This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (76 page)

Although Puri, when he had last seen her, was himself fraught with anxiety and in a desperate situation, memories of the Urmila he had previously known flared up in his mind: her extraordinary glowing complexion, her vivacity, her uninhibited, almost obscene longing for romance. In spite of his determination to remain aloof, he had all but succumbed to her charms. Beyji, decent person that she was, had dealt with that affair quietly and with tact. An intense awareness of that embarrassing and distasteful incident had kept him from accepting the invitation to Urmila’s marriage, and visiting the family to congratulate them. But the news that Urmila had become a widow in March, just after the riots had begun to flare up, had really shaken him.

Stunned for the moment by this unexpected meeting, Puri addressed Jagdish and all the others together, ‘Where’re you all going? What’s happened?’

Jagdish put the case he was carrying down on the road, and others did the same with their own loads. Urmila moved the roll from under one arm to the other. Beyji dabbed at her tears with the corner of her dupatta. Narang sat down heavily on the front boards of a nearby shop, struggling to catch his breath.

Jagdish said, ‘Pitaji got very sick, and we couldn’t go to Delhi. Yesterday afternoon, policemen came to the camp at Islamia College, with trucks. ‘It’s a Government order,’ they announced. ‘Everyone must vacate the building immediately. We were to be moved to another camp …’

‘Yes,’ Puri cut in to say, ‘the new secretariat will be coming up there in its place.’

‘How would we know!’ Jagdish said in an exasperated tone, ‘The police loaded us into the trucks, and then dumped us in the grounds of an old mosque, seventeen miles out of town. The place was deserted. We spent the night without any food. A truck coming from the direction of Lohiyan charged us four rupees each for a ride up to an intersection some distance from here. We couldn’t find any conveyance there. Now we don’t even have
a roof over our heads, or a place to unload our stuff. Father is in poor health. Thought we’d sit for a while in the waiting room at the railway station.’

‘Come with me all of you, no need to wander around,’ Puri said, taking Narang’s attaché case in one hand and tucking Urmila’s bed roll under his other arm. ‘Come on.’

Puri brought the family back to the printing press. He summoned the two helper boys, told them to carry up the luggage, and led the family upstairs. He brought out the charpoys, and said, ‘No shortage of space, the other room wasn’t being used. That’s the bathroom with running water, get washed. I’ll send out for some food.’

When the food from the dhaba was delivered, Puri sat and ate with the family.

Puri opened up the second room, and got the boys to come up again and sweep and tidy it. He came upstairs several times to inquire if the family wanted anything. He intended to pay back the help and hospitality that the family had given him in the past. The feeling of being able to do so was overpowering.

In the evening, Jagdish went to the bazaar with Beyji to buy some groceries. Puri objected when he found out, ‘You didn’t have to trouble yourselves. You’re my guests, you shouldn’t have done this.’

‘Kakaji, what’s ours is yours too. May God give you lots more,’ Beyji blessed him.

The evening meal was cooked in the kitchen. Puri ate with them, as one of the family, talking to each in turn.

He asked Beyji, Urmila and Praveen to take the large bedstead. He, Jagdish and the elder Narang slept on the charpoys. In the morning he went and got a seer of yogurt for them to make lassi.

Urmila’s attitude of hopelessness, and grief-stricken apathy rankled him. He said to Beyji as if she were his mother, in Urmila’s presence, ‘What’s wrong with Urmi? Who could change what fate had in store for her. That’s no way to lead a life. She has to accept it and go on living, like the rest of us.’

Urmila sat quietly, staring fixedly at the floor under her feet. Beyji again dabbed her eyes with her dupatta, ‘Kakaji, I’ve given up on her. Don’t know what’s wrong with her. Never says anything, nor listens to us. I’ve been after her since yesterday to change her clothes. No result.’

Puri insisted, ‘No, that’s not right. Get her to wash her hair. Just look
at her. Whatever happens, you have to go on behaving and living your life like a human being.’

Puri sent out the electric fan that Isaac had abandoned for repairs. When he came upstairs for his lunch the next day, he brought along the repaired fan. Urmila lay on the chatai, her face to the wall. Puri said to Beyji, ‘The heat must be bothering Urmi. Here’s the fan. I got it repaired.’ He switched on the fan and turned it towards Urmila.

Narang, Jagdish and Beyji sat and pondered over the state of affairs. After his three days’ rest, the father said to Puri, ‘Kakaji, Jagdish and I have decided to go to Delhi. If it’s no trouble, can Praveen, his mother and Urmi remain here with you? Once we’ve settled in, we’ll come back and get them.’

Narang and his son left for Delhi. Whenever they could, Beyji would sit with Puri and have long discussions. Her concern was mainly over the blows fate had dealt to Urmila, and what might come next. Calamity had ruined the whole country, but Urmila seemed to have suffered the worst of all. Beyji didn’t say so in so many words, but her message was clear: her daughter’s widowhood was a fate worse than death. What would be her future?

Urmila would sit near them, or some distance away, and listen to their talk. Bored with the repeated reviews of her problem, she would go and lie down in the next room, or take up some chore about the house.

Lowering her voice, Beyji said to Puri, ‘I’d decided, no matter what people say, that I’d wait for six months and then enrol her into the women’s or some other college. She’s at the age when she can learn something and become self-supporting. Males are different, they all end up finding something or other to do. I worry for her. I want her to get some training, in the medical line if she can. What else is there for her? Whatever little I’ve saved, I want to spend, to give her a start in life. But for this upheaval I’d have had her signed up somewhere. We’ll see what’s possible once we’re in Delhi.’

In the days when the Narang family had been living well, and in comfort, in Lahore, Beyji had little time or inclination to go to a temple or attend keertan-singing sessions. Living the good life, she would say, without causing suffering to others was the true form of devotion. A group of refugee women, distraught with grief and traumatized by violence, and eager to throw themselves at God’s mercy, had been gathering near the press building, every morning and evening, to perform keertan in the
hope of divine compassion. Beyji began attending these sessions to lighten her own grief. It was better to remember God, she said, than continually to remember one’s misfortunes.

Puri, out of politeness, walked a few steps with her, to see Beyji off when she went to the bazaar for shopping or to the keertan meetings. During those few minutes together, she confided in him comments that she avoided in front of Urmila. ‘What more can I say, kakaji. They say that when someone suffers a serious blow, their nature changes. But with the attitude that girl had, who knows if she’ll ever be serious about studying? Her
lavan-phere
ceremony was performed; otherwise she’s still a virgin. It’d be best to let a year or two pass, to let her heart become a bit lighter, and then find a suitable boy for her.’

Puri enthusiastically supported her view, ‘Give her the chance to get some education. Then think of settling her down. It’d be best if you did both. But you must do something. She can’t go on the way she is now.’

Urmila’s mute indifference to herself in reaction to her tragic past seemed to Puri a cruel twist of fate. Her sorrow wrenched at his heart. Married only for two months, after spending two days with her in-laws her husband was murdered, how was she to blame for this cruel blow that fate had dealt her? Her misfortune was the result of other people’s folly, of the war between two communities, for which others rather than the poor innocent were to be blamed. Puri and some like-minded and level-headed persons had tried, but had failed, to prevent the disastrous consequences of that confrontation. In her eyes, he must look as guilty as anyone, because of his helplessness to avert her misfortune.

In the depths of his heart, he felt guilty for another crime of omission. He had contributed to her misfortune by resisting her unquenchable, earthy desire for love, her lust for life as vibrant as an electric current. He was the one who had rejected her at the Murree hill resort, he had ignored her needs. He had let her suffer all the shame, the disrepute, the frustration and the blame for the incident. What would have happened if he had acted more boldly? An understanding mother like Beyji would surely have handled that situation diplomatically. Would Urmila have been able to avert her misfortune then?

Letters written in Urdu from Narang and Jagdish in Delhi arrived every fourth or fifth day, full of gratitude for Puri’s kindness and with the
request that he reassure Beyji, Urmila and Praveen. Delhi had hardly any accommodation available, and they were trying to make some permanent arrangements before sending for the family. Jagdish sometimes included a brief note meant for his mother, written in Hindi. Puri read his letters aloud to Beyji and Urmila, adding, ‘Until some arrangement is made in Delhi, this is your home. Think of me as just the same as Jagdish or Praveen. And until I find something about my own people, you are my family. How can I let go of your affection and the comfort of your company?’

Eyes closed and palms joined, Beyji would pray to God to reunite Puri soon with his family, and assure him that she did in fact regard him in the same light as Jagdish.

Sitting in his office, Puri’s ears echoed with the din and rattle of the press machines, and his head spun with the thought of Urmila upstairs, vulnerable, cursed by fate, a bud that had been shattered by a hailstorm before it had opened. An afterthought would be the memory of the letter he had written to Kanak at Nainital. How the tragedy of Urmila would sadden her.

Puri would go upstairs for lunch, after being summoned by Praveen, usually around midday. He would also go upstairs around 10 o’clock, and then again around three to look in on Urmila. He would call, even if Beyji or Praveen were present, ‘Urmi, get me a glass of water.’

With downcast eyes, Urmila would silently bring him the water, and resume her position on the chatai with her back to the wall, or go quietly to sit somewhere else.

Puri thought that Urmila’s all-consuming grief was the reason for her silence and her reluctance to speak to him. But there was a pinch of guilt too in his thinking: Didn’t I cause her enough trouble at Murree? Why would she want to speak to me? Feeling ashamed of the wrong he had done, he now wanted to put things right.

Ignoring her silence and even the lack of any sign that she was paying attention, he would strike up some conversation in her presence with others about the problems and troubles people were facing after the Partition. He described Gandhiji’s efforts to keep communal peace in Delhi. Or he talked about women who had not married, or had been widowed, but still had accomplished something for themselves by getting an education. After completing the Hindi Prabhakar certificate, he said, one could qualify for a university bachelor’s degree and then a master’s. And if some young woman
passed the two-and-a-half year L.M.P. course, she could lead a respectable life as a medical practitioner.

Beyji, already deeply indebted to Puri for his generosity, didn’t want to let him spend any more on the family. She said to him, ‘Kakaji, what do men know about cooking and groceries! Stop bothering about it.’ When she went for her keertan meeting in the mornings, either alone or with Praveen, she shopped for vegetables and other foodstuffs. When the need arose, she would get some in the evening too. She had not minded doing such jobs in Lahore when she had servants, and wasn’t embarrassed to do them now.

When Puri saw her leaving, he would say, ‘Why don’t you take Urmi along? A walk would do her good, change her mood.’ Urmila just shook her head in refusal if invited by her mother.

Puri had given Urmila some popular fiction to read. ‘Have you read anything?’ he would ask her. ‘What did you read?’

He had not heard a reply to his letter to Kanak. What became of it, he often thought. Probably they had moved to another city, and the letter had to be redirected. Enough time had passed for some kind of response since the letter had been sent by registered post. Maybe Nayyar is behind all this. Not a nice person, and so vain about his wealth and status, and jealous in the bargain.

In the afternoon of the twelfth day, his letter came back. On it was inscribed in red ink: Left station.

Puri’s heart sank. What else could he do to find her? He had lost his family, and now Kanak. His head buzzed. With eyes fixed unseeingly on the rafters overhead, he imagined: A vast flood has engulfed Lahore. The houses were coming down, crashing one by one. He had been absent on some business, and had returned to find the city inundated. Swift-moving streams were flowing through the bazaars, sweeping men and women along in its current. Hundreds of persons were being swept along into one immense swath of river. He had got hold of a floating beam and so was saved from drowning. He was searching for his family, but had found that they were gone. He saw Kanak, also holding on to a beam like himself. He called, but she did not hear. Next to her was Urmila, caught in a whirlpool, about to be pulled under. He was scared … his hands touched and grabbed Urmila by the hair.

Puri shook his head and made an effort to concentrate on the papers in front of him. His thoughts drifted off again. If Kanak had had to move away,
couldn’t she leave instructions at the post office to forward her mail? She was not helpless and naive like Urmila; she was able to instruct others, to speak with clerks and officials. Didn’t she want to hear from him? What more could he do now?

His hands capped the fountain pen on the desk and put it into his shirt pocket. Biting his lip to suppress the disappointment welling up in his heart, he went upstairs.