DECEMBER 7
Today’s fresh news: The airport at Agra has been totally destroyed. How? In the darkness of the blackout the marble Taj Mahal glimmered. This revealed the location of Agra, and of its airport, which was then destroyed by bombing.
When people read this news, and heard it with full details from their friends who had contact with informed sources, how happy they were! With this news a fallen reputation was suddenly restored; otherwise, we had already decided that the Taj Mahal, and the history which gave birth to the Taj Mahal, had no connection with Pakistan.
In this city too there’s a building as white as marble. Today when we were sitting in the Shiraz, Irfan said in his sarcastic voice, “Yar, we knocked down the Imperial Hotel and built that pseudo-Taj Mahal,* and now I’m afraid it might take us all with it.”
“How?”
“Yar, coming back from the office I passed through that street and I really felt afraid. That building can be seen so clearly in the darkness of the blackout, it even looks softly lighted! Enemy planes can easily make it out.”
Even in peacetime, I had always objected to the building’s white color. If along with being white a building becomes the Taj Mahal, that’s different; otherwise, whiteness usually detracts from a building’s dignity. Sun, storms, rain, bird-droppings: these four things combine to bestow venerability and grandeur on a building. But our city’s white building is so new and so clean that it will be a long time before it can attain the dignity of buildings that have endured the heat and cold of the seasons.
In any case, now that the Imperial has been erased like a redundant letter from the city’s slate, and Dolly and her admirers are only a legend, and the tawny cat has vanished, this building ought to be preserved. The time will come when its roofs will be black with bird-droppings, and birds will sit tranquilly amidst the immemorial black and white stains.
In this age one harmful effect of war is that it doesn’t allow buildings to acquire dignity. Tall, grand buildings don’t have time to become old before some war breaks out, and the bombers destroy them. After the war the cities are planned all over again, starting afresh, and even taller buildings are constructed. But while they’re still new, another war starts, and before an air of grandeur and mystery comes to surround them, they fall into heaps of rubble.
DECEMBER 8
Last night was the limit. After writing my diary I lay down and immediately my eyes closed, but only a little while later Ammi shook me awake. “Son, the siren is sounding.”
The same thing kept happening all night. I don’t know how many times the siren wailed. I was very much afraid. I was afraid for this city where I had endured so many sorrows, where I had sat and remembered Rupnagar so vividly, where I kept it alive even now in my imagination. If something happened to this city, how could I bear it? I want to remember my sorrows. If a city is destroyed, the sufferings of those who lived there are forgotten at the same time. The tragedy of this war-stricken time is that our sufferings don’t manage to turn into memories. The buildings, the places which hold our sorrows in trust, are reduced to nothingness in a moment by one single bomb.
I can do nothing else for this city, but I can pray, and I do pray. In my mind is a prayer for Rupnagar and its people as well, for I can no longer imagine Rupnagar apart from this city. Rupnagar and this city have merged together inside me, and become one town.
DECEMBER 9
Crossing the street in this city is no longer at all difficult. On the first morning of the war, what trouble I had, crossing the street! But then how quickly the rush of the traffic was diminished. As the days passed, the traffic kept lessening. How much the noise of the scooter-cabs diminished, and people’s calls and shouts. Sometimes it seems that the only transport left in the city is the bus, which moves along from street to street as regularly as before — the only difference being that passengers no longer ride perched on the footboards or standing in the aisles. Few passengers, many seats. There aren’t even any crowds at the bus stands. When the air-raid siren wails and the traffic police, blowing their whistles, move into the middle of the road, then lines of vehicles form on both sides of the road. At such times it seems that only scooter-cabs and taxis are still running in the city.
When evening falls, when I return home as the whistles announce the curfew, Ammi asks me for news of the city, and tells me how things are in the neighborhood: today the people of such-and-such a house went off to such-and-such a city. Every morning Khvajah Sahib knocks at the door, and sits at his ease in the drawing room, smoking the huqqah and telling the rumored reports of some new victory; and every day another house in the neighborhood is locked up. Every day Ammi comments on those who have gone.
Today Ammi seemed especially anxious. “Ai hai, will we be the only ones left in the neighborhood?”
“Zakir’s mother,” Abba Jan said gravely, “Death is everywhere. Where can a man go to flee from it? It is a saying of the Prophet’s that those who run from death, run toward death instead.”
I gazed at Abba Jan with wonder. This was the very thing that Abba Jan had said to Bi Amma when the plague spread in Rupnagar and people were closing their houses and leaving the town.
Two residents have taken leave of our house too. In our courtyard is a guava tree. During the good weather, a pair of bulbuls sniffed out its scent and found it, and settled in and made themselves at home. Ammi was very cross with the bulbuls. “Oh the wretches, they ruin the guavas! As soon as they start to ripen, the wretches stick their beaks in. They might at least let one guava ripen properly!”
“Ammi, birds too have a right to share in food that comes from the trees.”
Ammi stared at me. “That’s a fine idea, that we should do the work and the birds should do the eating!”
But where are those bulbuls now? On the first morning of the war, both bulbuls came flying along and settled on the guava tree. With zeal and enthusiasm, their beaks were exploring the ripening guavas — when a plane passed overhead with a tremendous roar. Both birds, frightened out of their wits, left the guavas and flew off.
Now a lot of guavas have ripened on our tree. Every day Ammi picks them and makes guava salad. Now no guava is ever marked by a beak. Those guests of our house, those sharers in our food, have gone.
Today as I left the Shiraz, evening was falling. When I finished my last sip of tea and came out, there was only a little time left until the curfew. Outside everybody was hurrying along. The vehicles were rushing at full speed. Cars, horse-carts, motorbikes, taxis, scooter-cabs. A sort of tumult had broken out, as if a film were just over. I was very much astonished. All day the streets were empty. Where had this flood of vehicles come from? On what invisible streets had these vehicles been traveling, that suddenly they were drawn to Mall Road?
I called to so many scooter-cab drivers, but no one heard me, no one stopped, although the scooter-cabs were empty. Caught in the traffic, one scooter-cab paused near me. When I pleaded with the driver, he said, “Man, if you want to go to Baghbanpura, I’ll take you.”
“Why Baghbanpura?”