Train to Delhi (12 page)

‘A friend,' Gautam replied, smiling.

‘Gallivanting?'

‘I'm on a secret mission. I'll tell you later.'

The jeep leaped forward. In a few minutes they were at the station.

‘Thanks a lot,' said Gautam. ‘It was a question of life and death.'

‘I'm glad I could do something for you.'

‘Well, I shouldn't hold you back from reporting the fire,' said Gautam.

‘It looks like you are on your way to some scoop … Good luck!' Bala waved to Gautam and jeeped away.

As soon as Berry saw Gautam and Haseena, he rushed towards them.

‘Bravo!' he cried out, gleefully. ‘But, look, what you've done to yourself. Splashed all over with mud.' Then, turning to Haseena he added, ‘It must have been quite a sprint.'

‘It was traumatic,' she replied, still gasping for breath.

Then, after a pause, Berry announced: ‘I've some good news for you both … Two berths in a reserved coupe. A damned luxury these days, isn't it?'

‘Great!' Gautam exclaimed. ‘But how did you manage it?'

‘Some name-dropping—William Thornton, for instance.'

‘But you haven't met him.'

‘I know his friend—Bob.'

Haseena stood by, now feeling relaxed and secure.

As they started walking towards the platform, Gautam narrated to Berry how they had had a close brush with death.

‘Oh, God!' Berry said, looking quite surprised. ‘Well, in that case, he may be still on the chase.'

‘Yes.'

Berry then pushed a handbag into Gautam's hands, and said: ‘Why don't you both go into the waiting room and change into something better?'

A little later, the couple emerged, all spruced up. While Haseena was now draped in Sonali's sari and blouse, Gautam was dressed in a three-piece suit.

The platform presented a gruesome spectacle. The refugee special had arrived from Amritsar only an hour ago to unload hundreds of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Lahore, Multan and Peshawar—men, women and children. They were all squatting on the platform, huddled together, their hair unkempt, lips famished, faces moribund.

The Hindu Welfare Association had organized its camp in a corner of the platform itself, with ample supplies of medicines, food and clothing bought with the donations from the rich businessmen of Delhi. Some volunteers were even trained to give first aid for minor bruises.

But how could these volunteers help men with amputated penises, young women whose breasts had been chopped off after they'd been raped? It wasn't the physical pain so much as the social stigma these destitutes would have to endure for the rest of their lives. Their tales of suffering had incensed some of the volunteers to wreak vengeance. Frantically, they now prowled about looking for any Muslims on the platform.

Someone spotted a young Muslim couple trying to hide behind a newspaper stall. They were at once pulled out, stripped and knifed to death, their killers shouting: ‘Blood for blood! Death to all Muslims!'

The platform presented a ghastly contrast—of exuberant compassion and heinous brutality. While some volunteers were consoling and distributing food and milk to the refugees, others were busy scouting about for Muslim victims. Word had gone around that the Howrah Express, carrying Muslim refugees from Patna, Lucknow and Allahabad, would arrive early next morning. So most of the volunteers were now keyed up for the attack. The train must be wiped out, they said: all young women whisked away and all men massacred.

And this must be done before William Thornton moved in.

Since Berry had been on the platform for about an hour, waiting for Gautam and Haseena, he'd witnessed several poignant scenes. Impressed with his stout body, a pockmarked young volunteer had even asked him to join them in the raid on the Howrah Express train from Calcutta, next morning.

‘There'll be many young women, you know—and you may have the pick of them.'

‘No, thank you … I just came to see off my brother and sister-in-law. They should be here any moment.'

‘What a pity!'

‘Maybe some other day,' Berry said.

‘You'll be welcome any time. We're here day and night serving our Hindu brothers and sisters.'

Berry was discreet enough to hold back all this from Gautam and Haseena, who had already been through a great ordeal. So, he led them quickly across the flyover bridge to platform thirteen. But they'd hardly crossed over when the guard blew the whistle. At once they rushed towards the reserved coupé. While Gautam and Haseena jumped onto the train, Berry stood on the platform waving to them. Suddenly Gautam, who was standing near the door, clasping the handrails, cried out to Berry:

‘Oh God! There he is—Pannalal!'

Berry turned round to see the pimp running along the platform, followed by a group of armed volunteers. While Gautam disappeared inside the compartment, Berry leapt on board, clasping the handrails.

‘Is there any Muslim couple in that coupé?' asked the pockmarked volunteer.

Berry recognized him as the young man who'd asked him to join in the raid on the train, the next day.

‘Don't you remember,' Berry replied, ‘that I'd come to see off my brother and sister-in-law? I've just got them seated.'

‘He's lying,' yelled Pannalal, drawing close to the train. ‘There's a Muslim girl in there.'

The guard blew another whilstle, and the train jerked into motion. Berry asked the pockmarked volunteer: ‘Why don't you look at the reservation chart out there?' Then, pointing towards a brown sheet of paper pasted near the door, he added: ‘There, you may see the names—Mr and Mrs Gautam Mehta!'

The volunteer shot a glance at the chart, as he continued running alongside the train.

‘It's all right,' said the volunteer.

‘It's that man,' Berry now shouted to the volunteer, pointing to Pannalal, as the train was still inching out of the platform, ‘There's a rabid Muslim for you—Abdul Hameed. Strip him and you'll see the circumcised devil.'

The entire band of volunteers now swooped down upon the pimp. But before Berry could see him stripped, the train had chugged away.

‘It appears I'll have to travel with you till Hathras, the next stop,' Berry said to Gautam. ‘In any case, let me now make sure you have no more trouble.'

‘Thank you very much for your help, Berry sahib,' Haseena said, regaining her composure.

‘Bhai sahib
—that should be more appropriate now that I've adopted you as my sister-in-law.'

Haseena nodded, smiling.

‘Why don't you stay away from Neel Kamal for a few days?' Gautam advised Berry.

‘Worried?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll take care of myself,' Berry said.

As the train reached Hathras, the next stop, Berry jumped off, and taxied back to Delhi.

12

‘A
penny for your thoughts,' Gautam said, as he saw Haseena brooding, her chin resting on her right palm.

‘Nothing,' she replied, now raising her head.

‘There's always something to a mere nothing.'

‘Well, how I have made you go through all this—for my sake,' she said.

‘Maybe I've done it all for myself,' Gautam countered. ‘Someday you'll understand.' He smiled.

‘I was, in fact, thinking of my father,' she resumed. ‘You see, today is his birthday … How some mysterious destiny controls our life rhythms.'

‘Oh dear!' Gautam exclaimed.

‘It's the living who are left to suffer,' Haseena said, in a heavy voice, ‘while the dead are out of it all.'

‘How true.'

‘Because,' Haseena continued, ‘the dead leave all their problems to others—and these others are sometimes complete strangers. Like yourself.'

‘Maybe there's a mystic force that binds all humans together, dead or living, relatives or strangers.'

Haseena's gaze settled on Gautam's face; she was trying to fathom the meaning of what he'd just said.

The only sound audible in the coupé was that of the ceiling fan, whirring away above their heads, like a caged bird, fluttering helplessly against the steel bars. But the air it churned up was sultry; a sense of prickly stuffiness persisted even though the night had somewhat cooled down.

‘Did they leave his body on the street, exposed …' Haseena's voice came on again.

‘No,' replied Gautam. ‘After the rioters left, his body was carried inside the church for a burial. I saw it all.'

‘Then someday I may go and pray over his grave,' she sighed, ‘even though he had a Christian burial.'

‘What difference does it make to the dead?' Gautam said.

‘You're so right.'

‘And aren't there other kinds of death,' Gautam said, knitting his brows, ‘worse than the body's extinction? … The trauma of betrayal, your wife's affair with your own friend and colleague, your son not being your own …'

‘Are you married?' Haseena asked, her eyes searching his face for the clue to his agonized look.

‘W-a-s!' Gautam drawled out the monosyllabic word as if to charge it with poignancy. ‘I was divorced only a few days ago,' he said, with a lump in his throat, and then added: ‘Remember the man standing on the compound wall of that burning house?'

‘Who was he?'

‘My wife's lover!'

‘I understand,' she said, then drawing close to him, ‘you've also been through hell.'

Hell
—the word rang like a knell.

There was a moment's silence.

‘But not darker than the one I've been through,' Haseena resumed. ‘Imagine a group of young abducted girls, holed up in a house, murky as a dungeon, forced into prostitution at knife-edge. I don't know why I submitted myself to all that ignominy … But each time I let a customer take me, I felt as though I'd thrown a bone to a dog.'

‘Then wasn't I also a dog when I came to take you at the Bridge?' Gautam asked.

‘No,
no
,' she responded, repeating the word emphatically. ‘You never touched me … you were a perfect gentleman.'

‘I don't know.'

‘But I am still baffled how someone like you could lend himself to such a situation.'

‘It was Berry's idea,' Gautam said, ‘to let me have some fun after my divorce … At first, I almost hated myself …' He paused. ‘But now I think how fortunate I was to meet you …'

‘Mysterious are the ways of Allah,' she said.

Both of them now lapsed into a long spell of silence as if they were listening to the train, hypnotized by its own thud-thudding, which had acquired a sort of musical notation—two accentuated notes followed by a pause. Outside the window, the trees on either side of the track looked like tall guardsmen in the pale moonlight.

Suddenly, the train screeched to a halt. As Gautam peeped out, he noticed that it was just a small wayside station with hardly any passengers visible on the platform.

A knock at the door.

‘Who is it?' Gautam rose to answer.

‘The attendant, sir,' a voice replied. ‘Some coffee?'

‘What station is this?' Gautam asked, opening the door to see a middle-aged man in khaki shorts and shirt.

‘Besa, sir.'

Gautam looked at his watch; it was a quarter past twelve.

‘Coffee?' Gautam turned to Haseena.

‘This is hardly the time for it.'

‘Then, let's wait till morning—for breakfast,' said Gautam.

‘I can take the order for it right now, sir,' the man said. Then writing on his coupon, he asked: ‘Two breakfasts?'

‘He seems to have taken us for a honeymoon couple,' Gautam whispered into Haseena's ear.

Her lips curled into a smile.

‘Breakfast will be served at Kanpur, sir, at seven,' said the attendant.

‘Fine,' said Gautam.

As the man shuffled away down the aisle, Gautam said: ‘Why don't you get some sleep, after that sprint? Tomorrow may be another hectic day.'

‘Yes, I guess.'

‘I'll take the upper berth,' Gautam said, looking up.

‘Are you sure you'll be comfortable up there?'

‘Sure,' he replied, rising from his seat.

Strange man, thought Haseena, so unlike anybody else.

In a few minutes, Gautam had gone deep into sleep. He dreamt that he'd strayed into a dark, narrow tunnel, over a rail track, winding like a python. He heard voices hissing all about his ears. As he kept trudging deeper into the tunnel, he lost all track of time. Was it day or night? And then as he heard a train clanging up from the rear, he stepped off the track, pressing himself against a wall, frightened out of his wits. He came to only after the train had whizzed past. He now lost all sense of direction—was he going north or south, east or west? A few moments later, another train sped past him, like an arrow shot through space. Again, he shrank back to the wall. This time the gritty surface of the wall scratched his back till blood came oozing from his shoulders. He then collapsed on the ground, and lay parallel to the track. But as another train shot through the tunnel, he recalled how, as a boy of six or seven, he used to place coins on the rail track to pick them up hot and flattened, after the train had gone by. He fumbled for some coins in his pocket, but it had many holes.

Then, suddenly, the tunnel was flooded with lights, hundreds of fluorescent bulbs glittering all around. As he gathered himself up, he saw, to his great amazement, that while the track had narrowed, the tunnel's belly had bulged, allowing him ample space to walk up and down. Then came jingling up the track, a toy train with seven bogies, each a different colour of the rainbow. It stopped at the spot where he now stood, dumbfounded. Out of the front bogie, some invisible hand held out a bunch of tuberoses, white and long-stemmed …

A knock at the door jolted Gautam out of his dream. As he climbed down to answer the door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he saw the attendant with a tray. Two breakfasts—and two roses.