Footprints on Zero Line

by Gulzar

  I don’t know why I was so hopeful that this would be the same Wazir Ali. The same Wazir who had abducted me when I was an infant. Or rather, I had wished that he had taken me away.

  But it wasn’t him. It turned out to be someone else. In any case, he agreed to let me stay in his houseboat for one night. He even made a bed for me … on the floor. There was no carved bed in sight.

  The next day I returned. I came back to the airport. Three times. At three places. My entire luggage was opened and checked. My bras and panties were whisked and inspected minutely. The sight of it made my breasts ache. Everywhere there were two queues, two cubicles. And the way the women officers touched me during the body search, it seemed as though they were lesbians. All of them. In the third cubicle, when they made me take off my shoes and socks, one of them asked me as her hands roved over my body, ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s for my period; I am having my menstrual cycle.’

  At about the same time, I heard a familiar choked voice from an adjacent cubicle.

  ‘Who is there?’ I asked and almost pushed my way into the cubicle. Bua was standing in front of me. She held a ticket for Delhi in one hand. Her waistband was open. Her salwar lay on the floor and her shirt was tucked above. She was speaking in a rasping voice, taut as a tightly drawn rope, ‘This is the only place left to search … go on, search it.’

  She saw me and became nearly hysterical.

  ‘Which country have I come to? Is this my own country?’

  She collapsed on top of her fallen salwar.

  I could hear Khalil’s loud voice.

  ‘What do you people want? What do you want from us? Leave us to our own fate, Be’n. Now even our greenery has turned red. Even the grass that grows on our earth has become red.’

  Over

  BUJHARAT SINGH had got so used to speaking on the wireless that in the normal course of events, when he finished speaking, he would always say, ‘Over!’ We were standing near him. He said to us, ‘You can pull up that cot and sit. Over!’

  We pulled up the cot. Gopi whispered to me, ‘What kind of name is Bujharat Singh?’

  I shrugged. ‘That’s his name, what can one say?’

  Bujharat Singh had been talking on the wireless for a long time.

  ‘Get four sturdy men to sit on his back and let him run. He will be set right. Over!’

  He waited for a response from the other side and then said, ‘Tie a rope around his legs, use a stick and make him run. Make sure he runs at least two miles. Over!’

  There was another pause while he listened. Then he said, ‘It won’t do any good starving him. He will only die. You talk such nonsense. Over!’

  He was making these suggestions to help get a maddened camel under control in some distant check post. Gopi and I sat patiently on the other side of the lantern.

  We were at a small check post in the middle of a desert, about 40 km from Pochina. We had come to Pochina, on the border of India and Pakistan, to shoot a film. It is a beautiful village. The houses look as though they have been made with crayons, like a drawing in a child’s painting book. Even the check post is a kutcha house of bricks plastered with mud. There are two barrack-like rooms. A square alcove has been cut into one of the walls; a soldier in full uniform stands in it with a gun resting to his side. It seems so unnecessary. All the others stroll about in their shorts and vests, or sit in the sun, giving each other a massage with mustard oil, or else they are busy doing squats. When our heroine came, the poor things had to put on clothes and comb their hair. Our director found this location after a rigorous search. You can stand anywhere, look in any direction, all you would see is a vast undulating desert. And the wind constantly caresses and smoothens out the wrinkles in the sand dunes.

  About two furlongs from this check post there is a block of cement: on one side of it is written ‘India’, and on the other, ‘Pakistan’. Such blocks of cement are placed after every two furlongs; in between there is an empty barren stretch of land, sand and loose dirt and a few scraggly green bushes that sheep and camel keep tugging at.

  The animals are at liberty to roam on either side. You can’t tell anything about state or religion by looking at them. As a matter of fact, you can’t tell even from looking at their masters. But at least one can interrogate them; you can’t do that with the animals…

  We were given permission for three days. We could set up our tents. However, there was a problem. The boys could go here or there behind a mound to answer the call of nature; the girls were a worried lot. There was a makeshift latrine of sorts but it had no door, nor even a curtain.

  ‘We go to the desert for all our needs. The sand serves every purpose. Where will we get so much water out here?’

  ‘So where do you get the water for drinking and cooking or bathing?’

  ‘There is a pipeline, sahib-ji, but it’s controlled from Jaisalmer. There is always a shortage by the time it reaches here. So, we have to send for water tankers. That way the contractors are happy as they make money too.’

  We had set aside one tent for the girls. We got our water from bottles as we had a sufficient stock of Bisleri. Our heroine, whom we called Dimpy-ji, had fired many bullets on the screen. But she had never fired real bullets from a real gun. She asked the soldier standing in the cut-out in the wall, ‘Does it have bullets?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  The soldier stepped down. Dimpy-ji put one foot in the groove in the wall and clambered up. In front of her lay an empty desert … like an exceedingly beautiful bedcover spread out on the ground.

  Far on the right were two green trees; they were khejri trees, and squatting close beside them were some houses.

  ‘Who lives there? Over there?’ Dimpy-ji asked, gesturing in the distance.

  ‘Those houses belong to the goatherds.’

  ‘Is it a village?

  ‘Well, you can say it’s a village of sorts.’

  ‘What is it called?’

  The soldier looked around a bit sheepishly. Several soldiers had trailed the heroine and were now standing in the doorway. They were all smiling. There was a senior among them; he said, ‘It has no name. Everyone calls it Pochina’s Tail.’

  A scratchy laugh ran through the crowd. A row of teeth glittered like a line drawn by a chalk.

  Dimpy asked the senior, ‘Can I fire this gun?’

  He answered a little hesitantly, ‘Yes … yes, you can.’

  ‘But what if someone fires back from that side of the border?’

  ‘No problem … we use a bullet here or there by way of greeting.’

  ‘Really? What if I fire two shots?’

  A smile was pasted on the face of every soldier.

  The senior replied, ‘It is a signal to allow someone who wants to cross over from our side to do so. If they wish to send someone over from that side they too fire two shots.’

  Another line was drawn by the chalk. Everyone smiled yet again, their smiles frozen on their lips. Dimpy-ji fired a salute towards the check post on the other side.

  The sound of the shot echoed in the empty desert and floated across to the other side.

  Gopi Advani was standing beside me. Suddenly, he trembled. His lips quivered and his eyes became moist.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Sheepishly, he said, ‘Nothing. Sindh lies on that side … my village.’ And he went outside.

  Several people in the unit tease Gopi by calling him ‘Gopi Baby’. He is a very emotional person. His eyes well up when he talks about his mother. He is from Sindh. After Partition, he had continued to study in a school there for three or four years. Things worsened when the muhajirs from India reached Sindh. And so he had to flee. Today, suddenly upon seeing Sindh so close by, his eyes had welled up.

  Nobody saw him for the rest of the day. At night, he was not to be found in his tent either. When the director asked about him, I came up with an excuse. ‘He wasn’t feeling too well; I have told h
im to go back to his tent and rest.’

  But I was worried. What if he had gone over to the other side?

  He wasn’t to be found the next morning either. It was only the day after that I finally met him in the afternoon. It turned out that he had indeed set out for the other side. But he had barely travelled some distance when he got lost.

  As he told me, ‘The desert looks the same in all directions. You climb one dune and the dune facing you is exactly the same as the one you have left behind. There was only one thing to do: look out for my footprints and return. But when I turned to look, they had disappeared. I was really scared. Thank God, Salman showed up.’

  ‘Salman?’

  ‘Listen, I am telling you, when the desert began to heat up, it seemed as though it was getting angry at me. “Why are you messing up my bedcover? Pick up your footprints and leave!” It is so vast, and I am so small. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my head. After some time, I heard someone singing. Somewhere far away someone was singing a maand: “Padharomaare des… (Come to my land…).” I couldn’t see anyone. I unwrapped the shirt from my head and began to wave it about. He spotted me from God knows where, because when I saw him he was standing on the dune just above my head. He was riding a camel. He said: “Kithapiyo ache, sain?”

  ‘I can’t describe how I felt when I heard these words spoken in Sindhi in the middle of that desert … as though my mother had picked me up and placed me on her lap! He had asked me: “Where are you coming from?” I answered: “Pochina.” He made me sit on the camel behind him and we sped off.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ I asked. ‘Sindh?’

  ‘No, we went to a village called Miyan Jallarh. It is behind Pochina. That’s where Salman’s home is.’

  ‘So where is he from? Here? Or there?’

  According to Gopi, Salman was on the run from the other side. He had killed a rival there and run away to find refuge in Miyan Jallarh. And then, three years later, he had married the woman who had given him shelter. Now he has two girls from that woman. They are growing up.

  ‘He didn’t go back?’ I asked.

  ‘He goes back … to meet his beloved … the same girl over whom he fought and killed. She is married now. She also has two children.’

  After a pause, Gopi continued his story.

  ‘When I told him I am from there, he immediately said: “Come, I will take you there. I will show you your village and bring you back.” For a minute I was tempted; I wanted to go. I said: “Now? At night?” He said: “Arre, sain, I can forget the way but my camel never does! She will go all the way and stop at the same door each time.”

  ‘“Whose door?” I asked but it was his wife who answered: “He has a woman there also … at her door! Across the border!”

  ‘“You don’t mind?”

  ‘“I have told him … bring her here. The two of us will stay together.”’

  Our borders are amazing places. What we read in the newspapers would have us believe that a line of fire has been drawn. And a river of blood keeps flowing.

  It was the next day when our hero, Binna-ji, said to me, ‘Yaar, I can’t make do with this rum; arrange for some whiskey, even if it is Indian whiskey.’

  We had heard about a village ahead of Pochina from where Indian whiskey is smuggled into Pakistan. And in exchange, silver comes from the other side. The police check posts have monthly meetings. The supervisors on both sides meet. How many sheep have come this side; how many camels have been caught that side … all this is accounted for. And arrangements are made for the return of the animals that have strayed. And sometimes in the evenings the two sides sit together over a meal and drinks.

  Gopi and I were sitting at one such check post on the border that evening … with Havaldar Bujharat Singh. He had finished his conversation about the camel on the wireless. He had also given the order for the whiskey on the wireless. Now he was talking about a letter from his home.

  ‘I tell you, she is a fool … she has gone mad. She writes anything that comes into her head. Am I supposed to defend India or fight over her two canals of land that have been grabbed by the zamindar. You know, the border is wide open; the enemy can sneak in at any time. The government has created nuclear bombs, but what has it done for us? Even a matchbox costs one rupee!’

  Bujharat Singh’s bidi had gone out. He pulled out a bit of straw from the charpai, poked it into the top of the lantern and used it to light his bidi. He pulled on it a couple of times but the bidi went out again. At about the same time, as Gopi used his lighter to light his cigarette, Bujharat Singh smiled and said, ‘Wouldn’t our lives be better if we had a lighter too! We can’t light our bidi with a nuclear bomb, can we? Over!’

  P.S.

  Insights Interviews & More ...

  A Dialogue: Gulzar and Joginder Paul

  On Partition and Their Fiction

  Translator’s Note

  Rakhshanda Jalil

  A Dialogue: Gulzar and Joginder Paul on Partition and Their Fiction

  Poet, author, lyricist and film-maker Gulzar and writer Joginder Paul have creatively visited their experiences of the Partition over and over again. Here is a dialogue between the two about the Partition they witnessed and the scars that it left on their literary endeavours. The discussion was moderated, transcribed and translated by Sukrita Paul Kumar.

  On the Partition of India, 1947

  Joginder Paul: At the time of Partition, we had no home of our own and lived in a rented place. The landlord was forever after us to increase the rent to Rs 15, something we could not afford. Times were difficult and we were very poor. I was doing my MA and didn’t have a job. In hindsight, I would say I didn’t leave behind any home in Pakistan. The idea of a home materializes only if you have a house. In fact, the house our friend got us in Ambala was quite comfortable and I worked for the dairy that he helped us open. Of course, the bloodshed I saw, the suffering all around, could well have been avoided. But then experiences of the blackest of tragedies vary from person to person.

  Gulzar: Perhaps it has something to do with the age at which one witnessed Partition. You were doing your MA and must have been mature and sensible enough to contain it all. I was too young. My house was already divided, half of us were there and the rest here. Some had migrated – a process that had begun at the end of 1946. My father was stuck on the other side of the border while we had arrived here in Delhi. We were at Sabzi Mandi which was among the worst riot-affected areas. Sabzi Mandi, Sadar and Paharganj were terribly affected when the riots started. These areas were very close to our school. For me the riots were terrifying. We did not know what was happening, why it was happening. All we knew was that India was going to be divided. We saw people being killed and it didn’t make any sense.

  I remember a small incident. In school, there was a boy leading our daily prayers each morning – in M.B. Middle School, Roshanara Bagh – and right in front of me I saw a sardar dragging this boy tied with a rope, pulling him towards Roshanara Bagh. People peeped from their windows and doors but nobody came out. The roads were totally empty. When we asked him where he was taking this boy, pat came his reply, ‘I’m sending him to Pakistan!’ Soon he came back, down the same road, with a blood-soaked sword in his hands, almost triumphantly. Oh the horror of it! People want to know how I reacted to this. Did I cry? No, I didn’t. You know, out of horror, a silence settles inside you. That is what happened to me.

  Joginder Paul: Thankfully, we are dealing with this question today – more than half a century later. I wouldn’t say I did not experience the horror that surrounded me then. You know what, I laugh at my stupidity today when I think of how I went by the political slogans of those times. A young man of twenty-three, and fed on the speeches of our local leaders, I actually believed as we crossed the border that I had achieved something by successfully bringing my family to what we should perceive as our country! But then where was our home? Even though I had no home as such even before Partition, what was wrenched
away was my sense of belonging. After all, I had lived all my life in the same mohalla of our old city – on the right a chachi, a dadi on the left! When the front door of our house would be locked, I would jump from one roof to another, jump into the inner courtyard of our house and go to sleep. Even with my mother away and the door locked from outside. I belonged to the whole mohalla and the mohalla belonged to me. It is that feeling that I missed. Even today when I think of it, I believe my roots lie there. That apart, I must say that we were part of a slogan-fed mess. I blame our leaders for not planning the settlement of people who had to migrate…

  Gulzar: My reaction remained buried within me for a very long time. I said I didn’t even cry, but I wonder, should I have just wept, cried it all out? I was completely horrified by what I saw – half-burnt bodies on the streets, broken chairs and beds thrown over them. Even then the whole body wouldn’t burn. I remember someone saying, ‘Liaquat Ali Khan is coming!’ And people began to clean up the mess frantically…

  Joginder Paul: Where was that?

  Gulzar: Sabzi Mandi, here in Delhi.

  Joginder Paul: Our experiences then must be very different!

  Gulzar: I saw how they started to pick the bodies off the road, scrape them off the road with spades … half-burnt bodies, corpses all around stinking away, and then, truckload of bodies going away. If I had cried, and cried enough, I may not have written at all. For twenty or twenty-five years I used to have nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night horrified, afraid to go back to sleep lest the nightmares returned. That fear settled in me. I think writing it out helped. The purging happened slowly, not in a gush. I took my time and did not write about it all at once. I may not have written short stories if it had happened that way. I took my time even to get a hold over my medium of expression.