The Weary Generations (21 page)

Naim sat without answering, watching the schoolmaster grind a cardamom pod on a hearth-stone to brew with the tea.

Hari Chand spoke again. ‘Have you considered your father's position?'

A look of sorrow mixed with a kind of panic passed across Naim's eyes.

‘He wasn't there tonight,' continued Hari Chand. ‘He is a proud man and a brave one. But he is in a bad way. Who caused him to be like that? You tell me.'

The schoolmaster splashed boiling tea from one cracked earthen cup into the other to bring out the colour of the tea. He mixed raw sugar into the cups and, coming to sit beside Naim on the cot, handed one to him. They sipped the hot tea.

‘What would you say if I told you that you can change all this?' Hari Chand said to Naim.

‘Me?' asked Naim.

‘You, me, all of us.'

‘How?'

Hari Chand looked at him with a steady gaze. ‘First you have to be ready to do it.'

‘I can't be ready before I know how,' Naim said.

‘I can't tell you. I have a particular job to do here. But you will meet our people.'

‘Who. when, where?'

‘One question at a time,' Hari Chand said with a smile. ‘I will tell you in a few days. You will meet one man first in Rasool Nagar.'

‘Who is this man? I mean, who are you working for? The Congress?'

‘No. They don't approve of what we are doing, although our goals are the same.'

‘It's a town,' Naim remarked idly after a while, enjoying the flavourful tea after a long day and wishing subconsciously to forget the whole evening and even Hari Chand.

‘Only a small town,' said Hari Chand. ‘Delhi is a big city. Even bigger is Calcutta, where you come from.'

‘How do you know?'

‘We know a lot about you. This man you will meet also knows you. We have talked about you.'

Naim was quiet for a few moments. Then he said slowly, almost absent-mindedly, ‘I only come from Roshan Pur.'

‘Are you ready for this?'

‘Let me think about it.'

The schoolmaster had thick black hair on a pockmarked face with rough features. He had had the good fortune to go to school for a few years. But inside that simple peasant's body was a different heart. Shaking hands with him on his way out, Naim felt a deep sense of friendship with this man to whom he had spoken for the first time that night. He unwound the reins of his mare from the thick nail that served as the door-handle of the hut and said farewell. Before turning into his house he saw Roshan Agha's car starting off from the village and the munshi and a few others, unseen by their master, bowing at the tail lights as they disappeared into the dust thrown up by the wheels.

Following Hari Chand's directions a few days later, Naim knocked at the door of an old, narrow, two-storey house that seemed to have fallen into disrepair. It was situated in an equally narrow street which Naim, on horseback, could scarcely pass through. The door was opened by a white-haired man in old blue railway-type uniform.

‘I have come from Roshan Pur,' Naim said to him. ‘Hari Chand sent me. Master Hari Chand?'

‘Yes, yes,' the man nodded. ‘But nobody comes here on a horse. Look, tie it up by the wall. Here, there is a hook by the door, fortunately. And tell
your horse to stand sideways so that it does not stop people getting past. Hee, hee. Can you control it? Come in when you have done it, the door is open.'

There was an inner door leading to a back room. By the time Naim had dealt with his mare, which he now regretted bringing with him, another man had emerged into the front room.

‘My name is Balkamand,' he said, offering his hand to Naim.

‘I am Naim Ahmad Khan.'

‘I know, please come in, come with me.'

Balkamand led Naim into the back room. The room looked in bad shape. Most of the plaster had fallen off the walls, exposing small, thin bricks laid upon each other with mud instead of mortar in the old style. The dried mud had been pulverized over the years, causing the wall to crack and warp, bringing it to a state of near collapse. An old man sat on a stool, his elbows on a table before him, studying some papers. Balkamand introduced him to Naim. ‘Kishan Das sahib, our Assistant District Secretary.'

The old man looked up.

‘And this is Mr Naim Ahm–'

Before Balkamand could finish, old Kishan Das stood up to shake hands with Naim. ‘I know. Naim from Roshan Pur. I got Hari Chand's message some days back. Sit down.' He offered Naim another stool. ‘I saw you at Roshan Agha's party a few years ago,' he said.

Naim, halfway to sitting on the stool, stood straight up again in utter surprise. ‘Were you there?' he asked.

‘I only saw you from the other side of the lawn. But I heard what you said. I tried to contact you when we set up our branch here, but you had gone to the war by then. Please sit down.'

Kishan Das, completely bald except for a fringe of white hair around the base of his head, had an unusually young voice and a strong grip. The man who had opened the door brought two cups of tea which he set down on the table. Neither of the two men paid any attention to the tea. Kishan Das gazed at Naim quietly for a moment, then said, ‘If you just consider your family's history – your father, grandfather – you will realize how treacherous these people are who represent this system, the system of poverty and slavery, these people who control all our lives. They will not bat an eyelid before betraying those who provide them with the means to lead their grand lives.' He paused. ‘If you are prepared to work to change all this, you should know beforehand that it is risky and dangerous work.'

‘I am not afraid of danger,' Naim said.

‘I know. You fought bravely in the war.'

‘Nobody sets out to be brave in war. It's just a –'

‘I am talking of the risk involved. We are poor people and possess nothing. But you have lands and awards from the sarkar. You have something to lose.'

‘It doesn't matter to me,' Naim said to him.

‘Mind you, it may not come to that. All you have to do is not get caught.' He laughed, and an expression as young as his voice spread across his face. ‘Brave as you are, what we need most of all is educated people. We only have simple peasants and day labourers. We have very few people with any proper education to work in the field.'

Naim nodded in reply.

‘Let me tell you how we can proceed,' Kishan Das said. ‘You will spend two weeks here. Balkamand will tell you all about it. Then you will go out into the field. You need not see me until then, but do look me out when you are ready to go.'

They got up and shook hands. In the front room Balkamand pointed to a cot with a durree spread out on it, a cotton sheet jumbled up towards the foot and a thin, hard pillow with smudges of oil on it at the head of the bed. ‘You can sleep here,' he said.

‘Is it your bed?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where will you sleep?'

‘Ooh – somewhere,' Balkamand said vaguely. ‘Have some food, it's ready.'

‘All right.'

Naim ate one roti with cauliflower cooked in mustard oil, thinking all the while that perhaps he was eating Balkamand's share of food. Balkamand was a tall man of middle years with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. But his most distinguishing feature was his eyes, which had a shine in them that seemed to come not from the surface but from somewhere within.

When Naim had finished eating, he stood up. ‘I will come back in a few days,' he said. ‘I have to prepare my father. Also,' he laughed, ‘I have to take my horse back to the village.'

‘Of course,' Balkamand smiled, ‘I had forgotten all about that.' He shook Naim's hand, his eyes shining more intensely. For a few seconds Naim couldn't take his eyes away from Balkamand's face.

‘Do you want to ask me about anything else?' Balkamand asked.

‘No,' Naim said, slightly embarrassed for appearing to stare at the other man's face.

‘Look,' Balkamand put his hand on Naim's arm, ‘if you have any questions, ask without hesitation.'

‘No, no,' Naim said, ‘it's just –'

‘What?

‘You have a remarkable shine in your eyes, that's all.'

Balkamand blushed like a young boy. They walked to the door. Naim untied the mare's reins from the door-hook. Some children had gathered in the street, looking at the horse.

‘When you get to my age,' Balkamand said to Naim, ‘the eyes change. They either make you blind or make you see further.'

‘According to what they have seen?' Naim asked with a smile.

‘No. Because of the kind of eyes you have.' There was a note of sadness in his voice.

After a few seconds, Naim said farewell.

Niaz Beg didn't prove as difficult as Naim had expected. ‘You have been lonely since you came back,' he said. ‘If you want to go and see your friends in the big cities, by all means go. It will make you happy. I am not yet too old to look after everything on my own in your absence.'

L
YING ATOP A
thin cotton-wool quilt spread on the floor in a pitch dark room, Naim said to himself, ‘It is the fortieth day.' He put his hand beyond the edge of the quilt and felt the cold of the stone floor. ‘Forty days have passed and I have done nothing. I have merely become one of them. I haven't had the chance even to try to do what I came here to do. Who can get through to these illiterate idiots anyway? If only Kishan Das knew these people. “You are my son,” he said to me before I left, “but first of all you are the son of Hindustan.” Ho ho! If he knew what this son is doing for Hindustan!'

The wooden plank covering the hole in the wall that served as a passage between the two rooms of this mountain hut shifted to the side, casting a wide band of lantern light in the darkness of the room. Sheelah's round face appeared in the space.

‘Ay, Wood-bound, how are you?' she asked.

Naim produced a grunt in reply.

‘Why did you not go today?'

‘I am not well.'

‘Afraid of planting the powder?'

‘Shut up.'

‘Why, even I can fix the powder under anything.'

Naim didn't answer. A childlike smile appeared on Sheelah's face. ‘Do you want a cup of tea, Wood-bound?'

‘No.'

She stepped in and replaced the plank to cover the hole. Darkness returned to the room. Naim sat up, wrapping his arms round his raised knees. The girl came and sat down beside him. Naim peered into her face in the dark.

‘What are you looking at?' she asked, fluttering her eyelashes near his face.

Naim stood up and went silently to the sole window in the room. This was a roughly cut small opening in the stone wall with a plank fixed in it, the holes around it filled with broken stone. He struggled with its rusted bolt for a minute.

‘Don't open it,' Sheelah said, coming to stand by him.

‘I need some air,' he said.

‘Baba will be unhappy.'

‘I can't figure out to this day whether Baba is on our side.'

‘He is,' she said.

‘Could be an informer.'

‘No. Listen, Wood-bound –'

‘Don't call me that. My name is Naim.'

‘My brother told me that this,' she said, shyly touching his left hand, ‘is made of wood.'

‘So?'

‘In our village there was a man with only one leg and another who was mad. We called the one who was lame Lame, and the mad one Mad.'

‘Only idiots talk like that. We say Naim Ahmad Khan and Sheelah Rani. Say it.'

‘Naim Ahmad Khan and Sheelah Rani.'

‘Good.'

‘Now am I good?' ‘Yes.'

‘Why don't you talk to me, Naim Ahmad Khan?'

‘Just call me Naim.'

‘All right. Why don't you talk to me?'

‘I do.'

‘In many months you have spoken to me only –' counting on her spread fingers, ‘one, two, three, four, five, six times.'

‘Only one month and ten days.' ‘Do you count them?'

‘I do. Every day.'

‘Why did you come here?' she asked.

‘I don't know.'

‘You came here from many miles and you don't know?' ‘Five hundred miles.'

‘How could you count them, you didn't come on foot.'

‘I read books. That is how I know. Look,' Naim touched her face with wooden fingers, ‘this is your cheek, this your nose, these lips. I can feel them.' He kept passing his lifeless fingers over the girl's dark, spotless face
and felt very clearly that he could in fact sense the touch of her skin, as though blood actually flowed through that piece of wood. Sheelah, stunned for a minute, looked up at him with wondering eyes. Then she laughed quietly with embarrassed pleasure and touched his left hand again, holding on to it for a second.

‘It is warm,' she said. A bird of the night flew silently across the window. ‘An angel passed,' she said, putting her hand breathlessly on Naim's arm.

‘Only an owl. Or a bat.'

‘Don't say that. It's a sin. I heard the sound of its wings. When it passes good things come to you.'

‘Are you a good thing that has come to me?'

She was quiet for a moment. ‘I don't know,' she said.

‘So now it is you who don't know why you have come, see?'

‘I know why you have come,' she said, laughing. ‘You have come to do nothing but eat our food for free.'

‘I have gone out with them and done my share,' Naim said.

‘Only three times.'

‘Were you counting?'

‘Yes, yes.'

She had a strange face. On dark skin, her lips were naturally red. She was now looking out of the window at the distant hills where wooden houses, built one above the other like steps to an enormous palace, glimmered in the half-dark of a starry night.

‘I had a village once,' she said.