Train to Pakistan (12 page)

Imam Baksh put down on the truck the wood he had carried on his head and handed his bottle of oil to the lambardar. He re-tied his turban, then greeted the officer loudly, ‘Salaam, Sardar Sahib.’

The officer looked away.

Iman Baksh started again, ‘Everything is all right, isn’t it, Sardar Sahib?’

The officer turned around abruptly and snapped, ‘Get along. Don’t you see I am busy?’

Imam Baksh, still adjusting his turban, meekly joined the villagers.

When both the trucks were loaded, the officer told Banta Singh to come to the camp next morning for the money. The trucks rumbled off towards the station.

Banta Singh was surrounded by eager villagers. He felt that he was somehow responsible for the insult to Imam Baksh. The villagers were impatient with him.

‘O Lambardara, why don’t you tell us something? What is all this big secret you are carrying about? You seem to think you have become someone very important and don’t need to talk to us any more,’ said Meet Singh angrily.

‘No, Bhai, no. If I knew, why would I not tell you? You talk like children. How can I argue with soldiers and policemen? They told me nothing. And didn’t you see how that pig’s penis spoke to Chacha? One’s self-respect is in one’s own hands. Why should I have myself insulted by having my turban taken off?’

Imam Baksh acknowledged the gesture gracefully. ‘Lambardar is right. It somebody barks when you speak to him, it is best to keep quiet. Let us all go to our homes. You can see what they are doing from the tops of your roofs.’

The villagers dispersed to their rooftops. From there the
trucks could be seen at the camp near the station. They started off again and went east along the railway track till they were beyond the signal. Then they turned sharp left and bumped across the rails. They turned left again, came back along the line towards the station, and disappeared behind the train.

All afternoon, the villagers stood on their roofs shouting to each other, asking whether anyone had seen anything. In their excitement they had forgotten to prepare the midday meal. Mothers fed their children on stale leftovers from the day before. They did not have time to light their hearths. The men did not give fodder to their cattle nor remember to milk them as evening drew near. When the sun was already under the arches of the bridge everyone became conscious of having overlooked the daily chores. It would be dark soon and the children would clamour for food, but still the women watched, their eyes glued to the station. The cows and buffaloes lowed in the barns, but still the men stayed on the roofs looking towards the station. Everyone expected something to happen.

The sun sank behind the bridge, lighting the white clouds which had appeared in the sky with hues of russet, copper, and orange. Then shades of grey blended with the glow as evening gave way to twilight and twilight sank into darkness. The station became a black wall. Wearily, the men and women went down to their courtyards, beckoning the others to do the same. They did not want to be alone in missing anything.

The northern horizon, which had turned a bluish grey, showed orange again. The orange turned into copper and then into a luminous russet. Red tongues of flame leaped into the black sky. A soft breeze began to blow towards the village. It brought the smell of burning kerosene, then of wood. And then—a faint acrid smell of searing flesh.

The village was stilled in a deathly silence. No one asked anyone else what the odour was. They all knew. They had known
it all the time. The answer was implicit in the fact that the train had come from Pakistan.

That evening, for the first time in the memory of Mano Majra, Imam Baksh’s sonorous cry did not rise to the heavens to proclaim the glory of God.

The day’s happenings cast their gloom on the rest house. Hukum Chand had been out since the morning. When his orderly came from the station at midday for a thermos flask of tea and sandwiches, he told the bearer and the sweeper about the train. In the evening, the servants and their families saw the flames shooting up above the line of trees. The fire cast a melancholy amber light on the khaki walls of the bungalow.

The day’s work had taken a lot out of Hukum Chand. His fatigue was not physical. The sight of so many dead had at first produced a cold numbness. Within a couple of hours, all his emotions were dead, and he watched corpses of men and women and children being dragged out, with as little interest as if they had been trunks or bedding. But by evening, he began to feel forlorn and sorry for himself. He looked weary and haggard when he stepped out of the car. The bearer, the sweeper, and their families were on the roof looking at the flames. He had to wait for them to come down and open the doors. His bath had not been drawn. Hukum Chand felt neglected and more depressed. He lay on his bed, ignoring the servants’ attentions. One unlaced and took off his shoes and began to rub his feet. The other brought in buckets of water and filled the bathtub. The magistrate got up abruptly, almost kicking the servant, and went into the bathroom.

After a bath and a change of clothes, Hukum Chand felt somewhat refreshed. The punkah breeze was cool and soothing. He lay down again with his hands over his eyes. Within the dark chambers of his closed eyes, scenes of the day started
coming back in panoramic succession. He tried to squash them by pressing his fingers into his eyes. The images only went blacker and redder and then came back. There was a man holding his intestines, with an expression in his eyes which said: ‘Look what I have got!’ There were women and children huddled in a corner, their eyes dilated with horror, their mouths still open as if their shrieks had just then become voiceless. Some of them did not have a scratch on their bodies. There were bodies crammed against the far end wall of the compartment, looking in terror at the empty windows through which must have come shots, spears and spikes. There were lavatories, jammed with corpses of young men who had muscled their way to comparative safety. And all the nauseating smell of putrefying flesh, faeces and urine. The very thought brought vomit to Hukum Chand’s mouth. The most vivid picture was that of an old peasant with a long white beard; he did not look dead at all. He sat jammed between rolls of bedding on the upper rack meant for luggage, looking pensively at the scene below him. A thin crimson line of coagulated blood ran from his ear onto his beard. Hukum Chand had shaken him by the shoulder, saying ‘Baba, Baba!’ believing he was alive. He was alive. His cold hand stretched itself grotesquely and gripped the magistrate’s right foot. Cold sweat came out all over Hukum Chand’s body. He tried to shout but could only open his mouth. The hand moved up slowly from the ankle to the calf, from the calf to the knee, gripping its way all along. Hukum Chand tried to shout again. His voice stuck in his throat. The hand kept moving upwards. As it touched the fleshy part of his thigh, its grip loosened. Hukum Chand began to moan and then with a final effort broke out of the nightmare with an agonized shriek. He sat up with a look of terror in his eyes.

The bearer was standing beside him looking equally frightened.

‘I thought the Sahib was tired and would like his feet pressed.’

Hukum Chand could not speak. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and sank back on the pillow, exclaiming ‘Hai Ram, hai Ram.’ The nervous outburst purged him of fear. He felt weak and foolish. After some time a sense of calm descended on him.

‘Get me some whisky.’

The bearer brought him a tray with whisky, soda, and a tumbler. Hukum Chand filled a quarter of the glass with the honey-coloured liquid. The bearer filled the rest with soda. The magistrate drank half of the glass in a gulp and lay back. The alcohol poured into his system, warming his jaded nerves to life. The servant started pressing his feet again. He looked up at the ceiling, feeling relaxed and just pleasantly tired. The sweeper started lighting lamps in the rooms. He put one on the table beside Hukum Chand’s bed. 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 spiralled 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. One could even die in bed alone and no one would discover until the stench spread all round and maggots moved in and out of the sockets of the eyes and geckos ran over the face with their slimy clammy bellies. Hukum Chand wiped his face with his hands. How could one escape one’s own mind! He gulped the rest of the whisky and poured himself another.

Death had always been an obsession with Hukum Chand. As a child, he had seen his aunt die after the birth of a dead child.
Her whole system had been poisoned. For days she had had hallucinations and had waved her arms about frantically to ward off the spirit of death which stood at the foot of her bed. She had died shrieking with terror, staring and pointing at the wall. The scene had never left Hukum Chand’s mind. Later in his youth, he had fought the fear of death by spending many hours at a cremation ground near the university. He had watched young and old brought on crude bamboo stretchers, lamented for, and then burned. Visits to the cremation ground left him with a sense of tranquillity. He had got over the immediate terror of death, but the idea of ultimate dissolution was always present in his mind. It made him kind, charitable and tolerant. It even made him cheerful in adversity. He had taken the loss of his children with phlegmatic resignation. He had borne with an illiterate, unattractive wife, without complaint. It all came from his belief that the only absolute truth was death. The rest—love, ambition, pride, values of all kinds—was to be taken with a pinch of salt. 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.

But a trainload of dead was too much for even Hukum Chand’s fatalism. He could not square a massacre with a philosophical belief in the inevitability of death. It bewildered and frightened him by its violence and its magnitude. The picture of his aunt biting her tongue and bleeding at the mouth, her eyes staring at space, came back to him in all its vivid horror. Whisky did not help to take it away.

The room was lit by the headlights of the car and then left darker than before; the car had probably been put into the garage. Hukum Chand grew conscious of the coming night.
The servants would soon be retiring to their quarters to sleep snugly surrounded by their women and children. He would be left alone in the bungalow with its empty rooms peopled by phantoms of his own creation. No! No! He must get the orderlies to sleep somewhere nearby. On the veranda perhaps? Or would they suspect he was scared? He would tell them that he might be wanted during the night and must have them at hand; that would pass unnoticed.

‘Bairah.’

‘Sahib.’ The bearer came in through the wire-gauze door.

‘Where have you put my charpai for the night?’

‘Sahib’s bed has not been laid yet. It is clouded and there might be rain. Would Huzoor like to sleep on the veranda?’

‘No, I will stay in my room. The boy can pull the punkah for an hour or two till it gets cool. Tell the orderlies to sleep on the veranda. I may want them for urgent work tonight,’ he added, without looking up at the man.

‘Yes, Sahib. I will tell them straightaway before they go to bed. Should I bring the Sahib’s dinner?’

Hukum Chand had forgotten about dinner.

‘No, I do not want any dinner. Just tell the orderlies to put their beds on the veranda. Tell the driver to be there too. If there is not enough space on the veranda, tell him to sleep in the next room.’

The bearer went out. Hukum Chand felt relieved. He had saved face. He could sleep peacefully with all these people about him. He listened to the reassuring sounds of human activity—the servants arguing about places on the veranda, beds being laid just outside his door, a lamp being brought in the next room, and furniture being moved to make place for charpais.

The headlights of the car coming in, lit the room once more. The car stopped outside the veranda. Hukum Chand heard voices of men and women, then the jingle of bells. He sat up and
looked through the wire-gauze door. It was the party of musicians, the old woman and the girl prostitute. He had forgotten about them.

‘Bairah.’

‘Huzoor.’

‘Tell the driver to take the musicians and the old woman back. And … let the servants sleep in their quarters. If I need them, I will send for them.’

Hukum Chand felt a little stupid being caught like that. The servants would certainly laugh about it. But he did not care. He poured himself another whisky.

The servants started moving out before the bearer came to speak to them. The lamp in the next room was removed. The driver started the car again. He switched on the headlights and switched them off again. The old woman would not get in the car and began to argue with the bearer. Her voice rose higher and higher till it passed the bounds of argument and addressed itself to the magistrate inside the room.

‘May your government go on forever. May your pen inscribe figures of thousands—nay, hundreds of thousands.’

Hukum Chand lost his temper. ‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘You have to pay my debt of the other day. Go! Bearer, send her away!’

The woman’s voice came down. She was quickly hustled into the car. The car went out, leaving only the flickering yellow light of the oil lamp beside Hukum Chand’s bed. He rose, picked up the lamp and the table, and put them in the corner by the door. 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. Hukum Chand watched the whole thing with bland indifference.