Half a Rupee: Stories (7 page)

Bujharat Singh had got so used to talking over the wireless radio that he would suffix all his conversations with ‘Over’. We were standing just next to him and he said, ‘Why don’t you pull that charpoy and sit? Over!’

We pulled up the charpoy and sat. Gopi whispered into my ears, ‘Bujharat Singh! Now, what kind of a name is that?’

I shrugged my shoulders, ‘It is, so it is. So leave it be.’

Bujharat Singh had been speaking for quite some time now over a wireless radio, ‘Put four–five beefy burly men on his back and make the bugger run … he will automatically fall in line. Over!’

The wireless set cackled. Bujharat Singh lit up his beedi and puffed in the smoke. The party on the other side said something and Bujharat Singh snapped, ‘Rope his legs
together … then chase him with a stick … make him run … a kos at least. Over!’

He breached his talk to listen and then picked up the wireless radio and barked into it, ‘Arre, you will get nothing by starving him. He will die, uselessly. You also, no, talk like a stupid man sometimes. Over!’

He was doling out advice to somebody in another camp on how to rein in a crazed camel. A lantern lit his face amidst the darkness gathering in the sand dunes. Gopi and I sat patiently on the other side of the lantern. We were at a desert outpost, about forty kilometres from Pochina.

Pochina is situated at the India–Pakistan border. We were here on a film shoot. You could not really call Pochina a village. It was more like a outpost flung out in the desert, a pastiche of houses huddled together—but quite picturesque, like houses drawn in crayon in a children’s drawing book. The garrison quarters too was not a pukka building, but a framework of bricks plastered with mud. There were two rooms—barrack-like—and a square alcove cut into one wall. A soldier in full military regalia stood in the alcove leaning on his gun—quite pointlessly—while the rest of his garrison romped about in their undershirts and
gamchas
doing squats or massaging each other bare-bodied, slathering mustard oil onto their rippling muscles. Poor men! With the arrival of our heroine, they had to comb their hair and strain themselves into proper clothes.

And what a location our director had dug up! Scenic! There were ridges upon ridges of desert sand wherever
you looked, as far as the eye could see. Undulating in the wind—now a crease here, now a crescent there.

About two furlongs from this outpost was a cement milestone. ‘Bharat’ was written on one side of the stone and ‘Pakistan’ on the other. Such milestones are hammered into the sandy earth along the border at an interval of two furlongs. Between the two milestones the land lies barren—just a patchy growth of puny scrub which sheep and camels keep scratching at. These animals roam about with full freedom on either side of the border, unburdened by religion, unfettered by boundaries of nation-states. You cannot make out the religion or the nationality of their owners either.

We had a permit to be there for three days. And we also had the permission to pitch our own tents. But we had a small problem on our hands. The men would crouch behind the dunes for their morning ablutions. But what would the women in our troupe do? We found a makeshift toilet sort of thing, though, but it had no doors, not even a make-do one.

‘Who bothers with a door, Sahibji? This is the desert … we go behind the dunes and make do. The sand comes in handy. Where in this desert will you find enough water to work a flush?’

‘Then where do you get water to bathe and cook?’

‘There’s a pipeline, Sahibji, but the control is in Jaisalmer. By the time the water reaches here, it is never enough. We order water tankers. The contractors too need to earn a living.’

We reserved a tent for the womenfolk. Water was
available in bottles and we had a plentiful stock of Bisleri. Our heroine, whom we addressed as Dimpyji, had fired a gun a number of times in films. But she had never handled a real gun, never fired real bullets. She asked the soldier standing in the alcove, ‘Is this thing loaded?’

‘Yes, certainly madam, it is.’

‘May I?’

The soldier jumped down. Dimpyji stepped on the empty wooden crates by the wall and climbed onto the alcove. The desert sprawled out like a beautiful, delicate silken sheet over the earth. Not far away, towards the right, two palm trees stood tall in their green plumage. A few thatched houses huddled around them.

‘Who lives in those houses?’ Dimpyji asked.

‘Shepherds, mostly.’

‘Is that a village?’

‘Yes, something like it.’

‘What’s its name?’

The soldier had no idea. He looked embarrassed and began to look sideways. A number of soldiers had come and stood behind Dimpyji, crowding the door. They were all trying hard to suppress their smiles. A senior soldier finally said, ‘The village does not have a name. People call it Pochina Ki Poonchh, the tail of Pochina.’

Laughter crackled through like a piece of chalk scratching a line on the blackboard. Dimpyji asked the senior, ‘May I fire this gun?’

He hesitated a little before saying, ‘Yes, go ahead.’

‘But what if somebody from the other side of the border fires back?’

‘Not a problem ji. We normally fire a shot to greet each other.’

‘Is that so? And what if I were to fire two shots?’

A smile stayed glued on each and every face.

‘Oh … that would be a signal to the men on the other side that we are sending people across the border … if they want to send somebody across they too fire twice.’

They all broke into laughter but the laughter never left their lips, it stayed glued to their faces. Dimpyji fired a greeting at the enemy outpost. The sound reverberated in the desolate arid desert and began to swim across the border. Gopi Advani was standing next to me. Suddenly he trembled. His lips quivered and tears welled up in his eyes.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ I asked.

‘Nothing!’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Over there on the other side is Sindh … my village.’ And he walked away.

People in our unit would tease Gopi; they called him Baby Gopi. He was a very emotional man. Tears would well up in his eyes if he were to talk about his mother. His family had stayed back in Sindh after Partition. He had gone to school there for a few years. But with the arrival of the Indian
muhajirs
—the Muslims from India who were forced to go to Pakistan after Partition—life for them became increasingly difficult and they had to leave. That day, seeing Sindh so close, his heart trembled.

I did not see him again that day. He did not even return to the tent at nightfall. When the director inquired about him, I covered for him, ‘He’s not feeling well. I asked him,
to rest in the tent.’ But I had begun to worry about Gopi. What if he had scrambled across the border? He wasn’t to be found the next morning either, but he resurfaced in the afternoon the day after. I learnt that he indeed had gone over to the other side. But soon he had found himself totally lost.

‘Deep in the desert, you tend to lose your orientation. Dunes upon dunes of sand, they all look the same. You climb a dune but the one in front looks the same as the one you just left behind. There was only one thing to do—to retrace my footsteps and head back. But when I turned back the footprints were all gone. To tell you the truth, I was really scared. If it wasn’t for Salman, I would be … he was godsent.’

‘Who’s Salman?’

‘Let me finish … I will tell you. When the desert begins to heat up it really seems as if it is getting angry at you … as if it is trying to say “why are you trying to step on my bed”… pick your feet up, go away. The desert is so vast and I am so puny. I took off my shirt and tied it around my head. A while later I heard the strains of a song. Somebody was singing
maand.
Not very far away. I could make out the song—
Padharo mere desh
—but I could not see anybody. I untied my shirt and began to wave it. God knows how he spotted me or from where because when my eyes fell on him he was on the top of the dune under which I was standing. He was sitting astride a camel; he hollered at me, “
Kotha piyu inchay, Sai
?”

‘I don’t know how to say it, man, but in that frame of mind, to hear him speak Sindhi it felt as if I was in my
mother’s arms, as if Mother herself had come to pick me up. He asked me again, “Where are you coming from?” I said, “Pochina.” He pulled me up on the back of his camel and spurred the animal into a run.’

‘Where did you two go then? Sindh?’ I asked.

‘No, only up to Miyan Jalaadh, a village behind Pochina. That is where Salman lives.’

‘But which side is he from? This side or the other side?’

Gopi told me that Salman was a fugitive from the other side: a murderer on the run. He had killed an admirer of the woman he loved and had run across the border and sought refuge in Miyan Jalaadh. A woman took him in and gave him shelter. He stayed with her for three years and then married her. Now he had two strapping kids with her.

‘He never went back to the other side?’

‘He does, sometimes, to meet his beloved. The same girl. Now even she is married and all. She, too, has two kids.’

Gopi paused awhile and then resumed his tale, ‘When I told him that I too am from the other side, he got all fired up and said, “Come, I will take you to your village.” I felt so much like saying yes. I asked him, “Now? In the night?” He looked at me and harrumphed, “O, Sai … I may forget the way but my camel will not. Once she starts running she will only stop at her door.”

‘“Whose?” I asked.

‘But it was his wife who answered, “The woman’s, who else’s? He’s got a woman there too. Across the border.”

‘I looked at her and asked, “And you don’t feel bad about it?”

‘“I have been telling him, bring her over too … the two of us will learn to live together.”’

What a wonderful border ours was. When we read about it in our newspapers it seems nothing less than an incendiary line drawn of fire, spewing fire and spouting blood.

The next day, the hero of our film, Banneyji, said to me, ‘Yaar, rum won’t do. Can’t you arrange for some whiskey … even Indian whiskey will do.’

We had heard that Indian whiskey got smuggled across the border near a village not far from Pochina. Whiskey got ferried from the Indian side and silver from the Pakistani side. The police from both sides met every month in the village to work out the logistics. A lot of things got ironed out in such meetings: how many sheep strayed from this side, how many camels got caught on the other side, etc.—these meetings took everything into account. The two sides sorted out everything amicably between themselves. On some evenings the Indian side even threw a party in honour of the guests from across the border, opened a few bottles of good whiskey, roasted a few skewers of lamb.

That evening Gopi and I were sitting on one such border outpost, next to Havildar Bujharat Singh. He had just finished giving his advice on how to break in a camel over his wireless radio. He had even ordered for our whiskey bottles over the wireless. Now he was talking to us about the letter that his wife had written him.

‘She is a complete idiot, Sahibji … she has gone mad … she writes anything she feels like. Now you tell me Sahibji … what should I do? Shall I protect Hindustan or shall I go and fight the thakur who has usurped her two-finger-width worth of land? Look, Sahibji … the entire border is open … the enemy can march over at any time. The government has produced bloody nuclear bombs … but what has it done for us … now even matches are one rupee a box.’

He tried to puff on his beedi but it had gone out on him. He plucked a dried twig from the weave of his charpoy and poked it through the tiny opening in the lantern’s housing. The dried twig immediately fared up. He relit his beedi on the faming twig. He had hardly taken two or three puffs before the beedi once again died on him.

Gopi had pulled out his lighter to light his cigarette. He looked at Gopi and laughed, ‘Only if I had a lighter of my own … life then would be such fun … now you cannot light a beedi with a nuclear bomb, can you? Over!’

Suchitgarh is a small hamlet on this side, in Hindustan. Sialkot is a big town on that side—in Pakistan.

Captain Shaheen was a handsome army man in New York. He ran a restaurant named Kashmir. His office was styled like a glorified bunker: the roof replete with artificial leaves sticking out of plastic nets, a number of army caps hung on one wall, military boots carelessly placed upon the floor, a military uniform hung on a clothes hook.

Amjad Islam had invited me over to the restaurant for lunch—and Vakil Ansari escorted me to the place. He was from that side, but he kept inviting all the Urdu poets and writers from this side to his place and in this way indulged his love for the language.

Vakil Ansari had celebrated
Jashn-e-Gopichand Narang
all over the country. He owned a hotel and that was his means of livelihood. Sardar Jafri from this side and
Ahmad Faraz from the other side often stayed as his guests in his house. His favourite phrase was: ‘Life’s become as commonplace as partridges and quails.’ Or another variant of the same: ‘Life has reduced us to partridges and quails.’ It was a very original phrase, one that I had not come across before—neither on this side nor on the other.

While inviting me over to Captain Shaheen’s restaurant, Amjad bhai had said, ‘If you want to dine on Eastern cuisine, then you will not find a better place than Shaheen’s in the whole of New York.’ Amjad bhai was very cautious with the words he picked—he did not call it Indian or Pakistani cuisine. For that matter he did not even refer to it as Punjabi cuisine. He called it ‘Eastern’. And he went out of the way to avoid the word Kashmir. But Captain Shaheen was your typical large-hearted army man and he laughed off Amjad bhai’s cautionary approach. ‘Aji … both sides stake their claims on Kashmir—and that’s the reason why this restaurant of mine is flourishing,’ he said.

Something had upset him in the army and in a sulk he had resigned his commission. ‘If I had stayed for just one more month I would have retired as a Major,’ he said, ‘but somehow, I like the sound of Captain Shaheen better.’

He had participated in the 1971 Indo–Pak war. ‘All the action took place on the eastern front, in Bengal. We only had a few skirmishes in Punjab,’ he said. He was embroiled in action in one of the battles in the Sialkot sector.

I asked him, ‘What is that emotion that makes a soldier out of a man?’

He had grown a thin beard and was in the habit of twirling his moustache as he spoke. ‘O ji, that’s just a grandiloquent feeling. It is all about the splendour of the uniform and the charm of the army beret, and the status that it adds to a man’s prestige. I don’t think that men become soldiers to die and kill for the country.’ He then burst into laughter, ‘Our feud is no war. The wars between Hindustan and Pakistan! Come off it. They keep fighting like schoolchildren—twist this one’s arm, break that one’s knee, spill some ink over this one’s shirt, drive the nib of the pen into that one’s side. Remember when we were kids, how we would go to watch sheep ram their horns into each other—you too must have bunked school to see them fight …’

I found him a very down-to-earth person. There was a deeply felt honesty in his way of speaking. I must have asked him something that made him say, ‘Yes, of course! A soldier too is scared—at first. But after he fires his gun a few times, empties a few bullets, fear takes fight. When bullets are fired, there’s a kind of smell that permeates the air—that of burnt gunpowder. And at the front, you get intoxicated with it, sort of addicted to it. When the guns fall silent and the trance is about to be broken you begin to fire again. Not necessarily at the enemy. Just so that you do not sober up.’

He paused and then added, ‘When you face your fear, you become familiar with it and familiarity makes it lose its meaning, loosen its grip—fear ceases to be fear.’

To me it seemed as if he was asking people at the front to get intimate with death—it will come when it comes.

He said, ‘Right in the beginning, at the outset of your training when you are prostrate on the ground, grazing your knees and your elbows, the thought does come time and again to quit, to give it all up. But when your bargedar (brigadier) singles you out and reprimands you on your mistake, when he screams at you, demanding to know which part of the country you are from, then believe me, sahib, you are unable to take the name of your village or state—it is just so embarrassing.’

Perhaps this is what translates into honour for a soldier—the honour of the soil that you come from, the honour that a soldier needs to defend at all costs.

Captain Shaheen kept up his narration. ‘Suchitgarh is a small little hamlet—of a few houses. Some had already been abandoned because they were very close to the border and some when we marched into the village. It was necessary for us to inspect each and every house: when you win a territory without any resistance, you are wise to suspect an enemy manoeuvre. It could be one of their traps.’

He was of the opinion that there is a great difference in the temperament of the soldiers on the two sides. ‘They are both Punjabis but the soldiers on this side—they are a little more aggressive. And those on the other side—they are of a more pacific nature, more calm. Farmers on the other side till their lands within inches of the border. But on this side, they let at least two–three hundred yards of barren land distance their houses and farms from the
border. In such places, troops of five to seven soldiers patrol the borders on either side. And often they are in such close proximity to each other that they can light each other’s cigarettes.

‘The soldiers on this side are commonly Punjabis but on the other side you often find non-Punjabis. Many a times, the soldiers on this side shout across the border, “So, bhai! Where from?” If that soldier is from down south he shouts back in English but normally what you hear is Hindi laced with Urdu.

‘After seizing Suchitgarh, I took a troop of four or five soldiers and started checking the houses in the village. As my men pushed open the door of a house, they found a small boy cowering in one corner of the house, scared out of his wits. My men called out to me, “Sirji.”

‘The moment I reached there the boy leapt towards me and hugged me. He just wouldn’t let go. My men pulled him away, somehow. I was troubled; what was I to do with him? I could hardly get a word out of the boy—he was too scared to even tell me the name of his parents. He just stood there, shaking in fear. I told him to scamper, to run away. But he just couldn’t. So I put him in my jeep and brought him back to my post. I gave him something to eat and asked him to lie down in a corner. I instructed my men not to let a word of this out—technically, he was our prisoner of war. I was duty-bound to report this matter to my headquarters and throw him into a jail along with other prisoners. But there was something in his eyes, his innocence perhaps, that made me wish the poor boy well.

‘After noon the next day, I took out my badge-shadge and went on a patrol to the same border village. On a farm a little away from the village I found an old Sikh rinsing his mouth at the tubewell. I shouted, “Sardarji … oye … come here!” He looked in my direction and I gestured to him to come over. When he came near me, wiping his hands on the tail end of his turban, I asked him, “You haven’t gone?”

‘He looked at me, a little taken aback, “Where?”

‘“Everybody else has gone. Left the village. Why haven’t you?”

‘“Lai … I have already left my village on the other side with you,” he said pointing across the border with both his hands. “What have you come here for now … to grab my fields?”

‘The Sikh seemed to be in a rage. I tried to pacify him and said, “A kid from Suchitgarh … about seven or eight years old … has strolled over to our side. I believe his parents have left the village.”

‘“So?”

‘“If I bring him over, will you take him to his parents?”

‘The sardar fell in deep thought. After a long pause he nodded, “All right.”

‘I asked him to come back at five in the evening. Never till then had I seen a smile glint off such yellowed, decaying teeth. The old Sikh laughed, “Let the boy off. Imprison me instead. Take me with you. My village is over on that side. A little further down from Sialkot. Chajra.” He sounded ecstatic—drunk just on the name of his village.

‘I could not make it back to the village that evening. Our commander was paying us a visit. And it took all our efforts to keep the boy hidden from him. We fed him and then hoisted him on to the loft of the control room. When the commander wanted to inspect the control room, we pulled him down from the loft and bundled him behind the gunny sacks of the storeroom and then later quickly locked him in the latrine behind the barracks. It was totally illegal to keep him with us. Heads would roll if the commander were to get a whiff of him. There was a moment when I was on the verge of ordering my soldiers to tie him in a gunny sack and dump him in the old Sikh’s field. A sword kept dangling over our heads all through the commander’s stay.

‘News from the eastern front, from Bengal, had begun to pour in. And it depressed the hell out of us. The Indian armed forces were with the Mukti Bahini and Yahya Khan … well … leave that be.’

There was a long pause. Captain Shaheen’s eyes had begun to soften, I could discern a hint of hurt pride in them. His face was criss-crossed with emotions. Finally, he spoke again.

‘The next day too there was a lot of troop movement. The day whittled away. The sun was about to set when I reached the border along with the kid. I was surprised to see the old Sikh still waiting there. There was a small troop of four or five soldiers with him. One of them stepped forward and addressed me, “Captain or Major?” Soldiers do not wear their ranks in ribbons at the front, but still it is not difficult to make out an officer
amongst the ranks. The soldier who spoke was also either a Captain or a Major. I stepped forward, shook his hand and handed the boy over to him. “He’s from Suchitgarh. We found him hiding in one of the village houses,” I said.

‘“So … where are you from … who are your parents?” the officer asked him, a little sternly.

‘The boy shuddered once again. He raised his eyes in my direction and said, “Chacha … I am not from this side … I am from the other side,” he gestured in our direction, towards our side, “from Chajra, a little further down from Sialkot.”

‘We were all stunned. I looked at the old Sikh. A smile once again glinted off his yellowed teeth. He moved towards the boy, ruffled his hair with the fondness reserved for one’s own and with tears that refused to stay within his eyes asked, “Really? You are from Chajra?”

‘I yelled at him, “Then what the hell were you doing here?”

‘Tears began to roll down his cheeks. “I had run away from school … to … to … see the ram fight.”’

Captain Shaheen looked into my eyes and said earnestly, ‘Believe me, Sahib, the two of us, soldiers both, were standing before that seven–eight-year-old like two idiotic schoolmasters. And our faces looked like those of rams.’