“Yes. Things like that are hard to miss,” said Maneck. Where did the fellow think he was returning from, the moon? In the silence that followed, he realized that in fact he knew very little about the years he had been away. He wondered what other tragedies and farces had unfolded in the country while he was supervising the refrigeration of the hot desert air.
He encouraged the driver to keep talking: “What’s your opinion about the Golden Temple?”
The man was pleased at being asked. He turned off the highway near the outskirts of the capital. They passed the burned-out carcass of a vehicle, its wheels in the air. “I will have to take a longer way to the station, sahab. Some roads are better avoided.” Then he came back to Maneck’s question. “The Prime Minister said Sikh terrorists were hiding inside the Golden Temple. The army’s attack was only a few months ago. But the important thing to ask is how the problem started many years ago, no?”
“Yes. How?”
“Same way all her problems started. With her own mischief-making. Just like in Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Assam, Tamil Nadu. In Punjab, she was helping one group to make trouble for state government. Afterwards the group became so powerful, fighting for separation and Khalistan, they made trouble for her only. She gave her blessing to the guns and bombs, and then these wicked, violent instruments began hitting her own government. How do they say in English — all her chickens came home for roasting, isn’t it?”
“Came home to roost,” murmured Maneck.
“Yes, exactly,” said the driver. “And then she made the problem worse and worse, telling the army to attack the Golden Temple and capture the terrorists. With tanks and what-all big guns they charged inside, like hooligans. How much damage to the shrine. It is the most sacred place for Sikhs, and everybody’s feelings were hurt.”
Maneck was touched by the poignant understatement. “She created a monster,” the driver went on, “and the monster swallowed her. Now it swallows innocents. Such terrible butchery for three days.” His fingers clenched the steering wheel, and his voice was shaking. “They are pouring kerosene on Sikhs and setting them on fire. They catch men, tear the hair from their faces or hack it with swords, then kill them. Whole families burnt to death in their homes.”
He drew a hand across his mouth, took a deep breath, and continued to describe the slaughter he had witnessed. “And all this, sahab, in our nations capital. All this while police do their shameless acting, and the politicians say the people are upset, they are just avenging their leader’s murder, what can we do. This is what I say to the stinking dogs-phthoo!” He spat through the window.
“But I thought the Prime Minister was not much liked by the people. Why are they so upset?”
“It’s true, sahab, she was not liked by ordinary people, even though she went about like a devi in a white sari. But let’s suppose she was beloved — do you think ordinary people will behave in this way? Aray, it’s the work of criminal gangs paid by her party. Some ministers are even helping the gangs, providing official lists of Sikh homes and businesses. Otherwise, it’s not possible for the killers to work so efficiently, so accurately, in such a big city.”
They were passing through streets now where smouldering ruins and piles of rubble lined the road. Women and children sat amid the debris, dazed or weeping. The driver’s face contorted, and Maneck thought it was fear. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There will be no trouble because of my beard. If we are stopped, they’ll at once know I’m a Parsi — I’ll show them the sudra and kusti I am wearing.”
“Yes, but they might want to check my licence.”
“So?”
“You haven’t guessed? I am a Sikh — I shaved off my beard and cut my hair two days ago. But I’m still wearing my kara.” He held up his hand, displaying the iron bangle round his wrist.
Maneck studied the driver’s face, and suddenly the evidence became plain: his skin, unused to the razor’s scrape, had been cut in several places. Suddenly, all the incidents narrated by the man — of mutilation and bludgeoning and decapitation, the numerous ways that mobs had of breaking bones, piercing flesh, and spilling blood — everything that Maneck had been listening to with detachment now achieved a stark reality in the razor’s nicks. The coagulated specks of red on the chin and jowls might have been rivers of blood, so intense was their effect against the pale, newly shaven skin.
Maneck was nauseated, his face felt cold and sweaty. “The bastards!” he choked. “I hope they are all caught and hanged!”
“The real murderers will never be punished. For votes and power they play with human lives. Today it is Sikhs. Last year it was Muslims; before that, Harijans. One day, your sudra and kusti might not be enough to protect you.”
The taxi drew up to the railway station. Maneck checked the meter and counted out twice the amount from his wallet, but the driver refused to take more than the actual fare. “Please,” said Maneck, “please take it.” He pressed the money on him, as though that would help him survive the terror, and the driver finally accepted.
“Listen,” said Maneck, “why don’t you remove your kara and hide it for the time being?”
“It won’t come off.” He held up his wrist and pulled hard at the iron bangle. “I was planning to have it cut. But I have to find a reliable Lohar, one who won’t tell the wrong people.”
“Let me try.” Maneck grasped the driver’s hand, tugging and twisting the kara. It would not budge past the base of the thumb.
The driver smiled. “Solid as a handcuff. I am manacled to my religion — a happy prisoner.”
“At least wear long sleeves, then. Cover it up, keep your wrist hidden.”
“But sometimes I have to stick my hand out, to signal my turns. Or the traffic police will catch me for bad driving.”
Maneck gave up, releasing the kara. The driver took Maneck’s hand in both of his and clasped it tight. “Go safely,” he said.
Ab an Kohlah began to weep when her son arrived. How wonderful it was to see him again, she said, but why had he stayed away for eight years, was he angry about something, did he feel he was not wanted? She hugged him and patted his cheeks and stroked his hair while speaking.
“But I like your beard,” she said dutifully. “Makes you look very handsome. You should have sent us a photo, Daddy could also have seen it. But never mind, I am sure he is watching from above.”
Maneck listened silently. Not one day had passed during his long exile that he did not think about his home and his parents. In Dubai, he had felt trapped. Trapped, he thought, as surely as that young woman he had met during one of his domestic maintenance calls to service a refrigerator. She had come to the Gulf as a maidservant because the money promised had seemed so good.
“What is it, Maneck?” pleaded Mrs. Kohlah. “Don’t you want to live here in the hills anymore — is that it? Do you find this place too dull?”
“No, it’s beautiful,” he said, patting her hand absently. He could not stop wondering what had become of that maidservant. Overworked, molested repeatedly by the men of the house, locked up in her room at night, her passport confiscated, she had begged him for help, speaking in Hindi so her employer would not understand. But she had been called away from the kitchen before Maneck could say anything. Uneasy about intervening, all he had done was anonymously telephone the Indian Consulate.
How fortunate he was compared to that poor woman, he thought. Why, then, did he feel as helpless as she was, even here, at home?
And now, as his mother wept, he wished he had answers to her questions. But he was unable to explain, either to her or to himself. All he could offer were the trite, customary excuses: a demanding job, pressures at work, lack of time — a repeat of the empty words he would scribble in his annual letter to her.