Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (30 page)

“That wretched preacher fellow—Dr. Raghubir Randhawa. Remember him? He stayed with us about nine years ago? He wanted to sell me maps or coins or something? The Independent-Country-for-Sikhs fellow?”

“That boring man who put us all to sleep? Who does he think he is? King of England?” Bibi-ji exclaimed. She had taken a strong dislike to the man the first time she set eyes on him. “As if our house is his personal dharamshaala! Tell him to go jump in the pond, na! No way is he staying here. No way is he eating my parathas.”

“Why does he want to stay with us anyway?” Pa-ji asked, tossing the letter aside. “He hasn’t heard? I am allergic to these Khalistani types? These militant fellows? Not interested!”

“He is coming because our house is better than a five-star hotel, that’s why,” Bibi-ji replied. “And it is free. But if you don’t want him to stay here, tell him straight off: we are busy, I am unwell, to please go and stay with somebody else. Why don’t you?”

Pa-ji didn’t respond. He rubbed his unseeing eye wearily with his knuckles and drew a pad of letter paper towards him. Bibi-ji watched him with resigned affection. He was still fit and energetic, his beard just beginning to show traces of grey even though he was in his early seventies now, and she knew he could never bring himself to refuse a request from a fellow Sikh. She left him alone to his correspondence and made her way down the stairs to the unusually quiet kitchen and living area. She had noticed that in the past year, the number
of their guests had dropped significantly. No doubt it had something to do with Pa-ji’s loud declarations at temple committee meetings that an independent Punjab was a ridiculous idea. So many people in their community were now arguing for a Sikh homeland apart from India for the Sikhs.

She was startled to find Jasbeer in the living room, sprawled across one of the sofas, reading a pamphlet.

“Arrey, putthar, when did you come home?” she asked. “Why are you wearing that black turban? You look much better in light blue or green ones.” She worried about him—he was becoming like one of those strange young men with whom he spent most of his time nowadays. More conservative and religious than their parents, they behaved as if they were God’s personal messengers on earth, Bibi-ji felt.

“What are you reading?” she tried again when she got no response to her earlier question.

“Something Dr. Randhawa sent me,” Jasbeer said, sitting up straight.

“He has been writing to you?”

“Yes, sometimes,” Jasbeer said.

“Did you know he was coming back here? And that he wants to stay with us?”

“Yes, I invited him.”

Bibi-ji struggled to hide her astonishment and annoyance and changed the subject. “Leela was telling me that Preethi is going away to Toronto for university. And didn’t Wendy get a scholarship to some American college?”

Jasbeer shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen them in a while.”

“And what are you planning to do, putthar?” Bibi-ji asked, holding on to her temper. “You dropped out of high school … I promised your mother that you would get a better education here in this country, but look at you …”

“I might go back to India,” he said.

“Oh,” Bibi-ji replied, trying very hard to sound unsurprised. She gathered herself and continued: “Your parents will be happy to see you home. They would have been even happier if you had finished high school, though.”

“I am not going to Delhi,” Jasbeer said. “I’m joining the Damdami Taksal in Bhinder for a year or so. Dr. Randhawa said I would do well there.”

“But that’s a religious school!”

“Yes. So?” Jasbeer gave her a challenging look and rose to his feet.

“And why are you listening to that loud-mouthed fraud?” She could no longer hide her irritation.

“He is a great and good man. I don’t think you should speak in that disrespectful way about him,” Jasbeer said. He turned and left the room and a few minutes later Bibi-ji heard the front door slam. She stood there for a little longer, wondering whether she ought to tell Pa-ji about Jasbeer’s decision now or leave it until later. Not so long ago they had had to drag Jasbeer with them to the gurudwara; now he was planning to go to India and live in a religious school. Was that a good thing or not? She was not sure at all.

Dr. Raghubir Randhawa arrived a few weeks later, tall, grave and self-important in a grey pathan suit with a gold Rolex pocket watch. He was less thin than they remembered him; his work as an agitator appeared to suit him well. He had also grown in fame, it seemed, because there was quite a crowd at the airport waiting to greet him with bouquets of flowers. Pa-ji was taken aback by the reception, though he was aware that the mood of the Sikhs in his community had changed considerably in the nine years between Randhawa’s last visit and this one. A large number of new immigrants from Punjab had come into Canada, and many nursed a deep grievance against the Indian government, which they believed had reneged on its promises to distribute land and river water equitably among Punjab and its neighbouring states. Rumours flew of disappearances, killings, deaths in police custody and the torture of innocent Sikh men in the villages of Punjab. Pa-ji did not think much of these tales, though it occurred to him that they sounded surprisingly like the ones that had preceded the departure of the British from India. That had been different somehow, he felt—a heroic endeavour to rid the land of foreign occupiers. He had contributed as much as he could to that freedom movement, applauded the men and women who had blown up bridges and trains and buildings and shed blood for what he had considered a worthy cause. But this, this desire to create a separate country within India for the Sikhs, seemed to Pa-ji faintly absurd. Neither could he understand how the temple and its priests could encourage the discontent, fan the simmering anger, urge young men to violence in the
name of God. Pa-ji’s religion was as simple and straight-eyed as his own nature. There was a Being who had created the universe and granted him, Pa-ji, the privilege of being human for a brief span of time. He could not understand how the Being, who must surely be benign, having created this magnificent planet, could generate hundreds of lunacies, little and large, in a person’s heart. How could hate be born of something as private as faith in this unseen God?

Lately it appeared to Pa-ji that there were far more immoderate than moderate people in his community. Not so long ago, he was a pillar of that community; when he said something, people stopped to listen. These days, whenever he opened his mouth to object to the politics of power and violence that seemed to be taking over their temple, he was angrily shouted down. At the temple, a visiting preacher from India had delivered a fiery speech about an independent Sikh state. He had ended his speech by passing around a box for funds to set up this state. When the box came to him, Pa-ji had shaken his head.

“No, I am not giving for this,” he had said.

“You do not wish for an independent country for the Sikhs, bhai-saheb?” asked the young man holding the box.

Pa-ji’s good eye glared at the boy—a stranger who had arrived with the preacher—at the high black turban worn like a beehive on his head, his flat black eyes and his unkempt beard, and said: “Not a question of my wishing. What I am not wishing to do is interfere in the business of another country. I am Canadian, why I should pay for more partition of India?”

“As a Sikh you are not interested, then?” the man persisted. Now other people were turning around to see what the altercation was about.

Pa-ji got to his feet and said loudly, “As a Sikh I am interested in putting money into
building
things—like schools and hospitals—not for breaking up countries!”

Soon afterward, the attacks had begun. First someone threw a rock at the window of The Delhi Junction. Then Pa-ji’s tires were slashed in broad daylight behind the restaurant. When he called the police, two young goras arrived to ask desultory questions. They made flat-footed efforts to find the culprits, mostly interrogating the regulars at The Delhi Junction. The community withdrew into resentful silence at the foreign intrusion. Pa-ji was censured for bringing the police into what was surely a family quarrel, and several of his customers transferred their patronage from The Delhi Junction to a new restaurant a block away.

Pa-ji refused to be cowed. He increased the volume of his protests against the growing mood of violence in the temple. He wrote an article that was published in the local Punjabi-language newspaper, urging moderation and asking his fellow Sikhs not to bow to the wave of fundamentalism. Late the following evening, after locking up the restaurant, he noticed he was being followed. He quickened his pace, but not soon enough. He felt a hard, heavy object crash into his shoulder from behind, and then excruciating, blinding pain. If he had not shouted at the top of his lungs then, attracting passersby, he might have been more badly hurt, perhaps permanently
silenced. Again the police came, performed their ineffectual investigations and went away none the wiser.

For the first time the Taj Mahal’s enormous wrought-iron gates, which had always remained welcomingly open, were locked at night. Lalloo hired a watchman to stand guard around the clock and insisted on accompanying Pa-ji to and from the restaurant every day before heading off to take care of his many businesses. But even he, it pained Bibi-ji to note, contributed to the funds being collected for a separate Sikh state. And when confronted, he insisted that it was to keep his wife’s family happy. His brothers-in-law were all for separation from India, even though his wife wasn’t too happy about it.

“For the sake of homely harmony,” Lalloo had said, spreading his palms upwards. “What to do? You know my in-laws, they are tough guys …”

On the day of Dr. Randhawa’s arrival, an entire fleet of cars followed Pa-ji from the airport to the Taj Mahal. It appeared that all Dr. Randhawa’s acolytes were to be his guests that afternoon, and Pa-ji dreaded the thought of Bibi-ji’s reaction to this unexpected influx of visitors. Especially Dr. Randhawa’s admirers.

“So, Khushwant-ji, I believe your son is an active member of the organization,” Dr. Randhawa said suddenly. During the entire drive from the airport he had been talking to two other men who had got into the car with him, and Pa-ji had paid little attention to them. For a moment he wondered who his visitor was speaking to.

“You can call me Pa-ji, like everyone else,” he said.

“Why has the good Maharaj above given you a name then?” Dr. Randhawa asked in a tone of gentle reproach which made Pa-ji feel like a ten-year-old boy.

“What organization is Jasbeer active in, Dr. Randhawa?” Pa-ji struggled to contain his irritation, though he knew the answer. When he had first discovered Jasbeer’s involvement with the youth wing of Dr. Randhawa’s group, he had been furious. This boy, whom he and Bibi-ji had brought up like a son, was hanging around with the very thugs who might have attacked him? “He eats the salt in my home with one hand and stabs me with the other!” he had raged to Bibi-ji. He had controlled his anger and spoken to Jasbeer in a reasonable voice, but received only a mute obstinacy in response. He had asked Bibi-ji to intervene, but she too had come away empty-handed, saying anxiously that at least Jasbeer was not taking drugs or alcohol or engaging in goonda-activities.

Dr. Randhawa interrupted his thoughts. “Young Sikhs for a Free Punjab, of course. Very good boy. Knows how to get things done. I have received many respectful letters from him telling us what he is doing here in our outreach wing. Yes, indeed, you must be proud of Jasbeer. We need people like him in our group.”

Pa-ji grunted and contained his shock. Jasbeer had been writing to this awful man? Telling him what? “He does not tell us much,” he said at last, trying for a light tone. “He is too old for all that.”

“A son is never too old for his parents,” Dr. Randhawa replied. “My children tell me everything every day. We will speak to your boy and bring him back to the right path.”

We,
thought Pa-ji. Was Dr. Randhawa referring to himself with the royal “we”? Or did he mean the two of them, he and Pa-ji, together? The rest of the day he brooded over the fact that his foster son had been sleeping with the enemy, so to speak, under his very nose. By evening Pa-ji had worked himself into a fine rage. He pushed aside his manuscript and prowled up and down the floor of his office. In the room below was Jasbeer, fawning over that fool of a man who preached hate and violence. Was it for this that he, Khushwant Singh, Proprietor and Landowner, had humoured his wife and brought in the boy? He poured himself a drink and tossed it down, but didn’t feel any less angry.

“Bibi-ji!” he roared, opening the door of his office and leaning out. He knew she was in the bedroom, also unable to be around Dr. Randhawa. “Bibi-ji!”

She emerged from the bedroom. “What? What are you shouting like that for? Am I deaf? You will disturb the guests.”

“Where is that boy of yours?” Pa-ji shouted, as if she had not spoken.

“I don’t know. He is what—twenty? Old enough to look after himself. Surely I don’t need to follow him around everywhere.”