Train to Delhi (7 page)

‘Religion never gets that far anyway,' said Berry. ‘But the prayer was certainly very moving, even for someone like me. These people, however, are quite professional, you know,' he continued. ‘They know how to spout such mouthfuls.'

‘Oh, you unbelieving thing!' Gautam said, nudging him. ‘You don't know what you're missing. How would your Hindu priest have done it? He would have just chanted a few Sanskrit mantras, asked you to sit cross-legged near the sacred fire, and thrown spoonfuls of ghee and camphor into the flames … These pundits are real ringmasters, you know, mumbling incomprehensibly all the time.'

‘Bravo!' Berry exclaimed. ‘Already gone overboard! You'll make a blooming fanatic Christian, surely.'

‘I don't know,' said Gautam. ‘But you can't deny that Jesus has been my real saviour.'

‘Here's then an occasion for celebration,' Berry said. ‘Even a hot cup of tea should do since the bars wouldn't serve whisky at this time … I wonder, though, what's wrong with drinking whisky at noon? Stupid conventions!'

‘I know if you had a pool of Scotch in your house, you'd be swimming about like a Chinese goldfish, from dawn to dusk, till you'd boozed it all off.'

‘What a thought! I wish I had the money to do it, really.'

As they stopped by a wayside tea-stall, further down Mahavir Street, an outburst of shouting hit their ears—‘Allah-ho-Akbar!' There appeared from the street's bend a large mob of Muslims armed with knives, swords, spears and sticks. The crowd was led by a young tough who was blaring away through a microphone: ‘Khoon ka badla khoon! Blood for blood!' The others joined in: ‘Kill the bloody kafirs! Castrate them! Rape their women!' It was all rounded off with a piercing yell: ‘Ya Ali, ya Mohammad!'

The tea vendor, a Hindu, at once pulled down his shutters and disappeared into the house behind his stall, leaving Gautam and Berry alone on the pavement. Before they could flee, a middle-aged man from the crowd had already spotted them.

‘There—catch those kafirs!' he bawled.

Instantly, three hoodlums, brandishing their knives and swords, closed in. The first, a moustached fellow, caught Gautam by the collar and nearly lifted him off the ground like a sack of rice, while the other two pounced upon Berry.

‘Spare us please—we're Christians!' Berry pleaded.

The moustached creature now dropped Gautam and turned to Berry.

‘We'll find out if you're lying.'

A fourth man who'd joined the others shouted: ‘Strip them!'

But before they could do anything, Berry called out to Gautam: ‘Show them the card, brother', then, looking at the assailants, he said, ‘or, you may ask Father Jones at St. John's, just across the street.'

‘All right,' said a bystander, holding a long spear in his left hand. ‘Let's see the card.'

At once Gautam pulled out his certificate of conversion and handed it to the moustached fellow, who appeared to be utterly illiterate. Turning it over in his hand, he looked blankly at the words.

‘Let's go—they're Christians all right,' he said.

The mob hustled onward, leaving Gautam and Berry dazed and unnerved. They knew that if they tried to bolt they'd again arouse suspicion. No, they should walk away casually into some bylane.

Suddenly a side-door on the pavement opened and a hand pulled Berry inside.

‘Ask your friend in too,' said the man, in a whisper.

‘But we're Christians,' Berry mumbled, his face losing colour.

‘Never mind,' came the prompt reply. ‘I've heard it all through my window. I'm only trying to help you both.'

‘Thank you, but …'

Berry's eyes fell on a wall calendar showing a massive-chested Swami Dayanand, a stump in one hand and the
Satyarath Prakash
in the other. ‘Ah, an Arya Samajist!' he said to himself, in a spurt of recognition.

At once Berry stepped out and pushed Gautam inside, who was looking about stupefied.

‘It's all right,' whispered Berry.

But Gautam too had seen the calendar.

‘Is your friend really a Christian?' the man asked Berry.

‘Well, sort of …'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That's a long story,' said Berry.

‘Oh, you don't want to tell me. But then neither of you looks Christian. It's just my instinct!' the man said, with a sparkle of omniscience in his eyes. He then turned to Berry. ‘And is he your brother?'

‘A friend. And I'm a Hindu—sort of.'

‘Quite amusing,' the man said. ‘Two sorts!' After a brief pause, somewhat puzzled, he asked, ‘Your names, please?'

‘I'm Birender Dhawan,' Berry replied, ‘and he's Gautam Mehta.'

‘That has cleared up a lot of mystery.' The man smiled.

‘Has it?' Berry would have laughed out but for the gruesomeness of the situation.

‘Well, I'm Gopinath Trivedi and, since we're just a few Hindu families around here, I always put up a large green flag with a crescent, whenever a Muslim mob passes by.'

‘Very ingenious,' said Gautam, who had so far kept silent.

Gopinath felt somewhat exposed before these young men. Was he, after all, any different from them? But in these turbulent times, announcing one's identity on any occasion could be sheer foolhardiness. Perhaps, he thought, even Swami Dayanand would have condoned such a subterfuge.

Gopinath now ushered them into his drawing room. ‘You may have to wait here awhile,' he said, ‘The mob is still prowling about. They're out to avenge the killing, a few days ago, of an old Muslim, near St. John's.'

‘Yes, I know,' Gautam said.

‘Heard about it?'

‘I was there when it happened.'

‘Do you live around here?'

‘No, I live,' then suddenly Gautam realized that he should have said
he used to live until a few days ago,
‘in Darya Ganj, down Geeta Street.'

Gopinath's face brightened up.

‘Interesting,' he said. ‘I have a cousin who lives out there—Padamnath Trivedi.'

‘Of course, I know him very well,' said Gautam. ‘He's my neighbour.'

‘Is he? God help you,' he said. ‘Well, I'm a little scared of him—he's too meddlesome.'

‘Then you should know him better,' Gautam said, thinking it unwise to speak out about this scandalmonger.

Since Gautam didn't hear any other voice in the house, he wondered if this man lived alone, like his cousin. But he certainly sounded quite different, so gracious and helpful.

There was a brief silence. While Berry and Gautam sat near the window, Gopinath took a seat in a corner, under the mantelpiece. Suddenly, there was another outburst of yelling in the street. As Berry drew aside the curtain, he exclaimed: ‘Oh God!' and looked away. Then Gautam and Gopinath also peered through, only to look stunned.

An old shaggy cow, that was muzzling into a heap of garbage for something to chew, had been hemmed in by a few Muslims.

‘The kafir cow!' one of them shouted, and hurled his spear at the animal.

The weapon pierced through its emaciated belly, letting out a jet of deep, red blood. It was amazing to see how even this skeletal animal had hoarded up so much blood. The cow bellowed out in pain, almost a heart-rending human cry, then slumped to the ground, bashing its head against a lamp post.

The others now swooped down upon it with knives and spears, tearing apart its body, limb by limb. On their faces, glowing with demoniac rage in the blazing summer sun, was the lust for blood—the blood of even a ‘Hindu cow'. As the animal lay still in its pool of blood, a vulture flapped down from a nearby tree and began to tear apart its intestines.

The sight nauseated Gautam so much that he nearly threw up.

‘What satanic butchery!' he said. ‘Strange, how even the animals have been branded Hindu.'

‘Is it the aggrieved heart of a Hindu?' asked Gopinath.

‘No,' replied Gautam. ‘It has nothing to do with my being a Hindu or a Christian. The sight of any killing, of man or animal, sickens me.'

‘Even the killing of a pig?'

‘Of course.'

‘Are you sure?' Gopinath asked, smiling.

Gautam was too deeply agitated to let this man turn on his banter amidst such a grim spectacle. He stood up and asked Berry: ‘Shouldn't we be moving on?'

‘It seems the cow has done it for you,' Gopinath pressed on. ‘But you know you can't leave—the coast is not yet clear.'

‘It looks all right now,' Gautam said, looking through the curtain. ‘Only a few stragglers out there—all unarmed, I guess. The fury has spent itself out.' Then rising, he said to Berry, ‘Come, let's go.'

But Gopinath, who was now afraid of remaining alone in the house, again tried to dissuade them: ‘I think it's only a lull before the next storm,' he said. ‘It may erupt any time.'

‘Not so soon,' said Berry. ‘Both parties will need a little time for the next round. So this is the moment to sneak out.'

But hardly had they moved to the front door when they heard a poignant cry—a woman's. Rushing back to the window, they looked through the curtains again and saw a few assaulters pulling away at a young woman's sari, while a man in dhoti and kurta stood close by with folded hands, beseeching them to let her go. Suddenly, one of the ruffians turned around to kick him in the stomach.

‘How stupidly mistaken I was to take those stragglers for innocuous pedestrians,' said Gautam.

Dumbfounded, they all kept peering through the curtains, witnessing the gruesome spectacle near the rear end of the tea-stall, just a few feet away.

‘A real catch!' said the tallest of the assaulters, who seemed to be their leader.

‘Let's carry her away,' said another.

The man in dhoti drew near, and cried out: ‘Spare her, please—she's my sister.'

‘Good for her,' grinned the leader. ‘We'll let you have her first so that she knows the difference between a grass-eater and a beef-eater.

The words lanced through Gautam's heart. ‘What wanton lechery!' he muttered.

‘Oh please, be merciful,' the woman's brother again implored. ‘We were on our way to see our sick mother.'

‘Then we'll have your mother too. We'll ravish the whole lot of you—bloody grass-eaters!'

The man now began to tear away at the woman's sari, which came off, then the petticoat, the blouse, the bra, till she stood totally stripped, trying in vain to cover up her breasts with her hands.

As her brother again struggled to intervene, a hefty fellow whipped out his knife and stabbed him in the back. Then he threatened to plunge it into his heart.

‘Don't kill my brother, please,' the woman entreated, her lips trembling. ‘Oh Lord, save my brother!' she shrieked.

But the cry whizzed idly past their ears. The leader had already pushed her against the wall, and was now pulling at her breasts.

‘All right, let her brother live,' he suddenly told the hefty creature who had threatened to kill him. ‘Maybe, she'll then cooperate,' he laughed. ‘Isn't that a deal, honey?'

‘Kill me instead!' the woman sobbed.

‘That wouldn't help, my love. We've so much to do. Where can I find such taut breats, such fragile lips?'

With a lascivious sparkle in his eyes, his mouth went for her breasts.

Gautam could take it no longer. Blood shot into his eyes, and his temples began to throb.

‘Can't we do something, Berry? Must we stand here impotently?'

‘It isn't that we are impotent, Gautam—this just isn't our moment. It would be certain death if we tried to save them now. It's very agonizing, I know, but …'

‘He's right,' said Gopinath.

‘So we just sit here and watch the show?' Gautam asked, his entire body shaking like a leaf.

‘Let's move away from the window,' said Berry.

For the first time Berry realized that such a public exposure of nudity could kill all sexual urge in a man. Ordinarily, he would have felt aroused to see a young woman stripped. But now he felt as though he'd himself been abused and humiliated.

What distressed Berry most was his utter helplessness. He had always been proud of his physique. If the assaulters had been unarmed, he would have certainly charged into them like a wild bull. He'd have wrenched the neck of their leader, even if subsequently he would have been overpowered by the others.

Suddenly, the sound of a shrill siren hit their ears.

‘It's the police van,' Berry shouted excitedly, as he opened the window. ‘Thank God, they've arrived—at least once, at the right moment.'

At the sight of the police, the entire gang bolted from the scene, carrying away the woman's clothes. Seizing a large tablecloth from the dining room Berry rushed out.

‘Wrap yourself in this, please,' Berry said to the woman, giving her the tablecloth. Then he hurried forward, signalling the van to stop. A swarthy young officer jumped off, and almost grunted.

‘What's it, man?'

‘A bunch of Muslim goons tried to rape a Hindu woman,' Berry said, breathlessly.

‘Where are they?' the officer asked, rather nonchalantly.

‘They've vanished into some bylane.'

‘And what were you doing all this time? Watching the fun?' the officer taunted.

‘They were armed,' Gautam intervented, walking up to the van.

‘And are you both eunuchs? Couldn't you have picked up something—a stick or a crowbar? Always waiting for the police to come to your rescue.'

Although there was some truth in the officer's barb, his cockiness stung Gautam. As he looked closely at his face, he noticed a white patch of leucoderma on his left cheek, and a deep cut on his chin. He wondered if the officer's ugliness was responsible for his uppishness.

‘And what are the police officers supposed to do?' Gautam flashed out. ‘Go careering about in their vans?'