Once Upon a Curfew

by Srishti Chaudhary

  ‘So people can participate.’

  ‘I know, but these are mostly boys’ colleges.’

  ‘How does that matter?’

  Indu gave her a long, hard look. ‘It matters because this is a library for girls only.’

  ‘Yes, but, of course, men can also participate in discussions. It’s an intellectual event; you can’t really keep half of the population out of it.’

  Indu didn’t reply for the moment, but later told Rana and Runjhun that only women would be invited to participate.

  ‘That’s madness!’ Runjhun said, looking from Rana to Indu. ‘The Partition didn’t affect only women, they are not the only ones who can have a discussion about it.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, Indu,’ Rana said to her.

  Indu shook her head without looking at him. ‘Of course it didn’t affect only women, but the whole point of this place is to empower women so they can find a voice that they commonly lose in the presence of men! They won’t be able to do that if there are men here.’

  ‘Says who?’ Runjhun said angrily. ‘Women won’t be able to speak in front of men, so let’s give them a separate room? What kind of logic is that? It’s a mixed world out there, and nobody gives you space if you don’t demand it.’

  ‘I don’t agree with you,’ Indu told her. ‘It is because women traditionally have been denied such opportunities that I want to offer it only to them! The atmosphere will change completely if there are twenty men here, offering their opinions as if they were fact. I don’t want that.’

  Runjhun looked at Rana, aghast. Indu didn’t have the energy to argue anymore, so she walked away.

  On the way back home in the evening, she couldn’t help the tears rolling down her cheeks as Natty tonelessly hummed his songs. He noticed she didn’t rebuke his singing today and went quiet after a while.

  ‘You’re definitely more beautiful, madame,’ Natty said when he heard her sniff, at which Indu laughed hysterically, but she was grateful for it.

  The following day, Runjhun was absent and Indu found Rana quieter than usual. She sat next to him, and although unresponsive at first, he soon gave in to Indu’s prodding.

  ‘What will you do after the summer?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’ll go home for some time, and then hopefully get a job.’

  ‘You can talk to my father.’

  ‘I will, definitely.’

  His books lay open on the table, but he leant back in his chair, whistling a tune. Indu looked at him, her own face expressionless. He was unshaven and his hair was as messy as ever, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He stared back at her for some time, and then looked away.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked her, staring ahead.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘In the summer . . . or after.’

  Indu went quiet for a moment.

  ‘I’ll keep this running for as long as I can.’

  ‘Will you be married?’

  She didn’t reply, and went over the logbook that she had in front of her.

  ‘I suppose. I mean, whenever Rajat returns.’

  It was a few minutes before he spoke up again.

  ‘Will you still be living here after that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. And then added, almost as a respite from the situation, ‘I didn’t like what Runjhun said yesterday.’

  ‘I think it made sense,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not opening this platform up to men, Rana!’

  ‘Why not? It’s just for a day, not every day, and the nature of the subject invites—’

  ‘That’s not the point! The very presence of men who think themselves as superior, of their opinions as more valid, is what holds women back from speaking. They feel that what they have to say is automatically less important in front of a man.’

  ‘It’s not about equal opportunity. Those riots affected everyone, and men should learn from them too. The world out there does not safeguard a spot for certain opinions or protect you from them.’

  ‘In an ideal world, yes, this is not equality,’ Indu said. ‘But this is not the ideal world. How will those women narrate the torture they went through in front of men? Some people require extra encouragement and the right atmosphere to open up. Like Esha.’

  He fell quiet after that and finally nodded.

  ‘She means well, though,’ he said to Indu, and she knew he was referring to Runjhun. Indu didn’t reply.

  11

  Rana cleared his throat before reading the first part again,

  and his voice reverberated on the mic. Indu smiled, both nervous and proud.

  ‘Ye daaġh daaġh ujālā ye shab-gazīda sahar

  vo intizār thā jis kā ye vo sahar to nahīñ

  ye vo sahar to nahīñ jis kī aarzū le kar

  chale the yaar ki mil jā.egī kahīñ na kahīñ

  falak ke dasht meñ tāroñ kī āḳhirī manzil

  kahīñ to hogā shab-e-sust-mauj kā sāhil

  kahīñ to jā ke rukegā safīna-e-ġham’

  Indu heard the sound of every movement from the audience as he paused; nobody spoke.

  ‘This stained, pitted first light,’ he finished in English, ‘this daybreak, battered by night; this dawn that we all ached for, this is not that one. This is not that dawn, this is not that dawn.’

  Applause broke out along with a jingle of bangles. There were rows of chairs from the front, where Rana stood in front of the screen and the mic, to the back, all occupied by women dressed up in saris on this pleasant March morning. It had been cold and damp inside Number 7 when they opened it that morning, but now, with so many people inside, it was warm and there was barely any space to move. The clapping went on and Rana bowed, looking slightly embarrassed, for it was only a recitation. Indu went up to where he was.

  They nodded at each other, smiling, and Indu took the mic. Her mother sat at the very back with her sister, and she nodded at them with confidence. Apart from Rana, there was no other male in the room, not even Fawad.

  ‘I would like to thank you all for being here this morning,’ she said, looking around the room. She had invited Mrs Bala and a few other teachers. Indu recognized some of her classmates too. Mrs Leela, her daughter, Sangeeta, Rosie, and all the others who came to the library every day were also in the crowd, some of them with their mothers and sisters.

  ‘This year, we at the Number 7 Library would like to take this day as an opportunity to remember a ghastly past, the horrors and savagery of which must be remembered as well as it is possible to. We must be reminded that freedom came at a terrible cost, and India’s heart today beats for the graves of those who were massacred in mindless violence organized in the guise of religion.’

  She adjusted the notes from which she spoke and looked up to see Rana staring at her with bated breath.

  ‘The partition of India in 1947 is the biggest mass migration of people in the history of the world, till date, and may remain so for a long, long time. A look at the statistics to understand the sheer scale of what actually transpired within those few days: estimates suggest that one crore, forty-five lakh people crossed the borders, that is, from India to Pakistan, and from Pakistan to India, both in the west and the east. While some figures claim the deaths of thousands of people, the actual number easily goes up to hundreds of thousands. Some reports suggest that anywhere between ten to twenty lakh people died, more than twenty lakh people went missing, and thousands and thousands of women were abducted and raped.’

  There was absolute silence in the room, and Indu heard her own gulp sound much louder than it would otherwise have. Yet, the more chilling her content, the harder her voice became.

  ‘Most people who had to cross over left within a few hours, lest the violence get to them. They left all they had ever known, the lives that they had built for themselves, departing for a new land where they didn’t know what they would find, leaving by any means that they could. Some thought that one day, they would be able to return; most kne
w that was it and tried to carry as much with them as they could.

  ‘As if the trauma of leaving their homes, the arduous journey, and the uncertainty of what lay in the future wasn’t enough, on the way, they were subjected to every kind of misery and violence. There was carnage and looting, families were separated, women were kidnapped, raped and left to die, children murdered, and men killed, unable to help as their families disintegrated before them. Yet, the biggest trauma of all was that these atrocities weren’t committed by a foreign, strange hand; it was brother against brother, wielding swords at each other after years of breaking bread together, simply because they belonged to different faiths.’

  The silence was almost palpable, and Indu couldn’t stop now.

  ‘Centuries of peace and love broke down within a few nights, into hatred and slaughter. Swept up in the frenzy of the mob, humanity was forgotten. What occurred would be the biggest number of civilian deaths by civilians in this short a duration of time, as the world watched the annihilation unfold. Governments and officials might want you to forget what happened and start anew, but it is essential that what happened must not be forgotten, that the past is ever present in memory to remind and shame us, so that we may never repeat such sins, and construct a better future.’

  ‘This event has been curated with the special assistance of Miss Runjhun Verma, and we hope to preserve the stories that we reveal today. I would like to invite on stage a few women who will share their experiences of their journey from what is now Pakistan to India.’

  From the audience rose Kaur aunty, who came to the library every now and then. She was the first one who had agreed to tell her story in front of other people, eager that people should know her struggles, sure that what she had seen wasn’t the worst of it. She was a heavyset woman and walked up to the mic slowly, holding her sari gingerly. Rana began clapping, the others joined him and she seemed slightly more confident when the applause died down.

  ‘Thank you for having me here,’ she began, slightly hesitant. She looked towards the audience, but her mind seemed to be somewhere else. Indu knew she was looking for a place to start. ‘I was born in Lahore, nineteen years before the partition. My father was a trader and a strict, principled man. We were two sisters and one younger brother. I was the only one of the children to survive.’

  Her words evoked an even deeper silence, and the room seemed colder than before.

  ‘We grew up on the streets of Lahore, and I knew those inside out. I knew every shop at the bazaar, where the British made their offices. I knew them better than the back of my hand. In the summer of ’47, I knew there would be danger soon. You could smell it in the air, as much as you could smell the summer air leaving. Gazes had turned hostile, and there was talk of arming yourself. “Do it for the peace of your own mind,” they would tell us, but we had seen it coming long ago. My father took the decision too late, and it cost him everything.’

  Indu held her breath and she saw everyone in the room doing the same; some held the sides of their chairs. Not a single eye left Kaur aunty.

  ‘By the time we decided to leave, it had already spread on the streets. The violence, it was a disease, and it spread like wildfire. My father and brother had three women to take care of, and I had never seen them so scared. Yet, with courage, we packed up and left for the station.

  ‘We heard screams from far away. They were much closer than we realized. We got on the bus safely, but it was one of the first buses to be attacked. When the bus halted, they hit the sides of the bus with sticks. We were terrified and clung to our seats. They entered and killed the driver and the men who sat in the front almost immediately. They hit a few others and ordered us all out, separating the men and the women. Some women were taken away; my sister and mother were among them. I never saw them again.’

  Indu thought she heard a sob from the back of the room and forced herself to swallow the lump that rose in her own throat.

  ‘They killed randomly, not caring who it was or what was their name was. But with each death, their confidence grew. They fed on our helplessness. Once all the men were dead, they began to march us women back, crossing towns where all we could hear were people screaming and begging for mercy. When I remember walking in the company of those women, being herded by those men who had killed all those people, I wondered where the God was I had prayed to all my life. I still do sometimes.’

  ‘Yet, fate had something else in store for us, for soon, the police found us—the boundary force. Seeing them, these murderers fled. We cried when we saw them, and that dawn, each of those faces, the ones in uniforms, they far surpassed any Bollywood hero you see today. More than Dev Anand, more than Rajesh Khanna . . . they were the most beautiful men I had seen in my life.’

  Indu’s mouth was dry.

  ‘My father survived too, and after a few months, I met him again in Amritsar, where I was staying with some relatives. We came to Delhi and built a new life here, but there is not a day when I don’t think of that time.’

  Her head was bent and she finally broke, her voice booming on the speakers. Indu clutched her arm and walked her back to her seat. She looked at Rana, and he took over.

  ‘Mrs Kaur,’ he said softly into the mic, looking directly at her as she settled down, ‘we thank you for your courage and for sharing your words.’

  There was another round of applause that refused to die down for some time, and when it finally stopped, he spoke again. ‘We would now like to invite on stage Mrs Monga. She moved to Delhi from Faisalabad with her family when the riots were at their height. She has displayed immense strength in agreeing to talk here in front of us all. Mrs Monga . . .’

  A lady sat in the front row, looking, to Indu, only slightly younger than her own mother. Rana had found her and invited her to talk. Before beginning, she cried for five minutes, by the end of which there was hardly anyone in the room who did not share her tears.

  She narrated a harrowing tale, which began with doors being broken down in maddening rage, burning streets and demolished shops and houses. ‘Men ran rampant, flinging swords they didn’t know how to use, shoving them into bodies without a second thought,’ she said, gazing blankly in front of her. She had left on foot with her family, but was soon separated from them. Yet, she said, she managed to stay with caravans that had police protection, and for days they walked the country, with no knowledge of where the rest of her family was.

  ‘I had not the slightest clue whether they were dead or alive,’ she said, ‘but we had to keep moving no matter what, no matter who got left behind—husbands, children or parents. We had to trust fate to reunite us some day. If we paused, we would be dead too.’

  She narrated how every day, in the camp, she cooked for hundreds of people, eager to use every last bit of her energy to make the situation better. She described how some people stood guard for hours, taking turns with the police, and how instructions would be given on the mic—more reassurances than instructions. One night, some crooks came into the camp and bribed the police, who let them take her away. They held her for a week.

  Mrs Monga’s face hardened at this point.

  ‘Some yelled Jai Shri Ram, some yelled Allah-hu-Akbar . . . but they all did the same thing,’ she said. ‘I was lucky. I ran off to another camp and made my way to India. I was even more lucky that my family made it back alive and took me back willingly. A lot of the others weren’t so lucky.’

  The sounds of others crying were louder now and a couple of women got up and walked out, while the rest sat in silence. A few minutes passed and a woman from the audience spoke, raising her hand.

  ‘I would also like to say something,’ she said, and Indu recognized her as the mother of the little Sardar boy who was always peeking inside. She was dressed in a plain kurta. She had put up her hand hesitatingly. Indu looked at Rana and nodded at the woman, indicating she should come up.

  ‘My name is Parminder Chadda and I live on this floor, in the next flat,’ she said. ‘And I would als
o like to share my story.’

  A silence followed her announcement and Indu nodded at her.

  ‘It was a horrible time, enough to make me lose my faith. For a long time, I couldn’t say the name of waheguru. It was hard for me. How can you, when it seems like everyone around you has forgotten all logic, all compassion, all humanity?

  ‘In the town where I lived, Dera Ghazi Khan, men travelled together, telling each other to be ready, collecting weapons, and we could hear it. There was fire in their eyes. People sat on buses, took their cycles, walked, but it was hard to get out unscathed. They poured kerosene over things that were too big, vehicles and buses, and burnt them to ashes. The canals ran with blood and it was, truly, brother against brother. We left our house at half an hour’s notice. A minute later and we would have been dead. But even the streets were burning. We could be noticed by the mob any second.

  ‘Men on horseback, men in jeeps, men running, they all had the same, sole purpose—to destroy. The police force would attempt to save people, but the mobs shot in a frenzy, not knowing who they were killing. For days, we slept on wooden racks atop buses. I came from Multan and most of our family made it to this side too. But even if we got here, what then? Our life was over there.

  ‘For weeks, we were in the camps. After some time, they allotted us some land near Panipat. Just some barren land, and said go, build your life here. What would we build it out of? We had nothing. Yet, we managed. My husband worked hard, so we sold it off and managed to shift here, to this sprawling city of Delhi, where there are so many like us rendered homeless by the actions of those who thought they know what was best for us. Today, life is better. We can give our children a good life, but we have to remember that at that time, nobody was spared the monstrosity. Not little girls, not infant boys, not the old, the elderly, the pregnant women—everyone met the same fate if they found themselves in the wrong place. Loot, rape, murder.’

  Once she spoke up, more women began to raise their hands, offering to narrate how they had been affected, in whatever small or big way. After some time, Indu began writing what they were saying as Rana and Runjhun took over to mediate and moderate. Today, Indu could not bring herself to feel unfriendly towards Runjhun.