Four Miles to Freedom (14 page)

This was the routine. The prisoners in Cell 5 played a sham game of bridge until about ten o'clock. Then they asked a guard to unlock the cell for their nightly trip to the toilet. When all four were once again back in the cell and the guard had turned out the light, Dilip and Grewal, in turn, would begin chipping away at the wall, using the light of a torch. The spot the POWs had chosen was on the back wall a few feet from the corner of the room. They had traced a rectangle in the plaster at ground level, just large enough for a broad-shouldered man to slip through.

In mid-July, as they began chipping the plaster, their chief concern was light. Bhargava had managed to get them a torch by telling a lascar he needed one so that he could read after lights out. As the person doing the chipping lay under the charpoy with the torch in one hand and a chipping instrument in the other, it was essential that no shaft of light escape from the work space. To prevent this Dilip had gathered half a dozen blankets (no one was using blankets in the heat) and draped them over his charpoy so that it was covered on all four sides right to the floor.

Each night, before the work started, they moved Dilip's charpoy out from the wall. Then either Dilip or Grewal lay down on the floor under the charpoy with chipping tools and the torch before the charpoy was shoved back, flush with the wall so that no light could escape. Every half hour or so, the two men changed places.

Their second concern was noise. Although the guards were not curious, or even particularly attentive, they knew if a guard heard something suspicious he could be there in seconds, and the first thing he would do was flip the light switch and catch them red-handed. Thus they could dig only when the guards on duty were at least twenty feet away, or when it was raining. The role of Chati and Sinjhi was to stand near the door and keep an eye on the guards. As an extra precaution, one of them always unscrewed the cell's single light bulb before the work began and replaced it when they had finished.

Of course they realized that if the guard flipped the switch and the light didn't come on, he might investigate (or he might not since power outages were common enough). Their back-up plan was a U-shaped gizmo made of raw wire they called the bazooka. By inserting the ends of the bazooka in the electrical outlet in their room, they could blow the fuse. Perfecting the bazooka had taken some time. When they tested Kamat's first bazooka, there was a small explosion, a spark that made a popping noise, and the bazooka was a charred mess. Now they had a stronger, thicker bazooka to do the job.

The chipping tools they used were better than Dilip's original knife and fork. As well as the screwdriver and scissors they now had a sharp-pointed old engine valve Grewal had bought from a little boy selling cold drinks in the camp. Still it was very hard working from such an awkward position. And it was slow, too. Every time a guard started in their direction, Sinhji or Chati whispered a warning and work stopped immediately. ‘Our initial plan was to cut this hole in a week to ten days,' Grewal remembers. ‘It ended up taking about fifteen.'

The wall was about 25 centimetres thick. After removing the inner plaster, they had a clear view of the bricks. They were typical bricks of the era, 22.5 x 10 x 10 centimetres. Some were laid lengthwise along the wall. In those sections there was another brick behind them, also laid lengthwise. Next would be a section with two bricks laid side by side pointing outwards. In the end they had to remove only eighteen bricks, but each one was firmly ensconced in mortar that had to be chipped away a bit at a time with as little noise as possible. (Unlike the two prisoners who had blasted their way through a similar wall in one night while Grewal's father was magistrate in Punjab, our prisoners were neither desperate nor reckless, and the presence of four armed guards patrolling through the night was reason enough for caution.) They were amazed at how thick the mortar was and how firmly it held so many decades after construction. By the time they finished the job they had accumulated seven or eight boxes of mortar.

Every night, at about 1.30 a.m., they replaced the loose bricks and stored the debris in an empty Red Cross box (there were always several boxes under beds or in the corner of the room). The next day they would be up by seven, as usual, for breakfast with their mates. The others might occasionally be laggards but since Cell 5 was used for all meals its inmates could never linger in bed. Later in the morning, when the sweeper came through, all ten POWs would avert their eyes from the charpoy in the corner, the one with all the blankets and the spare shoes and plastic slippers lined up along the length of it. They were counting on the sweeper's aversion to touching the footwear of the Indian POWs in the course of his cleaning. And sure enough, they were right. The shoes were always left undisturbed.

Every few days, Bhargava shifted a Red Cross box full of the chipped mortar back to the storage room. So far, everything was going according to plan, but Bhargava was growing more and more worried about his friends. Since they were not inclined to listen to him, he decided to speak to Jafa. He had an argument that might convince him, as a senior officer, to put a stop to the whole thing.

The idea that married men couldn't be part of the project did make some sense, he had to admit. Jafa, Bhargava, Coelho, Kamat and Singh had wives and children who depended on them and this crazy scheme could definitely be a widow-maker. Even young Kuruvilla was married, though the marriage was so recent that he and his wife had now been apart far longer than together.

But there were people who cared about the single men, too. That was the point Bhargava used with Jafa. ‘Think about their parents,' he argued. ‘You have children. What would you say if one of your sons were in a prison camp and wanted to break out? Would you allow it?'

‘These men are adults,' said Jafa, ‘and they are very brave. I'm not going to stand in their way.'

Tension mounted as the night of the breakout neared. Dilip and Grewal knew they could not remove the outer plaster until the night of the breakout itself. Otherwise, the hole would be visible from the recruiting compound and petrol pump behind their cell. Every morning employees at the recruiting office parked their bicycles near the barbed wire fence which was only a foot from the wall, so someone was bound to notice.

On the evening of Thursday, 27 July, they dislodged the final brick. ‘Tomorrow night, we go,' said Dilip. But Grewal wanted to wait. The Simla Pact had just been ratified by both countries and troop withdrawals were beginning. Again there were rumours of a prisoner exchange. Why not wait a few more days to see if they were true?

‘I don't want to go back through repatriation,' said Dilip. ‘If repatriation is tomorrow I will attempt to escape today. We have wasted enough time already.'

Sinhji took Dilip aside. ‘If you force Grewal to go and the whole thing goes wrong, his blood will be on your hands,' he said.

‘I'm not forcing anyone,' said Dilip. ‘I will go on my own. No one has to come with me.' He meant what he said, but, at the same time, he knew very well that Grewal would never let him go by himself and neither would Sinhji. It was a matter of honour, of keeping one's word. It was a matter of loyalty to a fellow officer.

Then Sinhji suggested they should at least wait another day. The next day (28 July) was a Friday. If they waited until Saturday night, their absence would be discovered on Sunday, which was the camp commandant's day off. Discipline was always slack on Sundays. They might have a few more hours of freedom before the alarm was raised.

‘But Dilip was determined,'Sinhji remembers, ‘and so we all got ready to go.'

The only uncertainty was the weather. Even during the monsoon there was the occasional clear night with no threat of rain. When that happened, the off-duty staff usually dragged their charpoys outside to catch the breeze. Clear weather meant far too many ears close by to hear the sound of breaking plaster.

But that particular Friday the weather was cooperative and the rain clouds rolled in late in the day as expected. In the evening they ate dinner with their comrades as usual, and wished each other a goodnight. Everyone knew that goodnight really meant goodbye. The others went back to their cells, wondering if they would ever see their three friends again. And what would happen to Chati? He was in danger, too. It is always the initial reaction that is unpredictable and possibly violent. When the guards discovered Chati alone in the cell they were bound to be furious. After all, their jobs would be on the line. They might shoot him in anger or in a calculated move to save their reputations. They could always say they shot him while he was trying to escape.

The plan was to break through the plaster at midnight. Kuruvilla would provide a distraction by calling a guard for a visit to the toilet. The cell he shared with Kamat was on the other side of the yard from Cell 5. He knew the guard would come over and unlock his cell, then wait there to lock him up again after he had made his trip. Thus no guard would be standing close enough to Cell 5 to hear the plaster breaking.

After the required rubber of bridge and lights out, the POWs removed the light bulb and got ready to go. They donned their civvies and concealed their pink prisoner identity cards in the waist bands of their underwear. Should they be caught, they hoped that their identity as prisoners of war would give them some protection. They filled the G-suit tube with water, then packed the two knapsacks with some glucose powder (for energy), dried fruits, first aid kit, rope, and the sections of Chati's old parachute. They each pocketed part of the 180 rupees saved from the common funds.

‘We made dummies in our beds,' remembers Sinjhi, ‘and covered them with blankets and said goodbye to Chati. We made some sketch maps showing we were heading south to Sind, crumpled them up and threw them in the corner of the room to mislead the inevitable search party.'

By this time the rain had started. Their timing, it seemed, was perfect. The guards on duty sought shelter, and those off duty were sound asleep inside the barracks. Kuruvilla had called a guard for the toilet and that guard was probably cursing his luck as he stood over there in the rain waiting for him to return.

Grewal got down to break the outer layer of plaster. First he gave it a push with his hand, but it didn't give. It was stronger stuff than he'd reckoned on. When a simple push didn't work, he pounded it with the heel of his hand, then kicked it with his foot. After a pause, he asked someone to hand him the cricket bat. He tied a rubber sandal to the bat and used it as a battering ram.

‘He banged and banged,' Sinhji remembers, and he was finally able to make a small hole the size of a fist. What they had thought was a thin layer of plaster turned out to be much thicker and stronger than they had expected.

By this time one of the guards had heard the noise and rushed to flip the switch outside the cell door. When the light didn't come on the first time, the guard flipped the switch again and again.

‘What's going on?' yelled Dilip.

‘The light's out,' said the guard.

‘Is that you Shams-ud-din?' responded Dilip, as he banged the light bulb in the palm of his hand to break the filament. ‘Don't worry about the light. It's always going out. We'll see about it tomorrow. Don't stand there in the rain.'

After a few more clicks of the switch Shams-ud-din left. Seconds later, the bulb was in its socket and everyone was in bed. They expected Shams-ud-din to return with the keys and check the light himself. To their surprise, he never came back. The next morning the POWs were prompt to complain about the burnt out light bulb in their cell. How were they going to play bridge if they couldn't see?

A few days later, they resumed their work on the wall. Before making another attempt, they would have to weaken the plaster by scraping a trough along its periphery. As for the fist-sized hole Grewal had made with the cricket bat, they stuffed it with a dirty piece of cloth so no light would show, and kept their fingers crossed that no one on the outside would notice it. But one night, while Dilip was under the bed, scraping away, he saw the cloth move. Someone on the other side of the wall had to be poking at it. He immediately grabbed the cloth to keep it in place, but could feel someone pulling it in the other direction. The tug of war went on for several seconds, long enough for all four men to be sure the jig was up. Then Dilip lost the battle and the cloth disappeared entirely. When he put his eye to the hole, he was able to glimpse his opponent. ‘It's the damned cat,' he whispered.

The new chipping operation was finished in less than a week. Then it was a matter of watching the weather. Several times they watched the clouds gather before sunset, and bid their comrades goodbye after dinner, but at ten o'clock, as they stepped out of the cell to go to the toilet, the sky was as clear as a bell.

‘There were at least three occasions,' Bhargava remembers, ‘when we had said goodbye and good luck to our heroes and then retired for the night, and to our surprise we saw them in the same room next morning.'

And so arrived the weekend of 12−14 August 1972. On Monday, 14 August, Pakistan would celebrate its twenty-fifth year of independence from Britain (India would celebrate the same anniversary the following day). There was certainly less for Pakistan to celebrate in 1972 than there had been in 1971. Half the country had chosen to secede, and thousands of Pakistani prisons of war awaited repatriation. Nevertheless, it was a holiday weekend and Camp Commandant Wahid-ud-din would spend it with his family in the hill station of Murree. The cat was away …

‘The camp commandant was on a trip to Murree,' says Sinhji. ‘The Warrant Officer in charge, Rizvi, lived at the other end of town. The camp was in the hands of a dim but lovable corporal called Mehfooz Khan … During the early evening stroll, Jafa spotted a flash of lightening and told Dilip a storm was building up. “Go around midnight or earlier if the storm hits before that,” he advised.'