Unprecedented International Acclaim “Told with a confident realism lost to English fiction.” The Observer, London “Mr. Nahal, with detailed description of the daily lives of seven families...shows how they were swept along by events. Hindus and Muslims spoke and wrote one Punjabi language, implicitly respected each other's religion, intermarried, shared business interests, attended mixed classes in schools, joined a mixed police force and mixed arms regiments—but in 1947 it all disappeared. Mr. Nahal’s simple and moving story brings out each of these points.” Times Literary Supplement, London “As long as novels like Azadt are written in the language, there is strength and continuity in the English novel!” Tony Gould in New Society London “4 Passage to India written by an Indian...with a lyrical, loving tone. Chicago Tribune “Chaman Nahal brilliantly draws a portrait of a war-torn land and of one family trying to bring order and safety to their lives... A memorable journey and one related so dramatically and realistically that it 1s likely to live for ever in our minds and in our hearts.” Chicago Sun-Time, U.S.A. “Here is India. India colourfully, penetratingly, amusingly and agonizingly. No one but an Indian could have written this book, and not many Indians would do it as well as Chaman Nahal.” rp Seqitie Times, U.S.A. “Chaman Nahal, an Indian writer of unusual ability, has come close to answering the question of the slaughter of the innocents in the compelling novel Azadi”. Pholadela ba uinet EVader RRI. ">i Waat of Fuads Member“Novels such a$ Azadi can help us to know and understand other peoples, to find some meaningful sense of our common humanity.” Kansas City Star, U.S.A “A wonderfully deep and teresting story that is full of the flavour of India, the Punjab, and the time.” John Kenneth Galbraith “In Azad: Chaman Nahal describes, this disaster and this tragedy with brilliance, compassion, and great humanity.” Maxwell Geismar “The power Nahal displays is his sympathetic human involvement, his ability to show that in spite of wide differences in social mores between India and the West, man is man wherever you find him.” Carlos Baker “No one before Nahal has dramatized this terrible episode in our recent history with such sweeping power and authenticity. Bhabani Bhattacharya “This novel depicts in graphic detail the catastrophic incidents that took place immediately after the announcement in June 1947 of the British intention to quite India after partitioning it.” The Hindu, Madras “This is a book very well worth reading.” The Times of India, Delhi “Done most convincingly, revealing the contradictions, the illusions, the smallness of outlook and occasional acts of kindness and humanity in the face of common disaster.” The Sunday Standard, Bombay “Chaman Nahal is a brilliant writer...The book is a good illustration of painstaking and painful documentation.” The Tribune, ChandigarhAzadi Chaman Nahal ORIENT PAPERBACKS A Division of Vision Books Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi © BombayAuthor’s Note All characters in the novel, except the historical ones, are imaginary. The account of Gandhi's tour of the Punjab and the Prince of Wales’ visit to Sialkot, given on pages 103-107, is entirely fictitious. The few lunar dates mentioned also do not conform to facts. Rs. 35.00 lst Paperback Edition 1979 Reprinted 1988 Azadi © Chaman Nahal, 1975, 1979 Cover design by Vision Studios Published by Orient Paperbacks (A Division of Vision Books Pvt. Ltd.) Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110 006 Printed in India at Arun & Rajive Pvt. Ltd., Delhi-110 092 Cover Printed at Ravindra Printing Press, Delhi-110 006To the memory of Kartar DeviWhere the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth... Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit... Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Rabindranath TagorePRINCIPAL CHARACTERS Lala Kanshi Ram: a grain merchant of Sialkot, West Punjab (now in Pakistan), and Bibi Amar Vati’s chief tenant Prabha Rani: his wife Madhu Bala: their daughter Arun Kumar: their son Bibi Amar Vati: a landlady of Sialkot Gangu Mull: her husband Suraj Prakash: their son Sunanda Bala: Suraj Prakash’s wife Sardar Jodha Singh: a dry-fruit merchant of Sialkot, and another tenant of Bibi Amar Vati Sardar Teja Singh: his son Isher Kaur: Teja Singh’s daughter Niranjan Singh: Isher Kaur’s husband Padmini: a charwoman, also a tenant of Bibi Amar Vati Chandni: her daughter Lala Bihari Lal Phool Chand Bhagwan Devi Mangat Ram Ram Kali Mukanda’s mother | Chaudhri Barkat Ali: a sports-goods dealer of Sialkot, and a bosom friend of Lala Kanshi Ram Begum Barkat Ali: his wife Munir Ahmad: their son Nurul-Nisar: their daughter Dr Chander Bhan: a medical practitioner of Sialkot Abdul Ghani: a hookah manufacturer of Sialkot Pran Nath Chaddba: Deputy Commissioner Asghar Ahmad Siddiqui: Superintendent of Police Inayat-Ullah Khan: Inspector: of Police Sergeant William Davidson: a British army officer Captain Rahmat-Ullah Khan: a Pakistani army officer Major Jang Bahadur Singh: an Indian army officer other tenant families of Bibi Amar VatiPart I The LullChapter 1 Ir was the third of June, 1947. This evening, the Viceroy was to make an important announcement. That’s what Lala Kanshi Ram told his wife Prabha Rani, whose education had become his task. Lala Kanshi Ram was not too literate himself — it is doubtful if he ever finished high school. But life had rolled him around, misfortunes had come and gone, and this had given an edge to his intelligence. And then he at least knew fairly well one local language, Urdu, which was the first language he had learned to read and write. His own language was Hindi, or so it was supposed to be. For over twenty years he had been an ardent mem- ber of the district Arya Samaj, and one thing that the Samaj had done was to give status.to the low and the humble. Was he the son of a rich man or poor? Did he inherit landed property or did he not? These were the questions the Arya Samaj did not care one bit for. So long as you could tie a white turban on your head in a becoming manner, and so long as you boasted of an upright moral character, you were a khandani, a worthwhile citizen. And the Samaj taught him in no uncertain terms that the true heritage of an Indian was the Vedic heritage, and the true language of an Indian, Sanskrit — the language of the Vedas. Since Sanskrit was an ancient language, its modern -derivative Hindi would do if you were unable to get that far back. So when the census was taken by the government every tenth year, Lala Kanshi Ram dutifully entered against the column for mother tongue, the word ‘Hindi’. But he neither spoke Hindi nor ever wrote it on paper. 13When he opened his mouth he spoke Punjabi, the rich and virile language of the province to which he be- longed. And when it came to writing, whether the entries in his shop ledger or a note to the vendor down the road, he wrote in Urdu. Who said it was the language of the Muslims? He had learned it from his father and from the primary teacher in his village a few miles out of Sialkot, and neither of the two was a Muslim. The upshot was that every morning, after his breakfast, he spent at least a half hour reading through the Urdu newspaper he took. No one in the house was allowed as much as to whisper during this sacred half hour. ‘Don’t you see your father is looking through the paper?’ Prabha Rani would tell Arun sternly, if he made the slightest sound. And in that rebuke was the pride of select ownership. For wasn’t her Lalaji the most learned man in the whole neighbour- hood? Wasn't he an avatar of Vishnu, so far as she was concerned? Lala Kanshi Ram at such moments was propped up on his bed. Having finished his bath and his morning prayers, he would be ready for his nashta. ‘Nashta’ was one of the Urdu words Lala Kanshi Ram liked parti- cularly, it gave him the feeling of status. What he in fact took in the morning was a glass of milk. A heavy breakfast did not agree with his system. And Prabha Rani would boil pure cow’s milk, let it cool a little, and serve it to him in a long, brass tumbler. She no doubt knew how important his health was to her and the entire family. Who else was there to take care of her if he was gone? Who else had she in the entire wide world? Her eyes brimming with sentimental tears, she poured a lot of thick cream on top of the milk — cream that she made at home by boiling up the left- over milk of yesterday. She also threw a handful of peeled almonds into the brass tumbler, before she took 14the milk to him. These almonds she soaked in water, last thing at night before she went to bed. In the morning she had only to press them lightly from one side and out came the white, smooth nuts slipping on to her hand. This hot stew of milk, patchy cream and white al- monds, with at least four spoons of sugar in the mixture to give it the right flavour, Prabha Rani carried to Lala Kanshi Ram, sitting on the bed. Each man’s bed in this house was his divan, so to say. It was a middle- class home, and they did not have a separate living room. There were tables and a few chairs, but they were only used when a guest arrived. The family sat down and relaxed on beds — except for Lala Kanshi Ram who used an antique, sprawling easy chair in the evenings. Lala Kanshi Ram had his bed in the chaurus room (it so happened it was square — chaurus), Prabha Rani in the next room, and Arun in the very last room, at the back of the house. At night the arrangement was some- what altered, depending on the number of guests in the house, but no one dared intrude into the chaurus room, at least not during the day. It was the citadel of the Head of the Family, as the data processing forms of the government would have him called. He sat there alone and undisturbed. Lala Kanshi Ram took the long, brass tumbler of milk from Prabha Rani, and wrapping himself in a chader, leaned back against the round, tightly stuffed pillow. It was then he opened the morning paper and, adjusting his glasses, resumed his own and his wife’s education. And while he rolled the milk in his mouth with in- finite pleasure, taking time to crunch-crunch the almonds and break up and swallow the thick cream, his eyes roved on the page with their own hunger. And from time to time he spoke up aloud. ‘Arun’s mother, you know what? Germany has turned 15round and attacked Roos.’ (Coming as it did from a mouth filled with milk, ‘Roos’ sounded far more impres- sive and terrible than Russia.) ‘They've dropped an atom bomb on Japan!’ ‘Today Gandhiji goes on a fast unto death.’ ‘We have a new Viceroy now — Lord Mountbatten. He is related to His Majesty the King.’ Very often he stopped in the middle of his exclama- tions, and looking up from the page peered at his wife from above the rim of his glasses. Patiently he asked: ‘You know what a fast unto death means, don’t you?’ Prabha Rani nodded her head in slow appreciation, but Lala Kanshi Ram went on in a liberal mood: ‘It means a fast until a person dies.’ He took on a tearful tone: ‘Gandhiji might now die — he might pass away!’ Prabha Rani uttered a desperate ‘Hai Rama!’ and satisfied he had created the right dramatic tension, he passed on to other subjects. Or he asked: ‘You know what an atom bomb is?’ And when his wife doubtfully shook her head and said, no, she did not, Lala Kanshi Ram had the time of his life. Pontifically he lurched forward and took hold of the opportunity (with both hands, as it were) of revealing the mysteries of the universe to this peasant woman, whom he had married when she was only thirteen and who could not tell an ‘alif’ from a ‘bai’ — who till this day thought they lived on a flat earth and not a round one. He had since taught her many things, including how to sign her name, though she still could not read and write. He would teach her more, he said to him- self complacently. ‘So you don’t know what an atom bomb is!’ And he chuckled to himself, while Prabha Rani stood with her eyes on the ground, looking guilty. ‘An atom bomb, Arun’s mother, is a bomb filled with liquid fire,’ he said slowly, rolling the milk in his mouth. He had a slight doubt — wasn’t that what it was? He 16went on with confidence: ‘Millions of people perish. when you drop such a bomb.’ There was no problem about that — it was all in the paper. But what really was the bomb? What was the principle behind it? “You remember the Mahabharata, don’t you?” — and he looked at his wife with a little annoyance at her slow grasp of things. ‘Remember the last days of the epic battle?’ — his wife was now vigorously nodding her head, and saying, yes, yes, yes. “The fire darts they threw at each other, the Kauravas and the Pandavas?’ After a pause: ‘Well, it is like that, the atom bomb. You throw a dart or a bomb at your enemy, and that burns him up!’ ‘Then it is nothing new these Angrez loge have made?’ That line of reasoning was to Lala Kanshi Ram’s taste. It prevented serious thinking, and it satisfied some deep national urge in him. ‘New?’ he said with obvious relief. ‘What are you talking about? No other nation in the world can ever touch the glory of the Vedic civilization, can ever in- vent anything we haven’t already found out. And these English particularly, they're a race of monkeys, who till a few hundred years back used to live in jungles. Why, you ought to read Satyarth Prakash. The entire Europe was a piece of swamp, while great kingdoms flourished in the land of Bharata.’ ‘Did many people die in Japan?’ asked Prabha Rani eagerly, to convince him how much she valued his dis- course, while in her mind she was thinking of the food which would soon burn in the pan. ‘Millions!’ whispered Lala Kanshi Ram in sorrow for his suffering brother, secretly relieved it was the brother who was the victim. His finest moments of elation came when the news pertained to the British royal family. Like any other Indian he had a prejudice against the British (he spoke 17of them as the Angrez — the English). He hated them for what they had done to his country and wanted azadi. Throughout the Second World War, he had prayed they be defeated by the Germans. The news of German vic- tories, at front after front, had pleased him beyond measure, and when eventually they were held and con- tained by the British, Lala Kanshi Ram did not give up. With the coming of flying bombs in 1944, with hundreds of V-2s falling on London every day, and the chance of a British defeat again becoming pronounced, he loudly proclaimed he had known all along that one day the Germans would defeat this bunder race, the monkey race. But deeper down, he also admired the British — in any case he enjoyed the safety of the British Raj and hugged it lovingly. All said and done, the British had brought some kind of peace to this torn land. Think of the Sikhs after Maharaja Ranjit Singh — or the Mara- thas. Think of the Muslims in Delhi or in the Deccan. When had this country ever been united? Who let down warriors like Porus or Prithvi Raj Chauhan? For that matter, who let down the Moguls in their fight against the British? Always our own men, our own kith and kin! And the British had somehow made a nation of us. Or was it Gandhiji who had done that? Lala Kanshi Ram was confused about this point, but he did not let that interfere with the drift of his argument. There had been less bloodshed in India in the two hundred years of British Raj than in any similar period in the past. No one could deny that. Even Gandhiji or Jawaharlalji would have to concede that. The British had brought peace to the land and they had brought justice. They no doubt were pagans, they had no reli- gion worth the name (‘no awareness of the atman, I tell you’), and he knew all their church services were a fraud. 18‘Their hymn singing and the stupid smile with which their padres moved about were merely snares for the unwary, to make a few more converts to Christianity. Lala Kanshi Ram knew all that, thanks to Swami Daya- nand. But he also knew that in impartiality they were miles ahead of any Indian he knew of. He could get his way with any of his countrymen — a few rupees into the man’s pocket and the deed was done. But try and bribe an Englishman! Lala Kanshi Ram quaked at the mere thought of it. What sent him into raptures over the British was his schoolboyish passion for pageantry: their bands and their parades and the colour of their uniforms. Baljit Raizada, the nationalist editor of the paper he took, said in his columus men like him were simpletons. The British, he said, were not as just as they were made out to be. It cost you nothing to be just with a people when you were not a party to their petty disputes. What of the injustice the British had visited on the entire land? The British in India were paid their wages not in paper money but in gold. Each year tons of that gold were shipped back to the bunder motherland, where ruled those bunder kings and queens. ‘And where does the money they take away come from?’ asked the theatrical Raizada of the Urdu daily Inglab. ‘It comes from the pocket of each one of you!’ Lala Kanshi Ram invariably felt at his pockets every time he read this favourite phrase of Raizada. The first time he read the Inglab, he took out his money and counted it paisa by paisa. Now he confined himself to feeling the weight of it from the outside. But it was always all there, every paisa of it. Raizada said the Bri- tish King was not a king but an Ali Baba. And England was really a robbers’ den, filled with the loot of the world. Ah, the things Raizada said! Lala Kanshi Ram did not quite approve of many of them, but he enjoyed 19reading them all the same. After all, he too wanted to belong to the times; he too wanted to claim for himself the role of a revolutionary. ‘I’ve even been to prison,’ he would boast before his listeners, real ones or imagi- nary. It mattered little if the only night he had spent in prison was in connection with a Sales Tax strike, where along with the merchants of his trade he had taken part in a hartal (much against his wishes) and in a procession (even more so), when some of the merchants including himself were taken into custody (‘Oh, God! now what will become of my family!’) and forced to pass the night in the district lock-up. The point was, he had been inside the four walls of a prison, and with the passage of time he had convinced himself it was because of his part in the freedom movement. It was in similar prisons that Gandhi and Jawaharlal lay and wasted their lives away. With his own experience to back him up, he could quite see the privations they had gone through (this on the verge of tears). Some heroes, like Bhagat Singh, paid for their courage with their lives — as indeed he too was very near to doing that night; he, Lala Kanshi Ram, the ‘registered’ grain mer- chant of Sialkot (ah, the risks he took that night!). But then what was one’s lifé compared to the honour of one’s country, anyway? Carried away by the emotion of the moment and the last article of Raizada he had read, he would shout: ‘Oh, they’re kutai, they're dogs — these Angrez.’ And to continue for a while in that state of self-induced indigna- tion he kept repeating, ‘Kutai! Kutai! Kutai!’ He couldn’t agree with Raizada, though, that the shows and the parades the British put on periodically were meant to keep the average citizens befooled, while they plundered them behind their back. Now he was not an average citizen and even he liked those shows. And he liked the British for doing them for him. 20There were many such pageants in his mind and he went fondly over his memories. The most recent one was the Victory Parade in 1945. So the British had won once again; so the Germans had in the end lost and the Japanese too. ‘Eh, behan chode!’ said Lala Kanshi Ram slowly, not making it clear whether the abuse was meant for the British or the Germans. That was a subtlety of the Punjabi language he enjoyed im- mensely. Abuse could mean a thousand different things, depending on the way you said it. Behan chode and maan chode were the most commonly used words, but they touched only the fringe of Punjabi ingenuity in the matter of obscenities. Pedigreed Punjabis went much further; they fabricated compound swear words, where a little arithmetic was necessary before you could see through the insult. Lala Kanshi Ram knew exactly how it was done, but like a good Arya Samaji he stayed away from too hurtful phrases. Behan chode meant, you seducer of your sister. Maan chode meant, you seducer of your mother. That was simple. A compound ob- scenity ran something like—you seducer of your mother’s father’s daughter. Or, you fucker of your father’s mother. The second one was not too complicated, the genealogy was easy to follow, but the first was a tough nut. For your mother’s father’s daughter need not necessarily be your mother. It might as well be your aunt. The aunt again might be from the same wife as your mother, or an- other wife. So Lala Kanshi Ram was being polite when he said only behan chode. But the very same abuse could be used in praise too. The Ganges water, behan chode, cold! meant positively the speaker was in a state of bliss over it. Who in- deed would dare abuse mother Ganges? Wasn’t that a novelty, though? Could you think of any other lan- guage in the world where you might try that kind of a poetic experiment? All right, all right, Hindi is my 21language, if you say so. But it is a senile drivel com- pared to Punjabi, if you ask me. Even Urdu comes nowhere near the vigour and plasticity of Punjabi. You are too damned concerned with nafasat, with gentility, to be able to say anything effective. But Hindi, my God, Hindi was a joke. Look at the swear words they have in Hindi. Dusht, moorakh, papi, atyachari.... You call those swear words? So soft, so weak, so impo- tent! And what is a language if you cannot have a manly explosion in it to your entire satisfaction? That’s how Lala Kanshi Ram reasoned with himself, when he was compelled again and again to state his mother tongue as Hindi. Maan chode, he said quietly on such occasions. Those who stood next to him in the Victory Parade that day had the impression he used the obscenity not for the Germans but for the British. Thev also had the impression he used it in admiration. For he was smiling when he raised his eyes to the British Superintendent of Police who had passed by on a bay stallion, and he placed his stress on the first word of the abuse, thus showing his praise for these ‘eh’s’, that is the British. And that precisely was what he was saying to himself, as he watched the Tommies march through the street. their tanks rolling ahead of them. They are a nation which cannot be easily beaten, he thought. A handful of them have kept us under their feet for over two hundred years. And now that Hitler too has met the same fate at their hands. An absolutely invincible race — eh, behan chode! Another parade that often came to his mind was the one celebrating the enthronement of King Edward VIII. The glorious King — for wasn’t he a friend of Nehru, and wouldn’t India stand to gain at his hands? — the glorious King was forced to abdicate soon afterwards. but the parade was a great success. Beginning from the 22Cantonment grounds outside of the city, the horse cavalry and the men on foot had marched through the entire city and one of the bands had stopped right in front of Lala Kanshi Ram’s store, playing the pipes and the drums for a full fifteen minutes, while Lala Kanshi Ram stood outside on the platform of his store, and with the crowd all gathered around in the chowk, and women and children looking down from every balcony, and his the only store at the crossing and him standing erect on the platform — it looked as though the whole show was be- ing staged in his exclusive honour. At least that’s what Lala Kanshi Ram imagined when he stood there and took his bow. But the parade that happened annually and which Lala Kanshi Ram never missed was the New Year’s Day Parade. It was held each year on the first of January, and the population of the town referred to it as the Hurrah Parade. It took place at a ground about five miles out of the main city at eight in the morning, but Lala Kanshi Ram was always there on time. When Arun reached his sixth year, he began taking him along too. For shouldn’t the boy witness the magnificence and grandeur of the British Raj from an early age? And as the sun broke on the distant hills near Jammu, and as the gora sahibs of the army and the police shouted ‘Attention!’ or ‘By the right — quick march!’, Lala Kanshi Ram explained to the sleepy child how every word of command being used there had been approved personally by His Majesty himself, sitting bolt upright five thousand miles away in London on the Peacock Throne and wearing the Kohinoor Diamond. Lala Kanshi Ram was a wholesale grain merchant in the city of Sialkot, and one of his many customers hap- pened to be the present English Superintendent of Police. Lala Kanshi Ram had, on occasions like Diwali or Dussehra, tried to send dalis to him — baskets of 23fruit and bottles of Scotch whisky (much against his Arya Samaj training. for he did not drink himself). But he could never get his gifts past the Muslim City Ins- pector, who accepted them in the name of the Superin- tendent and consumed them himself. One day the Superintendent in person arrived at his store, looking for a high quality wheat. Lala Kanshi Ram was at once electrified. He was not only able to provide the right stock, he was willing to provide it without charge. And when the Superintendent remonstrated with him, he folded his hands and entreated: ‘I am only your servant. sir. I’m running this business only in your name.’ Lala Kanshi Ram would not make out the bill and the Superin- tendent would not take the goods gratis. Ultimately the Superintendent left a reasonable amount of money on the counter, which the Muslim City Inspector, who al- ways accompanied the Superintendent on his rounds of the city, quickly pocketed. For Lala Kanshi Ram it was all the same, whether the bribe went into the pockets of the Superintendent or the City Inspector. He was satisfied: at least the lower hazoor sahib (as he called the Inspector) accepted his favours. But that episode won Lala Kanshi Ram the acquain tanceship of the Superintendent. It became simply im- possible for the Superintendent to ignore him at public functions. While he walked around, swishing his cane and curling his thin mustache, he would all at once become aware of a small figure in the crowd who was pining to do his obeisance. Even when he casually glanced in that direction, he would observe the man fold his hands and get ready to bend forward in supplication. He tried to ignore him, but with a starched turban tied neatly on his head, the Lala was present at every gather- ing. In the end the Superintendent gave in, it was too much for him to keep up the fight. Whenever he saw Lala Kanshi Ram now, he went over to him, and after 24the man had bent forward from his waist and almost touched the ground, he said a word or so of politeness to him. The bands came marching at the Hurrah Parade — drum, drum, — drum, drum — and the stern white Tommy faces with blue eyes looked straight ahead. Lala Kanshi Ram said to Arun: ‘See, the way the sahibs march!’ Arun would be too sleepy and he said, unhunh, unhunh, and Lala Kanshi Ram jerked him awake and roared: ‘I'll give you a slap on your face if you don’t look at the sahibs. Don’t you see how lucky you are! There are Indian children in villages who never see the face of a white man. They come and go’ — and he gave himself the luxury of a moan — ‘they come and go as flies. Arun, beta, you were brought by me into the world in a big city. Make the best of the opportunity I’ve given you.’ He saw the child’s head still drooping and pulled him hard by the hand. ‘You listen to me, you haram zadai, you son of a bastard. I’m telling you, look at the gora sahibs!’ The Superintendent of Police was not obliged to march with the troops in the Hurrah Parade. Being a senior officer, he was allowed his liberty, and he sauntered up and down as the columns marched past a central Union Jack. Spotting Lala Kanshi Ram, or seeing that he had been spotted by Lala Kanshi Ram, he walked up to him and perfunctorily asked : ‘Lalaji, thik hai?’ Lala Kanshi Ram only hoped everyone in the crowd had heard the question. He of course was all right -- what was wrong with him? He was hale and hearty and only last night had emptied his water into Prabha Rani. But he expanded with the concern of the white Superintendent for him, and grinning from ear to ear replied, as much to the crowd around him as to the Superintendent : 25‘Han sahib, thik hun. Bilkul thik hun, sahib.’ The Superintendent would have liked to move on, but Lala Kanshi Ram pushed Arun in front of him. ‘Is this your son?’ the Superintendent asked reluc- tantly. ‘No, sir, no. He is your son only,’ Lala Kanshi Ram replied, folding his hands and going into additional raptures. The Superintendent knew the Punjabi terminology and did not show alarm at the fatherhood attributed to him. He only smiled benignly and somewhat confused- ly at the little child. ‘Sir, he is quite good in his studies.’ ‘Now is he really?” ‘Yes, sir, very good. He knows all the causes why Henry VIII broke up with the Pope.’ Addressing Arun: ‘Come on, Arun, tell the sahib what you know about Reformation in England. Begin by numbers...’ In a whisper, ‘Now wake up, you behan chode. I’ll skin you alive, if you cannot mention the causes.” The Superintendent passed on, but Lala Kanshi Ram had his day. If he was disappointed in Arun, he recovered his composure after he had boxed his ears and the child had started crying. After having marched around and displayed their regi- mental flags and scarlet uniforms, the Tommies gathered near a Union Jack in the centre and hollered three times — hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah! The natives did not know a thing about what was happen- ing, but they joined their masters in shouting out aloud, some saying hup, hup, and some hoorah, hoorah, in place of the right words. Another year had been formally ushered in for a people whose New Year really began in April, on the Baisakhi day. And the entire parade marched back to barracks, and the crowd broke up. The seasoned spectator did not leave the parade 26ground. For now was the time when the stray dogs were shot by the gora sahibs. The sahibs were cut to the quick to see these shaggy creatures with ulcerated skins and flies buzzing in their ears roaming around the place, while the soldiers were smartly presenting arms and standing to attention to the tune of God Save the King. They took all human precautions to exclude these sickly brutes in advance from: the parade ground. But what was an Indian dog if it could not sneak past any barrier? And while the RSM was shouting, “Atten — shion}’ several of these lowly creatures would be running at top speed from one end of the cleanly swept parade ground to another. A few orderlies ran after the dogs to shoo them away, but the dogs, though wobbly on their thin legs, were too fast for them. And then the crowd drove them back into the centre of the ground the moment they reached the periphery. The soldiers on parade were certainly fun for the crowd, but the dogs were a greater fun, and they drove them back with stones, doubling up with laughter and cheers. Soon the orderlies would be running in the other direction, until they caught up with the dogs and cornered them and took them out. But do you think they had finished with them? No, sir, they did not know what creatures they had taken on. For surely as the Adjutant rode past on his white horse, his sword held upright in front of him, the brass of his uniform and the steel of his sword dazzling in the early morning sun, there would be a small stray dog only a few steps away from the horse, marching almost in step with the horse, its skinny tail wagging, its shaggy, lean mouth turned towards the ferocious looking man on the horse, just unable to contain its curiosity about what the horse and the man were doing there. It must be stressed that not once did any of these Indian dogs break the decorum of the parade. There is no record that any of them defiled the ground with its feces (a 27remarkable display of fortitude, considering this precisely was the hour when they usually emptied what the humans call their bowels), nor that any of them ever used a motionless soldier as a prop for lifting its leg and empty- ing its bladder. If the itch on the shaggy skin became too much, the dog momentarily stopped and with one nimble foot gave a vigorous scratching to a part of its belly. But it did this in absolute taste, quickly and smartly, and in another moment it was back again in step with the Adjutant on his charger. As soon as the parade was over, three or four sergeants came back on bicycles, with guns in their hands. No one had dared flout the authority of the King Emperor for the last several centuries. The geography books and the huge wall maps in school rooms proclaimed in bold letters the sun never set on the British Empire. But during the parade it did briefly set here because of the sacrilege committed by these filthy beasts of a filthy race. Left to themselves the sergeants would have made men pay for that crime — as they did as recently as in 1919, when they shot hundreds of them out of hand with machine guns at Jallianwala Bagh. But times had changed for that kind of revenge, so now they only went after the dogs. The sergeants held the cycles with one hand, leaving the other free to carry the gun. They appeared to be cool, they even whistled an old British tune, but the crowd knew the storm brewing:inside their minds. And obligingly, they made room for them, gathering them- selves into several small circles. This was quite an effort for these people, to adjust themselves so abruptly to another type of formation. The Indian mind, im- mersed as it is most of the time in such lofty subjects as the Brahman and the atman and the ultimate end of man, is not a very fast-moving mind; it takes care of earthly, wordly things rather slowly. But knowing the 28agony of their foreign masters, these men, with the pro- verbial generosity of the soul each Indian possesses for the entire created universe, willingly obliged. It was not for nothing their history spoke of their ancestors feeding snakes with milk, or carrying food for tigers into their dens. All created matter was one, man and beast and bird, and the flowers and the trees to boot. And these Angrez were another aspect of the same Brahman who constituted total reality. Today they governed the Indians, tomorrow maybe the Indians would rule over them. At the moment they needed their help. Their Hurrah Parade had been ruined by these nasty dogs, which no one owned and which were a nuisance to the entire community. They must help them to coiner these scavengers and destroy them. The crowd had not only split up into several small arenas, but in each-arena they had cornered one dog for the ultimate arrival of the sahibs. It went against Lala Kanshi Ram’s grain to see a dog being killed before his eyes, for he was a vegetarian. Yet there was another grain in him, in common with the rest of his countrymen, much deeper than religious or ethnic conditioning. And that was the acute need for thrilling spectacles in his otherwise drab life. Mornings he went to his store, evenings he came back home. This had been the routine, without a break, for the last thirty-five years of his married life. No movies, no books to read, no other recreation; his puritan upbringing kept him away from such pastimes. Meetings, yes, plenty of them. Spiritual meetings, sat sangs, political meetings, meetings of the Arya Samaj. But they too had a pattern which seldom varied. Somebody got up and spoke on for maybe sixty minutes without a break. Or someone started a chant and the same chant went on for several hours. In the Arya Samaj meetings, you might be asked to fill in an entire evening by looking fixedly at a picture of Swami 29Dayanand, without batting an eyelid. Political meetings he enjoyed, they were like a merry-go-round, someone would get up on a platform and start abusing the British and there was always variety in the quality and the con- tent of the abuse. But Lala Kanshi Ram worried about the possibility of police interference at such meetings, and even there he did not fully relax. A. spectacle like a stray dog being shot by a stray Tommy was different. It was fun, he said to himself — quietly, so that no one should overhear him. The arena was formed, the dog cornered, and the sahib had finally arrived. Getting off his cycle, the sergeant with the three stripes placed the cycle on its stand, and taking deliberate aim, without more ado, shot the dog dead. Somehow the poor thing would suspect the end was near. Tucking its tail between its legs, it started moan- ing dolefully the moment it saw the man with the gun. But the sahib paid no attention, this bastard had ruined the entire decorum of the parade and deserved instant death. So he lifted the gun, took aim and fired, and the dog went straight up into the air six feet high, eight feet high, at times ten feet high, with the impact of the bullet, and then dropped lifeless with its neck broken and curled up hopelessly on its chest. What struck Lala Kanshi Ram was the deftness of the sergeant. Only a few feet away from the dog stood the ting of people and there was not an instant’s hesitation on the part of the Tommy lest he might miss the dog and hit them. Up went the rifle — and bang! — and that was the end of the dog. And how elegant the sergeant looked when, soon as the dog had stopped shivering, he went forward in his spotlessly polished shoes and cut off its tail. To this day Lala Kanshi Ram did not know what they did that for. Maybe they stuffed them and hung them on their walls back home as trophies. Or maybe they got a reward from the company 30commander and had to carry the tail in as evidence What mattered to Lala Kanshi Ram was the precision of the British Raj, which was seen in as small an act as the killing of a stray dog. No wonder they ruled the world over, no wonder, he said to himself. ‘There indeed was no Raj like the Angrez Raj! The respect for the Raj was implicit in his voice, when he declared to his wife in the morning: ‘Tonight Lord Mountbatten is to make an announcement from the All India Radio.’ He had fallen in love with the new Viceroy the day he saw his picture in the newspaper. If the British were going to lose India, it was not because of Gandhi or the awakening amongst the masses; it was because of the tactical error they made in sending cut an ugly Viceroy in the crucial days of their Raj. This, according to Lala Kanshi Ram, was the root cause of the tide turning against them. Wavell’s bulky frame looked so ungainly in baggy trousers — and then he had only one eye! Having spent centuries here, didn’t the great sahibs in Walayet know that Indians have an ingrained superstition against a one-eyed man? Thanks to the Arya Samaj he had got rid of his prejudices, he said Om-Bhur-Bhawa-Swaha ten times when he saw a one-eyed man and walked on. But there were men in this land who would return home if such a calamivy befell them, would have a bath, change their clothes, and re- fuse to stir out for the rest of the day. It is true Maharaja Ranjit Singh was one-eyed too, but then he had many virtues to make up for that. He tied such a beautiful turban and he supported a hawk so superbly on his hand as he rode. At least he looked so handsome whereas Wavell only blinked like an owl. Why of all the persons at their command, did the big sahibs have to send him? They had taken themselves very close to ruin in 1857, by issuing cartridges greased with cow’s fat. And now they had done a worse thing — even the 31Muslims mistrusted a one-eyed man. The arrival of Lord Mountbatten in March seemed to restore a semblance of the earlier dignity. How tall he was, how slim! That’s how a Viceroy should look— majestic! The derby on his head and the sleek robes on his body sat perfectly, to say nothing of the beauti- ful wife by his side. And Lala Kanshi Ram confided to Prabha Rani, he was also related to His Majesty the King. He used the Urdu expression Badshah Slamat for the King, and the chewability of the words in his mouth sent a thrill through his entire body. Even if all the millions of Indians were to turn hostile to the King, he would find at least one person ready to fall at his feet if he were ever to visit India in the future. For he was the great English King, direct descendent of the great Malika Victoria, on the sight of whose fat statues in Indian cities Lala Kanshi Ram had grown into manhood. This morning when Lala Kanshi Ram told Prabha Rani of the coming broadcast, he was in a reflective mood. He was not jubilant and gay; he looked timid. As usual, he was sitting on his bed propped up against the round pillow, and Prabha Rani was standing in the doorway, dividing her attention between her learning and her kitchen. Lala Kanshi Ram said, ‘Arun’s mother, come and sit near me on the bed.’ Prabha Rani was surprised at these words. Company was what Lala Kanshi Ram: wanted least when he was reading the paper. And he seemed so scared. Nothing had happened in the house for several days to upset ae anything special in the store, either. What then. She slowly walked over to the bed and sat down beside him. Lala Kanshi Ram gazed at her. Her dark bfown face had grown weary through anxious years, 32but she was beautiful still. What big eyes she had — almond shaped and so wide! He gazed at her hands, and the skin on her fingertips was cut and broken at many places. How many household chores did that mean? Her haunches had grown big with time, but that was not her fault. That happened to every Punjabi woman after giving birth to one child — and she had to many. In any case big haunches were not a blemish in a good woman, nothing was a blemish in a good woman, And she had been a good woman to him, he could say that for her. He looked around and there was silence and peace in the rooms. From where he sat, he could see all the three rooms that constituted their home. There were connecting doors all the way through. At the end, by the side of the last room, was the kitchen, which was not visible from here. He could seé the three main rooms, and in each things were so neatly arranged and stacked. The room next to his was a very large room, almost like a funnel, connecting his room with that of Arun at the end, and there were two beds in that large room, one in each corner. Printed sheets were spread neatly on both the beds, and in addition to the usual flat pillow, a round pillow was placed on top of the flat one. In the large room there were also several spare beds, stood up against the wall on one side, the legs of one bed going through the string nets of the others, so that they did not take up much space. And, artist that Prabha Rani was, on top of these standing beds too she had spread a printed sheet, so that the sight did not hurt the eye. No one could tell at first glance there were beds hidden behind the sheet; it looked more like a curtain, a decorative curtain. The clothes of the house were kept in small trunks. Things like sheets and quilts and bed pads, and pillow cases, both flat and round, were placed in big steel 33chests, which were about as big as a twin bed. Each house had one or two of these chests, called paities locally. Lala Kanshi Ram and Prabha Rani had two of them and they were placed on the left side of the big room. On top of them rose the other trunks of the house. The smaller trunks could be opened any time of the day by any of the children, but the big chests were the job of the mother or the father alone. Not only did it mean lifting heavy steel lids, it meant there were things in those chests which parents alone could see. Their contents remained a matter of endless mystery and the never ceasing subject of discussion for children. The privilege of opening them was never claimed by any of them, nor was this right ever allowed to them however big they might grow. The utmost they were permitted was to stand by the side of the chest, while it was being opened by one of the parents. And if their eyes were dazzled by the gold ornaments or the currency bills tied into bundles, they were not supposed to have seen anything. Lala Kanshi Ram looked through the door to the far end, where Arun’s windows opened out at the back, and the peace of the house came to him with something of pain. He had got so used to it he did not know how gracious it was. For about three decades had he been living there, and what he saw today had all been put together by him and Prabha Rani bit by bit through their own efforts. How loaded with goodness it was —everything! There were eight small trunks stacked on top of the two steel chests. On each one of the chests and the trunks, there was spread a separate cloth cover. Prabha Rani had whole sets of them in different colours; some days she used green, on others yellow, on others pink. Today the covers on the trunks were lemon yellow. In yet another corner, she had hung a thick line and 34