When reunions took place, how variously people met! Sometimes, walking through the bazaar, two people would encounter each other.
“My God, how did you come here?”
“Brother, I just couldn’t live a good life there any more, so I said to myself, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ So I just tied up my bedding and got a seat on one of the Specials.”
Sometimes there would be an unexpected knock on the door. When the door opened, sometimes there would be a horse-cart crammed with passengers and luggage standing outside; and sometimes a man alone, unshaven, covered with dust, his clothes torn and stained, without any baggage at all. At first glance his face was unrecognizable. When recognition came, with it came amazement: “Why, it’s you!” Then he was urgently embraced, and asked question after question. “How did you come? Was it all right on the road? Where’s everybody else? Did you travel alone? Where are your things?”
“How could it be all right on the road? The train was attacked.”
“May God protect us all! Then?”
“God did protect us, we escaped with our life and honor; otherwise we wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“Thanks be to God! Where’s everybody else?”
“In Walton Camp.”
“When this house is here, why are you staying in a camp?”
“I thought I should find out first whether there was space in the house or not.”
“There ought to be space in people’s hearts!”
Even in houses, there was no shortage of space. In Shamnagar, there were so many empty houses. So many houses lying open! The doors and windows were all open, and through the open windows the whole house, full of furnishings and utensils, could be seen. It seemed that the owners had suddenly stood up, shaken the dust from their feet, and walked out. There were also houses with big heavy locks on them, and all the ground-floor windows carefully closed. It seemed that the owners had locked up their houses and gone on a long journey, with the thought of coming back. In some houses an occasional window in an upper floor had carelessly been left unfastened, and now when the wind was strong the window blew open and shut, banging and banging. Some houses stood half-finished, some were left all but complete. The owners of the houses must be searching in faraway cities for any place to lay their heads; while people who had come from faraway cities were striving to find a place to live in these houses. There was lots of space in the houses. There was even more space in people’s hearts. In the two-story house he had occupied, Hakim Bande Ali had given shelter to so many families. Nanua arrived after both floors were already full.
“Hakim-ji, I’ll stay, sir, on this outside verandah.”
“Yes, yes, I’m very willing. Why not, when it’s right here?”
Nanua and his family made their camp in the outer verandah.
Those were good days, good and sincere. I ought to remember those days, or in fact I ought to write them down, for fear I should forget them again. And the days afterward? Them too, so I can know how the goodness and sincerity gradually died out from the days, how the days came to be filled with misfortune and the nights with ill omen. How before our eyes the houses of Shamnagar went from being spacious to being narrow, and the space in people’s hearts kept diminishing. The string of caravans had been broken off. Now only an occasional person came along, and sometimes a family or so, and wandered around in Shamnagar. They couldn’t find a place to lay their heads. All the houses in Shamnagar were already full, the open ones, and the locked ones, and the half-finished ones too. The locked house with that unfastened upper-floor window that banged open and shut with a terrifying noise when the afternoon and night winds blew, now had children and young people coming and going through its doors, and a bamboo shade over its upper-floor window. Some of the upper-floor windows had bamboo shades over them, some had colorful curtains, some had screens of thick jute sacking. The high roof-parapets, which so recently had been desolate, were now festooned with many colors of wet clothes spread out to dry. The eggshell-colored house, with its open doors showing the furnished rooms inside, now had water buffaloes tied up in the left-hand verandah, and in the drawing room the furniture was all piled up on one side, and the other side was covered with chaff and with mounds of cow-dung cakes for fuel. Now there was no longer any absolute poverty to be seen in Shamnagar. The conditions of life, which at the time of Emigration had steadily narrowed until they were limited to covering the body and filling the stomach, had again widened, and continued to widen and extend themselves. The houses that had given shelter to a number of families now shook the rest of the families off their necks and were home to one family alone. But at the same time they seemed less adequate, and the needs of those who lived in them had increased. In the houses that were still crammed full of different families, every family was trying to spread out as it widened its sense of the necessities of life. Some residents gradually spread beyond their borders and were inclined to expand into the territory of others. From the others came resistance. Then quarrels, then men’s hands were raised against each other. The combatants first fought inside, then gradually their battle moved outside. The neighbors began by watching the show. Then they intervened. Some smart operator would wheel and deal and get the whole house allotted in his name alone. Then the rest of the residents packed up all their goods and went out in search of a new place to stay. Anyone who was reluctant to leave the house was drawn into court cases and lawsuits.
“Hakim-ji! Has Nanua gone away?” I saw with astonishment that there was nothing left on the verandah but an abandoned cooking stove, and went to ask Hakim Bande Ali, where he had his dispensary in the adjoining room.
“What else could he do but go, when the police came and began throwing his pots and pans out into the street?” He fell silent, then said, “I’m looking for a house too.”
“You!”
“Yes, I too. Rather than be humiliated at the hands of the police, it’s better to go voluntarily.”
“But you came to this house before anyone else, you were the one who gave us all shelter!”
“Son, ‘the sleeper’s female calf turns male.’* Munshi Musayyab Husain managed to wheel and deal and get an order in his name.” He paused, then said, “He has no heart at all. He won’t let anyone stay on here.”
I went inside and reported, “Abba Jan! Nanua has left.”
Abba Jan made no reply.
“And the Hakim-ji too is looking for a house.”
Abba Jan acted as though he hadn’t heard at all, but Ammi said, “When will you go look for a house?”
“Will we have to leave too?”
“Why, do you think you’ve got some special charm to protect us?”
“Ammi! The Munshi wasn’t like this there.”
Ammi sighed. “Since they’ve come here, people have lost all feeling. You won’t remember it, but when your grandfather was alive, this Munshi Musayyab Husain used to sit humbly at our doorstep. Behold the glory of God, that now he looks down his nose at us!”
Abba Jan regarded her with some displeasure, and said, “My late father in his time treated everyone generously, but he never reminded them of it.”
“I never remind people of it either, but when you’re upset inside, it’s hard to keep your tongue quiet! There, he was nothing. And since we’ve come here, ‘the bald man has gotten fingernails’!”*