Читать книгу Journey After Midnight - Ujjal Dosanjh - Страница 15

I KNEW MANY YOUNG PEOPLE who yearned to go abroad and leave poverty behind. Thousands of sons and daughters (mainly sons, back then) of the newly independent India were trekking west to make their fortunes. Those who returned to visit seemed happy and wealthy. In my immediate family, my cousin Biraji had made the journey when I was ten, in 1956. I had not thought of leaving India myself, but then something happened to change that.

One afternoon as I was enjoying the spring sun on the college lawn and catching up on my reading, a fellow student named Harjinder Atwal stopped to say goodbye; it was his last day at college, he said, because he was leaving for England. He had been accepted at Faraday House Engineering College in London, he told me, and he thought they were still taking applications for admission from foreign students. He gave me the address for the college and bicycled away. Call it coincidence, fate or chance — our encounter would sculpt the story of my life.

I headed home that evening with my mind racing faster than the wheels of my bicycle. The dust on the road crackled under my tires, as if to prick my conscience. Chachaji had always made it clear that I was to stay in India to study. Riding home to Dosanjh that evening with the London college address in my notebook, I felt the shame of a deceitful son. The night felt darker and lonelier than usual. Even the warm quilt on my bed later that evening failed to quell my shivering bones and trembling spirit.

The next morning, after some quick chores at the khooh , I set off for Phagwara as usual. The fog was slowly vanishing in the glistening rays of the morning sun. Post-compartment, I was working very hard. But I was not happy. Chachaji would never abandon his dream of an engineer son and allow me to do a BA in history or political science instead. Those who studied humanities remained poor or underemployed: that was his logic, and it was somewhat true. Chachaji’s own life of poverty dictated his choices for me.

After several days of battling my doubts and fears, I invested half my daily allowance on an aerogram. I wrote to the college in London, asking for a prospectus and an application form. Not a soul knew about it. My routine of college, home and khooh continued uninterrupted for the next few weeks. Then, one Saturday, Mahee, the village poet-cum-postie, delivered an envelope from the college in London addressed to me. I quickly hid it from sight, opening it when I got back to school, in the anonymity of the college library.

As I read the prospectus and the application form, two challenges emerged. First, I would need to consult a dictionary to decipher many of the words and phrases used in the material. That would be cumber-some, but doable. The other was more difficult. The completed application had to be returned with a five-pound draft attached. At the time, getting an amount greater than three English pounds required approval from the Reserve Bank of India in Delhi. Getting that approval would be an impossibility for me. It meant travelling farther than I had ever gone and, what’s more, I would need Chachaji’s consent.

By now, I had made up my mind to try to get to England. I didn’t have the courage to share that with Chachaji or Bhaji — not until I had the college admission in hand. Biraji, too, had to be bypassed — having been repeatedly yanked out of school by my Tayaji, he was anxious that nothing should delay my continued education. For him, as for Chachaji, that meant staying and studying in India. But Biraji had a brother-in-law, Pushkar Singh Lail, living in Nottingham. I wrote to Pushkar for the draft, impressing upon him that he was not to tell Biraji.

While I waited for his reply, I filled in the application form, except for the space for my name. As a non-Christian, I didn’t know how one dealt with providing a “Christian name.” I couldn’t ask Chachaji since I had not yet told him what I was up to. I asked some of my friends, without disclosing why I needed to know, but no one could help. One day the thought of asking our Dosanjh School headmaster, Dharam Singh, crossed my mind. I broached the subject when I found him alone at his home. He had a bachelor’s degree in English himself, and he agreed to help. A few days later, Mahee delivered the draft from Pushkar, and my application with the draft was on its way to London.

On the day the reply came from England, the college at Phagwara was closed for a few days. After finishing work at the khooh , I went over to the school grounds to play field hockey with some other village boys. The movement of the ball was hard to control on the uneven ground, making the game both more interesting and more trying. The deserted school buildings looked forlorn as we played on into the dusk, delaying the walk home. There were no road lights. On a pitch-black night, you had only your wits and your knowledge of the road to guide you.

This night, unknown to me, there awaited a challenge at home. Mahee had delivered the reply from London to our home, and Chachaji was restlessly waiting for my return. As a father in the India of the early sixties, when sons dared not disobey their fathers, he must have wondered why this was happening to him. Did he feel lonely having to deal with an errant child without his wife, my Biji? There must have been many moments in his life when he felt her absence keenly.

As I entered our home, I was met with Chachaji’s anger: “Why did you do this? How could you do this without telling me?” He showed me the letter: I had been accepted. But instead of elation, I felt all the pain of my father’s disappointment. My tongue felt frozen. Taeeji took me into her embrace and then went away to get my dinner.

There was no studying that night, only an uneasy sleep. From his bed beside mine, Bhaji said, in a wounded voice, “you could have told me !” I had no answer for him, but when we woke the next morning, Bhaji asked what we were going to do. He was always responsible in family matters, and still is to this day. As we busied ourselves in the khooh , we discussed it. I knew Bhaji wanted to go abroad himself. If I went first, it might be easier for him to follow, I said, and he agreed to speak to Chachaji on my behalf.

Bhaji triumphed; a couple of days later Chachaji handed me a bunch of papers. It was an application for a passport. I had a photograph taken, my first ever in a studio.

The completed passport application had to go from the official district town of Jullundur to Phillaur, one of several tehsils , or sub-districts. When the papers did not reach Phillaur, Chachaji, now fully on board, accompanied me to Jullundur in an attempt to speed up the process. There was a deadline: I had to be in London before the first week of January, and it was now mid-November. The following week, the papers arrived in Phillaur. They had been gathering dust somewhere, and someone advised me nothing would happen unless I greased a palm or two. It was getting late in the day, so I decided I should make the trip to Phillaur as well.

I bicycled with a college friend Hargurdeep Dosanjh, nicknamed Chand. At the passport office, I was told I needed to fill out a special form that cost fifteen rupees. When we asked whether the form was available elsewhere, the official said yes — I could get it from another office in town. Chand and I got the form, filled it in and handed it to the original clerk. But the form seemed to have no relevance to my application, and next the clerk wanted to sell us some tickets for an upcoming hockey match in Jullundur, the proceeds from which, he said, were to go to a charity. Chand lost his temper. It was a scam. The clerk wanted a bribe. And if we were to get to Dosanjh at a reasonable hour, we needed to leave right away. We decided to try a different strategy. The residence of the sub-divisional magistrate, the administrative head of Phillaur, was nearby. But like many other residences of the rich and powerful, the SDM ’s had a high wall around it, with a sentry stationed at the tall gate. The guard said “sahib” was not home.

The next day at 9:00 AM , Chand and I were standing outside the unwelcoming gate again. We had left Dosanjh early in the hope of catching the SDM at home. “Sahib is not in,” the sentry informed us. (I detest with a passion this colonial term of “sahib.” In India today it is almost mandatorily uttered by subordinates addressing seniors, the poor addressing the rich, and the weak addressing the mighty. Not coincidentally, the same word is often used to invoke or allude to the Almighty in religious discourses in India.) I peeped through the narrow spaces between the wooden planks of the gate and saw a middle-aged man in a nightgown walking around the yard. I immediately decided he must be the SDM . I called out, “ SDM - ji , we are two young men. We would like to see you. Your subordinates are asking for money to do their work.” The man opened the gate, heard our story and sent his guard back with us to the passport office, where we overheard the guard telling the clerk to do what we were asking. Moments like this reaffirmed my failing faith in the new India.

Before long we received confirmation that the Punjab State had forwarded my application to the nation’s capital for the issuance of my passport. Delhi was only about two hundred miles from Dosanjh, but to us it seemed like a million. The train took ten hours to get there. Undaunted, Chachaji set out immediately, taking the train to Ghaziabad, where he stayed with my cousin Siso, and then bicycling the rest of the way into Delhi. He must have had to push his way through crowds in various offices. And he might have had to find some “people of influence” in Delhi to return with my passport in hand so quickly.

It all reminded me of a time one winter when Chachaji had left home on his bike with a woollen blanket and a change of clothes in a cloth bag. I saw him leave, but I repressed my curiosity; it was considered a bad omen to ask a departing person where they were going, just as it was to call out after a person already on their way. A week later, Chachaji had returned with exhaustion writ large on his crumpled clothes and ashen face. His dishevelled beard and turban spoke to the tense moments he must have endured on his trip. Years later, I learned that Chachaji had been in Chandigarh that week, successfully securing the reversal of a decision by corrupt officials that had seen an acre of our land illegally registered in someone else’s name.

IT WAS MID-DECEMBER 1964, almost ten months since Har-jinder Atwal had bidden me farewell on the college lawn in Phagwara. The bumps along the way had thrust me into deep despair, but the Punjabi equivalent of “this too shall pass” — “ darvuttzamaana cut bhalay din avangay (gird up, persevere, good days shall come)” — always came to my rescue.

I had started to grow up, and I needed more practice in doing important things without Chachaji or Bhaji holding my hand. That was probably what prompted Chachaji to send me, rather than Bhaji, to Hoshiarpur to get some money from Masiji Gurmit. The money was needed for my ticket to England. Maybe Masiji owed Chachaji money, or maybe he had asked her for a loan. I didn’t know. Either way, I made the journey from the bus depot in Phagwara to Hoshiarpur and received the money from Masiji; it was also my chance to say goodbye to my sister Tirath, who was still living there to attend school. Nothing was said between us about my planned departure for England, however; I do not believe Tirath had been told I was leaving.

For reasons I cannot remember, I arrived by bus back at Phagwara late at night. I was carrying over two thousand rupees: not a small sum in those days, especially for the Dosanjhes.

From Phagwara, the direct road that followed the canal and passed by the Dosanjh School was not well travelled at night. The Banga road was much busier; late-night truckers, motorcyclists, cyclists and farmers on guddas ensured the night did not provide easy cover for robbers or the infamous bandits known as dacoits . Still, the rickshawalas wanted forty rupees for the trip on the Banga road at night. I could not afford that kind of money, and anyway, what robbers there were would think me rich if they saw me on a rickshaw. But I could not think of a safe place to spend the night at Phagwara, and I was hungry too. I bought half a dozen bananas and some peanuts for the walk back to Dosanjh and set off on the Banga road.

It was 10:30 PM . Phagwara was an industrial town, but not yet a big urban centre. In the roadside establishments, things were coming to a halt. The road lights stood as if fighting off the night. I was less successful in fighting off my fears. I ate some bananas as I walked, which helped assuage my anxiety. As I passed by the chungi where the police had stopped the farmer, in my mind’s eye I saw again the poor farmer’s son crying on the gudda . My eyes scanned every tree, caught every fleeting ray of light. The moon occasionally pierced through the canopy of branches overhead. The shadows wove a pantomime punctuated by the sounds and speed of traffic. A nightingale sang from the banyan trees.

After a while, I found myself in Mehli, at the turnoff to Mandhali, where the paved road ended. No canopy of trees here, and almost no traffic. In Mehli’s poor homes, divas were mounted in makeshift windows. Those better off had electric bulbs affixed to their plastered gates. The two kinds of homes sat next to each other, framing the chasm between wealth and poverty. On my left was the primary school where, during the monsoons, I had sometimes taken shelter from the pelting rain on my way to or from college. Silent and solitary, the school seemed to be calling to me for company, even for just a moment, in return for the comfort and reprieve it had offered me.

Even bricks and mortar can speak, I believe. To hear them, you need to let the voices enter your being. It had happened to me once before, at the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar, where Meeto Bhenji took me to have my wandering eyes corrected at the Medical College. My family knew an ophthalmology student, who arranged it; the surgery was done by visiting professors in private practice as part of the student’s practicum. (Only the surgery to my right eye was successful; the left one still wanders when I’m tired.) Walking through the narrow passage that served as both entry and exit from the Jallianwala Bagh, I imagined General Dyer ordering his riflemen to gun down the peaceful and unarmed protestors listening to speeches for the freedom of India in 1919 . Having just visited the Golden Temple and the Durgiana Mandir, both abodes of Indian spirituality, might have rendered me susceptible to the power of suggestion. The sound of gunfire, the screams of men, women and children, and the sight of General Dyer frothing at the mouth with hate and imperial arrogance vividly entered my soul that day.

Lost in these memories, I finally crossed the railway tracks that led on one side to Saila and on the other to Phagwara and beyond. A cyclist rode by, noticing me, and quickly stopped. “Who are you, and what are you doing here this late at night?” the rider asked. I told him who I was, giving my father’s name and village. The man was Comrade Harbans Singh of Mandhali, and he ordered me to hop behind him on his bike, promising to drop me within Dosanjh village limits, where I would be safe. He left me no more than a mile away from our khooh building.

All danger past, I began to dread explaining to Chachaji why I was this late at night. Why had I not waited overnight at Masiji’s place in Hoshiarpur, rather than taking such a big risk with so much money? Bhaji would have been smarter about it, I was sure.

Soon I was passing by the land on which we toiled. Gobs of cattle dung, with its distinct, fresh smell, lay on the road. Mixed and composted with household garbage of ash and greens, then allowed to mature for a few months in a heap at the khooh , the dung was a potent organic fertilizer. Whenever we needed manure, we dug some from the composted mound, piled it on a gudda and carried it to the field. From there, Chachaji or Bhaji filled up the tokras , wide-rimmed buckets made of cotton stems or tree branches that were lifted for carrying onto the spreaders’ heads. When we stopped for lunch and siesta on hot days, we would have to stand outside the chalha and use pots to pour water over our bodies to wash away the coats of manure.

Chachaji was still awake when I got home. I had once again disappointed him, and he got out of bed, filled with rage. He stood before me, and I felt his hand strike my cheek. It was not my cheek but my heart that was hurt. It was not until years later, when my own sons were in their teens, that I was able to understand the full anguish of a parent not knowing where a child might be.