Sultan of Delhi: Ascension Read online

  At dinner the next weekend, Arjun’s mother had brought up the topic of leaving, wondering aloud whether it would be wise to move to Bombay, where her sisters stayed. ‘Maybe,’ she had said, ‘we should send the boys there for a while. The schools are better and they will have children their age to play with.’

  Shyamprasad Bhatia would have none of it. He was, after all, the city’s biggest cloth merchant and the president of the Merchants and Craftsmen Union, being the first brown man to be so. He and the chief of police were on first-name terms, and the governor invited him for tea. There was no way he would run away like the others, with their tails between their legs. Not from Lahore, where they had lived and made their money for generations.

  ‘All this trouble is in passing only,’ he had said, wiping the corner of his mouth with a white silk kerchief, like the pukka Britisher he was at the table. ‘There will be some blood in the old city when the British leave, but they fight over everything there. Even an unpaid ten-rupee loan brings out the butcher knives in Lohari Gate.’

  ‘But still…’ She had continued to argue.

  Arjun’s father had rattled the cutlery with an air of finality, ‘Nothing will happen here. This is Model Town, a place for gentlemen. Not Papar Mandi.’

  Model Town was truly a place for gentlemen, a garden city located six kilometres from the heart of Lahore and populated by the Hindu elite. It had clean roads, perfectly manicured lawns and high walls. To those who were used to its antiseptic life of privilege, something as improper as violence would require a noobjection certificate from the cooperative if it wanted to make its appearance there.

  ‘But Ameena was saying that the Muslims of the League are marching in Mozang and that there are Afridi Pathans from the North who are provoking the boys and planning God knows what.’

  Shyamprasad spoke slowly and in a low voice; it was what he did when his patience was being tested. ‘The cheapest things in Anarkali Bazaar, they say, are rumours. Some boys with no jobs and all talk are shouting slogans and we should do what? Pack up and leave? Just based on a washerwoman’s idle gossip?’

  This put an end to the conversation. It was clear to all at home that the subject was no longer open to discussion among them.

  Iqbal Malik would visit the Bhatia residence from time to time, for business, for gossip and for the Scotch, and the conversation would invariably veer towards the affairs of the country. Malik had been sanguine. ‘Changes in siyasat have happened in the past, and revolutions demand blood, but life has gone on for people like us, just as it always has.’ And so they had stayed, though Arjun, young as he was, could still feel his mother’s immense unease. But he trusted his father. And Shyamprasad Bhatia was not worried. Not in the least.

  Then Arjun had fallen sick again, with high fever and fits of vomiting. Things had become so bad that Dr Muhammed had him admitted to a nursing home, merely as a precaution – at least that’s what he had told his mother. It was difficult to move around the city now that it faced regular fits of violence, so he argued that it might be better if Arjun stayed where he would get good care at a moment’s notice. She agreed and Arjun was immediately shifted to a hospital.

  It was on a Tuesday that everything changed.

  Shyamprasad Bhatia had driven to the hospital to check on Arjun. The fever had subsided, the vomiting had stopped, and the doctor on duty had wanted him discharged the day before, what with the shortage of beds for people coming in, overflowing from the city hospital. It was prudent to save the beds for patients with serious burns, stab wounds and severe trauma. But no one could discharge Dr Gul Muhammed’s patient without his consent, and that too when it was the son of Shyamprasad Bhatia.

  Just when Shyamprasad was going to leave, Dr Muhammed had burst into the room in a panic and slammed the door shut. He was panting and the front of his white shirt was blackened with sweat.

  ‘You have to leave. Now,’ he gasped, holding on to Arjun’s bedrail. ‘They are going to kill you and your family. You have to leave the city. There is no more time.’

  Shyamprasad stared as if he had seen a ghost. Arjun could see it in his face. His father did not believe him.

  ‘Dr Muhammed, please relax.’ He stretched his hand out. ‘Nobody wants to kill us.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. They do and they will.’ The doctor shook away the outstretched hand, with some violence. ‘There is a train leaving tonight, in a few hours. Get on it. Or there will be nothing left…’

  Shyamprasad again put on that polite tone of gentle exasperation. ‘I know you are worried and I am grateful for that. But I am sure the police and the army can put down a few angry young men. We stay in Model Town…they won’t even…’

  The doctor exploded in rage, ‘You think your police will protect you? You think that just because you live in a big house with tall brick walls, that the world will pass you by? I hate to have to tell this to you but the police and the army are standing back all over town. The orders have come from above, to let things happen as they must. The Hindus must leave. Either walking or feet first.’

  Arjun looked once at Dr Muhammed and then at his father. He desperately wanted to believe his father.

  ‘Why would they want to harm us? We have never done anything to them.’ Shyamprasad still seemed to believe he could reason his way out of the reality the doctor was forcing upon them.

  Dr Muhammed shook his head. ‘You have had your fancy parties with your white tents and your white-gloved waiters while they have gone to bed on empty stomachs. You have driven past their houses while they have begged for scraps of food you wouldn’t even feed your dogs. You have refused to let them sit at your table or drink water from your glasses, because your religion makes Muslims unclean, and you ask “Why would they want to harm us?” Are you stupid? Or just blind?’

  Shyamprasad was still smiling. ‘You know I have never done that kind of thing. At our house…’

  ‘You are a decent man, Bhatia sahib. But that does not matter to those on the streets. For them, you are just one thing. A Hindu. An enemy.’ He slapped his forehead dramatically. ‘We can keep arguing here over the whys and hows or you can save yourself and your son by catching the train.’

  It was then that Arjun saw something new, something he had never seen before in his ten years – fear on his father’s face. He felt faint.

  ‘What do you mean by me and my son? I have to take my family with me.’ Shyamprasad paused and asked, ‘They are all okay, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. The rioters were moving towards Model Town and they had your name on the list. I would say take Arjun and leave. Your family can join you later.’

  Shyamprasad had started moving now. ‘I will bring them to the station in my car. Can you get in touch with Iqbal? He will know what to do, whom to talk to. The governor, I need to talk to the governor.’

  Dr Muhammed lowered his voice and said, ‘Do not get in touch with Iqbal Malik. He is arming the mob, I saw him on the street. Who do you think gave your name to them?’

  Shyamprasad stopped, sat down on the bedside chair and held his head in his hands. ‘Iqbal? He is my friend…Why?’

  The doctor caught hold of his shoulders. ‘There are no friends in this world. There never have been. Just people looking after themselves.’ He shook him lightly. ‘Now will you go or do you want to watch your son die here in front of your eyes?’

  Shyamprasad rose stiffly, shuffling forward to the door. Then he turned to Arjun and said, ‘Come with me. We have to go for your brothers.’

  Dr Muhammed stopped him. ‘There’s no time to waste. You should go to the railway station straight away.’

  ‘I can’t leave my family!’ Shyamprasad shouted in panic.

  The doctor hesitated. ‘It’s too risky. But if you must go to Model Town, don’t take your car. It’s too fancy to pass unnoticed. My car is downstairs, it has a red cross on it. They won’t stop you if you are in it. My driver knows how to get through. Don’t sit at the back like you
do, stay down. Don’t be seen through the window. And don’t take Arjun with you.’

  ‘Not take Arjun with me? Why?’

  ‘I will take him to Lahore Junction. It’s not a long walk from here, and I know the back alleys.’ He turned towards Arjun. ‘Do you think you can walk with me to the station?’ Arjun’s tongue felt heavy, no words came out. He just nodded. He had understood what lay behind the doctor’s words, that death lay in wait at Model Town. The panic in Dr Muhammed’s eyes, Arjun had realized, came not from the fear of what might happen but the knowledge of what already had.

  He felt weak and light-headed as they stepped out, him and Dr Muhammed, through the back door of the nursing home. The moment they were outside, Dr Muhammed whispered to him, ‘If anyone stops us, I will say your name is Shabbir and that you are my nephew. Understand? You are born mute. Remember that. Do not say a word. The way you talk, it gives your religion away. And if they try to pull your shorts down to check if you are circumcised, run. Do not wait for me. Do not look for me. Do not turn back. Just run as fast as you can.’

  Arjun had never been in this part of the town. If he had, he had been driven around in a car. So he had no idea where he was as they walked grimly on. They kept to the narrow streets, sometimes taking shortcuts through little private yards, climbing through holes in dirty brick walls, jumping over little ditches filled with refuse and sneaking by metal cages full of fluttering chickens. Arjun could see columns of thick black smoke belching out into the sky and once or twice, a phalanx of voices shouting slogans in the name of Allah would pass by. Dr Muhammed would then pull Arjun into a corner and they would wait for the voices to die down.

  Then as they were walking down a road, Arjun saw three men in white Pathan suits coming from the other end, talking animatedly among themselves. One of them held an extinguished torch, another a long sword, the rays of the afternoon sun dancing cruelly down the sharp edge.

  ‘Assalaam alaikum doctor sahib,’ said the man with the sword, and it was then that Arjun noticed the bloodstains on the blade. It had been wiped with a cloth but the red still lingered ominously.

  ‘Wa-alaikum salaam,’ Dr Muhammed said, making a slight adaab. The three did the same.

  ‘Kya baat hai, doctor sahib, you are wandering the streets when there is so much work to be done,’ the tallest one said politely, but there was no mistaking the frostiness in his words. Then he looked down at Arjun and asked, ‘Who is this boy?’

  Without changing his expression, Dr Muhammed replied, ‘This is Shabbir, my nephew.’

  The man sat on his haunches and asked, ‘Which mohalla do you stay in?’

  ‘He can’t speak. Poor boy can barely hear. He was born like that,’ said Dr Muhammed, putting a protective arm around Arjun’s shoulder.

  The man with the extinguished torch said, ‘Nephew? I never knew you had a nephew, doctor sahib. That too, a deaf mute?’

  There were two side lanes, one to the left and one to the right, and if he had to run, Arjun had decided he would go left, further away from the man with the sword.

  Dr Muhammed said, ‘I hardly know him myself. Shabbir and his grandmother came from Amritsar on the train a few days ago. The Hindus killed his family, leaving them alive.’

  The man touched Shabbir’s forehead tenderly. ‘Doctor sahib, he is burning with fever.’

  ‘Yes, I know. The shock of what he has seen…all that slaughter in front of him,’ Dr Muhammed mumbled.

  His suspicious frown dissolving, the man reached into the pocket of his Pathan suit and brought out a fistful of gold. Necklaces, earrings and other things Arjun could not well make out.

  ‘Take this. It’s a small price for what they took from you.’ The man held the items forward, gesturing for Arjun to take them. Dr Muhammed gave Arjun an encouraging pat on his back, signalling that he should take what was being given.

  Arjun knew what this was. Loot from a store these three had just robbed. Maybe that blood on the sword…He made his hand into a begging bowl, and smiled his most grateful smile. For a second, his reflexes gave him away, manoeuvring his hands subconsciously into a namaskar, because that was what he had been taught to do whenever anyone gave him a gift. Then he pulled back, for that would definitely have given away his religion, and made a low bow instead, keeping the ‘please have mercy on me I am a deaf mute’ smile pasted on his mouth.

  The man with the extinguished torch said, ‘We should get going.’

  ‘They have a train going out in the evening. Some faujis are standing guard at the station, so we have to wait till it’s on the tracks to get at the Hindus,’ explained the man with the sword. The three men then walked past, leaving the two standing there, frozen for a few moments, shoulders clenched in terror. Then they looked at each other, Dr Muhammed nodding a silent ‘well done’, and moved forward.

  Lahore Junction was pure bedlam. There were people crawling all over the platforms, like flies on a piece of jaggery. Old women barely able to move, babies strapped to their mothers, young men with bandages on their heads and lines of cloth bundles and steel trunks of various shapes and sizes. There were a few army men walking about kicking at the larger trunks, yelling at the owners, ‘This can’t go on the train,’ while their owners argued and pleaded and fell at their feet.

  Dr Muhammed thrust a bundle of currency notes into Arjun’s hand. ‘This and that gold should get you over the border.’

  ‘That gold…I can’t take that. It’s…’ Arjun began, reaching into the pocket of his shorts where he had stuffed the gold.

  ‘It’s yours. Don’t think the owners are there to lay claim. And if it keeps you alive, it would be worth much more than it would ever be on anyone’s neck.’ There were tears in Dr Muhammed’s eyes. ‘You are a smart boy. Allah may not have given you health, but he has given you an even bigger blessing. Brains. It will keep you alive.’

  Arjun looked towards his shoes, and asked the question he had been dreading to ask, ‘My father isn’t coming back, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the doctor said sorrowfully, then he added, ‘I couldn’t have stopped your father from going back home. No man can leave without trying to save his family. So I did what I could.’ He swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions on a leash. ‘No matter what happens, you get on that train. Do not wait for your father. Is that understood?’

  ‘What’s the use? They will kill us later on the line. That’s what those men said.’

  ‘They will try to. They may succeed. They may fail. Stay here, though, and you are dead. For sure.’

  ‘Is there any way I can pay you back once I reach the other side? This is a lot of money you have given me,’ Arjun asked, with all the innocence of his ten years.

  The doctor lifted him up in his arms and gave him a hug, his beard pricking against Arjun’s cheeks. His tears now trickled down without hold.

  ‘When you grow older, go to a dargah one day and give alms in my name. Maybe then Allah will be able to forgive some of my sins.’ He put Arjun down on the platform, turned away without another word, and vanished into the crowd.

  Arjun watched him go and then sat himself down near a dirty pillar, squeezing himself on the ground between a family of five and an old man. The old man was dressed in an impeccably tailored white suit, with a red handkerchief folded out of his pocket, a matching red tie and a monocle. Seeing Arjun looking at him with mild interest, he smiled and adjusted his white hat rakishly. ‘If I am going to die, I might as well die in my best,’ he said. Arjun thought of telling him how much more he would stand out in a crowd in that outlandish get-up when they came for them, but thought better of it. What did it matter to him? The world was changing and silence saved lives – as it had saved his back with the three men in the Pathan suits.

  Night fell and the crowd grew and so did the terror. There was no sign of the train. Arjun sat still, his vision blurring and then getting crisper with the ebb and flow of the fever. He thought of Ram and Laxman and about playing tag with th
em on the lawns, with him always being the it. He thought of the cars and their gleaming round curves. He thought of ma and daadi and the puja room up on the third floor. He thought of his father at the table reading the paper, and he thought of himself that day out in the countyside, shooting down pigeons – white fluttering wings against the bright blue sky.

  They were drifting away now, the memories and the people in them, like scraps of paper in a strong breeze, and he felt, deep inside, that they would never come back.

  But he was wrong.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, and it snapped him out of his half-slumber.

  For there he was. His father.

  The Diwali before last, Ram and Laxman had tied a roll of firecrackers to the tail of a stray dog. Arjun had tried to stop them, but they would have none of it. The poor dog had yelped and barked and run around as the two boys had laughed and clapped their hands, and Arjun had rushed to tell his mother, but he could not forget the look of stark terror that had been on the poor mutt’s face. It had bothered him for nights on end.

  That face.

  He saw that look again today on his father’s face. Arjun stood up to hold his father, whose limp body seemed to almost collapse in his arms. And then his father started bawling long and loud. People were looking at them, for even in that sea of misery, his father’s sobs stood out. It was then that Arjun noticed his father’s shirt was caked with grime and ash, and he understood what had happened.

  ‘They burned down everything. Our house. Everything,’ his father said, through the flood of snot and tears, ‘your mother, your grandmother…they are all…’

  Arjun clasped his father close to his chest. Words were superfluous.

  ‘Ram and Laxman, I couldn’t find them…maybe they took them…maybe they had mercy…I don’t know…I could not find them.’

  ‘They must have run away. Ram and Laxman are smart. They will find us, daddy. I am sure someone will help them, as Dr Muhammed has helped us.’ Arjun knew this was highly unlikely. The men he had met today did not seem to be the kind who would leave a job incomplete, but he needed to get his father to stop crying, at least so that he would not attract so much attention.