Without replying I slam the door in his face and return to my chair. Celebrating the murder of a frail, little woman! What have the Sikhs come down to? If only the stupid woman had owned up her mistake, gone to the Temple and said, ‘My Sikh brothers and sisters I am sorry, I made a big mistake, forgive me,’ they would have forgiven her. But to get one demented monk and his gang of armed goons she let the army slay a thousand innocent pilgrims: grey-beards, blackbeards, no beards, women and babies-in-arms. Blasted the Akal Takht, seat of Sikh spiritual and temporal authority. Let the army loot cash, utensils and burn down the archives. In short, to kill a rat, she pulled down the house. One crime follows another. One lie by a bigger lie. The entire country pays the price for these blunders and lies.
I fiddle with my transistor switching from All India Radio to the BBC, to the Voice of America to Radio Germany to Radio Moscow. AIR says she is still alive. The BBC and the Voice of America say she is dead. Moscow simply quotes Delhi. Hours pass. Not a soul on the lawn in front. Not a soul on the road facing the gurdwara. A few buses run by without their usual hooting, a few cyclists hurry homewards bent double over their handlebars as if facing a strong wind. An eerie quiet spreads like a pestilent fog.
The shadows lengthen. The newspaper boy shoves
The
Evening News
under my door. Banner headlines: ‘Indira Gandhi Shot by Her own Sikh Guards. One of them has been killed; the other badly wounded. At the All India Medical Institute teams of surgeons are taking out bullets and pumping in blood into Indira Gandhi’s body and trying desperately to save her.’ Stale news. By then most foreign radio stations are saying she died on the operating table. What now?
The bell rings. Followed by slapping on the door. I peep through the Judas hole. Some fat, old woman I cannot recognize in the dim hallway light. She bangs on the door with her fist. I open the door. It is Bhagmati. Sparse hair daubed with henna. No teeth. Squashed mouth. Hair-bristle about her chin. Is this the same Bhagmati I had lusted after most of my lustful years? ‘
Hai Laam! Hai Laam
!’ she says with her toothless mouth. She holds her ears with her hands, sticks out her yellow tongue, ‘
Toba
!
Toba
! What I have seen with my own eyes, may no one ever behold! They are killing every Sikh they see on the road, burning their taxis, trucks, scooters. Connaught Place is on fire. They are looting every Sikh shop, office, hotel. And you are sitting here waiting for them to come and kill you!
Hain
? I am going to take you to Lal Kuan. Nobody will bend a hair on a
hijda’s
head.
Chalo
,’ she orders.
‘Patience!’ I tell her as I open the door to let her in. ‘If they are killing every Sikh they find, how do you think we will get to Lal Kuan? It is best to stay where you are. The police is bound to stop it in time.’
‘Police?’ she asks contemptuously. ‘Those
bahinchods
are with the mobs. “We give you thirty-six hours to finish every Sikh in the city,” they tell them. She sinks down on the sofa, covers her face with her hands and is convulsed with sobs. It is my turn to comfort her. I put my hand on her shoulder, ‘It can’t be all that bad. This is a civilized country,’ I tell her.
She looks up with her tear-stained eyes. ‘You want to see it with your own eyes? Come up on the roof and look.’ She takes my hand and heaves herself up from the sofa. We climb up the four storeys of my apartment building and go on the roof. She points northwards towards Connaught Circus. The sky is aglow: not with electric lights but with flames. In the dusk I can see clouds of smoke rising from different points. I look around in other directions. There are bonfires and smoke on many roads. ‘Sikhs’ taxis and trucks,’ Bhagmati informs me. The evening breeze wafts across the voice of crowds roaring in unison, ‘
Indira Gandhi zindabad
(long live Indira Gandhi).’ ‘
Sikh hatyaron ko khatam karo
(finish the murderous Sikhs).’ A mob is moving up the road towards my apartment. Bhagmati panics. ‘
Chalo, chalo
,’ she screams. ‘I’ll cut your hair and beard quickly. Then we can get out safely. All they can burn will be your books. They are of no use to Dilliwallas.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I snap, ‘Nobody is going to cut my hair or beard.’ I follow her down the dark staircase back into my apartment. There is no time to unscrew my nameplate; I get an iron rod, stick it in the space behind the door and the plate and wrench it off. It breaks into two. ‘Now no one will know who lives here.’
‘You are a stupid Sikh!’ she exclaims angrily. They will ask your neighbours. Do as I tell you. Let me cut your hair and beard and we can go to some hotel or something.’
‘No,’ I yell back stubbornly. ‘Let them do their worst. I’ll kill one or two before they get me.’
‘And me. You stupid, old
budha bewakoof
! Will you ever get sense in your head?’ I am not used to being abused by Bhagmati. My temper rises. Our argument is silenced by the mob yelling somewhere behind my back garden. We slip out into the dark garden and watch through the thick hibiscus hedge. The mob is composed of about fifty young boys armed with iron rods. Some have canisters of petrol in their hands. They surround the gurdwara and storm in. They drag out the Bhai and beat him up with their fists and rods. He cries at the top of his voice: ‘
Bachao
!
Bachao
! Police!’ They shout back. ‘Bhindranwale
key bacchey
(son of Bhindranwale)! Ask your father to save you now.’ They bring out the
Granth
, its canopy, carpets and
durries
, heap them up in a pile and sprinkle petrol on it. One puts a match to it and the heap bursts into flame. The Bhai’s hair is scattered over his bloodied face but he pleads, ‘Do what you like to me but don’t dishonour the holy book.
Rab
da vaasta
(for God’s sake).’
‘Let the bastard go with his holy book,’ shouts someone. They pour petrol over his hair, splash it on his beard and push him on the flaming pile. He shrinks and crumples into a flaming corpse. They yell triumphantly: ‘
Indira Gandhi amar
rahey
(Indira Gandhi is immortal).’
My knees buckle under me and I sit down on the wet grass. I cannot hold my bladder. Bhagmati sits down beside me and massages my back. After a while she helps me stand up and whispers in my ears, ‘Let’s go indoors before they spot us.’ I stay rooted to the ground and peer through the bush. I see a fellow reading something from a paper in his hand. He points to garages owned by Sikh mechanics. The mob moves to the garages. Cars lined outside for repairs are set on fire. Garage doors smashed open. People watch them from their balconies. Someone pleads, ‘These cars belong to Hindus; the Sikh mechanics have fled. If you set fire to the garages, the whole building will catch fire. We are only Hindus, Muslims and Christians here. Why don’t you go to the taxi-stand?’
That makes sense to the mob. It makes its way past the Bhai’s funeral pyre towards the cab-rank. I can hear the exchange of abuse. The cab-drivers are defiant. I stagger to the other side of the garden with Bhagmati tugging at my arms and pleading with me to get back into the room. Six unarmed cabbies face an armed mob which has grown to over two hundred. Abuse changes to hurling of stones. A posse of armed constabulary watch the unequal combat without moving from their places. Stones smash into the cab-drivers kiosk and the window-panes of the cabs. The fellows nevertheless keep the mob at bay. A shot rings out and a driver crumples down beside his cab. The other five run away as fast as they can. Armed police form a ring round the cabs, take out wallets, transistors, cassette players. Then they let the mob set them on fire. The policemen direct the mob to Sikh shops in the market. They move away from my apartment. Bhagmati tells me to change my trousers. I feel ashamed of myself.
Pins and needles down my legs. Bhagmati stares vacantly at the wall without saying a word. I get out my last bottle of Scotch (which I had kept for an emergency) and pour out a stiff one. ‘The best thing in times of trouble,’ I announce to her.
‘And nothing for your old
budhia
woman?’ asks Bhagmati. ‘I have never touched the stuff; but today give me poison or give me wine.’ I pour her a generous portion and mix it with Campa Cola to sweeten its taste. She gulps it down as if it were a glass of buttermilk. A glow spreads over her wrinkled, toothless face. ‘More,’ she orders.
‘Not so fast, you’ll get sick.’
I help myself to a second, a third. She eyes me banefully while she shakes her empty glass. I take a fourth and give her another smaller one. ‘Don’t gulp it down; learn to drink like a lady.’
‘Lady be buggered!’ she replies. She is her old self. ‘What’s happened to that mad Sikh you had? What was his name? Buddhoo or something like that.’
‘Budh Singh. He was around this morning. Raving like a lunatic. If these fellows lay their hands on him, they will make a
seekh kabab
of him. If he comes round, we must lock him up in a room.’
I empty a packet of cheese crackers on a plate and put it before her. ‘This is all I have at home,’ I tell her. She picks up one and feels its texture. ‘How can I eat wooden biscuits? I have no teeth.’ She soaks one in her Scotch and Cola till it turns soggy and pops it in her mouth. She eats up the entire packet without bothering to find out if there is anything left for me. In any case I have no appetite for food. I tell her to sleep in my bed while I sleep on the sofa. She accepts my offer and waddles into the bedroom. A few minutes later I hear her belch, snore and break wind.
I switch on my radio and tune it to foreign stations. All give detailed news about Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her own Sikh bodyguards. And very briefly talk of anti-Sikh violence. Only Radio Pakistan talks of hundreds of Sikhs massacred and hundreds of gurdwaras burnt in Delhi. The telephone rings: ‘Is that you?’ it asks. ‘Yes.’ The caller proceeds to abuse me. ‘Bloody bastard you murdered your mother.’ I hit back. ‘Bloody mother-fucker, bastard yourself. You murdered your Bapu Gandhi, who are you to
buk buk
?’
The abuse upsets me. The telephone rings again. This time it is someone very polite. ‘Don’t drink water out of your tap.It’s been poisoned by the Sikhs.’ He puts down his receiver.
A few minutes later another ring. ‘Trainloads of dead Hindus massacred by Sikhs in the Punjab have arrived in Delhi. Hindus will avenge these killings.’ Again the receiver is put down before I can say a word.
I sit and wait for the phone to ring again. It is dead. At midnight there is another hubbub. Slogans, yelling, people running from somewhere to somewhere. Everyone is awake. Another truckload of boys arrives. They burn another couple of cars and disappear. People peer through their windows to see the conflagration. Policemen armed with rifles stop by for a few minutes and then walk away.
Fatigue overtakes me and I doze off in my chair. I am woken up by the sound of shouting coming from the side of the gurdwara. I get up with a start and run out into the garden to see what is going on. It is early dawn but everyone seems to be on their balconies and windows looking at the gurdwara. Bhagmati comes heaving herself along as fast as she can and shouting at me.
‘Get inside,’ she screams. I ignore her and peep through the hedge.
I see Budh Singh in the gurdwara courtyard beside the smouldering ashes of the
Granth
and the Bhai. He has a
kirpan
in one hand and is whirling about like a dancing
dervish
, yelling abuse at a gang of young men armed with steel rods who have surrounded him. ‘You
madarchods
, you
bahinchods
, may your seed be destroyed! You burn our holy book May your
Vedas
and
Shastras
be burnt!’
The young gangsters play a cat and mouse game with him. They take turns prodding Budh Singh in the back with their rods. The old fellow is getting tired. He can’t fight so many men. As he pauses for breath, an iron rod crashes on his shoulder and brings him down. His
kirpan
falls out of his hand. One fellow picks it up and pokes it in his bottom. Two lads pounce on him and pin his arms behind his back. One takes out a pair of scissors and begins to clip off Budh Singh’s beard. Budh Singh spits in his face. The fellow slaps him on the face, catches him by his long hair and cuts off a hunk. They’ve had their fun. They get down to serious business. A boy gets a car tyre, fills its inside rim with petrol and lights it. It is a fiery garland. Two boys hold it over Budh Singh and slowly bring it down over his head to his shoulders. Budh Singh screams in agony as he crumples down to the ground. The boys laugh and give him the Sikh call of victory: ‘
Boley So
Nihal
!
Sat Sri Akal.’