Brother, when I regained consciousness, I was home. Some passers- by who recognized me, had brought me home. They later told me that the firing on the bridge had enraged the crowd. As a result, the statue of the Queen had been destroyed. The Town Hall and three banks had been set on fire. Five or six Europeans had been murdered. And there had been much looting and chaos.
The English officers were not particularly bothered by the loot and arson. The blood bath at Jallianwala Bagh took place to avenge the killing of these five or six Europeans. The deputy commissioner had handed over the reins of maintaining law and order to General Dwyer. On 12 April, the General had marched through the markets and street of the city and ordered the arrest of scores of innocent people. About 25,000 people had assembled in Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April. General Dwyer had arrived with armed Gurkhas and Sikhs and rained bullets upon those poor unarmed people.
No one could tell right away how many lives had been lost that day in Jallianwala Bagh but later, when inquiries and probes were conducted, it was found that a 1000 people had died and 3000–4000 had been injured. Anyhow, I was telling you about Thaila. Brother, I have told you what I saw with my own eyes. Only God Almighty is faultless and pure. The deceased was guilty of all four sins that are banned by the Sharia. He may have been born from the womb of a professional courtesan, but he was a brave man. I can tell you with complete certainty that he was hit by the first bullet fired by the white soldier. When he had turned around and urged his companions to follow him, perhaps in the heat of the moment he had not realized that the hot lead had already pierced his chest. The second bullet had hit his back, the third his chest. I didn’t see it, but I have heard that when Thaila’s corpse was removed from the white soldier’s body, Thaila’s hands were clasped so tightly around the dead man’s neck that it had been difficult to prise them free.
The next day when Thaila’s corpse was handed over to his family for the last rites, his body was found to be riddled with shots. The other white soldier had emptied his entire cartridge in Thaila’s body. But by then Thaila’s soul had departed from his body and the white soldier was merely target practising on a dead body.
I have heard that when Thaila’s corpse was brought home, loud cries of lamentation had rent the neighbourhood. Thaila was not especially popular among his people but the sight of his body, looking like mince meat, had made grown men cry like babies. His sisters, Shamshad and Almas, had fainted. When the body was being taken away for burial, their wailing and weeping had made the assembled mourners shed tears of blood.
Brother, I had once read somewhere that the first shot fired during the French Revolution had hit a prostitute. The late Mohammad Tufail was the son of a prostitute. In this struggle to bring about a revolution, whether it was the first bullet or the tenth or the fiftieth, no one has made any attempt to find out. Perhaps because he had no real social standing. I think Thaila Kanjar does not even feature among the list of those who died in that blood bath. For that matter, no one knows if such a list has ever been compiled.
Those were days of tumult. The army held sway. The ogre called Martial Law went about snorting and bellowing through the streets and alleys of the city. In that free-for-all state of chaos, poor Thaila was buried with indecent haste as though his death was the cause of such a great shame on the part of his relatives that they had to instantly remove every trace of it.
‘And, brother, Thaila died. He was buried … and … and ….’ For the first time since he had launched into his story, my companion checked himself and fell silent. The train kept rushing on. The tracks began to sing, ‘Thaila died … Thaila was buried.’ There was no gap, no space, no distance, between his death and his burial. As though he had died one minute, and been buried the next. The rattling tracks and the rhythmic beat of those words were so entirely bereft of feeling that I had to drag my mind away from their staccato beat. And so I said to my fellow-traveller, ‘You were about to say something when you stopped?’
Startled, he turned around to face me and said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, a poignant part of that tale is still left.’
I asked, ‘What?’
He began to speak: ‘As I had told you, Thaila had two sisters — Shamshad and Almas — who were extremely beautiful. Shamshad was tall with slender features and big eyes. She sang the thumri very well. People say she had trained under Khan Saheb Fateh Ali Khan. The other, Almas, could not carry a note, but there was none who could match her steps. When she danced, it seemed every pore, every part of her body came alive. Every gesture spoke volumes. Her eyes had a magic that entranced you and caught you unawares.’
My companion was busy heaping praises upon the duo, yet I thought it best not to interrupt. Finally, he emerged from his long- winded eulogies and came to the sad part of the tale. ‘It so happened, brother, that some toady had gone to the English officers and told them about the beauteous sisters. An Englishwoman had been killed during the riots … What was the name of that witch?…. Miss … Miss Sherwood! And, so it was decided that the sisters would be sent for and revenge would be taken in ample measure. You do understand how, don’t you, brother?’
I said, ‘I do.’
My companion took a long, deep sigh. ‘In some delicate matters, even prostitutes and courtesans are, after all, mothers and sisters. But, Brother, sometimes I think our country has lost all sense of shame. When the order was conveyed from the top, the thanedar himself immediately agreed to go. He went to the sisters’ house and told them that the English sahab had sent for them to sing and dance. The soil on their brother’s grave was still fresh. He had been dead for just two days when the orders came: Come! Come and dance before us! Can there be a more terrifying way of causing hurt. I doubt if there can be another greater example of cruelty. Did those who issued these instructions not stop to consider that even prostitutes can have some self-respect? After all, they can, can’t they?’ Evidently, he was asking himself that question even though he was talking to me.
I asked, ‘Did they go?’
My companion answered, somewhat sadly, after a while. ‘Yes, yes, they did — and they went dressed to kill.’ Suddenly, his sadness acquired an edge of sarcasm. ‘They went made up to their eyebrows. People say, it was quite an occasion. The sisters were in peak form. Dressed in all their finery, they looked like fairy princesses. Wine flowed like water. People say, at two past midnight, when a senior officer finally gave a signal, the merriment eventually wound up.’ The man got up and began to watch the trees racing past the window.
His last two words began to dance to the tune of the wheels and the tracks: ‘Wound up, wound up, wound up.’
I tried to wrench them free from the rumbling inside my head and asked, ‘What happened then?’
Removing his gaze from the trees and poles running past, he spoke clearly and firmly, ‘They tore off their fine garments. Standing stark naked before the English officers, they said, “We are Thaila’s sisters — sisters of that martyr whom you riddled with bullets simply because he possessed a soul that loved his country. We are his beautiful sisters. Come and besmirch our fragrant bodies with the molten lead of your lust. But before you do that let us spit on your faces — once!”’