Across the Line

by Nayanika Mahtani

  It is full-blown war. However, it always abides by the spirit of the sport.

  After all, the sports pitch is perhaps the only place where this war should happen. Between the two nations, across the line.

  Epilogue

  ‘We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place. We stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back.’

  —Pascal Mercier,, Night Train to Lisbon

  What Did I Miss?

  1966

  London, United Kingdom

  Boasting original ownership by Napolean III’s favourite chef, the Gaslight was the place to be seen at, in London’s 1960s. Which, of course, was why Antonia Radcliffe had chosen the restaurant for the luncheon with Claire and Pauline. To which, she would, of course, arrive fashionably late.

  A waiter materialized with a platter of hors d’oeuvres, which he set down in front of the two elegant ladies seated across each other, at a table for three. Deeply engrossed in conversation, Claire and Pauline barely noticed its arrival.

  ‘Do you honestly think we should tell Antonia about that ghastly poem?’ asked Claire. Her words seemed to imply that they shouldn’t mention it, although her smug expression suggested entirely the opposite.

  ‘Well, if it’s in the papers and it’s by W.H. Auden, she’s bound to find out about it,’ said Pauline. ‘Is it really all that bad?’

  ‘Goodness, yes. It shows Cyril in the most unflattering light. Have a look for yourself—especially the last few lines.’

  Claire reached into her handbag and handed a newspaper to Pauline. The words ‘Partition: A Poem by W.H. Auden’ caught her eye. Pauline began to read it, at first in silence, and then, murmuring the last few lines aloud, as if to convince herself that this had actually appeared in print.

  The weather was frightfully hot,

  And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,

  But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,

  A continent for better or worse divided.

  The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot

  The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,

  Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

  ‘Oh dear, this is quite harsh. But it was hardly like Cyril drew that line of his own choosing,’ said Pauline. ‘Antonia says that he doesn’t want to be reminded of it at all. Says he burnt all the papers connected with it. And even returned his fee of £3000.’

  Claire looked over her shoulder and dropped her voice to the breathy whisper of confidences, ‘Well, some would say that Cyril was rewarded handsomely enough upon his return from India. I mean, to be made a Law Lord without ever having been a Judge!’ Claire raised a suggestive eyebrow, indicating just how out of turn that was. ‘And then, a few months later, he was suddenly a Baron! Don’t you remember how chuffed Antonia was at becoming Lady Radcliffe, flaunting it in our faces at every chance?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Claire. I think we’re being a little unkind here,’ said Pauline. ‘If anything, it was that crooked Dickie Mountbatten and his lust for laurels that forced Cyril’s hand. And he gained far more from the whole exercise than poor Cyril did.’

  ‘I guess you’re right, Pauline,’ conceded Claire, sipping her Pimm’s. ‘In any case, it was the fault of the squabbling Indian and Pakistani governments. Appallingly poor governance—how else could a million people die just by the drawing of a line?’

  Pauline nodded distractedly, as she tried to catch a waiter’s attention for more pressing matters. Her White Lady wasn’t quite chilled enough.

  Just then, Antonia Radcliffe breezed into the restaurant in her perfumed paisley, pashmina and pearls.

  ‘I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, darlings,’ she gushed. ‘Tell me, what did I miss?’

  Ever so discreetly, Claire pushed the newspaper closer to Antonia’s chair, so that she might happen to spot it.

  Erasure

  1966

  London, United Kingdom

  The man looked up from the maps he had been poring over. His hands were clammy, partly from the heat but mostly from the enormity of the task he had been assigned. He mopped the sweat off his brow. Then, Cyril Radcliffe picked up his pen, drew a deep breath—and started to write.

  Dear Dickie,

  I regret to inform you that I cannot draw this line—especially not in the manner and time frame that you have asked. My conscience will not allow it. Not even for Crown or country. Because, before all else, I am answerable to myself.

  Yours truly,

  Cyril Radcliffe

  He set the pen down. There. The deed was done.

  He felt lighter. Afloat almost.

  ‘Cyril, it’s time for supper,’ said Antonia, as she gently shook him awake.

  Radcliffe opened his eyes, now almost completely clouded with cataracts, to see his wife standing next to his armchair. He sat up with a start.

  ‘Is everything all right, dear?’ Antonia asked.

  Radcliffe nodded absently. He slowly stood up and shuffled to the window.

  The sun was setting. There was nothing half-hearted about the autumn. A luminous sapphire sky framed a canopy of scarlet leaves. Radcliffe watched a solitary leaf languidly drift and finally settle on the ground, adding to the burgundy patchwork quilt that covered the earth. It would be winter soon. Followed by spring. The colours of nature erasing what was written before.

  Cyril Radcliffe stood at the window, looking out into the fading light of dusk.

  If only all lines could be erased.

  If only.

  Author’s Note

  This book probably started writing itself many years ago, owing to an unspoken conversation. One that I wish I’d had but didn’t.

  I was about ten years old, and as we always did over the school holidays, my parents, my brother and I journeyed from Kolkata to my grandparents’ farm in a little village in north India. At the time, I didn’t know that my grandparents had spent their childhood and youth in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Sargodha. I didn’t know that they had arrived in New Delhi as refugees in 1947, alongside millions of others, with just the clothes on their back, having lost loved ones in an upheaval so deeply traumatic that it never found mention in our conversations. Except, perhaps, that one time—had I stayed and spoken.

  Afternoons at the farm were sweltering—too hot for tractor rides or skimming stones on the canal or splashing around in the tube well, which is what my brother and I would usually spend the rest of the day doing. So, our afternoon ritual was to laze around on the divan in my grandfather’s study, with the bamboo blinds lowered and the air-cooler blowing khus-khus scented breeze our way. Some days, my grandfather would ask us to select a book from his huge collection of Urdu novels and poetry, and then he would read to us. Having grown up in Rawalpindi, he was fluent in Urdu but couldn’t read Hindi. I couldn’t read Urdu

  but could understand it enough to get by, so this arrangement worked pretty well for me; although, my brother, who was younger, would usually wander off to play with our cook’s son instead.

  One afternoon, I selected a book and handed it to my grandfather. He looked at it, hesitated ever so slightly, and then announced its name Phundne, which meant ‘tassels’, he said. He told me it was a collection of short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto—and the story he chose to read to me was called Toba Tek Singh.

  By way of backdrop, my grandfather explained that this story was set in a lunatic asylum, a few years after the Partition. It began with the governments of Pakistan and India having decided to swap their lunatics along religious lines, just as they had done with the rest of their people—so that all Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims ended up on the ‘right’ side of the border. I remember thinking this a rather silly plotline, but there was little else to do, so I listened. Manto’s dark satire as to who then were the real lunatics was lost on me, of course.

  I can still recall my grandfather’s voice, ass
uming different intonations as he read. He had me in splits as he muttered the well-known rant of the story’s protagonist: ‘Upar di gur gur di annexe di be dhiyana di mung di daal of di Pakistan and Hindustan of di durr phitey munh.’ I had no clue of its context, but it sounded nonsensically amusing. Between peals of laughter, I looked up to notice that my grandfather had stopped reading. He sat slumped forward, his hands covering his face, his shoulders convulsing as he sobbed.

  I had never seen my grandfather cry before—or ever after—but that day, my otherwise fearless grandfather, who had braved lathi charges and prison in the fight for independence, wept. At a loss for what to do, I went to call my grandmother. In stunned silence, I watched her comforting him as if he were a little child, murmuring ‘Chhado, mitti pao’—let it go, bury it. And then I quietly left the room. Later that evening, I remember hiding that book behind all his other books, so I would never happen to take it out again. And never have to see my grandfather cry.

  What I didn’t do was ever ask him what caused those tears. The regret still leaves me feeling empty.

  As the years went by, my grandparents shared countless anecdotes about their early days in undivided India. The pranks they would get up to with their friends at school and the trouble it got them into with their teachers and parents. The uncooked legs of lamb that they would sneak into the kitchen garden to be slow-roasted overnight in the tandoor pit, without my strictly vegetarian great-grandmother’s knowledge. The street plays they would stage to protest against British rule. Their stories were peppered with fond anecdotes of their neighbours—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis—who had lived next door for generations. I would listen, enraptured, piecing together the fragments in my head, imagining the people and places that once made up their world.

  Yet, what they never spoke about was the events surrounding the Partition itself. Perhaps it was just too painful to reopen the wounds. Perhaps, as refugees, grief was a luxury they could ill afford. Or perhaps, gaining independence had demanded centre stage instead. I sometimes wonder, on each Independence Day, did they also quietly mourn who and what they’d lost in the aftermath?

  This book, then, is my attempted tribute to a generation of quiet heroes on either side of the border, who silently bore the brunt of a cataclysmic rupture in their lives. A generation that wordlessly erased its past and gave their all to building our future. And most strikingly, a generation who, despite everything they had been through, harboured no malice. Maybe because they had seen first-hand that there were no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. That, alternatively, the aggressors had also been the victims. That an eye for an eye did indeed make us blind, and easier to manipulate by those whom it suited.

  In these tumultuous times, as the world gets alarmingly less tolerant, we might do well to take a leaf from their book—to seek out what we share rather than what divides us and not hand history the chance to repeat itself.

  I’d like to think that perhaps this story chose me to allow me a chance to make amends, in some small way, for not finding the words, when I should have.

  I hope these words do make a difference to someone, somewhere.

  Bibliography

  Pratchett, Terry. A Hat Full of Sky. London: Corgi Childrens, 2005.

  Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2000.

  Pratchett, Terry. Sourcery. New York City: Harper, 2008.

  Turow, Scott. Ordinary Heroes. New York City: Warner Books, 2005.

  Dunn, Stephen. Here and Now: Poems, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011

  Mercier, Pascal. Night Train to Lisbon, trans. Barbara Harshav, 2007

  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). ‘The State of The World’s Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action’. Last accessed 11 October 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/3ebf9bab0.pdf.

  Acknowledgements

  I have no idea why a particular story chooses us. Or why it

  gets told when it does. I’ve come to believe that long before a story is born, the universe earmarks the people who will be involved in its telling; their paths then cross by exquisite design—and the pieces serendipitously fall into place when the stars align.

  If you indulge my seemingly far-fetched drift, it doesn’t take a village—it takes a galaxy (with a publisher in it) to raise a story. And an author who shows up to write, day after day—hoping, against all odds, that the galaxy will also do its bit.

  Luckily for me, the galaxy obliged. I have been ever so fortunate to cross paths with some incredibly special people who helped shape this book along the way. For which, I owe many grateful thanks.

  To Pervin and Sean Mahoney, for their invaluable inputs and generous friendship. I must have done something truly wonderful to deserve having them in my corner.

  To the absolutely phenomenal team at Penguin Random House India—Sohini Mitra, Smit Zaveri, Piya Kapur, Aditi Batra—for their belief in my stories and for taking my words to a better place, always. It has been such a joy to work with you.

  To Devangana Dash. Thanks to her amazing talent, I hope this book is judged by its cover.

  To Rajan Navani, Vikram Sathaye, Asma Said Khan (my inspiration for Nabeel Said’s character), Aliya Suleman, Sangeeta Datta, Chintan Girish Modi, Baela Raza Jamil, Ting Wang, Sunaina Shivpuri, Avi Gulati, Deepak Melwani, Dr Adwaita Menon (ace tape-ball cricket consultant), Jyotsna Gadi, Noreen Kazim and Bodhijit Ray—for their unhesitating and enthusiastic support in finding a wider reach for this little book.

  To all the contributors to The Partition Museum in Amritsar, The 1947 Partition Project at Stanford University and The Oral History Project—The Citizens Archive of Pakistan; and the lovely staff at the British Library.

  To my parents and my brother, Nishchae, for their boundless duas that guide my hand to write.

  To Nandana and Vrinda, for reading every single draft and coming up with uncannily insightful plot points. And more than anything else, for gifting me with precious memories of our shared writing adventures.

  To Vivek, for always believing, even when I floundered, and making it all possible.

  Thank you everyone. For helping me tell a story that is very close to my heart.

  Read more in Penguin

  Red Card

  Kautuk Srivastava

  One team. One year. Everything to lose.

  When Rishabh Bala reaches the tenth standard, life takes a turn for the complicated. The bewildered boy feels the pressure of the looming board exams and finds himself hopelessly and hormonally in love. But what he yearns for most is victory on the field: at least one trophy with his beloved school football team.

  Set in the suburban Thane of 2006, here is a coming-of-age story that runs unique as it does familiar. Hopscotching from distracted classrooms and tired tutorials to triumphs and tragedies on muddy grounds, this is the journey of Rishabh and his friends from peak puberty to the cusp of manhood.

  Read more in Penguin

  Toppers

  Aayush

  How far will you go to be the best?

  Manipulation and lies reign supreme at the elite school of Woodsville. The race for the coveted spot of head scholar sees stakes being raised and sides taken as the student body turns into a pawn in a vicious game played by Woodsville’s toppers: a charismatic royal, a calculating damsel in distress, the school star who had it all, a topper who cannot lose, a soft-spoken boy tired of living in the shadows and an unstoppable child prodigy.

  Witness an intense battle of wills where the toppers overcome their demons only to unleash those lying in wait within others. Chaos and mayhem become their playthings as the facades slowly begin to crumble. But in their fight to be the best, they forget one thing . . . there’s always someone better.

  Fast-paced, riveting and intense, Toppers is the edge-of-the-seat dramatic thriller you’ve been waiting for all year.

  ‘Armed with ambition and a politics that is rarely found in the genre, the book invents a new space for itself ’ Fi
rstpost

  Read more in Penguin

  Asmara’s Summer

  Andaleeb Wajid

  ‘For a month, I’m going to be living a lie.’

  Smart, sassy, popular, Asmara has a secret that could absolutely destroy her street cred in college: her grandparents live on Tannery Road, a conservative, not-so-posh part of town filled with claustrophobic houses and fashion disasters. So imagine her despair when she finds out that she has to spend her entire summer vacation there . . . possibly without Internet!

  Funny, filmy and wildly entertaining, Asmara’s Summer will send you into fits of giggles and tug at your heartstrings at the same time.

  THE BEGINNING

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  This collection published 2019

  Copyright © Nayanika Mahtani 2019

  Jacket images © Devangana Dash

  This digital edition published in 2019.

  e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05714-5

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.