Sunshine Above The Shillong Peak

By K.L.Khanna

It is a tale in the song of an airman who leaves his camp and reaches the peak….

The Shillong Peak. Where Love feels him with a beloved footfall and

touches the deep spaces of his soul.

It is a book of cultures that grow in steps on the sylvan vistas of heavenly Shillong.

It is love. Simple and drawn on the lingering frontiers of the beyond

in the naïveté of the mid-70s.

Nina...the most beautiful girl in the campus, and the topper….

And Rohan. He is an airman in the night, and a student by the day.

They meet on the struggling ways of life. And walk together in a village church.

Comes in Trisha, a goddess of charm, beauty and grace-

-an angel but at the mercy of a forest of rogues.

It is also the story of the Department of English nestled by the

twigs and the tweets of the birds- real and sweet, in the lap of Shillong.

- See more at: https://notionpress.com/read/sunshine-above-the-shillong-peak-1294288-1294288#sthash.i7LZsu5x.dpuf

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 1862
• ISBN: 9789384049812

Book preview

Apologia, Thanks and the Excuse

This book is not a memoire of the misery of love, though the heart strings are pulled here to such limits that the story seems mine. But I tell you, I have written it in high amplitude sympathetic vibrations of true lovers. A beam of romance hovers over the story presented in the classroom prose that perforce takes over poetic frames every now and then. Would it be in the vogue of writing or not, to me it came naturally for that is how probably I feel and perceive the phenomenon of love.

The novel reports some imponderabilia of airmen’s lives in their camp. That is based on the participant observation I had in my youth in the air force camps. I am grateful to the Indian Air Force for this opportunity.

I am also grateful to the memories of my younger days. And to the pools and the plants; the cosmos fields and the orchids; sweet peas on the waysides of Mayurbhanj Palace; and the people with whom I lived and learnt in Shillong.

Aspirations, when they outlast their expiry time, become crystals of special emotions. More than the memories they are. I have lent some of mine to Rohan, the male protagonist of this novel. But I gave him no part of my subjectivity. I keep that with me through a thousand missed chances and discoveries of my life. And that is the reason that in spite of me, Rohan does better. At the end of the book I envy him. Even slightly annoyed but with a triumphant feeling that it is after all not my story, though with a time machine I would rather it be.

Some beautiful people of Shillong of the seventies may find a faint or a well-lined reflection of theirs in the book. I plead with them not to sue me for wangling some parts of their time to fill up the zest of the seventies in my characters. I gratefully acknowledge beauty of their consciousness in my life. In my memories, in imagination, and in the book. But for their thought, or thoughts about them, I wouldn’t have been able to write this one. I hope nothing in the book triggers uneasiness in their mind… … or.. or... the heart!

But if that happens, my apologies are here in advance. I wish I could present the book in a better form. Failings of diction or of the language are all mine. The new trend in publishing takes editing in the commercial street. It seems, it is no longer a business of the publisher. Hence this book comes to you without the professional support of editing.

And finally, thank you dear reader. Have a nice time in Shillong of the mid seventies.

K L Khanna

[e-mail]

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Apologia, Thanks and the Excuse

1. Rohan K. Anand

2. Nina Come Back!!

3. Nina Smith

4. Enter To Grow In Wisdom

5. Sunshine Above The Shillong Peak

6. Signal Men of Upper Shillong

7. Two Pretty Girls of English Department

8. Passion on The Rooftop

9. Sprouting of Romance Amidst The Books

10. Destiny Gave Him A Frameto Fill With Courage

11. A Semaphore of Hope on The Ancient Route

12. Monday, Tuesday, Bar Day

13. The Air Force Cricket And The Passion’s End

14. The Date on The Hill And The Buddha

15. The Humungous Winter of Nina’s Shillong

16. Do I Have Any Space For Love In My Life?

17. Second Term And The Blooming of Love

18. Winter, Jan

19. What if he Would Leave The Town!!

20. ‘Psychiatric Ward’ and ‘The Psalm of Love’

21. An Angel on The Mercy of A Forest of Rogues

22. I am Free From the False Fences of Time

23. Goodbye, Palace!!

24. Jeesu Ee Manke Bais Rakhbe

25. Supine She Lay in The Shadow of Love

1

Rohan K. Anand

If destiny had its ways, he too had his will. His eyes set on the stars, Rohan Kumar Anand decided to topple the system or bang the quirks of fate that had so far only kicked him around. So what if he had his BA degree through correspondence course! He now decided to be serious about his post graduation more than even a regular student, as he told Joseph K, his companion of the day from the book in his hand. He sat for a while on a stool inside the office and reflected on his life.

He was very conscious about his vernacular education in a series of government schools where he learnt English alphabets in the Fifth Form. His tenth-standard English teacher trained all his pyjama-clad students to memorize English translation of one hundred popular Hindi phrases; and at least five stories; two précis and three letters, including one to the local Police Officer against a theft. All the guys in the class learnt a lot of English to pass the exam. Some, dodging Rohan on the way, had their names even on the merit list of the Secondary School Board that year.

But merit or no merit; by the time Rohan finished his twelfth standard, he knew English more than others in the class. Now, after five years of service in the Air Force, he knew it more than all his Section-mates. He yawned and concluded that it was because of the conversational norms of the Air Force, or his occasional conversation with the characters he pulled out of a number of books that he had read since his recruitment. The characters spoke as much as their authors wanted, but he created tens of more dialogues. The alternate ones. When he spoke to them and they didn’t reply, he carried on with his soliloquies. Reading was his hobby, and talking while reading a compulsion, that had helped him grow in his self-esteem and ambition. Characters gave him a good company too. So much that he often became them.

Two days after he joined his Section in the Eastern Air Command Unit in May, 1974, he was detailed in ‘watch C’ which was to come for the night shift that day when he was busy assessing his competency of English language.

This Air Force Unit, or more appropriately, the Communication Section in the Unit, followed the ‘four watch system’. This means that he would have an ‘off’ in the day time on both sides of the 12 hour night duty, followed by the ‘morning’ and ‘afternoon’ shifts on two succeeding days. His joining done, he now had to think about his main purpose of seeking and getting posting in Shillong.

About a week later, when he inquired about the location of the university in town, no one seemed to have had any clue. But he knew, there was one; a newly established central university in Shillong. Someone suggested he went to town by the school children’s ferry truck and got it somewhere near laitumkhraw. It was a good idea, he felt. So the next day, when the three-tonner fitted with fixed benches came, he asked the driver, Will it be okay if I travel with you to the city! The driver was a corporal and senior to him. Else he would have jumped in the booth with a friendlier assertion.

Are you off duty.e.e.e.e? corporal driver drawled tenderly as if he was talking to a new school kid in his truck. Naturally, sir. I am in the Signals, I mean Communications. My duty’ll begin at 7 pm. Night duty, you know! So the day is off, he said with a business-like congeniality. Hop in; but help the kids at the next stop. I wouldn’t get down, said the spatially moustachioed corporal, happy with the instance of having an assistant for the job that he abhorred doing.

I am a bloody servant of the Air Force and not of these brats, he muttered; not with any lethal conviction. Rohan walked around the front and got into the cabin from the other side. Big handlebar moustaches turned to inspect him. He saw the name on the breast tag: Nair P.R.P. ‘He couldn’t be any other thing than a PRP’, Rohan thought. One of Rohan’s discoveries about collective Indian living was that the Malloos were the easiest to get friendly with. He recalled his days in Bangalore with colleagues like Hamza Thayyil, T.K.S. Nambiar, Thomas Verkey and Montoo Nair. He had gotten along well with them. He knew all the statistics of how many cousins each one had in the gulf; or the coconut trees or pepper climbers in their home fields. One even had a boat that ran on rent in the backwaters of Kumarakom!

P.R.P. Nair thrust some power to the engine, and the truck moved up the hill. Its next stop was the main gate of the officers’ quarters. Two ayahs, two mothers and five kids waited there. Rohan acted like the driver’s handyman and helped the kids get into the truck. It sneezed and moved again. Cpl¹ P.R.P. Nair started whistling a tune in the smugness of his settled routine. His vehicle ran past the main gate; the Helipad; and then by the Indo-Danish Animal Husbandry Project site. Suddenly, the moustaches turned straight and the mouth within asked the handyman, Whatz your naaaame? I am Rohan. LAC (Leading aircraftman) Rohan K. Anand. Coming from where? Training Command Unit, Bangalore he replied softly. You need to have a new bank account then! P.R.P. Nair asked in a dead serious tone.

Puzzled by the question at this time on the road, Rohan mumbled, Yes, well. I don’t need that right away. We all get and spend our salary in cash. So what!! I think you should save something, and look, that’s your Bank. You see. Nearest to the camp. You may try there, said PRP, again in a grave voice while pointing at a small building in the fenced-in project area. A sturdy board fixed near the building read in white letters over the sky blue surface: Central Semen Bank. PRP started humming the tune again. Rohan was not amused by the poor joke but he laughed to honour hilarity that came wearing moustaches. He gathered some wit and said, I am not that kind of a bull, sir. PRP drove on nonchalantly. His borrowed sense of humour didn’t go beyond the sperm investment bank. The PJ must have been repeated by the likes of PRP over the years with thousands of passersby, Rohan thought. Moustaches whistled again; the truck trundled on the winding road, and Rohan savoured every inch of beautiful landscape, the country houses, and delicate fair lasses with baskets on their back carrying anything that throbbed with life or with the freshness that grew on the terraces over the hills or the slopes around. He was falling in love fast with the town and its countryside as the truck moved on. Exhilarating eagerness penetrated his heart and body. After running for about ten miles, the truck reached a place, where a lot of boys and girls with school satchels or books in their hands walked about. Some adults too. Several signboards and indications stood or hung about to show the presence of schools and colleges like St Ignatius, Loreto Convent, and St Edmund’s, Don Bosco, St Mary’s, St. Anthony’s et al.

Rohan saw many dolls-like local girls clad in school uniforms or in the local Khasi dress. The place gave a gorgeous hint of a carnival. He started seeing the people individually. He soon discovered that every child was happy, every adult eager, and every object on the concourse stood to help the happiness reach out to the corners of the crowd. But none of the people helped him know the truth of the university’s existence. Everyone, of whom he asked about the location, shrugged his shoulders. But there was one and it had its office somewhere close by, he knew, partly by knowledge, partly by hunch. So, even in that highly infectious state of happiness around, he stood helpless on the pavement and looked at the Church and its magnificence. It was a well decorated one. Some people moved in and out of it. The place had a unique cultural rhythm. But in spite of that unique cultural halo in abundance, there was no hint of the path that he wanted to tread. No one knew where Rohan Anand should go and study for his post graduation.

A taxi stopped by and the driver raised his eyebrows. Twice. A comical question mark to know if the pedestrian would afford the taxi! But Rohan was adamant. He insisted on his own question. The cabbie then decided to speak and he gave him some directions in the guttural paan-soaked voice which he only half understood. Nevertheless, he got on to the right road by the side of the Loreto Convent. He made the right turns but ended up in a blind street. A woman stood there. She wore a local dress; that means she would know about the nearby places, he thought. She heard Rohan; smiled at him; and in addition, gave him directions for one Horse-shoe Building. He thanked her and walked back. A soft feel of trailing gratitude swelled in him. He took her talking to him as a good omen. He liked the animal-friendly name of the building.

‘Horseshoe building’, he thought and mumbled, ‘Tup Tup Tup’. He saw a horse that looked like.. like… like what!

‘Rozinante, he mumbled, ‘He would like the building’.

‘And.. Dulcinea’. … … Vow, will she be there too?’ the callow Don asked the virtual Rozinante. Walking down the happy steps, he fell inside Cervantes’ book². Not on the horse yet, he saw her wearing a long frock with small sleeves smocked on her shoulders looking harried and scared! He raised his palm to reassure her. His smile was genuine. Somewhat patronizing.

The slope next to him in his real-time town was steeper now. His hands clasped the reins and pulled them fast. They hit his chest and he tumbled out. Back on one of a thousand slopes in Shillong. The horse, and Dulcinea, and the Don vanished in the felt reality of a trip on the road.

A hundred meters down the lane, he stood before the big signboard of the Central University by the entrance of the Horseshoe Building. The University had started PG courses in 1973. He read on the notice board that the admissions were open until 20th of June in the departments of English, Mathematics and Life Sciences. Rohan’s joy knew no bounds as if he had it in his pocket already. He made inquiries and was told to meet Professor Ghevarghese George for admission in English.

From Cpl PRP Nair in the morning to Prof. Ghevarghese George in the noon! Good progress Malayalam land in the abode of clouds, he whispered to himself. He didn’t carry his degree mark sheets, so he only took the admission form and planned to come in a few days. There was much time still up the last date.

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Professor Ghevarghese took his interview two weeks later. He asked him if he had read any English book in his life!

Rohan was hurt. Prof looked at him condescendingly and said, Say! Rohan felt he was worth a word, but his several SSB interviews had taught him by now how to answer cranky questions.

Yes sir. Few, I mean a few, like: What Katy did, Merchant of Venice, Gora, Guide, Mother, Don Quixote, Ben Hur, Autobiography of an unknown Indian, Thelma, Ibsen’s plays, Brecht’s plays, Les Miserables, Roots, Second World War books, Adversary in the House, Exodus, The Dream Merchants, Ludlum’s thrillers, all of them; Love Story, The Idiot, Sherlock Holmes’ stories, The Resurrection, The coolie, The Pickwick papers, The Castle… Rohan was rattling off his eclectic assemblage of old and new readings cutting across genres, nationalities and styles when the Prof interrupted him.

Of all the books that you have mentioned, only one or two are there in the graduate or the PG course. Secondly, not all of these are original English works. However, yes, it shows your interest in books. What is your mother tongue? Sir, Punjabi ...but Hindi is equally important to my family,he said with a faint smile. All right. How many have you read in Hindi...and...What? Punjabi, you said!

‘He knows today that Punjabi is a language,’ Rohan thought in revenge, but said in an easily captured politeness, Sir plenty of them; more than a hundred sir... originally written in Hindi and Punjabi, and translations in Hindi of the Russian, French, English, other European and Indian language books… sir, and then recalling that the Prof was a Malayali, he hammered on his memory head, got it fast, and added, .. Sir, like Chemmeen, Ummachu.. and... and... Etcetera sir.

The Prof permitted a subdued smile on his donnish face. He understood that the boy was not faking it up. He then compelled himself to go through his marks sheet. And that act made him angry. Furious, in fact.

If I count your overall performance, I won’t admit you. Third division in BA!! Do you think MA in English is a joke…? And we the university professors will sit idle without you as our student? Prof. Ghevarghese had a fit and he threw his marks sheet on the table.

Rohan fell off his perch, or the horseback. He looked like a man clutching on the grass off a cliff. He had an instant bloat of sorrow and despair. He couldn’t move. The Prof looked at his face and said, Go away. You have only got good marks in English, but here we count the overall grade, which you don’t have! Rohan could hear his heart pounding. Self-pity and shame assailed him. He couldn’t move, nor could he speak. Professor raised his face and looked at him. Rohan’s neck was stiff and bent; his face had turned pale. His eyes betrayed a resigned finality and his hands trembled.

He had failed another SSB interview today, the final one.

He was ten years old and was asked to strip fully and stand in the corner for losing another pen. He stood in disgrace waiting for his father to come out and shame him. Useless, disgustingly useless, he heard him say in anger.

Professor got a shock seeing him in that hopeless state. Why don’t you do a correspondence course from some other university? he asked in a laboured sympathy. He just abhorred the idea. ‘I want to sit in a classroom and study, I want to attend seminars, I want to write assignments, I want to sit in the library, I want to talk to students the whole day and I want to write and speak in good English. Damnit!’ he raved and shouted in anger in his mind. But he spoke softly... ... pleadingly, Sir..sir.. I promise. I’ll do well… please! I want to study as a regular student… … sir, sitting in the classroom, sir, and my life depends on this admission, sir. He finished in a whisper that asked for a still possible space.

The boy’s words didn’t sound hollow to the Prof. Somewhere in the jumble of fate and luck-makers’ anarchy of ledgers, a word got leaked in his favour. Professor felt that the boy could make it to the final. But he said nothing. He waited for him to return.Rohan stood on expectantly. His joints pressed hard against the edge of the table. He pushed his upper body and the neck further as if to push out some words which wouldn’t come out. Slowly he said, "I have not been good at getting marks, sir... but please believe me... Literature has been my life line...

I want to learn sir; only learn...and to… write, and he couldn’t say more. A lump in his throat and water in his eyes stopped him there. Promise me that you will leave of your own, if your tutor does not report well of your progress in the first quarter. I promise, sir, said Rohan in the most mawkish English tone of his life. Go and give your fee. But I am not sure if you will make it to the final... or even the first term..." he snapped at the boy and got busy with some other papers.Rohan took a deep breath. He thanked the professor and slipped off quickly like a pretender when discovered of his reality. All his despair dispersed in a moment. He felt injected with a new wave of life and confidence. Though, a part of him said that he should feel insulted. Another part said he deserved it for his third division.

But no! He now wanted to challenge the professor who had doubted his potential to pull through; but was afraid. The Prof didn’t know yet about his job. On thinking about his shifts, and the daily travel, all across Upper Shillong and the whole of city, which meant maximum stretch of impossibility to do well in the studies, Rohan was perplexed. But he had no alternative, he thought. He had to do well; come what may, he resolved. He believed in what he had said, off the cuff, to the Prof. It was a question of life and death for him. This was his only chance of living any more, he felt.

He then had a flash. Two months annual leave! ‘I’ll not go home for the annual leave. I’ll use the leave for the annual exams. Yes. Full preparation for two months. Got it! I’ll make it’, he thought. But he saw the fate mocking. That made him angry. There was aggression in his mind. He clenched his fingers and shook the fists in the air. ‘How! Why! If I can prepare for the IMA entrance exams in the all consuming ab-initio training, I can do this stupid MA as well in four months leave in two years.’ In that one minute of his internal struggle he also reached the counter to pay the fees.

He paid up Rs. 25/- for the first year and went back to the secretary of the Dept. of English. He read her name on a wooden tab. Carolyn Smith. A frail and fair youngish woman, she informed him that the classes would be held at ‘the palace building’ at, what sounded to him like ‘Nan-Thimmaiah’. He wondered at the strange sounding name. ‘This place is not Coorg’, he joked with himself with his army knowledge. He didn’t ask her again. He knew he would get it right anyway, the way he would get all other things right in his life.

He saw some books lying on her table. Spines of the two of them announced Prof. Ghevarghese’s name. He asked the secretary if the HOD was their author! Yes, his books, all of these. said Miss or Mrs. Smith, They are on literary criticism. Rohan felt proud of his HOD, even if the latter had doubted his intelligence. He was in a hurry to go to join his afternoon shift. He did the formalities fast and turned back to go. He walked three steps; then stopped and turned. He saw the woman standing and smiling at him. He knew that she was witness to his admission scene. He constructed a beautiful congenial smile for the lady. He walked, and shook hands with her; thanked her.

See you in the department… and all the best, she said in a very pleasant way. Oh yes. How…, will you be there? I normally sit in the department; here I am only for the admissions. Rohan smiled again, thanked her and waved a bye. He had re-started his education, he confirmed. Good boy", he murmured for himself on behalf of the lady.

The classes for English, Maths and Life sciences were held in a palace building on the outer fringe of the town, in a locality known as Nongthymmai. The palace also housed the central library. All the courses became instantly popular thanks to the vibrant civil society and excellent colleges in Shillong. And also because of the reputed teachers who had joined the university with promotions. Department of English was part of the School of Languages, but that was the only language that was taught there.

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Rohan had joined the Air Force as a ranker when he knew that there was no much money with his refugee parents for his higher studies. His elder brother had graduated in electrical engineering but had fallen in the sudden glut of engineering jobs in the late sixties. His father, that is father of four sons, including Rohan- the second one, had joined army in 1948 after he failed to establish any business without the capital. And he didn’t know then how to run a business with other people’s money.

Both of Rohan’s younger brothers were in the school. Father, when he retired from the army as a Havildar (Sergeant) in 1969, at the age of forty-three, pursued his ambition of running a grocery shop in his home that he had built part by part in a small town of Haryana. He had received some life-skills lessons in his adolescence that he kept recounting to all his sons, the first one of whom he had sired beyond the borders of Independence and the other three in different cantonments.

Father, after graduating from a primary school in Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan’s Kaalara estate in Sargodha district, had put himself in the apprenticeship of his big cousin who had a cloth shop there. He had given him three lessons to remember for the rest of his life.

Lesson one: Trading is the second best occupation in the world, the first being farming. Since he didn’t want to work on land he wanted to settle for the next best. Lesson two: The profit, and only the profit, is the Dharma and the karma of a trader. And number three: Spend as little as possible on your family and self in the first four or five years of your business; especially when the investment is small. Some subsidiary lessons sometimes made a change in his advisory dialogue box. ‘Keep six months’ ration in your home before you start a new venture’;‘ Plough back your profit, fully, for about six months or a year’; ‘Go for stocking in a grocery shop; and, never ever think that you can buy fresh and sell in retail and make a profit’; etc. Soon after he announced his intention to run a grocery shop in the street-side room of the house, he dovetailed his learning into the code of conduct for the family. Since his eldest son was already off-home, earlier for his studies and then for the project engagement (of unemployed engineers), he escaped the martial law. Now, rest of the three sons had to show solidarity with the new regime. Army had left its camp and taken over home. Discipline shorn of its army-soul replaced the anarchic noise of family love. Fun among the brothers and mother was gone. The barracks world over fall silent at ten thirty. It was always ten forty in the house. The guava tree in the compound dropped its pink-flesh fruit for the kids but at the dead of the night.

But unlike this time, the growing of these kids in cantonments was not always the shadow of PT and parade. The two elder brothers grew up with a plenty of library books that they read and which had made them sensitive and conscious about poverty and deprivation that the partition gifted to thousands of families like theirs. Father had once brought a huge world map, discarded for its frayed ends by his Unit Reading Room, and had pasted that on the wall of his sons’ room. Both the big boys played ‘search the place’ on the map. So they knew the world cities more than the guys in the Foreign Ministry. Kamchataka, Bujumbura and Mercedes were real cities at some real spots on the wall and the boys could get there in a jiffy in their daily-turned-weekly game. They knew the distance between them inch by inch; they knew the national capitals, major rivers, straits, islands and also that the southernmost part of India was Pygmalion point and not Cape Komorin.

In their home-spun geography and anthropology they also knew that there was an élite segment of the refugee Punjabis, which mostly settled in Amritsar and Delhi- the big landlords; the moneylenders and contractors from Lahore, Jhelum, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Sargodha and Lyallpur and other big towns. They settled well in the market of their new habitations; bought property and gold aplenty, got into several businesses including ‘financing’ (or ‘money-lending,’ to say crudely) and joined hands with politicians. However, for all others like Rohan’s family, the partition was a big scar of history that burnt the flesh and soul not just the generation that survived it but the next ones too. The restructuring took place on a large scale of time, culture, economy and history. Government had a department of rehabilitation but it had no vision of reshaping lives. That department gave to the Anand family fifteen acres of useless land in Ropar in lieu of their 31 acres by the mighty and marshal Jhelum River. Father, being the eldest after his slain father, had tried hard with the department to change the allotment to a better land, but he knew no man in power. And he had angered the clerks instead of bribing them. So what, even if it was 1947! The family belonged to a race that had started having corruption as a way of life.

The rehabilitation business becomes eventually the burden of the victims of history, after the nation or the government does its cosmetic act. Father, even with his anaemic education, knew it too, but he fired at the fate, the collective one, with vengeance. The heavy recoil was taken by all at home, all the time. Children, through books and the talks knew that the education was the only key to all the wiliness that was necessary to live in dignity.

Father and mother in the family of six had also told their children a number of stories about their life in their village and the places where they had lived before partition. The kids had also received horrendous details of their movement down to the platform no 1 on the railway station of Ambala Cantt. And about all those people who survived the qatle aam (mass murder) in the train on their first international travel. Father’s family could survive the railway mayhem because all its members were in an over packed compartment that stood on a small narrow bridge at a spot ten miles from the Wagah border. The passage on the ground connecting the bridge was full of dead bodies and the marauders would not walk over them to reach father’s compartment. But about a mile before the Wagah border, the train was stopped again. The killers came in hordes shouting praises to God. They also hunted for passengers hiding among the dead prayers. They attacked the compartment. God is great, they shouted. The train started and caught speed. They could take only one person out. The one who stood near the door with a sword in his hand – ready to kill his young daughters before the attackers killed or worked to take them away. He was father’s father. They snatched him away. And all the money that he carried on his person. And his sword of ages rusted by the inaction of pre-independence peace.

The head man’s wife, daughters and sons saw him from the windows of the running train. The attackers threw his turban on the ground and trampled that. They slapped and boxed the head of the family and then they stripped and looted him. One of them shoved a knife in his stomach. God is great. He twisted and turned god’s edges severally till the entrails came out. God is the greatest. The naked head man‘s eyes popped and his twisted body fell. Uttering worst profanities, the killers threw him beside a stinking pool. Near the inert water without a soul. Characterless water. Thick with muck and blood, and innards of the oldest man in Anand family.

He paid seed money for the Independence. Next generations would keep paying more.

Only those two compartments that stood on the bridge that day disgorged at Wagha station about five hundred half dead human beings. Rest of the eight bogies contained the corpses. The train, after it emptied its dead cargo of not-to-be-counted humans, along with their putrid stinking flesh; was sent back from Wagah lest the sight should cause retribution. Besides, the nubile politics of the country was sensitive; it was prone to puke over the stench. Another train from Amritsar carried the breathing contents to Ambala cantt.

It had happened in September 1947. Mother had told her children this chilling story, along with many other horrible tales of the partition time. All four sons, born as a boon of their grandmother who had blessed their mother on her deathbed soon after her husband was slain, were all the time badly clothed and undernourished. Rohan, the second one, and the strongest of them all, was always hungry too. And he, with a fire in his belly reaching at times his head, read more and more about the partition from various authors from Yashpal to Manto and became overly sensitive to such of human miseries. More he knew about the suffering, more he abhorred the power elite. Very early in his life he became suspicious about the moral base of society and religion, and purpose of life -individual and collective. Not in a certain well-linked intellectual dialectics or articulation, but in a puny wisdom of denying beliefs.

And it didn’t stop there. Even when the historicity of collective misery stuck on to the gashes of Anand children, the third teaching of the big cousin to their father had a heavy toll on their lives. Army had posted father to a non-family station four years before his retirement. That was the time when the big brother was in the engineering college and rest of the family sans father lived in the small house. Father had built that house in sixteen of the total twenty one years of his service after cutting enormously on the family expenses. Rohan, who acted as the man of the family in the years between 1965 and 1969, was asked by father, after his retirement, to fend for himself. He was seventeen then. He had passed class XII exams by then with marks not enough to enter any medical college. Since he was not expert in getting good grades in examinations he was dubbed useless. He mostly started with correct answers but ended with his own opinion or conjectures or interpretations which may not have been scholastically or factually tenable or appealing yet to the examiners.

There was another aspect of his uselessness which the society outside the family felt. While Rohan Anand was still in the school, he had attended some open study sessions organized in the town’s central park by Comrade Balbir Singh of the Communist Party of India. Those were the days of uprisings in Ropar and other places in the country that turned eventually into a Naxalite movement. Though he and his small-time fellow students of CPI’s ideology had nothing to do with that movement; yet everyone who was seen or adjudged or suspected to be carrying a leaning towards Marxism, was put under observation by the State. The raw, unkempt lanky boy was dubbed by Shri McCarthy Bharitya, Super Ghoul to the Prime Minister, as the biggest potential danger to the democracy of India. And he remained under surveillance of the ugly Leviathan for a large part of his life, sustaining the pressure only through his innate sense of humour.

In such a mêlée of ideological, existential and a dreamy confusion of the meaning and purpose of life, Rohan decided one day to work in a factory. He easily got the job as a daily wager in a newly established liquor factory, thanks to comrade Debi Prasad who was the union leader. He worked in shifts and began to understand the physical labour and a labourer’s life. Three rupees and seventy five paise was his daily wage. He gave half the amount to his mother on the days he got his wages. The job was physical and repetitive and yet he liked it. He also liked rubbing shoulders with illiterate proletariat, many of whom got pissed under the tables by a bottle or two that they stole from the assembly table.

And yet one day, after three months when his mother went inside the shop and father was busy with his clients, he picked up all his money from his private drawer, collected all his certificates and some clothes; shoved them all into an old travel bag, and sneaked out of the compound gate. He walked up the railway station and got into a train bound for Ambala Cantt. Back to the basic step of his family’s modern history.

He reached his destination after three hours’ journey by the passenger train. He didn’t know what to do. He walked up and down the platform. After about fifteen minutes of a useless walk, he stood under the footbridge that joined different platforms. Sight of a woman in rags, and rheum in her weepy eyes triggered in his mind the partition pistol. He recalled his mother’s words and got the flash that he, at that time, stood at the de facto ‘gateway of India’ for his family. At platform no. 1; under the huge over bridge, where above a thick red carpet they were welcomed by the history, and where in September 1947, his aunts, uncles, mother, father and grandmother mourning her husband’s a day-old murder, and kids and dogs, scratched through the daily meals that came through the ushers of charity in the plates shining with feeble, trembling rays of a nervous sun of freedom. He looked around himself and thought, ‘they must have breathed here, in this space under the first flight of the steps.’

Now, in 1969, the space sheltered two wheelbarrows, a few broomsticks and some odds and ends. He imagined his uncles, aunts, grandmother -all younger by twenty-two years, huddled up around him. A tangible horror of misery and wretchedness seized his mind. He felt helpless and poor. Poorest of the poor. Without spare clothes; sans food, sans dignity, sans a sensible meaning of life. A subject of charity. The refugee. Member of a race that comes back every time the history wails on the excesses of her brutal man. The race that pays the price of every intrusion or independence at every counter of life... mostly across several generations.

He felt thirsty; very thirsty. He came out of the hovel in feeble steps and reached the water tap. He took some water on his palm, and sprinkled over his head. He didn’t know why he did that. He stared at the tap and then drank plenty of water with his hands under the tap. Wiping his hands by the sides of his pants, he moved away slowly, his bag lolling by his right shoulder.

He felt that he was ready to go for an uncharted, confused quest of life. A personal struggle for freedom, emancipation, progress and peace, which the fate had coded to him so far only as freedom from the daily slog at home, where even the happy change through the factory work had started making a boring incursions of uselessness. He came out of the station and wandered on the road. After about an hour-long walk on the asphalt road, he discovered on the right side ruins of a grand church that the Pakistanis had bombed down in the 1965 war. He inspected the ruins from all sides, sat on the edge of a fallen stone and mused over his future that never came as close to his thinking as it did that day. He sat there for about an hour and got tired of chasing and demolishing dreams. He yawned in a long and bored directionlessness. He got up and slowly walked to the road.

He spent the evening and the night at his aunt’s place. He said he had come there for a change. His cousins talked to him, entertained him and one of them, a girl, adored him. She fed him well and sat beside him intimately. She was eager to feed him more. ‘How does she know that I am always hungry’, he asked himself. Since he had no sister, and had hardly talked to a girl, he felt very uncomfortable. They all knew he had come of his own free will. He had no plans, so he didn’t tell them of any.

Next day he reported back at the Church ruins on Alexandra road. He had said bye to his aunt and his daughters and now didn’t know what to do. He sat on the fallen boulder for a while in the cool breeze. Then he saw some boys of his age walking about in a street nearby. Every one of them carried a file or a bag. He was curious to know what they were after. He left the destroyed church and walked up to the street. He saw a queue in and out of a building about a furlong away. He decided to see what it was. He walked fast and came closer to the crowd. He read on a big sky-blue sign board: No. 1 Airmen Selection Centre; 48 Mansfield Road, Ambala Cantt.

He didn’t think for a second and stood in the line.

He cleared the physical and then the mental tests. He went back to his aunt’s house in the evening and announced to his daughter that he was enlisting. Aunt welcomed him back to her house.

Next day, when the chairman asked him which trade he wanted, he knew they were selecting him as an airman. He thought about his future insurance in a vague way. In a flash. He blurted out naïvely, "Anything sir, that would help