Train to Pakistan (23 page)

‘I see,’ said Iqbal, ignoring Meet Singh’s question. ‘I see the trick now. That is why the police released Malli. Now I suppose Jugga will join them, too. It is all arranged.’ He stretched himself on the mattress and tucked the pillow under his armpit. ‘Bhaiji, can’t you stop it? They all listen to you.’

Meet Singh patted and smoothed the air mattress and sat down on the floor.

‘Who listens to an old bhai? These are bad times, Iqbal
Singhji, very bad times. There is no faith or religion. All one can do is to crouch in a safe corner till the storm blows over. This would not do for a newly married couple,’ he added, slapping the mattress affectionately.

Iqbal was agitated. ‘You cannot let this sort of thing happen! Can’t you tell them that the people on the train are the very same people they were addressing as uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters?’

Meet Singh sighed. He wiped a tear with the scarf on his shoulder.

‘What difference will my telling them make? They know what they are doing. They will kill. If it is a success, they will come to the gurdwara for thanksgiving. They will also make offerings to wash away their sins. Iqbal Singhji, tell me about yourself. Have you been well? Did they treat you properly at the police station?’

‘Yes, yes, I was all right,’ snapped Iqbal impatiently. ‘Why don’t you do something? You must!’

‘I have done all I could. My duty is to tell people what is right and what is not. If they insist on doing evil, I ask God to forgive them. I can only pray; the rest is for the police and the magistrate. And for you.’

‘Me? Why me?’ asked Iqbal with a startled innocence. ‘What have I to do with it? I do not know these people. Why should they listen to a stranger?’

‘When you came you were going to speak to them about something. Why don’t you tell them now?’

Iqbal felt concerned. ‘Bhaiji, when people go about with guns and spears you can only talk back with guns and spears. If you cannot do that, then it is best to keep out of their way.’

‘That is exactly what I say. I thought you with your European ideas had some other remedy. Let me get you some hot spinach. I have just cooked it,’ added Meet Singh getting up.

‘No, no, Bhaiji, I have all I want in my tins. If I want something I will ask you for it. I have a little work to do before I eat.’

Meet Singh put the hurricane lantern on a stool by the bed and went back to the hall.

Iqbal put his plates, knife, fork, and tins back into the haversack. He felt a little feverish, the sort of feverishness one feels when one is about to make a declaration of love. It was time for a declaration of something. Only he was not sure what it should be.

Should he go out, face the mob and tell them in clear ringing tones that this was wrong—immoral? Walk right up to them with his eyes fixing the armed crowd in a frame—without flinching, without turning, like the heroes on the screen who become bigger and bigger as they walk right into the camera. Then with dignity fall under a volley of blows, or preferably a volley of rifleshots. A cold thrill went down Iqbal’s spine.

There would be no one to see this supreme act of sacrifice. They would kill him just as they would kill the others. He was not neutral in their eyes. They would just strip him and see. Circumcised, therefore Muslim. It would be an utter waste of life! And what would it gain? A few subhuman species were going to slaughter some of their own kind—a mild setback to the annual increase of four million. It was not as if you were going to save good people from bad. If the others had the chance, they would do as much. In fact they were doing so, just a little beyond the river. It was pointless. In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty.

Iqbal unscrewed the top of his hip flask and poured out a large whisky in a celluloid tumbler. He gulped it down neat.

When bullets fly about, what is the point of sticking out your head and getting shot? The bullet is neutral. It hits the
good and the bad, the important and the insignificant, without distinction. If there were people to see the act of self-immolation, as on a cinema screen, the sacrifice might be worth while: a moral lesson might be conveyed. If all that was likely to happen was that next morning your corpse would be found among thousands of others, looking just like them—cropped hair, shaven chin … even circumcised—who would know that you were not a Muslim victim of a massacre? Who would know that you were a Sikh who, with full knowledge of the consequences, had walked into the face of a firing squad to prove that it was important that good should triumph over evil? And God—no, not God; He was irrelevant.

Iqbal poured another whisky. It seemed to sharpen his mind.

The point of sacrifice, he thought, is the purpose. For the purpose, it is not enough that a thing is intrinsically good: it must be known to be good. It is not enough only to know within one’s self that one is in the right: the satisfaction would be posthumous. This was not the same thing as taking punishment at school to save some friend. In that case you could feel good and live to enjoy the sacrifice; in this one you were going to be killed. It would do no good to society: society would never know. Nor to yourself: you would be dead. That figure on the screen, facing thousands of people who looked tense and concerned! They were ready to receive the lesson. That was the crux of the whole thing. The doer must do only when the receiver is ready to receive. Otherwise, the act is wasted.

He filled the glass again. Everything was becoming clearer.

If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy—to wipe the slate clean—then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the conflagration, not to turn a moral hose-pipe on them—to create such a mighty chaos that all that
is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In blood, if necessary.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed. Take philosophy, about which there is so much hoo-ha. It is just muddle-headedness masquerading as mysticism. And Yoga, particularly Yoga, that excellent earner of dollars! Stand on your head. Sit cross-legged and tickle your navel with your nose. Have perfect control over the senses. Make women come till they cry ‘Enough!’ and you can say ‘Next, please’ without opening your eyes. And all the mumbo-jumbo of reincarnation. Man into ox into ape into beetle into eight million four hundred thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith. Thought, which should be the sine qua non of a philosophical code, is dispensed with. We climb to sublime heights on the wings of fancy. We do the rope trick in all spheres of creative life. As long as the world credulously believes in our capacity to make a rope rise skyward and a little boy climb it till he is out of view, so long will our brand of humbug thrive.

Take art and music. Why has contemporary Indian painting, music, architecture and sculpture been such a flop? Because it keeps harking back to BC. Harking back would be all right if it did not become a pattern—a deadweight. If it does, then we are in a cul-de-sac of art forms. We explain the unattractive by pretending it is esoteric. Or we break out altogether—like
modern Indian music of the films. It is all tango and rhumba or samba played on Hawaiian guitars, violins, accordions and clarinets. It is ugly. It must be scrapped like the rest.

He wasn’t quite sure what he meant. He poured another whisky.

Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good. It is no use trying to build a second storey on a house whose walls are rotten. It is best to demolish it. It is both cowardly and foolhardy to kowtow to social standards when one believes neither in the society nor in its standards. Their courage is your cowardice, their cowardice your courage. It is all a matter of nomenclature. One could say it needs courage to be a coward. A conundrum, but a quotable one. Make a note of it.

And have another whisky. The whisky was like water. It had no taste. Iqbal shook the flask. He heard a faint splashing. It wasn’t empty. Thank God, it wasn’t empty.

If you look at things as they are, he told himself, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one’s conduct. Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater. What happens ultimately, you do not know. In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters. Nothing whatever …

Iqbal fell asleep, with the celluloid glass in his hand and the lamp burning on the stool beside him.

In the courtyard of the gurdwara, the fires on the hearths had burned to ashes. A gust of wind occasionally fanned a glowing ember. Lamps had been dimmed. Men, women and children lay sprawled about on the floor of the main room. Meet Singh was awake. He was sweeping the floor and tidying up the mess.

Somebody started banging at the door with his fists. Meet
Singh stopped sweeping and went across the courtyard muttering, ‘Who is it?’

He undid the latch. Jugga stepped inside. In the dark he looked larger than ever. His figure filled the doorway.

‘Why, Juggut Singhji, what business have you here at this hour?’ asked Meet Singh.

‘Bhai,’ he whispered, ‘I want the Guru’s word. Will you read me a verse?’

‘I have laid the Granth Sahib to rest for the night,’ Meet Singh said. ‘What is it that you want to do?’

‘It does not matter about that,’ said Jugga impatiently. He put a heavy hand on Meet Singh’s shoulder. ‘Will you just read me a few lines quickly?’

Meet Singh led the way, grumbling. ‘You never came to the gurdwara any other time. Now when the scripture is resting and people are asleep, you want me to read the Guru’s word. It is not proper. I will read you a piece from the Morning Prayer.’

‘It does not matter what you read. Just read it.’

Meet Singh turned up the wick of one of the lanterns. Its sooty chimney became bright. He sat down beside the cot on which the scripture lay. Jugga picked up the fly whisk from beneath the cot and began waving it over Meet Singh’s head. Meet Singh got out a small prayer book, put it to his forehead and began to read the verse on the page which he happened to have opened to:

He who made the night and day,

The days of the week and seasons.

He who made the breezes blow, the waters run,

The fires and the lower regions.

Made the earth—the temple of law.

He who made creatures of diverse kinds

With a multitude of names,

Made this the law—

By thought and deed be judged forsooth,

For God is True and dispenseth Truth.

There the elect his court adorn,

And God Himself their actions honours.

There are sorted deeds that were done and bore fruit,

From those that to action could never ripen.

This, O Nanak, shall hereafter happen.

Meet Singh shut the prayer book and again put it to his forehead. He began to mumble the epilogue to the morning prayer:

Air, water and earth,

Of these are we made,

Air like the Guru’s word gives the breath of life

To the babe born of the great mother Earth

Sired by the waters.

His voice tapered off to an inaudible whisper. Juggut Singh put back the fly whisk and rubbed his forehead on the ground in front of the scripture.

‘Is that good?’ he asked naively.

‘All the Guru’s word is good,’ answered Meet Singh solemnly.

‘What does it mean?’

‘What have you to do with meaning? It is just the Guru’s word. If you are going to do something good, the Guru will help you; if you are going to do something bad, the Guru will stand in your way. If you persist in doing it, he will punish you till you repent, and then forgive you.’

‘Yes, what will I do with the meaning? All right, Bhaiji. Sat Sri Akal.’

‘Sat Sri Akal.’

Jugga rubbed his forehead on the ground again and got up. He threaded his way through the sleeping assembly and picked up his shoes. There was a light in one of the rooms. Jugga looked in. He recognized the head with tousled hair on the pillow. Iqbal was sleeping with the silver hip flask lying on his chest.

‘Sat Sri Akal, Babuji.’ he said softly. There was no reply. ‘Are you asleep?’

‘Do not disturb him,’ interrupted Meet Singh in a whisper. ‘He is not feeling well. He has been taking medicine to sleep.’

‘Achha, Bhaiji, you say Sat Sri Akal to him for me.’ Juggut Singh went out of the gurdwara.

‘No fool like an old fool.’ The sentence kept recurring in Hukum Chand’s mind. He tried to dismiss it, but it came back again and again: ‘No fool like an old fool.’ It was bad enough for a married man in his fifties to go picking up women. To get emotionally involved with a girl young enough to be his daughter and a Muslim prostitute at that! That was
too
ludicrous. He must be losing his grip on things. He was getting senile and stupid.

The feeling of elation which his plan had given him in the morning was gone. Instead there was one of anxiety, uncertainty and old age. He had released the badmash and the social worker without knowing much about them. They probably had no more nerve than he. Some of the leftist social workers were known to be a daring lot. This one, however, was an intellectual, the sort people contemptuously describe as the armchair variety. He would probably do nothing except criticize others for failing to do their duty. The badmash was a notorious daredevil. He had been in train robberies, car hold-ups, dacoities and murders. It was money he was after, or revenge. The only chance of his doing anything was to settle scores with Malli. If Malli had fled when he heard of Jugga’s arrival, Jugga would lose interest and
might even join the gang in killing and looting the victims of the ambush. His type never risked their necks for women. If Nooran was killed, he would pick up another girl.