Halfway Companion

It was the month of December. I was studying in eleventh class then. A guest had come home to deliver a wedding invitation. He wasn’t a close or important relative, I’d never seen him before. I guess that’s why I didn’t know him. Though, while leaving, he greeted me with the customary dua salaam and urged me to come to the wedding with the whole family. After he left, Ammi said that he was Shahzad bhai’s, that is Chhoti Khaala’s son’s, soon-to-be brother-in-law. It was his younger brother’s wedding and he had come with a card. Shahzad bhai’s engagement had just happened two months earlier. None of us brothers and sisters, except for my little sister, went with Ammi. These engagement functions are not a big deal. Only a select few guests are involved. While asking us to stay home, Ammi said she would take us all to the wedding instead, and took my sister with her.

It had been a month since Chhoti Khaala’s phone call, after which there was talk about Shahzad bhai’s wedding happening the following month. His in-laws were planning to marry off both their children, a son and a daughter, at the same time. But now, we found out that they were only holding the son’s wedding this year. They’d vetoed the plan to give their daughter away at the same time. Her wedding was planned for this time next year. And now, Shahzad bhai’s elder brother-in-law had come with a card for his younger brother’s marriage.

When I entered the house, he was sitting on the sofa drinking tea and eating namkeen and biscuits out of the shiny new glass plates on the table. Ammi sat next to him on the sofa chair, also nursing a cup. She was speaking to him very warmly. He was chattering non-stop. As soon as he finished tea he made to leave. Before getting up he insisted that Ammi come for the wedding. While leaving he repeated again, ‘Khaala ji, you must come. We’ll be waiting for you.’

When he turned to the door, I was standing right in front of him. ‘You also come, bhai. With everyone,’ he said. Then he laughed, adding, ‘Now it’s your responsibility.’

‘Yes, yes. Definitely,’ I replied.

I shook his hand and he left.

The wedding was on the eighth of January. Abbuji had gone on work to Calcutta. The relationship with this family was a newish one, so everyone in the house couldn’t show up for the wedding. It was decided that I would be sent. For one thing, after Abbuji I was the eldest man in the house. Secondly, the eighth was a Saturday and it was a school holiday. The ninth was Sunday. So, I just had to take leave from school on Friday, the day I had to depart for the wedding.

The wedding party was in a very small, ordinary village called Naiamu, close to Charthawal in Muzaffarnagar district. I’d been to Charthawal many times. Chhoti Khaala used to stay there, before she settled down in Deoband. So I knew the way till Charthawal, but did not know how to get to Naiamu. Ammi said that I could easily find tongas going towards Naiamu from there.

Now, to get to Charthawal I had to first go to Thana Bhawan/Jalalabad. The best option was to take a train till Thana Bhawan from the city. Starting from Old Delhi, it went through Khekra, Baghpat, Baraut, Shamli, Jalalabad, Nanauta, Rampur (Maniharan) and straight to Saharanpur.

I left home on Friday, the seventh. Everything went smoothly and I reached Naiamu as planned. The wedding was great. Almost all of my Nani’s family was invited for the wedding. My three Khaalas, their children, my Mama-Mami and their children. We all squeezed into one car and went for the baraat, which went up to a village ahead of Muzaffarnagar. At the wedding we had a blast and stuffed ourselves silly. I really enjoyed being with my Khaala-Mamu’s sons and the two days went by in a blur.

I had to come back on the ninth. The train was to leave at 10 o’clock. In the morning I asked my Khaala’s son to drop me to Charthawal on his bike. From there I’d take a tempo or a jeep to Thana Bhawan. Then return home in the train.

My cousin dropped me off at Charthawal well before 9 o’clock. It usually takes only half an hour from Charthawal to Thana Bhawan. I thought an hour would be more than enough.

Standing at the stop, I waited for the bus. As time passed, many other passengers also arrived. But no bus or jeep came for us. Once in a while, one or two motorcycles, scooters, buggies, tongas and tempos came and went. Otherwise, the road and the stand were deserted.

When it was 9:30 and still no transport was in sight, a passenger flagged down a tempo-wallah coming up from ahead. When asked to take the passengers, the driver replied, ‘I’m only going till Thana Bhawan. If you want to go, then hop in.’

I got into the tempo with the others. In just about 15-20 minutes he dropped us off at Thana Bhawan. The whole way over we neither saw any traffic or any other vehicle. The road was completely empty.

At the Thana Bhawan bus stand, I looked at my watch. It was 10 o’clock. I quickly tried to catch a rickshaw or a three-wheeler, but I couldn’t find any. The entire stand was empty and the passenger vehicles usually gathered around were also absent.

I’ll surely miss my train now, I thought, and will have to wait for the 12 o’clock service. I had two whole hours until twelve. So, I decided to walk to the station.

As I left the terminal and got on the road to the station which cut through the centre of town, I saw a swarm of hundreds of people and tractor-trolleys filled with bundles of sugarcane at a crossroads. The people were shouting slogans against the current government, and in support of the farmers, and were lighting sugarcane bonfires. As I got closer to the crowd, I found out that a chakka jam had been called by the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), one of the regional political groups in Uttar Pradesh.

Suddenly a bell rang in my head. The protest I’d been reading about for the last month, because of which my school was closed the previous day (the school owner was a member of RLD) … I’d forgotten all about it.

Walking further ahead, I asked a couple of people if only road transport was grounded or if the train was out of service too. ‘Everything. Everything is shut. From two-wheelers to the train, everything is chakka-jammed.’

I didn’t believe what they were saying, so I thought I’d go to the station and check for myself. I started walking across town. After almost two hours when I reached the station and asked the man behind the grill at the inquiry booth window, he said the same thing. ‘These people have blocked everything. RLD, BKU (Bhartiya Kisan Union) and their farmer supporters have stopped the trains in Khekra, Baghpat, Baraut and Shamli. They won’t resume before evening. You should set off on foot. Otherwise, you should head back to where you came from.’

I could not go back. So, I decided to walk till Shamli. On foot, I could reach Shamli by evening, I thought, and by then something, either the train or bus, would start running.

I left the station and made the two-hour trek, back to the crossroads. There was a much bigger crowd gathered now, still shouting slogans against the government. But this time I did not linger. After a couple of turns I reached the main road which went straight to Shamli. I had been walking non-stop for four hours. After a short while on the Shamli road, I was exhausted and sat down by the side to rest. When I felt my strength returning, I got up.

Although I had started again, just the thought of walking all the way to Shamli sank my spirits, and my feet began giving up. I stuck my hand out at the trucks, cars, tempos and DCM trucks, hoping that someone would stop and give me a lift. But nobody stopped and I crossed the first village on foot. By this time, two quarters of the day had passed, and the third had started. The cool rays of the sun, which had, until now, kept the fog at bay and offered protection from the cold winds, were waning and the fog was taking over. The winds too were starting up slowly, giving me the chills. I was shivering as I walked, so I put my hands in my jacket pockets or rubbed them together to keep them warm.

With the first village far behind, I stopped again to rest under a tree, and turned to see if any vehicle was on its way. Perhaps this time someone would give me a lift.

There was nobody.

As I was about to start, I turned around once again with little hope and saw a truck approaching at great speed. I raised my hand to flag it down as I had with the other vehicles before. But it was going very fast. It did not look as if it would stop. As it came closer, it slowed down, but not so much that one could be sure it would halt. However, seeing it slow down I felt, hoped that it might stop. And I kept waving.

The truck was faded from the outside. It was very close now, but it did not stop. Then it passed by me. Finally, a 100 metres later, it came to a halt and the driver rolled down the window. I ran over and stood in front of the open window. The driver looked at me as I implored, ‘Can you please give me a lift?’

‘Where to?’

‘Baraut.’

‘Baraut? I can be your halfway companion.’

‘As in?’

‘As in I’m going till Kandhla. If you like, you can come till there.’

I couldn’t let this chance slip away. Even if it was only for half the journey. I quickly climbed in, settled into the seat next to the driver and rolled the window up. The driver slowly released the clutch and the truck eased forward. Soon it was running along at its earlier speed. I relaxed and spread out in my seat, looking around. Compared to the outside, the interior of the truck was quite new and shiny. The seat was wide and soft. It was covered with a red and yellow sheet, sparkling smooth. At our feet were new black rubber mats with holes. It looked like a new steel body inside the cabin. On the steel strip dividing the front windshield in two was a small wooden temple. Inside it was a Hanuman idol. There was a small, pointed bulb in front of the idol, like a flame, which kept flashing red and blue light. A garland of old marigolds hung from the temple doors. The sides had stickers of Hindu gods and goddesses. All this looked very new, as if the truck’s cabin had just come from the factory.

Even the driver seemed young, serious and quite intelligent. He must have been around thirty. His straight black hair was nicely trimmed. His forehead was dark and there was a saffron tika on it. There was a yellowness in his big eyes, his nostrils were wide and lips thick. He was wearing a full-sleeved shirt. From the red thread around his neck hung a steel locket with a photo of Hanuman. His shoes were quite old, torn in many places and his pants were a bit stained. Still, he looked quite youthful and attractive.

After completing my inspection, I said to the driver, ‘Shukriya, for giving me a lift.’ To assure him that his companion was not some rude person with poor manners, or a crook.

Hearing the word ‘shukriya’ he looked at me. Then turning back to the road he asked, ‘Are you a Muslim?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

He floored the accelerator. The truck was now flying through the air like a tornado. He crossed two-three villages in a very short time. Then he spoke again, ‘Has your sister ever slept with a Hindu?’

‘No,’ I said as I looked at him, aghast at his question.

‘Your mother?’ he asked again, without looking at me, eyes still on the road.

‘No,’ I said again.

‘They must have been raped, at least.’

‘No.’

‘Then is your father alive – or was he killed?’

‘He’s alive.’

‘Elder brother?’

‘I don’t have an elder brother.’

‘Your house must have at least been burnt once or twice?’ He stressed on the must as if this was only natural.

‘No. No one has burnt our house. We have been living there for the last twenty years.’

As I answered ‘no’ to his questions, his face was changing colour. His yellow eyes were turning red with anger, and loathing. The veins in his face were taut. We had covered quite a distance and were just about to enter Shamli.

‘Are there no riots in your city?’ he asked, struggling to keep his rage in check.

‘No. In my memory at least there hasn’t been any riot.’

‘Why? Do Hindus not live there?’

To this, I said the same thing which my town folk often cite as the reason for the lack of such trouble. ‘Actually, ours is mostly a Jain-majority town. After them, Muslims are highest in number. Then come the people from other religions, who have settled in such a manner that you can’t tell which house belongs to Sikhs and which to Christians. Which to Hindus and which to Muslims.’

‘Oh! So you have occupied this place too with those swine nudists. This is why you bastard mullahs have survived. Otherwise, you have no right to live in our country.’

Now we had crossed the tri-junction going into Shamli, which connects Thana Bhawan, Muzaffarnagar and Shamli. On entering the town, we came upon a huge crowd of farmers in front of the Gurudwara near the railway crossing. A popular woman RLD leader, Anuradha Choudhary, was about to address the crowd. Here too people were sloganeering against the government and mill-owners. They were also cheering for the RLD leaders.

The driver started honking to move people out of the way and kept honking until we had crossed through the whole town. Throughout this stretch, he did not speak to me. Nor did he ask any questions. He looked straight ahead at the road and blew the horn incessantly. I watched the city bazaars and the houses, the shops and buildings passing us by.

Soon the town was behind us and the truck was on its way to Kandhla at full speed. After crossing many villages, he started talking again. But this time he didn’t ask me anything, instead he started ranting at me. ‘Sixty years ago, you made Pakistan, and now you’ve captured this place too with those nudists. This is not correct. You don’t have any right to live in Hindustan, understand!’

Then he went quiet. Once, he looked in my direction for a second. I thought maybe he wanted me to say something in response. But he didn’t wait for an answer and went on, ‘Though, if you think about it, in one way … it’s actually good that you people did not go to Pakistan. Otherwise, where would we get our women? Readymade houses? Where would we get inmates for our prisons? Who would pay the price for our deeds?’

This time he looked pleased with his own words. He smiled first, and then he howled with laughter. This laughter was quite unlike his serious demeanour.

I did not respond to any of this, kept mum and listened. Soon we reached Kandhla. After crossing the village, he turned off the main road and stopped the truck on a wide dirt track and asked me to get off. I got down and started walking towards the road. ‘Farewell, my halfway companion!’ he yelled from behind.

When I turned around, I saw that he was waving his hand outside the window and laughing at the same time. Hate-filled laughter. Then he rolled up the window and took off at his earlier speed. I stood there watching the truck moving forward with great speed, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.