Page 29 of A Shimla Affair
Afreen turned to us, tears in her eyes. ‘Do you see what’s happening here? I can’t find Ratan … if they see him, they will kill him!’
She shook her head helplessly, her face anguished. There really was no way for us to do anything right now. It pained me to see Afreen. Where were the police now? They always seemed to be there to drive away the Indians from the Mall, so why weren’t they here now, controlling the mobs?
Rooted to the spot, I looked up—turning to the Lord, hoping to be guided, to be told what to do. But any step we took, it seemed we would lose something. We waited there in the darkness for minutes or hours, it was hard to say, until all noise had subsided. The mobs had likely decided to march towards the neighbouring villages.
Nodding at each other, we stepped out gingerly, on the lookout for the slightest sign of noise. Afreen held our hands and whispered to us to follow her, and we did, trusting her.
In the darkness, we moved forward like cats, looking closely but not making any noise. I was sure now that the street above us had the house where we were taken to meet Guruji. Perhaps this was the safest place for us right now, where we could look to the Shimla Circle for help, to escort us, and they perhaps even knew where Ratan Babu was.
Before any of us could say anything, Afreen yelled out, ‘Ratan!’
The silence was broken and I felt fear grip me—what if there were still men out?
‘Ratan!’ Afreen called out again, and in a few seconds, we heard latches being unlocked, doors slamming open.
‘Afreen Behenji, is that you?’
It was a familiar voice, and Afreen yelled out in relief. A man came down and I realized it was Azad Bhai. Noor looked at us confused, being the only one who didn’t know these people.
‘I’ll explain later,’ I quickly muttered, ‘that’s what I was trying to tell you—before.’
We followed Azad Bhai up the winding street, momentarily relieved to have a shelter over our heads.
Inside, there were several men we didn’t know, some armed with swords, a couple with guns, who could not have been more shocked to see us come in. Azad Bhai led us into another room, asking us to sit on the charpais kept there, handing out blankets. He lit more torches, and the light and warmth, the presence of so many others, and the locks on the inside of the house finally relieved the tension I had harboured since stepping out of the hotel. We had been out for only a few hours, but it felt like weeks.
Afreen started, ‘Streets full of men. Hindus on one side and Mussalmans on the other, out for blood. Destroying shops, setting fire to tongas, lynching random people they find. I saw several dead, nobody to respectfully say goodbye to the bodies … not a soul on the street in the Lower Bazaar.’
‘But why did you come outside?’ Azad Bhai asked us.
Afreen looked at us before answering. ‘To look for Ratan Babu, we haven’t had any word of him since he left! Do you know where he went, Azad Bhai? Perhaps we could go look for him in a group …’
He looked at me and Noor first, and the way his eyes expressed grief, we immediately knew something was wrong. Afreen got up and walked towards him, Noor coming forward to hold her hand.
‘Didn’t you hear, Bhabhiji? I thought you must have heard … His family was caught in the riots, and his father, injured, and his mataji … no more …’
11
They say I was born at the most inauspicious moment in India’s history with Britain, a moment that changed the very course of the century, that instilled anger, hostility and bitterness in the hearts of millions across this land: the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
As bullets rained down that fateful day and ended hundreds of lives in Amritsar, our mother took her last breath while giving birth to me in Bombay. When I awakened, so did our father’s conscience, as he realized that supporting the British rule was wrong.
Shockwaves ran across India, and Noor says she remembers those days clearly: as a motherless child, I wailed all day. Wailing for a family that could never be, wailing over our father’s broken dreams, his punctured faith. Our relatives flailed about to take care of us, as my father remained in shock over the next few days, unable to accept what had happened.
When our father had married our mother, he was deeply in love with Hindustan. He admired its people, who had always welcomed other people and cultures, such as our own ancestors who arrived here centuries ago. But he was also in love with whatBritain stood for—progress, science and knowledge, growth, leadership and wealth. He thought a marriage of the two, the richness of Hindustan’s people and the triumphs of Britain’s industrial feats, was more than desirable. He had believed British rule to be good for us, that Hindustan had plunged into darker ages while the rest of the world progressed, and through Britain’s worldliness, we would grow again.
Significantly, he felt that Parsis—with their worldliness, thriftiness and strong sense of culture—would lead the way for such modernism. For we were and always had been the bridge between the East and the West, having the best of both worlds in our minds and hearts. He hosted British officers and their wives—preaching friendship and camaraderie, setting up dialogues and conferences where there was a deadlock, suggesting innovative solutions to make progress.
But after the day of my birth, the same day as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, our father saw the British Raj for what it was and spent months trying to understand what he could do, finally deciding to act—not just for now, but also for the past. He spent the rest of his life making up for his delusions, for his hope in the British rule, and fought them with all that he had.
This brush with death brought us closer, and Afreen and I confessed everything to Noor, and she heard us with patience and aplomb, saying nothing, only listening.
Numbness and anger carried us all, as they burnt Ratan Babu’s mother at the cremation grounds in Kalka once the riots subsided. We mourned her with all of their relatives, who had all arrived in Shimla to celebrate the beginning of a new life and instead had to return home with death. From what we knew sofar, seven people had died that night, subsumed in the violence of the riots.
Why take away the life of this mother who had been nothing but happy for her son, who had come to bless him and his future wife with all she had? Why punish Ratan Babu in this way, a sincere, passionate, loving son, who wanted nothing more than to bring justice in this world, to make the lives of others better? Why did the Lord have such a terrible fate for my sister, who was so close to the happiness she had always desired, but instead had to wear her white wedding sari to a cremation?
It was hard to digest this cruel twist of fate, to settle the sorrow in my heart. I heard the others say that she was only paying for her deeds—that one’s karma does not allow a person to go on any other path except the one chosen for them, that we all must bear the fruits of our past lives and atone for our sins.
It hit me that tragedy and loss would continue to haunt us till the day we die, that there would be no respite, no escape from grief. Suddenly, my dreams of going to America, acting, of the movies of Hollywood, didn’t seem as glamorous any more. How foolish and innocent I had been, to imagine that life could be so easy.
