Train to Pakistan (15 page)

One morning a party of five men were brought to the station in handcuffs. As soon as Jugga saw them he lost his temper and abused them. They protested and refused to leave the reporting room veranda. Iqbal wondered who the new prisoners were. From the snatches of conversation that he had overheard, it seemed that everyone was on a spree, killing and looting. Even in Chundunnugger, a few yards from the police station, there had been killing. Iqbal had seen the pink glow of fire and heard people yelling, but the police had made no arrests. The prisoners must be quite out of the ordinary. While he was trying to figure out who the newcomers were, his cell was unlocked and Jugga came in with a constable. Jugga was in a good humour.

‘Sat Sri Akal, Babuji,’ he said. ‘I am going to be the servant of your feet. I will learn something.’

‘Iqbal Sahib,’ the constable added, relocking the cell, ‘teach this badmash how to go on the straight and narrow path.’

‘Get away with you,’ Jugga said. ‘Babuji thinks it is you and the government who have made me a badmash. Isn’t that so, Babuji?’

Iqbal did not answer. He put his feet in the extra chair and gazed at the pile of papers. Jugga took Iqbal’s feet off the chair and began pressing them with his enormous hands.

‘Babuji, my kismet has woken up at last. I will serve you if you teach me some English. Just a few sentences so that I can do a little
git mit
.’

‘Who is going to occupy the next cell?’

Jugga continued pressing Iqbal’s feet and legs.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered hesitantly. ‘They tell me they have arrested Ram Lal’s murderers.’

‘I thought they had arrested you for the murder,’ said Iqbal.

‘Me, too,’ smiled Jugga, baring his row of even white teeth studded with gold points. ‘They always arrest me when anything goes wrong in Mano Majra. You see, I am a badmash.’

‘Didn’t you kill Ram Lal?’

Jugga stopped pressing. He caught his ears with his hands and stuck out his tongue. ‘Toba, toba! Kill my own village bania? Babuji, who kills a hen which lays eggs? Besides, Ram Lal gave me money to pay lawyers when my father was in jail. I would not act like a bastard.’

‘I suppose they will let you off now.’

‘The police are the kings of the country. They will let me off when they feel like it. If they want to keep me in, they will trump up a case of keeping a spear without a license or going out of the village without permission—or just anything.’

‘But you were out of the village that night. Weren’t you?’

Jugga sat down on his haunches, took Iqbal’s feet in his lap, and started massaging his soles.

‘I was out of the village,’ he answered with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, ‘but I was not murdering anyone. I was being murdered.’

Iqbal knew the expression. He did not want to encourage Jugga to make further disclosure. But once the subject had been suggested, there was no keeping Jugga back. He began to press Iqbal’s feet with greater fervour.

‘You have been in Europe many years?’ asked Jugga lowering his voice.

‘Yes, many,’ answered Iqbal, vainly trying to evade the inevitable.

‘Then, Babuji,’ asked Jugga lowering his voice further, ‘you must have slept with many memsahibs. Yes?’

Iqbal felt irritated. It was not possible to keep Indians off the subject of sex for long. It obsessed their minds. It came out in their art, literature and religion. One saw it on the hoardings in the cities advertising aphrodisiacs and curatives for ill effects of masturbation. One saw it in the law courts and marketplaces, where hawkers did a thriving trade selling oil made of the skin of sand lizards to put life into tired groins and increase the size of the phallus. One read it in the advertisements of quacks who claimed to possess remedies for barrenness and medicines to induce wombs to yield male children. One heard about it all the time. No people used incestuous abuse quite as casually as did the Indians. Terms like
sala
, wife’s brother (‘I would like to sleep with your sister’), and
susra
, father-in-law (‘I would like to sleep with your daughter’) were as often terms of affection for one’s friends and relatives as expressions of anger to insult one’s enemies. Conversation on any topic—politics, philosophy, sport—soon came down to sex, which everyone enjoyed with a lot of giggling and hand-slapping.

‘Yes, I have,’ Iqbal said, casually. ‘With many.’

‘Wah, wah,’ exclaimed Jugga with enthusiasm and vigorous pressing of Iqbal’s feet. ‘Wah, Babuji—great. You must have had lots of fun. The memsahibs are like
houris
from paradise—white and soft, like silk. All we have here are black buffaloes.’

‘There is no difference between women. As a matter of fact, white women are not very exciting. Are you married?’

‘No, Babuji. Who will give his daughter to a badmash? I have to get my pleasure where I can get it.’

‘Do you get much of it?’

‘Sometimes … When I go to Ferozepur for a hearing and if I save money from lawyers and their clerks, I have a good time. I make a bargain for the whole night. Women think, as
with other men, that means two, or at the most three times.’ He twirled his moustache. ‘But when Juggut Singh leaves them, they cry “hai, hai”, touch their ears, say “toba, toba” and beg me in the name of God to leave them and take the money back.’

Iqbal knew it was a lie. Most young men talked like that.

‘When you get married, you will find your wife a match for you,’ Iqbal said. ‘You will be holding your ears and saying “toba, toba”.’

‘There is no fun in marriage, Babuji. Where is the time or place for fun? In summer, everyone sleeps out in the open and all you can do is to slip away for a little while and get over with things before your relations miss you. In winter, men and women sleep separately. You have to pretend to answer the call of nature at the same time at night.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it, without being married.’

Jugga laughed. ‘I don’t keep my eyes shut. Besides, even if I am not married, I do a married man’s work.’

‘You also answer calls of nature by arrangement?’

Jugga laughed louder. ‘Yes, Babuji, I do. That is what has brought me to this lockup. But I say to myself: if I had not been out that night, I would not have had the good fortune of meeting you, Babuji. I would not have the chance to learn English from you. Teach me some git mit like “good morning”. Will you, Babuji-sahib?’

‘What will you do with English?’ Iqbal asked. ‘The sahibs have left. You should learn your own language.’

Jugga did not seem pleased with the suggestion. For him, education meant knowing English. Clerks and letter writers who wrote Urdu or Gurmukhi were literate, but not educated.

‘I can learn that from anyone. Bhai Meet Singh has promised to teach me Gurumukhi, but I never seem to get started. Babuji, how many classes have you read up to? You must have passed the tenth?’

Tenth was the school-leaving examination.

‘Yes, I have passed the tenth. Actually I have passed sixteen.’

‘Sixteen! Wah, wah! I have never met anyone who has done that. In our village only Ram Lal has done four. Now he is dead, the only one who can read anything is Meet Singh. In the neighbouring villages they haven’t even got a bhai. Our Inspector Sahib has only read up to seven and the Deputy Sahib to ten. Sixteen! You must have lots of brain.’

Iqbal felt embarrassed at the effusive compliments.

‘Can you read or write anything?’ he asked.

‘I? No. My uncle’s son taught me a little verse he learned at school. It is half English and half Hindustani:

Pigeon
—kabootur, oodan—
-fly

Look
—dekho, usman—
sky

Do you know this?’

‘No. Didn’t he teach you the alphabet?’

‘The A.B.C.? He did not know it himself. He knew as much as I do:

A. B. C. where have you been?

Edward’s dead, I went to mourn.

You must know this one?’

‘No, I don’t know this either.’

‘Well, you tell me something in English.’

Iqbal obliged. He taught Jugga how to say ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight’. When Jugga wanted to know the English for some of the vital functions of life, Iqbal became impatient. Then the five new prisoners were brought into the neighbouring cell. Jugga’s jovial mood vanished as fast as it had come.

By eleven o’clock the rain had dwindled to a drizzle. The day became brighter. The subinspector looked up from his cycling. Some distance ahead of him, the clouds opened up, unfolding a rich blue sky. A shaft of sunlight slanted across the rain. Its saffron beams played about on the sodden fields. The rainbows spanned the sky, framing the town of Chundunnugger in a multicoloured arc.

The subinspector drove faster. He wanted to get to the police station before his head constable made an entry about Malli’s arrest. It would be awkward to have to tear off pages from the station diary and then face a whole lot of questions from some impertinent lawyer. The head constable was a man of experience, but after the arrests of Jugga and Iqbal the subinspector’s confidence in him had been somewhat shaken. He could not be relied on to handle a situation which was not routine. Would he know where to lock up the prisoners? He was a peasant, full of awe of the educated middle class. He would not have the nerve to disturb Iqbal (in whose cell he had put a charpai and a chair and table). And if he had put Jugga and Malli together in the other cell, they would by now have discussed the murder and dacoity and decided to help each other.

As the subinspector cycled into the police station, a couple of policemen sitting on a bench on the veranda got up to receive him. One took his cycle; the other helped him with his raincoat, murmuring something about having to go out in the rain.

‘Duty,’ said the subinspector pompously, ‘duty. Rain is nothing. Even if there was an earthquake, duty first! Is the head constable back?’

‘Yes, sir. He brought in Malli’s gang a few minutes ago and has gone to his quarters to have tea.’

‘Has he made any entry in the daily diary?’

‘No, sir, he said he would wait for you to do that.’

The subinspector was relieved. He went into the reporting
room, hung his turban on a peg and sat down in a chair. The table was stacked with registers of all kinds. One large one with its yellow pages all divided into columns lay open before him. He glanced at the last entry. It was in his own hand, about his leaving Mano Majra rest house earlier that morning.

‘Good,’ he said aloud, rubbing his hands. He slapped his thighs and ran both his hands across his forehead and through his hair. ‘Right,’ he said loudly to himself. ‘Right.’

A constable brought him a cup of tea, stirring it all the time.

‘Your clothes must be wet!’ he said, putting the tea on the table and giving it a last violent stir.

The subinspector picked it up without looking at the constable. ‘Have you locked Malli’s gang in the same cell as Jugga?’

‘Toba! Toba!’ exclaimed the constable, holding his hands up to his shoulder. ‘Sir, there would have been a murder in the police station. You should have been here when we brought Malli in. As soon as Jugga saw him he went mad. I have never heard such abuse. Mother, sister, daughter—he did not leave one out. He shook the bars till they rattled. We thought the door would come off its hinges. There was no question of putting Malli in there. And Malli would not have gone in, any more than a lamb would into a lion’s cage.’

The subinspector smiled. ‘Didn’t Malli swear back?’

‘No. He really looked frightened and kept saying that he had nothing to do with the Mano Majra dacoity. Jugga yelled back saying that he had seen him with his own eyes and he would settle scores with all of them and their mothers, sisters and daughters, once he was out. Malli said he was not afraid of him any more since all Jugga could do now was to sleep with his weaver girl. You should really have seen Jugga then! He behaved like an animal. His eyes turned red; he put his hand on
his mouth and yelled; he beat his chest and shook the iron bars; he swore that he would tear Malli limb from limb. I have never seen anyone in a rage like that. We could not take any chances, so we kept Malli in the reporting room till Jugga’s temper was down. Then we moved Jugga into the Babu’s cell and put Malli’s men in Jugga’s.’

‘It must have been a good tamasha,’ said the subinspector with a grin. ‘We will have some more. I am going to release Malli’s men.’

The constable looked puzzled. Before he could ask any questions, the subinspector dismissed him with a lordly wave of the hand.

‘Policy, you know! You will learn when you have been in the service as long as I have. Go and see if the head constable has had his tea. Say it is important.’

A little later the head constable arrived, belching contentment. He had the smug expression of one ready to protest against any commendation of his efficiency. The subinspector ignored the modest smile the other wore and asked him to shut the door and sit down. The head constable’s expression changed from contentment to concern. He shut the door and stood on the other side of the table. ‘Yes, sir. What are the orders?’

‘Sit down. Sit down,’ the subinspector said. His voice was cool. ‘There is no hurry.’

The head constable sat down.

The subinspector rotated the sharp end of a pencil in his ear and examined the brown wax which stuck to it. He got a cigarette out of his pocket and tapped its tip on the matchbox several times before lighting it. He sucked it noisily. The smoke poured out of his nostrils, rebounded off the table and spread into the room.

‘Head Constable Sahib,’ he said at last, removing a tiny bit
of tobacco from his tongue. ‘Head Constable Sahib, there are lots of things to be done today, and I want you to do them personally.’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered the head constable gravely.

‘First, take Malli and his men to Mano Majra. Release them where the villagers can see them being released. Near the temple, perhaps. Then inquire casually from the villagers if anyone has seen Sultana or any of his gang about. You need not say why. Just make the inquires.’