“The whole place was littered with men, women, children, cattle and Dogs. There were kites wheeling high up in the sky long lines of crows were flying from somewhere to somewhere and millions of sparrows tweeted about the trees. Where in India could one find a place which did not teem with life?”

TRAIN TO PAKISTAN

I read an article written by Khushwant Singh in a newspaper when I was very young. And I disliked the thoughts of the author, I remember. What was written in that article, I don’t remember! I only remember that I despised whatever was there. It’s an old case and my memory is not good. That article was also not in English.

But only sometimes back, I read the first few chapters of Khushwant Singh’s ‘Delhi’ and ‘I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale’ in a library for the first time and I was outright impressed with his writing skills. He writes in a very charming way. There is an inherent charm in his pen. Simple and binding! And today when I am finally reading his first book complete, I should claim that I thoroughly enjoyed both the plot and writing. The charm of his storytelling further prevailed.

This is a famous book in India and it begins in Bollywood style. A gang of dacoits enters a village at night, after looting the house, they murdered a man. The dacoits, gun firing in the air, creating dialogues in very filmy style! And another badmash named Jugga, making love with his lover at night, outside their houses in open! And when the gang of dacoits passes through the same place, he furtively sees their faces and recognizes them.

The time is near 1947, British have left the country and India has been partitioned into two nations. Mano Majra is a small fictional place at the border of India and Pakistan. It has only three brick buildings and one of them is of Lala Ram Lal and the other two are ‘a Sikh temple’ and ‘a Mosque’. Everyone lives there in harmony and there has never been a communal clash. One educated young man, well-read and studied in a foreign land, Iqbal comes to the village one day and stays at the Gurudwara. All villagers look at him with interest. He claims he wants to preach humanity and education or capitalism too. You’re ‘being illiterate’ is the cause of your grief, he preaches!

But local administration and police arrest him along with Jugga and put them behind the bar assuming both of them are involved in decoity and murder. They manipulate and try to misuse their authority for their own greed or unsolicitous interests. The educated man got irritated with the behavior of policemen and rebukes them.

“You just want to cover up your stupidity by trumping up a false case!”

 Time changed and one-day clouds appeared in the sky with hues of russet, copper, and oranges. And those who had fallen asleep had been prodded into getting up because one day a train comes in the station and it was filled with corpses, men, women, old, children some mutilated, some half dead, some packed lifeless among the luggage like a sack of cotton. The train had come from the Pakistan side. Magistrate witness this and become restless in the apprehension of the future of that small border village.

“The moth flew up again and down again. Hukum Chand knew that if it alighted on the ceiling for a second, one of the geckos would get it fluttering between its little crocodile jaws. Perhaps that was its destiny. It was everyone’s destiny. Whether it was in hospitals, trains, or in the Jaws of reptiles it was all the same. One could even die in bed alone and no one would discover until the stench spread all around and maggots moved in and out of the sockets on the eyes and get run over the face with their slimy clammy bellies.  Hukum Chand wiped his face with his hands. How could one escape one’s own mind!”

And then the administration or some machinery play with the emotions of the people of different religions and incite them to kill the people of other religion in the same manner they have killed the people of their religion on the other side. And after some reluctance, some refugees and the dacoits approve the plan. The innocent peasants and uneducated villagers just witness this vicious plan, vulnerable to their own existence! The author has made clever innuendoes through the dialogues of villagers, on effete elements of religions. I also liked the filmy bravery of Jugga Badmash portrayed by the author.

This book finished with some positivity though, and the climax of the book was succinct and well-executed, I loved it. This book gives a horrible account of the time when there occurred an exodus of people after the partition of India in 1947 from both sides. But the writing and storytelling of the author make it a very compelling read. You won’t find any intricacy that involuntarily presents itself whenever a story is based on a real historical misdeed. The prose is simple and binding and reverberation of dialogues, characters, and imagery of village life is also very natural. I found them unprocessed to the context of rural India of that time. Through the character of Iqbal, the author has been able to push a certain mindset of contradiction (of ‘hope and dilemma’ ) of the educated, modern young man of that time.

The condition has not much changed even after eighty years have passed. People still go fanatic when it comes to religion, they lose their sense, though they are well aware of losing it! 

Let kindness be the case everywhere! I hope.

“If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy- to wipe the slate clean- then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the configuration, not to turn a moral hose-pipe on them- to create such mighty chaos that all that is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In blood, if necessary.”

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