Train to Delhi (4 page)

‘You may now return to your dear father,' she jibed. ‘The charter of freedom awaits you at St. John's—next Thursday.'

Suddenly something flashed through his mind. He must make sure that this woman wouldn't do a somersault, and back out of the divorce.

‘Look Sarita, we shouldn't wrangle any more,' he said, in a general tone. ‘It doesn't do either of us any good …' He paused. ‘I wish I could tell you something … But I don't know how you'd take it.'

‘What's it?' Her curiosity was stirred.

‘I don't really hate you,' he started off. ‘I wish I could open out my heart to you. There's my grievous hurt, of course … and Rahul's predicament … But won't you agree that we've also had our moments of tenderness … If now I ask for divorce, it's because I feel we should live separately for a couple of years so that we may learn to miss each other … You know, I have seriously considered remarrying you after …'

‘The divorce?' Sarita cut in. ‘Come, come. Don't you try to fool me.'

But even though Sarita had lapsed into sarcasm, Gautam sensed a ring of confusion in her voice, as though she were pondering over what she'd just heard.

‘Please listen—for just a moment.' Gautam came on again. He felt like an actor who, after his prompter's timely cue, doesn't want to be interrupted. The words flowed on, effortlessly.

‘Sarita, you may not believe it and, of course, you have the right to distrust me. But, please … has it been only hell these four years? Well, if a woman goes astray, it's as much the husband's fault as hers. No, I can't absolve myself of my share of the blame. The child is not mine, I know, but isn't he still as dear to me as if he were? I don't know how to explain …'

As he trailed off, he watched Sarita dart a searching glance at his face. He could see that his words had somehow touched her deeply. She was now lost in some introspection.

‘Are you putting me on?' she said. But there was no tinge of irony this time, only a feeble urge to fathom the truth.

‘Why don't you look into your own soul for the answer?'

Gautam knew that rhetoric could often accomplish much more than a mere statement—and his words had silenced her. Sitting there on the sofa, she was swallowing the bait. She was aware that he couldn't live alone very long—he'd always been such a puny, dependent thing. She was certain he would last only a couple of months. And if he returned to her, vanquished and penitent, shouldn't she accept him? She'd had her fling with Mohinder, but she had never seriously considered marrying him. Marriage was a different thing altogether. Also, Gautam might really adopt Rahul as his own child. Yes, he really loved him. Wasn't Gautam something of a fool too? And all fools, she knew, were capable of spurts of magnanimity. So, let him have the divorce.

As she sat there, lost in her thoughts, Gautam felt convinced that she'd swallowed the hook. His offer to return to her, humbled on his knees (even though he was himself the injured party), had pleased her. He now waited for her to speak. Time was running out. The curfew was only an hour away.

He wondered if she had noticed that he'd started parting his hair on the left side, not in the middle, as before. If only he could also change his name, his profession—everything. He wanted a clean break with the past.

‘All right,' Sarita said. ‘Let things take their own course.'

As he now rose to leave, he snatched a glance at the canvas hanging just above the mantelpiece—Jamini Roy's impressionistic painting of a beggar girl, staring out of her hollow, sunken eyes—oh, the look of some dark anguish. He'd bought it in Calcutta during one of his professional visits there. How he wished he could ask her for this painting. Silly man, he said to himself, asking for little things when he was gambling for such high stakes.

Hardly had he moved towards the door when Purnima shuffled in, with Rahul in her arms.

‘Ma'am, he's been whimpering away in his room. Perhaps it's time for his glass of milk.'

‘Surely, you could have given it to him yourself,' Sarita snapped at the servant.

It was surprising, Gautam thought, how she hadn't noticed that the child had slipped away. Was it his offer of remarriage that had absorbed her so completely?

‘Take care of yourself,' she said, as he walked to the door. But this time, her voice had mellowed in a genuine concern for his safety.

‘Daddy, when will you come back?' Rahul's lisping voice now caught his ears.

‘I'll be back soon, my darling,' Gautam replied, and vanished out of the door.

The street lights had been turned on and, in the house opposite, behind a half-drawn curtain, a face hung close to the window. It must be Trivedi, Gautam surmised, as he strode towards the main road.

4

A
fter walking briskly through the bylanes of Darya Ganj, Gautam came to Faiz Bazaar, which looked completely deserted—no taxi or tonga anywhere. Although Neel Kamal was still open, the tobacconist under the peepal tree had pulled down his shutters and was gone for the day. An eerie quiet had fallen on both sides of the main road.

Since time was running out, Gautam decided to walk the entire length of Faiz Bazaar, and up Asaf Ali Road, hoping to find some taxi near the Ajmeri Gate, or further down the bridge overlooking Ram Nagar. He knew that he must somehow reach Anand Parbat (the locality in which he was staying) before the curfew, otherwise he'd be helplessly stranded on the way.

Near the Turkman Gate, one of the strongholds of fanatic Muslims, he was challenged by a young man in a fez. Instead of stopping, Gautam jumped across the pavement onto the other side of Asaf Ali Road, and hid himself behind a tea-stall on the eastern edge of Ramlila Grounds. The man set upon the chase was, however, closing in fast.

Suddenly, a police jeep pulled up alongside the tea-stall, and an officer with a perky moustache asked him in an aggressive Punjabi accent. ‘Hiding away? … Who are you?'

Gautam emerged from behind the stall, a little shattered and confused. But on seeing a police officer, he felt secure.

‘Gautam Mehta, assistant editor of
The Challenge,'
he replied.

‘But this is not the time, Mr Mehta, to be out.' The officer's voice was now polite. ‘It will soon be curfew time, and we have orders to shoot at sight anyone out on the streets.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Gautam. ‘I wasn't reporting. I just went to see someone and couldn't find a taxi anywhere.'

‘How far are you going?'

‘Anand Parbat, beyond Karol Bagh.'

‘Maybe I could give you a ride as far as Pahar Ganj.'

‘That would be a great help. Thank you very much.'

Hardly had the jeep rattled across the Ajmeri Gate flyover bridge when the officer braked it to a stop. Right ahead, all along Pahar Ganj, a terrible blaze of fire—yellow, brown and red flames—was shooting into the sky. Since Gautam was quite familiar with this street, he surmised that the fire had engulfed all the timber shops in this area—the godowns stacked with teak, bamboo and deodar. The incensed flames were gutting everything in their way.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Mehta,' said the police officer, ‘I can't take you any further. It looks like I'll be stuck here for a while.' Then he added, after a moment's pause, ‘It must be those bloody Muslim arsonists.'

Gautam realized that the officer was a bigoted Hindu.

‘Thank you very much for the ride,' Gautam said, and he jumped off the vehicle.

The fire had now engulfed a four-storeyed building looming above one of the timber shops, and frantic screams were coming from the top floor. By now a large crowd had gathered, yelling for revenge. Instead of making way for the fire engines, groups of people stood excitedly around, blocking the road and shouting, ‘Har Har Mahadev!'

Gautam heard a man cry out: ‘It was a missile from the Ajmeri Mosque that set it off! I saw it myself! Kill those bastard Muslims, those Pakistani spies!'

In spite of the imminent curfew, hordes of people from the neighbouring areas started swarming in. As Gautam decided to pull himself out of this maelstrom, he noticed a few young men passing knives and sticks of explosives all around. So the lines were being drawn up; soon there would be another battle.

The sky was now pitch dark. Since most of the street lights had been smashed during the rioting, Gautam wouldn't have been able to find his way home for the glare of the fire.

Suddenly, a hush descended over the place. Everyone stepped aside to make way for a huge open car, escorted by several jeeps. Then a heavily decorated officer stood up in the car, and blared into a microphone. It was a deep, resonant voice, minatory and merciless, shooting off ultimatums like the yapp-yapp of a Bren gun: ‘I give you all just fifteen minutes—no more. Get off the streets and back to your homes. Make your choice—life or death. In a quarter of an hour, I will order my men to start firing.'

‘Ah, Thornton sahib, the commissioner of police!' someone whispered.

The word flashed all around like the relentless blaze which was still raging away, despite the firemen's efforts.

As the thunderous voice stopped, a volley of guns boomed into the air. This was a clear signal that Thornton sahib meant business. Now there was no shouting, only mute curses.

‘That mongrel of a police commissioner!' someone said. ‘Why doesn't he go over to the Turkman Gate and control those bastards?' Another voice joined in: ‘These hybrid Englishmen were always for the Muslims!' … ‘Stupid Nehru—to let our enemies stay on, Mountbatten and Thornton!' ‘No, don't say that of Pandit Mountbatten—he's now one of us.'

Gautam was amused to hear these tarty comments. Obviously, none of them had heard of Father Jones, otherwise he too would have come in for some sniping.

Gautam started walking briskly towards the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic Higher Secondary School. The crowd had now begun to thin away and Pahar Ganj looked like a forsaken fortress. By the time he reached home, it was a quarter to ten—just fifteen minutes before the curfew was due to begin.

‘You shouldn't have risked staying away so long, Gautam,' said his father, as he answered the door.

‘I know, Dad. But I was helplessly caught on the way.'

‘Good heavens!' his father exclaimed, tense and worried. ‘Come right in. You do look all nerves.'

Gautam felt like a fugitive who is offered shelter. While his mother rushed to the kitchen to fix him some supper, his father kept staring at Gautam. Shamlal wondered how his son had fared during the day.

Weary-footed, Gautam retired to his room and changed into his white kurta and pyjamas. He dropped down on the divan which had been improvised as a settee with a cotton-stuffed mattress, and three long bolsters.

His parents had arrived in Delhi after many harrowing experiences on the way from Lahore. Though they were fatigued and their nerves were frazzled, Gautam couldn't keep them with him for more than a few days. They'd been looking forward to seeing their grandson, but soon they felt unhoused—their second partition, as his mother called it. Sarita had made it impossible for them to stay in the house. She had married an individual, she kept dinning into Gautam's ears, not a family. Then came the shocking revelation about Sarita and the child.

Gautam thought it prudent to let them move into a small house at Anand Parbat. Fortunately, his father had been offered the post of the secretary to the managing committee, Dayanand College, more out of recognition for his past association with the Arya Samaj, Anarkali, Lahore, than for his administrative experience.

In Lahore, Shamlal Mehta had been known for his zeal for the Hindu dharma. He had organized several successful rallies against the British missionaries, who held public discourses against Hinduism and distributed handsomely bound free copies of the Bible. They also tempted many poor Hindus into Christianity by offering them the bait of social security—good jobs, quick out-of-turn promotions …

Shamlal Mehta felt like a crusader against the combined might of the British Empire and the Anglican Church. He held counter-rallies in the city to expose ‘the insidious designs' of the rulers. ‘It isn't so much their political domination as their subtle, devious assault on our dharma,' he always said in public. ‘This may some day undermine our great civilization.' Many times he was warned by the secret police, but this dedicated banner-holder for Swami Dayanand continued to fire away, emboldened by the national movement for independence that had picked up a new momentum in the early 1940s.

Now he had been adequately rewarded by the Delhi Arya Samaj Prabandhak Committee with a sinecure job—and free official accommodation, just when he had been dislodged by his daughter-in-law. An old two-room house, near Karol Bagh, atop an ancient hill called Anand Parbat, was a virtual boon.

It wasn't really a house, only a battered cottage with a tin roof that rattled whenever the hot winds blew across the hill. If it hadn't been a dry month, the rains would have pounded the wobbly, cracked tin sheets, making sleep at night impossible.

The room in the rear had been taken over by Gautam as his temporary lodging. Here he would sit at the steel-barred window, which looked like the porthole of a sinking ship, and look at an open patch of land littered with garbage. There, behind a cluster of grey weather-beaten boulders, the street urchins would sometimes stop to urinate.

The room in front was used by his parents as a bedsitter. On the wall facing their bed hung a faded painting of Swami Dayanand, a knotted stump in one hand, a copy of the
Satyarath Prakash
in the other. He looked like a self-assured wrestler out to twist the arm of anyone who dared to challenge him.

In a corner of the covered verandah, beyond this room, Gautam's mother had improvised her kitchen—a small wooden cupboard for utensils and crockery, hastily salvaged from their house in Lahore. It was also used as a bathroom. Immediately after the morning tea, a curtain was pulled down to ensure privacy. As for the lavatory, everybody had to queue up in the morning, in front of a shed that served about half a dozen families of the teaching and administrative staff of the Dayanand College. In fact, this part of Anand Parbat looked like one of those refugee colonies that had sprung up all over Delhi—from Kingsway Camp to the Lodi Estate. Gautam, however, felt much happier here with his parents, in spite of the grimy environs.