Train to Pakistan (7 page)

‘Is he a friend of yours?’

‘Friend? No,no,’ protested Meet Singh. ‘I am a humble bhai of the gurdwara and he is an emperor. He is the government and we are his subjects. If he comes to Mano Majra, you will see him.’

There was a pause in the conversation. Iqbal slipped his feet into his sandals and stood up.

‘I must take a walk. Which way do you suggest I should go?’

‘Go in any direction you like. It is all the same open country. Go to the river. You will see the trains coming and going. If you cross the railroad track you will see the dak bungalow. Don’t be too late. These are bad times and it is best to be indoors before dark. Besides, I have told the lambardar and Uncle Imam Baksh—he is mullah of the mosque—that you are here. They may be coming in to talk to you.’

‘No, I won’t be late.’

Iqbal stepped out of the gurdwara. There was no sign of activity now. The police had apparently finished investigating. Half a dozen constables lay sprawled on charpais under the peepul tree. The door of Ram Lal’s house was open. Some villagers sat on the floor in the courtyard. A woman wailed in a singsong which ended up in convulsions of crying in which other women joined. It was hot and still. The sun blazed on the mud walls.

Iqbal walked in the shade of the wall of the gurdwara. Children had relieved themselves all along it. Men had used it as a urinal.A mangy bitch lay on her side with a litter of eight skinny pups yapping and tugging at her sagging udders.

The lane ended abruptly at the village pond—a small patch of muddy water full of buffaloes with their heads sticking out.

A footpath skirted the pond and went along a dry watercourse through the wheat fields towards the river. Iqbal went along the watercourse watching his steps carefully. He reached the riverside just as the express from Lahore came up on the bridge. He watched its progress through the criss-cross
of steel. Like all the trains, it was full. From the roof, legs dangled down the sides onto the doors and windows. The doors and windows were jammed with heads and arms. There were people on buffers between the bogies. The two on the buffers on the tail end of the train were merrily kicking their legs and gesticulating. The train picked up speed after crossing the bridge. The engine driver started blowing the whistle and continued blowing till he had passed Mano Majra station. It was an expression of relief that they were out of Pakistan and into India.

Iqbal went up the riverbank towards the bridge. He was planning to go under it towards the dak bungalow when he noticed a Sikh soldier watching him from the sentry box at the end of the bridge. Iqbal changed his mind and walked boldly up to the rail embankment and turned towards Mano Majra station. The manoeuvre allayed the sentry’s suspicion. Iqbal went a hundred yards up and then casually sat down on the railway line.

The passing express had woken Mano Majra from its late siesta. Boys threw stones at the buffaloes in the pond and drove them home. Groups of women went out in the fields and scattered themselves behind the bushes. A bullock cart carrying Ram Lal’s corpse left the village and went towards the station. It was guarded by policemen. Several villagers went a little distance with it and then returned along with the relatives.

Iqbal stood up and looked all round. From the railway station to the roof of the rest house showing above the plumes of pampas, from the bridge to the village and back to the railway station, the whole place was littered with men, women, children, cattle, and dogs. There were kites wheeling high up in the sky, long lines of crows were flying from somewhere to somewhere, and millions of sparrows twittered about the trees. Where in India could one find a place which did not teem with
life? Iqbal thought of his first reaction on reaching Bombay. Milling crowds—millions of them—on the quayside, in the streets, on railway platforms; even at night the pavements were full of people. The whole country was like an overcrowded room. What could you expect when the population went up by six every minute—five million every year! It made all planning in industry or agriculture a mockery. Why not spend the same amount of effort in checking the increase in population? But how could you, in the land of the
Kama Sutra
, the home of phallic worship and the son cult?

Iqbal was woken from his angry daydreaming by a shimmering sound along the steel wires which ran parallel to the railway lines. The signal above the sentry’s box near the bridge came down. Iqbal stood up and brushed his clothes. The sun had gone down beyond the river. The russet sky turned grey as shades of twilight spread across the plain. A new moon looking like a finely pared fingernail appeared beside the evening star. The muezzin’s call to prayer rose above the rumble of the approaching train.

Iqbal found his way back easily. All lanes met in the temple—mosque—moneylender’s house triangle with the peepul tree in the centre. Sounds of wailing still came from Ram Lal’s house. In the mosque, a dozen men stood in two rows silently going through their genuflections. In the gurdwara, Meet Singh, sitting beside the Book which was folded up in muslin on a cot, was reciting the evening prayer. Five or six men and women sat in a semicircle around a hurricane lantern and listened to him.

Iqbal went straight to his room and lay down on his charpai in the dark. He had barely shut his eyes when the worshippers began to chant. The chanting stopped for a couple of minutes, only to start again. The ceremony ended with shouts of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ and the beating of a drum. The men and women came out. Meet Singh held the lantern and helped them find their
shoes. They started talking loudly. In the babel the only word Iqbal could make out was ‘babu’. Somebody who had noticed Iqbal come in, had told the others. There was some whispering and shuffling of feet and then silence.

Iqbal shut his eyes once more. A minute later Meet Singh stood on the threshold, holding the lantern.

‘Iqbal Singhji, have you gone to bed without food? Would you like some spinach? I have also curd and buttermilk.’

‘No, thank you, Bhaiji. I have the food I want.’

‘Our poor food …’ started Meet Singh.

‘No, no, it is not that,’ interrupted Iqbal sitting up, ‘it is just that I have it and it may be wasted if I don’t eat it. I am a little tired and would like to sleep.’

‘Then you must have some milk. Banta Singh, the lambardar, is bringing you some. I will tell him to hurry up if you want to sleep early. I have another charpai for you on the roof. It is too hot to sleep in here.’ Meet Singh left the hurricane lantern in the room and disappeared in the dark.

The prospect of having to talk to the lambardar was not very exciting. Iqbal fished out his silver hip flask from underneath the pillow and took a long swig of whisky. He ate a few dry biscuits that were in the paper packet. He took his mattress and pillow to the roof where a charpai had been laid for him. Meet Singh apparently slept in the courtyard to guard the gurdwara.

Iqbal lay on his charpai and watched the stars in the teeming sky until he heard several voices entering the gurdwara and coming up the stairs. Then he got up to greet the visitors.

‘Sat Sri Akal, Babu Sahib.’

‘Salaam to you, Babu Sahib.’

They shook hands. Meet Singh did not bother to introduce them. Iqbal pushed the air mattress aside to make room on the charpai for the visitors. He sat down on the floor himself.

‘I am ashamed for not having presented myself earlier,’ said the Sikh. ‘Please forgive me. I have brought some milk for you.’

‘Yes, Sahib, we are ashamed of ourselves. You are our guest and we have not rendered you any service. Drink the milk before it gets cold,’ added the other visitor. He was a tall lean man with a clipped beard.

‘It is very kind of you …I know you have been busy with the police …I don’t drink milk. Really I do not. We city-dwellers …’

The lambardar ignored Iqbal’s well-mannered protests. He removed his dirty handkerchief from a large brass tumbler and began to stir the milk with his forefinger. ‘It is fresh. I milked the buffalo only an hour back and got the wife to boil it. I know you educated people only drink boiled milk. There is quite a lot of sugar in it; it has settled at the bottom,’ he added with a final stir. To emphasize the quality of the milk, he picked up a slab of clotted cream on his forefinger and slapped it back in the milk.

‘Here, Babuji, drink it before it gets cold.’

‘No! No! No, thank you, no!’ protested Iqbal. He did not know how to get out of his predicament without offending the visitors. ‘I don’t ever drink milk. But if you insist, I will drink it later. I like it cold.’

‘Yes, you drink it as you like, Babuji,’ said the Muslim, coming to his rescue. ‘Banta Singh, leave the tumbler here. Bhai will bring it back in the morning.’

The lambardar covered the tumbler with his handkerchief and put it under Iqbal’s charpai. There was a long pause. Iqbal had pleasant visions of pouring the milk with all its clotted cream down the drain.

‘Well, Babuji,’ began the Muslim. ‘Tell us something. What
is happening in the world? What is all this about Pakistan and Hindustan?’

‘We live in this little village and know nothing,’ the lambardar put in. ‘Babuji, tell us, why did the English leave?’

Iqbal did not know how to answer simple questions like these. Independence meant little or nothing to these people. They did not even realize that it was a step forward and that all they needed to do was to take the next step and turn the make-believe political freedom into a real economic one.

‘They left because they had to. We had hundreds of thousands of young men trained to fight in the war. This time they had the arms too. Haven’t you heard of the mutiny of the Indian sailors? The soldiers would have done the same thing. The English were frightened. They did not shoot any of the Indians who joined the Indian National Army set up by the Japanese, because they thought the whole country would turn against them.’

Iqbal’s thesis did not cut much ice.

‘Babuji, what you say may be right,’ said the lambardar hesitantly. ‘But I was in the last war and fought in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. We liked English officers. They were better than the Indian.’

‘Yes,’ added Meet Singh, ‘my brother who is a havildar says all sepoys are happier with English officers than with Indian. My brother’s colonel’s memsahib still sends my niece things from London. You know, Lambardar Sahib, she even sent money at her wedding. What Indian officers’ wives will do that?’

Iqbal tried to take the offensive. ‘Why, don’t you people want to be free? Do you want to remain slaves all your lives?’

After a long silence the lambardar answered: ‘Freedom must be a good thing. But what will we get out of it? Educated people like you, Babu Sahib, will get the jobs the English had. Will we get more lands or more buffaloes?’

‘No,’ the Muslim said. ‘Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.’

Iqbal was startled at the analysis.

‘What you say is absolutely right,’ he agreed warmly. ‘If you want freedom to mean something for you—the peasants and workers—you have to get together and fight. Get the bania Congress government out. Get rid of the princes and the landlords and freedom will mean for you just what you think it should. More land, more buffaloes, no debts.’

‘That is what that fellow told us,’ interrupted Meet Singh, ‘that fellow … Lambardara, what was his name? Comrade Something-or-other. Are you a comrade, Babu Sahib?’

‘No.’

‘I am glad. That comrade did not believe in God. He said when his party came into power they would drain the sacred pool round the temple at Tarn Taran and plant rice in it. He said it would be more useful.’

‘That is foolish talk,’ protested Iqbal. He wished Meet Singh had remembered the comrade’s name. The man should be reported to headquarters and taken to task.

‘If we have no faith in God then we are like animals,’ said the Muslim gravely. ‘All the world respects a religious man. Look at Gandhi! I hear he reads the Koran Sharif and the Unjeel along with his Vedas and Shastras. People sing his praise in the four corners of the earth. I have seen a picture in a newspaper of Gandhi’s prayer meeting. It showed a lot of white men and women sitting cross-legged. One white girl had her eyes shut. They said she was the Big Lord’s daughter. You see, Meet Singh, even the English respect a man of religion.’

‘Of course, Chacha. Whatever you say is right to the sixteenth anna of the rupee,’ agreed Meet Singh, rubbing his belly.

Iqbal felt his temper rise. ‘They are a race of four-twenties,’ he said vehemently. [Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code defines the offence of cheating.] ‘Do not believe what they say.’

Once again he felt his venom had missed its mark. But the Big Lord’s daughter sitting cross-legged with her eyes shut for the benefit of press photographers, and the Big Lord himself—the handsome, Hindustani-speaking cousin of the King, who loved India like the missionaries—was always too much for Iqbal.

‘I have lived in their country many years. They are nice as human beings. Politically they are the world’s biggest four-twenties. They would not have spread their domain all over the world if they had been honest. That, however, is irrelevant,’ added Iqbal. It was time to change the subject. ‘What is important is: what is going to happen now?’

‘We know what is happening,’ the lambardar answered with some heat. ‘The winds of destruction are blowing across the land. All we hear is kill, kill. The only ones who enjoy freedom are thieves, robbers and cutthroats.’ Then he added calmly: ‘We were better off under the British. At least there was security.’

There was an uneasy silence. An engine was shunting up and down the railway line rearranging its load of goods wagons. The Muslim changed the subject.

‘That is the goods train. It must be late. Babu Sahib, you are tired; we must let you rest. If you need us, we will be always at your service.’

They all got up. Iqbal shook hands with his visitors without showing any trace of anger. Meet Singh conducted the lambardar and the Muslim down to the courtyard. He then retired to his charpai there.