Land of Five Rivers (20 page)

a
punjab pastorale

Khushwant Singh

        P
eter Hansen was a young American from Illinois. His father was a Swede who had settled in the United States and made good as a stockbroker. Peter was given the best an American youth could desire in the way of schooling and university education, and in due course joined his father’s firm. It did not take him long to discover that he was not meant for business. His spirit of adventure felt cramped in horizons clogged with skyscrapers. He yearned for the wide open spaces and wanted to serve humanity. He gave up stockbroking and took to Christianity, left Illinois and came to India. His Mission ordered him to preach the gospel of Christ among the Sikh peasantry in Punjab. This brought Peter Hansen to Amritsar.

Hansen plunged into the humanitarian business with American thoroughness. He drew up maps of the countryside and stuck little flags to mark the villages he would visit. He made lists in an indexed register, of villagers he had to contact, together with details of their private lives. He bought an American army motorcycle, and within a few weeks of his arrival Padre Hansen and his
phut-phut
became a familiar sight in the district.

Hansen was a missionary, but with a difference. He did not go about peddling religion. It was reform he was after — social reform, economic reform, educational reform, moral reform. His method too was different. He did not believe in preaching or proselytising but in reform by example and personal contact.

‘Once you get to know them,’ he used to say, ‘you can make them do anything.’

Hansen and I were destined to meet. I, too, had a heart for humanity, only I did nothing about it except talk. But Hansen did not know that. I was not religious and had taken to Marxism. Even that did not bother Hansen, he was a bit of a Socialist himself. He happened to attend a meeting I was addressing.

‘The country is ripe for revolution,’ I was saying. ‘It needs proper leadership to get it going. High falutin talk of dialectical materialism and Marxist economics does not register on the rural mind. We must preach Socialism through example and personal contact. We must denounce police oppression, corruption and injustice in the law courts. Above all, we must get to know the people. Once you get to know them — you can make them do anything.’

Hansen and I shook hands and a partnership to further the cause of progress was made.

One hot May morning we decided to give our enterprise a trial. Hansen rigged himself out in his touring clothes — a white jockey cap, a tight-fitting vest, a pair of very short shorts and sandals on his feet. I donned my socialist garments of the coarsest handspun
khaddar,
mounted Hansen’s motorcycle pillion and we shot out of Amritsar.

Some fifteen miles east of the city, there was a big canal which ran at right angles to the road. We crossed the bridge and turned off the metal road onto a cart-track. The track showed visible signs of wear and tear. Bullock-cart wheels had left deep ruts which ran criss-cross like intersecting tram lines. Hansen did not seem to notice them. He sped on with a grim resolve, his belly hugging the petrol tank. I held stoically on to his vest. I could find no protruding gadgets on which to rest my feet, and they dangled helpless above the hot exhaust pipes. I did not dare to protest. There were greater things in offing, and I could not go down just because the going was rough. But I did go down. While Hansen’s eyes were glued to the distant horizon as if straining to get a glimpse of the domes of Shangrila, we flew over a ditch at some forty miles per hour. I was tossed in the air and by the time I came down Hansen and his motorcycle were several yards ahead on their philanthropic errand. I landed in the middle of a very dusty track. It didn’t hurt much, but it was somewhat undignified. My turban had flown off and my long hair spread clumsily over my face. Hansen pulled up and looked concerned for a moment. Then he flashed his teeth at me like a cheap toothpaste advertisement and burst out laughing.

‘You look too darned funny for words,’ he roared. ‘Just as well it happened here. This is where we break off. Soorajpur is just across those fields, behind the
keekar
trees.’ Hansen ran his motorcyle down the canal bank to a large
peepul
tree, still laughing. I collected my scattered belongings and joined him. I opened his water bottle, poured the water down my parched throat and splashed it on my dusty face. Then I stretched myself in the welcome shade of the
peepul,
and was at peace with my surroundings.

Soorajpur was just visible through the thick cluster of
keekar
trees. All around it stretched a vast expanse of wheat fields. The corn was ripe and ready for harvesting. A soft breeze blew across the golden cornfields like ripples over a lake. Under the trees the cattle and the cow-herds lay in deep slumber. It was a scene typical of pastoral Punjab on a summer afternoon.

It was too peaceful to think of revolution. My enthusiasm was somewhat on the wane. I was willing to leave Soorajpur to its slovenly backwardness.

But Hansen’s ardour had not cooled. Just as I had shut my eyes in peaceful contemplation, he started to talk.

‘The last time I was here there was a crisis going on. The Sikhs would not let the Christians into their temple because the Christians were sweepers and skinned dead buffaloes.’

‘Oh?’ I enquired politely, ‘what happened?’

‘I told the Christians to go and tell the Sikhs that they would give up skinning dead buffaloes if they were allowed in the temple. Just then a buffalo died right near the most popular village well and no one would touch it. The place was full of crows and vultures and the stink was terrible. I got round Moola Singh — you must meet the old man — and told him to persuade the Sikhs to think over the matter. He told his fellow Sikhs to remove the carcass themselves or let the Christians into the temple. Sure as ever, they came round. Now the Christians are paid twenty rupees for skinning a dead buffalo. They sell the hide for another thirty or forty rupees, and they walk in and out of the Sikh temple as they please. It was all really because of Moola Singh. Personal contact does so much. I’ve always said once you get to know these village folk you can make them do anything. And Moola Singh is a grand old fellow. Come along, we had better be moving.’

And so we started off again. This time Hansen was on the motorcyle, and I was pushing it across ploughed fields and dry water courses. Hansen was apparently very popular. Everyone who saw him came around to greet him. He knew the names of all of them. In the traditional fashion, he shook them by both hands and put his hands across his heart. No one took any notice of me nor volunteered to help me push the motorcyle.

I pushed hand-shaking Hansen and his motorcyle up a narrow alley to the centre of the village. We parked the machine by a well amid a crowd of urchins and proceeded to Moola Singh’s house, which was a few metres away. Moola Singh was to be my first contact and I was to deliver to him all my Socialism. At night I was to address a meeting at the temple with Moola Singh to back me up. Hansen would visit the house of the Christians who lived on the outskirts of the village.

We caught Moola Singh unawares. Hansen’s enquiries about him had envinced no answer from the crowd walking along with us towards his courtyard. When we got to his house, we saw his two wives sitting under the shadow of a wall. One was rubbing clarified butter into the head of the other. They too were reticent about Moola Singh. Suddenly becoming aware of this mysterious silence, Hansen tumed to the crowd and asked the reason for it. They all looked at each other but no one would answer. Then all of a sudden appeared Moola Singh on his threshold. He was a large hulking man over six feet in height. His hair hung over his shoulders and mingled with his beard. He was about sixty, but a youthful roguish smile played about his face.

He stretched his arms wide and gathered Hansen in a friendly embrace. Through the mass of hair and beard I heard Hansen calling out my name. Moola Singh held out one hand to me, still holding the American by the other. He clasped him again and the two swayed in a close, amorous embrace. Moola Singh was stinking of drink. Saliva dribbled from his mouth onto his shaggy beard. It ran down like threads of silver on Hansen’s hazel-brown hair. Hansen winced as the liquid ran through his hair onto his scalp. With a little jerk he extricated himself from Moola Singh’s grasp and pushed him back gently.

Hansen was too well bred to lose his temper. He smiled his toothpaste advertisement smile and poked Moola Singh in the ribs.

‘Bahut sharab! Bahut sharab!’
he rebuked in Hindustani.

Moola Singh grinned. He caught both his ears with his hands and stuck out his yellow tongue in a gesture of repentance.

‘Never again, Sahib
.
This is the last time —
toba, toba.
You come to my house and I am stupidly drunk. If you forgive me this time and promise to come again, I will not touch drink any more.’

Hansen forgave him and promised to come again. We left Moola Singh’s house a little depressed. I began to think that our ardour for reform was somewhat adolescent. Hansen was wiping the dribble off his hair with his handkerchief and cursing the Sikhs. The Christians folk, he insisted, were so much nicer. They didn’t drink. They didn’t grow long hair and beards which stank of sweat and stale clarified butter. Since he had got to know them, they were living a clear Christian life — free of pagan superstition which beset the life of the hirsute Sikh. He dismissed the crowd with a firm wave of the hand and we walked down to the mission school.

We entered the Christian habitation with more optimism. Mr. Yoosuf Masih, the teacher, welcomed us and put a garland of marigolds around Hansen’s neck. Sweeper women and children gathered about him in a chorus of
salaams.
Hansen patted the children and shook hands with their mothers. So much cleaner than the Sikhs, he said with a triumphant smile. He insisted on my going inside their huts and seeing for myself. The first hut had a large picture of the black, red-tongued, multi-armed goddess Kali hanging in the centre of a wall. Others also had pictures. In fact, we saw the entire Hindu pantheon: Shiva on his tiger skin with serpents twining around his neck; Ganesha riding the mouse, his lady love seated on his elephantine thigh; Saraswati standing in spotless white on a large lotus. Hansen saw them too. I smiled at him but he looked away. He shook hands with Mr. Yoosuf Masih rather abruptly, promising to see him later in the evening. We then made our way back towards the village well to our motorcyle.

We walked a long way without speaking. Hansen was somewhat depressed. I was just bored and tired. As we approached the well, Hansen spoke.

‘Queer country this! You do not know where to start. When you’ve begun, you are not sure if you are going about it the right way. When you look back to see how far you’ve got, you find that you’ve got nowhere. It’s like a stream losing itself in the desert sand. It dries up so quickly that you cannot even find its traces.’ I made no comment.

The sun went down and the shades of twilight gathered Soorajpur in their fold. The moon was in the first quarter and shed a soft, silky light in the narrow alleys. Hansen started talking again. If only Christian converts would free themselves from the clutches of superstition. If only Sikhs would give up dissipating and use their fine manhood towards something constructive. If...if...if...The burden of the world’s woes seemed to have descended on him and he looked miserable and woebegone.

Suddenly Hansen stopped talking. He sat up straight as if electrified. From Moola Singh’s courtyard emerged a girl, barely sixteen, with two pitchers balanced on her stately head. She came towards the well where we were sitting. She wore a man’s striped shirt. It had no buttons in the front and made a V formation running from her neck down to the middle of her flat belly. On either side, the V was misshaped by her youthful breasts. Hansen’s eyes were fixed on her. His mouth was wide open. The girl drew several buckets of water from the well and we watched. The depression lifted, and the streets of slovenly Soorajpur were charged with romance and mellowed moonlight. The girl went with the two pitchers balanced on her head. Her slim figure disappeared into Moola Singh’s courtyard.

Hansen came back to earth. ‘Oh my, oh my, that was sum’pn. She is old Moola Singh’s daughter. Hardly believe it, would you? She is like a flower in the desert, and desert flowers always smell sweeter. They have to make up for the desert. I could almost write a poem about her.’

We sat by the well for a long time, feeling strangely happy. Hansen was trying hard to give his emotions a poetical form. ‘I’ve got it,’ he exclaimed, snapping his fingers and looking up at the sky—

‘She walks in beauty like the night.’