Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  This was not all that changed the life of the village. A unit of Sikh soldiers arrived and put up tents near the railway station. They built a six-foot-high square of sandbags about the base of the signal near the bridge, and mounted a machine gun in each face. Armed sentries began to patrol the platform and no villagers were allowed near the railings. All trains coming from Delhi stopped and changed their drivers and guards before moving on to Pakistan. Those coming from Pakistan ran through with their engines screaming with release and relief.

  One morning, a train from Pakistan halted at Mano Majra railway station. At first glance, it had the look of the trains in the days of peace. No one sat on the roof. No one clung between the bogies. No one was balanced on the footboards. But somehow it was different. There was something uneasy about it. It had a ghostly quality. As soon as it pulled up to the platform, the guard emerged from the tail end of the train and went into the station-master’s office. Then the two went to the soldiers’ tents and spoke to the officer in charge. The soldiers were called out and the villagers loitering about were ordered back to Mano Majra. One man was sent off on a motorcycle to Chundunnugger. An hour later, the sub-inspector with about fifty armed policemen turned up at the station. Immediately after them, Mr Hukum Chand drove up in his American car.

  The arrival of the ghost train in broad daylight created a commotion in Mano Majra. People stood on their roofs to see what was happening at the station. All they could see was the black top of the train stretching from one end of the platform to the other. The station building and the railings blocked the rest of the train from view. Occasionally a soldier or a policeman came out of the station and then went back again.

  In the afternoon, men gathered in little groups, discussing the train. The groups merged with each other under the peepul tree, and then everyone went into the gurdwara. Women, who had gone from door to door collecting and dropping bits of gossip, assembled in the headman’s house and waited for their menfolk to come home and tell them what they had learned about the train.

  This was the pattern of things at Mano Majra when anything of consequence happened. The women went to the headman’s house, the men to the temple. There was no recognized leader of the village. Banta Singh, the headman, was really only a collector of revenue—a lambardar. The post had been in his family for several generations. He did not own any more land than the others. Nor was he a head in any other way. He had no airs about him: he was a modest hard-working peasant like the rest of his fellow villagers. But since government officials and the police dealt with him, he had an official status. Nobody called him by his name. He was ‘O Lambardara,’ as his father, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father had been before him.

  The only men who voiced their opinions at village meetings were Imam Baksh, the mullah of the mosque, and Bhai Meet Singh. Imam Baksh was a weaver, and weavers are traditionally the butt of jokes in the Punjab. They are considered effeminate and cowardly—a race of cuckolds whose women are always having liaisons with others. But Imam Baksh’s age and piety had made him respected. A series of tragedies in his family had made him an object of pity, and then of affection. The Punjabis love people they can pity. His wife and only son had died within a few days of each other. His eyes, which had never been very good, suddenly became worse and he could not work his looms any more. He was reduced to beggary, with a baby girl, Nooran, to look after. He began living in the mosque and teaching Muslim children the Koran. He wrote out verses from the Koran for the village folk to wear as charms or for the sick to swallow as medicine. Small offerings of flour, vegetables, food, and cast-off clothes kept him and his daughter alive. He had an amazing fund of anecdotes and proverbs which the peasants loved to hear. His appearance commanded respect. He was a tall, lean man, bald save for a line of white hair which ran round the back of his head from ear to ear, and he had a neatly trimmed silky white beard that he occasionally dyed with henna to a deep orange-red. The cataract in his eyes gave them a misty philosophical look. Despite his sixty years, he held himself erect. All this gave his bearing a dignity and an aura of righteousness. He was known to the villagers not as Imam Baksh or the mullah but as Chacha, or Uncle.

  Meet Singh inspired no such affection and respect. He was only a peasant who had taken to religion as an escape from work. He had a little land of his own which he had leased out, and this, with the offerings at the temple, gave him a comfortable living. He had no wife or children. He was not learned in the scriptures, nor had he any faculty for conversation. Even his appearance was against him. He was short, fat, and hairy. He was the same age as Imam Baksh, but his beard had none of the serenity of the other’s. It was black, with streaks of grey. And he was untidy. He wore his turban only when reading the scripture. Otherwise, he went about with his long hair tied in a loose knot held by a little wooden comb. Almost half of the hair was scattered on the nape of his neck. He seldom wore a shirt and his only garment—a pair of shorts—was always greasy with dirt. But Meet Singh was a man of peace. Envy had never poisoned his affection for Imam Baksh. He only felt that he owed it to his own community to say something when Imam Baksh made any suggestions. Their conversation always had an undercurrent of friendly rivalry.

  The meeting in the gurdwara had a melancholic atmosphere. People had little to say, and those who did spoke slowly, like prophets.

  Imam Baksh opened the discussion. ‘May Allah be merciful. We are living in bad times.’

  A few people sighed solemnly, ‘Yes, bad days.’

  Meet Singh added, ‘Yes, Chacha—this is Kalyug, the dark age.’

  There was a long silence and people shuffled uneasily on their haunches. Some yawned, closing their mouths with loud invocations to God: ‘Ya Allah. Wah Guru, wah Guru.’

  ‘Lambardara,’ started Imam Baksh again, ‘you should know what is happening. Why has not the Deputy Sahib sent for you?’

  ‘How am I to know, Chacha? When he sends for me I will go. He is also at the station and no one is allowed near it.’

  A young villager interjected in a loud cheery voice: ‘We are not going to die just yet. We will soon know what is going on. It is a train after all. It may be carrying government treasures or arms. So they guard it. Haven’t you heard, many have been looted?’

  ‘Shut up,’ rebuked his bearded father angrily. ‘Where there are elders, what need have you to talk?’

  ‘I only . . . .

  ‘That is all,’ said the father sternly. No one spoke for some time.

  ‘I have heard,’ said Imam Baksh, slowly combing his beard with his fingers, ‘that there have been many incidents with trains.’

  The word ‘incident’ aroused an uneasy feeling in the audience. ‘Yes, lots of incidents have been heard of,’ Meet Singh agreed after a while.

  ‘We only ask for Allah’s mercy,’ said Imam Baksh, closing the subject he had himself opened.

  Meet Singh, not meaning to be outdone in the invocation to God, added, ‘Wah Guru, wah Guru.’

  They sat on in a silence punctuated by yawns and murmurs of ‘Ya Allah’ and ‘Hey wah Guru’. Several people, on the outer fringe of the assembly, stretched themselves on the floor and went to sleep.

  Suddenly a policeman appeared in the doorway of the gurdwara. The lambardar and three or four villagers stood up. People who were asleep were prodded into getting up. Those who had been dozing sat up in a daze, exclaiming, ‘What is it? What’s up?’ Then hurriedly wrapped their turbans round their heads.

  ‘Who is the lambardar of the village?’

  Banta Singh walked up to the door. The policeman took him aside and whispered something. Then as Banta Singh turned back, he said loudly: ‘Quickly, within half an hour. There are two military trucks waiting on the station side. I will be there.’

  The policeman walked away briskly.

  The villagers crowded round Banta Singh. The possession of a secret had lent him an air of importance. His voice had a tone of authority.

  ‘Everyone
get all the wood there is in his house and all the kerosene oil he can spare and bring these to the motor trucks on the station side. You will be paid.’

  The villagers waited for him to tell them why. He ordered them off brusquely. ‘Are you deaf? Haven’t you heard? Or do you want the police to whip your buttocks before you move? Come along quickly.’

  People dispersed into the village lanes whispering to each other. The lambardar went to his own house.

  A few minutes later, villagers with bundles of wood and bottles of oil started assembling outside the village on the station side. Two large mud-green army trucks were parked alongside each other. A row of empty petrol cans stood against a mud well. A Sikh soldier with a sten gun stood on guard. Another Sikh, an officer with his beard neatly rolled in a hair net, sat on the back of one of the trucks with his feet dangling. He watched the wood being stacked in the other truck and nodded his head in reply to the villagers’ greetings. The lambardar stood beside him, taking down the names of the villagers and the quantities they brought. After dumping their bundles of wood on the truck and emptying bottles of kerosene into the petrol cans, the villagers collected in a little group at a respectful distance from the officer.

  Imam Baksh put down on the truck the wood he had carried on his head and handed his bottle of oil to the lambardar. He retied his turban, then greeted the officer loudly, ‘Salaam, Sardar Sahib.’

  The officer looked away.

  Imam Baksh started again. ‘Everything is all right, isn’t it, Sardar Sahib?’

  The officer turned around abruptly and snapped, ‘Get along. Don’t you see I am busy?’

  Imam Baksh, still adjusting his turban, meekly joined the villagers.

  When both the trucks were loaded, the officer told Banta Singh to come to the camp next morning for the money. The trucks rumbled off toward the station.

  Banta Singh was surrounded by eager villagers. He felt that he was somehow responsible for the insult to Imam Baksh. The villagers were impatient with him.

  ‘O Lambardara, why don’t you tell us something? What is all this big secret you are carrying about? You seem to think you have become someone very important and don’t need to talk to us any more,’ said Meet Singh angrily.

  ‘No, Bhai, no. If I knew, why would I not tell you? You talk like children. How can I argue with soldiers and policemen? they told me nothing. And didn’t you see how that pig’s penis spoke to Chacha? One’s self-respect is on one’s own hands. Why should I have myself insulted by having my turban taken off?’

  Imam Baksh acknowledged the gesture gracefully. ‘Lambardar is right. If somebody barks when you speak to him, it is best to keep quiet. Let us all go to our homes. You can see what they are doing from the tops of your roofs.’

  The villagers dispersed to their rooftops. From there the trucks could be seen at the camp near the station. They started off again and went east along the railway track till they were beyond the signal. Then they turned sharp left and bumped across the rails. They turned left again, came back along the line toward the station and disappeared behind the train.

  All afternoon, the villagers stood on their roofs shouting to each other, asking whether anyone had seen anything. In their excitement they had forgotten to prepare the mid-day meal. Mothers fed their children on stale leftovers from the day before. They did not have time to light their hearths. The men did not give fodder to their cattle nor remember to milk them as evening drew near. When the sun was already under the arches of the bridge everyone became conscious of having overlooked the daily chores. It would be dark soon and the children would clamour for food, but still the women watched, their eyes glued to the station. The cows and buffaloes lowed in the barns, but still the men stayed on the roofs looking toward the station. Everyone expected something to happen.

  The sun sank behind the bridge, lighting the white clouds which had appeared in the sky with hues of russet, copper and orange. The shades of grey blended with the glow as evening gave way to twilight and twilight sank into darkness. The station became a black wall. Wearily, the men and women went down to their courtyards, beckoning the others to do the same. They did not want to be alone in missing anything.

  The northern horizon, which had turned a bluish grey, showed orange again. The orange turned into copper and then into a luminous russet. Red tongues of flame leaped into the black sky. A soft breeze began to blow towards the village. It brought the smell of burning kerosene, then of wood. And then—a faint acrid smell of searing flesh.

  The village was stilled in a deathly silence. No one asked anyone else what the odour was. They all knew. They had known it all the time. The answer was implicit in the fact that the train had come from Pakistan.

  That evening, for the first time in the memory of Mano Majra, Imam Baksh’s sonorous cry did not rise to the heavens to proclaim the glory of God.

  The Woman on Platform 8

  Ruskin Bond

  IT WAS MY SECOND YEAR AT boarding-school, and I was sitting on platform no. 8 at Ambala station, waiting for the north bound train. I think I was about twelve at the time. My parents considered me old enough to travel alone, and I had arrived by bus at Ambala early in the evening: now there was a wait till midnight before my train arrived. Most of the time I had been pacing up and down the platform, browsing at the bookstall, or feeding broken biscuits to stray dogs; trains came and went, and the platform would be quiet for a while and then, when a train arrived, it would be an inferno of heaving, shouting, agitated human bodies. As the carriage doors opened, a tide of people would sweep down upon the nervous little ticket-collector at the gate; and every time this happened I would be caught in the rush and swept outside the station. Now tired of this game and of ambling about the platform, I sat down on my suitcase and gazed dismally across the railway-tracks.

  Trolleys rolled past me, and I was conscious of the cries of the various vendors—the men who sold curds and lemon, the sweetmeat-seller, the newspaper boy—but I had lost interest in all that went on along the busy platform, and continued to stare across the railway-tracks, feeling bored and a little lonely.

  ‘Are you all alone, my son?’ asked a soft voice close behind me.

  I looked up and saw a woman standing near me. She was leaning over, and I saw a pale face, and dark kind eyes. She wore no jewels, and was dressed very simply in a white sari.

  ‘Yes, I am going to school,’ I said, and stood up respectfully; she seemed poor, but there was a dignity about her that commanded respect.

  ‘I have been watching you for some time,’ she said. ‘Didn’t your parents come to see you off?’

  ‘I don’t live here,’ I said. ‘I had to change trains. Anyway, I can travel alone.’

  ‘I am sure you can,’ she said, and I liked her for saying that, and I also liked her for the simplicity of her dress, and for her deep, soft voice and the serenity of her face.

  ‘Tell me, what is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Arun,’ I said.

  ‘And how long do you have to wait for your train?’

  ‘About an hour, I think. It comes at twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Then come with me and have something to eat.’

  I was going to refuse, out of shyness and suspicion, but she took me by the hand, and then I felt it would be silly to pull my hand away. She told a coolie to look after my suitcase, and then she led me away down the platform. Her hand was gentle, and she held mine neither too firmly nor too lightly. I looked up at her again. She was not young. And she was not old. She must have been over thirty but, had she been fifty, I think she would have looked much the same.

  She took me into the station dining-room, ordered tea and samosas and jalebies, and at once I began to thaw and take a new interest in this kind woman. The strange encounter had little effect on my appetite. I was a hungry school boy, and I ate as much as I could in as polite a manner as possible. She took obvious pleasure in watching me eat, and I think it was the food that strengthened the bond between us
and cemented our friendship, for under the influence of the tea and sweets I began to talk quite freely, and told her about my school, my friends, my likes and dislikes. She questioned me quietly from time to time, but preferred listening; she drew me out very well, and I had soon forgotten that we were strangers. But she did not ask me about my family or where I lived, and I did not ask her where she lived. I accepted her for what she had been to me—a quiet, kind and gentle woman who gave sweets to a lonely boy on a railway platform . . . .

  After about half an hour we left the dining-room and began walking back along the platform. An engine was shunting up and down beside platform no. 8, and as it approached, a boy leapt off the platform and ran across the rails, taking a short cut to the next platform. He was at a safe distance from the engine, and there was no danger unless he had fallen; but as he leapt across the rails, the woman clutched my arm. Her fingers dug into my flesh, and I winced with pain. I caught her fingers and looked up at her, and I saw a spasm of pain and fear and sadness pass across her face. She watched the boy as he climbed the other platform, and it was not until he had disappeared in the crowd that she relaxed her hold on my arm. She smiled at me reassuringly, and took my hand again: but her fingers trembled against mine.

  ‘He was all right,’ I said, feeling that it was she who needed reassurance.

  She smiled gratefully at me and pressed my hand. We walked together in silence until we reached the place where I had left my suitcase. One of my schoolfellows, Satish, a boy of about my age, had turned up with his mother.

  ‘Hello, Arun!’ he called. ‘The train’s coming in late, as usual. Did you know we have a new Headmaster this year?’

  We shook hands, and then he turned to his mother and said: ‘This is Arun, mother. He is one of my friends, and the best bowler in the class.’

  ‘I am glad to know that,’ said his mother, a large imposing woman who wore spectacles. She looked at the woman who led my hand and said: ‘And I suppose you’re Arun’s mother?’