Haiku (?)

हाय! कू-ब-कू है
छाई कमल की वो बू
सांस लें तो कैसे?

एक अजोका अजूबा (Ek Ajoka Ajooba or Today’s Wonder)

It was July 2016. While Sushma Swaraj and Nawaz Shareef were playing verbal table tennis, our taxi sped through the moderately busy market street of Sector 19 in Chandigarh, headed towards Tagore Theatre in Sector 18. With one eye on my watch, which was creeping with alarming rapidity towards 7 O' clock, I was reading the signboards that whizzed past us.  Two signs made me tear my eyes away from the watch. Nestled between ‘Gift Bazar’ and ‘Lifestyle’ was a shop with a stone patterned facade announcing its name in black capital letters- ‘Peshawar Supermarket’. Not too far away, proclaiming its expertise in ‘wedding suits, sarees and lehngas’ in white letters was an establishment called ‘Pindi Fashion Mall’.  I couldn’t help but wonder if this was but a small teaser of the five-day long celebration that we would witness courtesy Ajoka Theatre of Lahore. Every day for the next five days from seven in the evening Ajoka Theatre enthralled, entertained and won over an audience of men and women, both old and young by a dazzling exhibition of dramatics. It was a spellbinding display, the likes of which I had never experienced before.

It was early in the morning (by my standards) one day when my friend Zeeshan’s call woke me up. Mumbling some of my favourite swear words, I fumbled with the buttons of my mobile phone.

 “Manas! A Pakistani theatre group is going to perform at Tagore Theatre.”

My first reaction was that of disbelief. Surely, there must be a Tagore Theatre in Delhi or Calcutta. A Pakistani group in Chandigarh, despite the physical proximity, was a rare phenomenon. After all, the road between the two Punjabs goes via Islamabad and Delhi! During my six year long stay here, I have never heard of a Pakistani artist visiting Chandigarh for any kind of performance, let alone an entire group, barring the exception of the Pakistani Cricket Team of course. 

“Great”, I muttered with little enthusiasm and went back to sleep thinking all this must surely have been a dream. But to my delight it didn’t turn out to be a dream. 

Ajoka Theatre were going to travel to Chandigarh from Lahore for the 2^nd Humsaya Festival to be held at Tagore Theatre. It was quite a miracle that nearly fifty Lahoris got Indian visas amid all the muscle flexing on display in Delhi and Islamabad.   

Spread over five days from 23^rd to 27^th July, Ajoka Theatre performed five different plays during the Festival. All five plays, although themed on seemingly disparate topics, had a very obvious common undercurrent- a celebration of a shared past, a longing for peace, for religious harmony and most importantly an attempt to highlight human stories in face of multitudes of imposed, abstract doctrines- be it nation, religion or moral codes. 

The festival opened with Ajoka’s tribute to Dara Shikoh. In a play titled simply Dara, the tragic tale of Dara Shikoh was woven seamlessly with that of Dara’s contemporary, Sarmad, an Armenian Sufi mystic who lived in Delhi. Condemned to death by Aurangzeb, both men shared much more than just the manner of their death. Dara Shikoh’s attempts at religious syncretism- depicted beautifully in the play in a scene in which a classical dancer facilitates Dara’s interaction with religious leaders of all major South Asian religions while the live musicians sing Kabir’s Moko Kahaan Dhoonde Re Bande- and  Sarmad’s rejection of religious dogmatism have never been more relevant than in these troubled times of religious fundamentalism and nationalistic vitriol that goes by the name of patriotism in our country. Few relics of these two men survive today. The tomb of Sarmad, whose headless corpse is said to have ascended the stairs of the Jama Masjid proclaiming Anal Haq (अहं ब्रह्मास्मि), exists to date in Old Delhi and can be accessed by the public.  The fabled library established by Dara too has survived and can be located near Kashmere Gate.

The second play, Kaun Hai Ye Gustakh, celebrated the life and work of the most prolific Urdu short story writer of the previous century- Saadat Hasan Manto, a man whose life was probably as interesting as his stories. The play was a masterful interplay of enacting of parts of Manto’s stories (including Thanda Ghosht, Permit, Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do) and Manto’s own narration of his life story, including the harassment he faced for the “obscene” nature of his stories. The high point of the play, however, was the recurring conversation between Manto and a mysterious woman, who turns out to be Manto’s alter ego. 

If I had to pick a favourite out of the five, it would be Lo Phir Basant Aayi, a satirical take on what happens when fundamentalism suppresses daily life. It was the story of an aging Lahori kite-maker, who treats his kites as if they were human beings (a kite called Rani must not be treated in any fashion that would dishonour a queen!) and reminisces about those days before kite-flying was banned, when his kites could soar unhindered in the skies of Lahore. His family includes his daughter-in-law whose ambition is to constantly out-shout her neighbour (another formidable woman) in their fiercely contested slanging matches over the rooftops. His granddaughter is a confident young woman who wants to be a painter and is in love with an aspiring singer. This provides an ideal backdrop for a bunch of fundamentalists, led by an uncontrollably talkative and incomparably funny Pathan, to step in. Art, music, kite-flying, poetry, secular education are among the many soft targets.  Although the subject was quite serious, it was dealt with so brilliantly that every now and then the crowd couldn’t help but burst into spontaneous rounds of applause and whistles. Despite being set in Lahore, the play’s message is quite universal; be it Bombay- where fundamentalists dictate what name the citizens can use for their own city, who can work in the city (North Indians, South Indians and Pakistanis beware!) or even the UK, whose post-Brexit Tory government has banned foreign academics based in the UK from advising UK policymakers.

If there was a blemish on the five-day long festival, it was the fourth play, Kabira Khara Bazaar Me, the only one that did not elicit a standing ovation. This was the first time the play was being staged and the performers looked ill at ease throughout the performance, especially when compared to the other four plays which were simply flawless. The message of the play, however, was loud and clear. As expected, with the help of some very fine musicians, the play made ample use of Kabir’s poetry, which many in the audience were familiar with and could sing along in hushed tones. 

If the last play, Anni Mai Da Sufna, was meant to make people laugh and cry at the same time, it was a roaring success! It was a play that many in the audience with Partition stories could relate to. Anni Mai is a stubborn old Punjabi lady who was forced to leave her ancestral village and migrate eastwards in the wake of independence. Several decades later, now having lost her eyesight, her only dream is to visit her pind and relive all those moments with her friends who she had to leave behind. On the other side of the border is an old chunri dyer, dear to everyone in the neighbourhood. While his family migrated to India, he simply couldn’t bring himself to part ways with his beloved Lahore and stayed on. Now that his granddaughter is getting married in Amritsar his only desire is to attend the wedding. With visa applications being summarily rejected, the play tells the story of how these two individuals fulfill their dreams in two very different ways.      

What was striking about the Festival, apart from the simple fact that it was spectacular, was the sheer versatility of the people involved. One reason why the plays had such a powerful impact was that a variety of languages and dialects were used based on the context of the plays. Shah Jahaan’s stately Urdu in Dara, the fundamentalist leader’s Urdu in Lo Phir Basant Aayi, garbed in a beautiful, musical, sing-song accent that only a Pathan can produce, Anni Mai’s earthy Punjabi and Kabir’s Bhojpuri-Braj Bhasha were impeccable and made the characters sound real. While the multi-lingual genius who wrote four of these plays, Shahid Nadeem and the directors (Madeeha Gauhar, Usha Ganguly and Kewal Dhaliwal) are certainly kaabil-e-taareef, the actors, many of whom played multiple roles in the five-day festival stole the show. Uzma Hasan, who was Jahaan Ara in Dara, reappeared the next day as Manto’s alter ego. Usman Raj, who was Aurangzeb on Day 1, transformed into Manto on Day 2 and on Day 3 was an ordinary Punjabi-speaking, energetic young man. The ease with which these people could switch roles was astonishing. The transformations were so complete and the characters so authentic that for example, only upon careful observation could one tell that the Shahjahaan in Dara and the Pathan in Lo Phir Basant Aayi were the same person, Sohail Tariq.  

After every play, members of the audience would overwhelm the artists with greetings. Memories would be shared, complements given and taken. A lonely looking old gentleman in the audience, who would do some extremely odd things during the plays such as fiddling with tiny LEDs while sitting in the front row, would labouriously make his way to the stage and throw a fistful of rose petals in the air. But no post-play session was more charged with emotion than the one on the last day. Anni Mai Da Sufna and some lovely speeches were enough for some members of the audience and even some of the artists to break down. As the members of the Ajoka contingent were called on stage individually, the applause refused to die down. The gentleman with the rose petals had to be halted as he tried to perform his usual ritual while Madeeha Gauhar, Shahid Nadeem and others were about to speak. As the formal ceremony ended many in the audience, including us, went on the stage. Some took selfies with their favourite actors while others just shared their experiences. While the crowd refused to budge, in the end, the organizers had to shout above the din and beg the audience to let the artists go.   It was a fascinating evening; an evening that made me feel that there still was hope.

Two months have passed and murderous fires have erupted on both sides of the fence. Reports have emerged (read the Hindu’s report on Operation Ginger) of violence of such disgusting nature by militaries of both countries that it would make even an avid Game of Thrones fan cringe. The Central Government, with its eyes firmly set on the upcoming assembly elections, has discarded all attempts to even pretend to seek a peaceful solution to South Asia’s problems. Artists from across the border have been forced to leave the country.  Hideous chest-thumping on national television by the so-called protectors of our national interest, baying ever so loudly for the enemy’s blood, is now a daily sight. Voices questioning the increasingly violent language of our politicians and the dangerously violent conduct of our military have been drowned out or humiliated. Many across the country are celebrating the Army’s “valour”. “Annihilation”, “obliteration”, “massive casualties” are terms that are now being used in a celebratory tone. Even Amul, a farmers’ cooperative, has released a pathetic cartoon depicting gun-wielding soldiers, followed by a drone, with the captions- “Surigical Strikes” and “Amul- Paks a punch”; tasteless puns coming from a brand that claims to be “the taste of India”.  

  

I knew the window Humsaya Festival had opened was a tiny one, but I had no inkling that it would shrink so rapidly. A madness has gripped this part of the world and there has been a chilling surge in senseless hatred. There doesn’t seem to be a way out of this ever quickening spiral. 

May be Dara would know what to do. Kabir and Manto would definitely have a thing or two to say about this insanity. Maybe Toba Tek Singh would rise up once again from the No Man’s Land. The old kite-maker would remind us all of his kites gliding happily in the cloudless, blue sky of the Punjab in spring. Anni Mai would vividly describe her youth in her ancestral village and regale us with beautiful stories of her friends, of times when the word ‘enemy’ was yet to be invented.

But will anyone care to listen?   





Ajoka Theatre's Website: www.ajoka.org.pk

कडेलोट

अक्राळ-विक्राळ डोंगरांमधून

मोडक्या कडेकपारींतून

काढलेला तो सरळसोट द्रुतगती महामार्ग

आणि त्यावरून भरधाव जाणारे

माझे आलिशान वातानुकूलित वाहन

अचानक जेंव्हा टकमक टोकावर जाऊन पोहोचले

आणि रस्ता अंतर्धान पावला---------

मला जाग आली

आणि मी डोळे चोळत पुन्हा

त्या पुस्तकावर नजर टाकली.

Grieve...

Grieve-
       for those who lost
       their children, brethren, parents.
Mourn-
       those who lost their blood,
       their eyes, their lives.
Give voice-
       to the silenced dissenters,
       those who lost their voice,
       their right to speak, their freedom.
Condemn-
       those who maim, wound
       with impunity
       and those who grant them
       that draconian right.
Expose-
       those peddlers of lies,
       those heartless self-centred egomaniacs,
       in whose patriotic fervour
       people have ceased to matter.
Reason-
       with oneself,
       take a stand,
       one backed by rational thought
       and a desire for suffering to end.
       

      

Kohli & Amir

M S Dhoni dispatched a short and wide delivery to the fence, gently dislodged the bails and pulled a stump out of an uncharacteristically green and bouncy Mirpur wicket. There were no wild celebrations, just a few hugs and handshakes. The rest of the Indian team marched into the ground led by the Man of the Match Virat Kohli and shook hands with the Pakistanis. There was no acrimony, no visible tension. The atmosphere was relaxed. Smiles, occasional affectionate pats and, I am sure, friendly words were exchanged. But no interaction was longer or warmer than that between Kohli and Mohammed Amir, the two undisputed heroes of the match. The two gave each other a brief hug and quite clearly congratulated each other on their respective performances.

Earlier in the evening, thanks to a disciplined bowling and fielding display (with some help from the Pakistani batsmen of course), India had bowled out Pakistan for a paltry 84. With the pitch offering considerable assistance to the faster bowlers no one expected the Indian chase to be smooth sailing against a Pakistan bowling unit comprising of Mohammed Amir,  Wahab Riaz, Mohammed Irfan and Mohammed Sami that was formidable to say the least. Pakistan needed a good start to stay alive in the game and they got onecourtesy Mohammed Amir. Amir’s first over was simply astonishing. After a stunning first delivery on the off stump which bamboozled even the television viewers, he produced a gorgeous in-swinger to send Rohit Sharma to the dugout and, in the same over, dismissed Ajinkya Rahane with another one that swung in sharply. In the three overs that followed, he produced an exhibition of fast bowling of such magnificence that I am certain he won many hearts here in India. Out of the 25 balls he bowled, nearly two thirds must have been wicket-taking deliveries. His breathtaking spell made one wonder what international cricket had missed in the last five years.

Virat Kohli batted like Virat Kohli. After few nervous moments, especially a close LBW shout that must have stopped many an Indian heart, he batted with such ease and assurance that it made one doubt whether it was the same pitch where the rest of the batsmen had laboured on. With three wickets down for less than 20 runs and Yuvraj struggling to meet bat with ball, Kohli singlehandedly pulled India out of trouble with his trademark authoritative style of batting. By the time he was given out LBW, India were less than ten runs short. But he won my heart today, not with his batting (which was thoroughly enjoyable), but with the spirit he displayed after the match. In the post-match interview with Ramiz Raja, he showered heaps of praise on Amir and even said that he had congratulated Amir while he was batting. He further went on to answer questions in a manner that was both mature and clear. His fearlessness and his ‘no half-measures’ attitude, both on and off the field makes him the best Indian batsman of the 21^st century. Die hard Tendulkar fans may not agree with me but Kohli is probably a better batsman and definitely a better sportsperson than Tendulkar. I have never heard Tendulkar, who always tried to be the ideal ‘patriot’, praise a Pakistani player in a post-match interview and remember, he played against people like Wasim Akram , Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq. Even while answering questions about the match Kohli is as clear as Tendulkar was vague. “Our plan was to stay on the wicket…” Tendulkar would say, explaining his grand strategy. Just today Kohli, in very few words told Ramiz Raja how batsmen on this tricky pitch would have been better off steering deliveries outside the line of the off stump down to third man rather than trying to drive.

Overall, it was a decent India-Pakistan game, played in good spirit. There were some exceptional performances- Amir with the ball, Kohli with the bat and Ravindra Jadeja in the field. But the moment of the match was definitely that Kohli-Amir hug. It made my day.  

(For the scorecard of the India-Pakistan Asia Cup group stage tie played in Dhaka on 27^th February 2016; http://www.espncricinfo.com/asia-cup-2015-16/engine/match/966751.html)

Inheritance

The bus trudged along on the road, as it twisted, turned, and climbed down the mountain, which never seemed to end. It was cold and dark and the only thing visible was the 20 metre patch of road just in front of the bus, which was a good thing since some of the fainthearted passengers might not have particularly enjoyed the sight outside. The ravine was deep and a drop was but a single mistake away. Quite frequently, as the driver manoeuvred the bus on tight hairpins the rear portion of the bus would actually be driven outside the road and had a passenger sitting in the last row flashed a torch outside the window, looking for the ground, nothing but emptiness would have greeted his eyes.  Some of the passengers were simply terrified, some others were pretending, quite unsuccessfully, to be unperturbed by the road. The handful, who were sound asleep were mostly locals. I was fighting a losing battle trying to prevent the remnants of my last meal (something really oily and spicy) from defying the force of earth’s gravitation.

The journey had begun ten hours earlier at noon up in the mountains at the Nawabpur bus station, where I had boarded a state transport bus headed towards the plains. Had it not been for that hideous buffalo, which had this sudden impulse to take our bus by the horns and get hurt in the process, I would have already reached my destination, Kharora, a garbage-ridden, stinking cluster of the most obnoxious looking, brick-walled buildings (the only reason for the existence of which was the single line railway that bisected it right in the middle and headed towards the capital, carrying on it the slowest train on the entire network). It had taken an hour to move the buffalo out of the way and another to examine the damage caused to the bus. A few miles ahead on the road our driver had decided to break for lunch and that wasted another precious hour of daylight. In the mountains the sun disappears with incredible swiftness, catching the inexperienced traveller by surprise. One moment I had been squinting my eyes, wishing that the sun would set and the next moment I was barely able to see. The road wasn’t exactly the best known in the country for its safety record and travelling on it in the dark, even with seasoned drivers who knew every square inch of the road, wasn’t without considerable risk.

I wondered how much longer would this misery last and closed my eyes in the hope of finding some sleep. The prospects of some rest, which were never very bright, were extinguished  by the man sitting behind me, when he gave my shoulder a violent jerk. Annoyed, I turned around trying my best to hide how I really felt about this interruption. I answered his question whether I had a lighter in the negative and closed my eyes again. Some time later, as the disgusting smell of cigarette smoke wafted my way, it appeared that he had managed to obtain what he wanted. Suddenly the bus took a sharp left turn and its cargo, both living and non-living, was pushed to the right. People sitting to the left of the aisle were nearly on the aisle. People on the right, like me, lunged sideways towards the windows. Somebody cried in pain as their head banged against the window. With a whoosh a rather heavy plastic bag fell to my left, on the empty seat across the aisle and its contents came bursting out on to the bus floor. Barely a second later, the turbulence seemed to have passed and many of us heaved a deep sigh of relief. I surreptitiously stretched my leg under the seat in front of me and felt my bag. The bag and its precious contents seemed to be unharmed.  

It had been the most eventful year of my life and I was glad that after months of hard work I had finally in my possession the piece of paper that would soon change my life forever, of course for the better. On a foggy February afternoon, I had received a phone call from Satinder, my childhood friend, who was also one of the most unscrupulous lawyers of Nawabpur. He had warned me that the doctors hadn’t been very optimistic and that I had at best a year at my disposal to do something. You see, my father, a retired schoolmaster, a man of principle (and more importantly the sole owner of the region’s largest tea estate, which he had inherited after my grandmother's death, making him the wealthiest schoolmaster the district had ever seen) had, for a large part of my life as his son, hated me. In spite of his enviable bank balance, he had always led a simple life. He detested any sort of extravagance.  Caffeinating the population gave him no pleasure and therefore he had remained a schoolmaster and would have continued (partially) bringing up yet another generation of children of Nawabpur, had it not been for that growing mass in his liver.      

I, his only child, was the exact opposite of what he wanted me to grow into. He had provided me with all that a  growing child needs. But my desire for more, be it for more food or more toys, had been just insatiable. He would lecture me for hours and hours, for throwing tantrums about not having enough toys to play with. Not that he was very successful in moulding me along the blueprint he had in his mind. At twelve, I was already a frequent visitor at the local police station and had made quite a few acquaintances during my stays there. With no remorse whatsoever, I would watch my father’s face, dejected, crestfallen, every time he had to come and rescue me, his disappointment in me growing each time. But the killer blow had to wait till I was seventeen. It had involved a safe in his study and a missing draft of a physics paper for the State Board Examination that he had been preparing. The safe, which had housed the papers in question had no visible signs of damage and naturally, the police had no clear evidence. But my father (and probably even the police) had always known the truth and from that day whatever little affection had been left in his heart for me was drained out. He hadn’t yelled at me as he would usually. It had just been cold indifference, as if I was no longer his son. Perhaps I had deserved it, perhaps not. A week later I had hitched a ride down the mountains, promising myself that I would never return.

But Satinder’s call had ensured that I would have to break my promise. I just couldn’t help it. I would have gone on to hate myself had I let this opportunity slip by. I just couldn’t let my father’s tea estate, our tea estate be auctioned to the highest bidder and the proceeds distributed to numerous charities spread over the entire district. I had to do something and there hadn’t been much time left. I had immediately packed my things and gone straight to the railway station. 

Meeting my father for the first time in nearly two decades hadn’t been easy, but I had known that what lay ahead was probably the most difficult thing I had ever tried in my life. He had looked awful, reduced to a mere shadow of his younger self. If he had felt any emotion upon seeing my face, whether surprise, anger or joy, he had quite successfully managed to conceal it behind the same icy mask I had seen on his face when I had left. Satinder had taken me in and together we had devised a strategy. Every morning I would visit my father and talk to him, about my childhood, about all those dreadful episodes that he had to face because of me, about my family (while reminding him that it was also his family), about my job (I left out the details of course). I never formally apologized to him, however. That would have felt artificial. At first he would ignore me, pretending to be immersed in one of his countless books. But slowly, my perseverance had paid off and he had begun responding to what I would say. It had happened first when I had been recounting to him how my four-year old daughter had marched home one day from school and announced that she wanted to be a teacher. My heart had missed a beat when I had noticed that there were tears in his eyes. He had looked at me properly (for the first time in all those years) and smiled. Very soon, that first smile had given rise to many more occasional chuckles, which by the end of July had been supplemented by real conversations, although his contribution to these conversations had mostly been monosyllables. As his health had declined, his icy mask had melted away to give rise to a new warmth I had never seen in him earlier. We would talk for hours, on subjects ranging from his childhood to the Indo-Pak peace process, from how he hated the tea estate to India’s space programme, him leaning against his pillow, sipping coffee and me on a stool by his bed. 

The doctors would come and go, tweak his medication a little. But quite clearly, they couldn’t do much, apart from trying to convince him that his pain could be eased a little. After October he had gone downhill fast, making me wonder whether it was too late. It had been early in November, when Satinder and I had decided to make our move. He had drafted the document ages ago, possibly even before that telephone call in February. A couple of witnesses were arranged for. After dinner we had gone into Father's room and got it done.  It had been far quicker than I had ever dreamt. Father had been in no state to make a conscious decision and he had done what his son, who he just had begun to trust, had told him to do. Strictly speaking, the validity of such a will could have been questioned, but Satinder had assured me that there was little that couldn’t be achieved and few favours that couldn’t be won in the legal circles of Nawabpur with a couple of gifts exchanging hands. As soon as I had laid hands on that paper, there had been just one thought on my mind- “I want to run down this mountain, go away for good.” Satinder had advised caution. “A few more weeks...”, he had said. But I had seen enough of my father, enough for one lifetime anyway. The next morning, I had gone to the bus station, only to learn that the first bus out of Nawabpur was at noon. I had boarded the bus hoping that I would reach Kharora just in time to catch the lone train (the Sohrabad Passenger) that served the station. But fate had other plans for me.

I had just entered that state exactly midway between being awake and being asleep, when a loud commotion made me jump. Our bus seemed to have come to a standstill. Brilliant white light was shining into the bus through the windscreen. For a moment I thought of fairies but quickly realised that a more parsimonious explanation involved another vehicle facing ours. It was a state transport bus and it was less than fifteen feet away from ours. It was exactly this sort of a thing I had been worrying about. I looked to my left and realised that the mountainside and the side of our bus were just a couple of feet apart. I peered out of the window on the right and understood what the commotion was all about. There was hardly five feet of land between us and a sudden drop and no car, let alone a bus, was going to pass through. Outside the bus, a fierce argument was being raged as to which bus, theirs or ours, would have to be reversed till we reached a point broad enough for two buses to pass safely. No party seemed willing to concede any ground. The other driver seemed to be arguing that it would be much safer to reverse uphill and therefore it had to be our bus. Our driver countered back claiming that if they did that then this cat and mouse game would have to go on for a much longer distance than if the other bus were to reverse. Meanwhile, I moved closer to the window. Any moment I would have to thrust my head out to deposit the contents of my stomach on the road. I had placed a polythene bag somewhere in the pouch attached to the seat in from of me, but in time of dire need, it seemed to have disappeared. I rested my head on the window and tried to take a couple of deep breaths. I tried to imagine that I was somewhere else, leading a life that I had only dreamt about so far. I tried to imagine, that those disgusting diesel fumes reaching my nostrils and telling my brain to throw up were not there. It seemed to have worked a bit, since I was no longer as close to the brink as I was a few minutes ago.

There was a loud cry and suddenly the engine of our bus burst to life. We were moving at last! With a very worrying noise the driver managed to shift the bus into reverse and inch by inch we started moving backwards. The conductor (and many passengers who probably considered it too risky to be in the bus) were walking alongside the bus and instructing the driver all at the same time. But somehow the driver appeared to be doing in his job properly. So far there were no free falls. Many of my co-passengers were holding their breath, lest the sound of their respiration break the driver’s concentration. I wondered who was concentrating harder- the driver, trying to keep us all alive or me, trying to keep myself from vomiting? The other driver patiently waited for us to cover a good distance and then followed us, only to wait for some more time. Our progress was slow. (It had to be!) Turn after turn, our bus reversed up the incline, retracing our path. Very quickly I lost track of time. After what might have been five minutes, fifteen minutes or even an hour, our conductor banged loudly on the side of the bus and there was a loud cheer. The bus turned one last time and came to a halt and the driver jumped out.    

I had no time to waste. I almost leaped out of my seat, pushed an elderly lady who was trying to move to the front of the bus out of my way and clambered out of the bus. There was much more space than I had expected and I even managed to go a couple of yards away from the bus. Down on all fours I puked my horrible lunch.  A couple of minutes later, feeling slightly better but very weak, I tried to get my bearings. The other bus had joined us and the two buses were parked side by side. The place was very big and unexpectedly flat. In fact, it occurred to me upon closer inspection that we were on a mountain pass. The place offered spectacular views on both sides of the pass and for the first time in the evening I realised that I had forgotten how breathtaking the night sky on a new moon night up in the mountains can look! An abandoned Indo-Tibetan Border Police chowki was the only building there and I started walking towards it when both the buses sounded their horns at the same time. I cursed. For one brief moment, I had deleted from my mind the simple fact that the horrible journey was nowhere near complete. There was still hours and hours of treacherous road to go. As soon as my brain registered this reality my nausea returned. I dragged my reluctant feet towards the buses. I was between the two buses, whose engines were already rumbling, when my mobile phone, which was in my shirt’s pocket, started vibrating. I took the phone out and saw that the caller was Satinder. I wondered why he was calling me now. Maybe he still wanted to make one last attempt to convince me to return to Nawabpur. But I never found out. Because the moment I pressed the “accept call” button, the phone flew out of my hand I fell flat on my face. It was a football-sized rock that I had missed. It had jarred my right toe, which was most probably bleeding profusely. There was no time to think. Both buses seemed to be leaving. Blinded by pain (it was too dark to see clearly anyway). I groped along the ground and felt no sign of either the phone or the battery which would inevitable have separated from the phone. The buses started moving. I cried aloud in desperation, waving my arms violently ( and  quite uselessly). Our bus slowed down. I dived one last time on the ground, an effort that cost me a few more precious seconds and started running after our bus. Out of breath and almost on the brink of passing out I managed to jump on the rear footboard and entered the bus. I was glad to find that nobody had stolen my seat or the seat across the aisle to my left and the smoker who had been sitting behind me seemed to have found another seat; he was nowhere to be seen. I collapsed into my seat and lay as flat as it was possible to be in a bus. I closed my eyes and wondered how many more hours...

It is not every day that you find yourself in an empty bus at a bus station when you wake up. The first few moments after I woke up were sheer panic. But I recovered fairly fast. Last night’s journey seemed like a dream. In fact, the whole of the past year or so felt like a story. It just couldn’t be true. I stretched myself and reached for my bag under the seat in front of me. It wasn’t there. Within a fraction of a second, I was lying flat on the floor of the bus and scanning the entire bus. I looked under every seat, then on every seat, in the gaps between adjacent seats, in the overhead luggage compartments. But it was nowhere to be seen. It had been stolen. But by whom? Who would steal a battered old bag, unless of course they knew what it contained and for some weird reason wanted to trouble me? Absolutely devastated, I got down from the bus. My only hope was that the bag had been deposited with the bus station authorities as unclaimed luggage. I looked around. The place wore a deserted look. A bored looking man sitting on a tickets counter was probably the only human being around. Something about the place did not look quite right. There was a large board above the window of the tickets counter displaying fares for bus journeys to various places from – and my visceral organs did a couple of somersaults as I read the name- Nawabpur! I ran out of the main entrance to the bus station onto the street outside. There it was! The main market of Nawabpur. Satinder’s house was just a couple of hundred metres to the left. And if I walked a kilometre in the other direction, I could be face to face with my father! 

I had this mad urge to throw myself off a cliff. I had just committed the stupidest mistake of my life. I had got on the wrong bus at the pass! I sat myself down on a bench and thought about the entire episode. The departing buses, Satinder’s phone call, the desperate search for parts of my phone, the chase and finally the wrong bus... Of course the smoker was nowhere to be seen. He was on the other bus, headed the right way! And here I was, back in Nawabpur. There was a bright side though, to this entirely depressing chain of events. If I had boarded the wrong bus, then my bag had probably reached Kharora safely. I would have to reach Kharora, as fast as possible. But first I had to check when the bus would depart from Kharora on its return journey. 

I walked towards the tickets counter and explained to the man there that a friend wanted to board the bus from Kharora to Nawabpur. (I was too embarrassed to describe the truth) “When does the next bus leave Kharora?”, I asked.    

He looked at me in a strange way and said, “That bus isn’t going to run today,”

“What do you mean it isn’t going to run today?”, I asked rudely.

“Didn’t you hear? There was a big fire in the bus yesterday. They were halfway down the mountain. It was running late. Fortunately, nothing serious happened”

“Nothing serious? You mean, there was no damage to the bus?” I asked.

“Oh no. There was no way they could have brought the fire under control. The interior was completely incinerated. I heard, no trace of even one seat cover is to be found. Curtains, bags all gutted. I meant, no one was seriously hurt...some minor burns.”

Ten minutes later I found myself on the road to Satinder’s house. If this fire story was true, and there was no reason to believe otherwise, then there was one in a billion chance that the bag had survived the fire. There was another way, of course. We would have to do it again, get it signed by my father. We had done it yesterday and we could do it again today. 

I rang Satinder’s doorbell. He opened the door a few seconds later.

“How did you hear? “ he asked, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

“How did I hear what?”

“I tried calling you so many times. Couldn’t reach you. You father died last night.”

THE END