Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (29 page)

T
he monsoon rain was tapering off when Satpal’s sister Manpreet fixed the date for her daughter’s wedding. Travelling to attend the occasion in Amritsar, Nimmo and Satpal noticed that, unusually, the trains were both arriving and leaving on time.

“It’s because of the Emergency,” one of their fellow passengers remarked. “We have been deprived of all our rights, we can be thrown in jail and kept there forever if it pleases Madam Gandhi, but the trains run on time. Isn’t this the best thing that has happened to us?”

“Not for the thousands who are sitting in jail, bhai,” another passenger replied.

“Thousands in jail!” Satpal said. “For what?”

“For
thinking.
For disagreeing with what Madam has done to this country. For exercising their rights, that’s what. And tomorrow, if you go and complain about me I might end up in jail too!”

Nimmo shivered and looked around the crowded compartment to see if anyone was listening to their conversation. What if this man was right? Were there spies everywhere? She found it difficult to believe that the woman whom she so admired, and for whom she had voted in two elections, should impose such a thing as this Emergency without good reason. The country must be in danger.

The following morning, in Amritsar, Satpal, Nimmo and the children, accompanied by Manpreet’s oldest son, Sunny—a stocky, bespectacled young man of twenty-two— went early to the Golden Temple to pay their respects to the Almighty in this greatest and most holy of Sikh temples. The taxi dropped them off at the eastern gate of the vast, walled complex of guest houses, dining halls and offices that surrounded the main temple—Harimandir Sahib, as it was better known. They jostled with thousands of other pilgrims and devotees who had also arrived at the break of dawn to avoid the even greater crowds that would pour in as the day wore on.

Nimmo covered her head with her chiffon dupatta and stood in silence with her family for a few moments, gazing at the massive marble Harimandir Sahib. Topped by a golden dome, it seemed to rise weightless as a prayer above the green lake that surrounded it. This sacred lake, supposed to contain the nectar of the gods, gave the city
its name—Amritsar—nectar lake. A peace unlike anything she had experienced filled Nimmo, her heart beat a little easier and her doubts, large and small, disappeared.

She had made the pilgrimage to the Golden Temple almost every year since her marriage to offer prayers. When she wanted to thank the Almighty for some particular happiness he had sent her way, she would volunteer to cook in the kitchens of the public dining halls or to scrub the vast marble floor of the Harimandir Sahib, where the sacred book, the Guru Granth Sahib, was kept during the day.

Now, with her family, she made the obligatory circum-ambulation of the temple, stopping to wash her feet in the lake before crossing the walkway into the calm marbled interior. She remembered the conversation on the train from New Delhi and comforted herself with the thought that no matter what wickedness and violence occurred in the outside world, here at least, within the sacred walls of the Golden Temple and deep inside its heart in the Harimandir Sahib, only peace reigned.

Afterward Satpal took Pappu for a dip in the lake, while Sunny, Nimmo and Kamal strolled out of the temple gates to the market that nuzzled up to the walls of the temple compound, its gullies radiating outwards like an intricate spiderweb. In these narrow streets were hundreds of shops, cheap hotels and homes fitting snugly into and over each other, filled with the clamour of shopkeepers advertising their wares, customers haggling, children wailing, cows lowing, bicycle bells jangling. Here silence was unknown.

Staring at the wares on display in the shops, Nimmo felt as excited as Kamal. There were brightly coloured fabrics and ready-made clothes of every size, jewellery, plastic toys, shoes, religious books, paintings and prints of the Sikh gurus and of the Golden Temple, fruit, vegetables, flowers, amulets, charms, cedar and sandalwood worry beads and gaudily coloured boxes of firecrackers. Although Diwali was three months away, the shops were fully stocked with merchandise for the festival.

“Can we get that? Please, Mummy?” Kamal pointed to a large cardboard box that looked like it might contain a cricket bat but was the repository of something called a zing-zing-dhamaal bomb. On the cover of the box was an illustration of a smiling woman in a bright pink sari, holding the bomb—a lethal-looking rocket-like object in one hand, a lighted sparkler in the other.

“No,” said Nimmo, dragging her daughter away. Before long, though, Kamal dug in her heels in front of another store advertising a Whistling Catherine Wheel with six-colour stars at the end. Nimmo refused, but Sunny insisted on buying one for his small cousin.

“Why do you spoil her like this, Sunny?” Nimmo protested mildly when the young man, her favourite nephew, emerged from the shop bearing a large plastic bag.

“It’s nothing much,” Sunny said, presenting the bag to Kamal with a flourish. “Just a small gift for my littlest sister.”

Kamal hung on to her cousin’s arm as they walked back to the Temple, giggling as he teased her about something. Nimmo smiled and shook her head, feeling thoroughly
relaxed and happy. By now the sun was setting and the evening had turned cool. A fine drizzle misted the air. Satpal and Pappu were waiting for them near the jujube tree, where wishes are said to come true and wispy hopes may turn into realities.

Back at Manpreet’s house, they found that other members of the family had gathered and were noisily discussing the Emergency.

“Sometimes it is necessary for a woman to be tough in order to run this unruly country,” Satpal’s brother-in-law, Balraj, a dignified-looking man in his fifties with a grey and white beard, said as they came in. “It seems to have done some good at least in my office. Everybody arrives on time. It is unbelievable. Even that rogue of an assistant of mine, who always has a sick mother or father or some person dying four days out of five, even he has been arriving exactly at eight-thirty and leaving at four-thirty!”

“But a suspension of all our rights? Spies everywhere?” Satpal said doubtfully. “That can’t be very good.”

Balraj snorted. “And you believe all that nonsense? Hah! That won’t happen here, I assure you.”

Sunny had been listening silently to the conversation. Now he spoke softly. “It is not nonsense, Baba. I was interrogated yesterday at the police station. It was not very pleasant, believe me. They came to our college and marched me and my friends into the van without giving any reasons. Fortunately one of the senior officers at that particular station was my classmate’s uncle and he had us released. But he did warn us that if we were arrested again he would not be able to help.”

“You were arrested?” Balraj asked, his voice rising. “Why?”

“We were at a rally protesting the Emergency,” Sunny said.

“Is this why you failed again this year? Because you were protesting instead of studying? And why didn’t you tell us about your arrest?”

“What would you have been able to do, Baba? I didn’t want to worry you needlessly,” Sunny replied. “I should warn you though, tomorrow I am joining a citywide march. Everyone I know is taking part. You should all come too.” He looked around the room at the assembled people.

“What if you are arrested again?” Balraj asked. “Why do you need to get involved? It could be dangerous.”

Sunny frowned. “It wasn’t dangerous before the Emergency to protest against something my government did. This is a democratic country, not some banana republic with an Idi Amin at the head of it, shooting anyone who disagrees with him!”

There was an edge to his voice completely unfamiliar to Nimmo, who had seen him only as an affectionate and mischievous boy, and more recently as an indulgent older cousin to her daughter.

“Well, sometimes I feel this country is a circus of lunatics,” said one of the several house guests who had arrived for the wedding. “Now and then it is necessary to take a big stick and beat everyone into shape, and that is what Indira-ji is doing. Look at China, how well everything runs there. And Singapore—did you know, if you spit on
the streets in that country, you can get a big fine? I am happy that the trains are finally on time, those clerks and secretaries in the municipal offices are on time, and the whole of India is on time. I’m tired of standing in long queues to pay my water bill or electricity bill, then waiting again when the fool closes his window in my face and goes away for his coffee break and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“This is wonderful,” Sunny said angrily. “You are all so happy that everything is on time, but don’t care that some poor innocents are sitting in jail for reasons not known to them? What if it happens to one of you? Or to your sons or daughters? I got off this time, but I hear that student leaders who are against the Emergency are being rounded up and thrown into jail. Then they simply disappear.” He stood up abruptly and walked out of the room.

A long, uneasy silence followed. Finally Manpreet broke it by getting to her feet and asking brightly if anyone was ready for dinner.

The following day, in the excitement of preparing for the wedding—getting the mehendi done for all the women, doing the make-up for the bride and taking care of a thousand other details—all thought of the Emergency that shrouded the country was temporarily forgotten.

But on the train home a few days later, with Sunny’s voice echoing in their ears, neither Satpal nor Nimmo said anything to their fellow passengers—two clean-shaven young Hindu Punjabis—who were loudly condemning the Emergency. And they were relieved to return to their home,
to Asha’s voice haranguing the fruit vendor over a matter of a few paise and the contented clucking of Kaushalya’s hens.

Asha stopped arguing with the vendor when she saw them alight from their autorickshaw.

“Did you hear, Nihal Singh bought his wife a gas stove?” she called, her face flushed with importance at being the bearer of this news. “I am thinking, I will ask Him to get one for me too.” Asha always referred to her small, rat-like husband as Him with solemn deference, although it was obvious from the screaming that emerged from their home that Asha was in fact the boss. “How about you, Nimmo?”

Nimmo shrugged. She had seen the advertisements for this wonderful object which emitted no fumes or smoke or odours. It would be nice to own one, she thought. But she said, “I don’t know, Asha. I hear it costs a lot of money.” She went into the house to cut off further conversation.

Satpal entered with their bags and muttered, “Don’t talk to that woman about this Emergency, understand? Don’t say anything to anyone. You never know.”

How quickly fear had sneaked into their small, peaceful world, Nimmo thought. How fragile her safety.

B
ibi-ji sat on the couch in Pa-ji’s office, still in her dressing gown, her greying hair woven into two thick braids that curled down her ample bosom, sorting through a packet of recently developed photographs. She found one she had taken of Jasbeer just a week ago in her garden. He had turned twenty that day and Bibi-ji had persuaded him to wear a pale blue turban which she thought suited him better than the black ones he had started to wear a few years ago. He had not known that he was being photographed and looked pensive and happy. Nimmo and Satpal would love this image of their
son, Bibi-ji thought, as she slipped the photograph into the envelope bearing her letter, even though they had seen Jasbeer almost every year since he had turned seventeen. He had dropped out of high school that year and Bibi-ji had been relieved to stop pretending to Nimmo that her son was academically gifted.

She remembered how surprised she had been when Jasbeer had asked if he could go and spend a few months in Punjab with relatives of Dr. Randhawas’s after visiting his parents in Delhi. He had never showed any desire to go to India before, a fact that had given Bibi-ji a guilty satisfaction.

“But why with these strangers when you have your father’s sister Manpreet in Amritsar?” she had asked.

“I want to live in the village,” Jasbeer had responded. “I want to see what life there is like.”

After that he had gone back almost every year, and even though, in the beginning, Nimmo was upset that he preferred to spend more time with friends in Punjab than with his own family, she learned to be happy with the little she did see of her oldest son.

Bibi-ji shuffled her fingers through the photographs trying to find another one of Jasbeer, when she heard a snort of annoyance from Pa-ji who was at his desk going through his mail. She looked up to see him reading a letter and frowning.

“What is it?” she asked.

“He is coming back,” Pa-ji said. “He wants to stay with us again. He is one of the chief guests at this year’s Baisakhi festival celebrations. He is bringing his own group of keertan singers, he says.”

“Who are you talking about, ji?”