Land of Five Rivers (4 page)

‘I saw sister-in-law Lajo.’

The
chillum
fell from Sunder Lal’s hands; the sweetened tobacco scattered on the floor. ‘Where did you see her?’ he asked, taking Lal Chand by the shoulder.

‘On the border at Wagah.’

Sunder Lal let go of Lal Chand. ‘It must have been someone else,’ he said quickly and sat down on his haunches.

‘No, brother Sunder Lal, it was sister-in-law Lajo,’ repeated Lal Chand with reassurance. ‘The same Lajo.’

‘Could you recognise her?’ asked Sunder Lal gathering bits of the tobacco and mashing them in his palm. He took Rasalu’s
chillum
and continued; ‘All right, tell me what are her distinguishing marks?’

‘You are a strange one to think that I wouldn’t recognise her! She has a tatoo mark on her chin, another on her right cheek and...’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ exploded Sunder Lal and completed his wife’s description: ‘the third one is on her forehead.’

He sat up on his knees. He wanted to remove all doubts. He recalled the marks Lajwanti had had tatooed on her body as a child; they were like the green spots on the leaves of lajwanti, which disappear when the leaves curl up. His Lajwanti behaved exactly in the same way; whenever he pointed out her tatoo marks she used to curl up in embarrassment as if in a shell — almost as if she were stripped and her nakedness was being exposed. A strange longing as well as fear wracked Sunder Lal’s body. He took Lal Chand by the arm and asked, ‘How did Lajo get to the border?’

‘There was an exchange of abducted women between India and Pakistan.’

‘What happened?’ Sunder Lal stood up suddenly and repeated impatiently. ‘Tell me, what happened then?’

Rasalu rose from the charpoy and in his smoker’s wheezy voice asked. ‘Is it really true that sister-in-law Lajo is back?’

Lal Chand continued his story... ‘At the border the Pakistanis returned sixteen of our women and took back sixteen of theirs... there was some argument... our chaps said that the women they were handing over were old or middle-aged... and of little use. A large crowd gathered and hot words were exchanged. Then one of their fellows got Lajo to stand up on top of the truck, snatched away her
duppatta
and spoke: ‘Would you, describe her as an old woman? ...Take a good look at her... is there one amongst those you have given us who could measure up to her? And Lajo
bhabhi
was overcome with embarrassment and began hiding her tatto marks. The argument got very heated and both parties threatened to take back their ‘goods’. I cried out ‘Lajo! ...sister-in-law Lajo!’...There was a tumult... our police cracked down upon us.’

Lal Chand bared his elbow to show the mark of a
lathi
blow. Rasalu and Neki Ram remained silent. Sunder Lal stared vacantly into space.

Sunder Lal was getting ready to go to the border at Wagah when he heard of Lajo’s return. He became nervous and could not make up his mind whether to go to meet her or wait for her at home. He wanted to run away; to spread out all the banners and placards he had carried, sit in their midst and cry to his heart’s content. But, like other men, all he did was to proceed to the police station as if nothing untoward had happened. And suddenly he found Lajo standing in front of him. She looked scared and shook like a
peepul
leaf in the wind.

Sunder Lal looked up. His Lajwanti carried a
duppatta
worn by Muslim women; and she had wrapped it round her head in the Muslim style. Sunder Lal was also upset by the fact that Lajo looked healthier than before; her complexion was clearer and she had put on weight. He had sworn to say nothing to his wife but he could not understand why, if she was happy, had she come away? Had the government compelled her to come against her will?

There were many men at the police station. Some were refusing to take back their women. ‘We will not take these sluts, leftover by the Muslims,’ they said. Sunder Lal overcame his revulsion. He had thrown himself body and soul into this movement. And there were his colleagues Neki Ram, the old clerk, and the lawyer, Kalka Prasad, with their raucous voices yelling slogans over the microphone. Through this babel of speeches and slogans Sunder Lal and Lajo proceeded to their home. The scene of a thousand years ago was being repeated; Shri Ram Chandra and Sita returning to Ayodhya after their long exile. Some people were lighting lamps of joy to welcome them and at the same time repenting of their sins which had forced an innocent couple to suffer such hardship.

Sunder Lal continued to work with the Rehabilitation of Hearts Committee with the same zeal. He fulfilled his pledge in the spirit in which it was taken and even those who had suspected him to be an armchair theorist were converted to his point of view. But there were many who were angry with the turn of events. The widow in number 414 wasn’t the only one to keep away from Lajwanti’s house.

Sunder Lal had nothing but contempt for these people. The queen of his heart was back home; his once silent temple now resounded with laughter; he had installed a living idol in his innermost sanctum and sat outside the gate like a sentry. Sunder Lal did not call Lajo by her name; he addressed her as goddess — Devi. Lajo responded to the affection and began to open up, as her namesake unfurls its leaves. She was deliriously happy. She wanted to tell Sunder Lal of her experiences and by her tears wash away her sins. But Sunder Lal would not let her broach the subject. At night she would stare at his face. When she was caught doing so she could offer no explanation. And the tired Sunder Lal would fall asleep again.

Only on the first day of her return had Sunder Lal asked Lajwanti about her ‘black days’ — Who was he...? Lajwanti had lowered her eyes and replied ‘Jumma.’ Then she looked Sunder Lal full in the face as if she wanted to say something. But Sunder Lal had such a queer look in his eyes and started playing with her hair. Lajo dropped her eyes once more. Sunder Lal asked, ‘Was he good to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t beat you, did he?’

Lajwanti leant back and rested her head on Sunder Lal’s chest. ‘No... he never said a thing to me. He did not beat me, but I was terrified of him. You beat me but I was never afraid of you... you won’t beat me again, will you?’

Sunder Lal’ s eyes brimmed with tears. In a voice full of remorse and shame he said ‘No Devi... never... I shall never beat you again.’

‘Goddess!’ Lajo pondered over the word for a while and then began to sob. She wanted to tell him everything but Sunder Lal stopped her. ‘Let’s forget the past; you did not commit any sin. What is evil is the social system which refuses to give an honoured place to virtuous women like you. That doesn’t harm you, it only harms the society.’

Lajwanti’s secret remained locked in her breast. She looked at her own body which had, since the partition, become the body of a goddess. It no longer belonged to her. She was blissfully happy; but her happiness was tinged with disbelief and superstitious fear that it would not last.

Many days passed in this way. Suspicion took the place of joy: not because Sunder Lal had resumed ill-treating her, but because he was treating her too well. Lajo never expected him to be so considerate. She wanted him to be the same old Sunder Lal with whom she quarrelled over a carrot and who appeased her with a radish. Now there was no chance of a quarrel. Sunder Lal made her feel like something fragile, like glass which would splinter at the slightest touch. Lajo took to gazing at herself in the mirror. And in the end she could no longer recognise the Lajo she had known. She had been rehabilitated but not accepted. Sunder Lal did not want eyes to see her tears nor ears to hear her wailing.

...And still every morning Sunder Lal went out with the morning procession. Lajo, dragging her tired body to the window would hear the song whose words no one understood.

‘The leaves of lajwanti wither with the touch of human hand.’

a
hundred mile race

Balwant Gargi

        I
n a low thatched mud-hut the peasants sat and discussed how they could get word to all the villages about their urgent meeting. They asked me what they should do. I could not help them.

Suddenly a low timid voice startled us. ‘Please give me your message. I’ll take it.’ He was a tough looking young man of about twenty in a frazzled shirt and patched carrot-coloured shorts.

‘To which village?’ I asked.

‘To all the villages,’ he replied.

‘All the villages! Do you know that the meeting is to be held tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I know that,’ he insisted. ‘There are only ten or twelve of them...the distance cannot be more than sixty miles. I’ll cover it within a few hours.’

Did he mean it? I looked at him. His thick lips were like furrows in a freshly-ploughed field, and above them spread the bluish down of a moustache which merged into a sprouting beard. He had a long neck, a thin belly like that of a leopard and big knees, round like bronze shields. On his bulging calves there was no hair, only the tattooed figures of two peacocks. His eyes were dull. How on earth could he cover sixty miles in a few hours? Was it that he did not understand what we said?

Inder Singh, an old peasant with a brown gnarled beard, rapped my shoulder with his metallic hand and said, ‘It is Boota Singh... from Bhagoo village. Don’t you know him? He can run a hundred miles at a stretch.’

‘A hundred miles?’

‘Yes. A hundred miles. When he runs he leaves the storm wind behind...’

‘A hundred miles!’ I was puzzled.

‘Have you never heard the name of Boota Singh?’ asked lnder Singh.

‘Never.’

‘Boota is the son of Rakho,’ began Inder Singh. ‘He comes from my village. Soon after he was bom, his mother put him in a basket in the field where she was harvesting and went on with her work. The family lived in one corner of the field under a tattered straw awning. Boota’s father guarded the crops from jackals, pheasants, rabbits and other animals. One frosty night he died of pneumonia. Rakho lived in the field with her little son. She got a small hill dog from a gypsy family. Soon the little puppy grew into a full-mouthed dog. Along with him grew Boota. He would twist his tail and the dog would yelp and howl and romp about mischievously, playing with Boota like an elder brother.

‘Boota’s childhood was spent chasing camels, colts, jackals and squirrels. He would run after the rabbits jumping over hedges, his dog at his heels. He became so agile that he could chase a rabbit, catch it, let it go and catch it again. A rabbit can run four miles, a jackal about eight, a horse forty at the most and the fastest camel not more than fifty miles. But Boota can run a hundred...’

‘How long does it take him to cover that distance?’ I asked.

‘Twelve hours. A horse can run faster than Boota no doubt, but it cannot run a hundred miles at a stretch.’

Inder Singh looked at me and said, ‘If you doubt my word you can test it. Give him the papers and he will deliver them by tomorrow.’ He turned to Boota and said, ‘Boota, my son! Take these messages and deliver them to all the villages. Go, my lion.’

He handed Boota the letters, told him the names of the villages and gave him full instructions to deliver them to the proper persons.

The following day, the secretaries of the peasants’ unions assembled at the appointed time for the meeting. I asked each one of them, individually, who had given them the message. Each one replied, ‘Boota brought it.’

After the meeting was over, Kumar Sain, the lawyer, Jugal Kishore, the retired headmaster, Ajmer Singh, the judge, and a few others gathered around Boota and talked to him. We felt grieved that such a wonder was not known beyond his village.

‘If Boota had a chance to go to London and run a cross-country race, he would make the name of the little village of Bhagoo shine on the map of the world,’ declared the headmaster.

‘Our country is full of wonders,’ added Kumar Sain. ‘We have great divers, wrestlers and hunters but they waste their talent and die unknown.’

‘If Boota can run a hundred miles, no power on earth can stop him from attaining world fame,’ concluded the judge.

An aged military
havaldar
said, ‘His Highness the Maharaja of Patiala is very fond of games and sports. If somehow we can get this news to the ears of His Highness, he will surely send Boota to an international athletic tournament.’

A cunning, one-eyed petition-writer said, ‘Has anyone tested Boota to see if he can run a hundred miles?’

A bald-headed shopkeeper looked doubtfully at Boota and remarked, ‘A peasant’s sense of distance is very vague. If a man runs as much as thirty miles, he believes he has run a hundred.’

‘Why not arrange a race in our town,’ suggested the headmaster.’ The distance round the big common meadow is about 440 yards. If Boota completes four hundred rounds of this meadow, he will have run one hundred miles. All of us will watch and enjoy it. After this we can plan his future.’ Everybody was thrilled by this proposal.

I asked Boota Singh if he would like to run around the meadow. He blinked his eyes and merely said, ‘As you please.’

Maroo, the village drummer announced the news, ‘Listen, everybody! On Sunday morning at seven o’clock Boota Singh, the famous runner, will run a hundred miles race. The people of the town are requested to visit the common meadow and watch this wonderful spectacle.’ Dum! Dum! Dum!

Early on Sunday people gathered in the meadow to see Boota Singh. He was wearing dull,
khaddar
shorts and a flamecoloured kerchief tied round his long black hair which was rolled up on the top of his head into a big knot. At seven, the retired headmaster, who acted as the referee, whistled and Boota started his solitary race.

People continued to arrive till eight o’clock. The headmaster sat watching Boota going round and round the meadow with the same speed, in the same posture and with the same machine-like rhythm. The women came flouncing their skirts and sat at one side of the meadow, gossiping about village scandals, deaths and births and watching Boota going round and round.

At noon Boota stopped, drank a jug of milk which the drummer brought for him, changed his drenched shorts which were clinging to his body, combed his hair and twisted it into a ball on the top of his head, tied his kerchief around it and again started running. He ran on till evening and finished four hundred rounds of the meadow by-six-thirty, half an hour before his scheduled time. The sun was setting. In its rays the wisps of Boota’s hair, straggling from his flame-coloured kerchief, looked like glowing feathers. His chest heaved and over his bronze body perspiration streamed.

The crowd cheered him. Two people carried him on their shoulders to the
bazaar
. The news hummed through the village. Boota said, ‘It is God’s will. His strength runs in my bones. That’s how I could run this hundred miles.’

We gave the news to a local paper and made plans to send him to Patiala for an interview with His Highness.

On the third day, Boota’s mother came from the village. She was about sixty years old, a stout peasant woman with thick lips like her son’s and small bleary eyes. She had come to take him back. We tried to convince her that a great future awaited Boota, but she would not listen to us. She said, ‘I can’t look after the farm. Who will drive away the jackals and rabbits from the crops? The old dog is dead. I am left with no one but my son. I can’t live without him.’

‘Old mother, your son is a world champion and you are holding him in a field under your skirt. His place is not in a remote village but in a city. The world must know about him. You are blocking his career. Don’t be selfish and ignorant and foolish. Leave him with us,’ we all implored.

She listened with distrust in her eyes and then repeated with a grunt, ‘I can’t live without my son. I must take him back with me.’

But when the judge said that an interview with His Highness was being arranged, she agreed.

‘Don’t worry, mother,’ said Boota. ‘Soon I shall go across the seven seas and run a hundred miles race in London and then the whole world will know me. Then we shall be rich and I shall come back to the village. Only I must have a chance to go to London.’

The following day she went back to the village, leaving her son.

He stayed with the retired judge at the outskirts of the town. The judge and his friends played bridge in the afternoon and Boota sat alone outside on the verandah, lost in his thoughts. We had sent two letters, one to the Officer of Sports in Patiala and the other to the Maharaja, and we awaited their replies. Early in the morning Boota would run with his long wild strides to the Post Office to bring mail to the judge. Sometimes in the afternoon he would race to the market and fetch betel leaves, cigarettes, ice or lemons for the people who played cards. The number of those who gathered at the judge’s bungalow to see Boota dwindled. The aura of novelty about him disappeared. Three weeks passed. Boota felt as if months had rolled by.

One day he said to me, ‘Sir, I know a man who was once in the court of the Maharaja of Patiala but now he is staying at Faridkot. He knows the Maharaja very well. If I go to him, he can easily introduce me. Then I can make my way.’

A week later Boota left for Faridkot.

After some time I heard that Boota had gone to Patiala. A long chain of references ultimately led him to the Maharaja’s aide-de-camp, who promised to arrange an interview with His Highness.

Meanwhile the country was partitioned. I shifted to Delhi and lost touch with Boota.

It was sometime in the middle of 1948, the time of the integration of States into the Union. Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister, was touring the country, negotiating with the Princes.

I was in Patiala that day. There was a big procession. Sardar Patel and the Maharaja sat side-by-side in an open car. People in multi-coloured turbans lined the streets. In the crowd I caught a glimpse of Boota. He was watching the car move sedately behind the military band with its gleaming instruments and well-laced liveries.

I asked him what had happened to his interview. He said, ‘Just now the Maharaja is busy with important affairs of State. When he is free, I shall have my interview.’

I returned to Delhi and did not see Boota for two years. But I kept hearing bits of news about him. He waited at Patiala for his interview. Each time some urgent State matter occupied the attention of the Maharaja. The aide-de-camp asked Boota if he would like to take a job in Patiala instead of going back and forth to his village, wasting time and money. At the first opportunity he would be granted an interview and be sent to the Olympics. This appealed to Boota and he become a watchman in the Royal kitchen. His pay was like a stipend. He had little to do but sit on a small stool, yawn and bask in the sun or roam about in the garden.

Once more his mother came to take him back to her village. But Boota, who had come to know the routine of life in the town, with its delays and red-tape, asked her to return, assuring her that all their troubles would end as soon as he got his chance to go to London. He gave the old woman his salary of the last three months. She tied it in the fold of her skirt and went back to the village.

Boota stuck to his job. Often he felt tired of sitting. Unused to sedentary life, he would shoot off to the
bazaar
or to the market on the slightest pretext and wander about. Once he stayed off duty the whole day. The matter was reported to the manager of the household and then to the higher authorities. Boota was summoned, sharply rebuked, and threatened that if he left his post again, he would be summarily dismissed. Then there would be no possibility of his going to the athletic tournaments ever.

It frightened Boota. He blinked his timid eyes and promised to behave more responsibly in future. After the warning he become punctual and cautious.

A year later, I went to Patiala to appear as a witness in a case before the judicial court. After a tiring day, I was standmg on the road, waiting for some conveyance when I saw a cycle-rickshaw slowly approaching. Beside it hobbled an old woman with a stick. When the rickshaw came nearer I recognised Boota sitting in it. He was wearing near khaki shorts and fine leather shoes. His shirt and turban were new. He greeted me with a smile and the driver halted the rickshaw.

‘How are you, Boota?’ I asked.

‘By God’s grace and your kindness I am quite well, thank you,’ he replied. ‘His Highness is away at Chail, his summer place. As soon as he comes back, I will be granted an interview. My name is at the top of the list... I hear an athletic team is going to London in the autumn. I hope to be selected...’

I looked at him and asked why he was riding in a rickshaw.

The old woman heaved a sigh and moaned, ‘Oh, my son! My Boota was a free bird. Eternal sitting on a watchman’s stool has been hard on him. Blood has curdled in his thighs and has gathered in his knees. Look, how swollen they are! Oh, my heart!’

She beat her breast with her fists and wailed, ‘Now I am taking him to the hospital to have his knees treated.’