Demons in men's shapes

 

Pavleen was haunted by nightmares though she lay holding her husband in a tight grasp. A woman wailing helplessly as she was chased by men who looked like monsters rattled Pavleen’s nerves all through the night.

Exactly fifty years ago, in the torrid summer of 1934 in Lahore, a woman was chased by men with long beards and turbaned heads. Zenib was her name. She kept wailing as she ran until she collapsed at the feet of Buta Singh who was digging his farmland.

“Save me, save me, please.” Zenib pleaded.

Buta Singh was a pugree-wala too. He looked at the other pugree-walas in front of him, people metamorphosed into demons by anger and hate.

Buta raised the woman at his feet by her arms and looked at her face. He did not see the terror in her eyes. The beauty of the youth on that face buffeted Buta’s heart like a tempest.

“Stay behind me,” he told her. “What do you want?” Buta asked the men.

“Give her to us,” they said. “She’s ours.”

“She’s mine,” Buta asserted. The men in front of him were younger than him. Buta was in his late forties and none of the men looked old enough to have celebrated thirty Vaisakhis.

Buta was a farmer who lived all alone and did nothing all his life but cultivate his sprawling fields and look after his cows. He was rich. He was healthy. He had a heart too. Yet he had never managed to find a woman as a companion. He was too shy to face women. Now here was a woman, a beautiful young woman, who had surrendered herself to him.

“She’s a Muslim,” the young men told Buta.

The Sikhs had demolished a mosque that was situated within the precincts of the Shahidganj Gurudwara in Lahore. Not contented with the demolition, the Sikhs wanted to kill the Muslim men and rape their women. Isn’t that what the Muslims did to the Hindus in Malabar a decade and a half back? Didn’t Ali Mudaliar and his men without foreskins desecrate the Hindu temples in Malabar, kill the Hindu men, rape the women and rip open the bellies of pregnant women? Didn’t they convert the Hindu children into Mohammedans?

Buta Singh was not interested in what happened in distant Malabar or anywhere. Love fluttered its tender wings in his heart like a rain descending on a land that had remained drought-hit for too long.

“Give her to us,” the men demanded.

“How much do you want for her?”

“We want her,” the one who looked like a leader said.

“She’s mine,” Buta said firmly. “Tell me how much you want.”

The young men muttered among themselves before the leader turned to Buta and said, “One thousand.”

“You’ll have it.”

The young men divided the amount gleefully among themselves calling Buta an old fool.

“How old are you?” Buta asked Zenib.

“Seventeen,” she mumbled.

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Be my wife.”

“Inshallah!” She murmured.

“Waheguru!” Buta sighed.

Pavleen was the granddaughter of that union of Inshallah and Waheguru.

The nightmares did not end there, neither Zenib’s nor Pavleen’s.

Autumn had brought the demons of gods to a temporary repose. One serene dawn of that autumn brought a strange melody of flutes down the road to Buta Singh’s house.

“We won’t let you convert this village into a brothel,” one of the elders in the group said to Buta Singh.

“I don’t understand.” Buta Singh’s consternation was genuine.

“You’re living with a woman who is not your wife.”

“Zenib is my wife.” He didn’t add that she was carrying their child too.

“Have you married her? Was there any ceremony?”

What ceremony was greater than the union of two hearts in the fondest of feelings? Buta didn’t ask that, however. He knew how deep and passionate the love between him and Zenib was. Zenib had no one else to turn to for affection; all her people had been killed in the riot. Buta was everything for her. She was everything for Buta. What could any ceremony add to that?

Something had to be added, however.

The trembling Zenib put on the red sari that the people had brought. Buta donned a new scarlet turban. The Granth Sahib in hand, a guru explained to the couple the obligations of married life. Then he read from the holy book.

When the guru had finished, Buta Singh stood up along with Zenib and clutching the ends of a sash walked around the Holy Book four times. The autumn sun that spread over Buta’s fields was gentle.

Buta was happy. Zenib was happy too. She had forgotten the demons of the gods that had haunted her and killed her people. Their daughter Tanveer was growing up into a charming little girl.

No sooner had Buta and Zenib celebrated Tanveer’s eleventh birthday with all the pomp and gaiety that they could afford without the intrusion of others into their private bliss than a group of angry men entered their house along with two uniformed men. Their country had become two nations while they were celebrating the fruit of the union of Inshallah with Waheguru. “All Muslims should go to Pakistan,” someone in the group shouted. “India is for Hindus.”

“Your wife is a Muslim and she should join her people in Pakistan,” one of the uniformed men said to Buta Singh.

“My wife is not a Muslim,” Buta asserted.

“Isn’t her name Zenib? Where on earth does a Sardarni have a name like that?” Buta Singh looked at the young man who raised the question. It was one of his nephews who had his greedy eyes on his lands for a long time.

“The government is identifying all the Muslims left behind and helping them to join their relatives in Pakistan,” the uniformed man explained to Buta Singh. “I’m a government official who has been assigned the duty to take a woman called Zenib from here to the Muslim camp. She will be restored to her people soon.”

“She has no people. I am her people.” Buta Singh pleaded.

No one listened to his pleas.

No one asked Zenib who her people were. She was pushed out of the house and led away like a cow. Buta Singh collapsed to the ground. Tanveer crouched beside him and wailed.

Pavleen woke up once again from her nightmare. She was Tanveer’s daughter. Demons in men’s shapes were still stomping in the depth12s of her being hollering furiously words that made no sense to her. Slogans.

The above is an extract from my novel, BLACK HOLE.

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