This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (30 page)

Masterji and Hari were sleeping on a large charpoy while Tara lay alone on a smaller one. Usha, who did not want to share a bed, was sleeping on the floor on a chatai. Munni slept on a length of dhurrie on another charpoy. At 11 o’clock Bhagwanti was still downstairs finishing off one last chore.

‘Oh, what’s that?’ Masterji shrieked in a frightened voice. Puri raised his head from his work. He saw that some flaming object had fallen near Masterji’s
charpoy. It stank of oil and resin. Puri went up to it and saw that the flames came from a rag tied to a bamboo stick fashioned into an arrow.

‘Tara! Bring some water!’ Puri called.

‘What?’ Tara asked with a start, and went down immediately to bring water. Puri picked up the flaming rag by the other end of the stick, and carried it away from the beds, to near the latrine and doused it with bricks pulled from the latrine wall. Then he went and called out to Ratan.

Puri and Ratan decided that an arrow, with the rag on its head, had been shot from a bow. Puri turned the lamp off, ‘Maybe some one saw this light and shot the arrow to start a fire.’

‘Look! Look at that!’ Tara yelled. Another arrow with a flaming head was soaring into the eastern sky.

Puri and Ratan called out to other houses of the gali that they should be on guard and keep buckets of water on their rooftops. Some people living near the Mochi Gate were shooting arrows with burning rags tied to them, they said.

Tara corrected them, ‘That arrow had been shot towards the Mochi Gate.’

‘Om! Om!’ Being woken so abruptly shook Masterji. His heart was still racing. He was uttering prayers to calm himself, ‘Om! Om tatsat! You are our Saviour! You are our Protector!’

‘What happened? What’s the trouble?’ Dewanchand, Prabhu Dayal, Tikaram and Khushal Singh began calling from their rooftops.

Govindram, Meladei and Bhagwanti had come up to see the flaming arrow. Everyone gathered on the roof now was scared that another arrow might land at any moment. Puri said, ‘This is their revenge for exploding a bomb at the holy hour of namaz.’ Meladei said, ‘May these heartless murderers go to hell, those who throw bombs at people praying to God. It’s not them, but helpless folk like us, who suffer the consequences. God will punish those who set fire to other people’s houses.’

Bhagwanti asked, ‘What have we done to anyone that they’re setting our homes on fire?’

‘How will the person know where his arrow will land?’ Ratan replied by way of calming her.

‘Yes,’ Tara muttered. ‘They just want to burn somebody’s house. Anybody’s house.’

Mewa Ram came over from two rooftops away by climbing over the low dividing walls. He too tried to calm the others, ‘Bhai, anything can happen in battle, in times of war.’

‘This is something no human being would do,’ said Govindram.

They heard shouts of ‘Hai! Hai! Ho! Ho!’ and screams coming from the north-east. Then smoke poured out from where the shouts had been heard. Some house had apparently caught fire. Everyone gathered on the rooftops turned their heads in that direction.

The sound of a fire engine alarm came from the direction of Rang Mahal.

Govindram and Meladei turned towards the staircase. Bhagwanti said to her family, ‘All of you come down too. Anyone can try to set this house on fire again. God saved us all this time.’

‘If anybody tries it, we’ll handle things. We can look after ourselves,’ Puri replied.

‘Girls, you go down.’

‘Why? Can’t we look after ourselves?’ Tara asked.

‘Just listen to her…’ said Bhagwanti.

Meladei had begun to go downstairs. She turned back and said, ‘Of course, you can look out for yourselves. But you girls are handicapped with your dupattas and shalwars.’

‘What difference would it make even if I died?’ Tara remained sitting on her charpoy.

‘You will put a jinx. Keep quiet and don’t bring bad luck,’ Bhagwanti scolded her.

‘Is just talking so bad, when Fate is playing such dirty tricks?’ Tara said, with a sideways glance.

‘Go downstairs if Ma tells you to,’ her brother said.

‘I can’t sleep as it is. Why should I suffer in that heat downstairs?’ Tara’s tone showed that she wouldn’t budge.

‘Let her stay here then,’ Puri intervened. ‘Besides, someone must keep watch on the rooftop.’

Mewa Ram had returned to his roof. He called out, ‘Look there, up that way. Towards Pari Mahal.’

Smoke was billowing up in that direction, and screams and cries could be heard.

‘Yaar Ratan, listen!’ Bir Singh said from his rooftop across the gali, trying to keep his voice low, ‘Can’t we shoot back an arrow with a
dabba
tied to it? That would be some fun.’

‘Shut up, you moron!’ Ratan rebuked him. He looked at Puri, ‘A stupid person’s friendship is always a headache.’

‘What’s a dabba?’ Tara wanted to know.

‘A home-made bomb!’ Puri replied with disgust, and said to Bir Singh, ‘What if someone else fired an even bigger dabba at you?’

Ratan asked Puri, ‘Do you want me to sleep on the roof?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Puri replied. ‘I’ll call you if there’s any need.’

Masterji, the doctor, Tikaram, Khushal Singh and Govindram quickly reached a decision that two men, one at the right and another at the left end of the gali, would stand watch in two-hour shifts until the morning. In the surrounding galis, a lot of hubbub and shouting was still to be heard.

Puri pushed Masterji’s charpoy under the awning of the barsati, and lay down on another charpoy in the open. Tara and Usha too lay in the open, wrapped in their dupattas. There was no sleep for Tara. She looked at the twinkling stars in the night sky through the gossamer covering of her dupatta. She could still hear people screaming and calling out loudly from the direction of Delhi Gate, Peepul Behera and Pari Mahal. The sound of the neighbours’ voices from their rooftops showed that they too were unable to sleep because of their fears.

Tara could not put Bir Singh’s threat of shooting an arrow with a dabba tied to it out of her mind. ‘Why do they want to kill poor, innocent Muslims?’ She reflected that Ratan and his cronies had already thrown a bomb into a Muslim gali, and someone had set one off at the time of the Muslim prayers, and still they didn’t have enough. Why do they consider all Muslims to be evil-minded and wicked? Behind closed eyes she saw images of several Muslims, of rais, and the khaki-clad tongawallahs who called out to warn others as they rode through crowded bazaars: ‘Watch out, lady, may your children live long! Make way, daughter! Good sister, hey mother, look out!’ And those working for communal harmony, Asad, Zubeida, Manzoor, Zuber … Asad …Asad. ‘My brother agreed to go to Surendra’s tomorrow, but now there’s this curfew. My movement is restricted by it; he can go whenever he wants. A man can sleep in the open; it’s the woman who must cover herself. There’s either a taboo or a restriction on everything that a woman wants to do.’

The curfew imposed at 4.30 in the afternoon of 11 May was lifted at 5 o’clock in the morning of 14 May. The city people were most inconvenienced by the absence of
mehtar
s, the cleaners that removed the night soil from the rooftop latrines. The gali floor was covered with droppings from the buffaloes of Dewanchand and Ghasita Ram. The newspapers delivered on Monday morning were full of reports of bloody riots and cases of widespread arson throughout the city on the previous afternoon. Hari, Ratan, Bir Singh and Puri had gone out and verified that contingents of armed police were stationed in bazaars, at the intersections and near the entrances to galis. Policemen were sitting on charpoys in a temporary camp in the Rang Mahal square. Puri had even been to Uchchi Gali to inquire after his uncle’s family.

Masterji did not go to his job after the lifting of the curfew on Monday, nor were Usha and Hari allowed to go to school. Since his worrying over the unrest in the city was not going to bring any change in the situation, Masterji was discussing his other constant worry with the children’s mother—the expenses of the forthcoming wedding. His application for the loan of one thousand rupees from his provident fund had been approved, and he was to receive the money in the first week of June. The first gift they wanted to buy for Tara was the customary brass bucket with a lid and a variety of kitchen utensils inside it. Tara could hear them, but she was not paying attention to what they were saying. She was thinking that perhaps the curfew had been lifted in the Gwal Mandi area. That Asad might have gone to Surendra’s. That she’d have to find another occasion to meet Asad.

Puri was unable to concentrate on his work. At 11 o’clock he made another hour-long sortie to assess the situation. Tara, to be away from the others in the house, was again sitting on the chatai in the veranda with an open book. Puri sat down next to her with his back against the wall, and asked, ‘What are you studying?’

‘I’m going over the period of Aurangzeb’s reign.’

‘I’ve rewritten that part for the textbook. I just walked to the Gwal Mandi intersection. It seemed peaceful, but you can feel a certain tension. Didn’t see any women on the street, except one or two in motorcars. It’s not safe yet for you to go out—maybe tomorrow.’

Tara agreed, and thought, she’ll have to think it out all over again. She was so decided about the twelfth that she had not done her daily laundry
on the eleventh, and had prepared two suits of clothes instead of one for the twelfth.

Puri went out again on Tuesday afternoon to check the streets and the bazaars, and on return told Tara quietly, ‘We’ll leave after four.’

He hired a tonga outside the Shahalami Gate, something he had never done before for the journey to Gwal Mandi and Amritdhara. He halted the tonga outside Shaduram’s Gali, and said to Tara in English, ‘You go and meet Kanak first. Don’t be too long. If you see Panditji, don’t tell him that I’m waiting outside. I don’t want to meet him. If Kanak asks you to stay, tell her that I’m waiting for you.’

Tara knew what he meant, nodded her head, and walked into the gali.

Puri had gone over his plan minutely. Why wouldn’t Kanak come out, once she knew he was waiting outside? If she didn’t, that would be the end of it all. He was sure that when Tara returned, Kanak would be with her. Surendra’s house was only a short distance away, he thought, Tara could walk to her place. He’d ask Kanak to accompany him. Let Girdharilal try and stop her! He was dying to interrogate her, in the severest way, for an explanation of the insult meted out to him. He could already see in his imagination the tears rolling down Kanak’s face.

Puri got a rude shock. Tara returned alone from the gali. He was too thunderstruck to ask her anything. She sat next to him in the tonga and said, ‘What a strange family! There was no one in the living room, so I went into the aangan. Kanak’s mother said that Kanak had gone to her sister Kanta’s house in Model Town. She telephoned her father in the morning to say that she’d be back home by five o’clock. Her mother doesn’t know me, but she still said, “
Balli
, dear, do sit down. Kanak will be back soon. Have something to drink.” I said that I’d come again, that my brother was waiting for me outside. As I was going out, Kanchan came down the stairs. She knows me well, but she just said “namaste” as if I was a stranger, and asked whom I had come to see.

‘When I told her that I wanted to meet Kanak, she said that her sister was out, and that she didn’t know when she’d be back. What strange behaviour!’

Kanak’s absence had put Tara in a difficult situation. She thought, ‘What if my brother stays with me everywhere I go?’ That would be another day lost. How long would she be able to tempt fate? Her mind went blank.

Puri had hired the tonga for a set period, therefore the tongawallah was driving along at a leisurely pace towards Amritdhara. Puri, his eyes closed, was deep in thought. He had made up his mind by the time the tonga reached Jeeva Gali. He asked the driver to stop, and said to Tara, ‘You go ahead to Surendra’s; I’ve nothing to say to her. I’ll come along after a while to pick you up.’

Tara let out a sigh of relief. ‘Achcha,’ she said, and walked quickly into the gali.

Puri looked at his wristwatch. It was close to 5 o’clock. He did not want to miss seeing Kanak that day, even if that meant speaking to her in the middle of the street. Kanak’s mother had told Tara about her daughter returning around 5 o’clock from Model Town.

On his way back after letting Tara off, Puri did not see Kanta’s car parked outside Shaduram’s Gali. The road from Kanta’s house in Model Town passed through Chauburzi. He’d watch for all the cars, he thought, coming towards Gwal Mandi from Chauburzi through Nisbet Road and Ferozepur Road. He would try to spot Kanta’s tan-coloured car. On seeing him, Kanak would ask the car to be stopped. Or, he himself would signal for the car to stop. He did not care what anyone might think; his reputation had already been blackened.

He asked the tonga driver to go towards Chauburzi, and peered into every vehicle, particularly the automobiles, that passed by. He did not see Kanta’s car, or Kanak. The car could have gone to Gwal Mandi via Anarkali, he realized, or even along the road that went by Bahawalpur Jail. In desperation he asked the tonga to turn around. He let the tonga go in the Gwal Mandi square, but did not give up on his resolve to meet Kanak and ask her for an explanation.

It was a few minutes to 6 o’clock. If Kanak was not back yet, he thought, she should arrive within the next half-hour. Why not ask Tara to go to her house again? Kanak’s mother had invited her back. Let’s try once more, whatever the result. As he went towards Kanak’s house, Puri saw Kanta’s car parked outside the gali. He began to walk briskly towards Jeeva Gali. He wouldn’t go up, he decided, but would call from the gali and ask Tara to come down quickly.

After he had called Narendra Singh’s name at the house twice from the gali, Surendra’s ten-year old sister Mahendra looked out of the window and said, ‘Bhaiji’s not home.’

Puri said, ‘Munni, my sister Tara has come to meet Surendra. Ask her to come down quickly. Tell her that her brother is waiting in the gali.’

Mahendra pulled back from the window. After a few moments, Surendra’s mother looked out and said, ‘Surendra and Tara are out. Maybe they’ve gone to the party office to look for Narendra.’