirty years Gandhi preached non-violence. But in the end it did no good in the Punjab. We still behaved like brutes.’

  ‘What is going to happen to us? Where are we going to go?’ she asked.

  ‘We have been transferred to Simla,’ he replied.

  ‘Simla!’ she uttered incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ he said without emotion. ‘Simla is going to be the new capital of the Punjab, now that Lahore has been lost to Pakistan.’

  ‘You mean the Simla—the one in the hills?’ she repeated, still not believing him.

  He nodded.

  ‘But how exciting! I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in Simla? I went there when I was fourteen and I have never seen anything so beautiful.’

  Her reaction was understandable, for a visit (let alone a posting) to the Himalayan summer capital of the British Raj was considered to be an unbelievable stroke of good luck. To live in the moun
tains of Simla was the fondest hope of every English family in India during the Raj. It was a mysterious pleasure forbidden to most Indians.

  ‘Oh, the Himalayan flowers, the pine trees, the rhododendrons, the snow-covered peaks, and the cool breeze from the mountains—it is a city built by the gods!’ she added excitedly.

  Seva Ram had never seen her like this. She was like a child, and she infected him with her excitement. He too laughed. It had been a long time since the refugees had known happiness.

  ‘The pretty little English houses, the glamorous shops on the Mall, the tiny train. . .’

  Arjun jumped with joy, shouting ‘Simla train, chook-chook train.’

  ‘When do we leave?’ she asked.

  ‘When it is safer. In a week perhaps. I am going back tomorrow to see if I can bring out my father and mother from the other side.’

  ‘But you will be killed!’ Her face changed suddenly; her eyes became frightened again.

  After dinner that night, Dr Sharma, a friend of Seva Ram’s, invited them to his tiny brick cottage, where he had the rare luxury of electricity, so that they could listen to the radio. There were a dozen people huddled around the radio in the ill-lit room when Nehru began his historic speech to the new nation.

  Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. . . At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. . .

  Despite the suffering and the uncertainty about their future, the refugees were filled with emotion as they listened to Nehru’s words. The national anthem of the new nation was heard for the first time. Most of the listeners did not recognize it. Dr Sharma was the first to stand up. Then one by one the other listeners got up, until everyone in the dusky room was standing at attention. When the reference came to the ‘Punjab’ in the song, the refugees looked at each other. There was helplessness in some eyes, a few were red with anger, others were filled with tears. Despite their travails, Tara and Seva Ram realized their good fortune in having witnessed the birth of their nation after centuries of domination by foreigners.

  Midnight came and the rule of the British over India was over.

  Their train had been standing still for six hours at Jullunder station. Seva Ram got up and went out of the train carriage to check again with the station master when the train would move. As he was leaving, Tara implored him to be careful and to return quickly. And she clutched Arjun’s hand.

  There was chaos at the station since no one knew to what schedule the trains were running. On both sides of the railway platform crowds of refugees were gathered. On the east side, Hindus and Sikhs sat waiting for the train. On both sides they were huddled together, believing that they were safer in a group. As soon as a train approached, the refugees would get up. Pushing and shouting, they would rush for the train. But the last four trains had not stopped.

  Arjun was looking out of the train window. He tried to lean out, but the horizontal steel bars on the window prevented him. A tall Muslim policeman stood stationary on the platform. His face was strong-willed and handsome. Suddenly, there was movement and noise amongst the refugees. A train was coming from the opposite direction—from Delhi going to Lahore. Activity on the platform increased. The policeman was unaffected, and continued to stare straight ahead. Arjun saw two Sikh boys in their teens suddenly emerge from nowhere. They came from the back and thrust a dagger through the policeman from behind. He did not cry. He just fell down and died. Tara pulled her son back. She tried to shut the window, but it wouldn’t close.

  Screams were heard as the incoming train slowed down. There were sounds of bullets. Tara pushed Arjun down; she too lay on the floor of the carriage with her baby. They were shooting at the incoming train, which again speeded up. It was not going to stop either. There was more shooting, followed by more shouts and shrieks. The train full of half dead bodies passed by.

  Soon it was quiet again. Tara could hear herself crying. ‘Why doesn’t my father come back?’ asked Arjun. ‘Hush!’ she silenced him. She was frightened and haunted by the same question.

  Half-an-hour later, an elderly Sikh gentleman forced his way into their compartment. Full of fear, clutching Arjun, Tara screamed, ‘We are Hindus, don’t kill us!’ Then she saw Seva Ram, who came immediately after the Sikh. She rushed up to her husband. The Sikh gentleman sat down with a sigh. Seva Ram introduced the stranger. He was the richest landlord from his home town, and he had lost everything, including every member of his family. Seva Ram found him at the ticket window when the shooting had started. He had grabbed him, and both of them had found shelter in the toilet of the First Class Retiring Room during the trouble.

  The stranger did not say a word but stared out of the window mournfully. After some time, Tara, who couldn’t bear the silence any longer, asked her husband if the Simla train was running. The stranger unexpectedly snapped at her, Woman, is this the time to think of holidays in hill stations!’ Tara quickly explained that she was not going to Simla for a vacation. ‘My husband has been posted there by the government.’

  The old Sikh began to cry. ‘Last Thursday night Muslims rushed into my house with swords, screaming jihad,’ he said. ‘In an instant they cut off the head of my seventy-year-old father because he was closest to the door. Then they cut off my son’s legs. My poor brave boy, he hurled an axe at them before he fell down. They struck at him again, and killed him while I, like a coward, I concealed myself behind a standing charpai.

  ‘Next they broke down the door of the room where my daughter and my wife had tried to hide. They dragged out the two screaming women. Before my eyes, I saw one of them hack off my wife’s breasts one after the other. They cheered as each one was lopped off. Then they cut her throat. Just before I lost consciousness, I saw the man, who had eut my wife’s breasts. I saw him carry off my fifteen-year-old daughter on his shoulders.

  ‘When I came to, it was morning, and there was a deathly silence throughout the house. I stealthily walked out and discovered that there was not a single living person in the entire neighbourhood. I inhaled the pungent smell of decomposing corpses, and I vomited.

  ‘My only thought now was to escape with my life. Fortunately, I found a patrol of the Punjab Border Force. I hid in a truck manned by a Gurkha, who brought me to this train. And here I am now, shamelessly alive, with nothing to call my own in this world, waiting to go wherever this train will take me.’

  4

  The view from the tiny window of the miniature Kalka-Simla train was enough to refresh the most exhausted emotions. Before them stood snow-tipped crests of the world’s highest mountain range. Their eyes feasted on the resplendent green of the lower Himalayas—soaring pines, luxurious deodar, and delicate carpets of fern. This was heaven, after the tiring journey through unending dusty plains, withering in the Punjab’s remorseless heat. The stench of death was left far behind at Jullunder station.

  The train stopped at Barog. Seva Ram and his family alighted to have breakfast in the garden of the railway refreshment room, surrounded by dahlias, roses and heliotropes. Rosy-cheeked hill boys served them tea, which tasted like no other tea in the world. As they ate breakfast they were treated to an extraordinary sight: a beautiful white car on rails went speeding by. ‘The rail car,’ said the waiter, ‘carries the rich and the busy, who don’t carry luggage and who want to reach Simla in a hurry. It used to be only the white sahibs who travelled in it. Since Independence everyone is riding in it. Amazing, how quickly the brown sahibs have slid into their shoes!’

  After they returned to the toy train, an old Anglo-Indian ticket collector came into their compartment to check their tickets. He sensed their excitement, and he said, ‘Ah, this is a lover’s train!’

  ‘Lovers?’ said Tara.

  ‘There are 103 tunnels in a run of
just sixty miles,’ he said with a mischievous smile.

  Each curve of the winding journey revealed verdant slopes with tiers of neatly and evenly cultivated terraces, which looked like hundreds of gardens hanging in the air. Between the terraces were belts of huge fir and pine trees. Tara pointed at a splendid waterfall, tumbling majestically down into the valley below. Its water shone like silver in the distance under the blue, cloudless sky. They passed a dense forest of deodar, surrounded by slopes clothed with rhododendrons. Towards the south, they could see the Ambala plains far below, with Sabathu and the Kasauli hills in the foreground, and huge ravines leading down into deep valleys. Northwards, were the confused Himalayan mountain chains, rising range after range, crowned in the distance by a crescent of perpetually snowy peaks that stood out in bold relief. At Shogi they glimpsed the first wondrous vision of Simla. From afar it looked like a beautiful green-carpeted hill garden dotted with red-roofed Swiss chalets. Their excitement mounted. They passed Jutogh, crossed Summer Hill, turned into tunnel number 103, and finally reached Simla’s Victorian railway station.

  Soon after their arrival they settled into a little cottage called ‘Pine Villa’, which was situated in a less fashionable part of town known as Chota Simla. They had a servant from Lyallpur, Babu, to help them settle down. Although it was tiny and icy cold at night, Tara liked her little house. It was situated in a handsome grove of oaks and deodars and from her veranda she had a spectacular view of the next ridge and many ridges beyond. From the narrow veranda she could step out to a little lawn; from the lawn there was nothing to step onto except fresh air for the ground suddenly dropped beneath one’s feet as it often did in Simla.

  The first days in Simla were exhilarating. They went out every day, walking about the six-square-mile town, seven thousand feet above sea level. They had never seen anything so beautiful: the Tudor belfry of Christ Church Cathedral with its massive brass bells; the elegant Victorian villas with their gardens bursting with dahlias, pansies and sweet-peas, the imposing architecture of the Raj, epitomized in the Viceregal Lodge; and the wide Mall, with its brilliant and fashionable shops. After all, Simla had been a grand bouquet to the Englishmen’s fondest Imperial dream. For five months of the year, from mid-April to mid-September, it used to be the Imperial capital from where the British Viceroy ruled the Indian Empire (extending, administratively speaking, from Burma to the Red Sea). Every Englishman and woman in India used to yearn to be in Simla for ‘the season’, when it was one of the gayest places on earth. For all its vivaciousness and glamour, one was never allowed to forget that it was an Imperial capital. Until World War I, Indians were not even allowed to walk on the Mall. Later they were, as long as they did not wear sandals, a requirement which effectively excluded the majority.