Puri came upstairs and asked Tara in English, ‘What is it? A registered letter from whom?’
Their mother was listening. Tara answered in English, ‘From Nainital. Mother wanted me to read it, but I didn’t open it. The sender’s name is K. Dutta, Vimal Villa. Could be from Kanak.’ Her tone of voice suggested neither complicity in a secret, nor any kind of irony.
Tara reached into the cupboard and handed the letter to Puri. Every fibre in Puri’s body throbbed with tension. He did not open the envelope in front of others, and went out to the veranda. There were several pages. As he unfolded the pages, he found two one-hundred-rupee notes tucked inside. He hid the notes in his fist as he read the letter.
In the six-page letter Kanak had put down the story of the constraints placed upon her in the past weeks. How, under pressure from Nayyar and her father, she had to promise them not to write or meet Puri for two months, how she could not hold back after learning about his being in the police lock-up. She had written:
‘… We have decided to spend our lives together, and nothing can prevent that. The situation in UP is different from that in Punjab. There is very little communal strife here, the Congress is in power, and self-rule is almost a reality. Your talents will be appreciated, not in the climate of sectarian violence and enmity that is widespread in Punjab, but here in UP. These people appreciate talent, and patriotism as well. I spoke with one parliamentary secretary. It seems certain that we both will be able to get employment at a salary of two hundred rupees per month once we are in Lucknow. You will probably be offered even more. I have kept my promise to my family. Now I can expect my brother-in-law’s support as well.
‘If you don’t come here, I’ll have to come to Lahore. If you want me to come to you, reply immediately. However, I want us to end the torture and pangs of separation here in this cool climate, beside this lovely lake. Words cannot do justice to the natural beauty all around me. You can’t imagine a lake surrounded by hills, even if I attempt to describe it. I have enclosed some money for your travel expenses and for staying in a hotel here. Even if you don’t need it, don’t be angry with me. The money belongs to you; you may tear up the bills and throw them away, but don’t send it back. Wire me the time and day of your arrival. You’ll be a stranger here. I’ll meet you at the bus terminus.’ Kanak also gave details of the route of the journey from Lahore. She asked him to reply by registered letter.
It had rained twice in the past week. Then the skies cleared, the sun shone brightly, and it became very humid. There were again thin clouds
in the afternoon, and the air was perfectly still. The gali women felt very uncomfortable in the stifling heat when they held their singing party in the room in Bhagwanti’s house, but what could they do?
Meladei invited all of them, ‘Come, we’ll sit on my side of the house.’ She cleared her big room of the charpoys, and plugged in the table fan.
They began by singing seven wedding songs about a daughter asking her father to find her a suitable groom. Sheelo, Usha and Seeta sat in the centre with the dholak. According to the custom Tara, the shy bride-to-be, could not sit with the singers, but Sheelo had dragged her to the gathering. Tara had been fondly making baby clothes for Sheelo’s son and Pushpa’s daughter from leftover pieces of cloth bought for her trousseau. She sat quietly on one side, with her eyes on the garment as she put basting stitches in it. Relatives from her father’s village could not come for the wedding. Women from other galis had not been able to join them either. That day Sheelo’s mother had been unable to come as well. There were not many women, but the resonant voices of Sheelo and Seeta filled the room and made up for the small number present. One of them would launch into a new song even before the other could finish the one they had been singing. Usha and Pushpa were doing their best to keep up.
Masterji, fan in hand, was taking his siesta on a charpoy in the cool of the ground floor aangan. Puri sat in the veranda reading Kanak’s letter over and over. After reading it for the umpteenth time, he thought, there were only four days to Tara’s wedding. How could he leave before that? Tara knew who had written the letter, but she had not asked anything about it. She won’t ask, but he’ll have to tell the others something or other. He was so engrossed in reading that he did not notice that the women had gone over to Ratan’s house, nor did he hear them sing.
Every sinew in Puri’s body tingled with excitement and pleasure after he read the letter. He did not want to sit by himself. As he went downstairs, he heard the voices of Sheelo and Seeta now singing tappa songs filled with longing.
As Puri came out into the gali, Bir Singh was sitting with Ratan on the chabutara opposite him. Bir Singh said loudly, ‘Look at Jaddi bhappa! He’s been listening to the tappa upstairs. Didn’t even invite us.’
Before Puri could reply, Masterji called him over to the aangan. He asked, ‘What was in that letter that came from Nainital?’
Puri answered, ‘I did some work for Pandit Girdharilal. The letter was
from him. He’s spoken about me to some parliamentary secretary in UP, and he’s asked me to go there.’
‘Very good! That’s very good!’ said Masterji, excitedly waving the fan over his body. ‘The wedding’s on the twenty-eighth. Tara will return here from her in-laws’ on the morning of the thirtieth. You can leave on the thirty-first, at the latest on the first or the second. It’s not wise to delay such things.’
When Puri returned to the gali, he heard Bir Singh calling repeatedly, ‘Tayiji! Tayiji! Listen, please listen to me.’
Meladei looked down from her window, ‘What is it? Speak up!’
‘You asked Jaddi bhappa on the quiet to listen to the tappa. What crime have we committed? I too went to fetch Sheelo bahin,’ Bir Singh complained. ‘I too want to come up and listen.’
‘Jaddi isn’t anywhere upstairs, you idiot!’ answered Meladei. ‘If you boys want to come up, come on. Who’s stopping you? You’re not strangers. These are all your sisters here.’
Bir Singh pulled Ratan along, and asked Puri to come too. Hari, Vijay and Shyam followed them quickly upstairs. Seeing them crowd in, the women stopped singing. Seeta looked at Bir Singh with her furrowed brow, and complained loudly, ‘What’s the meaning of this rudeness? What’s the meaning of boys barging into a girls’ party? Leave us alone in peace.’
‘Calm down, girl!’ said Bir Singh with a hard glare. ‘We have tayi’s permission.’
‘This ass dragged us all here,’ Ratan slapped Bir Singh on the back. ‘Don’t be angry! We’re leaving.’
Sheelo said quickly, ‘Welcome, hearty welcomes, sohanyo, motianwalyo, baadshaho, you’re most welcome.’ In the relaxed atmosphere of the ceremony, she could speak freely.
Puri brought in a charpoy and all the males perched on it.
Pushpa said to Sheelo, ‘Sing some more. Sing another tappa.’
Sheelo nodded her head. She continued to tap the beat gently with her fingers on the drum as she tried to recall the words of a tappa. Then she looked straight into the eyes of Ratan sitting opposite her, and sang out loudly, ‘I sit in front of you and weep, but can’t tell you of my pain…’
Puri had come up at Bir Singh’s urging, but his mind was full of Kanak and her letter. The letter, like a strong gust of the south wind, had cleansed his heart of all feelings of disgust and anger against the female of the species.
The words sung in Sheelo’s melodious and vibrant voice had jolted him out of his dreamy state of mind, as if they were addressed to him personally. As if Tara, after handing over Kanak’s letter to him but not uttering a word about it to anyone else, was making one last proclamation of her readiness to suffer alone and silently … ‘I sit in front of you and weep, but can’t tell you of my pain!’
Tara had gone to share her sorrows with Asad, he remembered. He recalled Asad’s words, ‘Tara’s very upset… It’s not all that unusual for someone other than a brother to understand the problems of a sister.’ And Tara, splitting her scalp open by knocking it on the charpoy corner, then silently corroborating his explanation that she had fallen because she felt dizzy. Now she had stopped struggling, and was sitting quietly and letting others do to her as they pleased. She had given up the right to express her own mind. He saw himself, in his imagination, crushing his heart with both hands to suppress his feelings. The room had become very crowded, he felt, and he could not breathe. Sheelo sang out again in her pain-filled voice:
‘Do not speak ill of my beloved. Punish me, if you want, by pulling on my braid …’
Puri sat unmoving, his eyes fixed on the floor, as if he was listening intently to her song.
Ratan got up and said to Bir Singh, ‘Come on! Let’s go. Its time for us to start our duties at the railway station.’
Puri too went out with Ratan and Bir Singh. He had to write to Kanak and send the letter by registered mail.
Muslim families from the east and Hindus from the west were pouring into Lahore in search of asylum. To help these newcomers, the volunteers of the Muslim League, Congress, the Communist Party and the Hindu Mahasabha were given night curfew passes. As there had been several cases of Hindu and Muslim volunteers vanishing while they were out at night, these men usually returned to their homes by nine in the evening. If they were held up for any reason, they spent the night either at the railway station or at some refugee camp. Mewa Ram had to spend a night at the camp at Bawli Saheb. His parents spent that night without a wink of sleep.
One evening, when Ratan and Mewa Ram returned to the gali and Bir Singh did not, Khushal Singh, Kartaro and Peeto were all worried. They kept asking both of them repeatedly about Bir Singh. Both the men assured
them, ‘He must have stayed overnight at the railway station or at some camp. Don’t worry. He’ll turn up in the morning.’
It was still dark in the morning when the bugle signalling the end of curfew sounded. Kartaro came out and sat on her chabutara. After the sun began to shine brilliantly and Bir Singh did not show up, she and Peeto both began to weep and wail. Their neighbours tried to comfort them, ‘Bir Singh is not a child. He’ll be here soon.’
Although the gali people continued to comfort Khushal Singh and his wife, they too were getting uneasy when Bir Singh had failed to turn up even after nine. Ratan, Mewa Ram and Puri put on the armour under their shirts and tied pugarees around a
kulah
to protect their heads, and went off to look for their missing comrade. Doctor Prabhu Dayal and Babu Govindram were asked to telephone the police substation on the road where many medical doctors lived in Vachchovali, to inquire whether Bir Singh had been arrested for any reason.
Khushal Singh had no heart to set up his stall of papad–bariyan and freshly ground lentil paste on the chabutara of the Woman of the Well. He sat there quietly, his arms clasping his knees and his eyes fixed on the gate at the gali entrance. Masterji and Mukund Lal took turns sitting next to him and talking, to take his mind off his worries.
Sitting on their chabutara, Kartaro and Peeto cried incessantly. Occasionally one or the other would begin to wail. Birumal’s mother sat with them for a while, asking them not to lose hope. When she left, Seeta’s mother Purandei came to sit next to the crying women. Some woman or other would sit with them continuously. Kartaro and Peeto had not lit the fire in their kitchen.
Around half past eleven, Masterji went to Khushal Singh, took his arm and said, ‘Come, sardar, have a bite to eat.’ When Khushal Singh refused to budge, Hari brought a thali of food to where he was sitting. Meladei and Pushpa too sent to Khushal Singh a bowl of whatever they had cooked. Tikaram’s wife took Peeto’s hand and led her home, and Birumal’s mother insisted that Kartaro come to her place and have something to eat.
Doctor Prabhu Dayal and Babu Govindram returned to the gali around half past one. Disappointment was writ large on their drawn faces. The doctor sat down on the chabutara to rest his legs without bothering that his trousers might get dirty. He said dejectedly, ‘No one picks up the phone at the police station. We asked Lala Baisakhi Ram to come with us
to the office of the joint magistrate Khan Khurshaid Ali. He tried phoning on our behalf. Khurshaid Ali is a very decent person. Not at all a religious fanatic like some others. The good man was right when he explained why it was so difficult to get any information. Between a thousand and twelve hundred arrests are made in the city every day, he said. Many of these are not reported. One should go to the police station personally and slip a fiver or tenner to the desk clerk and ask there. That’s the way to do it.’
Khushal Singh got to his feet, ‘How many rupees do you need? Take whatever I have. What do I need the money for!’
Masterji said, ‘Listen, doctor. Come on, I’ll take you to see Professor Pran Nath. He’s the advisor to the governor. Who’ll fail to answer if he telephones? His family mansion was burned down. The family’s gone to Lucknow. The professor is staying at the Savoy Hotel. He has his job, he couldn’t go off with them. A real gentleman. I was his tutor when he was a boy. When Jaddi was arrested in ’42, I went to him. He immediately telephoned Khan Sahib Wali Mohammed and said that if the prisoner needed someone to put up bail, he was ready to do so.’
Khushal Singh was willing to go and meet Nath, but Masterji told him to wait and have patience. Masterji went with Mukund Lal to see Nath, taking the Lohari Gate to go to Mall Road by way of Vachchovali and Sootar Mandi. There was no time to have the invitations printed for Tara’s marriage, but he had to inform some guests who were close to the family. Masterji also wanted to invite the professor to the wedding.
At about two, Rajrani, Sheelo and Kishori Lal arrived, escorted by two men from their gali. Sheelo was so insistent that her mother had to find a way to send her to Bhola Pandhe’s Gali. And how could the mother not go along herself? She had not been able to make it the previous day, but her absence from that day’s singing party would have forever been a cause for complaint against her. They found the gali in a sombre and quiet mood. Bhagwanti whispered the details into the ear of Sheelo’s mother, who then went and commiserated with Kartaro. There was no question now of holding the singing party.