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When the goods train steams in, they say to each other, “There is the goods train.” It is like saying goodnight.
He lit a cigarette and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Just above his head two geckos were getting ready for a fight. They crawled toward each other emitting little rasping noises. They paused with half an inch between them and moved their tails with slow, menacing deliberation, then came to a head-on collision. Before Hukum Chand could move away they fell with a loud plop just beside his pillow. A cold clammy feeling came over him. He jumped out of bed and stared at the geckos. The geckos stared back at him, still holding onto each other by the teeth as if they were kissing. The bearer’s
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“There is no crime in anyone’s blood any more than there is goodness in the blood of others,” answered Iqbal
If the fear of the gallows or the cell had stopped people from killing or stealing, there would be no murdering or stealing. It does not. They hang a man every day in this province. Yet ten get murdered every twenty-four hours. No, Bhaiji, criminals are not born. They are made by hunger, want and injustice.”
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.”
He should have started his political career by finding an excuse to court imprisonment. But there was still time. He would do that as soon as he got back to Delhi. By then, the massacres would be over. It would be quite safe. The goods train had left the station and was rumbling over the bridge. Iqbal fell asleep dreaming of a peaceful life in jail. Early next morning, Iqbal was arrested.
He fell asleep with visions of banner headlines announcing his arrest, his release, his triumphant emergence as a leader.
But Meet Singh was a man of peace. Envy had never poisoned his affection for Imam Baksh. He only felt that he owed it to his own community to say something when Imam Baksh made any suggestions. Their conversation always had an undercurrent of friendly rivalry.
this is Kalyug, the dark age.”
A moth fluttered round the chimney and flew up in spirals to the ceiling. The geckos darted across from the wall. The moth hit the ceiling well out of the geckos’ reach and spiraled back to the lamp. The lizards watched with their shining black eyes. The moth flew up again and down again. Hukum Chand knew that if it alighted on the ceiling for a second, one of the geckos would get it fluttering between its little crocodile jaws. Perhaps that was its destiny. It was everyone’s destiny. Whether it was in hospitals, trains, or in the jaws of reptiles, it was all the same.
He did so with a clear conscience. Although he accepted gifts and obliged friends when they got into trouble, he was not corrupt. He occasionally joined in parties, arranged for singing and dancing—and sometimes sex—but he was not immoral. What did it really matter in the end? That was the core of Hukum Chand’s philosophy of life, and he lived well.
The moth circled round the glass chimney, hitting the wall on either side. The geckos crawled down from the ceiling to the wall near the lamp. As the moth alighted on the wall, one of the geckos crept up stealthily behind it, pounced, and caught it fluttering in its jaws.
Then flowering trees take their place. First come the orange showers of the flame of the forest, the vermilion of the coral tree, and the virginal white of the champac. They are followed by the mauve Jacaranda, the flamboyant gol mohur, and the soft gold cascades of the laburnum. Then the trees also lose their flowers. Their leaves fall. Their bare branches stretch up to the sky begging for water, but there is no water.
Geckos dart about filling themselves with insects till they get heavy and fall off ceilings.
Hukum Chand began to speak again. “One should bow before the storm till it passes. See the pampas grass! Its leaves bend before the breeze. The stem stands stiff in its plumed pride. When the storm comes it cracks and its white plume is scattered by the winds like fluffs of thistledown.” After a pause he added, “A wise man swims with the current and still gets across.”
“Who are Malli and his companions, Sikh or Muslim?” asked Hukum Chand abruptly. “All Sikhs.” The magistrate relapsed into his thoughts once more. After some time he began to talk to himself. “It would have been more convenient if they had been Mussulman. The knowledge of that and the agitator fellow being a Leaguer would have persuaded Mano Majra Sikhs to let their Muslims go.”
“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.
The head constable’s visit had divided Mano Majra into two halves as neatly as a knife cuts through a pat of butter.
Quite suddenly every Sikh in Mano Majra became a stranger with an evil intent. His long hair and beard appeared barbarous, his kirpan menacingly anti-Muslim. For the first time, the name Pakistan came to mean something to them—a haven of refuge where there were no Sikhs.
“Yes,” added another warmly, “we first, then you. If anyone raises his eyebrows at you we will rape his mother.” “Mother, sister and daughter,” added the others.
decided to appoint Malli custodian of the evacuated Muslims’ property. Anyone interfering with him or his men would be shot. Malli’s gang and the refugees then unyoked the bullocks, looted the carts, and drove the cows and buffaloes away.
They saw Malli’s men and the refugees ransack Muslim houses. They saw Sikh soldiers come and go as if on their beats. They heard the piteous lowing of cattle as they were beaten and dragged along. They heard the loud cackle of hens and roosters silenced by the slash of the knife. But they did nothing but sit and sigh.
Colonies of cormorants and terns which were used to roosting there flew over to the banks and then to the bridge—over which no trains had run for several days.
He had never known the Sutlej to rise so high in so short a time. Mano Majra was still a long way off and the mud dam looked solid and safe.
“Now we can talk. Listen and listen very carefully.” He paused, looked around and started again. He spoke slowly, emphasizing each sentence by stabbing the air with his forefinger. “For each Hindu or Sikh they kill, kill two Mussulmans. For each woman they abduct or rape, abduct two. For each home they loot, loot two. For each trainload of dead they send over, send two across. For each road convoy that is attacked, attack two. That will stop the killing on the other side. It will teach them that we also play this game of killing and looting.”
“I will tell you what we are to do,” answered the boy, pointing to himself. “If you have the courage to do it.” He continued after a pause. “Tomorrow a trainload of Muslims is to cross the bridge to Pakistan. If you are men, this train should carry as many people dead to the other side as you have received.” A cold clammy feeling spread among the audience. People coughed nervously. “The train will have Mano Majra Muslims on it,” said Meet Singh without looking up.
Iqbal realized that it was the company of Jugga and the constable, who were known Sikhs, that really saved him from being stopped and questioned. He wished he could get out of this place where he had to prove his Sikhism to save his life.
