Page 26 of A Shimla Affair
And now that it was about to be taken away from us, we felt wholly lost.
From our refuge, we saw soldiers advancing toward Palka. Led by the Commander-in-Chief Lord Ripon’s car, they marched down the Hindustan–Tibet Road. While I thought of Ratan Babu, praying he remained safe, Afreen only thought positively. She believed that everything would work out for the best.
The police arrived and checked the hotel thoroughly, claiming to be looking for suspicious characters. In the evening, a curfew was declared, making any contact with the Shimla Circle impossible for the moment. While nobody had any idea what was going on, people in the Lower Bazaar were randomly arrested and put in jail.
There was a sense of foreboding around town, and we had to work extra hard to entertain our housebound guests, organizing rummy nights, themed dinners and impromptu dances. Within a couple of days, some of the hotel servants, or members of their families, were taken away by the police, and we busied ourselves in trying to seek their release. Soon, things fell into a lull, and Afreen and I waited to hear of Ratan Babu and the others.
Then, several days later, Ratan Babu returned from ‘his trip home’, as we had told Noor. To her, he narrated the mad rush of Bombay, the smell of the sea breeze, people in the grip of Satyagraha. When he managed to get an audience with Afreen and me privately, the stress of the past harrowing days was made visible.
‘Everything went wrong,’ he whispered, his voice cracking with tension. ‘We managed to trigger the bomb on time, and the train stopped. The guards from the train jumped out, so we wereable to open the carriage doors. We told the men the truth, and to run.
‘The guards had still not seen us, so we asked them to quickly follow us to Palka. But then Sood saw that some of the men were trying to break open another carriage—’
‘Why would they do that?’ I asked fearfully.
‘Because it had guns! Can you believe our luck? The train we block in its tracks had a carriage full of Mauser pistols! They were being taken to a godown in Kalka, where soldiers would receive them. Since so many of the men were crowded around to open the carriage, the guards finally noticed and started shooting. But the worst had just begun!’
‘What do you mean?’ Afreen asked.
‘Sood abandoned his post! He seemed to think that ransacking the train of its arms was essential. We would never get our hands on ammunition with such ease otherwise. But our job had been to lead the men to Palka, not stock up on arms! Azad Bhai and I led the men away. But we could not hold the guards off that well, now that Sood and Dr Bannerjee were busy carrying away the ammunition. Everybody scattered, and maybe some of them were even caught again. But we messed up, we could not lead them away, and instead had to flee and hide, as the police got there so fast. We thought we were leading these men to freedom, but instead they got caught trying to escape … and we don’t know what happened to them then. Sood shouldn’t have left us on our own like that.’
‘But why would Mr Sood do that?’
Ratan threw up his hands, apparently tired of asking himself the same question. ‘He made a decision for what he thought was greater profit. He says that we can now use these arms to conduct operations more easily.’
‘So, he and Dr Bannerjee took the arms all the way to Shimla?’
He shook his head. ‘No, they hid themselves and the guns in some caves. Sood and Dr Bannerjee returned yesterday, but the guns are still there. We will have to find a way to sneak them into town later.’
‘How do you think Guruji will react?’ Afreen asked fearfully.
Ratan Babu shook his head.
We thought the next few days would quieten the terror that seemed to have taken over Shimla, but it got worse. The authorities, having found out that a Hindu group had led the attack on the train, were troubling the Hindu villages neighbouring Palka.
Random fines and indiscriminate taxes were imposed on the villagers, their crops often destroyed and burnt in the hopes that they would reveal the group who had attacked the train. But the greatest blow came when a suspect was executed, shot in the streets before an audience and made into an example. And then, to add salt to the wound, they allotted a piece of land in the village to the Muslims to stoke tensions. For the British, it was the oldest trick in the book: pit the Hindus against the Muslims.
So far, the Shimla Circle managed to remain discreet in the entire affair, but I wondered how long that would last.
The days took us faster into the summer and there was still no solution to save the hotel. And yet, I held on fast to the hope that Noor would find something—a loophole, a forgotten rule, an error in their judgment. While I dreamt that I wanted to ship myself to America, the only place that came to mind when I thought of home was the hotel and Shimla. I couldn’t bear to think of it being taken away from us, it felt like the end of ourworld. But Noor promised, still resolute, still determined, ‘We will find a way. We only lose when we give up.’
Sometimes I would look at Afreen, catch her laughing about something, or trying on a sari, and I would wonder how she could keep up this joy when, beneath the shimmery surface, the fear of the last few days still reverberated in our hearts. Did she always have it in her, to be brave and disruptive, heroic and unfazed? It filled me with awe that she sought to walk in our father’s footsteps.
Now that Noor had accepted that Afreen had married a Hindu, she insisted that we at least have a ceremony at the hotel, and Ratan Babu’s relatives could be invited. And if the wedding could not be a Parsi one, the feast would certainly make up for it. Sweets were already being prepared: motichoor laddoo, mohanthal, ghujia, ghevar, balushai, kaju katli. The pièce de résistance would be Afreen’s special Parsi custard, which she would prepare with her own hands to be served to all guests on the day of the wedding.
Afreen was going to be adorned with our mother’s wedding dowry, a three-tiered gold necklace studded with emeralds, matching bangles andpayalsfor her feet. Aside from the jewellery, Afreen’s wedding coffers included several of our father’s prized possessions: his antique furniture and his car that stood at our uncle’s home in Bombay. The hotel would be free of guests for two days, as Ratan Babu’s relatives would be traveling to Shimla from Bombay, bringing along the family priest.
But as the day of the wedding arrived, a sudden storm seized Shimla. For two days, the sky took its time to darken and warn us of the looming bad weather, thunder and lightning announcing an outburst that threatened to split open the hill on top of which the hotel perched. From my window, I watched the vicious gale spare nothing in its way. Hail demolished every sapling in and around our garden, ferociously hitting thewindows, and uprooting trees in the forest around the hill. Streams of muddy water ran down the hillside.
Everything had to be moved inside, and the garden could not be used for any of the wedding ceremonies at all—even if the rain were to stop, it would be too full of puddles. All trains and freight into Shimla were cancelled. Food supplies that still had to arrive were held up, and we only hoped they would make it to us before the arrival of Ratan Babu’s family, who were also delayed.
Every fireplace in the hotel was constantly lit, and it was impossible to open a window or a door to the outside without a barrage of water and wind coming in uninvited. Now that we had the hotel to ourselves, it seemed more eerie than usual. The building echoed off the emptiness surrounding us.
Finally, the rain began to lighten, though the howling gale and thunder remained. We received word from town that the trains had started again and prepared to soon receive the guests. Afreen was being given ahaldi-chandanbath by one of the helper girls, and Noor and I were almost ready. I wore my mother’s blue sari and did my hair up in a bun. As I watched Noor tend to her hair, I realized that she was still completely in the dark about Ratan Babu and Afreen, about Shimla Circle. Should I tell her how they met, how they wanted to fight for our country, that they would not perhaps have a normal family and life as Noor expected it?
She had to know, I wished she would know, that it was all for our father, for our country, if only she would understand. I hesitated at first, but then braced myself for whatever consequences telling her the truth would have—it could not be worse than Noor finding out later that I had known all along and never told her.
‘I must tell you something.’
