what could my
mother be to yours?
what kin is my father
to yours anyway?
and how did you and
i meet ever? but in
love our hearts have
mingled like red earth
and pouring rain
Sangam Age Poem
(Translated by A.K.Ramanumjam)
The banging on the door almost seemed like somebody pounding on his head. Then somebody must have opened the door, because the pounding had stopped.
“Sahab, sahab, an inspector sahab is come”.
Asha was already up, nudging him, chiding him lovingly, “Vikram get up, there is some inspector at the door, says he wants to see you. Get up now. I told you to go easy on the vodka, didn’t I?” Vikram limbered into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. God, the water is freezing, he thought. Still slightly unsteady, he ambled into the living room. There were about six uniformed men in the room, one who seemed the senior most, stepped forward.
“Mr. Vikram Chand Tiwari? err.. My name is Nitin Kalra, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Rajouri Gardens Police Station, in New Delhi”. He extended his hand, almost apologetic that he had to wake him up at this late hour. Kalra was a small man, looking more well rounded than he really was, because he seemed to be wearing all the warm clothing that he could lay his hands on. Clearly he was not used to this kind of weather.
“Have a seat Mr. Kalra, how can I help you”, said Vikram, and then with a pointed pause, “at this hour?” not bothering to hide his displeasure at being woken up at this hour.
“Mr. Tiwari”, he said, flinching slightly at the sarcasm, but nonetheless wanting to get this uncomfortable duty done as quickly as possible “I am here to arrest you for the murder of Abhay Singh. Here, you can have a look at the Arrest warrant”.
Vikram simply stared at the inspector for some time, taking in what the inspector had just said. Then he realized that the inspector was waiting for him to say something. Asha who was inside had heard it too. She moved to the edge of the living room, looking slightly dumbstruck, almost like she was seeing the season finale of her favorite family soap. Finally Vikram took the arrest warrant from the inspector’s outstretched hands, still too stunned to speak. All it said was that he was to be arrested for the murder of Abhay Singh and had to appear before the Sub Divisional Magistrate, in the district headquarters in Haridwar the next day.
“Mr. Kalra, there clearly must have been a misunderstanding”, Vikram said, finding his voice at last, “I don’t even know who Abhay Singh is. How could I have murdered somebody I didn’t even know?”
Vikram was standing now, getting increasingly agitated. Strangely this made Kalra more comfortable. He had spent years doing these things. Situations had rarely been as peculiar, but once he knew that a culprit was before him, he knew exactly what to do. “Sorry Mr. Tiwari, I cannot give you any further details”, he said quite sternly, “All I can say is that you have to appear before the Sub Divisional Magistrate tomorrow. We have to leave right now”.
Vikram was calmer now, but his mind was whirring away. He had been in the Indian administrative services for more than three decades. He had worked in several sensitive departments. There were numerous instances where events had ended acrimoniously. Contractors, businessman, union workers, colleagues, all kinds of people had attempted to threaten, cajole, persuade and even bribe him. There were so many people whom he had ticked off. But he had never known an Abhay Singh. And if somebody wanted to trump up a charge to get at him, why would somebody wait for four years after he had retired.
“Inspector, I would like to make a call to my lawyer. I’m sure you would allow me that much.”
Kalra decided having shown his sternness and since having established his ground, he could give a little leeway. He said, “That is alright with me Mr. Tiwari. But you have to make the call in front of me. And we have to leave in thirty minutes. The train to Haridwar leaves Kathogad at eight thirty.”
It was close to two in the morning when they left for Kathogad. Kathogad was a four hour drive, and the closest station to Almora. From there they would take the morning train to Haridwar. Kalra had come in a closed jeep from the Kathogad polica station. He was accompanied by local police officials, who clearly resented being ordered around by an official from outside the state.
Even in mid march the journey would be very uncomfortable. The mercury could drop to about five degrees below in the nights. The driver, Vikram and Kalra sat in the front and the rest sat in the rear. Vikram was happy that Kalra had not insisted on handcuffing him. The servants must already have gathered something was amiss, but had Vikram been taken away handcuffed, then the situation would have been far more awkward for him. Almora was his ancestral town. Chand Tiwari was the dynasty which had ruled Kumaon in the sixteenth century. He was related to the royal family. None of the remnants of those times remained, and all his family had now was their ancestral haveli (mansion) and their orchard, which Vikram had lovingly maintained, even through the years he was away. But far more importantly what they had here was the respect that the people of Kumaon still gave their family.
Vikram decided he could not worry about that now. There were more pressing matters at hand. The jeep wound through the narrow by lanes of Karkhana bazaar, crossed the bridge over the rushing Koshi River, and went by the Nanda Devi temple on its banks. Only a few hours ago they had organized a puja cerermony in the Nanda Devi temple, Vikram remembered. It was their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and Asha had insisted. Vikram was not really agnostic. But spiritualism, which with men, almost always gets more pronounced with age, had somehow passed him by. Actually they had worked out a compromise between them. She wanted the puja and Vikram wanted a big party in the evening.
But just as they had returned after the puja, they were greeted with bad news. Neha had been hurt. It was a minor bruise she said, but then children hardly ever told the truth. Somehow children always felt that they had to exhibit their maturity by assuming parents were old now, and could not take the bad news, especially about their children.
Neha who was Vikram and Asha’s only child, was studying in Ahmedabad. Lately she had also been volunteering with a NGO which had been working for the rehabilitation of riot victims in Gujarat. All she had said on the phone was that they were escorting a Muslim family to the relief camp when they had been attacked. Neha was like that. She only shared that much information with her parents, which she thought was absolutely required.
“But a little truth never hurt anybody”, Vikram had said, as Asha had quietly kept ignoring him. It was already four in the afternoon, and not much time was left for the preparations. It was not like Delhi where parties started late and continued late into the night. In Almora people came early and began to trickle out by nine. Already the evening chill was upon them. She had told Vikram that there was no need to go in to so much brouhaha over a marriage anniversary. But after staying in Delhi for over four decades, he was still adjusting to the quiet lifestyle of the land of his forefathers. He liked the life in the hills, but once in a while longed for the kind of life they had spent in Delhi.
Naiduji meanwhile was all over the house and the huge verandah that the haveli had. The party was in the verandah. She found it hard to believe that anything in the household would get done without Naiduji. He as usual was in total control of the preparations. Naiduji was their driver through their years in Delhi, and he and his family always moved to wherever Vikram moved. So when Vikram retired and moved to Almora, Naiduji and his family moved too. He now was the odd ends man, and also looked after the orchard.
It was just about six thirty when the guests began to trickle in. A party beginning at that hour in Delhi was unthinkable, but Asha was adjusting to the pace of life in Almora. Unlike Vikram, she was a Delhi girl, born and brought up there. She had been there all her life. Almora took some getting used to, but she loved the hills too, and like Vikram, she loved their orchard. The party had picked up by the time it was eight, inhabited mostly by Vikram’s friends and family members. Ashutosh had just arrived. Vikram had rebuked him, as Ashutosh was supposed to come early, and help with the preparations. Ashutosh had said something about having been stuck at the some councilors meeting.
Ashutosh, a journalist all his life with a newspaper in Delhi, was Vikram’s best friend. They had studied together and had been together since. He was a Kashmiri pandit from Kishtwal in Doda district. His parents had stayed there till the early nineties when the militancy had forced them to leave. He had always wished he could have made a difference to his ‘motherland’ as he called it. Ashutosh always had a missionary zeal to anything in life. But even Ashutosh in all his passion towards life realized that this one was beyond him. So after retirement when they settled in Almora, at Vikram’s behest, he accepted Almora as his homeland. All the things that he wanted to do in Kishtwal, he set about doing them here.
Almora was a small, almost virgin, horse back shaped hillock in the Himalayan valleys. The local populace desperately wanted to retain this small town feel. But in the bargain the development and the standard of living, that other nearby tourist locations had acquired, had passed Almora by. Ashutosh’s new found passion was to develop Almora into a model tourist destination. In the last four years that Ashutosh had been here, he had become more a part of Almora, than Vikram. Vikram was a fairly private person, apart from the odd parties that he gave or went to. But Ashutosh was the kind who made a friend a minute. He already had a huge circle of friends of all ages and backgrounds in Almora.
As soon as he had arrived, he had taken over the party. He was a great lover of ghazals, and the guests knew that. For the next hour the party hurtled from one nazm to the next sher. As the audience thinned, the storyteller in him took over and Ashutosh began telling stories about his childhood in Kishtwal. Vikram was uneasy about his daughter’s insistence on getting into something which was strictly not her business, and thereby not concentrating on her studies. What cause was she fighting for? Why did she have to get involved in saving a family she knew nothing about? Why get into somebody else’s problem. And then, to top it off Ashutosh was waxing eloquent about Kashmir, where thousands died every year in terrorist violence. When he could not take it any longer he said, rather pointedly, “But what’s the use of those lakes and apple orchards Ashu, will Islam and its Jihad ever leave India to enjoy them at peace”.
Ashutosh had been brought up in a social milieu where the ‘Hindu Muslim bhai bhai’ (hindus and muslims are brothers) image that indians take pride in, in India, had actually been a reality, which despite whatever India’s so called secular purveyors would have you believe, was not the case everywhere. The intermingling was such that Ashutosh hardly thought that such bonding was anything but natural. Despite the fact that he had been forced to leave Kashmir because of his religion, he sacredly guarded this bonding between Hindus and Muslims, and he never took loose remarks about any religion lying down.
Ashutosh was incensed, “So are we perfect Vikram? We are practicing Hindus, are we not? Are we Hindus so perfect, Vikram? Do we condone the mobs tearing down mosques in the name of Ram or the killings of Christian missionaries? We do not? But have we raised our voice against these voices which claim to be speaking for Hindus? So why then do we flinch, when CNN calls Hindu an increasingly militant religion? Every religion has these zealots who interpret the religion their way and sway the masses with their rhetoric.”
Vikram seeing that his careless remark had disturbed Ashutosh attempted to reconcile, “All I am saying Ashu, is that the trishul carrying kar sevaks are a minority. The vast majority, the common Hindu is not like that. He could not care less about the Ram temple, and whether a few starving tribals got converted to Christianity. Also, the common Hindu does not get the weekly dose of venom on the microphone when he goes to the temple to pray.”
“Does he not? What is the Hindutva brigade preaching today, Vikram? And is it not the common man who is rioting today in the streets of Gujarat? In village after village diktats are being given to the Muslims, stating under what conditions they can return to their own homes. You have seen the 1984 riots in Delhi, how difficult is it to provoke any human being, Vikram. When provoked or brain washed would we be really different from anybody else. We would be the all be the same animals. Are the Taliban in Kabul, the IRA in Ireland, and the VHP in Ahmedabad, really different? How are we so different, Vikram?”
Seeing Asha looking bemused, and with the ‘there these men go again, can they ever talk about anything but politics and sports’ look, Vikram had decided to take the easy way out. “Yeah we are all the same Ashu, all of us get a little carried away after a few drinks. Chal yaar, I am starving, let’s get something to eat.”
Ashutosh, as usual was the last to leave, and they had turned in soon after. Vikram had kept thinking about what Ashutosh had said earlier. He totally disagreed with the premise that all religions were the same and preached love and brotherhood among all men. Even then, the man on the street did not know religion. They were totally led by whatever their religious leaders preached. They could be swayed. This new thought had further confused him as he had fallen into a disturbed sleep.
Then of course Kalra had turned up, and now they were hurtling down Kailash ghati at this godforsaken hour. The weather was becoming increasingly unpleasant. Vikram had wracked his brains trying to think who this Abhay Singh was, or what the basis for this accusation could be. He had to find out what this was about. If he did not, he would go nuts thinking about it by the time he got to Haridwar. Getting any information out of the inspector, Vikram thought, would not be too difficult. Vikram started discussing where Kalra was from, and how long he had been in the service. Kalra had heard about the Chand family of Almora, and said he felt almost embarrassed having to arrest an elderly man in the middle of the night. But duty had to done, he said. Vikram reckoned Kalra had relaxed considerably, and may be, would be more amenable to disclosing any details.
“So tell me Kalraji”, he said, “Who is this Abhay Singh, and when am I supposed to have murdered him”.
Kalra was distinctly uncomfortable at the question, but felt that there was no harm in letting the old man know. After all he would come to know a few hours later. Anyway he was sure a gentleman like Mr. Tiwari would never have done such a dastardly act. This must be some mistake he thought. “Abhay Singh”, he said, “was a Sikh living in Rajouri Gardens, who had been murdered by rioters on first day of November in 1984, the day after Indira Gandhi, was assassinated”.
As soon as Kalra said that, Vikram felt a huge slap of cold water on his face. It was like a memory which he had buried deep inside him, had been wrenched out. It was something he had been afraid to bring up, even in his own mind. He knew what Kalra was talking about. That night seemed like a nightmare now. He was driving home from work on the second day of the 1984′ riots. Urgent office work had necessitated that he go to work the day when all of Delhi was under curfew. But then curfew did not apply to the government bureaucrats.
Just as most people in the office, he had left way after midnight. Many reasoned it was a way to ensure that the violence would have abated. But they were wrong. All along the way there were burning vehicles, though not too many people on the road. But as they had turned into Rajouri Gardens from Ring Road, only about a mile from his house, Vikram saw this huge Sikh running towards him with a kirpan (dagger) in his hand. He was being chased by a mob of around dozen people. Vikram instantly realized that they had landed up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The man had reached the car shouting, “Sahab, save me. For the sake of God, save me. Please Sahab, these people will kill me.”
The drivers’ window was rolled up, so he had directly approached the open rear window. Seeing Vikram hesitate, the man had grown desperate and reached inside the window and held the kirpan at Vikram’s neck through the open window. “Let me in Sahab, save my life or I will slit your throat” he had said. It all happened so quickly that Vikram hardly knew how to react. Already the mob had reached the car and someone from the mob struck a blow to the man’s head. The kirpan fell from his hand, but he only staggered and did not pass out. The group struggled to control the huge man. A man who seemed to be the leader of this group had approached the car. Vikram had instantly recognized him. He was Shadhu Yadav, a local shopkeeper. Shadhu had said “Vikram Sahab you should help us too. These men only murder Indiraji. These people are deshdrohis(traitors) .You should help us kill these rats. We need petrol from your car, give us that, and we will let you go. Otherwise you are a deshdrohi too. And you can see what we do to deshdrohi’s.”
Vikram by this time was quite shaken, and strangely felt somewhat indebted to the mob for having saved his life from the kirpan wielding Sikh. What an irony he had thought. His life saved by a mob. The demand for the petrol had not seemed so outlandish to him. Before he knew it petrol had been taken from his vehicle and was sprayed on the sikh. A match was thrown at him, as Vikram had watched stunned. He had never seen anybody die in front of him before. The men had kept hurling expletives at the sikh, even as he writhed burning. As Vikram watched the enormity of what had happened, or what he had just done, struck him. Inexplicably Vikram had suddenly started sobbing in the middle of the road. He had realized that he had just become a part of the rioting mob. He had become one of them. He just stood there sobbing, as he heard Asha’s voice, from what seemed like a great distance, say, “What happened, Vikram?”
Vikram woke up sobbing and in the semi darkness could see Asha looking at him curiously in her half sleep. He was still sobbing and at the same time trying to piece together what was happening. Asha was now fully awake and said, “What happened? Why are you crying?” She moved to his side of the bed, holding him, trying to console him. But Vikram would hardly stop, and kept saying, “I’m a murderer, I have murdered Abhay Singh”. Now Asha was perplexed. Vikram had never shed a tear in their three decades of marriage. Not even when his mother had passed away, a few years back. In fact he did not believe in ever displaying much emotion. And now the same man was sobbing inconsolably.
“Who’s Abhay, and what do you mean murdered?” said Asha. But Vikram just held her and kept crying. All he kept saying was, “I’m a murderer, Asha your husband is a murderer. What Ashu said in the evening was true. I am like everybody else. We are all the same, animals. Asha, I was not just watching a reality game show. There was a real man of flesh and blood, and I actually participated in his killing.” Finally Asha shook him, and said “Vikram stop that. You must have had a bad dream. I’ve known you for 30 years. You’re not a murderer. What murder are you talking about?”
“I don’t know Asha, I don’t know anything anymore. There was this inspector who had come to arrest me for murdering Abhay Singh. And he is right Asha, I did murder him. I killed him, Asha, I killed him”.
Asha was now at her wit’s end. First Vikram was claiming to have murdered some Abhay Singh, and now apparently there was an inspector and an arrest, to queer things further. She had only heard of the seven year itch, never of the thirty year madness. “Vikram, tell me what happened. You can’t keep mumbling like that. You must have had a bad dream.”
Vikram, still trying to make sense of what had happened, told her he that it had seemed as if somebody had come to arrest him for Abhay Singh’s murder, which he had been a part of, 18 years ago. He had never told her or anyone of this incident before. He had been to ashamed. He recounted to her how that night the mob had poured petrol over the hapless Sikh and burnt him alive. Now it dawned on her what Vikram was talking about. She distinctly remembered Naiduji telling her about the incident near the chowk, after Vikram had returned home that fateful night.
“Vikram calm down, Naiduji did tell me what happened that night. When the car reached the mob had already caught up with the poor man. It was a rampaging mob and if Naiduji had not driven away they would have attacked the car as well.Naiduji knew the man. His name was Paramjit Brar or something, not Abhay Singh. He lived in the nearby lane. And he wasn’t burnt to death. We heard later that he had been stabbed to death, repeatedly. God save his soul”.
