A House Called Askival

by Merryn Glover

  But Aziz also recognised unexpected faces in the exodus. The Jain proprietor of Busy Best Stores was accompanying his Muslim neighbours and the Hindu man from Baba Sweets was holding an umbrella over an elderly couple. Mrs Chatterji of the Antique Shop – another Hindu – walked with a large family, carrying their small daughter in her arms as her sari got splattered by mud, and there too was Mr Godiwala, the Parsi Plastics man, with his arm around a bearded friend. On the bend near the bus stop, he saw Mr Harbinder Singh, owner of Paramount Picture House, his tall turbaned frame pulled down by two heavy bags, back soaked, as he walked with a young Muslim couple. He was the only Sikh they saw that day and Aziz did not dare to meet his eye.

  FOURTEEN

  30th September 1947

  Kurukshetra

  Dear Leota and James,

  It is dark now and late and my candle half burnt. Though tired and sore eager to sleep, I must write this now as Thampan Verghese is travelling to Mussoorie tomorrow and can take it to you. How do I tell what I have seen in these past two weeks? A part of me does not wish to attempt it, for anything I say is like suggesting that a grain of sand is the desert, or one small lick of flame the entire furnace of hell. And yet the burden of it grows heavier in me each day and I must lay some of it down in writing. I do regret if easing my load serves only to increase yours, but I know you will be anxious to hear how we are. Please have no fear for my safety, or that of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. By God’s grace we are all protected and in good health. ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.’

  I will begin at the day I left you. We all met up at Mullingar Hotel at 5am and there were about thirty of us – all the folks on the hillside with medical training that could be spared, plus myself as team co-ordinator and General Dog’s Body. We walked down to Kingcraig and by God’s mercy a bus was waiting there and it got us to Dehra Dun in time. But that was where the trouble started. The train was already full, so we had to fit in wherever we could and I ended up standing the whole way. By the end, we had people on the roof and hanging from the windows and perched on the buffers and every bit of running board or doorstep. It was hot and humid, of course, and as more bodies got pushed together there were rivers of sweat running down us and a stench rising up that was full strong enough to knock you out. And I tell you, I dearly wish I had been knocked out before I witnessed the next thing.

  The train was crawling down the tracks and at every station the men had weapons. At one of these, a small band of Sikhs and Hindus made their way down the platform pulling open the compartment doors and demanding the Muslims be handed out. At our door they caught sight of an old fellow with a beard hunkered down in a corner. He was furiously denying he was Muslim, but the others in the compartment dragged him forward. I guess they had no choice, what with guns and knives in their faces. I called out that he was old and to leave him be, but they paid me no heed. On the platform they yanked down his pyjamas to reveal he was circumcised and took up such a howling you would not think it human. I will not relate what they did next but can only say it was the most terrible thing I have witnessed and I still pray to our Father to release me from the image of it.

  I don’t think I really believed old Bunce’s report until that moment. Now I believe it all, and worse. If ever I needed proof of a world in the grip of Sin, I have seen it.

  We finally arrived at Kurukshetra at dawn, where a truck took us to the camp. There are already tens of thousands of refugees here, mainly Hindus who have come across from Pakistan, but Sikhs also. They arrive in droves every day, some off the trains, some in buses or the backs of trucks, some on bullock carts and horse drawn wagons piled high with possessions. Many come on foot, already ragged and sick, carrying their few belongings, their children, their old parents. Some weep that they have left loved ones on the way because they could no longer carry them, or because they had died. Many women have given birth on the road – often prematurely – only to pick up the baby and walk on. Some are abandoned by their families as soon as labour overcomes them and they deliver alone. Some have arrived with a dead infant in their arms.

  And it is not just the poor, but everyone. I have met lawyers and landowners and wealthy business men, scientists and professors. What they have in common is their loss. Some do not know if any family members are alive. In this land where folks are surrounded by family from birth, to be left alone is almost worse than death.

  I cannot begin to record all the stories I have heard. A school teacher from Lahore told of his life-long Muslim neighbours arriving in the dead of night with knives. A young man fled his burning village, but is still haunted by the screams of his family who died in the flames. Countless women have been seized and raped – even girls as young as five – and when I hear the seething desire for revenge I confess I feel it too. And yet I know that these horrors have been inflicted by both sides and that the rising waves of retaliation are serving only to destroy them. Every face is full of misery and hopelessness and a sorrow that we may never comprehend. The words that return to me time and again are those of our Lord’s: ‘When ye therefore shall see the Abomination of Desolation … woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!’

  Of the many refugee camps across both countries, I believe Kurukshetra is the largest. It is constructed of row after row of make-shift tents that stretch on forever across this dirty field. When I say “tent” I refer to a mean strip of cloth thrown over a string held up with two sticks. It affords only a bit of shelter from the worst glare of the sun, but does not keep out the mud or the flies or the dogs or the rain. For so long the plains were gasping with thirst as monsoon was late, but now it has come, it has brought troubles of its own. Filth and disease are swirling around the feet of all these homeless folks and babies are crawling in it. Nothing can get dry, or clean or healed. Nearly every one of these thousands of people is sick or wounded and the team is overwhelmed. I tell you, at times like this, I wish the Lord had equipped me to be a doctor instead of a farmer, but He has placed me here to dig pit latrines and plant vegetable gardens and build new wards and what all, so I must accept His Wisdom and His Call.

  Before we arrived, there were already half a dozen medical centres in operation and we are setting up more. Each one sees over a thousand patients daily. Smallpox, typhoid and cholera are rife, along with the usual dysentery and tuberculosis, and with the inadequate sanitation, the diseases are spreading fast. Today, Dr Hilda Clutterbuck vaccinated nearly 2000 people for cholera with one kidney basin of alcohol, two steel needles and one syringe. Her glasses became so smeared by flies that the health assistant had to clean them for her, as she would not stop working. Many of the doctors here are refugees themselves, but joining the work seems to help them cope.

  Also, the effort of the Indian Christian Council has made a big difference. They offered their services to the government very early on and have called on medical missionaries and Indian believers across the north. Thampan has been one of the main leaders in this and he is praying that, apart from aiding the destitute, it might persuade the government to protect religious freedom in the new constitution. There are many forces that oppose it. I do believe this is our opportunity to show the saving love of our Lord Jesus Christ and I pray many will respond to His grace. It is this hope that sustains me, as our days are long and we fall to our sleeping mats at night exhausted. There is very little food, just one chapatti and tea in the morning and not much more in the evening. I try not to remember our Aziz’ fine cooking, but when hunger is gnawing at me, I find I am missing him sorely! Please pass my greetings to him and Salima.

  Our team prays together each morning, and though we are tired, it is this half hour in His presence that gives us strength. It is sobering, too, to realise that only in the face of such a crisis have the different Christian groups come together. We are all here: Presbyterians, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Catholics and Pentecostals. Eu
ropean and American missionaries working alongside our Indian brothers and sisters and, indeed, working under their leadership. This is the Saviour’s hour.

  Do you know, this place is an ancient battle ground in Hindu mythology? Thampan explained it to me. According to the Mahabharata, it is named after King Kuru who was the ancestor of both the Kauravas and the Pandavas who fought their war right here all those thousands of years ago. And it was here, in that battle, that Krishna was the charioteer for King Arjuna and preached to him about love and duty. And it was that teaching that became the Bhagavad Gita – The Song of Love – that I am told is Gandhi’s favourite Scripture. What on earth can he be thinking, now, I wonder?

  These last few days I have felt at the heart of darkness. We took a truck along one of the routes of the refugee caravans to pick up the birthing mothers and anyone too weak and sick to keep going. People are heading in both directions along these roads and sometimes they have turned on each other. Everywhere around us dogs and flies were swarming over the carcasses and vultures falling in flocks. I saw a young man too weak to fight them off his wounds and in another place, birds so gorged they could not fly. We had to check bodies lying on the ground for signs of life, and when I moved one slain woman, I found a child was curled beneath her, bone thin but breathing. She was light as rags in my arms and her head flopped like a stone. By the time I got her back to the truck, she had died.

  My Dear Ones, my candle has burnt and I am finishing this in the dark. Forgive the horror of what I have told. I hoped it would bring me some release, but I fear it has not and that the distress I have caused you is in vain. Forgive me and pray. I thank our Father that you are safe at Askival. I cannot imagine these troubles extending so far, but in whatever circumstance, I know that you, Leota, will be wise, and I admonish you, James, to be brave.

  I commit you both, and dear Aziz and family, into our Lord’s Providence.

  In His Name,

  Stanley

  FIFTEEN

  At the gate to Askival they fell silent and stood looking at the house.

  ‘Have you seen it?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Iqbal’s voice was quiet. ‘But I am not coming for some time.’

  There was a gurning in the grey sky and the first splatters of rain.

  ‘Come on,’ she said and clambered over the gate, still holding her wildflowers. Iqbal followed, struggling with his plump frame and long shalwar kameez.

  Ruth waited for him on the south veranda, standing before the gaping hole that was once a French window, the very spot where Manveer had kissed her. When Iqbal gestured for her to go first, she gripped her posy and stepped into the room. The ceiling was sagging and had leaked rain across the floor, soaking a pile of charred wood, some flaps of newspaper and the crusting remains of a picnic.

  She laid the flowers on the mantel piece and moved slowly through the house, Iqbal following. Rubble and litter spilled across the rooms, and everywhere the peeling walls were mottled with black. Most bore graffiti: Hindi, English and the universal language of crude art. The door to one room was jammed shut, while the next opened onto a mess of shit and flies.

  Back in the living room, she pushed at the damp rubbish with her foot.

  ‘It’s horrible. This was such a lovely place.’

  ‘Even in your time?’ Iqbal walked through the archway to the former dining room where an old sheet lay rotting in a corner.

  ‘Well it was beginning to crumble, but it still had… beauty.’ She looked around, then followed him. ‘Certainly none of this trash. Hardly anyone came here. Just birds and mice.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Yeah. I felt a sort of bond cause it had been Dad’s place. And it always seemed lonely. Everyone called it the Haunted House.’

  Outside, the rain was swelling, plashing on the leaves, stirring the smells of earth and grass.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There were so many stories, you know.’

  ‘Such as?’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘The Irish girl who eloped here with her Indian lover.’ Her eyes slid to Iqbal. Had James told him about Manveer? His face gave nothing. ‘Way back in East India Company days. Her family had him killed and she threw herself off the khud behind the house. They say on certain nights when the wind is high you can hear her screaming.’

  ‘Ah, romance!’

  ‘Ill-fated romance.’

  ‘They so often are,’ Iqbal smiled. Ruth bent to pick up a piece of broken cornice from the floor.

  ‘Do you speak from experience?’ she asked softly, not looking at him.

  ‘No, no. I had arranged marriage. Skip romance and straight to the arguments!’ He slapped one hand against the other and laughed.

  ‘That’s a shame. ’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘We are divorced.’

  ‘Oh.’ She squatted and laid the cornice down. She wanted to know more without giving more but it didn’t seem possible. Hugging her arms around her knees she surveyed the room.

  ‘You know what really gets me? That this place isn’t loved anymore.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t let it fall apart like this, would you? If it was mine…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Sometimes we love, but cannot do what is needed.’

  Ruth shook her head. The room smelt of piss.

  ‘Grandma said it was the most beautiful, elegant house. Before their time, of course. They couldn’t afford anything fancy, but way back it had a grand piano and lace curtains and the garden was a mass of flowers. It’s a crime to be abandoned like this.’

  ‘Are you knowing why?’

  ‘She though there were water problems. After they left in ‘47, other missionaries lived here for a while but it fell into disuse.’

  ‘Is very strange,’ said Iqbal.

  ‘Yeah. I heard that bad things kept happening here. People got sick, had nightmares… felt this terrible grief.’

  ‘Did you feel it?’

  She paused.

  ‘Not then. It was sad, and a bit spooky at night, but…’ She looked over to a window and beyond where the rain was sweeping across the veranda. ‘I loved it.’

  ‘Your father also.’

  ‘Well, you’d think so, but he never came. Said it was private property and we shouldn’t trespass.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, standing up. ‘I did a lot of things I shouldn’t.’

  Iqbal folded his hands across the swell of his stomach. ‘Then you are like us all.’

  ‘The main thing we have in common, isn’t it? What defines our humanity?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Sin.’

  ‘No, no, Ruthie!’ His face was struck with alarm. ‘We are being made by God—’

  ‘Sorry, don’t believe in him.’

  ‘Loved by God!’

  She took a breath to argue but saw the urgency in his eyes and let the breath out on a tired sigh. ‘Sorry.’

  Iqbal’s mouth hung ajar for a moment, brows up. Then his face eased and he spread his hands. ‘I understand.’

  She turned suddenly to her pack on the floor. ‘Listen, I can’t stand this mess; let’s do something.’ And she pulled out a handful of plastic bags and started shoving fistfuls of rubbish into them. Iqbal chuckled.

  ‘So like Doctor-ji!’ He knelt beside her and took a bag. ‘He is helping one excellent clean-up programme: FRESH. Fight Rubbish Everyone and Save the Hillside! He is being so proud of you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ruth murmured and used a piece of newspaper to scoop up something black and furred with mould.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Iqbal insisted. ‘He is telling me you are always helping to others. Making the gardens for city kids, serving in soup kitchens, giving the shelter for homeless.’

  ‘Oh, only a bit,’ she said, embarrassed. True, she had felt compelled to work for the underdogs and the neglected, but was never sure if it was motivated by true compassion or the need to redeem herself.
Either way, she never learnt boundaries and got too involved and sometimes burnt. Then she would move on and feel ashamed for not sticking at things, not committing.

  When all their bags were full and stacked by the French door she looked round at the cleared floor. ‘God that feels good. The rest of the place is still a dump, but it’s a start.’

  Iqbal tipped his head. ‘Excellent start.’

  ‘I wish I’d seen it when it was first built. Grandma said it was a Scottish guy, in the raj days. Called it after a mountain on the island of Rum, where he came from. You know I’ve climbed that mountain.’

  ‘Was it beautiful?’

  ‘No.’ She pointed to the downpour outside. ‘Covered in fog and pishing rain!’ They laughed.

  ‘Actually, one of the ghost stories might have been about him,’ she said, remembering Sita telling it, on the lawn right outside this room. It was one of Mr Haskell’s class parties and they were huddled round a fire, squeezing in close as the night got colder and the tales more chilling. ‘There was this British family here who had a Hindu cook. He’d been with them for years and his wife was ayah to the children. But during the Indian mutiny he poisoned them.’

  ‘No!’ Iqbal breathed. ‘Terrible! What happened to the cook?’

  ‘I don’t know, but the ghosts of the family still haunt the place, they say.’ She walked across to the window, looking south where the rain sheeted over the ridge below, veiling the bazaar.

  ‘At least is not lonely,’ Iqbal said. ‘All of them, plus the young elopees.’ He pushed open the cracked wooden door into the kitchen. ‘And a few others.’

  ‘A lot of tragic things happened,’ Ruth said.