'THE SUNRISE OF OUR FREEDOM'
THE train was unlike any train they had ever been in. It was made up by coupling together whatever carriages a skeleton railway staff had been able to assemble from half a dozen station yards; a hotchpotch of derelict passenger carriages, cattle wagons and timber flats. It was protected by a dozen or so Madrassi soldiers travelling on it in order to keep away the mobs that prowled around the railway stations. And it was packed with humanity as no other train could ever have been packed before the holocaust that had descended upon them. Men, women and children were squeezed into windows and doors, stood precariously on the running boards, clung to the fittings between carriages even the roof-tops were packed. It had been halted at the platform for hours now, looking like an enormous dead snake with myriads of ants clinging to its body. Although no one knew when it would move on again, none of them dared leave their places for fear of losing them.
A week ago, they had all been citizens of India; men and women jubilant at the advent of the long-awaited, long-fought- for freedom. Today, they were just a small section of a seething movement of humanity. Here, they were the Muslims, the counterparts of the 'displaced persons' on the other side, who i were Hindus and Sikhs, both sides making for a border that was yet to be officially demarcated. They were, at the moment, stateless citizens, hounded out from the land of their birth as much by collective fear of racial massacres as by the actual out- rages perpetrated upon them by their erstwhile fellow-citizens. Political expediency had suddenly transformed them into refugees fleeing from their own land as though it had been invaded by an enemy. They left behind everything they possessed; their lands, houses, cattle, their household goods. They also left behind scores of thousands of dead and dying, sacrificial offerings to freedom. They fled without caring for the weak or the lame who had fallen by the wayside, unable to withstand the rigours of the migration.
The dark-faced guards stood with fixed bayonets, listlessly eyeing the passengers. The passengers huddled together, almost by instinct, like rats on a floating log. They were hungry, thirsty, tired and sleepy, and many of them were sick and wounded. But they clung on desperately, wallowing in the reek and filth of crowded humanity; degraded, dehumanized, dumb, resigned to the present with a total lack of resistance, as though stunned by the horror which, like a fellow traveller, had arrived with their freedom.
They were already cut off from their environments as effectively as by a surgical operation. They could dream only of a future in a promised land which most of them had never seen; a pure and free land that was going to be their very own: Pakistan. A million shall die! Debi-dayal kept remembering. That was what Shafi had predicted. 'A million shall die!' he had told them; perish as a result of the violence hidden in the midst of non- violence. The date was the 12th of August 1947; their freedom was only three days away. On the 15th of August, the sun that had not shone for them for more than a hundred and fifty years, would rise again. How many more men and women would have been killed by that time, Debi-dayal wondered, how many women abducted?
Yet, what was the alternative? Would terrorism have won freedom at a cheaper price and somehow still kept the Hindus and Muslims together? Perhaps not. But at least it would have been an honest sacrifice, honest and manly-not something that had sneaked upon them in the garb of non-violence. How had they come to this? After living as brothers over so many generations, how had they suddenly been infected by such virulent hatred for each other? Who had won, Gandhi or the British? For the British at least had foreseen such a development. Or had they both lost through not having allowed for structural flaws in the human material they were dealing with? Had Gandhi ever envisaged a freedom that would be accompanied by so much suffering and release so much hatred? Had he realized it might impose transfers of population unparalleled throughout history?
He and Mumtaz were now a part of that migration; squirming, microscopic creatures caught up in the flow of some insect movement.
For him there had been no other answer. He had to go, what- ever the risks. But it was certainly not necessary for Mumtaz to accompany him. She could have stayed on in Kernal, event though it was difficult to think of a young Muslim woman living alone at a time like this in his part of India, where gangs of hooligans went patrolling the streets, making house-to-house searches for Muslims. Mumtaz would have been almost certainly discovered, dragged out.
But the risks of staying behind were nothing to the ordeal of the journey. He had been exasperated by her stubbornness. He had fumed at her, entreated her, tried to reason with her, spoken harsh words. And as a last resort he had even tried to sneak away in the middle of the night, when he thought she was asleep. But she had not been sleeping. She had come after him, carrying a ready-packed tiffin basket and a couple of blankets rolled up in a bundle, shouting: 'Debi, I am coming with you. I shall never be able to live without you!"
He had not even looked back or slowed his pace, but she had caught up with him. 'Please don't leave me,' she said in a trembling voice. He did not reply.
'I came not because I was frightened to be alone, but because I cannot bear to live without you,' she told him.
"You lived without me all those years, he reminded her.
"That is the very reason why I cannot bear the thought of your going away without me, don't you see? What were those years to me but a time of waiting-hoping that it would be someone old and kind who would take me away; praying that it would not be someone ugly and deformed-or perverted; not even daring to dream of someone like you. And then that evening, I looked up and saw you a god! For a moment I could not believe my eyes, for that was the greatest moment of my life. It was like a revela- tion a sudden madness of joy. You have come to mean everything to me-the world itself.
A tiger cub he had saved, he kept telling himself, a very pretty tiger cub; now it was up to him to look after it. And yet, was that all there was to it ?-the blind devotion of an animal to its master?
Or was it something else, an emotion deeper and richer- love? That had been three days ago. And now they were perched on the flatcar, waiting for the train to begin moving again. He had become resigned to her accompanying him. Realizing this, she now lay curled up against his body, fast asleep in a sitting position.
A lump came into his throat. This was what he was giving his bride: a ride in a packed flatcar on which they normally trans- ported logs and steel girders. Barely a couple of weeks earlier, he had visualized that, now that he was going back into the family fold, he would be able to give his wife all that a woman's heart craved for: a car, clothes, jewellery, a house of her own, servants. And now that the British were going, there was no question of his having to remain in hiding.
In one short fortnight, gone unnoticed in the preparations for the festivities to welcome the country's freedom, the whole of India had been torn by a gigantic convulsion. Overnight, the ordered discipline of British rule had been replaced by unimagin- able chaos.
They had already been on the train for a whole day, and they had barely covered sixty miles. They had another two hundred miles to go. When would they get to Duriabad?-would they ever get there?
Normally, it was an overnight journey. You got into the Frontier Mail at night, and in the morning you were there. Only ten days earlier, Sundari had made the journey all by herself; now a woman travelling alone was difficult to imagine. She had got into an air-conditioned carriage, and the conductor had even agreed to let her take her dog with her in the carriage. "Mumtaz and I will follow you in four days,' he had told Sundari. 'You do the groundwork.
The groundwork was breaking the news of his marriage to their parents. He knew that they would be hurt. Men from their kind of family did not marry Muslim girls, and still less did they marry a girl picked up from a brothel. And yet he had felt
convinced that Sundari would make them understand, prepare their minds to receive Mumtaz as their daughter-in-law. He had always depended on Sundari.
Two days after Sundari's departure, when he went to buy the tickets, he was told that all train services had been cancelled. After that, he waited another two days in the hope that the services would be resumed. But by then, the uprooting of large masses of people was in full swing. All the Muslim railway servants had fled from their posts as the Hindus had fled from their posts on the other side: the station masters, signalmen, engine drivers, firemen, ticket-punchers, clerks, guards, everyone had gone. The majority of the Hindu staff too had panicked and run away. The authorities had brought over a skeleton staff from the south, unfamiliar with the line or its working, men who could not even understand the local languages. With their help, they managed to keep a trickle of traffic moving. But the only movement between East Punjab and West Punjab was that of refugees-ticketless travellers all.
He and Mumtaz went to the station dozens of times, trying to find out the timing of the refugee trains, but no one seemed to know anything. In the end, they camped at the station itself, squatting on the platform in the midst of the throng of refugees. The train arrived at last, in the middle of the night and already packed to capacity. They all made a concerted rush at it in the darkness, for the lights of the station had long ceased to function. He had to force his way through the yelling, cursing throng, Mumtaz clutching tightly to his arm. He heaved himself on to the flatcar and pulled Mumtaz after him. And then he was one of the passengers, fighting off those who were still trying to get on. The train began to move. If there was a whistle or a warning bell, no one could have heard it over the wail of protest from those who were left behind. Many of them made a last, desperate onslaught on the moving train. A few managed to clamber up, holding grimly on to other men and women clinging to parts of the carriages. Many others were repelled. At least a dozen men and women must have been caught in the wheels and crushed. Their screams were Debi-dayal's last memory of the departure. They crawled into the night, jerkily, making frequent halts.
Someone told them that the rails had been displaced by the mobs waiting to attack the trains; that the previous night, a whole trainload of refugees had been massacred.
Morning came; the incredible violet mist of the Punjab summer. The plain stretched away on both sides. They passed scene after scene of carnage. At one place there was a scatter of pitiful human belongings: bed-rolls, bundles, tin trunks, chickens in bamboo baskets, brass utensils gleaming in the sunlight, perambulators, boxes, tiffin-carriers, earthen surais, bewildered dogs still chained to stakes in the ground-but not a single human being. It must have been a camp where a thousand or so refugees had been assembled for evacuation. What could have happened to them? Had they made a rush for a train, leaving everything behind, or had they just fled in panic, chased by some howling mob? A few miles further, they saw in the distance, a field covered in red cloth, as though left for drying. It was only when they came closer that they discovered that they were not passing some factory for dyeing bolts of cloth but a scene of massacre, transformed by some trick of the morning light into a mirage. The large patches of red which had resembled saris left out to dry, shrank and shrivelled and faded before their eyes, leaving only pools of dried blood. The vultures, the dogs and the jackals emerged, strutting disdainfully. They had pulled and torn the flesh of the bodies of the men and women strewn over the field to such an extent that there was now no way of telling how much mutilation had been inflicted by those who had attacked them. That must be the place where they had attacked the train the previous night. The man with the black beard sitting next to them, kneeled down and began to say his prayers. Debi-dayal was only conscious of a sick feeling in his throat. This was his land, the Punjab, the land of the five rivers. He had always loved it, in all its moods, through the rage of the summer and the healing hand of autumn. But no one could have seen it in this particular mood: unrolling a scene of devastation on both sides as though denuded by swarms of locusts or by invading armies. The trees were picked bare of branch and leaf by the passing hordes of refugees, the roadside villages lay empty and smouldering, overturned and burnt-out cars and lorries and bullock carts and tongas littered the roads, and everywhere, there were cattle, made suddenly ownerless, wandering about in groups, looking for food.
The land of the five rivers had become the land of carrion. The vultures and jackals and crows and rats wandered about, pecking, gnawing, tearing, glutted, staring boldly at their train.
A million shall die! Debi-dayal kept remembering. 'A million!' Had that number not already been exhausted?
Now it was night again, and the train had come to another halt. This time they were at a covered platform. He was struck by the total absence of bustle, and realized that the station was absolutely empty. Even the familiar, bored-looking Madrassi sentries had been removed. The train had been waiting there, hour after hour. No one seemed to know why they were waiting or when they would go on. They had passed Amritsar, and must now be very close to the border, Debi-dayal reflected. Then it dawned on him that they were waiting for the train from the opposite side to come through before they would be free to proceed. He had heard someone say that the refugee exchange was being done strictly on a reciprocal basis, a trainload for a trainload, with drivers and military guards being exchanged at the frontier.
The emptiness of the station and the silence made his nerves tingle. So far, they had been in no real danger. The mobs on this side were Hindus; they would never have molested him if he could prove that he was one of themselves and that Mumtaz was his wife. But this was the crucial moment. He had got himself up as a Muslim, complete with a dark-brown fez and a long, knee-length shirt worn over voluminous pyjamas gathered up at the ankles, and Mumtaz was careful to address him as Karim, a common enough Muslim name. But of course, the mobs never respected the way you were turned out: you had to establish incontrovertible proof of your religion. That meant that they made you take off your trousers to make sure you were circumcised. But in a motley crowd like this, men and women from all parts of India with their different modes of dress and divers casts of faces and shades of colour, they would never suspect that he was a Hindu, he told himself; no one would subject him to that particular indignity. Why, many of the Muslims on their own flatcar could not even speak the language of the Punjab. He would slip away, just an insect wriggling amongst thousands of others in a swarm.
The swarm? It suddenly occurred to him that the moment they crossed the border, his fellow-passengers would no longer remain the pathetic dregs of humanity that had shared the journey with him with the apathy of cattle being transported to the slaughterhouse. The mere fact of crossing the line would transform them into the ruling race, themselves eager to plunge into the sort of excesses they had been subjected to in the land they had left behind.
He turned to look at them. In the darkness, only the nearest were clearly visible, the ones behind were like ghosts, their heads only faintly outlined, receding into infinity. He realized with a start that the man with the sleek, oiled beard and the black achkan was staring directly at him. Did he already suspect him? He looked a religious fanatic if ever there was one. He had devoutly turned to the west five times every day and prayed, and he seemed to be mumbling holy words from the Quran all day. Debi-dayal shifted his gaze, trying to hide his nervousness. He must remember to keep away from him; avoid those searching, penetrating eyes of the religious zealot.
Who else? There was the woman draped in the black burkha squatting next to him, who must be the bearded man's wife. She too, had seemed to stare at him with bold eyes through the net peepholes in her burkha. She had never once removed her veil, not even when she had squatted down to urinate, hitching up her skirts high over her waist, exposing her thighs and buttocks to their gaze but never her face.
He gave a sudden start. Mumtaz was nudging his shoulder, whispering something into his ear. He nodded and straightened his legs so that she could crawl over him and scramble down the side of the flatcar. Luckily, it was now almost pitch dark. For a minute or two, she squatted between the two sets of rails, keeping her head low, and then climbed back into her place.
Micturition was a purely physical need, and it was wrong to feel squeamish about its demands, but he still had not got used to that particular humiliation. The others on the train did not seem to mind where and how they relieved themselves. He and Mumtaz had always waited for the darkness. And he had to be particularly careful, go as far away from the track as he dared to, not knowing who was looking, trying to check from whether he was circumcised or not, if this man with the typical Punjabi- Hindu features who called himself Karim was really the Muslim he pretended to be.
Was his face really that of a Hindu? Had the mullah with the black beard which was so obviously dyed and his young wife whose bold, lecherous eyes peeped through the burkha already marked him down?
Many people claimed that just by looking at a man they could tell a Hindu from a Muslim; he himself could never have told the difference. He fingered the typical, down-curving Muslim moustache that he had acquired, and felt thankful for the three- day growth of beard on his face.
There was a rumble of wheels coming from the opposite direction, and then it was drowned by the tumultuous yells of the passengers of the oncoming train which had now come into the zone of safety for the Hindus. Soon, a train crawled past, just as crowded as the others even in the darkness, they could see the snake with the ants clinging tightly to its body joggle past, its passengers yelling with joy: Jai Hind! Jai Hind! Mahatma Gandhi-ki Jail Jai Hind!' The night air shook with their yells.
The roar could be heard long after the train had gone. The passengers in Debi-dayal's train who had watched them in a sullen silence, now buzzed with a new eagerness, knowing that they would soon be on their way. They had seen the southbound train that had come from West Punjab: the price for their own release had been paid.
There was a sound of footsteps in unison. Soldiers with torch- lights came and climbed into the guard's van. The engine hissed for a time and then gave a stifled whistle. The wheels began to move. Another hour, and they themselves would be out of danger. Then they too would be in a position to yell for joy, spend themselves in a sudden shudder of release.
"Pakistan Zindabad! Pakistan Zindabad!"
They had yelled themselves hoarse when they crossed the border of silence. Now they were in West Punjab. Debi-dayal had shouted just as lustily as the others. The train now crawled through the night at walking speed. The men and women around them stirred like a swarm of bees preparing for flight. The great fear was now behind them. Even at the rate they were going, they would arrive in Duriabad before noon, Debi-dayal calculated. Noon on August the fifteenth.
August the fifteenth!
He suddenly realized that for the past few hours, they had already been a free people, both Indians and Pakistanis; that the sun that was about to rise would be the dawn of their freedom.
Then the train came to a halt, the first halt since they entered Pakistan territory. It was four in the morning, and the false dawn was already showing in the east. Soon it would be daylight. He felt elated, ready to greet the sun. He shifted his shoulder slightly, but Mumtaz who was leaning against it did not wake. Suddenly his heart stood still. The sound in the far distance was only too familiar. It was the war-cry of a mob on the prowl, something like the roar of a distant sea. It was always the same, whether Hindu or Muslim; from a distance no one could have told the difference. Mumtaz stirred against his shoulder. She was now awake, listening.
The sound came nearer, became less indistinct. In the misty darkness around them, they could see nothing, but they could hear that some sort of commotion was going on further along the line. They heard the bark of rifle fire and then suddenly the ra-tat-tat-tat burst of a machine-gun.
"Hai-allah!' Mumtaz whispered. She gave Debi-dayal's hand a gentle squeeze.
No need for us to worry,' someone was saying at the other end of their car. "They are our brothers, they can do nothing to us.'
The roar of the crowd then suddenly ceased, but for a long time no one knew what had happened. Then they heard footsteps coming along the track. They peered into the darkness: a straggly line of soldiers marching, taking positions on both sides of the train, facing outwards. Then someone came behind them, shouting orders.
'It must be their Captain,' someone suggested.
"What is it? What is he saying?' everyone was asking everyone else.
They say they are expecting an attack,' someone said. "The troops are here to protect our train."
Attack! Attack from whom? Not from our own brothers! After all we have been through!"
The darkness faded and a faint light came up in the east. Now they could see the soldiers clearly, waiting with bayonets fixed to their rifles, facing a vast, treeless waste. The babble in the flatcar rose, as in the other cars of the train. "What are they holding us here for?" they began to complain. "Who is going to attack us?' they kept asking the soldiers. "Who can attack us when we are in our own land?" The man with the oiled beard drywashed his hands and knelt down to pray.
They always expect an attack at night,' someone said. "They attack any trains they are looters; they don't worry about whether their victims are Hindus or Muslims."
'Allah be praised!-the day is coming."
"Yes, they dare not attack us during the day; not when our soldiers can see to shoot."
Long live our soldiers! Shabash to our jawans !'
"Long live Pakistan!"
'Pakistan Zindabad!"
'Zindabad! Zindabad! Zindabad l'
Khamosh! Silence! SILENCE!
Listen, someone is trying to say something!"
I think it is the Captain. "Silence! Silence! Khamoshl
"What are they saying?"
Suddenly, there was silence. They could hear a voice in the background, saying again and again. Listen! Pay attention here!
Listen l' They turned their heads in the direction of the sound, and waited for what the speaker had to tell them.
'Listen! There has been trouble on the line a mile farther on. The mob dismantled the line, but now they have been dispersed. We feared they were going to attack the train, taking advantage of the dark. So we posted the sentries. Now the train can go no farther. It will be taken back from here. You will have to get out and walk. Another two miles, they will make arrangements to transfer you into another train. Is that clear?'
Yes, it was very clear. They began to curse and grumble. Now, after arriving in their own land, they were being told to get out and walk. The promise of another train two miles farther down the line did not ring at all true. Trains were not easy to come by these days; they all knew that. 'Listen!' the same voice yelled. 'Khamosh!"
It was like a switch being turned off. Their babble stopped.
'Now that it's getting light, I am withdrawing the sentries. They have been on duty all night and have to be relieved. Now get going. You haven't all day to wait here! Come on! Come on! Juldi!"
'Janabe-ali, please don't take away the soldiers! Don't abandon us-protector of the poor!' The clamour of protest rose from their midst. 'What will we do without protection, here, in the midst of nowhere?
The sun will be up in half an hour. They do not attack in the daytime you have nothing to fear."
He began to bark orders at his soldiers and they shuffled off after him, unfixing their bayonets as they marched and slinging their rifles on their shoulders. Meekly, the passengers began to scramble out of the train, moaning and sighing as they stretched their cramped limbs.
The light was enough to see the distant hills now, the hills beyond which lay Duriabad. How many miles was it? The south-western breeze was on their backs, making them shiver.
And then they saw the men gathering in ones and twos on both sides of the track, and in the middle distance there were more and more figures, indistinct in the half-darkness. There was nothing familiar about the landscape now; this was part of the country that the trains always covered at night. The train stood forlornly in the middle of nowhere.
The sky acquired a blue tinge and the stars disappeared; the figures were now more distinct. And as they gathered strength, they came nearer and nearer to the track, not saying anything, not even speaking amongst themselves. Their faces were grim and they walked with a strutting awareness of power. Most of them carried lathis or axes, and a dozen or so carried great curved swords or shotguns slung on leather holsters. man with a sword ran forward and caught it on the point of his sword.
Mumtaz and Debi-dayal stood hand in hand, not daring to move; just a couple in a crowd that had scented blood-the joys of revenge.
A least twenty men had been denounced; their wives and children given the punishment the crowd demanded. It was amazing how correctly they had guessed. Every one of them had sworn that he was a Muslim; not one had proved to be. No one was shown any mercy. Many were already dead even though their tormentors were still hurling stones at their bodies, bringing down lathis with loud whipping sounds, cursing. "There's another of them!' someone shrieked. 'I am sure he is a Hindu!' He was pointing at Debi-dayal.
'Yes, he has been behaving most suspiciously; he has not even shouted encouragement at those who are bringing them to
justice!" A kaffir! A spy! a Hindu!' the chant began.
"He is my husband! Mumtaz said defiantly. "Karim Khan!" The crowd was already forming around him, making a circle.
"Then can he prove that he is a Muslim?"
"Of course, he can! But how can you inflict such an indignity on one of your own faith!""
'We shall see... we shall see.'
The grabbing, coarse, knotted hands were already upon them, tearing them apart. Debi-dayal found himself dragged away, felled down; felt the horny fingers tearing at his clothes; like the beaks of birds, the claws of animals.
"A Hindul they announced in triumph. A kaffir!"
Above the clamour that rose all around them, he could hear Mumtaz's shrieks distinctly. 'No! No-oo! No-ooo!' and then he saw her struggle and leap through the packed rows of men and boys around him. She hurled herself on his prone body, still shrieking.
He felt her arms tighten around him as they tried to force her away, felt her clothes being torn off her, heard the obscenities and the catcalls of the crowd. And then suddenly they were wrenched apart, and he could see her being carried away, naked and struggling, screaming at the top of her voice.
And as they forced their way through the crowd, through the gap, he saw the sun that had just risen.
That was the last thing he ever saw: the rising sun in the land of the five rivers on the day of their freedom. The next second his eyes were blinded by a great flash of pain that seemed to shoot up from the centre of him, as though a bomb had exploded between his loins.
And the last thing he ever heard was his name being shouted by his wife with all her might.. Debil Debi, my darling! I shall never live without you! I am coming with you too...I am coming...
He surrendered himself to the pain, not knowing what she was trying to tell him, but taking a childish, pathetic consolation in the fact that she wanted to be with him wherever he was now going; go with him as she had always wanted to go wherever he went.
