“Now there will be no one that remembers, Nachhatar,” Bibiji said. “We are the only ones left.”
She looked out of the window with disinterest as the car crawled along the treeless GT Road, past garish facades of fake-century haveli homes, announcing themselves as “resorts” and “marriage palaces”.
There used to be the occasional bullock cart, public tonga, private horse and buggy, maybe a motor car, or perhaps a motor lorry along this then thin ribbon of road under a canopy of dense trees. But that was many, many years ago.
They were now entering Ludhiana city limits. The traffic congestion increased, and Bibiji rolled up the car window to shut out the noise, honking, and thick, dark clouds spewed by shabby trucks and buses. And the beggar-faced grimy hands streaking grease stains on the windows. And the street vendors enticing her with bric-a-brac in striking colours – maps, dusters, rat poison, ‘pens, sunglasses, unhygienic-looking water bottles, chips, sweets, fruit.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too warm, for the car did not have air conditioning. Bibiji had finally purchased the green Ambassador when the old Landmaster started giving too much trouble for Nachhatar to handle. For a 1972, it still ran rather well thanks to Nachhatar’s skill under the hood and determination to never drive over 30 mph. It was his pride and joy; the chrome shone an aged new and the colour still showed a faded brilliance.
Bibiji would have preferred to close her eyes, but then the suspense: in all that noise and commotion, was all well out there? Nachhatar kept his composure. A careful driver. Aware that any minimal space left vacant around the car at traffic signals would be filled immediately. It was the law of nature. All space must be filled. And it was. Filled. With scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, handcarts. Anything that could fit in and around and about.
Bibiji remembered the old railway crossing, still a single road in the midst of congested Ludhiana. Soon as the train had gone on through and the gates started to lift, traffic lined on either side of the crossing charged like cavalry troops. Horse carts, tractors, trucks, buses, bicycles, scooters, cars, rickshaws. May the cleverest and the best at manoeuvring win. A good lesson on survival of the fittest for ordinary folk in a world where one must learn to be content with such-like small victories and accomplishments.
Baljit Singh was dead.
“You have to make a right towards the convent school, Nachhatar,” Bibiji instructed from the back.
Golf Greens. That was the name of the development in Ludhiana he had purchased his house at. There never had been, nor could ever be, golf there, or greens – every inch was packed with brick and concrete and the day’s laundry, hanging on metal balcony railings from the ground to the third floor of tightly packed, randomly designed houses. It had to be arrived at through nerve-racking traffic, phlegm, snot, rubbish heaps, filth. Through gypsy carts, makeshift tents, and tattered settlers along the pavements. Through building and road construction, Maruti Suzuki cars and Honda scooties. Through old buildings and new buildings that would turn old overnight and be packed with sweaty bodies.
Bibiji disliked cities, and Ludhiana even more so now, for she remembered it from its better days – the time she arrived there with her parents as a little girl from Burma. 1942. Just ahead of the threat of the Japanese bombing of Rangoon. It was a livable city then. Even likable, perhaps. Instead of returning to the ancestral house which was only about twenty miles away, and accessible by a Dodge lorry or Grandfather’s Ford-T or horse buggy, they had moved into a house in the Civil Lines, where they were to be home tutored. Baljit Singh was a little boy then. Gurmukh they never saw or heard from again. Hardev was to prepare for the Matric examination. Bibiji still had some years of schooling left.
And now Baljit Singh was dead in Golf Greens.
Now there would be no one who remembered.
Here was the convent school with its yellow buses and children in shorts, skirts, and neckties. Across the road was the Hindi medium Saraswati Shishu Mandir where children arrived in rickshaws, carrying parathas, pickled mango or lime achaar, and roti for lunch. No doubt also an odour of cheap hair oil but necktied nonetheless.
“How many stations were there from the plantation to Rangoon, Nachhatar, do you remember?” Bibiji asked.
“Must have been at least four or five stations in that twenty-minute run, Bibiji,” Nachhatar said.
The steam engine entered each station puffing at a leisurely pace. There was no push or shove, elbow or jostle. There were children from other plantations in the neighbourhood, also off to school in Rangoon. There were the Burmese merchants. A lean smattering of people of all faiths: Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian.
“Remember the time we were returning from school and that man jumped into our carriage and hid under the seat?”
“Yes, Bibiji, I remember you telling us,” Nachhatar said. “They were hunting down and killing Muslims. Or maybe the Hindus or Christians.”
Here was one thing that had not changed.
Always someone, somewhere was hunting or being hunted down, killing or being killed.
Excerpted with permission from A River Runs Back, Amarjit Sidhu, Speaking Tiger Books.
