This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (87 page)

Dev did not speak about himself as the three of them went from one camp to another. All he talked was about the atrocities committed in Amritsar in spite of efforts to keep the situation peaceful. His young mind was so disgusted by the terrifying events he had witnessed that, to lighten his spirits, he could not keep himself from talking about it. He still could not tell the whole, shameful story, and just gave hints about how the news of atrocities and killings in West Punjab had made the blood of Hindus boil, and how, in their rage, they committed even worse crimes. It was women who suffered the most on both sides. He felt ashamed and guilty before all women for those acts of violence and humiliation, and to appease that feeling, he was willing to help any woman victim as best he could. He addressed Banti as ‘mataji’ and Tara as ‘bahinji’. He invited them to his home for the evening meal.

Dev’s father, Babu Santram, worked as a bank accountant. His mother, an educated woman, welcomed Tara and Banti like any other honoured guest. She neither paid any attention to the sorry state of their clothes, nor did she make any mention of the misfortune they had suffered.

Dev’s mother told them, ‘My son passed his F.A. exam in the first division. Now that his college is closed, he helps all day at the refugee camps.’ She praised other students who were Dev’s friends, ‘Those dear boys are working really hard.’

Tara did not want to talk about herself, but it slipped out that she was going to sit for her BA final exam, and she too had been passing her exams in the first division.

Next morning, Dev came early, to take them to the camps that they had not yet visited. Banti had been wondering about where else to search for her husband and son. Among the sketchy details she could remember about her visit to Amritsar seven years before, was that they had stayed at a dharamshala. Her husband’s agent had invited them for lunch in Guru Bazaar. It was a narrow and congested street, with the agent’s office at the ground level and his residence above. She did not have even the slightest inkling of the name of the agent or his shop, except that her husband had been his client for many years.

Banti was sure that her husband and his elder brother must have come to Amritsar. The elder brother had mentioned going to Amritsar when they first suspected trouble from the Muslims in their village. And if they had come to the city, they must have gone to see the agent.

Dev took Tara and Banti from one end of Guru Bazaar to the other three times. Banti could not recognize anything. She had come here only once, seven years before, holding the hand of her mother-in-law as she walked behind her husband with downcast eyes and her face veiled by a foot-long ghunghat. How could she recognize anything now?

When Dev mentioned Banti’s search for her husband’s agent to his father, he too said in sympathy, ‘How is that possible? There are hundreds of such agents, and thousands of traders visit them. It’s like searching for one particular grain of rice in a warehouse full of rice.’

Dev had also told his fellow workers about Tara being a BA student. Two others came forward to help. Helping Tara meant helping Banti too. Dev and his two friends began making inquiries at each and every cloth agent in Guru Bazaar. After three day’s search they found that the firm of Chetram-Pannalal supplied cloth to the shop of Gopaldas-Manohardas of Chimmoki village in Shaikhupura. Both the brothers had come to see the agent sometime in August, and said that they were planning to move to Ambala to begin a business. That’s all Dev and his friends had learnt.

Banti now became anxious to go to Ambala in search of her son and husband.

The camp officials were full of sympathy for the women refugees. They were willing to do anything to help them. They traced the families of Satwant and Amaro to the Loha Garh camp, and found that the families had gone to Jagrawan. They sent news about Satwant and Amaro to their
families, and were willing to house and feed the two women until they were reunited with their families. But they were not willing to risk giving shelter to a wayward young woman who refused to give information about her parents or her in-laws.

Dev’s father and his mother understood Tara’s mental state and her feelings. They knew that if a girl or a woman would be branded for life by society for crimes done to her by others, why—as an innocent victim—would she agree to give out information for which she might have to suffer? In Tara’s refusal they sensed her fight against society’s attempts to stifle her, her effort to keep her dignity and her desire to be independent. Their hearts went out to her.

Tara too found succour in the kindly attitude Dev’s family showed towards her. Had they asked her, she would have agreed to stay with them and cook their food, clean their house and wash their clothes until she found another means of support. But Dev’s family could not ask someone with her standards of education to work as a housemaid. Few Punjabi middle-class families hired cooks or maidservants. The wives, their wrists decked with rows of solid gold bangles, would do all household chores by themselves, then go out in fine and expensive clothes as respectable ladies. Then, perhaps, it was also unwise for Dev’s family to put any further strain on their already overstretched budget.

Banti would hug Tara and tell her over and over, ‘Come with me. You’re like a younger sister to me. This illiterate simple woman, who can’t even talk to anyone, depends on you. Maharaj made us sisters in time of sorrow; we should now always stay together. When I find my family, we’ll both have a roof over our heads. If there’s only one chapatti to eat, we’ll share it; we already did. You know we helped each other in the worst of times.’

Tara agreed to go to Ambala with Banti. The only garments on their bodies that were not in rags were the thick dupattas they had been given at the time of their rescue from Keshoram’s Haveli in Shaikhupura. More than poor, their clothes made them look like beggars. Dev’s mother murmured apologetically for not being able to give them new clothes, and handed them two suits of her own salwar-kameez and dupatta. With the same apologetic air she put in each palm five rupees, and closing their fingers over it, said, ‘What are five rupees worth these days, sisters? Keep them anyway. In time of need even a small sum may come in handy.’

Dev and his father had come to help Tara and Banti find a place in an east-bound train. The railway station was swarming with human beings for as far as the eye could see. The place buzzed like a beehive. People trod uncaringly on their fellow beings. An overpowering stench and chaos pervaded the concourse. Platforms were crammed full of passengers hoping to board the trains, with their luggage. Very few trains were in evidence. Trains coming from the east were specials carrying Muslims headed to Lahore. To forestall attacks by the agitated passengers, these trains sped past on tracks, remote from the platforms.

The trains that came from the west, under Indian military escort, were specials bringing Hindus. At the front and at the tail end of these trains were flatbed cars, with breastworks of sandbags. These specials too were allowed to go east without halting at Amritsar. The displaced, coming by road, were so densely packed in the station buildings that there was no place left for the disembarking passengers.

The commercial centre of Punjab had been turned into a frontier area between the two countries. Those who had been uprooted from their homes were desperate to go anywhere east or south; for them it was a matter of do or die.

The number of trains departing for the east was not even a tenth of what it used to be. Before the Partition, the engine drivers and firemen on the trains were mostly Muslims. The majority of them had gone to Pakistan, and were afraid to return to Punjab.

Tara and Banti, with Dev and Babu Santram, had reached the railway station early in the morning. A very long train made up of coaches and freight cars going east pulled up slowly to a platform. All the coaches and cars were so packed with refugees that no one else could enter them. How long these people had been inside the train no one knew. Scores of them were sitting on the roofs of the coaches, their luggage beside them. Scuffles and fights broke out when thousands of waiting men, women and children tried to force their way into the coaches or to get a foothold on the roofs. Dev and his father could do nothing. A male might have been hoisted to the roof to find a place, but not a woman.

Suddenly a loud call was heard. A young man with good lungs was speaking through a newspaper rolled into a megaphone, ‘We are making a plea with joined hands to all males, young and old. We are all facing very difficult times, and should help each other in our trials. We should regard
the mothers and sisters of others as our own mothers and sisters. We should regard the children and young ones of others as our own children. We plead with all you men with joined hands that all young and healthy males should take the uncomfortable places on the roof. Let the women and children and the sick have seats inside the compartments. Any healthy male who stays inside would be nothing but an unfeeling bastard!’

‘Yes! That’s right!’ a tumult of shouts in support rose from all sides.

Some began to yell threateningly, ‘Any man who stays inside is a mother—! Any healthy male sitting inside is a sister—!’ Obscenities and abuses were hurled, but with good intentions.

Tara and Banti got the chance to squeeze into a compartment. Babu Santram and Dev apologized for not being able to help them further, and hoped that they would meet again. They wished the women luck, ask them not to forget to write, said namaste and left.

The September sun made the compartments boiling hot. Bodies of women packed together like sacks of flour were drenched with sweat. At one moment they would quarrel and yell at others for lack of space and, in the next, they would talk to the same person sympathetically. Every few minutes some man came around to offer a drink of water to all mothers, sisters and daughters. The water they drank broke out over their bodies in sweat. Vendors passed by the windows crying their wares, which were swarming with flies, straight from the cooking pot. Hand-held fans made from palm leaves that some young lads sold were in great demand. Passengers paid two annas for fans that had sold for two paisas only a few days before, but not without first cursing the seller profusely.

Tara felt that she was the only one silent in their compartment. Women, their hands working their fans, spoke loudly to be heard over the clamour of voices. Punjabi, their common language, seemed to give them a feeling of camaraderie. Tara understood very little of this hotchpotch of Multani, Derawali, Jhangi and other dialects of West Punjab. They talked mostly about unimaginable terrors and troubles. The loudest sound was of children bawling. Banti too praised Dev and his family for their kindness to the women sitting next to her, calling them angels on earth. Her listeners gave examples of acts of even greater kindness done by others to them, and of the help they themselves had imparted.

The women in the compartment became increasingly listless. At last, after several hours, the engine was attached. It growled and fumed about
the heavy load it had to pull, let off steam in anger, and belched smoke in desperation and helplessness. Then it began to pull the train slowly and reluctantly. It picked up some speed, but not faster than a rickshaw, or a tonga pulled by an old tired horse. Some playful young men found this amusing. They began to play at jumping off the train and getting back on as the train moved slowly, the human tendency to find fun and play in every possible situation. Laughter was heard. Men sitting on the roof, their hands covering their ears, began singing tappas at the top of their voices, ‘…In Sawan the swings are on, but you are not there. I still think of you at the swings.’

Another voice rose in competition, ‘Why do you hide from me? When you are in my heart, what good does it do if you are out of my sight?’

Tara felt a pang of memory at this. She remembered how Sheelo and Sita had sung tappas at the time of her marriage. And all that she had to suffer in the past two months. If life was like that, why talk of love? All that was airy-fairy nonsense!

The train went past several stations without stopping, then began to halt at only the bigger ones. At every stop, people came by with buckets of drinking water or lassi. Because of the tightly packed bodies, it was impossible to use the lavatories inside the compartments. Box cars had no lavatories. Whenever the stain stopped, men from the rooftops and women from the compartments got out and sat down in the open to relieve themselves. The only way to overcome shame and embarrassment was to close one’s eyes. At some stations, the locals distributed salted chapattis, or daal and roti. At one station, the passengers were fed puris and vegetables; at another sweet halwa.

The people gathered on the stations to care for the suffering refugees did not let the train leave unless they had satisfied themselves that every passenger had been fed. The refugee passengers were in no hurry either. Very few knew or cared where they were going. They were not concerned about being late for anything. They were laughing at the fate that had failed to overpower them. They had already worried too much to worry any further.

Deep in that crowd, Banti was in a hurry. She was impatient and anxious to reach Ambala, but what could she say or do? The slow and erratic progress of the train infuriated her. The same train that was a metaphor for speed and swiftness, was crawling along with heavy load. It had taken twenty-four hours to reach Phillor. Banti did not know how far or where Ambala
was. Tara, the educated and clever one, could not tell her either. At Banti’s insistence, she inquired from some railway workers: How far was Ambala? When would the train reach there?

‘Seventy-five miles from here,’ she was told. ‘Two to two-and-a-half hours by train at its regular speed, but who can call this a train? We may get there this evening, or maybe tomorrow morning, or even later. Nothing is certain.’

Trains symbolized a system of organization in India that worked like clockwork, that had been a bastion of strict procedure and discipline. Villagers could tell what time it was by seeing a train go past. Disorder had upset its well-regulated operation now. Tara and Banti spent their second day in the train as it chugged along sluggishly. Night fell, and the women, packed tightly into the coach, dozed and snored. There was no point in complaining to anyone for pressing up too closely. An infant who had been quite sick now appeared to be dying. The women made space for the infant’s mother next to a window. It was well past midnight when the mother began to wail loudly, and others knew that the baby had died.