Helium (4 page)
Soon afterwards our class was divided into two groups for factory visits. The first, led by Professor Acharya, travelled to the Mathura Refinery and the ONGC offshore oil rig in Bombay. This was a five-day affair. All the plain and good-looking girls in our class signed up for this trip. If I had not been sick I, too, would have done the exotic trip, and if I had been fortunate enough I would have held that particular good-looking girl’s hand. But 1984 was not a fortunate year. Special, not fortunate. Professor Acharya was a complete asshole, a postgraduate of Imperial College, London. I am glad I did not accompany him. His sick jokes repelled me, and so did his New Age fixation on Krishnamurti and other so-called gurus. The chairman accepted my request to join the second, relatively small, group instead. This one was led by Professor Singh, the two-day visit to factories up north. We left on 30 October.
Because I was unwell my father drove me to the station that day. He insisted on shaking hands with my teacher, and Nelly was there on the platform too. Although it was late autumn, her light cotton sari exuded the feel of summer. Her cleavage visible, if one paid attention. The train was to depart at seven in the morning. ‘Is your father an IPS?’ Professor Singh took me aside. I remember his soft voice. ‘He appears to be a terribly important man.’ Father’s uniform made it obvious that he was an elite Indian Police Service officer; however, civilians found it difficult to decode the meaning of the stars and ribbons and medals and other signs. While we were still floating on the platform, when my professor and my good father shook hands I felt strangely proud (and I didn’t bother about ‘what other students would say’). One of my hidden subconscious hopes got realised that day, a perfectly ordinary day like any other. Precisely at that moment I became aware of my ‘double bond’. Blood and friendship – now that I think about it. ‘Please take care of my son,’ my father requested Professor Singh. ‘He has just recovered from jaundice.’
The train was still at platform number one, the neon sign SECOND CLASS RETIRING ROOM flickered randomly. Where I stood I noticed tracks of birds permanently embedded in cement. Two silverish-hued pigeons were fluttering about completely oblivious to the human mass. The platform was definitely not a good site for a group shot because we were surrounded by a high concentration of men, waiting chaotically, elbowing women, ogling. Nelly volunteered to take the photo. We flocked together, all boys. Time was on our side then, most smiles filled with optimism, or rather entitlement. As I said before there were no female students in our group. On my laptop I have a scanned copy of that overexposed photo. Behind us the flickering neon sign. Professor Singh in the middle. One hand visible. His tie, black and narrow and angled, so unlike the symmetry of his turban. Nelly included Father in the photo, even though she could have kicked him out of the frame.
We urged her to join us in the second shot, but she looked baffled, and insisted on occupying the space behind the camera.
Several years later I wrote about the photo and the handshake and my stoic-faced father. I wrote about Nelly. No other images haunt me more. But for some reason memory fails me here, I have little recall of the onward train journey.
On 30 October we visited the pharmaceutical plant in Kasauli. (In colonial times the building served as a TB sanatorium.) On 31 October we visited the Mohan Meakin Brewery in the Solan Hills. (In colonial times it was called the Dyer–Meakin Brewery. Dyer was the father of General Dyer who ordered the Amritsar Massacre in 1919.) I still remember the enzymes, the smell of fermentation reactors and the hum of giant crushers, centrifuges and heat exchangers. Stage 3 washing with excess CO2 to remove harmful gases from the liquid, the Bengali quality-control officer (a ‘teetotaller’ and a Brahmin) who tasted the ‘thing’ after it ‘matured’. Because I was exactly six feet tall, Professor Singh made me stand next to the inebriated fermentation reactors and commanded the camera-wallah to take a shot. No one asked why. For we understood the implicit reasoning. The dimensions of my body (height in this case) a most convenient way to estimate the dimensions of the reaction vessel! ‘
Back home you will list the design variables and calculate the safety factors. How safe are the “safety factors”?’
Alcohol was pumped like water from a muddy brown river to the bottling zone of the plant. In my ears I still carry an echo of the strange music the pasteurised glass bottles produced on the conveyor belt. Fifty thousand bottles a day.
During our return journey Professor Singh told us about the writer Kipling, who supported General Dyer even after the massacre of innocent Indians. Kipling contributed twelve pounds to the mass murderer’s retirement fund, and called him ‘brave’. Professor Singh also spoke about Gandhi with some admiration. ‘
But,’
he said
, ‘Mahatma Gandhi was plain wrong about certain things. I cannot get used to the idea that he opposed the railways! Where would we be without the railways? There
– ’ I heard a scream. Someone discovered two rats in the bogie. Perhaps it was the sheer insane energy of youth that made me pick them up. Something was definitely strange about the rats, they had not yet started decomposing. Two rust-coloured bodies, freshly dead, hooked to my fingers, dangled in front of everyone.
Abe pagal ho gaya hai kya?
teased the chorus of voices. Another whisper:
Professor ki pagri main dal de, saleh!
Put them inside the professor’s turban, saleh!
The rats spun and wobbled when I dropped them out of the moving window. For a brief second I felt I was in my school biology lab about to begin dissections. Odour of formaldehyde. Smell of an anatomy experiment. I don’t recall now my exact state of mind when after a brief pause the professor regaled us with stories about his great-grandfather. When just fifteen, great-grandfather, a self-taught chemist, joined the Maharajah’s court. One day musicians came to the court claiming their music possessed the power to light up all the lamps in the palace. Demonstrate it, ordered the Maharajah. Lots of sitars were strummed and resonant ragas and raginis sung, but the lamps refused to ignite. The Maharajah, more embarrassed than the celebrity musicians, turned to the fifteen-year-old, who knew exactly what to do. In his spare time the kid, the boy, had taught himself the sciences. He dissolved white phosphorus in carbon disulphide and refilled the lamps with this magical ‘oil’. The enchanted musicians kept playing their ragas and the royal audience kept swooning (and murmuring). Soon carbon disulphide evaporated in the lamps and the phosphorus caught fire. In a flash the wicks lit up high with a strange glow to dazzle everyone. There was a loud cheer in the court. And a stunned silence in the train. I don’t know when exactly one of us (pretending to be drunk) came up with the bright idea to transform ‘bad odours’ into fragrance. (The toilet in our bogie lacked a door, and there was an ensemble of houseflies on human vomit. Someone said a new bride had been throwing up.) Professor Singh very playfully massaged the student’s idea and they discussed the experimental procedure . . . He had a smile. To this day I cannot forget his sardonic smile. As engineers you are expected to be ‘ingenious’, he said seriously. In our country we end up becoming ‘one-dimensional’ and ‘obedient’. We must learn to pose the right questions, and question what is considered right. Soon some of you might get involved with the three most important questions. What are they? The origin of the universe. The origin of life. The origin of mind.
Several times I have tried to recall the train journey. Every attempt a failure. Every attempt a mere fucking iteration (if I am still allowed to use that word). I recall most of us disappointed (and terribly thirsty) because the managers at the brewery had refused to gift us bottles of Mohan Meakin. ‘Company policy.’ This detail is perhaps the most insignificant from that journey.
The catering-wallah passed by and we ordered twenty-one lunches, eight veg and thirteen non-veg, dal and chawal and dahi and oily parathas with achar. Non-veg thalis had fish curry or mutton with gravy. I ordered fish and this detail for some reason is stuck. The fish is stuck inside me. Some chutiya mentioned surrogate mothers and then a bad joke, ‘Do female mannequins have pubic hair?’ and Professor Singh stared at our silliness and there was a stunned silence. Then someone suggested antakshari and we sang old film songs and Michael Jackson and Prince, and even David Bowie, until someone turned on the radio, first All India Radio, and immediately afterwards the short-wave BBC Radio, which confirmed that Mrs Gandhi had been assassinated by her own bodyguards.
Good, the bitch is dead, a class fellow said, and Professor Singh stood up and raised his voice. ‘You should not talk like this. So many bullets have been emptied into the poor woman, no one deserves to die like that. To disagree with someone doesn’t mean you assassinate them.’
The slow-moving train got more and more delayed, and perhaps it was one of the most difficult nights for the entire country. The delay was a tense six-hours.
Early in the morning we saw people defecating by the railways tracks, Subzi Mandi passed by, and then New Delhi station. Even before it came to a complete halt we saw traces of violence on the platform, but there were cops stationed there, and because the cops were armed with guns and lathis we thought the situation was under control. We spontaneously formed a circle around Professor Singh (for he was the only Sikh in our group) and stepped out of the bogie. I wish my father had been there to receive us, then there would have been no need to worry, but in those days cellphones didn’t exist. Suddenly an angry mob, armed with the most elementary weapons (metal rods and rubber tyres), crossed the railway line and climbed up the platform. ‘
Khoon ka badla khoon say. Give us that traitor sardar
.’ We started to run. ‘Blood for blood.’ What broke the circle was a Vespa scooter on the platform. Sudden screeching of brakes, tyre marks, rubber smell. A photojournalist in a yellow windcheater started snapping pictures of the mob, which had fished out our professor. ‘Stop taking pictures,’ said one of the thugs, ‘otherwise we kill you.’
The thug points at Professor Singh. ‘This traitor Sikh is going to take pictures. Those who want to save him, we kill you.’ He kicks the ‘sister-fucker’ journalist in the balls, snatches the camera, destroys the roll. I remain paralysed on my spot. He snatches our professor’s suitcase. ‘Sardar-ji, our mother is dead and you are not crying? Cry, behnchod. Gadar kay londay, beat your chest.’ He unzips the suitcase, rummages through the contents, old and new, pulls out something that looks like a souvenir for Nelly, and a Pahari doll (most likely for his daughter) and a Himachali achkan (most likely for his son). ‘Nice wristwatch.’ Then the thug gestures for other lumpens to go ahead; the lumpens spray gasoline from the journalist’s scooter on our teacher, slip a rubber tyre around his neck. ‘Let me go. What have I done?’ I can hear Professor Singh shout. The tyre constrains his arms. ‘Sardar, you sister-fucker, you killed our mother. Gadar, now we kill you.’
‘Stop it,’ I say, ‘you can’t do this, he is our teacher.’ ‘Khoon ka badla khoon say . . . saala sardar ki aulad . . . gadar ki aulad.’ Although it is early morning, his breath stinks of rum. Half of my class fellows disappear, others repeat the same thing over and over: ‘This is madness.’ I urge the cops to help, I tell them that I happen to be the son of a senior police officer, the most senior. At this point the chief lumpen laughs and spits in Professor Singh’s face, douses the tyre with more hydrocarbons and strikes a match. A senior Congress leader, his Nehru – Gandhi khadi clothes fluttering in the wind, is standing close to the station master’s office on the platform, guiding the mob like the conductor of a big orchestra.
Khatam kar do sab sardaron ko. Khatam kar do saanp kay bacchon ko. Finish them, children of snakes. Destroy them all
. He is not very tall and wears black glasses. I will never forget that Congress-wallah’s black glasses. I feel like confronting him, but stand on my spot, paralysed. ‘This is the way to teach the Sikhs a lesson,’ says a bystander. I take a deep breath. The black glasses are gone. The photojournalist is still trembling; they spare his Vespa, and we keep hearing the screams. I still hear those screams. I can’t hear enough. We couldn’t do a thing. I could do nothing. The only thing I was able to save was a shoe and that too was lost in the commotion that followed.
It was sickening, you had to see the horror to believe the horror and it was so unreal I almost didn’t believe my own sense organs. But the fire and the smoke were so absolutely real, different from the way they are done in the movies. During the combustion I could not use my knowledge of chemistry and physics to extinguish the flames. How fast they engulfed his entire body. I could do nothing. I was a mere onlooker. In the end all that remained along with the ashes were a few bones and a steel bracelet. Black like a griddle.