A very absorbing read.....Memories of Madness stories of 1947.

Memories of Madness stories of 1947.

This is a compilation the novel, “Train to Pakistan” by Sardar Khuswant Singh, many short stories of Sadat Hasan Manto, and “Tamas” by Bhisam Sahni. The reader can feel as if he is seeing the events all described by one author.

I read it a year back.

Singhji was a Sikh who had not to change the border where as Sahni had to come India from Rawalpindi and Mantoji had to search where the wonder land Pakistan was. The commonest sentence written throughout the book is, “ We are running with a bad time”, the same sentence told by an Iqbal Singh, an Iqbal Khan and an Iqbal Sharma, a friend to a friend, a husband to a wife, an officer to a help seeking public. The evil took the upper hand and the people with sense had no option to save the situation.

Never in my life I read anything so close to my heart, so involved, I felt I am reading the once banned book, “Freedom at midnight” that I read during my final MBBS exam in 1991 at a stretch without sleeping, bathing, eating or going out of my hostel room. This was an extension that I read in a very slow pace after finishing Train to… in a jet speed.

I remember I was so involved that as my wife wanted me to visit Chhatrabazar vegetable market I felt how insensible a woman can be, sending the husband outside to a burning city. She could judge something terrible I felt and I explained.

Khuswantji’s first novel is a masterpiece that presents how a dacoit at last takes the possession of the belongings of the Muslims that the normal villagers felt shame and crime to keep with human feeling of compassion to the evacuated people. The Sikh hero knowing well that her Muslim love bird who permanently is shifting to Pakistan with their baby in womb does the supreme sacrifice to save not only her but a train load of human being evacuated to Pakistan whom the murderers from this side had planned a massacre .

In Manto’s stories all the human emotions are effortlessly crafted. He had exposed, it was nothing to do with religion but simply who can exploit whom with terrible mistakes too.

A grown up girl the only survivor of a family got separated at the last stop inside India where as the father escaped. After some months in a bilateral scheme volunteers from each country went to collect the missing people if found to unite the respective families. The Pakistani youth collected this girl……..

When the father asked he got the same answer that they were searching. The father got sick and was taken to hospital where he found the girl in a condition no father ever would like to see a daughter. She had saved herself in the perceived land of enemies but Mohamad Alli Jinnha’s youth brigade in the promised wonder land of Pakistan exploited the situation with masculine madness for a period of time till destroying her completely.

In another story a Muslim girl staying in a Hindu dominated area exchanged her place with a Hindu girl, her friend who was staying in a Muslim dominated area. They thought this should help both of them. Their guardians apparently did not know it. One family head seeing the destruction of his family brought out a weapon and went run amok. Why should he not take the revenge of the lost chastity of he own daughter and so he raped the place exchanged girl in the other locality too late to identify she was none other than the daughter.

And the ultimate story Toba Tek Singh the story of the lunatic who in an exchange program where the mad people were also sent as per their religion. At Wagha no force could push or pull the unique lunatic from Pakistan to India who for last 21 years never laid down from his standing posture in the asylum of Lahore, dropped dead in no man’s land.

 The same Wagha  I visited in March 2014 to see the anti Pakistani and anti India slogans, the phooed patriotism of the same people who loot their own respective countries in many roles. I felt the gates are nothing but knives pushed in my mother’s chest. No one should broker patriotism; religion is sub patriotism it changed many a time in history. The land southern to the great mountain wall Himalayas including the mountains was and one day will again be one country. 

Tamas  the novel of Sahni has dissected the minute anatomy of a riot. His Kendra Sahitya academy award winning novel exposed how the wicked mind of a Muslim hired a Chamar to kill a pig and hired a sweeper to take it to throw in front of a Mosque to start a riot. It is slow but clinical detail of what exactly happens during a riot.

A Sikh old couple whose daughter was married and teen son was at a distant place was assured by the Muslim village headman that nothing would happen to him or his small grocery shop. Things changed rapidly, the headman was ashamed of meeting him directly but uttered to himself in a loud enough voice so that his friend could listen that very bad time had arrived and he should control his own villagers but murderers were coming from outside. He walked to and fro to be sure his buddy whom he was unable to face really heard him and left the place to safe hide out.

 So humanity was intact.

The old man too possessive about his double barrel gun went out with his wife…………. They reached a unknown village and how should a Punjabi differentiate between a Sikh Punjabi rural house from a Muslim Punjabi rural house hence begged shelter in a Muslim’s house where only a mother in law and a daughter in law were present with the father son duo had gone out to loot. That family was the chief organizer of crime in the local area. The mother in law sheltered the old couple taking custody of the gun. The Sikh begged the gun without the bullet but the lady did not do that as she knew this would create instant rage in her husband and son when they returned with the loot.

The couple stayed in the upper storey of the mud house.

The males returned with the loot of the same Sikh’s trunk and started breaking the lock with a hammer as if the hammer was on the old man himself. He broke silence to tell please open it with the key that was with him. He was not worried for the wealth but the manner of the burglars.

And what must have happened discovering them there ……

The lady not only drove them out in the early night but also gave back the gun. Imagine the confidence of the lady on the human who had all chance to shoot back her son and husband.

The Sikh’s son somewhere was captured by a group of Muslims who offered Him Islam with intake of a piece of sweet meat obviously beef or else being stoned to death. He resisted to a point where he could not anymore. What I felt as if I was witnessing my son in that position and telling him taking a piece of meat wass not Islam and to save a son’s life was the first priority of a father. I was about to tell it loud when he took it.

 Suddenly the foes turned friends.

My mind suddenly saw a new dimension… At least there was a scope to save the life of a Hindu or a Sikh from the hands of Muslim murderers but what was the scope of a Muslim to save his life from the Hindu murderers. I did not know how to react, to cry or to shy or to be happy for the Sikh teen saved.

A Hindu girl was kidnapped by her one sided Muslim lover and kept unhurt till a point she understood there was no way a Hanuman would reach with Rama’s news and she started reciprocating as a beloved.  Tragedy of all forms, rumor of all forms, commonest rumor was, they had loaded there Mosques, Gurudwaras, temples with weapons and may attack at any point. The sense of insecurity, the poison of religious fundamentalism became the lord of the ring of riots.

A Muslim noble with his four wheeler vehicle went through the length and breadth of the Muslim dominated town to collect his Hindu and Sikh friends to save their life and property. He actually did save many. When he went with the key of the locker to bring back the valuable jewelry of a rich Hindu friend he found the servant of the family still guarding the house with little care to his own life. He brought the box safely but without any reason killed the servant in seclusion that was not going to decrease his nobleness vis a vis doing a religious duty to kill a person from another religion who was poor, helpless and defenseless.

 What a cruel joke.

 The bigger people could call all party all religion meetings of peace at the cost of lives of common.

 This what riots do everywhere around the world.

A Hindu extremist organization trained the youth to kill animals so that they should not fear killing human. The devotional songs of vakti in temples changed to songs of bravery.

A trained youth wanted to kill a Muslim as a duty. He followed an old man with impaired vision, a local vendor of eateries. The old man thought this boy out of fear is following him in the Muslim dominated area and told him, “Don’t worry son nothing would happen to you as long as I am here. All know me no one can harm you, but do not go beyond certain point where there is danger.” He felt he should help this son of the soil but the boy out of the call of his bravery and duty stabbed the man with impaired vision. The man very casually told, "Son ! probably you killed me, we are running through a very bad time".

Big group of Sikh ladies went in a line and jumped in to a well to save their shame which was completely based on rumor.
  

A cut throat business rival, merchants of cloth evacuates the enemies wire house and kept all in safe custody before the criminals torched the area and later on returned him back everything.

Tamas’ is not a fiction it is based on Rawalpindi riot.
   

A few monthS back I was reading my Guruji’s Odia novel, “PRAVANJANA”, meaning ‘cyclone’ which is also the English novel of him there also he describes a scene from Kolkata riot in a similar manner though it is a small peripheral part of the novel.

Going back to Mantoji, he describes three non Muslim friends persuading a rich Muslim not to leave Mumbai his own city to Karachi where he has nothing but he leaves. His reason was something different he wants not to put his friendship in testing time and it is better for him to leave than to put his friends in trouble trying or not trying to save him.

May be thousands of pages are written and the process goes on including this piece from me as the insecurity is not gone. The extreme feelings and speeches and writing that hurt others are on an increase. I am a Hindu not by choice neither my Muslim or Christian friend are following their religion by choice. We are attaching ourselves to our faiths knowing too little about Gita or Quran or Bible or Guru Granth Sahib. My atheist friend is without this baggage and there is no need to read a book to know we can never take groundnuts in front of a kid without offering him a few nuts. We are powered enough to judge right or wrong. These religions are to guide and refine our conscience not to create hatred. Wars happened in 1984, in 2002.

Every riot is organized and every terror attack has a master mind.

 It is shameful affair to discriminate someone because of his faith, skin color, caste or language those who are constantly busy with these activities are working for their own agenda.   


Dedicated to Odia poet Salabega the son of a Brahmin mother and Muslim father and Odia king Hafiz Kader @ Ramchandra Dev the central character of "NILASHAILA".