Other Side Of Silence

by Urvashi Butalia

  In the resthouse, there was an old chowkidar. I had not eaten for a day or two; after all, one can only eat if there is money. Just then, an officer came. He asked the chowkidar who was in the next room. The chowkidar said I don’t really know, I don’t understand, there’s a woman — at that time I was healthy, red cheeks — she keeps the room closed, she doesn’t eat or drink anything, she’s been in there for two days or so, she doesn’t come out or eat anything. Then the officer knocked on my door and said I’m the officer from here and am on duty here, where have you come from? I told him how I was there. He said, what are the arrangements for your food and drink? I kept quiet ... what could I say? ... Perhaps my eyes filled with tears, he felt very bad and said you come with me, you can’t stay here like this, this is not right ... and he got me food and drink.

  One day that old chaprasi came, the chowkidar, he said, ‘I’ll tell you a story. The Englishman here, the deputy commissioner’ — I don’t remember what name he took — ‘he stayed in this rest house. I used to be his chaprasi. He came in one night and said to me, chaprasi, take off my shoes ...I have shoes on my feet take them off. And today ... I’ll tell you a story ... note it down with pen and paper ... you know your baba Gandhi, he’s given us a lot of trouble, a lot of trouble. That old man, he doesn’t even stop for breath, he keeps telling us get out, get out. After all, where will we go? Here we are very happy. Baba, we’ll leave because we have to, we’ll leave, but not before we have taught him a lesson. We’ll leave such a state of affairs that brother will fight brother, sister will fight sister, there will be killing and arson and rape, we’ll leave such a state of affairs behind that he will not be able to control it, and he will raise his hands and plead with god to send us back ... send them back. And then what will happen ... his own men, his own people will hurl abuses at him, they will give him trouble, they will say look at this of mess you have got us into. And he pulled out a paper and said, see, take it down, see today’s date. I’m telling you we will go, we’re not likely to stay now, but we’ll teach him a lesson before going. This will happen, that will happen and everyone will say, Oh god, send them back ...’

  KAMLA : What stories these are, you’ve never told us these stories ...

  DAMYANTI : You don’t know, Kamla, you don’t know anything because you were in England ...

  KAMLA : No, I mean, we haven’t had much time to talk ... an hour here, an hour there ... you used to come for short visits ...

  DAMYANTI : And after this, I had another life altogether, and things kept changing ...

  KAMLA : I know, we’ve never asked you how you came away ...

  DAMYANTI : I came alone.

  KAMLA : No, I mean we thought ...

  DAMYANTI : Never, never ...

  KAMLA : We took it for granted because we came from England. We knew that everyone had come, no one asked how ... we took it for granted ...

  DAMYANTI : Kamla, no one was there to help ...

  KAMLA : No, I mean you came and you went from ashrams ... one didn’t know, the others came together ...

  DAMYANTI : You know ...

  KAMLA : The others came together, we thought you must have come with them all ...

  I felt I had no one in the world. I didn’t really know where anyone was. I was in the mountains, alone, without money. What could I do? One day, I saw two young men by the banks of the river, they were talking softly to each other. I tried to listen ... They were saying, our office is going to open, we don’t have leave ... from Nagar there is the place where they’ve taken electricity. Kamla, what is the name of this place? It will come back. They were worrying, it had been so many days, they had to report for their jobs. I pricked up my ears. They said there’s one place, one passage through the mountains from where the police goes. It’s some pass, not Khyber pass, but something ... it goes through the mountains, we’ll go through there. The river was full. I approached them and asked them, very gently, are you planning to go? They said, yes, our office is opening, we have to get back, otherwise action will be taken against us. We’ll go through the mountains. I said, take me along. They said no, sorry, the way is very dangerous, sometimes it is narrow, we may have to stop a night or two, and it will be difficult to reach. I said I must go, but they were adamant.

  They fixed with each other to meet at a particular time the next morning. In the morning, the place where the mountains opened up, I arrived there and sat down. After all, what did I have to lose? Whatever I had I was wearing. I told myself that I would simply follow them, how could they stop me. Yes, before that I went to the jungle people. I asked if there were forest resthouses on the way and if they could book me in. They said those places were dangerous, there was still killing and looting going on there. I pleaded with them, I said somehow, if you can send me to Simla by road, there I have people. But they refused. They said we can give you money. But I refused to take it even though they kept saying you are like our sister, our mother, we know you’re from a good family, but I refused. So I decided to go to the mountain ... and when they came, the two young men, they were shocked. They said what are you doing here, on this path? We’ve explained to you again and again that you can’t go by this way, it’s too dangerous. I said how can you stop me, I’m just walking on the road. I have no money. They said we’ll give you money. I just couldn’t take money. I wanted to get away from the place. So you know the place where the electricity comes from. Is it Mandi? I said if you get me up to there, I can get a connection to Dharamsala or Punjab, but they said the pass we’re going to travel through is very dangerous. But I kept following them, and they were very angry but they couldn’t do anything about it.

  Some distance ahead they stopped and opened their packets of food, and of course they had to give me some. They must have thought what a leech, what a chichar, but what could they do, I simply wouldn’t leave them. I was quite weak, red eyes ... no money. A little further on we came to a small village and there they even got me milk and roti. In the morning again I was after them ... but the grass was very slippery, and our feet kept getting caught, scratched, bruised ... dying of cold, no warm clothes ... Then we reached a point, a sort of main centre where buses left from. There was also a police post, a chowki. The two of them decided that they would leave me at the police chowki since I had attached myself to them. They took me to a sort of platform and said you sit here and we’ll fetch you some water or something, and they slipped away ... after all, they had to get rid of me somehow.

  Then, as I was sitting there, the police came and I told them how I had got there, that I’ve come from Lahore and I’m related to such and such, and if you could get me to Dharamsala. They said what will you do there? I said I’ll get in touch with the Deputy Commissioner who is on duty there ... I told them I have no money, but please put me on a bus somehow. You see, there I was at the chowki. My legs were swollen, my body was stiff like this, I could hardly move. What they did, they put a wire, a chain, across the road to stop buses. A bus came, and they stopped it and said you have to take this passenger. They said our bus is booked and we have no room. They said you have to take this passenger. They said ours is a marriage party, we have no room at all. They said this poor unfortunate woman is a victim of circumstance, you have to take her, you must take her up to the place where the electricity comes from, the place whose name I can’t remember at the moment. They said we have no seats: Then what they did, they opened the back door and in that little space they picked me up and put me, God help me always ... I was so stiff I couldn’t stand. The bus moved off and as it did my head began to spin and I began to throw up, I was half fainting ... I didn’t know what to do, I kept vomiting into my kurta, my kurta and dhoti, I kept filling my vomit into my clothes and I kept on being sick ... I prayed to my god. I said, O god, you kept Draupadi’s shame, look at what is happening to me now, O god, help me. As I was praying, the next stop came. I couldn’t even look out of the window, I was crouched over my vomit-filled clothes. The door opened and a y
oung man, tall and smart, wearing khadi, said mataji, behanji, you come and sit on my seat. I said no, no, leave me alone, I’m dirty, I’m filthy ... I could hardly speak ... and you know he said this after quite a distance, in fact it was soon after I prayed. He said my conscience does not agree, in this state you should not be sitting here. I have a front seat, you come and sit there, and I’ll sit here. I said no, I’m dirty, I’ll dirty the seat. He said, it doesn’t matter ... I kept crying, he simply picked me up and put me on the seat ... I kept crying, I’m stiff, I’m fixed in this position, my limbs are locked. He didn’t listen to anything, he put me on the seat, dusted all the dried vomit off my clothes, and put me there and went off to sit, I don’t know where.

  When we reached the place where the electricity comes from, the bus stops there, and from there I had to take another bus. I tried to sit up, and someone said to me, don’t worry, when the bus comes we’ll put you on it. I said but I have nothing, please help me to get to Dharamsala somehow, that’s all I want. Then the young man stood up. He said, I live here, and work here. I have a house here, you come with me. I said no. He said, why? I said, no beta I can’t. He said I cannot stand this, we can’t leave you in this condition, you’ll have to come. I said I can’t climb the mountain. He said don’t worry, I’ll get another man and we’ll take turns at carrying you up. His bungalow was quite high. Anyway in spite of my protests he took me up there, and put me down in the veranda of his bungalow. And then he called out, behanji, behanji, I have a mehman, a guest, for you behanji. Look we have a visitor. And, the door opened, and to my surprise, the woman who came out was my student!

  My god, my god, behanji, what’s happened to you, look at your condition ! Kamla, it was Shakuntala, from Mahila Devi, the beautiful girl. She came and put her arms around me and cried and cried, saying look at your condition. I said are you Shakuntala? Yes ... yes ... Get away from me, I’m dirty, dirty ... That very instant, she ... she said this lady means more to me than my life. Every student loved her. And she got hot water, got me a set of clean and warm clothes, put on heaters, made up my bed, and gave me tea and put me into bed. I couldn’t stop crying, and she kept saying behanji, why are you crying? You gave us the gift of knowledge ... I said, Shakuntala, I don’t know what to do, where to go, I don’t understand anything. I said please send me to Dharamsala, I’ll be eternally grateful to you ... I have no money or anything. She said, don’t make me ashamed ... and in this condition I’m going to send you nowhere, you rest first, become able to walk and become strong, and then ... this is your home, we’re your children, this is my sister whose house it is. They kept me for ten or fifteen days and really looked after me, massages, doctors ...I was happy but I also kept feeling I’m taking hospitality from someone I don’t know well, I had a sort of complex. Later, they sent me to Dharamsala ... there I went straight to the Deputy Commissioner.

  I explained to him how I had run away, I’ve come from such and such a place ... I’m not asking anything of you except that you send me to Punjab somehow. I don’t know where any of my relatives are except Dr Santokh Singh who is in Amritsar, so please send me there. He said, don’t worry, we’ll send you but first you come to my house. He called his driver and asked him to take me to his home. His wife was a patient of dama, asthma ... she kept me for nearly a month and really looked after me. He said, I can’t send you because the river is in full spate now and all the roads are closed. The moment things are better I will. At the moment the roads are very slippery and the jeep could easily skid.

  KAMLA : One minute. Did no one in the family bother? Did they not get worried? What about Premi auntie?

  DAMYANTI : Kamla, what did they know, or I know? For all they knew I could still have been in Kotra or dead or something ... The time was such ... no one knew about the other, nor did anyone have any interest, so what did they know about me? They must have thought she’ll manage ...

  Part I

  HIDDEN HISTORIES

  Icannot now pinpoint exactly when I became aware of the histories of women. I say ‘became aware’ because the process was a sort of cumulative one, where stories began to seep into my consciousness until one day when it became clear that there was something I should be actively seeking.

  Even as I say this, it sounds strange to me. As a feminist I have been only too aware, sometimes painfully so, of the need to fold back several layers of history (or of what we see as fact) before one can begin to arrive at a different, more complex ‘truth’. Why then, I have often asked myself, should the ‘discovery’ of women have come as such a surprise? But it did. Perhaps it was because the initial assumption I brought to my search was a simple one: the history of Partition, as I knew it, made no mention of women. As a woman, and a feminist, I would set out to ‘find’ women in Partition, and once I did, I would attempt to make them visible. That would, in a sense, ‘complete’ an incomplete picture.

  There are, of course, no complete pictures. This I know now: everyone who makes one, draws it afresh. Each time, retrospectively, the picture changes: who you are, where you come from, who you’re talking to, when you talk to them, where you talk to them, what you listen to, what they choose to tell you ... all of these affect the picture you draw. Listening to Rana’s story made me deeply aware of this.

  I realized, for example, that if it had been so difficult for Ranamama to talk about his story, how much more difficult must it have been for women to do so. To whom would they have spoken? Who would have listened? I realized too that in my questioning, something I had not taken into account was that in order to be able to ‘hear’ women’s voices, I had to begin to pose different questions, to talk in different situations, and to be prepared to do that most important of things, to listen: to their speech, their silences, the half-said things, the nuances. The men seldom spoke about women. Women almost never spoke about themselves, indeed they denied they had anything ‘worthwhile’ to say, a stance that was often corroborated by their men. Or, quite often, they simply weren’t there to speak to. And what right did I, a stranger, an outsider, now have to go around digging into their lives, forcing them to look back to a time that was perhaps better forgotten? Especially when I knew that the histories I wanted to know about were histories of violence, rape, murder.

  For a while, then, I held back from speaking to women: there were so many layers of silence encoded into these histories, I told myself, that perhaps I could make my exploration by looking elsewhere — surely I would still be uncovering some of the silences. I turned therefore to some of the very ‘documents’ that I had so often found wanting. Newspaper accounts, a memoir, and other sources helped me to piece together a story: a story of love and of hate, a story of four lives and two nations, a story that brought me back to the histories of women: the story of Zainab and Buta Singh.

  Zainab was a young Muslim girl who was said to have been abducted while her family was on the move to Pakistan in a kafila. No one knows who her abductors were, or how many hands she passed through, but eventually Zainab was sold to a Jat from Amritsar district, Buta Singh. Like many men who either abducted women themselves or bought them, Buta Singh, who wasn’t married at the time, performed the ‘chaddar’ ceremony and ‘married’ Zainab. The story goes that in time, the two came to love each other. They had a family, two young girls. Several years after Partition, a search party on the lookout for abducted women traced Zainab to Amritsar, where she was living with Buta Singh. It was suspected that Buta Singh’s brother — or his nephews — had informed the search party of Zainab’s whereabouts. Their concern was that Buta Singh’s children would deprive them of the family property, that their share would now be reduced. Like many women who were thus ‘rescued’, Zainab had no choice in the matter. She was forced to leave. Newspaper reports describe the scene as a poignant one: the entire village had assembled to see Zainab go. She came slowly out of her house, carrying her child, and clutching a small bundle of clothes. Her belongings were stowed in the jeep and as Zainab boarded it sh
e turned to Buta Singh and, pointing to her elder daughter, is reported to have said: ‘Take care of this girl, and don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.’

  Not surprisingly, property figured in Zainab’s recovery as well. Her own parents had been killed. But the family had received grants of land in Lyallpur as compensation for property they had left behind in Indian Punjab. Zainab and her sister had received their father’s share, and an uncle had been allotted the adjoining piece. Rumour had it that it was the uncle who had been the moving spirit behind Zainab’s rescue: he was keen the land remain in his family, and he wanted that Zainab, when found, should marry his son, which would then ensure the property would remain with them. The son had no interest in marrying Zainab, and as the story is told, part of his reluctance was because she had lived for many years with a Sikh. Discussion on this issue went on in the family for some time, and Buta Singh occasionally received snippets of news from neighbours and others who kept him informed.