by Bapsi Sidhwa
Dost Mohammad leads us to the heart of the fair, to the rides and food stalls. Frying onion pakoras. A bubbling, spicy stew of chickpeas. Pink and yellow clouds of spun-sugar candy. Helium-filled balloons. Our every step deflected by aromas. The family scatters. Ranna and I spend most of our small allowance on food; stuffing ourselves on syrupy gulab-jamans and jalebis. We scramble for seats on the creaking Ferris wheel, its six wooden trays swaying from six wooden spokes. Each tray is jammed with children, and the stones that are juggled from one tray to another to balance them. Agile attendants scramble among the spokes like acrobats to turn the wheel with the weight of their bodies. Dost Mohammad lifts us into a tray. I don’t trust the shallow railing guarding us; and as we orbit, our delighted limbs cramped, our eyes narrowed against the wind, I cling to Ranna. Holding the rickety edge of the swaying tray with one hand, he supports me with the other.
We ride the merry-go-rounds with metal seats and the seesaws. And despite the gaiety and distractions, Ranna senses the chill spread by the presence of strangers, their unexpected faces harsh and cold. A Sikh youth whom Ranna has met a few times, and who has always been kind, pretends not to notice Ranna. Other men, who would normally smile at Ranna, slide their eyes past. Little by little, without his being aware of it, his smile becomes strained and his laughter strident. “What’s the matter?” I ask him. “Nothing,” he says, surprised.
In the afternoon Dost Mohammad takes us with him to visit Jagjeet Singh. He has his hookah with him so he waits outside the Gurdwara while we go in to summon the granthi. Jagjeet Singh is sitting cross-legged in front of an open Granth Sahib. It is resting on an elaborately carved walnut stand. I have never seen a book so large. Surely, if God dwells in books, He dwells in one as large! Later that night Ranna told me that he had wished that the holy Koran their mullah occasionally displayed was larger.
Jagjeet Singh leads us to his charpoy beneath a young banyan already spreading its tender shade over part of the temple wall. He shouts to a Sikh boy washing utensils at a well to fetch tea. Dost Mohammad asks the granthi’s permission to light his hookah.
Dost Mohammad has noticed the presence of strangers too. After the boy hands us our tea, and we settle down to blowing into and sipping from the steaming brass mugs, he asks, “Jagieet Singh-jee, you have a large number of visitors to the fair this year... All those stalwarts in blue turbans with staves and long kirpans...?”
The granthi’s genial face becomes uncommonly solemn. He rubs the puffy skin around his eyes and I notice how old and tired he looks. “I don’t know what to say,” he says, bowing his head. “They are Akalis... The Immortals... Maharaja Ranjeet Singh formed the sect when he conquered the Punjab a hundred years ago.” And, though there is no one else that I can see—the Sikh boy is in any case too far away to hear—he moves closer to Dost Mohammad. Lowering his voice, he says: “I visit the Golden Temple at Amritsar from time to time... The Akalis swarm around it like angry hornets in their blue turbans... I wish they’d remain there!” He pauses; then, scratching his curly beard and frowning, he says: “They talk of a plan to drive the Muslims out of East Punjab... To divide the Punjab. They say they won’t live with the Mussulmans if there is to be a Pakistan. Owlish talk like that! You know city talk It’s madness... It can’t amount to anything... but they’ve always been like that. Troublemakers. You’ll have to look out till this evil blows over.”
I don’t know where Imam Din is. I wish to God he were here! It is, almost exactly, what he’s been telling the villagers for the past two days. Dost Mohammad appears to have sunk lower into the charpoy. He is quiet for so long that the granthi turns to look at him anxiously. I feel Dost Mohammad’s thigh twitch against mine. He raises his head slowly, and at last he says, “We’ll look out... Don’t worry Jagjeet Singh-jee... We keep track of things on our chaudhry’s radio.”
“May the Ten Gurus help us,” the granthi sighs. “Wah Guru!”
A short while later, pressing the small of his back, and acting old, Imam Din lumbers up, sighing, “Ya Allah! Ya Rahman! Ya Rahim!” Seeing our mugs, he asks for tea. Other men, Sikh and Hindu friends and a few villagers from Pir Pindo, stroll up in twos and threes, and group around the granthi’s cot. They talk of everything but the intrusive presence of the Akalis. Before dusk Dost Mohammad’s younger brother, Iqbal, joins us. He has bought some land in a village four miles west of Pir Pindo and had moved there. His wife is Ranna’s favorite aunt. He loves going to their village to play with his cousins and to be spoilt by his Noni chachi. She always has something special for him to eat or wear, he tells me. His uncle tosses a knitted skullcap into Ranna’s lap, saying, “Here’s something from your Noni chachi, pahailwan!” He calls Ranna pahailwan, wrestler. It is an affectionate form of address. Ranna wears the cap at once and his uncle laughs and musses his hair.
“You’d better leave before it gets dark,” Jagjeet Singh says quietly to Dost Mohammad; the other men are talking among themselves. “There’s no telling who’s about these days... and not all of them are your friends.”
The sun has set, but it is still light enough to see. Ranna was leaning against his father when the granthi spoke. The tone of the granthi’s voice, the sadness, and the resignation in it, turned the heaviness in Ranna’s heart into the first stab of fear. Even in retrospect, these isolated impressions didn’t add up to a reliable warning. Pir Pindo was too deep in the hinterland of the Punjab, where distances are measured in footsteps and at the speed of bullock-carts, for larger politics to penetrate.
The Sikhs of Dera Tek Singh escort us halfway to Pir Pindo.
That evening we crowd into the chaudhry’s courtyard to listen to his radio. The Congress and Muslim League spokesmen, the announcer says, warn the peasants not to heed mischievous rumors. Even Master Tara Singh, the leader of the Akali Sikhs, tells the peasants—especially the Muslims—to remain where they are. No one will disturb them.
A few days later, in Lahore, we hear of attacks on Muslim villages near Amritsar and Jullundur. But the accounts are contrary—and the details so brutal and bizarre that they cannot be believed. Imam Din tells Yousaf and Ayah that he is sure it is Akali propaganda, calculated to scare the Muslim peasants. And even if it does scare them, he asks, what good will it do the Akali Sikhs? Where can the scared Muslim villagers go? There are millions of them. Even supposing Dost Mohammad and his family leave Pir Pindo, which they can’t... how can they abandon their ancestors’ graves, every inch of land they own, their other kin? How will they ever hold up their heads again? Suppose every single person in Pir Pindo can hold his own someplace else—even then millions of Mussulmans will be left in East Punjab! Where will they go? No, he says, I have seen for myself; they cannot throw the Mussulmans out!
A fortnight after the Baisakhi Fair, late in the afternoon, an army truck disgorges a family of villagers outside our gate. Hearing the noise, I run to the kitchen. Imam Din is standing in the open door, staring at a string of men, women and children as they troop up our drive. I recognize some of the faces from Pir Pindo; they are distant kin—not of his immediate family—cousins, nephews or great-grandnephews thrice removed. I wonder how he will accommodate them all in his quarters. Ayah has one look at his face and says, “Go, greet them. I’ll prepare the tea and parathas.” Yousaf and Hari, followed by Imam Din, welcome the villagers and lead them to the quarters at the back.
The women and children are distributed among Imam Din and Ayah’s quarters. The men will sleep in Hari and Yousaf’s. There is a steep fall in the temperature at night, and it is still too cold to sleep out. It is difficult to count them; the babies all look alike. Excluding the tiny babies, there are at least fifteen guests. As the men squat in the courtyard, eating from a common tray as Muslims do, they tell us what happened the night before. They tell the story vividly, in the way of peasants, repeating the dialogue, presenting each detail of expression and movement, transporting us to the village.
Late in the evening three military lorries had lumbe
red into Pir Pindo gouging deep ruts in the fields and laying waste swathes of sugarcane. They were Gurkha soldiers come to evacuate them.
“Those Mussulmans who want to go to Pakistan had better get into the truck,” a soldier shouted through a megaphone. He was short and stocky like most of his race, and his small Tibetan features appeared frighteningly alien to the villagers. “We will leave at dawn.”
“What?” the puzzled villagers asked. “Is Pakistan already there?”
“Who knows,” said the Gurkha. “I’m telling what I’m told to say.”
The villagers gathered in the open yard of their mosque. They squatted in a tight arc round the mullah and the chaudhry. I imagine their faces: obstinate, dazed. And the chaudhry’s as, smiling wryly, attempting with sarcasm and wisdom to mask his panic, he says: “Do you expect us to walk away with our hands and feet? What use will they serve us without our lands? Can you evacuate our land?” he asks cunningly. And the villagers, as if they are at a debate where their chaudhry’s wit is scoring points, nod their heads and say: “Wha! Wha! Well said! What answer do you have to that, Hawaldar Sahib?”
They peppered the Gurkhas with formidable questions. “And what about our harvest?” they asked. “And the crop we have just sown? And our cattle? Who will evacuate them?”
The soldiers, unimpressed by the sarcasm and indifferent to the villagers’ confusion and troubles, shrugged and said, “We’re just here to evacuate you: hands, feet and heads. Nothing else. We’ve told you why we’re here; the rest is up to you.”
“Do you expect us to leave everything we’ve valued and loved since childhood? The seasons, the angle and color of the sun rising and setting over our fields are beautiful to us, the shape of our rooms and barns is familiar and dear. You can’t expect us to leave just like that!”
The soldiers were weary. They stood up. “You’re not the only village we are to evacuate, you know,” one of them said.
The chaudhry remained quiet and the silence settled like a black cloud over their heads, blocking out the stars. At last the chaudhry said: “If we have to go, if it’s Allah’s will, we will go when the time comes... The right time...”
“Yes... When the time comes, we shall see...,” said the villagers.
The trucks left at dawn. Five families, who like our visitors were poor relatives and hired hands, with no land in the village, left Pir Pindo, not caring one way or the other where the sun rose or set.
Chapter 13
The times have changed; the world has changed its mind.
The European’s mystery is erased.
The secret of his conjuring tricks is known:
The Frankish wizard stands and looks amazed.
-Iqbal
Already it is winter. I am never warm. I feel coldest in the misty mornings when, holding Hari’s calloused hand with my chilblained fingers, I walk on chilblained toes to Mrs. Pen’s.
The colder it gets the more reserved Hari becomes. I know he is secretly shivering. Cold turns me weepy and Hari secretive and Mrs. Pen indulgent. She lets me off early.
At Godmother’s I go straight to the kitchen. I am hungry. Slavesister warms some leftover curry and gives me the news that the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Rogers, is dead. Murdered. His mutilated body discovered in the gutter.
For a moment I cannot breathe. I feel I might fall.
I know of death: a grandfather died in Karachi and his remains were consigned to the Tower of Silence. Moti’s relatives are forever dying... But they weren’t murdered. Or mutilated. And they weren’t people I knew!
“How mutilated?” I ask, shocked.
“Never you mind,” says Slavesister.
I have seen goats slaughtered at the end of the Muslim fast on Eid. I’ve watched them being disemboweled and, with the other children, lined up to blow into their moist windpipes and inflate their lungs. But those were goats. Not tall men with moustaches and haughty voices and polished shoes and submissive wives...
“Will he go to heaven?” I ask breathlessly, clutching at straws.
“To hell!” says Mini Aunty with unexpected viciousness: giving me another shock. “All Englishmen will burn in hell for the trouble they’ve started in the Punjab! And let me tell you. The Christian hell is forever!”
The relish in her voice is ghoulish. I feel so upset at the awful fate awaiting Mr. Rogers’s mutilated carcass that I collapse on a stool. I cannot face the curry. I recall the police inspector’s chilly blue eyes that so narrowly escaped mutilation by Mr. Singh’s fork and the spit-polished ears of his orphaned children.
I start sobbing. Godmother sits up in bed and calls: “Hey! What’s the matter?”
“Mr. Rogers is dead,” I say, choking on the words. “He will burn in hell forever!”
“Who said that?” demands Godmother, knowing very well who.
“Mini Aunty.” (That’s Slavesister’s pet name. I’ve never heard her real name.)
“I know who’s going to roast forever if they don’t watch out!” says Godmother. “Don’t listen to Mini. She has no more sense than a twit!”
“After the Mountbatten plan to tear up the Punjab... how can you...,” mumbles Slavesister, shaking her head at the stove and looking martyred.
“If your mutilated body was discovered in the gutter, then you’d know how it feels! Badmouthing a dead man!”
Slavesister clicks her tongue and peers into a steaming pan and extra sweetly smiles because she is on the verge of tears. Her pale brown lips, that despite their clear outline and generous width are flat, flatten further and stretch moistly.
“Will they put Mr. Rogers into the Tower of Silence?” I ask, coming to the slave’s rescue—and attempting to get the derailed conversation back on track.
“He’s Christian. They’ll bury him,” says Godmother.
It occurs to me that I don’t know enough about the Tower. Perhaps I was too young when I first heard of it... The shock of Mr. Rogers’s demise makes me curious about all aspects of dying. “What is the Tower of Silence?” I ask.
“We call it Dungarwadi, not Tower of Silence. The English have given it that funny name... Actually it is quite a simple structure: just a big round wall without any roof,” says Godmother.
“So?” I persist.
“So nothing!” interjects the ungrateful slave crankily. “When little girls ask too many questions their tongues drop off!”
“I wasn’t asking you,” I retort, and poking my tongue at her, pointedly turn to Godmother. Godmother never talks down to me like that.
“The dead body is put inside the Dungarwadi,” explains Godmother. “The vultures pick it clean and the sun dries out the bones.”
I must look frightful because Godmother pats the bed and says, “Come here.”
I sit down, facing her, and drawing me close she says: “Mind you... It’s only the body that’s dead. Instead of polluting the earth by burying it, or wasting fuel by burning it, we feed God’s creatures. The soul’s in heaven, chatting with God in any case... Or broiling in hell like Mini’s will.”
I feel curiously deprived. Here’s an architectural wonder created exclusively by the charitable Parsees to feed God’s creatures and I haven’t even seen it. And I don’t want to wait until I’m dead! Mr. Rogers’s murdered and mutilated body is forgotten and my eyes stop tearing.
“I want to see it,” I demand.
“We don’t have one in Lahore,” says Godmother. “There are too few Parsees: the vultures would starve. But when you go to Karachi or Bombay you can see it from the outside. Only pall-bearers can go in... We have a graveyard in Lahore.”
“Thank God!” says Mini Aunty so emphatically that Godmother—who views all emphatic statements from Mini Aunty as direct challenges to her authority—rears up from her pillows demanding: “Why? What’s there to thank God for?”
“I prefer to be buried.”
“Oh? Why?”
“You know why! It gives me the creeps... The thought of vultures smac
king their beaks over my eyeballs!”
“You’d rather have your eyeballs riddled by maggots? Would you like me to post a sign over your body stating, Maggots only. No vultures allowed?”
“Really, Rodabai! I don’t want to talk or think about it. Please forget I ever...”
“I don’t know what you have against the poor vultures... favoring the maggots and worms over them! I’d be ashamed to call myself a Zoroastrian if I were you.”
“Being devoured by vultures has nothing to do with the religion... Surely Zarathustra had more important messages to deliver.... ”
“Since when have you become an authority on Zarathustra?” demands Godmother. “Haven’t you heard of Parsee charity? Only last month Sir Eduljee Adenwalla had his leg amputated in Bombay. Sick as he was, he sat in a wheelchair all through the ceremonies and had his leg deposited in the Dungarwadi! And what do you think happens when Parsee diabetics’ toes are cut off? Do you think they discard them in the wastebasket and deprive the vultures?”
Holding the dripping ladle aloft Mini Aunty covers her ears with her plump and muscular arms and says, “I don’t want to know!”
Even I’m feeling queasy. Godmother looks at me and holds her peace; and Mini Aunty, pressing her advantage, says, “I must say, you can be ghoulish sometimes. I wish you wouldn’t talk such nonsense before the child...”
“What do you mean, nonsense?” challenges Godmother. “Who was the one talking about eternal roastings in hell?”
“You know what I mean, Roda... Now don’t...”
“Who’s Roda? Who’s permitted you to call me Roda? Since when have you become my elder sister?”
“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Which way did you mean it, then?”
Slavesister, almost on tiptoe, hovers quietly over the stove. Her wet smile is flattening. Her eyes do not dare to shift from the bubbling contents of the pan she is stirring.
