Darshan (11 page)

Baba Singh began to shake. “I think I knew the whole time. No one will forgive me.”

Yashbir stood. “You never have to tell,” he said, pulling Baba Singh to his chest. The old blacksmith smelled of something woody mixed with the soapy scent of his long beard. Baba Singh was not eighteen anymore. He was a boy again. He melted.

~   ~   ~

The train was jammed with luggage racks, double-height berth seats, and too many people as it jetted through the flatlands toward Amritsar. Baba Singh was squeezed against the wall of the boxcar next to Desa and Khushwant, a cramp in his side from not being able to move. A man above him was sleeping; his arm dangled through the iron bars of the luggage rack. Baba Singh rested his head against the glassless window frame and listened to the
teedoo teedoo, teedoo teedoo
on the rails as the train sliced through the air. It was his first time on the train; he preferred the slow jostling pace of horse tongas. Things at this speed passed by too quickly.

The wind whipped at his face, drowning and suffocating him. He yelled into it, “I am sorry.” But all sound was carried away to the pinnacles of the distant Himalayan Mountains where it meant nothing.

Despite the nerves twisting his stomach, he smiled a weak, involuntary smile as he pictured Kiran and Avani on board, the way he preferred to think of them. Even now they hurtled through India, untouchable angels, laughing at how fast they could fly.

They arrived two hours later, pulling into Amritsar’s train station, which was as loud and massive as Baba Singh remembered. Wafting in from outside the station were the heavy smells of oil, spices, and smoke from an army of vendors bellowing, “
Gharam chai, chana, chana!
Hot tea, chickpeas, chickpeas!” Motor rickshaws buzzed in swarms like insects, exoskeletons weaving in and out. Bike rickshaws were slower, but no less aggressive, lawless rebels tinging their tinny bells.

Baba Singh followed Desa and Khushwant on the long walk down Grand Trunk Road and onto Queens Road where they passed a number of government buildings until they reached the jailhouse. Several Indian guards were just inside the entrance, wearing turtle-green British police uniforms.

Approaching the head guard who was sitting behind a desk, Khushwant said, “We are here for Ranjit Singh Toor.”

The guard gave a bored nod and rifled through some papers.

Baba Singh stepped forward, his heart thumping in his ears. “And doctor Nalin Bansal. I would like to see Dr. Bansal.”

The guard stopped and glanced up irritably. “I only have release papers for Ranjit Toor.”

Desa nervously pulled her brother back. “Yes, that is right.”

Baba Singh pried her fingers from his arm. “I have to see the doctor,” he said again. “He was brought here from Amarpur in 1912.”

The head guard set his pencil down, his jaw tightening. “Crime?” he asked.

Baba Singh lowered his voice. “Murder.”

The guard peered at Baba Singh momentarily. Then, nodding brusquely, he gestured to one of his men. “Vakash,” he said. “Look up Bansal.” He appraised them all, raising a menacing eyebrow. “Anyone else?”

They shook their heads.

“Ranjit is that way,” he said, coming around from behind his desk holding a familiar hand-painted wooden elephant.

“Where did you get that?” Baba Singh demanded.

The guard tapped the elephant into his palm. “Ranjit had it on him. Personal possession.” He turned to the other men and asked mockingly, “Should we give it back?”

“Should we?” one of the others laughed.

The head guard’s face suddenly hardened. “Perhaps he does not deserve it. He is a traitor who conspired with other traitors.”

“The government deserved it,” Baba Singh said.

The guard tapped his uniform, a threat. “The government takes care of me,” he replied.

“You can keep the toy,” Khushwant said hastily. “We don’t need it.”

The head guard smiled with hostility. “Vakash, the key,” he called over his shoulder as he led them down a corridor to Ranjit’s cell.

“Baba,” Desa whispered. “You have not seen him. He will not look like himself. He—”

“He was lucky,” the guard said, overhearing. “We know what he did, but they say he is not a threat. Who are we to argue? We tried our best to get him to talk. We think the elephant made him look innocent. Terrorists do not play with toy elephants, right Vakash?”

“No, sir,” Vakash grinned, jogging toward them with the key.

The head guard stopped in front of Ranjit’s cell. “Right baby Ranjit? Ranjit baby?”

Baba Singh peered into the dark cell, his eyes slowly widening when he found his brother. Ranjit sat cross-legged on the cement floor against the far stone wall. His turban was off, crumpled in the corner. His hair draped down his back in frizzy clumps. He had lost an eye, a patch of scarred skin where the eye once was. His lips were cracked, his body—clothed only in a dhoti—was covered with half-healed scars from whip lacerations, and some of his fingernails were missing. His feet and wrists were chained.

“He never said a word, only cried like a baby,” the head guard told them as Vakash loosened the chains. He then tossed Avani’s elephant at Ranjit’s feet where it landed with a clatter. “Oi, get out of here, Ranjit baby. Time to go, unless you want to stay for more.”

Vakash nodded at Baba Singh. “No Bansals here,” he said, following the head guard down the hallway, heels clicking on the cement floor.

“Baba?” Ranjit said faintly. “Did you come for me?”

Baba Singh’s knees went weak and he grabbed the cell bars to steady himself. “God,” he whispered, face to face with a fate that should have been his. “Wait,” he cried out to the guards.

They stopped.

“The doctor was brought here in the year 1912,” he repeated, his voice loud and panicked. “You might remember. He had a chipped tooth, and his hair was always combed, and he spoke strangely, his mouth was red from too much paan, and his favorite sweets were ladoos.”

“Don’t recall.” The head guard shrugged and moved on down the corridor.

“Is this what I have done to him?” Baba Singh choked, turning back to his brother.

Ranjit picked up the elephant with his bloody fingers as Khushwant and Desa rushed in to help him stand. “No, Baba,” he said, misunderstanding. “These were my choices. You were right. I should have stayed with you.” He started to cough.

“What did I tell you, Ranjit?” Baba Singh said, standing next to his brother. “You were just running. I did not want you to go.” He slid his hand around Ranjit’s waist, speaking softly, “I am much worse. What I did was so much worse. And all this time I have hated you.”

Ranjit smiled weakly. “I know, Baba. I have hated myself.”

~   ~   ~

A son was not the sort of penance Baba Singh had expected for his crime, but when Manmohan was born he fully comprehended the enormity of what he had done. He had ruined his own child with a legacy of violence and brutality, had brought him into a world of greed and cruelty. Over the next two years, Baba Singh handled his son at a distance, watched him grow with an increasing concern that the social and political threats continuing to brew around them would one day turn Manmohan into the enraged and lost man that he had become.

And he could hardly bear his wife’s discerning eyes, her intuitive understanding that something was wrong, that something had changed despite his obliging smiles. He had also ruined her, had sentenced her to a life with a murderer. He could not touch her the way he once had. He was tentative, worried that he would be too rough, thinking all the time that she would not be able to stand his hands on her if she knew.

Guilt for all measure of things now filled Baba Singh’s days and months and years. He spent a great deal of time with Ranjit, asking questions about his search for Kiran and Avani, those sleepless nights in which he had huddled in corners, fending off rats, searching for leads, starving for food. He asked about his brother’s time in prison, about those many meetings in San Francisco, about how the Ghadar party had incited poor, rash men to rise up without reason or logic, about how Ranjit had been led by rich men, equally as rash, who had caused so many to die, who had allowed torture without ever coming to rescue those who sacrificed everything. “Cowards,” his brother muttered, touching his eye.

Every detail was critical, every second Ranjit had experienced hopelessness and sorrow had to be examined, pitted against all those years of Baba Singh’s self-righteousness. Yet he eventually realized that Ranjit would rather not have relived any of it, that his brother shared his stories only to atone for what he believed were his own failings, and that too increased Baba Singh’s guilt. He would have tied himself to a tree if he could have, would have beat his own body for the penalties he had not paid, for the dues he owed.

Indeed, it was his secret hope that the British officer would return to arrest him, would brandish his pistol and cart him away to prison. Yet, although the officer had visited the neighboring villages in recent years, he had no reason to set foot in Barapind. After Ratan, the villagers had agreed to work more cooperatively. Prem’s insistence on sinking a new well and Ranjit and Khushwant’s willingness to venture regularly into Amritsar—where the earnings for the harvests were better—had staved off further calamity for their small community. Still, they could sense another wave of unrest approaching.

Gandhi was touting peace even as British war recruiters continued to flash their shiny uniforms in Amarpur and the surrounding villages. After more failed monsoons and a major outbreak of influenza, they ruthlessly sponged up nearly every remaining, able-bodied Sikh peasant warrior willing to fight for the British crown. With many on the brink of starvation, peace was becoming more and more problematic to master. Farmers and peasants all anticipated glorious appreciation for their sons’ defense of the British, but instead their problems were compounded by yet another unsympathetic increase in taxes and a resurgence of floggings in neighboring villages for nonpayment.

When the Great War finally ended in 1919, the countryside held its breath with collective relief, and grief for those who had died. Yet after the soldiers returned—expecting to be hailed, to be garlanded with flowers and riches—to discover their farms in ruin despite the savings they had sent home, pillaged by the British for whom they had just won the war, the mood again shifted. The people breathed steam and fire, enraged by too much abuse. They protested, burning post offices and banks and derailing goods trains.

Though a difficult task, Gandhi, with his considerable influence, managed to calm the public. He appealed to a purer sense of patriotism. Stop the violence, he reasoned. Join his peaceful march. Determining their voices would best be heard from the Golden Temple, Northern India’s holiest of shrines, he called on them to assemble there, and over five thousand disillusioned Indian citizens began their trek to the meeting place in Amritsar.

“I have to go, Baba,” Ranjit said. He had come to Barapind, had asked Baba Singh to step outside the mud hut so they could speak. “Ishwar asked me. After what happened to Tejinder, I have to go. He thinks Tejinder died for nothing.” He crossed the lane to stand in the shade of a small rosewood tree.

Baba Singh reached up to grab a tree branch, his kurta feeling too big around his shoulders when he stretched out his arm. He had not eaten much since Ishwar had come to tell them about Tejinder. “They will not allow this protest,” he said. “After everything that has happened you should know that much.”

“Khushwant is going with us,” his brother replied.

Manmohan peeked his head through the front door curtain, searching for them.

Ranjit beckoned to him. “Come,” he said, and the boy sprinted across the lane toward his uncle. “Baba, you should bring him. There will be many other children. Ghandiji’s message is clear. None of us will have weapons. There will be no fighting.” He smiled.

Baba Singh released the branch. “Ranjit, haven’t you had enough?”

His brother made a wry face, picking Manmohan up and settling him on his hip. “I am not trying to save the world anymore, Baba. I just want a place in it.”

Manmohan grinned happily in his uncle’s arms.

Ranjit returned the smile, but after a moment it faded. “He is so little. Avani was this little the last time I saw her.”

“I cannot remember what she was like,” Baba Singh replied, his guilt returning. “Or Kiran. But I like to think they are still this little, safe and happy, on some great adventure, not here, never knowing what will come next.”

“What about him?” Ranjit asked, indicating Manmohan. “What will happen to him if he stays here in the middle of this madness? How can we do nothing for him?”

Baba Singh looked gravely at his brother’s scarred face.

Ranjit pulled Avani’s elephant out from a loose, hidden pocket in his kurta. “You can keep this until I get back,” he told his nephew. “I will not be long.”

Baba Singh watched as his son took the elephant. Then, with a smile, toy in hand, Manmohan offered it to his father.

“No, son,” Baba Singh said. “It is your job to keep it safe.”

The next day, Baba Singh—standing with his wife, his son, Desa, and Yashbir—waved to his brothers, Ishwar, and many others as they were carried away on tongas down the road leading to Amritsar.

~   ~   ~

Khushwant had lost his turban somewhere along the way home, but in his hand he clutched Ranjit’s. It had taken him nearly a day and a half, following the train tracks to Amarpur on foot. He was dehydrated and blubbering, his face gritty and tear streaked. His feet were blistered as he crossed the threshold into Hotel Toor. Desa relayed an urgent message to Baba Singh, and when he and Sada Kaur arrived in town, Khushwant was shivering on his charpoy in Yashbir’s arms, mumbling that he and Ishwar had been separated on their way back home. His clothes were stained a reddish brown and carried on them a familiar smell, assumed forever plastered shut in the back room of the hotel.

Gandhi’s peace it seemed had been ineffectual against British General Reginald Dyer’s order to fire indiscriminately into an unarmed crowd marching around the Golden Temple. Ceasing only when out of ammunition, Dyer left behind the stench of several hundred dead. The smell drifted with the breeze until it blanketed the Punjab flatlands. Ranjit’s turban reeked of his own death, and also of gunpowder and metal bullets.