Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (27 page)

“It is mine,” she repeated. “I have had it since I was a girl, only a little older than Kamal.”

D
espite the chill winter drizzle, The Delhi Junction Café was crowded. Not unexpectedly, the talk was about the latest war between India and Pakistan. From his station behind the cash counter, Pa-ji noticed that the two Pakistani regulars, Hafeez and Alibhai, were absent from their usual table. He felt a twinge of regret mixed with anger. Why did they all have to cling so tightly to that other world? Why were they incapable of putting it behind them? Old enmities, ancient sorrows were carried around like the hag who climbed on to the backs of unwary sailors, growing heavier and heavier until the poor sailors, unable to shake her off, dropped dead from exhaustion.

“This is all thanks to the British!” someone shouted from the corner of the room. “They were the ones who divided the Muslims and the Hindus so they could rule, and then left the divisions to destroy both of us—Pakistan and India.”

“I don’t know why we should give the British credit for everything,” Dr. Majumdar grumbled, “from creating wars to creating civilization. Their time in India is ancient history. I think we have a phantom limb problem. We don’t have Pakistan as a part of our body anymore but keep feeling the itch and the pain.”

“What about Kashmir then?” Harish Shah wanted to know. He mopped his red face, sweating from the many pints of beer he had consumed. “Those Pakistanis are after our Kashmir, na? That’s why war after war we are having.”

“This
war isn’t about Kashmir,” Balu pointed out. “It’s about Bangladesh.”

“It’s about land, it is always about land,” said Dr. Majumdar. “As for Kashmir, I agree all our wars always boil down to Kashmir. But I think if we had held a referendum there as promised, things would have been resolved years ago.”

“Resolved in
whose
favour?” Shah persisted. “What if the Kashmiris voted to go to Pakistan? What then, Majumdar Sahib? Would you be happy to see the crown of our country lopped off? A headless India?”

The Delhi Junction’s front door opened, and Bibi-ji entered to take over the cash counter from Pa-ji. He had to drive to the airport to pick up a Dr. Raghubir Randhawa,
who had travelled all the way from Southall, England, and who was reputed to be a Sikh scholar. At the arrival gates, Pa-ji saw that the thin man who emerged through the arrival gates had a cadaverous face, grave, deep-set eyes and a grey beard that cascaded down the front of his white kurta almost to his stomach. His turban, a tall, saffron creation with an ornate steel pin in its front, was different from the smaller ones Pa-ji wore and added to Dr. Randhawa’s considerable height. On the drive home, Pa-ji also discovered that his guest had arrived on wings of anger and discontent, for it was promises—broken ones— that had brought him to Vancouver. He had been invited to give a lecture at the Sikh temple, and naturally he was to stay with the Singhs at the Taj Mahal.

But his lecture the following evening was poorly attended; there were only five people in an echoing hall that could accommodate three hundred. Used for weddings and religious ceremonies, the hall featured a low dais at one end, with red drapery hanging on the wall behind it.

Pa-ji and Bibi-ji were there, out of a sense of duty towards their visitor and because Pa-ji considered Dr. Randhawa a fellow historian—and a history lesson was not to be missed. Bibi-ji went out of politeness, although she thought the man a pompous fellow who talked too much. But then, she had a deep-rooted suspicion of anyone who wanted to divide up countries, a theme that seemed to run through everything Raghubir Randhawa said.

Lalloo was present as well, because Pa-ji had forced him to attend. He had brought his six-year-old-son, who spent the hour buzzing about the hall pretending to be a fighter
plane. Jasbeer was there for the same reason as Lalloo— Pa-ji had insisted. An old Sikh man, spread out over the last five chairs in the hall, was taking a nap, his snores occasionally rising above Dr. Randhawa’s impassioned speech.

The erudite visitor seemed undisturbed by the lack of an audience. Throughout his speech he kept his eyes raised upwards, as if he were appealing directly to the Creator.

“The Sikhs have been betrayed!” he declared in florid Punjabi to the ceiling. “We have been betrayed for two hundred years—first by the British, who stole Punjab that our great Maharaja Ranjit Singh won for us from the Mughals with valour and cunning; then by the Congress Brahmans, who gave the Mussulmans their Pakistan and the Hindus their India but left the Sikhs to die like flies in between; then by Nehru, with the rose in his jacket and his cunning words, who tore our hearts in half by making our Punjab a bilingual state. And now we have been cheated again by the rose-wearing Brahman’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, who takes the wheat that we grow on our lands and distributes it to all of Hindustan, who diverts the water from our rivers to neighbouring states and leaves us with empty buckets, who has ordered us to share our capital city, Chandigarh, with the Hindu state of Haryana. We fight their wars for them, give up our young men for the safety of their Hindu lives.
Think
how many soldiers in the Indian army are Sikhs!
Think
how many of us are dying fighting the Pakistanis while the Hindus shiver behind their doors! And then
think
what we Sikhs have got in return for all this endless generosity! A kick,
that’s all. We have been
betrayed,
I say, and we are fools to sit quietly and take it. We might be in the minority in India, but we have the strength and valour of a majority-sized army! Are we going to continue like this? Are we going to let the Brahman’s daughter bleed us to death? Are we lions that roar or mice that hide in holes?” The doctor brought his eyes down from the ceiling to glower at his small audience. “Are we?” he insisted.

“Hear hear!” said Pa-ji, clapping hard.

“Nothing doing!” said Lalloo, who had missed most of the speech because his son had been whispering an elaborate story of planes and ghosts into his left ear.

Jasbeer, on the other hand, listened intently. Dr. Randhawa’s diatribe of conquest and betrayal and revenge appealed to him. The older man seemed the epitome of a heroic figure lashing out against greater, darker powers.

“No, indeed, we are not,” continued the speaker, satisfied with the feeble response. He lifted his gaze once more to the ceiling. “What we Sikhs must do is press for separation. We demand, at the point of our swords, that the government of India return our Punjab to us, whole and undivided. We demand Khalistan, a land for the Sikhs, the pure and the brave. A country of our own. We demand a return of all that has been taken from us in the past hundred years.” His eyes fell on his audience. “And now, if I may, I have some maps of our future country that I wish to display.”

At the mention of maps Pa-ji, whose attention had wandered, snapped upright. He loved maps: they were
integral to the history of the Sikhs. It was maps that caused countries to exist or expire; maps caused bitter wars, maps erased people and landscapes just as efficiently as they created them. Maps, Pa-ji knew, were a bane
and a
.
boon. He shook Jasbeer. “Listen, putthar, this is important.”

But Jasbeer’s eyes were already fixed on the thin figure on the stage, dramatically contrasted with the red drapes behind him.

“This,” said Dr. Randhawa, unrolling a map of the kingdom of Punjab under the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, “this is the original land of the Sikhs. It is our body and it has been cut to pieces by everyone—the Mughals, the British, the Mussulmans, the Hindus. We lie bleeding, but we are not dead yet. Arise, warriors, and shout with me,
Our Country or Death!”

Dr. Randhawa’s battle cry was met with uneasy silence, but he was unmoved. He was a politician. Regardless of the reality, he continued to believe every soaring piece of fiction, every half-truth, every fact reconfigured to fit the theories that he conjured up. He placed on top of the map of the kingdom of Punjab another of India and Punjab as they appeared now, and then a third map showing the imagined Independent Country superimposed on the map of India.

Pa-ji stared at this third map. If such a thing happened, there would be many millions more of displaced, misplaced Indians—both Muslims and Hindus would be forced out of the new country. He remembered the conversation at The Delhi Junction earlier that day and
Harish Shah’s comment about a headless India. He wondered what the Gujarati doctor would think of Dr. Randhawa’s map of India without Punjab, the one that showed Khalistan.

“This will be our country again,” Dr. Randhawa was saying, tapping his ruler on the last map. “Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen, one day not so far away from now, this will be our country.”

From the back row, a gentle snore emerged from the open mouth of the old Sikh. Bibi-ji too gazed at the maps one on top of another, her thoughts wandering in a different direction from Pa-ji’s. Like me, she thought. A series of tracings, a palimpsest of images, the product of so many histories, some true, some imaginary, all valid, but surely not all necessary?

Later, at the Taj Mahal, Dr. Randhawa ranged around Pa-ji’s office and looked approvingly at the photographs. He pointed at the painting of Udham Singh and quizzed Jasbeer on that hero’s achievements.

“Who is that, son?” Dr. Singh asked.

“Shaheed Udham Singh, Uncle-ji,” Jasbeer said, proud that he had been singled out for attention by this fierce hawk of a man.

“And why is he famous?”

“Because he shot Lieutenant-Governor Sir Michael O’dwyer, Uncle-ji.”

“And why did he shoot that gentleman, son?”

“Because O’dwyer approved of the massacre at Jallianwallah Bagh, conducted by his general in 1919,”
Jasbeer said in one long breath, hoping he had remembered the date correctly. His head was stuffed with hundreds of dates, and he often mixed them up.

Dr. Randhawa patted Jasbeer’s back and said, “Good boy. Study hard and be a credit to your community. Read the Guru Granth Sahib every day and do not fall into bad habits such as drinking and smoking. Even in this foreign land full of temptations, resolve to remain true to your ancient culture.”

He gave Jasbeer one more pat on his back, and turning to Pa-ji revealed that in addition to his maps, which he had distributed to every government in the world, he had also created his own currency. He gave Jasbeer a coin he had struck in his mint in the cellar of his home in Southall. He had also designed a flag, which would soon be in production.

“I will send you one for a reduced rate of one hundred dollars,” he told Pa-ji. “With a proper receipt, of course.”

“Of course,” Pa-ji said unenthusiastically. His business antennae had gone up at the mention of money. Was this a charlatan or a man of convictions, however bizarre his beliefs? Pa-ji wasn’t sure. He was enjoying the man’s company for his vast knowledge of Punjabi history, although it seemed one-sided to him.
But show me one history that isn’t skewed,
he thought.

Out of politeness, because Dr. Randhawa was, after all, his guest and guests were akin to God above, Pa-ji refrained from disagreeing with him on any point. But his sympathies for the visitor waned rapidly. By the time Dr. Randhawa had been persuaded to go to bed, Pa-ji
was very bored and anxious to bring out the Johnny Walker.

That night in bed, he turned to Bibi-ji and murmured sleepily, “So, my queen, what did you think of Dr. Randhawa?”

“Idiot,” Bibi-ji said succinctly, pressing into the warmth of his body.

“I don’t think much of his notion of a separate country, do you?”

“Mmm. I don’t care what he thinks,” said Bibi-ji. “Why should we concern ourselves with such matters? We are Canadians now. Also I don’t like the idea of more partitions and separations, more fiddling with borders.” She snuggled farther down into warmth and comfort.

“Look at the trouble it is causing here in our own backyard, this business of partition!” Pa-ji said.

But there was no response from Bibi-ji, only a small snore.

The following morning there was a small ripple of renewed interest when Dr. Randhawa purchased a copy of
The New York Times
and showed Pa-ji a half-page advertisement he had taken out calling for “Free Countries” everywhere to support “Independence” for the Sikhs.

“That,” said Dr. Randhawa, tapping the newspaper with a lean finger, “that is my calling card to the president of the United States of America. Soon my dream will be reality. Soon we will have freedom.”

Pa-ji was relieved when his guest left. All the talk of secession made him deeply uneasy. He hoped this was the last he would see of Dr. Randhawa and hear about a free country for the Sikhs. He wished it would all go away.

But he was wrong. Nine years later, Dr. Randhawa would return to Vancouver, and this time he would be greeted by an audience that not only filled the auditorium but flowed out of it as well.