Cracking India

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  Ramzana the butcher and Masseur join us. Ayah sits sheathing her head and form with her sari, cowering and lumpish against the wall.

  “You shouldn’t have brought them here, yaar,” says Masseur. “They shouldn’t see such things... Besides, it’s dangerous.”

  “We are with her. She’s safe,” says Ice-candy-man laconically. He adds: “I only wanted her to see the fires.”

  “I want to go home,” I whimper.

  “As soon as things quiet down I’ll take you home,” says Masseur reassuringly. He picks me up and swings me until I smile.

  Ice-candy-man offers me another popsicle. I’ve eaten so many already that I feel sick. He gathers the empty tin plates strewn about us. The uneaten chapatti on Ayah’s plate is stiff: the vegetable curry cold. Ice-candy-man removes the plate.

  “Look!” shouts the butcher. “Shalmi’s started to burn!”

  We rush to the parapet. Tongues of pink flame lick two or three brick buildings in the bazaar. The flames are hard to spot: no match for the massive growth of brick and cement spreading on either side of the street.

  “Just watch. You’ll see a tamasha!” says Ice-candy-man. “Wait till the fire gets to their stock of arsenal.”

  As if on cue, a deafening series of explosions shakes the floor beneath our feet. Ayah stands up hastily and joins us at the parapet. The walls and balconies of a two-story building in the center of the bazaar bulge and bulge. Then the bricks start slowly tumbling, and the dark slab of roof caves into the exploding furnace...

  People are pouring into the Shalmi lanes from their houses and shops. We hear the incredibly prompt clamor of a fire brigade. The clanking fire engine, crowded with ladders, hose and helmeted men, maneuvers itself through the street, the truck with the water tank following.

  The men exchange surprised looks. Ice-candy-man says: “Where did those motherfuckers spring from?”

  The firemen scamper busily, attaching hoses, shoving people back. Riding on the trucks they expertly direct their powerful hoses at the rest of the buildings on either side of the road.

  As the fire brigade drives away, the entire row of buildings on both sides of the street ignite in an incredible conflagration. Although we are several furlongs away, a scorching blast from a hot wind makes our clothes flap as if in a storm. I look at Ice-candy-man. The astonishment on his features is replaced by a huge grin. His face, reflecting the fire, is lit up. “The fucking bastards!” he says, laughing aloud, spit flying from his mouth. “The fucking bastards! They sprayed the buildings with petrol! They must be Muslim.”

  The Hindus of Shalmi must have piled a lot of dynamite in their houses and shops to drive the Muslims from Mochi Gate. The entire Shalmi, an area covering about four square miles, flashes in explosions. The men and women on our roof are slapping each other’s hands, laughing, hugging one another.

  I stare at the tarriasha, mesmerized by the spectacle. It is like a gigantic fireworks display in which stiff figures looking like spreadeagled stick-dolls leap into the air, black against the magenta furnace. Trapped by the spreading flames the panicked Hindus rush in droves from one end of the street to the other. Many disappear down the smoking lanes. Some collapse in the street. Charred limbs and burnt logs are falling from the sky.

  The whole world is burning. The air on my face is so hot I think my flesh and clothes will catch fire. I start screaming, hysterically sobbing. Ayah moves away, her feet suddenly heavy and dragging, and sits on the roof slumped against the wall. She buries her face in her knees.

  “What small hearts you have,” says Ice-candy-man, beaming affectionately at us. “You must make your hearts stout!” He strikes his out-thrust chest with his fist. Turning to the men, he says: “The fucking bastards! They thought they’d drive us out of Bhatti! We’ve shown them!”

  It is not safe to leave until late that evening. As the butcher drives us home in his cart, the moonlight settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore.

  In a rush I collect the dolls long abandoned in bottom drawers and toy chest and climb stools to retrieve them from the dusty tops of old cupboards. I line them up against the wall, on my bed, and Adi, intrigued by my sudden interest in dolls, stands by quietly watching.

  I can’t remember a time when I ever played with dolls: though relatives and acquaintances have persisted in giving them to me. China, cloth and celluloid dolls variously stuffed, sized and colored. Black golliwogs, British baby dolls with pink complexions, Indian adult dolls covered in white cloth, their faces painted on.

  I pick out a big, bloated celluloid doll. I turn it upside down and pull its legs apart. The elastic that holds them together stretches easily. I let one leg go and it snaps back, attaching itself to the brittle torso.

  Adi moves closer. “What’re you trying to do?” he enquires.

  I examine the sari- and dhoti-clad Indian dolls. They are unreal, their exaggerated faces too obviously painted, their bodies too fragile. I select a large lifelike doll with a china face and blinking blue eyes and coarse black curls. It has a sturdy, well-stuffed cloth body and a substantial feel.

  I hold it upside down and pull its pink legs apart. The knees and thighs bend unnaturally, but the stitching in the center stays intact.

  I hold one leg out to Adi. “Here,” I say, “pull it.”

  “Why?” asks Adi looking confused.

  “Pull, damn it!” I scream, so close to hysteria that Adi blanches and hastily grabs the proffered leg. (He is one of the few people I know who is fair enough to blanch—or blush noticeably.) Adi and I pull the doll’s legs, stretching it in a fierce tug-of-war, until making a wrenching sound it suddenly splits. We stagger off balance. The cloth skin is ripped right up to its armpits spilling chunks of grayish cotton and coiled brown coir and the innards that make its eyes blink and make it squawk “Ma-ma.” I examine the doll’s spilled insides and, holding them in my hands, collapse on the bed sobbing.

  Adi crouches close to me. I can’t bear the disillusioned and contemptuous look in his eyes.

  “Why were you so cruel if you couldn’t stand it?” he asks at last, infuriated by the pointless brutality.

  How long does Lahore burn? Weeks? Months?

  We climb to the roof of the Daulatrams’ two-story house to watch. The Daulatrams flee.

  The Shankars, too, go. The back portion of our house is untenanted. The Shankars’ abandoned belongings are stored by Mother in empty servants’ quarters. Gita, with her short fat plait and satin bows, and her steamy, bellowing mate, have disappeared.

  Still we go to the Daulatrams’ abandoned house to see Mozang Chawk burn. How long does Mozang Chawk burn...?

  Mozang Chawk bums for months... and months...

  Despite its brick and mortar construction: despite its steel girders and the density of its terraces that run in an uneven high-low, broad-narrow continuity for miles on either side: despite the small bathrooms and godowns and corrugated tin shelters for charpoys deployed to sleep on the roof and its doors and wooden rafters—the buildings could not have burned for months. Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic fled—the fire could not have burned for... Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold, bricked-in rupees, secreted jewelry, lingering hopes... the fire could not have burned for months and months...

  But in my memory it is branded over an inordinate length of time: memory demands poetic license.

  And the hellish fires of Lahore spawn monstrous mobs. These no more resemble the little processions of chanting urchins that Warris Road spawned—and that Adi and I shouted ourselves hoarse in—than the fires that fuse steel girders to mortar resemble the fires that Imam Din fans alive in our kitchen grates every morning.

  Chapter 17

  Playing British gods under the ceiling fans of the Faletti’s Hotel—behind Queen Victoria’s gardened skirt—the Radcliff Commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards. Lahore is dealt to Pakistan, Amritsar to India. Sialkot to Pakistan.
Pathankot to India.

  I am Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that.

  A new nation is born. India has been divided after all. Did they dig the long, long canal Ayah mentioned? Although it is my birthday no one has time for me. My questions remained unanswered even by Ayah.

  Mother makes a disappointing little fuss over me that lasts for about three minutes. She wishes me happy birthday and kisses me and instructs Imam Din to make sweet vermicelli with fried currants and almonds and hands Ayah a cup of milk afloat with rose petals to pour over my head before my bath.

  Father hugs me, asks how old I am. I tell him I’m eight. (Yes, time has flown forward. It will fly back yet.)

  “Good, good,” says Father absentmindedly. He doesn’t even say, “You’re a big girl now,” as he did last year. I hang around him feeling bored, while he sits on the commode absorbed in newsprint.

  I go to the kitchen and announce my birthday. “So what?” says Adi, resuming his unseemly clamor for the sugar bowl. Imam Din and Yousaf say: “How nice. How nice. Greetings, Lenny baby.” But they are preoccupied. Ayah hauls me off for a bath. I have to remind her to douse me with the milk-and-rose-petals.

  It’s the same at Godmother’s. I get hugged and kissed, but insufficiently. Godmother is busy in the kitchen. She moves to and fro, looking like an upended whale in her white sari with her sloping shoulders and broadening torso and the sari narrowing round her ankles. She has the same noble bearing and alert, accommodating air of that intelligent mammal. As she moves to and fro, Godmother directs a nonstop stream of instruction and criticism at Slavesister. Just so’s to keep her on her toes and in fair working order. Besides, Godmother is in a hurry. Left to her own assessment of priorities and speed, Slavesister can bog down to a stop.

  “Have you soaked the rice yet?” Godmother enquires. “After you’ve soaked it I want you to knead the chapatti dough. And I told you to tighten the cot strings yesterday... Did you? Well then, you may have the pleasure of sleeping on it tonight! Give yours to Manek! Will you hurry up? Half the day’s gone,” says Godmother, briskly putting Slavesister through her paces. “If you don’t pick up your feet you’ll cut off my nose! Manek will be at our door any minute! I hate to think what he’ll tell Piloo about the disorder in this house... And I haven’t even started preparing the halva for him.”

  Dr. Manek Mody is married to their middle sister, Piloo. Despite the loudspeaker in his throat, he is easygoing and genial and hardly the type to tattle to his wife about a disorderly house.

  I am hurt. I thought the preparations for the sweet at least were on my account. I say so. “Aren’t you making the halva for my birthday?”

  “Of course,” says Godmother preemptorily. “It’s for you. Who else?”

  “Of course,” says Slavesister. Ever the opportunist, she adds, “But we mustn’t be selfish, must we? It’s for you, and to sweeten Manek Uncle’s mouth in welcome and, don’t forget, we have to celebrate the new arrival yet!”

  Godmother and I look at her blankly. “Somebody has a baby I don’t know of?” asks Godmother suspiciously.

  “Have you forgotten already?” says Slavesister with reproof. “We’ve all produced a baby... We’ve given birth to a new nation. Pakistan!”

  “You are silly,” says Godmother crossly. But without the devastating artillery fire such an absurd way of putting things might be expected to provoke.

  Godmother is a head taller than Slavesister. Standing on tiptoe she reaches for the semolina. “Where is the rose water?” she asks, peering into the top shelf. “And where is the sugar? Can’t anything ever be in place?”

  “Everything is in place... If you’d only bother to look, Rodabai.”

  “Is that so? The sugar and the rose water jumped last night? And, now, where’s the tea? Where’s the tea?”

  “Under your nose. Right under your nose. If you’d only look properly!” says the worm, turning!

  Godmother locates the box of tea literally under her nose. She doesn’t say anything. I can’t believe it.

  I am so astonished my jaw hangs open (ever since, I’ve had trouble with my mandibular). Hung-jawed I go to Oldhusband, and standing before him in a daze, say, “It’s my birthday.”

  Oldhusband emerges from his habitually sour-faced stupor and kisses my forehead. Like a somnambulist I receive from him a small packet wrapped in tissue paper.

  I open the packet. It is an autograph book with colored pages, and it falls open on a yellow page with writing on it. I look at Oldhusband. He takes the book from my hand and reads aloud in resounding tones:“To my dear Lenny,

  ‘The lives of great men all remind us

  How to make our lives sublime;

  And departing leave behind us

  Footsteps on the sands of time!’ ”

  He must have been quite something when young! I am unutterably impressed! I’ve never seen him so animated.

  “Will you leave your footsteps on the sands of time?” he asks.

  I imagine a series of footsteps, obscured by litter, on the gray sand by the muddy Ravi. Ayah’s, Masseur’s and mine. I nod gravely, awed and overcome by the thunder of the words.

  The only one who properly countenances my birthday is Cousin.

  When Ayah takes me and Adi across the road from Godmother’s to Electric-aunt’s he comes galloping to the gate shouting, “Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” And then, very seriously, like in films, he cautiously holds me by my shoulders and puckers his mouth. I read the intent in his eyes and, being theatrically inclined myself, I close my eyes and readily bunch my lips. I feel Cousin’s wet, puckered mouth on my bunched-up lips. I know I’m supposed to feel a thrill, so, I muster up a little thrill.

  The thrill comes and goes but Cousin’s mouth remains in exactly the same position, exerting exactly the same pressure as at the moment of impact. The muscles of my mouth begin to ache. I open my eyes and discover Cousin’s bewildered eyes gazing directly into mine. He doesn’t know if he is doing it right. Or when to stop. The kissing scenes in the films go on much longer. But I can tell at that alarming proximity that the muscles in Cousin’s jaws are trembling. My neck, too, is beginning to ache at that awkward angle. Kissing, I’m convinced, is overrated. Trust Cousin to enlighten me. When our mutual agony becomes unbearable, Ayah suddenly slaps Cousin hard on his back, thereby ungluing our stalemate, and scolds: “Oye! What is this badmashi? Shame on you!”

  Cousin totters off balance and looks sheepish. And becomes defensive when Ayah casually spanks him again. I think she is repaying me for minding Ice-candy-man’s toes.

  Electric-aunt appears on her veranda and holding hands we gallop up to her, trailed unenthusiastically by Adi and good-naturedly by Ayah.

  “What? No party?” says Electric-aunt, raising her scanty eyebrows and rubbing it in. She bares a white row of tiny teeth, as neatly packed and even as a goat’s, in a bright smile.

  Cousin looks at me pityingly: “We’ll have one right here!” he volunteers gallantly.

  While Ayah makes hard-boiled-egg sandwiches, Cousin tears Electric-aunt’s cook away from the radio. They take off on their cycles to buy a cake and potato chips. Electric-aunt, compensating for her lack of charm with an abundance of energy and thrift, briskly opens a locked cupboard in her store and removes paper napkins, plates, party hats and streamers that have already served Cousin’s birthdays on two occasions. She counts out eight little candles from an economy-sized box of fifty.

  Cousin returns with brown paper bags and a dented cardboard cake box. I blow out the candles and cut the squashed cake. And then we sit around the radio listening to the celebrations of the new Nation. Jinnah’s voice, inaugurating the Constituent Assembly sessions on August 11, says: “You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in the State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of State... etc., etc., etc. Pakistan Zindabad!”

  Chap
ter 18

  Mr. Singh, long hair knotted on top of his head, on long hairy legs, in his yellow pajama-shorts and wearing his kirpan-dagger, carrying a hockey stick and trailed by his modest American wife and two sweaty and subdued children, comes up our drive just as the huge red sun rests on the top of the house opposite ours.

  The family settles in wicker chairs on the veranda beneath the slowly squeaking ceiling fan. Mother, her young face grave and composed behind her tinted glasses, greets them with a stylish handshake—which Mr. Singh stands up to receive. Mother’s touch ignites men. Mr. Singh’s beard glows and his forehead turns incandescent.

  Mr. Singh is obviously uncomfortable perched on the dainty wicker chair. He would prefer to sit cross-legged but manages to keep both dusty, slippered feet firmly on the floor. I signal to Rosy-Peter to come inside, but they shake their heads and sit listlessly on their chairs.

  “The Mehtas have gone! The Malothras have gone! The Guptas have gone!” says Mr. Singh, coming straight out with what is uppermost in his mind. He is not a man for preliminary niceties.

  “The Guptas too? When?” asks Mother, her voice throbbing with concern.

  “About two hours back. They are joining an escorted convoy of cars.”

  Mother’s eyes grow moist. Mrs. Singh discreetly wipes the tears that have rolled into the recently acquired indigo smudges beneath her eyes. Rosy gets up and, exposing her damp cotton knickers, which look absurd on her eight-year-old bottom, scrambles on to her mother’s lap. Mrs. Singh smooths her daughter’s hair.

  Mr. Singh clears his throat. “I don’t think there are any Hindu families left on Warris Road,” he says.