Chapter 1-

A CEREMONY OF PURIFICATION

THEY were burning British garments. The fire that raged in the market square was just one of hundreds of thousands of similar fires all over the country. On one side was the platform, the enormous tricolour flag with the spinning-wheel providing its backdrop. On the milk-white cloth spread on the platform, flanked by a dozen or so solemn-faced men in white caps, squatted the dark, frail man who was the leader of their struggle.

But the market-day crowd held back, suspicious, unwilling to be branded as followers of Gandhi-agitators and non-co-operators. The police stood in groups, guarding the outlets, swinging their studded lathis. Most of the group round the fire were young; students from schools and colleges. There seemed to be just as many girls as boys. It was they who shouted the slogans: Boycott British goods! Mahatma Gandhi-ki jail Victory to Mahatma Gandhil

From the back of the crowd, Gian Talwar watched the fire and the men on the dais. So that was Mahatma Gandhi. For Gian this was a big moment. For years he had been hearing the name, Gandhi, the man who had come to represent true greatness to every Indian; the apostle of truth and non-violence.

Now at last he was seeing him.

The Mahatma was spinning, his right hand twirling a brass takli, the spinning-wheel, his left feeding it with little candles of cotton-wool, going up and down with the thread. He peered alter- nately at his takli and at the crowd, restlessly turning his head in small jerks. He did not look as solemn as the others on the plat- form. There was a twinkle in his eye, though it may have been the reflection from the fire.

Unfortunately it was a Monday, Gandhiji's day of silence; otherwise he would certainly have addressed a few words to them. It was his lieutenant, the slim young man with the sad eyes in the refined, handsome face, who got up to speak. He spoke in English, with a cultured, public-school accent:

'Sisters and brothers, I should actually address you as soldiers -for we are all soldiers. Soldiers in the army of liberation. Our aim is to free our motherland, India, from the British, and we shall not rest till victory is won..

But we are a new kind of soldier. Our weapons are truth and non-violence. Our war shall be fought only by peaceful means. Gandhiji has shown us the path. But make no mistake; our non- violence is the non-violence of the brave, arising not from coward- ice but from courage, demanding greater sacrifices than ordinary fighting men are called upon to make. We are aware that there are in our country those who do not believe in our methods, those who aim to achieve freedom by resorting to violence. Such men have no place in our army, however patriotic they may be." The thread lengthening on the spinning-wheel broke. The Mahatma wet his finger against his tongue and rejoined it expertly, almost without looking. Once again the wheel began to spin.

And today we are gathered here,' the earnest young man went on, "almost to administer a rebuke to some of our own brethren: those who, instead of opposing foreign rule, are content to remain under it... captives who hug the chain and vie with each other in imitating their masters. They wear clothes made of imported materials, cotton and wool and silk, helping the economy of the nation that rules us. It is only by renouncing all British-made goods, by wearing clothes made out of materials produced in this country wearing them proudly and defiantly that we shall foster the economy of our own country, defeat its poverty.

"Those of us who wear clothes of British materials help to pay the administrators who are sent to rule over us, to buy the rifles and bayonets for the soldiers who hold us in captivity, to arm the police who now surround us. But let us not be intimidated by the police or their lathis. Let us persuade our friends and our families to boycott British goods, to make bonfires of the garments that bear the taint of our shame. Let them come forward, bring their hats and coats and shirts and ties, to add fuel to this fire-the fire that has its counterpart in all our villages and towns, the fire that will purify us, will burn out all that is within us that does not conform with truth and non-violence. But remember: there must be no coercion, no intimidation, used in carrying out this message.

'Boycott British goods! that is the message. I particularly ask those of you who are hovering behind, undecided, to come forward. Let us fling away our fear. Our fear of the police itself is a reflection on our national status. It brands us as a subject race. In a free land the police are only servants of the people, not instruments for imposing the law of a foreign land, whom the citizens have to fear. Let us come forward to make our offering. Let it not be said, that while the trail to freedom was being blazed all over the country, we stood back through fear of the police. "The path of ahimsa is not for cowards; in true non-violence, there is no room for timidity. Just as we are this day throwing away in this fire our garments made of imported materials, so should we be making an offering of everything within us which conflicts with our dedication to true non-violence-ahimsa.

'Mahatma Gandhi-ki jai.'

He folded his hands to the crowd and sat down in his accustomed place on the right of the Mahatma who stopped his spinning for a brief moment to place a hand on his shoulder.

Almost without knowing it, Gian Talwar found himself repeating the slogan. 'Mahatma Gandhi-ki jail Victory to non- violence!' He took off his dark-blue and yellow football blazer and began to push his way through the crowd towards the fire. The blazer, made of imported English material, was his most elegant garment. Indeed, it was his most prized possession. As he clutched it to his chest, it felt soft and warm, like some furry animal. He felt a sudden desire to turn back, to fight down his irrational impulse, but it was already too late. The men crowding round the fire were making way for him, shouting encouragement.

He stepped forward and flung the coat into the flames. 'Shabash' the crowd yelled. 'Well done!"

But the rank and file of the spectators was still hesitant; looking at each other for courage, casting furtive glances at the white police sergeants, muttering amongst themselves. And then a sudden silence swept over them as a woman broke through the line; tall and dark and elegantly dressed, her clothes making her stand out in the crowd like an exotic bird of fine plumage. Over a flame-coloured sari, she wore a knee-length coat of some expen- sive fur. She strode up to the fire without looking to right or left. For a moment she stood still, her head bowed, while her fur coat, her sari and her blue-black hair glinted with the light from the fire. Then she took off her coat and hurled it into the fire.

For a moment the silence continued, and then, as though some valve had been released, they broke into tumultuous cheers. 'Bharat-mata-ki jai! Victory to mother India!" They surged forward, vying with each other to fling their coats and caps and shirts into the fire. 'Mahatma Gandhi-ki jail Bharat-mata-kij ki jail

Gian trembled with emotion as he watched the woman standing by the fire, framed by its glow. Like the goddess of fire, he thought, and then the bright patch of colour was lost in the milling crowd, leaving him with the impression that she had been there, or that she had vanished into the flames. never But the reek of the burning fur was all around them. It was still there when the meeting came to an end. Gandhiji put away his takli and gave them a quick grin. He folded his hands in a reverent namaskar. Then he rose to go.

Mahatma Gandhi-ki jai!' Gian found himself muttering. 'Bharat-mata-ki jai! The path of ahimsa is not for cowards.' The words were almost like a private prayer. 

THE GREEN FLASH AT SUNSET

THE floods were almost predictable. They came every year, late in June, soon after the colleges opened for the summer term.

The hot land of the Punjab waited for them, fissured and cracked with dryness. It quivered thirstily in the brassy glare of the summer sky, punning its faith to the sudden affluence of the floods. The canals were like sunken lanes, the five rivers mean little trickles of brown liquid, the rains of the preceding monsoon a faint memory. That was when the floods came like an answer to a prayer, flushing out the canals and the river-bed, overflowing the banks, ensuring yet another season of abundance.

Somewhere high up in the Himalayas, near the source of the rivers four hundred miles away, the fierceness of the sun had caused the vast piles of winter snow to melt. Millions of millions of snow crystals were transformed into drops of water. Natural dams stirred and shifted and collapsed. And three days later, the five rivers of the Punjab roared like monsters, glutted with water.

In Duriabad as elsewhere, men and women went to the river banks on bicycle and on foot, in tongas and rickshaws and bullock-carts. They watched the swollen, hissing river that had humbled the summer and the sun, thankful and elated.

Some of them even went as far as Birchi-bagh, thirty miles to the north where, a hundred years earlier, the river Chenab had suddenly changed its course. There you could see the old river- bed, its deep, clean-cut, white and pink banks gleaming with specks of mica, waiting for the largesse of the flood, for a momen- tary fulfilment, when some of the surplus water found its way into the old channel, making gorgeous blue pools in the sand. It was a favourite spot for swimming and picnicking. Barely half a mile away, you could see the main course of the Chenab, drunk, angry, contemptuous and vaguely frightening because it was believed that the river was once again ready to change course.

But a picnic in the sands of the old river-bed at Birchi-bagh was for those who had motor cars. Gian himself had never been there. He was sitting in the reading room, looking at the Civil and

Military Gazette when Debi-dayal came up to him. 'Some of us are going to Birchi-bagh this afternoon. Would you like to come?" he asked. And then he added:

"If you have no other plans, that is."

No, he had no other plans; boys of his sort never had any other plans. They sat in their rooms, pretending to work because they had nowhere to go.

Gian thanked Debi-dayal, trying to sound offhand, wishing, for a moment, that he had thought of saying that he did have other plans.

"Bring your swimming things, said Debi. 'It is quite safe to swim in the old river-bed.' Thanks, Gian said again, and as soon as the other had left, went round trying to borrow a pair of swimming trunks because his own pair, cheap, darned and faded, would not do.

He wondered what had made Debi-dayal ask him. Debi was one of the important boys at college; he, Gian, just one of the students. Debi was the only son of Dewan-bahadur Tekchand Kerwad. His family had lived in Duriabad for over a hundred years. They owned large tracts of land along the canals, they owned the Kerwad Construction Company, and the Kerwad Housing Development, and God knows what else even a street in the cantonment was named after them: Kerwad Avenue.

And there was Kerwad House, said to be the best residential building west of Lahore. Hitherto, he had seen it only from a distance, standing red-roofed in the grove of trees bordering the river, secluded, opulent, forbidding. From the gate, you could get only a glimpse of the house, cream and green and red, through the foliage of the gul-mohor, casuarina and eucalyptus trees bordering the drive; the high, pillared portico built for the days before American-made cars replaced two-horsed carriages as the status-symbol of Indian merchants; the garden tended by a dozen malis, prim as a chessboard.

That day he had seen the house itself. They were driven into the porch and taken to the sitting room upstairs for tea where white-coated servants carried in trays loaded with cakes and sandwiches and pakoras and jellebies. Gian had never tasted such food before, nor had he drunk his tea out of a cup as dainty and weightless and frail. Debi-dayal's father and mother had gone to Lahore for the day, but his sister was there. It was Sundari who sat over the heavy silver tea service, self-possessed, cool, faintly perfumed and breathtakingly lovely. Gian did not know any of the other guests. There was Singh, a taciturn, bearded man with dark, hypnotic eyes; a Sikh who wore a turban and a steel bangle on his wrist and yet could not have been a Sikh because he smoked. There was another man called Basu who spoke with a pronounced Bengali accent. Neither of them were from the college.

There was another girl too, a friend of Sundari's, dressed in salwar and kamis, a typical Punjabi girl, lush, fair, and provoca- tively full-bodied, with her features slightly over-emphasized; fiercely attractive even if you knew that she was going to be overweight at twenty-five and middle-aged at thirty.

But Gian had no eyes for the other girl, or for any of the others. Merely being close to Sundari made him feel sad and happy in turn. That the proverbial only daughter of wealthy parents should be so charming to him-a scholarship boy from her brother's college-made him wonder, was she being friendly or merely condescending?

Why did you ask Debi to have the dog tied up?" she was asking Singh. "Spindle is such a little dog, and so friendly."

A minute or so earlier, Spindle, the dachshund, had been carried away, protesting, to Debi-dayal's room.

'Dogs make me feel nervous, Singh told her. 'Once, I was trailed by police dogs-for miles. It was the sort of thing one never forgets.

For a moment, they were all silent, each trying to show that there was nothing out of the ordinary in his explanation, while Singh went on stirring his tea, with concentration, his head turned away, as though his thoughts were still in the past.

'Do you think it would be possible to see the museum,' Gian asked Debi-dayal, 'since your father is away?" 

It was Sundari who answered. 'Of course! But you could have seen it even if Abaji had been here. He would have loved to show you round, I am sure. Now you will have to put up with me as a guide, and I know nothing about bronzes."

They left the others, still drinking tea, smoking and talking of the picnic to be held later in the evening, and went to the room at the end of the verandah to see the collection of brass, bronze and copper antique statues which was said to have no equal outside the Prince of Wales' Museum in Bombay.

It was cool in the room, because of the high roof, and the light was dim, since the windows had been shuttered. At first Gian was aware only of being alone with the girl in the dimness, her bare arm touching his. Soft as the petals of a champak flower, he thought to himself, remembering a favourite simile of the Sanskrit poets.

And then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw the statues, all at the same time, and forgot about the girl. The gods and the goddesses and demons of the Hindu pantheon came crowding in on all sides, as though revealed to a disciple in one flash; dancing, laughing, caressing, fighting, killing, blessing, cursing, meditating, copulating, grotesque, frozen stiff in a moment of action, and yet with a compelling sense of motion, of living and breathing.

For a moment it was he who was the statue, lifeless, ageless, unbreathing, and the images that surrounded him were flowing with life, acting out a hymn of creation, the cycle of life and death, the drama of procreation and destruction. He stared, unblinking, abandoning himself to a higher consciousness as during a moment of prayer. Hil What's wrong? Are you all right?

The voice seemed to come from far away, from the depths of the earth, a part of the timelessness of the moment. But it had an urgency, an almost tearful trembling, which broke the spell. He shook himself. The girl was holding him by both shoulders and her eyes were staring with alarm. 'Are you all right?' she was asking. What happened?"

He blinked at her, a statue that had come to life, a face that was a mixture of irritation and anxiety, so beautiful, so near. He wanted to put his arms around her, to pull her close to him, smother her with kisses. 

Yes, of course,' he said. "Of course, I am all right. It is just that... just that for a moment I seemed to black our."

'It's the heat,' she said, releasing her grip on his shoulders. 'Come on, let's go and join the others."

The relief in her face was so visible that he did not remind her that she had promised to show him round the museum. He followed her out of the door.

By the time they reached Birchi-bagh, Gian was his own self again, even though he could not bring himself to share the easy, light-hearted mood of the others. Debi-dayal stopped the car under a gnarled kikar tree on the bank of the old channel and they carried their cushions and baskets of food and an ice-box covered with felt to the pool in which they were going to bathe. Beyond the farther bank, no more than three hundred yards away, was the main river, now swollen and in full glory, flowing with speed as it emerged from the low hills in the north.

First the girls went and changed into their swimming costumes. When they came back and began to splash about in the shallow pool, the men went off with their towels and swimming trunks, each to a private spot in the bend of the river..

When Gian emerged in his dark-green borrowed trunks, he found that all the others were staring at him. For a moment he wondered if there was a tear in his trunks, and then realized that they were staring at the sacred thread round his neck.

There was a moment of embarrassment. One or two of them tried to look as though nothing had happened. Debi-dayal got up to swim. And then Bhupinder, the other girl, began to giggle and come to their rescue.

'Oh, how sweet to be seeing a real sacred thread!' she squealed, and the ripples of fair flesh left out by her tight costume shook with her mirth. And the others all joined in her laughter, trying to surmount the awkwardness that had suddenly come over them.

But he did not understand. The laughter had stung. Their well-meaning gesture was outside the borders of his experience. He turned away from them, hot with shame, and went running towards the main river where the others would not dare to follow. He dived in, not surfacing till his lungs were ready to burst, and then struck out for the other bank which could be seen only as a low line of trees against the water. 

And there, far out in the rushing waters of the Chenab, out of sight of the others, he took off his janwa and allowed it to float away.

One thing about him at which no one could laugh was his swimming; all they were doing as they paddled about in the 'safe' pools wearing their flashy, imported swimming trunks, was to show off their half-baked Weissmuller crawl to the girls. Not one of them would have ventured into the swollen current of the main river.

When, an hour or so later, he rejoined them on the sand, the spell of awkwardness was still there. Their glances kept straying towards his bare neck. But this time no one said anything about his janwa even though they could not have failed to notice that he had removed it. Nor did they laugh at him.

But the day was ruined for Gian. He felt an inward resentment towards the others. He was the outsider, the poor college student asked out on the rich boys' outing, like something out of Sandford and Merton, he thought. He came from an orthodox Hindu background; in his world the sacred thread was still sacred. They, on the other hand, represented the forward generation, en- lightened by westernization. Admittedly, they were all scrupu- lously polite to him, careful not to appear condescending. But it was clear to him that they had nothing in common. He wondered why he had been asked. And almost in answer to his question, they began to talk of politics.

The girls had gone off to change into their saris. The sun, now spent and shapeless, hung over the sand-dunes in the west. The breeze which swept over the barren landscape had lost some of its fierceness. The stunted, dried up palms along the river-bank and the lacy babool and kikar trees beyond completed the pattern of the Punjab landscape in hot weather.

"Why do you wear khaddar ?' Singh asked.

Why did he wear khaddar, the rough homespun of the Indian peasant? Gian almost laughed. It was the uniform of the Indian National movement; it proclaimed you a soldier in the army that was dedicated to truth and non-violence..

"I am a follower of Gandhi,' Gian said. 

'Oh my God!' Singh said softly. 'And what does that mean?" "It means that I am one of those who believe that India should be freed from British rule. 'Gandhi is the enemy of India's national aspirations,' Singh pronounced, and after that no one said anything for a long time.

In the distance, a car was going along the road to Lahore, a brown beetle trailed by its own cloud of dust. Idly they watched it until it disappeared from view, until the dust cloud cleared. Then, from the ice-box, Debi took out bottles of beer, which he opened and poured into glasses.

Gian had never drunk beer in his life, but did not want the others to know it. Would you like some lemonade in your beer?"

Debi-dayal asked him. He shook his head. 'No, thank you."

They raised their glasses. 'Here's to the Freedom Fighters!' Singh said.

Freedom Fighters!" Debi-dayal and Basu repeated.

So that was what they were drinking to, the scion of the Kerwad family and his friends, all dressed in fashionable swim- ming trunks and drinking iced beer imported from Germany. The dreaded name hung in the air, like a blob of oil on water. Gian drank his beer in slow sips, trying to get used to its bitter- ness, adjusting his mind to the mood of his companions, knowing now that they were revolutionaries.

Look at the sun!' Basu said. 'In a minute it will have set, then there will be the green flash."

They all turned their heads to see the sunset, the extravagant display of colour; the flamingo sky with the scarlet sun only half submerged and the pink-and-gold expanse of sand. And then they were aware that Singh had jumped to his feet and stood silhouetted in the sunset, that he was talking to them. "The sun set for us a hundred and fifty years ago,' he said in a dry whisper. "When the British took over the country, the sun. died. For us the sun will rise again only on the day of our freedom. And to that sun I now ask you to drink. To the sunrise of our freedom l'

Solemnly, they all rose to their feet. "To the sunrise of our freedom,' they repeated after him. "To the sunrise of our freedom They sat down again and the warm sand shifted under them with soft crunching sounds. They did not see the green flash, it must have come and gone. For a time they watched the pink segment of sky where the sun had gone down, the sun that would rise for them only on the day of freedom.

A slight shiver ran over Gian's body. He realized that Singh. was speaking to him again.

"Tell me, how did you happen to become a follower of Gandhi?" How indeed? Was it merely a moment of weakness-the heady glow brought on by an act of sacrifice, the reckless discarding of a much-valued blazer? Or the sight of a beautiful woman throwing away her fur coat into a fire?

"Any patriot, any man with any feelings for the liberation of the country is a follower of Mahatma Gandhi,' he said.

'No, no!' Singh shook his head with scorn. 'I certainly am not one of his followers, and yet I hope I qualify as a patriot."

Have you ever met Gandhi?' Debi-dayal asked.

Not actually met him. But I have seen him. He was like-like a god, Gian said, suddenly carried away. "He alone can lead us to victory. Even Nehru has become his disciple the whole country. If there is any hope for us of achieving freedom, it is through his movement. Through non-violence."

Singh shook his head from side to side. 'What harm the man has done with his hypnotic powers! Tell me of a single instance in history, of just one country which has been able to shake off foreign rule without resorting to war, to violence?"

Gian felt angry with himself as he groped for an answer. He looked at Singh, the Sikh who kept his beard and had laughed at his sacred thread and who was now trying to pin him down in argument. "Gandhiji is a god,' he said in sudden defiance. 'Only he can bring freedom to India,"

Just one single instance,' Singh went on as though he had not heard. Just one.' He shook his head and answered his own question. No, there isn't one. Freedom has to be won; it has to be won by sacrifice; by giving blood, not by giving up the good things of life and wearing white caps and going to jail. Look at America the United States! They went to war. Turkey! Even our own Shivaji. Non-violence is the philosophy of sheep, a creed for cowards. It is the greatest danger to this country.

His voice was high-pitched, earnest as an angry preacher's. 

The faint glow of the sky falling on his heavy, bearded face made him look like a prophet-a prophet, or a man crazed with some inner hatred.

'No.' Singh repeated. 'It has happened nowhere; it can't happen here! Gandhi, by weakening the spirit of men, making us all into sheep and cattle, will only multiply the sacrifice. A million shall die, I tell you a million! For each man who should have died in the cause of freedom, Gandhi will sacrifice ten. That is what non-violence will do to this country." The wind and the sand and the glow of an already-dead sun gave greater meaning to his words: he was like a prophet shouting a warning to an unheeding world. "A million shall die a million It was the sort of thing they always talked about, and yet today it was not the same. Gian felt a quite unreasoning sensation of revulsion, a creeping wave of hatred for this strange man with the beard or was it fear? It was the face of evil, the voice of evil.

He shook himself, resentful of the other's hypnotic power over him, searching for facts to counter his contorted arguments, angry at finding himself with no convincing answer.

"How seriously do you yourself believe in it?' Debi-dayal asked. In non-violence? With all my being,' Gian told him defiantly. "Only the Mahatma can lead us to freedom, through the path of non-violence, the creed of ahimsal

Singh slowly shook his head from side to side and clucked his tongue. "It was a waste of time,' he muttered to Debi-dayal. "We should have known. College boys fall more easily for Gandhi's type of movement, it is much more face-saving. They shelter their cowardice behind the tenets of non-violence, and refuse to rouse themselves to any form of positive action.".

'Ahimsa is the noblest of creeds,' Gian retorted, stung by Singh's taunts. "There can be nothing more sacred. No man has the right to raise his hand against another, whatever the provoca- tion. I shall never do it. It takes greater courage; non-violence is not for the weak." "Ah,' interrupted Basu, 'there are the girls!" It was good to see them, rounding the corner of the bank. They came back, laughing and quite unaware that as far as the men were concerned, the day had been ruined. They busied themselves putting out the packets of kebab and rotis and achar and tandoori chickens on the cotton khes spread between them. Basu lit a fire to heat the water for the coffee. The moon came out, lush and pale lemon, and Debi-dayal poured more beer into the glasses. The big girl began to hum, weaving another kind of spell round them, and they all began to clap their hands softly and joined her song.