Train To Pakistan Read online

  Khushwant Singh

  TRAIN TO PAKISTAN

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Dacoity

  Kalyug

  Mano Majra

  Karma

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright Page

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  TRAIN TO PAKISTAN

  It is the summer of 1947. But Partition does not mean much to the Sikhs and Muslims of Mano Majra, a village on the border of India and Pakistan. Then, a local money-lender is murdered, and suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh, the village gangster who is in love with a Muslim girl. When a train arrives, carrying the bodies of dead Sikhs, the village is transformed into a battlefield, and neither the magistrate nor the police are able to stem the rising tide of violence. Amidst conflicting loyalties, it is left to Juggut Singh to redeem himself and reclaim peace for his village.

  First published in 1956, Train to Pakistan is a classic of modern Indian fiction.

  Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He is also the author of several books which include the novels I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi, The Company of Women and Burial at Sea; the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs; and a number of translations and non-fiction books on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature, current affairs and Urdu poetry. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published in 2002.

  Khushwant Singh was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.

  For my daughter Mala

  Dacoity

  The summer of 1947 was not like other Indian summers. Even the weather had a different feel in India that year. It was hotter than usual, and drier and dustier. And the summer was longer. No one could remember when the monsoon had been so late. For weeks, the sparse clouds cast only shadows. There was no rain. People began to say that God was punishing them for their sins.

  Some of them had good reason to feel that they had sinned. The summer before, communal riots, precipitated by reports of the proposed division of the country into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan, had broken out in Calcutta, and within a few months the death toll had mounted to several thousand. Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped. From Calcutta, the riots spread north and east and west: to Noakhali in East Bengal, where Muslims massacred Hindus; to Bihar, where Hindus massacred Muslims. Mullahs roamed the Punjab and the Frontier Province with boxes of human skulls said to be those of Muslims killed in Bihar. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who had lived for centuries on the Northwest Frontier abandoned their homes and fled towards the protection of the predominantly Sikh and Hindu communities in the east. They travelled on foot, in bullock carts, crammed into lorries, clinging to the sides and roofs of trains. Along the way—at fords, at crossroads, at railroad stations—they collided with panicky swarms of Muslims fleeing to safety in the west. The riots had become a rout. By the summer of 1947, when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.

  Mano Majra is a tiny place. It has only three brick buildings, one of which is the home of the moneylender Lala Ram Lal. The other two are the Sikh temple and the mosque. The three brick buildings enclose a triangular common with a large peepul tree in the middle. The rest of the village is a cluster of flat-roofed mud huts and low-walled courtyards, which front on narrow lanes that radiate from the centre. Soon the lanes dwindle into footpaths and get lost in the surrounding fields. At the western end of the village there is a pond ringed round by keekar trees. There are only about seventy families in Mano Majra, and Lala Ram Lal’s is the only Hindu family. The others are Sikhs or Muslims, about equal in number. The Sikhs own all the land around the village; the Muslims are tenants and share the tilling with the owners. There are a few families of sweepers whose religion is uncertain. The Muslims claim them as their own, yet when American missionaries visit Mano Majra the sweepers wear khaki sola topees and join their womenfolk in singing hymns to the accompaniment of a harmonium. Sometimes they visit the Sikh temple, too. But there is one object that all Mano Majrans—even Lala Ram Lal—venerate. This is a three-foot slab of sandstone that stands upright under a keekar tree beside the pond. It is the local deity, the deo to which all the villagers—Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or pseudo-Christian—repair secretly whenever they are in a special need of blessing.

  Although Mano Majra is said to be on the banks of the Sutlej River, it is actually half a mile away from it. In India villages cannot afford to be too close to the banks of rivers. Rivers change their moods with the seasons and alter their courses without warning. The Sutlej is the largest river in the Punjab. After the monsoon its waters rise and spread across its vast sandy bed, lapping high up the mud embankments on either side. It becomes an expanse of muddy turbulence more than a mile in breadth. When the flood subsides, the river breaks up into a thousand shallow streams that wind sluggishly between little marshy islands. About a mile north of Mano Majra the Sutlej is spanned by a railroad bridge. It is a magnificent bridge—its eighteen enormous spans sweep like waves from one pier to another, and at each end of it there is a stone embankment to buttress the railway line. On the eastern end the embankment extends all the way to the village railroad station.

  Mano Majra has always been known for its railway station. Since the bridge has only one track, the station has several sidings where less important trains can wait, to make way for the more important.

  A small colony of shopkeepers and hawkers has grown up around the station to supply travellers with food, betel leaves, cigarettes, tea, biscuits and sweetmeats. This gives the station an appearance of constant activity and its staff a somewhat exaggerated sense of importance. Actually the stationmaster himself sells tickets through the pigeonhole in his office, collects them at the exit beside the door, and sends and receives messages over the telegraph ticker on the table. When there are people to notice him, he comes out on the platform and waves a green flag for trains which do not stop. His only assistant manipulates the levers in the glass cabin on the platform which control the signals on either side, and helps shunting engines by changing hand points on the tracks to get them onto the sidings. In the evenings, he lights the long line of lamps on the platform. He takes heavy aluminum lamps to the signals and sticks them in the clamps behind the red and green glass. In the mornings, he brings them back and puts out the lights on the platform.

  Not many trains stop at Mano Majra. Express trains do not stop at all. Of the many slow passenger trains, only two, one from Delhi to Lahore in the mornings and the other from Lahore to Delhi in the evenings, are scheduled to stop for a few minutes. The others stop only when they are held up. The only regular customers are the goods trains. Although Mano Majra seldom has any goods to send or receive, its station sidings are usually occupied by long rows of wagons. Each passing goods train spends hours shedding wagons and collecting others. After dark, when the countryside is steeped in silence, the whistling and puffing of engines, the banging of buffers, and the clanking of iron couplings can be heard all through the night.

  All this has made Mano Majra very conscious of trains. Before daybreak, the mail train rushes through on its way to Lahore, and as it approaches the bridge, the driver invariably blows two long blasts on the whistle. In an instant, all Mano Majra comes awake. Crows begin to caw in the keekar trees. Bats fly back in long silent relays and begin to quarrel for their perches in the peepul. The mullah at the mosque knows that it is time for the morning prayer. He has a quick wash, stands facing west towards Mecca and with his fingers in his ears cries in long sonorous notes, ‘Allah-o-Akbar’. The priest at the Sikh temple lies in bed till the mullah has called. Then he too gets up, draws a bucket of water from the well in the temple courtyard, pours it over himself, and intones his prayer in monotonous singsong to the sound of splashing water.

  By the time the 10:30 morning passenger train from Delhi comes in, life in Mano Majra has settled down to its dull daily routine. Men are in the fields. Women are busy with their daily chores. Children are out grazing cattle by the river. Persian wheels squeak and groan as bullocks go round and round, prodded on by curses and the jabs of goads in their hindquarters. Sparrows fly about the roofs, trailing straw in their beaks. Pyedogs seek the shade of the long mud walls. Bats settle their arguments, fold their wings, and suspend themselves in sleep.

  As the midday express goes by, Mano Majra stops to rest. Men and children come home for dinner and the siesta hour. When they have eaten, the men gather in the shade of the peepul tree and sit on the wooden platforms and talk and doze. Boys ride their buffaloes into the pond, jump off their backs, and splash about in the muddy water. Girls play under the trees. Women rub clarified butter into each other’s hair, pick lice from their children’s heads, and discuss births, marr
iages and deaths.

  When the evening passenger from Lahore comes in, everyone gets to work again. The cattle are rounded up and driven back home to be milked and locked in for the night. The women cook the evening meal. Then the families foregather on their rooftops where most of them sleep during the summer. Sitting on their charpais, they eat their supper of vegetables and chapattis and sip hot creamy milk out of large copper tumblers and idle away the time until the signal for sleep. When the goods train steams in, they say to each other, ‘There is the goods train.’ It is like saying goodnight. The mullah again calls the faithful to prayer by shouting at the top of his voice, ‘God is great.’ The faithful nod their amens from their rooftops. The Sikh priest murmurs the evening prayer to a semicircle of drowsy old men and women. Crows caw softly from the keekar trees. Little bats go flitting about in the dusk and large ones soar with slow graceful sweeps. The goods train takes a long time at the station, with the engine running up and down the sidings exchanging wagons. By the time it leaves, the children are asleep. The older people wait for its rumble over the bridge to lull them to slumber. Then life in Mano Majra is stilled, save for the dogs barking at the trains that pass in the night.

  It had always been so, until the summer of 1947.

  One heavy night in August of that year, five men emerged from a keekar grove not far from Mano Majra, and moved silently towards the river. They were dacoits, or professional robbers, and all but one of them were armed. Two of the armed men carried spears. The others had carbines slung over their shoulders. The fifth man carried a chromium-plated electric torch. When they came to the embankment, he flicked the torch alight. Then he grunted and snapped it off.

  ‘We will wait here,’ he said.

  He dropped down on the sand. The others crouched around him, leaning on their weapons. The man with the torch looked at one of the spearmen.

  ‘You have the bangles for Jugga?’

  ‘Yes. A dozen of red and blue glass. They would please any village wench.’

  ‘They will not please Jugga,’ one of the gunmen said.

  The leader laughed. He tossed the torch in the air and caught it. He laughed again and raised the torch to his mouth and touched the switch. His cheeks glowed pink from the light inside.

  ‘Jugga could give the bangles to that weaver’s daughter of his,’ the other spearman said. ‘They would look well with those large gazelle eyes and the little mango breasts. What is her name?’

  The leader turned off the torch and took it from his mouth. ‘Nooran,’ he said.

  ‘Aho,’ the spearman said. ‘Nooran. Did you see her at the spring fair? Did you see that tight shirt showing off her breasts and the bells tinkling in her plaits and the swish-swish of silk? Hai!’

  ‘Hai!’ the spearman with the bangles cried. ‘Hai! Hai!’

  ‘She must give Jugga a good time,’ said the gunman who had not yet spoken. ‘During the day, she looks so innocent you would think she had not shed her milk teeth.’ He sighed. ‘But at night, she puts black antimony in her eyes.’

  ‘Antimony is good for the eyes,’ one of the others said. ‘It is cooling.’

  ‘It is good for other people’s eyes as well,’ the gunman said.

  ‘And cooling to their passions, too.’

  ‘Jugga?’ the leader said.

  The others laughed. One of them suddenly sat erect.

  ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘There is the goods train.’

  The others stopped laughing. They all listened in silence to the approaching train. It came to a halt with a rumble, and the wagons groaned and creaked. After a time, the engine could be heard moving up and down, releasing wagons. There were loud explosions as the released wagons collided with the ones on the sidings. The engine chuffed back to the train.

  ‘It is time to call on Ram Lal,’ the leader said, and got to his feet.

  His companions rose and brushed the sand off their clothes. They formed a line with their hands joined in prayer. One of the gunmen stepped in front and began to mumble. When he stopped, they all went down on their knees and rubbed their foreheads on the ground. Then they stood up and drew the loose ends of their turbans across their faces. Only their eyes were uncovered. The engine gave two long whistle blasts, and the train moved off towards the bridge.

  ‘Now,’ the leader said.

  The others followed him up the embankment and across the fields. By the time the train had reached the bridge, the men had skirted the pond and were walking up a lane that led to the centre of the village. They came to the house of Lala Ram Lal. The leader nodded to one of the gunmen. He stepped forward and began to pound on the door with the butt of his gun.

  ‘Oi!’ he shouted. ‘Lala!’

  There was no reply. Village dogs gathered round the visitors and began to bark. One of the men hit a dog with the flat side of his spear blade. Another fired his gun into the air. The dogs ran away whimpering and started to bark louder from a safer distance.

  The men began to hammer at the door with their weapons. One struck it with his spear which went through to the other side.

  ‘Open, you son of fornication, or we will kill the lot of you,’ he shouted.

  A woman’s voice answered. ‘Who is it who calls at this hour? Lalaji has gone to the city.’

  ‘Open and we will tell you who we are or we will smash the door,’ the leader said.

  ‘I tell you Lalaji is not in. He has taken the keys with him. We have nothing in the house.’

  The men put their shoulders to the door, pressed, pulled back and butted into it like battering-rams. The wooden bolt on the other side cracked and the doors flew open. One of the men with a gun waited at the door; the other four went in. In one corner of the room two women sat crouching. A boy of seven with large black eyes clung to the older of the two.

  ‘In the name of God, take what we have, all our jewellery, everything,’ implored the older woman. She held out a handful of gold and silver bracelets, anklets and earrings.

  One of the men snatched them from her hands.

  ‘Where is the Lala?’

  ‘I swear by the Guru he is out. You have taken all we have. Lalaji has nothing more to give.’

  In the courtyard four beds were laid out in a row.

  The man with the carbine tore the little boy from his grandmother’s lap and held the muzzle of the gun to the child’s face. The women fell at his feet imploring.

  ‘Do not kill, brother. In the name of the Guru—don’t.’

  The gunman kicked the women away.

  ‘Where is you father?’

  The boy shook with fear and stuttered, ‘Upstairs.’

  The gunman thrust the boy back into the woman’s lap, and the men went out into the courtyard and climbed the staircase. There was only one room on the roof. Without pausing they put their shoulders to the door and pushed it in, tearing it off its hinges. The room was cluttered with steel trunks piled one on top of the other. There were two charpais with several quilts rolled up on them. The white beam of the torch searched the room and caught the moneylender crouching under one of the charpais.

  ‘In the name of the Guru, the Lalaji is out,’ one of the men said, mimicking the woman’s voice. He dragged Ram Lal out by his legs.

  The leader slapped the moneylender with the back of his hand. ‘Is this the way you treat your guests? We come and you hide under a charpai.’

  Ram Lal covered his face with his arms and began to whimper.

  ‘Where are the keys of the safe?’ asked the leader, kicking him on the behind.

  ‘You can take all—jewellery, cash, account books. Don’t kill anyone,’ implored the moneylender, grasping the leader’s feet with both his hands.

  ‘Where are the keys of your safe?’ repeated the leader. He knocked the moneylender sprawling on the floor. Ram Lal sat up, shaking with fear.

  He produced a wad of notes from his pocket. ‘Take these,’ he said, distributing the money to the five men. ‘It is all I have in the house. All is yours.’