He made a roll of his bedding, picked it up, and said to Narang, ‘Achcha, namaste. I’m off.’
Narang flicked ash from his cigarette before replying, ‘Going to the bazaar? Go ahead, but why carry this load with you? Leave it with us. One of us is always here.’
‘No, it’s not much of a load. I may go further.’ Puri cut short their talk, and stepped down from the veranda. Another man from the veranda was leading the old women towards the centre for distribution of free rations.
Puri came out of the gate of the college and turned on to the same road he had taken the night before. The dense darkness had given way to shimmering sunlight. Now there was no cause for fear. Having had nothing to eat, he felt weak and had trouble walking. The sun felt searing and uncomfortable. Just down the Jarnaili Road, before the scattered houses began, he saw along the roadside small pyramids of wheat, piles of green and red chillies and other vegetables, and firewood heaped up for sale.
Puri had noticed that a number of men were clustered around something beside the wall of a house. He could hear snatches of several voices. A man standing in the centre was saying:
‘Thirty-five! Thirty-five! Thirty-five rupees!… Any more bids? … Going for thirty-five! Thirty-five once, thirty-five twice. Any other bids before I accept this bid? … Have a good look, folks! Come on! Sold to this bidder for thirty-five rupees!’
An auction was taking place, Puri decided. Why trudge another two miles to the station? he thought. Why not put his bedding up for auction here? He walked up. As he came closer, he heard the auctioneer’s voice call more distinctly:
‘All right, baadshaho! What am to I bid for this? Brand new, unused stuff! Check it over for yourself if you don’t believe me!’
The crowd let out loud guffaws.
The auctioneer called out again, ‘All right, let’s have the first bid.’
Puri peered through the wall of people.
In the centre of the circle stood the auctioneer, forcing a young woman to stand upright by holding the plait of her hair. The woman was naked. The man thrust his knee into the small of her back and arched her body forward, so that the bidders could see all parts of the merchandise, and pulled her hands away from her tear-stained face. Her eyes were closed. The skin of her body where it had never been exposed to the sun was rosier than her face, and supple and translucent like the inner skin of a freshly peeled orange. Several young women sat slouching on the ground, their arms around their knees, their faces hidden in their hands. Their clothes lay beside them. Puri stepped back involuntarily.
An angry male voice rose above the noisy lewd laughter, ‘What do you think you’re doing? Have some shame! Think of what’ll become of these poor women! If you dishonour them like this, what respectable person will want to take them in? It’d be better if you just twisted their necks and threw them away. How are you better than the
Musaltah
s—Muslims? What crime have they committed is not worse than what you’re doing now.’
‘That’s right! He’s right! The old man talks sense! Yes, have some shame!’ Some voices said in support of the accuser.
Puri bit his lip to control himself as he went back to the road, his head bent, and began walking towards the station. He felt faint and sick with hunger, and stars swam before his eyes. How his blood had boiled in anger, he recalled, when he read the news that Hindu women were paraded naked. When both sides had proved their manliness by doing unmentionable things to women, how could either claim to be any less brutal? Why should they take second place in this contest to display inhumanity?
He remembered what the right-thinking man had said: If you dishonour them like this, what respectable person will take them in? The women’s only crime was that they had been abused. Men can commit heinous and
revolting acts, and women have to suffer the consequences! Women have to be both a target for his cruelty and his lust.
Puri spread out his dhurrie in the bazaar that had sprung up across from the station, arranged the blanket, sheets and pillow on it, and sat down. He did not know how to sell anything by crying his wares, as was necessary. He would say timidly to those who went past, ‘Almost new stuff, bhai. Going cheap.’
People with their belongings perched on their heads, over their shoulders, or on their backs, came and went past him without paying any attention. The sun was getting hotter. Sometimes a person would reply before walking away, ‘It’s already a problem to carry around what we have.’
The afternoon was at its height. Puri pressed his hands on his temples to lessen a splitting headache. The pangs of hunger were becoming unbearable. No one had offered to buy his bedding; neither for eight, nor for five rupees, nor at any price. Spells of dizziness were making him sick.
‘What’s happening to me?’ he gritted his teeth and scolded himself. ‘What’s become of me? I should be ashamed of myself. Is this any way to behave after going without food for only thirty-six hours? Why? I’ve been on hunger strike in prison for three days, for seventy-two hours. Over 200 fellowprisoners staged that strike along with me. What’s wrong with me now? In prison they would tempt us with all kinds of food, and we never even looked at it. But what strength of conviction do I have now? That was a moral struggle, we wanted to defeat the enemy by the strength of our higher ideals! That was not when there was nothing to eat, like now.’
Pangs of hunger and a nagging, throbbing headache almost made him pass out. He needed an anna or two to buy some medicine for his headache. Images drifted through his delirious mind … he should join the crowd of lame, crippled and blind beggars hovering outside the station, and hold out his hand to beg, saying, ‘Will some kind soul give this poor person a paisa or two for medicine? My head is bursting with pain.’ And some kind person just might give him something to reap the reward of doing a meritorious act. A feeling of self-disgust overwhelmed him, ‘What am I turning into?’
He could barely see because of the throbbing pain in his head, but he made a determined effort and rolled up his bedding. He lifted himself by pushing off the ground with one hand. With the bedding under his arm, he went in search of the distribution centre where free ration was being doled out.
The khadi-clad gentleman handing out bowlfuls of wheat and handfuls of lentils kept repeatedly asking the eager recipients standing in a queue to be patient. He also warned them, ‘Brothers, don’t be dishonest and unscrupulous by taking your share twice. Anyone doing that would be committing a sin, if any other brother or sister has to go empty-handed.’
Someone from the crowd said approvingly, ‘Yes bhai, aren’t we being punished enough already for the sins of our past life? Who knows what more suffering is to come upon us if we commit the sin of fraud here?’
‘Be content with this free offering, bhai, be patient. This is the blessing of independence!’ Another person used sarcasm to lighten the pain.
‘What use is this independence,’ someone else complained bitterly, ‘when we have to beg for a bowl of wheat?’
‘The Congresswallahs have gained power. Now they’ll gain merit by doling out bowlfuls of wheat!’ the jester said again, and roared with laughter.
Puri stood looking at the speakers as others behind him in the queue moved past him.
It was around five in the afternoon when Tara’s alert ears picked up Hafizji’s voice from the sitting room, ‘Beta Qamaroo, listen!’
The sound of Qamaroo’s heavy footsteps followed as she went downstairs. Then Tara heard Qamaroo coming back, her tread making the grating resonate as she walked over it to the veranda beside the kitchen, and spoke to her mother and grandmother. Qamaroo came over to Tara quickly and said as she tried to catch her breath, ‘The police are waiting in the gali. They’ve come to take you to the camp.’
Tara rose at once, wrapping her dupatta around her head and shoulders. Khursheed and her mother-in-law had not risen to bid her farewell. Tara looked at them, made the gesture of namaste silently, and went downstairs.
Through the door to the sitting room she saw Hafizji sitting in an armchair. Tara salaamed him, lowering her eyes respectfully.
‘May Allah be kind to you,’ Hafizji gave his blessing in a sad voice, without getting up.
Tara moved aside the curtain hanging over the front door of the house. She saw a young man waiting for her in the gali. He was not in uniform, but had the air of a policeman. He wore a slightly dirty, silky shirt, a white
shalwar, and a police-like khaki turban with its fringe shaped to form a fan. Like a police officer, he also carried a baton.
Seeing Tara the man asked, ‘You’re the one that has to go to the camp?’
Tara nodded.
‘The transport is waiting,’ the man pointed to the exit of the gali.
Tara did not find the look on the man’s face very reassuring, but she had never heard of anybody, anywhere, being comforted by the sight of a policeman. Now that they had agreed, after her repeated demands, to release her from Hafizji’s house, how could she express any unwillingness to leave?
A battered jeep was parked near the gali entrance, with another man sitting in one of the back seats, wearing a high fur hat. The ends of his moustache were curled up like the tail of a scorpion. He too wore a khaki police shirt, but without any insignia on the epaulets. In her nervousness Tara did not notice that fine detail. She was told to sit in the back, across from the man in the khaki shirt. The other man sat beside her.
After she took her seat, Tara noticed a shallow wicker basket on the floor. Four chickens, their feet tied with torn strips of cloth, lay on their sides in it. Their shiny black red-rimmed beady eyes were fixed on Tara, and their mute expression of helplessness and resignation pierced her heart like a knife. When they blinked, the opaque membrane over their eyes made them appear even more vulnerable. Her own pain and the humiliation of having her hands tied behind her back flashed past her mind.
The jeep went through the bazaar and reached the main road, where it picked up speed. Tara kept her head lowered, but she was looking out of the corner of her eyes. She was not quite sure what part of the city they were in. After going some way further she thought they were heading towards the bridge over the Ravi River.
Tara began to panic. Another trap! She gathered the courage to protest, ‘I want to go to the D.A.V. College camp. This way goes to Ravi.’
‘That camp is full,’ the man sitting next to her said. ‘We’ve been told to take you to the camp at Shahdara.’
A smile creased the face of the man with the fur hat sitting across from Tara. She did not like that look, but what could she do?
Baluch soldiers with fan-shaped crests on top of their khaki turbans, holding bayoneted rifles guarded a barrier on the road to the bridge. They
motioned the jeep to stop. The man with the fur hat jumped out and walked over. He gave them a salaam, and exchanged a few words with them before the jeep was allowed to cross the bridge.
Tara had been to the tomb of Jehangir in Shahdara across the Ravi three times with her college friends. When the jeep kept on going past the tombs of Jehangir and Noorjehan, Tara again protested, ‘We’ve passed Shahdara!’
‘Shut up!’ The man sitting across from her ordered gruffly.
Tara shivered. She knew she had again fallen into the hands of another Nabbu.
‘Stop! I don’t want to go with you!’ She said as assertively as she could.
‘Be quiet, you mother…’ he growled at her, uttering an obscenity.
Tara realized that death was her only way of escape, and jerked her body around to throw herself out of the jeep. The man sitting next to her wrapped his arm around her and pulled her back.
Tara punched him in the face in an attempt to free herself. The man sitting across leaned forward and held her down by seizing her shoulders. The first man pushed her head down on his knees and leant his weight on her. She sank her teeth into his knee.
The man pulled hard at her plait to free his knee. Both men pushed her face and shoulders into the basket on top of the chickens, pressed her down with their knees, and dealt several sharp punches to her back.
Ever since the dreadful experiences of her wedding night, Tara’s sleep had been fitful and troubled. At Hafizji’s house she often had strange and terrifying nightmares about being dragged by the hands and feet, and about crying out for help while fighting to defend herself. Breaking out of sleep, she would lie in a cold sweat of terror.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the blurred outlines of an unfamiliar aangan around her. The skin on her face felt raw, her head spun and ached. She had again woken up after a nightmare, she felt. When she opened her eyes a little more, she saw three women who seemed to be fighting. One was completely naked, the second wore only a shalwar, and the third had on only a kameez that came to her knees. There were two other women wearing shalwar and kameez. None wore a dupatta. Tara shook her head to make sure she was not dreaming, and thought, ‘Where am I?’
She propped herself on one arm and rose to a sitting position, drawing her knees up to her chest. For some time, she sat looking around with eyes blurred from a splitting headache. This was real and not a dream, she finally realized. The naked woman and the one in the kameez were fighting over something that apparently had to do with her. After listening to them, Tara vaguely understood that while she was unconscious, one of the women wanted to take some of her clothes.
The woman wearing the kameez challenged the naked woman, ‘You thief! Now she’s conscious, and sitting up. Let’s see you take off her clothes now!’
The woman wearing only the shalwar spoke in defence of the naked woman, ‘Who do you think you are! The village chief?’ she said to the woman in the kameez, ‘Why are you interfering? Are you a thanedaar?’ The other two women also spoke up, but against the naked woman and the one with the shalwar.
The woman in the kameez came over to Tara. She put one hand on Tara’s shoulder, and placing a can of water to her lips with the other, said, ‘Drink some.’
Tara looked at it with distaste and turned her face away.