Train To Pakistan - Closing

The leader raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired. He hit his mark and one of the man's legs came off the rope and dangled in the air. The other was still twined round the rope. He slashed away in frantic haste. The engine was only a few yards off, throwing embers high up in the sky with each blast of the whistle. Somebody fired another shot. The man's body slid off the rope, but he clung to it with his hands and chin. He pulled himself up, caught the rope under his left armpit, and again started hacking with his right hand. The rope had been cut in shreds. Only a thin tough strand remained. He went at it with the knife, and then with his teeth. The engine was almost on him. There was a volley of shots. The man shivered and collapsed. The rope snapped in the center as he fell. The train went over him, and went on to Pakistan.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 173

He who made the night and day,

The days of the ween and the seasons.

He who made the breezes blow, the waters run,

The fires and the lower regions.

Made the earth -- the temple of law.

He who made creatures of diverse kinds

With a multitude of names,

Made this the law --

By thought and deed be judged forsooth,For God is True and dispenseth Truth.

There the elect his court adorn,

And God Himself their actions honors.

There are sorted deeds that were done and bore fruit,

From those that to action could never ripen.

This, O Nanak, shall hereafter happen.

Meet Singh shut the prayer book and again put it to his forehead. He began to mumble the epilogue to the morning prayer:

Air, water and earth,

Of these are we made,

Air like the Guru's word gives the breath of life

To the babe born of the great mother Earth

Sired by the waters

Train To Pakistan - pg. 172

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsin, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed. Take philosophy, about which there is so much hoo-ha. It is just muddleheadedness masquerading as mysticism. And Yoga, particularly Yoga, that excellent earner of dollars! Stand on your head. Sit cross-legged and tickle your navel with your nose. Have perfect control over the senses. Make women come till they cry "Enough!" and you can say "Next, please" without opening your eyes. And all the mumbo-jumbo of four thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason; just faith. Thought, which should be the sine qua non of a philosophical code, is dispensed with. We climb to sublime heights on the wings of fancy. We do the rope trick in all spheres of creative life. As long as the world credulously believes in our capacity to make a rope rise skyward and a little boy climb it till he is out of view, so long will our brand of humbug thrive.

Take art and music. Why has contemporary Indian painting, music, architecture and sculpture been such a flop? Because it keeps harking back to B. C. Harking back would be all right if it did not become a pattern -- a deadweight. If it does, then we are in a cul-de-sac of art forms. We explain the unattractive by pretending it is esoteric. Or we break out altogether -- like modern Indian music of the films. It is all tango and rhumba or samba played on Hawaiian guitars, violins, accordions and clarinets. It is ugly. It must be scrapped like the rest.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 165

The courtyard of the gurdwara was spotted with rings of light cast by hurrican lamps and fires on improvised hearths over which women were cooking the evening meal. Inside the main hall was a circle of people around Meet Singh, who was reciting the evening prayer. The room in which Iqbal had left his things was locked.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 161

The subinspector picked up a yellow paper and read: "Juggut Singh, son of Alam Singh, age twenty-four, caste Sikh of village Mano Majra, budmash number ten."

"Yes, sir" interrupted Jugga, smiling. The treatment he had received from the police had not made any differnce to him. His equation with authority was simple: he was on the other side. Personalities did not come into it. Subinspectors and policemen were people in khaki who frequently arrested him, always abused him, and sometimes beat him. Since they abused and beat him without anger or hate, they were not human beings with names. They were only denominations one tried to get the better of. If one failed, it was just bad luck.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 145

That evening, the entire village turned up for the evening prayers at the gurdwara. This had never happened before, except on Gurus' birthdays or on the New Year's Day in April. The only regular visitors to the temple were old men and women.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 143

They sat and listened and watched strange undistinguishable forms floating on the floodwaters. The moon went down. After a brief period of darkness the eastern horizon turned gray. Long lines of bats flew across noiselessly. Crows began to caw in their sleep. The shrill cry of a koel came bursting through a clump of trees and all the world was awake.

The clouds had rolled away to the north. Slowly the sun came up and flooded the rain-soaked plain with a dazzling orange brilliance; everything glistened in the sunlight. The river had risen further. Its turbid water carried carts with the bloated carcasses of bulls still yoked to them. Horses rolled from side to side as if they were scratching their backs. There were also men and women with their clothes clinging to their bodies; little children sleeping on their bellies with their arms clutching the water and their tiny buttocks dipping in and out. The sky was soon full of kites and vultures. They flew down and landed on the floating carcasses. They pecked till the corpses themselves rolled over and shooed them off with hands which rose stiffly into the air and splashed back into the water.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 136

His colleague did not reply. He had a sardonic smile on his face. Mano Majra Sikhs and Muslims looked on helplessly.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 133

It rained intermittently all night. Early in the morning it became a regular downpour. Villagers who had stayed up most of the night fell asleep in the monotonous patter of rain and the opiate of the fresh morning breeze.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 93

With the monsoon, the tempo of life and death increases. Almost overnight grass begins to grow and leafless trees turn green. Snakes, centipedes and scorpions are born out of nothing. The ground is strewn with earthworms, ladybirds and tiny frogs. At night, myriads of moths flutter around the lamps. They fall in everybody's food and water. Geckos dart about filling themselves with insects till they get heavy and fall off ceilings. Inside rooms the hum of mosquitoes is maddening. People spray clouds of insecticide, and the floor becomes a layer of wriggling bodies and wings. Next evening, there are many more fluttering around the lamp shades and burning themselves in the flames.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 91

The sun makes an ally of the breeze. It heats the air till it becomes the loo and then sends it on its errand. Even in the intense heat, the loo's warm caresses are sensuous and pleasant. It brings up the prickly heat. It produces a numbness which makes the head nod and the eyes heavy with sleep. It brings on a stroke which takes its victim as gently as breeze bears a fluff of thistledown.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 84

The northern horizon, which had turned a bluish gray, showed orange again. The orange turned copper and then into a luminous russet. Red tongues of flame leaped into the black sky. A soft breeze began to blow toward the village. It brought the smell of burning kerosene, then of wood. And then -- a faint acrid smell of searing flesh.

The village was stilled in a deathly silence. No one asked anyone else what the odor was. They all knew. They had known it all the time. The answer was implicit in the fact that the train had come from Pakistan.

That evening, for the first time in the memory of Mano Majra, Imam Baksh's sonorous cry did not rise to the heavens to proclaim the glory of God.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 77

KALYUG

EARLY in September the time schedule in Mano Majra started going wrong. Trains became less punctual than ever before and many more started to run through at night. Some days it seemed as though the alarm clock had been set for the wrong hour. On others, it was as if no one had remembered to wind it. Imam Baksh waited for Meet Singh to make the first start. Meet Sinfh waited for the mullah's call to prayer before getting up. People stayed in bed late without realizing that times had changed and the mail train might not run through at all. Children did not know when to be hungry, and clamored for food all the time. In the evenings, everyone was indoors before sunset and in bed before the express came by -- if it did come be. Goods trains had stopped running altogether, so there was no lullaby to lull them to sleep. Instead, ghost trains went past at odd hours between midnight and dawn, disturbing the dreams of Mano Majra.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 74

"No," he said. "For God's sake, no." He flung himself on the floor and clasped the subinspector's shoes with both his hands. "Please, O king of pearls." He was ashamed of himself, but he knew he could never endure such torture again. "I am innocent. By the name of the Guru, I had nothing to do with the dacoity."

Train To Pakistan - pg. 74

"No," he said. "For God's sake, no." He flung himself on the floor and clasped the subinspector's shoes with both his hands. "Please, O king of pearls." He was ashamed of himself, but he kew he could never endure such torture again. "I am innocent. By the name of the Guru, I had nothing to do with the dacoity."

Train To Pakistan - pg. 70

Jugga's arrival was the subject of much hilarity.

"Oye, you are back again. You think it is your father-in-law's house," shouted one of the constables from his barrack.

"It is, seeing the number of policemen's daughters I have seduced," answered Juggut Singh at the top of his voice. He had forgotten the unpleasantness in the tonga.

"Oye, Budmahsa, you will not desist from your budmashi. Wait till the Inspector Sahib hears of what you said and he will put hot chillies up your bottom."

"You cannot do that to your son-in-law!"

Train To Pakistan - pg. 54

"Babuji, we are being polite to you. We keep saying 'ji,' 'ji' to you all the time, but you want to sit on our heads. We have told you a hundred times we are doing our duty, but you insist on believing that we have a personal grudge." He turned to his colleague. "Put the handcuffs on the fellow. He can do what he likes with his face. If I had a face like his, I would want to hide it. We will report that he refused to cover it."

Train To Pakistan - pg. 49

Iqbal felt his temper rise. "They are a race of four-twenties," he said vehemently. [Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code defines the offense of cheating.] "Do not believe what they say."

Train To Pakistan - pg. 42

"You do not know the deputy?" Meet Singh was surprised. "It's Hukum Chand. He is staying at the dark bungalow north of the bridge. Now Hukum Chand is a nar admi. He started as a foot-constable and see where he is now! He always kept the sahibs pleased and they gave him one promotion after another. The last one gave him his own place and made him Deputy. Yes, Iqbal Singh Ji, Hukum Chand is a nar admi -- and clever. He is true to his friends and always gets things done for them. He has had dozens of relatives given good jobs. He is one of a hundred. Nothing counterfeit about Hukum Chand.

Train To Pakistan - pg. 38

"Why, Babu Sahib, you have come to stop killing and you are upset by one murder?" asked Meet Singh, smiling. "I thought you had come to stop such things, Babu Sahib. But you are quite safe in Mano Majra," he added. "Dacoits do not come to the same village more than once a year. There will be another dacoity in another village in a few days and people will forget about this one. We can have a meeting here one night after the evening prayer and you can tell them all you want. You had better rest. I will come back and tell them all you what happens."

The old man hobbled out of the courtyard. Iqbal collected the empty tin, his knife and fork and tin plate, and took them to the well to wash.