This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (78 page)

Puri knew that Kanak had some rights over him, but what about his own rights and responsibilities towards Urmila? If he owed something to Kanak, he also owed something to Urmila. Tall and independent, Kanak wanted to support him in his struggle, but Urmila needed to be held in his arms and supported by him.

The relief that Beyji had felt at Urmila shedding her stony indifference and behaving normally had turned into another worry for her. Urmila and Puri were becoming so obsessed with each other as to be oblivious to others around them.

One day Beyji could not help but scold her. Urmila shot back testily in reply, ‘What are you cooking up now in your mind! If you can’t stand to see me talking and laughing, just give me some rat poison.’

Beyji did not dare to grab Urmila by her plait and give her a couple of slaps as once she would have done. She was her daughter, but was now also a grown-up woman like herself. She shut her mouth, but made sure that Urmila got no chance to behave in a way that might call for rebuke. What could she say to Puri? His behaviour had been ostensibly beyond reproach. She thought of him as a good person, and she was under an obligation to him. The fault lay with her daughter. Urmila’s natural inclinations, lying dormant under her despair, were reawakening. Beyji was reminded of
Urmila’s flirtations at Murree that had caused her so much shame. How could she fault others when her own coin was tainted? She was at a loss as to how to handle the girl. She could not bear to see her daughter crying silently and wasting away in grief. But Urmila’s now radiant and smiling face also caused her acute embarrassment. She would think, ‘How will her father and brother feel when they see her in this state?’ And she would tell herself, ‘It’s best if we can be rid of her by marrying her off somehow, and do so quietly, without further embarrassment. How would I face her father and brother? Spare them this humiliation, O God.’

In the first week of November, Puri had gone one evening to the office of the State Congress Committee, and from there to several meetings at different places, all through the night. He returned home at 9.30 the next morning. As he entered the house, Raldu told him that Beyji had sent for a tonga carriage at six in the morning, and gone to the railway station with Praveen and three suitcases. She had said that she was going to Delhi.

Puri knew that the train to Delhi left at 7.30 a.m. What could he do? He went upstairs and found Urmila lying on the chatai with her head shrouded in a dupatta. He called her name, and she broke into loud sobs. No explanation was needed, and nothing needed to be said. He sat beside her, and pulled her into an embrace. His hands wiped away her tears, and his lips pressed on hers to stifle her cries, ‘Don’t cry! Am I not here? Mere sir ki kasam, what is there to fear when we have each other?’

Urmila threw her arms around him, and burying her head in his chest, sobbed her heart out.

WHEN PURI READ IN THE NEWSPAPERS IN NAINITAL THAT THE PAKISTAN
government was evacuating Hindus from Lahore, he left immediately to be of help to his family. Kanak did not think it proper to stop him from leaving, even though it wrenched her heart.

From the day after his departure she had sunk into the deepest gloom at the thought of the danger he faced. Every nerve in her body ached for some news of him. In her anxiety she went through every newspaper available at the Library. The New Club was the place for news from Punjab. Many newly arriving Punjabis showed up there.

After the celebration dinner on 14 August, Puri had stayed in Nainital until the twentieth. Kanak had not felt like going to the Club during those evenings. To avoid being asked to accompany her family to the Club, she left the bungalow just before 6 o’clock every evening. But on the twenty-third, in her eagerness to get some news of Punjab, she offered to accompany Nayyar to the Club. At first, everything looked the same as the week before, but she soon noticed that the number of Punjabis had increased.

Some Punjabis played bridge, rummy, flush and other card games with the locals. Others sipped tea, coffee or a drink as they conversed with the other members. A group of them talked excitedly in the lounge. The newly arrived told breathtaking tales of escaping from the jaws of death. A young man just back from Rawalpindi and a mission to rescue the family of his in-laws was telling about his experience. It was not possible to travel by road or railway, so he had taken a flight from Amritsar. One could not go around safely in Rawalpindi without a police escort.

Others were talking about the vengeful attacks on Muslims in eastern Punjab. How all passengers in the Punjab Mail had been massacred near Ludhiana on 21 August, and similar attacks on trains to Pakistan in the cities of Ferozepur and Amritsar. Some tales of the atrocities were even more gruesome.

Kanak trembled at the thought of the hazards that Puri might have had to face. Losing their homes and property had left these Punjabis distraught with shock, embittered and desperate; they played the martyr, and pretended to
be better and from a higher class than the locals. They gambled recklessly in card games to show that they did not care, and drank heavily. They all claimed to have suffered losses of five, ten or twenty lakhs. Kanak had seldom heard of anyone in Lahore being worth that much.

A young man wearing an ordinary, well-worn suit stood near Nayyar, with an angry expression and an embittered look in his eyes. He was talking loudly about his whole family being murdered, and about losing property worth lakhs. Seated across from him on a sofa next to two women, Kanak listened attentively. The danger and suffering the man had undergone tore at her heart.

The man put his hand amiably on Nayyar’s shoulder. ‘Have a whiskey,’ he said, as if wanting to put aside his own pain and suffering.

Nayyar accepted his offer.

The man summoned the bearer and ordered whiskey. Glass in hand, he resumed the story of his horrifying adventure. Nayyar and others listened to him sympathetically.

The man looked at the people gathered round him as he told his story. Kanak’s eyes, like the others’, were fixed at him. She did not like the way he looked into her eyes if their gaze happened to meet. She averted her eyes. Nayyar had barely taken a couple of swallows of his drink before the man drained his glass. He asked Nayyar to have another.

‘I still have mine. You go ahead,’ Nayyar said.

The man called for another. He finished his second before Nayyar had finished his first. The man insisted, ‘You’ll have to have another, to keep me company.’

Nayyar swallowed his drink and agreed to have half a peg.

Third drink in hand, the man concluded his story and launched into a bitter diatribe against the Indian government and the state of UP, ‘…Here they are firing upon people attacking the Muslims.’ He criticized Gandhiji and Prime Minister Nehru. He drained his glass, put his arm affably around Nayyar and offered him another drink for company’s sake. Nayyar politely refused, but the man ordered one more for himself.

The man’s excessive show of familiarity offended Kanak. She had never seen such vulgar consumption of alcohol in Lahore. Irritated by the man’s ogling glances, she turned her attention to others in the group. Most Punjabis were vehement in their demand for the expulsion of all Muslims from UP, Bombay, Madras, Bengal and other Indian provinces. ‘…Either
we Punjabi refugees should be allowed to expropriate properties, lands and businesses from Muslims, or we should be given a free hand to make up for the losses that we’ve suffered.’

One of them disagreed, ‘That’s unrealistic! There’s such a thing as law and order. There are not many Muslims in India who own land and businesses.’

‘Whatever! We should have the chance to make good what we have had taken from us. We sweated and worked hard for what we had,’ another person replied angrily.

It was past 10.30. Kanak had made several signs to Nayyar that she wanted to leave. Nayyar held out his hand to the man who had been with him to say goodbye, ‘I’ll take my leave of you.’

‘You’re leaving? I too must be off. See you again. Please settle the bill, if you don’t mind.’

Nayyar looked at the man with surprise, ‘But…’ The man cut him short. ‘Baadshaho, what’s wrong? We’ve lost lakhs of rupees and never whined. This is only 8 or 10 rupees.’ He walked off towards the next room, his face tight.

Nayyar was taken aback. Sympathetic listeners to the man’s story stood around him. He smiled and signed the bill.

Kanak fumed at Nayyar as they came out of the Club, ‘What weird friends you have!’

‘Friend? I saw him today for the first time. Wonder whose guest he was? What else could I do? People are turning into such goondas!’

A whole week passed without any letter from Puri. Kanak was confident that he would send some news, wherever and in whatever condition he might be. ‘Don’t you know how worried I’d be?’ Vexed by the tormenting thoughts of what might have gone wrong, she would curse herself, ‘Why did I let him leave? If he had to, I should have arranged for him to go by air. Or I could have gone with him. We would face the dangers together. And would have been together if…’

As a result of how she had been brought up to believe, and encouraged to think by her father, Kanak could not imagine any other differences between her own and a man’s abilities, except physical strength. But from the accounts and stories she had recently heard and been told, it seemed that being a girl or a woman was the worst fate one could imagine.

Nayyar’s hostility to her feelings for Puri was fresh in her mind, but Kanak still forced herself to ask for his help in finding out about Puri. Nayyar himself was distraught with worry on account of his own problems. He had come to Nainital with only two thousand rupees in his pocket. He usually made payments by bank cheques. He had written a cheque for the rent for their bungalow for July. All the shopkeepers with whom he had credit were paid by cheques at the month’s end. On 8 or 9 August, he had written to his bank in Lahore to send a draft of one thousand rupees drawn on the Nainital branch of either the Allahabad Bank or the Imperial Bank. Neither had the letter, nor his telegram sent as a reminder, been answered.

His bank would send the draft once the storm had died down after 15 August, Nayyar had thought; it was only a matter of time. His worries knew no end when he heard, at the end of August, that an embargo had been imposed on the transfer of funds from one country to the other between Pakistan and India. The outlays spent on his own and his brother-in-law’s family and on his two sisters-in-law were his responsibility. He regretted not following Panditji’s advice to transfer his accounts to a bank in India, and not going back to Lahore to empty his safety deposit boxes of the family’s jewellery and property deeds. What would he do for a living if he couldn’t return to Lahore? He had little time or inclination to listen to Kanak’s problems.

Kanta was in a daze too. To her, it seemed she was to blame for everything. She was the one who controlled the housekeeping budgets. Would she lose face before others? Would the family be brought to starvation? How could she ask her father for anything? He himself had barely managed to flee to Delhi, and had not been able to find proper accommodation in the three weeks he had been there. Nayyar had invited him to Nainital, but he had deferred, so as to avoid the embarrassment of being a burden.

Kanta could not pretend to be happy and carefree like Nayyar. She didn’t want her brother-in-law’s family and Nayyar’s sister to know about their financial hardships, but she also had to cope with the dwindling funds. The amount of ghee used for cooking was drastically reduced. A single vegetable dish and daal replaced the two vegetable dishes, meat course and the daal on which they usually dined. She had her own daughter and three children of Nayyar’s sisters to care for. Instead of four seers of milk per day, she began buying one-and-a-half seers. But her efforts to manage
the household had the opposite effect. The pressure to make do with less money led to an explosive situation.

The mother of her brother-in-law looked on these austerity measures as a personal affront. Since her childhood, she had been in the habit of having a glass of milk before she went to bed, and a glass of fresh buttermilk on an empty stomach in the morning. Without such a diet, she suffered from dryness of skin, constipation, and dizziness. The mother-in-law remarked testily, ‘If milk’s become so dear, we’ll get one-and-a-half seers separately for ourselves. We had two milch buffaloes in our backyard back home.’

Nayyar got a shock when he saw that his sister Subhadra ignored their financial difficulties and sided with her mother-in-law’s unreasonable attitude. Her complaints were even more bizarre, ‘…When we first arrived, they bought mangoes and peaches every other day. Our children have become such a burden that they’ve stopped buying fruit. Now we’re being asked to eat chapattis with only daal at both meals. All three sisters like to gad about. They stuff themselves at some restaurant every time they go out, but there’s no money when we’re concerned. Had we found a bungalow for our family, we wouldn’t have had to face such humiliation. If we’ve become a liability, I’ll cook whatever skimpy meals we eat on a separate brazier in the veranda.’ She began to cry.

Ramprakash’s sister Swarna could not overlook the injustice shown to her brother’s family, and defended her sister-in-law, ‘It’s our misfortune that we have to depend on these people. We came to stay with our brother. Had this been his home and had we been treated like this, we wouldn’t have accepted even a drink of water here. It must be fate conspiring against us that we’ve lost property worth lakhs, and now we have to look to others for our food. And just look at these women; the way they throw money about on fashion! They’d rather paint their faces than eat because their stomachs are rumbling.’

Subhadra’s mother-in-law began to shed tears at being treated so shabbily by her daughter-in-law’s family.

Nayyar’s mother could not stop herself from making a sharp retort. Kanak and Kanchan were trying to pacify her when Subhadra and Swarna began shouting at them, ‘You good-for-nothing creatures! What are you doing here? Neither do you have a place at your parents, nor will either of you ever get a man!’

The relaxed, sybaritic lifestyle at Vimal Villa degenerated into a battle
scene from the Mahabharata. Neighbours in the bungalows above, below and to either side of Vimal Villa stood and peered out from their doors and windows to see what was causing such a row. Nayyar’s brother-in-law Ramprakash slipped quietly out of the bungalow.

Stung by the abuse hurled at them, Kanak and Kanchan began packing their bags. Nayyar called both to his room and said severely, ‘Are you both stupid? Is that the way to behave? That’s all the help and sympathy you can give me in the difficult situation I’m facing?’ Both the sisters retired to a corner, wiping their tears.

Nayyar also spoke angrily to Kanta, ‘Have you gone mad? It was you who invited them.’

Kanta broke into tears, ‘Open my trunk and see for yourself. All there’s left is 625 rupees. I just want to make do with that until pitaji arrives. I can blow it all in a week if that’s what you want. Soon we’ll be eating only dry chapattis or half a meal, and what’ll these people say then? If they want to gargle with milk or must have the paranthas spread with ghee, it’s better that they move somewhere else. Why should they suffer because we’re hard up? I’d never ask these people for anything even if I was starving.’

Only two weeks before Subhadra was so fond of her bhabhi that Kanta was reluctant to go to the bazaar with her. Subhadra kept her money tied in a knot of the silk handkerchief that she carried, and if Kanta wanted to buy something, Subhadra would begin to untie the knot. Kanta could hardly prevent her from paying. She used to be happy only if she and Kanta ate from the same thali.

Nayyar sat and took several deep breaths, thinking, ‘My only crime is that I don’t have as much money as I used to have.’

After the frenzied melee of accusations and crying, Vimal Villa was quiet. Only Nano and Subhadra’s baby boy Dhammi, unaware of the tension, cried out in play or called out to someone.

With a premonition of danger haunting her, and after the affectionate scolding from Nayyar, Kanak’s heart was cleansed of all resentment towards her brother-in-law. Seeing Nayyar sitting alone and lost in thought, she went and sat beside him. ‘Jiai,’ she said using the old endearment, ‘what are you thinking about?’ She reminded him of the job promised by Awasthi, the parliamentary secretary, and asked for Nayyar’s permission to write to him. He could be of some help, she said.

Nayyar was already peeved, he asked her directly, ‘Is Puri in Lucknow?’

She met his gaze, and said, ‘Jiai, I’ve never told you a lie. If I go away with him, I’ll tell you beforehand. He left with the idea of going to Lahore. Today is the twenty-fourth day without any letter from him.’ She turned her face away. Her eyes had filled with tears.

Nayyar kept silent in sympathy, then said in English, ‘Forgive me, what objection can I have? Your father will be here soon. There’s been no letter from him for a week; maybe it’ll come today.’