rich if they saw me on a rickshaw. But I could not think of a safe place to spend the night at Phagwara, and I was hungry too. I bought half a dozen bananas and some peanuts for the walk back to Dosanjh and set off on the Banga road.
It was 10:30 PM . Phagwara was an industrial town, but not yet a big urban centre. In the roadside establishments, things were coming to a halt. The road lights stood as if fighting off the night. I was less successful in fighting off my fears. I ate some bananas as I walked, which helped assuage my anxiety. As I passed by the chungi where the police had stopped the farmer, in my mind’s eye I saw again the poor farmer’s son crying on the gudda . My eyes scanned every tree, caught every fleeting ray of light. The moon occasionally pierced through the canopy of branches overhead. The shadows wove a pantomime punctuated by the sounds and speed of traffic. A nightingale sang from the banyan trees.
After a while, I found myself in Mehli, at the turnoff to Mandhali, where the paved road ended. No canopy of trees here, and almost no traffic. In Mehli’s poor homes, divas were mounted in makeshift windows. Those better off had electric bulbs affixed to their plastered gates. The two kinds of homes sat next to each other, framing the chasm between wealth and poverty. On my left was the primary school where, during the monsoons, I had sometimes taken shelter from the pelting rain on my way to or from college. Silent and solitary, the school seemed to be calling to me for company, even for just a moment, in return for the comfort and reprieve it had offered me.
Even bricks and mortar can speak, I believe. To hear them, you need to let the voices enter your being. It had happened to me once before, at the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar, where Meeto Bhenji took me to have my wandering eyes corrected at the Medical College. My family knew an ophthalmology student, who arranged it; the surgery was done by visiting professors in private practice as part of the student’s practicum. (Only the surgery to my right eye was successful; the left one still wanders when I’m tired.) Walking through the narrow passage that served as both entry and exit from the Jallianwala Bagh, I imagined General Dyer ordering his riflemen to gun down the peaceful and unarmed protestors listening to speeches for the freedom of India in 1919 . Having just visited the Golden Temple and the Durgiana Mandir, both abodes of Indian spirituality, might have rendered me susceptible to the power of suggestion. The sound of gunfire, the screams of men, women and children, and the sight of General Dyer frothing at the mouth with hate and imperial arrogance vividly entered my soul that day.
Lost in these memories, I finally crossed the railway tracks that led on one side to Saila and on the other to Phagwara and beyond. A cyclist rode by, noticing me, and quickly stopped. “Who are you, and what are you doing here this late at night?” the rider asked. I told him who I was, giving my father’s name and village. The man was Comrade Harbans Singh of Mandhali, and he ordered me to hop behind him on his bike, promising to drop me within Dosanjh village limits, where I would be safe. He left me no more than a mile away from our khooh building.
All danger past, I began to dread explaining to Chachaji why I was this late at night. Why had I not waited overnight at Masiji’s place in Hoshiarpur, rather than taking such a big risk with so much money? Bhaji would have been smarter about it, I was sure.
Soon I was passing by the land on which we toiled. Gobs of cattle dung, with its distinct, fresh smell, lay on the road. Mixed and composted with household garbage of ash and greens, then allowed to mature for a few months in a heap at the khooh , the dung was a potent organic fertilizer. Whenever we needed manure, we dug some from the composted mound, piled it on a gudda and carried it to the field. From there, Chachaji or Bhaji filled up the tokras , wide-rimmed buckets made of cotton stems or tree branches that were lifted for carrying onto the spreaders’ heads. When we stopped for lunch and siesta on hot days, we would have to stand outside the chalha and use pots to pour water over our bodies to wash away the coats of manure.
Chachaji was still awake when I got home. I had once again disappointed him, and he got out of bed, filled with rage. He stood before me, and I felt his hand strike my cheek. It was not my cheek but my heart that was hurt. It was not until years later, when my own sons were in their teens, that I was able to understand the full anguish of a parent not knowing where a child might be.
10
I HAD LITTLE WINTER CLOTHING to speak of, so I packed one sweater, a couple of shirts and some shorts to take with me to London. And of course there was my rajaee , the cotton-filled quilt that travellers from the villages carried as a bundle tied with rope, belongings wrapped inside, to obviate the need for a suitcase.
On those last days in Dosanjh, I observed my surroundings with a sense of impending loss, storing away scenes of my family and the sights and sounds of village life. I had no camera, so my eyes were the aperture, my brain the recording device. The dust and beauty of my little world, including the faces of the men, women and children, began to feel special, since I would no longer be able to see them at will. I would miss friends like Bakhshish from Bahowal, Sardul, Hari and Gunga from Dosanjh, Jagtar and Bhushan from college. I had no photographs of them, so I tried to keep their images strong in my mind.
I took a quick visit to Bahowal to see Nanaji and family. Who knew when we next would meet? Air travel was very expensive. Punjabis who left for England returned rarely, and only after long periods away. I also went to Bakhshish’s home, only to learn he had enlisted in the army. A sadness came upon me, but soon other friends from school heard that I was visiting and showed up at Bakhshish’s house. Soon we were reminiscing about the rote sequential chanting of multiplication tables our teachers had forced us through, and our game of blindfolding a boy and then milling around him, chattering continuously, to see if he could follow the voices and footsteps and manage to touch one of us. Our talk also turned to a play we had once performed; I had played the newlywed wife, dressed in bright red clothes, and Bakhshish had played the husband who was going away to earn a living. The duet, which I still remember, was “ Kahnoo pavaaiyan kothian vay kahnoo Chhattia a Vehra ”: if her husband was planning to go away, the wife asks him, why did he have this big house and yard built?
On my way back to Dosanjh, I rode along the route that Nanaji and I had travelled by gudda twelve years earlier. In a culture where things had remained the same for thousands of years, this road had certainly been on the move. The spotless mud hut where Nanaji and I had enjoyed such memorable burfi , tea and milk was no longer there, and in its place stood a row of grimy brick shopfronts whose owners obviously lacked pride in their establishments. Inside the new tea and sweet shop, the walls were blackened with soot, and a single sooty electric bulb hung from the ceiling. But the chai was exquisite and the burfi delicious. The present had merged with the past.
It was getting dark as I entered the Dosanjh village limits. I tried to imagine what awaited me in England: the roads there were paved with gold and life was easy, people said. I knew that was a myth; yet I had no knowledge of my own to replace it. The darkness was a sanctuary for my ignorance. Bhaji had always been a fellow of few words, but that evening, in the room we shared, he and I talked late into the night.
The morning of December 28, 1964, brought mist and fog. As the sun burned through, I walked the five acres of land our extended peasant family jointly owned. Most of the hay had been ploughed and the ground prepared for sowing the next crop. By mid-February, the wheat would be lush green for miles across Punjab. The sugarcane would be ready for making shucker in a month or so. From the spot where our land ended, I could see the Saneen da Rauda of Mandhali, the site of the mela where qawwals from Pakistan used to sing. I was voluntarily leaving my motherland, and how painful it was! What must have gone through the minds of the millions who were forced to abandon their birthplaces and move hundreds of miles away after partition? Their lives lay in ruins.
My sister Nimmy, an irrepressible spirit, still lived in Dosanjh. Like my sister Tirath, she hadn’t been told of my departure — perhaps my father thought her too young, though she was considered
