Unbordered Memories

by Rita Kothari

The following day, Kamil visited Haji Sahib’s house with the money in hand. A 50-year-old woman came out of the house.

  ‘Amma, is Haji Sahib home?’ Kamil asked.

  ‘Haji Sahib is not well. He is asleep. If you want me to convey something to him, then tell me,’ said the woman, looking at him closely.

  ‘I had met Haji Sahib yesterday. I had talked to him about renting out rooms on the upper floor. I have come with the tenancy money. Haji Sahib must have told you about it. Don’t bother him, let him rest. If you give me the key, I can shift tomorrow. We wish to shift as soon as possible.’

  ‘I am Haji Sahib’s wife,’ the woman introduced herself for the first time, ‘he has talked to me about it. We had other tenants this morning, and they are willing to pay a rent of thousand five hundred and a year’s advance. At the moment, Haji Sahib has not made a commitment to them, since he had given you his word. If you wish, you can pay thousand five hundred and take the key.’ The woman was tougher than Haji Sahib.

  ‘But, Amma, Haji Sahib had agreed to a rent of thousand two hundred. And I simply cannot afford to pay more than that,’ a helpless Kamil protested.

  ‘That’s your wish. Feel free to do what you want,’ she stepped back into the house.

  ‘At least, listen to me. Haji Sahib knows what my circumstances are … we are all Sindhis … if you don’t sympathize … please …’ Kamil begged her.

  ‘Should we suffer a loss because we are Sindhis?’ The woman closed the door behind her.

  Kamil stared at the closed door aghast.

  His knees felt weak. He dragged himself up to the Wahdat colony and sat down at the chowk. His legs refused to move.

  This is the city of my ancestors, and I am desperately trying to flee from here, knocking every door for refuge, he thought.

  Suddenly, he got up, ‘I should go home. Zainab must be worried.’

  He took a ride in a Suzuki.

  On reaching home, Kamil found Zainab very anxious.

  ‘What happened? Why did it take you so long?’

  ‘Nothing special. There’s no need to worry. Everything is fine.’

  He sat down on a stringed cot, and began to remove his shoes.

  ‘Did you bring the house key with you?’

  ‘No. we are not going anywhere. We shall live here, in our own house. The house in which my ancestors, my mother and father took their last breath. Why should we be afraid of dying in such a house? Get rid of that fear from now on.’

  Kamil lay down on the cot and lit a cigarette.

  In Exile

  MOHAN KALPANA

  One morning in a government office—

  The clerk at the window that concerned Mohan arrived ten minutes later than his scheduled time. Nodding casually in the general direction of the watchman who saluted him, and waving his hand like a flag to greet the other clerks, he entered the attendance-room to sign the muster. He shook his pen twice to sign, and finally slumped into a chair. Resting his forehead upon his left hand, he surveyed with one eye the piles of papers on the desk, and with the other, the number of people queued up, waiting for him, and then fishing cigarettes and matches out of his pocket, he walked away towards the toilet.

  Thirty minutes later, with his nose high up in the air and elbows swinging, he returned. He threw a severe glance around him in a way that you would have thought it was he who carried on his shoulders the responsibility of the office, a responsibility as enormous as that of the proverbial cow from the Bhagawat, who carried the entire earth’s weight on one of its horns, and each time it shifted the weight to the other horn, the earth quaked and volcanoes erupted.

  The clerk was dressed in white clothes, and his eyes reflected alternating shades of despondency (from being underpaid) and outrage (from feeling overworked). When in bad spirits, he could bring the entire city to a halt, just like a traffic policeman who by raising his hand makes everyone stop, including leaders, businessmen, film actors, government officials and even senior police officials. Every government employee represents limitless power. His family may have to make do with his salary, but this designation can make or break other people’s lives.

  Mohan had been standing in the queue for a long time. The previous day’s cyclone had brought his house down. His mother had suffered from head injuries, so she had to be hospitalized. His two sisters had been sitting outside a broken down barrack. He needed to rent a new place for which he needed to submit an application, the form for which the said clerk had to give to Mohan.

  There were several such ‘windows’ in the office of the Sindhunagar administrator, and several clerks who had limited means but unlimited power. The bars between the clerks and the people kept the clerks safe from people’s wrath, as they also deprived people of clerical benevolence.

  It was the morning of 23 November 1948, and the night before had brought to Sindhunagar torrential rains. On seeing people blissfully asleep, it had shaken them up. The people of Sindh, who, on seeing the sky merely dribble would close their schools, shops and offices and with half-bare bodies run on streets, singing, ‘Throw away, Maula, balls of silver!’ had groped last night for safe little corners to protect their children. Clouds billowed and surged in the sky, lightning flashed, creating the sound of war tanks, effecting as it were, yet another Partition of India and Pakistan, but in the sky this time. Roofs made of cement, tin and tiles were blown away and thrown asunder, like ships in a thunderstorm. Dense, black clouds rumbled and rolled, forming an endless chain, like refugees. They unleashed a never-ending torrential rain, determined to destroy, like the leaders of India, the very existence and identity of the Sindhi people.

  People left homes, shops and businesses, and cities, villages and trees, and lanes, clothes and wells. Dreams and affection were now thrust into a colony where no house was bigger than twenty feet. In this jungle of despair, a city of ruined lives, there ran no street, save one; there was no garden, no cinema house, no telegraph office, no railway station; there were no buses, no schools, no gymnasiums, no nothing. The people of Sindh who had preferred to bring with them bedrolls and clothes rather than knives had been imprisoned in barracks. These barracks had no walls inside. They had to be created out of jute strings and tattered gunny sacks. No amount of sewing and mending had been able to hide what still escaped the holes—youthful desires and sensualities. At the time of war, when these barracks were army camps for the British, they were surrounded by night clubs and cinema halls. Now there lay only splinters of champagne and Black Knight bottles, broken guns, bullets, magazines, chairs, benches and torn photographs.

  Once the nightmarish sounds of the storm receded, everyone had promptly begun to put their lives back together. As for those whose barracks had collapsed, they now stood facing this window in a queue and exchanged notes with each other about the previous night’s storm.

  Mohan stood quietly. The clerk asked him with ceremonial indifference, ‘Did you bring the refugee certificate with you?’

  ‘Some months ago,’ the twenty-five-year-old educated and polite Mohan replied, ‘I had submitted an application for a refugee certificate at the window next to this one.’

  ‘Then go to that window,’ the clerk cut him short. ‘How do we know whether you are a refugee or not?’

  Mohan pointed his finger at the framed picture across, ‘Just as the man inside the frame is Mahatma Gandhi, every person living in a camp is a refugee.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ the clerk bellowed. ‘You have the audacity to compare a mere refugee with Mahatma Gandhi.’

  ‘I am not comparing myself with Mahatma Gandhi,’ Mohan replied patiently, ‘I meant to explain that what is self-evident requires no evidence. When a fish raises its head out of water, we do not cease to consider it a fish although it may not have a government certificate to prove its identity.’

  The clerk was floored by the answer but he did not want to concede to Mohan’s wit and superiority by smiling. Instead, he quipped, ‘Are you a fish then!’ creating full-throated gu
ffaws in the office.

  Refusing to be carried away by the academic discussion, a pastime for those who knew little about life’s experiences, Mohan replied, ‘My friend, my presence in this office proves that I am a refugee and that I have come to a government office for refuge.’

  The clerk could now comfortably smile, and smile he did, like a toothpaste advertisement. ‘I regret to inform you that in the absence of a certificate, I cannot be of help to you.’

  The clerk had replied in the kind of English he knew, but, seeing that Mohan had not gone away, he shouted, not in English, ‘Go away, you idiot.’

  Mohan, a graduate, was not ready to be sworn at, and his patience began to slip away from him. As a young man he could rebel against oppression, on the other hand, he could also choose not to waste intellectual energy over a trifling matter.

  He gritted his teeth, but an old man standing behind him in the queue said to him, ‘Bhautaar, if you wish to fight, please go and stand at the end of the queue so that we don’t waste time.’

  Another old man seconded the first one, ‘First the storm broke our backs, and now these two are engaged in a dialogue like Sikander and Porus.’

  ‘Away, away!’ voices shooed him.

  Mohan got out of the queue and bounded towards a room, determined to settle the score directly with the administrator. The peon standing at the door caught Mohan by his arm, ‘Where do you think you are going?’

  ‘I wish to see the administrator,’ said Mohan, pulling his arm free.

  ‘Some hopes you have, look at yourself first,’ the peon insulted him.

  ‘Don’t you people know how to talk? If I were to tell you, listen peon, you stay within your limits, and get out of my way, would it not violate your dignity?’ Mohan made an elocutionary presentation from his college days, ‘Every human being has some self-esteem and dignity, those who don’t understand this are primitive.’

  The peon perhaps did not follow, but he couldn’t dismiss what sounded nice to his ears. Mellowing a bit, he said, ‘But the sahib has not come yet.’

  ‘Does he have a fixed time?’

  ‘There is no such thing for a sahib.’

  ‘Does he not get paid?’

  ‘The government pays him, not you.’

  ‘But the government pays him to work,’ Mohan shouted. ‘I wish to ask where the administrator is.’

  The clarion call reached the ears of the head clerk who rushed to Mohan with spectacles in his hand, ‘Idiot, why are you yelling?’

  ‘Why do you swear at me, hanh?’ Mohan pulled the head clerk by his collar, ‘If you don’t apologize to me immediately, I will break your jaw.’

  In the meantime, two peons came to the head clerk’s rescue and dragged Mohan bodily to throw him out of the office. Mohan wrestled to break free, but the two of them rained blows on his body, pulled his hair and beat him up mercilessly. People standing in the queue did not come forward, but merely fidgeted a bit and watched the tamasha. A jeep rolled in and stopped beside the scene. The two peons dusted their clothes and hands, and offered a salute each, to none else but the administrator who disembarked from the jeep. He had surveyed the scene from inside the jeep. Avoiding Mohan’s eyes, he fled into the office.

  Gradually, Mohan got up. He took out his handkerchief to wipe the blood off his nose.

  Within moments, the peon who had stood at the door, came to him to say, ‘Sahib wishes to see you.’

  So far, everybody had addressed Mohan with the familiar you, now he was being addressed with a respectful you. Was that sympathy, or fear of the kind that every employee associates with a complainant, Mohan wondered.

  He entered the well-furnished room of the administrator, and looked at the sahib with questions furrowing his smooth face. The sahib swivelled on his chair, and leaned back, ‘Before I hand you over to the police, I wish to know the nature of the crime for which you were being beaten up.’

  Dressed in a green sari, the dusky looking typist standing next to the sahib found an opportunity to smirk, but she preferred to wrinkle up her forehead and looked at Mohan as if she were saying, ‘You have my sympathy, but …’

  The peon stood at the door and, a little away, unmoving like a stone, and rather like a well-fed, well-rested, indulged pet dog, stood the head clerk.

  ‘I was thrashed for asking a valid question whether it was not only necessary but ethical for you to come to office on time?’

  The sahib’s chair creaked. Two things were clear, one, that the chair needed oil, and two, that the sahib needed to give an answer. But the sahib did not reply, instead he asked, ‘Are you the governor?’

  ‘I have read in a book that every human being has a governor within him, who controls his mind and body. By asking this question, you are giving me the importance your conscience deserves.’

  ‘Some mad person, he is,’ said the sahib, looking at the head clerk. ‘Who is he? And what does he want?’

  The clerk had perhaps meant to say he’s mad, and wishes madness but, tongue-tied by the rage on Mohan’s face, he merely watched with his mouth wide open.

  Instead, Mohan answered the question, ‘Greatness lies in understanding the most ordinary person. You called me mad because you have the police on your side. You have been given the right of using language, that doesn’t mean you can say what you like. If you have the right to do that, you must grant the fact that I, too, have the right then to use language in ways I like and the right to give vent to my anger. If I were to submit to that impulse, I would be calling you by names of animals …’

  The sahib knew that he need not fear the young man, and the fact that he was losing an argument to an ordinary refugee was something he could bear were he alone, but to be insulted in the presence of other people was just very shocking.

  A young man stood before him, one whose idealism had made him forget a few things, such as his own low status and the purpose that had brought him there. After all, his mother was hospitalized and other members of the family were homeless. The sahib was not interested in winning an argument with him because he was much too ordinary to bother with. It was important to talk to him and make him aware of his own helplessness, and he could leave the office resigned to his fate, so that the blame would not rest upon the sahib.

  Reassured by his superiority, the sahib was gentle with Mohan, ‘Come, sit here. I wish to understand you.’

  Mohan glowered at the head clerk.

  ‘You see, two things are needed for efficient administration,’ the sahib said, ‘people must appreciate our competence and we should understand their helplessness.’

  ‘We understand our helplessness, but you must prove your competence.’ Mohan looked the sahib in his eyes.

  Stunned, the sahib lit a cigarette, ‘The refugees have my sympathy.’

  ‘I don’t want your sympathy. I need a place to stay—which you are in a position to give me.’

  ‘Go break a lock and take any place. Why do you need to ask?’

  ‘I need to, I need permission. I believe in the law, and if I understand that, why can’t you understand our helplessness?’

  ‘You submit an application, we will do the needful.’

  ‘An application for a house is incomplete without a refugee certificate. I have already applied for a refugee certificate and that application is sitting in one of your files waiting for “the needful” to be done. Unfortunately, it is not my responsibility to bring that file to your kind attention. The application for a refugee certificate required the submission of a ration card to certify that I was a refugee. Of course, an office which claims to be competent forgot that ration cards are issued only to those whose names are registered in the refugee office. We are not issued rations because our cards are with you, and we don’t have homes because our refugee certificates are with you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the sahib said, ‘you simply apply, never mind if there is no refugee certificate. You will find a place within a week.’

  ‘Where do I go
for a week?’

  Now it was the sahib’s turn to smile, ‘You are a refugee, you can spend a night under a tree, or near a railway track, or in a park. When you ran away from Sindh, did you ask Jinnah where should you go?’

  The poison of being uprooted welled up in Mohan’s eyes, he banged his fist upon the table, ‘Am I in India or Pakistan right now?’

  ‘Right now, you are neither in India nor Pakistan. You are a refugee. A refugee! You do not have a home either here or there, you people are like washermen’s dogs—neither free nor pets.’

  The typist quietly left the room, head down. The head clerk continued to stand, for he was also called a dog.

  ‘It was not only Jinnah who divided this nation, it is also people like you, who have no value for human dignity. Your prejudices and selfishness have divided humanity.’

  Mohan’s voice choked, ‘You people will not let us live here, but we will not let ourselves die.’

  With this, Mohan stormed out of the office, and looked at it from some distance in the street. He took out his kerchief and began wiping the rest of the blood.

  A selection from Mohan Kalpana’s Jalavatni

  Glossary

  Ada/ado: Honorific terms, elder brother

  Ajrak: Block printed material originating in Sindh, has come to represent Sindhi identity

  Akhada: Gymnasium

  Bahen: Sister

  Bajri: Millet

  Bhagat: Folk singer from Sindh

  Bhautaar: Honorific term, such as ‘Sir’ or ‘Respected One’

  Bilti: Consignment note

  Chaubaaz: Dice game

  Chopad: An altered pronunciation of chaubaaz, a dice game

  Deewan: Historically referred to Hindus employed as officers/munshis in the courts of Sindh, also denotes a respectable way of referring to a well-to-do Hindu

  Deg: A large wok or utensil used for cooking

  Doha: Couplet

  Dyata: A pejorative reference, of being uneducated and ill-bred, to Muslims

  Garibparvar: Saviour of the poor

  Gulkand: Rose jam