The Man Who Did Not Want to Remember

So all of you want to know why I am laughing?

You want to know how a man can laugh just when he is about to die, isn’t it?

Don’t you worry, doctor sahib. Better get back to your dispensary and sell your quinine mixture and your aspirin pills. You can’t save me from death. No one can save me now. The reason is that I have not one, but two deep stab wounds – one in the ribs all the way from the back to the liver; the second in the abdomen. Can’t you see the intestines oozing out?

So all of you are waiting to learn why I am laughing? You are wondering what strange humour can move a dying man to laughter in his very last moment? I will tell you. The reason is that I have just remembered who I am…

What did you say, brother? What is there to laugh at about that? Wait till you hear the whole story. Then you will know why I am laughing even as I am dying…

For more than two months now, I have been trying to find out who I am: A Muslim or a Hindu or a Sikh who might have been forcibly shaved and circumcised? A Brahmin or an untouchable? Rich or poor? From the East Punjab or the West Punjab? A resident of Lahore or Amritsar? Of Rawalpindi or Jalandhar? Not only I, but many others have tried to establish my identity – my caste, my religion, my name! But no one can unravel this mystery. Even I could not remember, though I tried very hard. But now, my memory has suddenly come back to me … now, when I am dying!

Don’t look so comically worried, doctor. You make me laugh. Believe me, your worrying won’t help. No doctor in the world can save me now … I know why you are so perplexed. I know your little surgical dilemma. My two stab wounds are so awkwardly placed that you are unable to decide which you should tend to first. If you let me lie on my back to put back the intestines and stitch the cut in the abdomen, all my blood will flow out of the other wound in the back so quickly that I will be dead before you have put in a single stitch. And if you turn me over to sew up the back wound, all the intestines and even the liver and the kidneys would come out of the abdomen. So don’t worry. Listen, instead, to my story…

It was about two months ago that, after countless days of coma and delirium, I regained consciousness and found myself in a government hospital in New Delhi.

‘Your name?’ the doctor asked.

I thought and strained my befogged mind to the utmost. But I had to say, ‘Sorry, I don’t remember…’

‘Hindu or Muslim?’

The doctor put the second crucial question. But I had to tell him I did not remember that either.

I remembered nothing about my past – neither religion nor caste, neither home nor family. I had forgotten whether I was married or single. I had no idea even of my age. Somehow, I had a vague idea that I must be young but when I looked in a mirror I saw a wrinkled, whiskered, haggard old face that was quite unfamiliar. I didn’t seem to have ever seen that face before…

The doctors in New Delhi did their best to revive my memory, and when they failed, they tried to help me discover my identity. I tried very hard because without knowing my own name I felt as if I had no valid existence, as if I was dead. On enquiry I could only learn that I was brought along with some wounded refugees from Punjab, most of whom had died in the hospital. When I asked if the others were Hindus and Sikhs or Muslims, I was told that they belonged to all the three communities. Between Amritsar and Lahore, it seems, two refugee specials had been attacked and derailed, one after another. In one of them were Hindu refugees coming to Amritsar from western Punjab, in the other were Muslim refugees from eastern Punjab going to Lahore. About eleven in the night, a bomb had exploded under the rails as the train was passing over a bridge. The engine had been derailed and had gone over the embankment, dragging several coaches along with it into the dried-up bed of a nallah. Many had been killed or wounded, while those in the rear carriages – who had escaped unhurt – received a shower of bullets from a gang of marauders hiding in the jungle. The injured had run blindly into the dark night for refuge. An hour or so later, a train coming from the opposite direction had met a similar fate a mile down the line. The wounded from this train too had taken shelter in the nearby jungle, while many had fallen exhausted as they stumbled across the ploughed field in the dark.

Next morning, when the Indian and the Pakistani forces went out to patrol the border on either side, they had found many dead and wounded from both the trains lying right on the newly drawn boundary line. They lay so hopelessly mixed up that it was difficult to determine who was a Hindu and who was a Muslim. I happened to be one of them. And the stretcher bearer who had carried me to the ambulance told me how I was found, unconscious, in a shalwar and shirt soaked in blood, lying sprawled across the border so that while my legs were in Pakistan the rest of the body was in the Indian Union. And the new boundary line, which cut across a field, was drawn – in blood! The blood of the Hindu and the Muslim and the Sikh which had mingled and seeped into the good earth, undistinguishable, indivisible…

Look, you, venerable white-bearded maulana, don’t stare at me so! For I know what is in your mind. Don’t forget I am dying and a man knows everything in the moment of death. You are hoping I would declare myself a Muslim so that even before I pass away you can start preparations for my burial on behalf of your Anjuman Khuddam-ul-Muslimeen.
And, you mahashayji with the sacred tuft so prominent on your shaved head, I can read your thoughts too. You are waiting for me to say I am a Hindu so that you can undertake my cremation on behalf of your Hindu Dharam Sevak Sangh. I have heard that here, in Bombay, the Parsi folk leave their dead in the Tower of Silence, to be devoured by vultures. These evil birds, I am told, hover there all the time, waiting for a corpse to be brought in. but I did not know that there are human vultures here which start hunting a dying man, even before he is dead.

To continue my story, for I haven’t much time for talk: my injuries were not very serious and healed in a couple of weeks. But the doctors said my brain had received an acute internal shock which had affected my memory. And so I became a notorious freak – a man without a name. My pictures appeared in the papers of India as well as Pakistan, but no relation, friend, acquaintance or neighbour turned up to claim me. Perhaps they had all been killed. Perhaps I was all alone in the world. Meanwhile, a new batch of sick and wounded refugees arrived, and the doctors at the hospital told me they couldn’t accommodate me any longer. So I came out, hoping to find asylum somewhere.

Wandering all over the city, I came up to the Jama Masjid, where a refugee camp had been established in the maidan opposite.

I said to the camp in-charge, ‘I am a destitute. Please give me shelter.’

He asked: ‘Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?’

I replied: ‘I don’t remember.’ That was a fact. And I did not mean to tell a lie.

The camp in-charge dismissed me curtly. ‘This camp is only for Muslims.’

Wandering along the dusty roads, I reached New Delhi. Here, I saw a still bigger camp for the refugees. So I went up and begged one of the volunteers to give me refuge. I could hardly speak, for I had not eaten for three days.

Once again I was asked: ‘Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?’

I had to say: ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Name?’

‘That too I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything at all.’

‘Then go elsewhere. This camp is for Hindus only.’

And so I wandered from camp to camp. There were refugee camps for Hindus, refugee camps for Muslims, but none for human beings.

That night, tired and footsore, I fell unconscious on the road in front of a bungalow which belonged to a Sikh sardar sahib, a minor official in the secretariat, as I learnt later. Finding me there he took me in and gave me some milk to drink. When I regained consciousness he did not ask me whether I was a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh. He only asked me: ‘Do you feel better, brother?’

I remained there for several days. The sardar sahib and his wife and their children were all very kind to me. I truthfully told them my story that I did not know who I was, but still they were good to me. After a few days, however, some of their relatives arrived in a refugee special from Rawalpindi. Some of them had been made to suffer horribly at the hands of Muslim marauders. They had been forcibly converted, shaved and circumcised, their women had been dishonoured. They had seen their relatives and neighbours murdered in cold blood before their very eyes. And so their hearts were full of bitterness and hate. Hearing their stories I began to hate the Muslims.

Sardar sahib told them my story, how I was a man without any memory, and some of the older ones spoke consoling words to me, even tried to help me regain my memory. But the younger ones eyed me with suspicion, and one night I heard one of them saying: ‘But suppose he is a liar. And even if he has actually lost his memory, suppose he turns out to be a Muslim after all!’ And I saw a dangerous gleam in their eyes.

The thought struck me again and again. ‘Suppose I am a Muslim! Who knows, I too might have committed such atrocities before I was injured and lost my memory! Perhaps I am being punished by God for my own misdeeds!’ That night, I ran away from sardar sahib’s house.

Again it was the open road for me – and starvation!

‘This camp is for Muslims!’

‘This camp is for Hindus.’

‘Who are you?’

‘What is your name?’

‘What is your religion?’

‘Where have you come from?’

Questions! Questions! Questions! And I could not answer any of them, for I was a man without a memory.

When I could find refuge nowhere else, and did not even have the strength to walk, I went and lay down on the steps of the Jama Masjid, resigned to die. Soon, I lost consciousness and all count of time. I did not know how long I lay there but once, when I opened my eyes, I saw a little boy – he could not have been more than eight years old – standing near me. ‘Wake up, wake up,’ he was saying over and over again, ‘and eat this food my mother has sent for you.’ It must have been the mention of food that hit my subconscious and woke me up. But I had not the strength even to sit up, and the little boy had to prop me before I could eat the chapattis and dal he had brought with him. How delicious was that simple, humble meal. How greedily I ate! ‘May you live long, my son,’ I said after I had wiped clean the brass plate which had contained the dal, and swallowed the last morsel. As I touched his little hand to express my gratitude, he cried: ‘But you are burning with fever. Come with me to my father. He is a hakim and will give you medicine that will cure you in no time.’

And so my little friend brought me to his house. The hakim sahib was a pious old Muslim who prayed five times daily and gave free medicines to all the poor patients who came to him for treatment, without caring whether they were Hindus or Muslims. He gave me some Unani medicine, milk to drink thrice a day, and a bed to sleep in. Hakim sahib’s treatment brought down my temperature, but even a great physician like him had no medicine to restore my memory. I told him about my predicament. ‘Maybe I am a Hindu after all. So perhaps I should leave your place and go elsewhere.’ But the kind old man pressed me to stay. ‘What does it matter if you are a Hindu?’ he said. ‘Aren’t Hindus too creatures of God?’ So I stayed.

But then something happened which made my further stay impossible. One day, the hakim sahib’s son went as usual to deliver food to some other hungry destitute like me, but did not return for several hours. The hakim sahib and I went out to look for him but found no trace of him. At night we were horrified to learn that, on his way back from Jama Masjid, as he was passing through Dariba, he was killed by some Hindus. There was pitiful wailing in the zenana and I learnt that the mother of the boy, the old hakim’s kind-hearted wife, had a fainting fit. I began to have hallucinations. Day and night I was haunted by the ghost of my little friend and he kept saying to me in his familiar friendly voice: ‘Remember I gave you food when you were dying. And yet you killed me!’ Of course, I knew I had not killed him. But the thought kept striking my brain: ‘Suppose I am a Hindu! Suppose, before I lost my memory, I too had killed Muslim children like the hakim sahib’s son!’ It became torture for me. So, early one morning, before anyone else in the house had got up, I quietly stole away.

Those were the days of terror in Delhi. People were being murdered in broad daylight and bullets flew on all sides, even on the main thoroughfares. Drifting aimlessly, dodging and escaping, somehow I reached the railway station. I had heard it was comparatively peaceful in Bombay, so when I saw the Frontier Mail about to leave, I got in. Sitting next to me in the crowded compartment was a sad-eyed youth from Punjab.

When the train started, he asked me: ‘Who are you, brother?’

‘I don’t know – maybe a Hindu, maybe a Muslim.’

‘I hear this route is dangerous for Muslim passengers. You have got a beard, so I asked you.’

I told him my whole story but, from the way he kept suspiciously eyeing my three-week-old beard, I knew he did not believe me. Then we fell to talking about him and he told me how his shop and house had been looted in Lahore and some of his relatives were killed and others were missing. Now he was going to Bombay to try his luck.

The train stopped near Bharatpur and all the passengers who were suspected of being Muslims were dragged out and shot without much ceremony.

I still laugh when I think of it. The whole thing was so grimly comical … What’s that? You want to know what could be funny about the ugly business of cold-blooded murder? I will tell you. You see, those assassins were shouting ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai’ all the time they were shooting down the Muslims or cutting them down with curved and sharp kukris. Surely, that is enough to make a man laugh in the moment of his death!

Anyway, when the assassins came to our compartment, I prepared to die. I did not know if I was a Muslim but I knew I had a beard. That was enough to have me killed. But before I was spotted, my young fellow passenger covered me up with a blanket and when they asked him about me, he said, without faltering in the least: ‘He is my brother. Don’t worry him. He was wounded in Lahore and is in no condition to answer any question.’ They seemed to be satisfied and went away. Shots were ringing out. A few last moans of the victims, and the train was on its way again.

At last I reached Bombay. But even here, in your blessed city, that fateful question pursued me.

‘Are you a Hindu?’

‘Are you a Muslim?’

The thoughts kept revolving in my mind: ‘Who is a Hindu? Who is a Muslim? That young man who saved my life in the train, though I looked like a Muslim – is he a Hindu? Or the ruffians of Dariba who killed hakim sahib’s innocent child – are they Hindus? Who are Muslims – hakim sahib and his family or those sadistic barbarians who killed, tortured and dishonoured so many Sikh men and women in Rawalpindi? And who are Sikhs – the kind-hearted sardar sahib and his family or those others who played havoc in Delhi?

Who is a Muslim? Who is a Hindu? Who is a Sikh?

And the harrowing question persisted, till it had been branded in my consciousness: Who are you? Who are you? Hindu or Muslim? Muslim or Hindu?

Who am I? A Hindu or a Muslim?

Day and night this one question haunted me. Even when I managed to sleep, fire-eating demons surrounded me and prodded me with red-hot spears to get an answer to their question: ‘Who are you? Hindu or Muslim? Muslim or Hindu?’ And I would scream in my dream: ‘Leave me alone. I don’t know what I am. I am not a Hindu, I am not a Muslim, I am not a Sikh. I am nothing. I am only a human being.’

In Bombay too there were camps for the refugees. If you were a Sikh, you went straight to the Khalsa College. If you were a Hindu, you took refuge in the Ramakrishna Ashram. If a Muslim, you made your way to Anjuman Islam High School. But where was I to go? I – who did not know who I was. I belonged nowhere.

Even charity was denied to me. Before giving alms everyone wanted to know if I belonged to the right community. But I belonged to no community!

Then must I starve to death? No, no, somehow I must find out who I am! Without that, there was no chance of surviving.

Someone advised me: ‘Go to Doctor Samani. He alone can restore your memory.’

You must have all heard of Doctor Samani. He is what is called a psychiatrist. He treats his patients not by surgical operation, but by talking to them and making them talk. And so I went to him.

The room was filled with a strangely soothing light. The walls were white. So were the doctor’s coat and the nurse’s uniform. Everything was white and soft and soothing. But the most calming was the doctor’s voice.

Softly, soothingly, he said: ‘Now relax your mind. Don’t strain it at all. Then speak out anything at all that comes to your mind. No matter how irrelevant it might be.’ Then he sat down with paper and pencil to note down what I spoke. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.

‘Blue sky,’ I began to say as a sense of vast space came to me as if from the past, ‘blue sky, green fields stretching up to the horizon…’

‘Well done, well done,’ the doctor coaxed me as I heard the scratch of his pencil on paper. ‘Don’t stop. Go on.’

I continued to describe the varied impressions that came to my mind. ‘Blue sky. Green fields. A river, overflowing in the monsoon. Boats in the river. A canal. Children bathing in the canal, playing, splashing water on one another. And among the children I myself as a child playing, splashing water…’

‘Who are these children?’ the doctor’s voice came as if from afar. ‘Hindu children or Muslim children or Sikh children?’

‘Just children,’ I heard myself saying.

‘All right, go on.’

‘A field after harvest. A big pile of golden grains, reaching up to the sky. The Baishakhi festival. Hush, listen, listen to the dholak – and the song!’

‘Who is singing this song?’

‘Women.’

‘Yes, yes, but Hindu women or Muslim women or Sikh women?’

‘Punjabi women – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs.’

I could hear the doctor’s sigh of disappointment. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘go on.’

But now I could not hear anything, couldn’t see anything. I told him that.

‘Why, what’s the matter?’

‘I have a severe headache. It is getting dark everywhere. A strange, horrible noise…’

‘Try, try hard, can’t you see anything?’

‘Yes I can see. Flames leaping up to the sky, whole villages on fire. The noise grows louder, shouts, shrieks, women screaming…’

‘Good! These are the rioters, these are the people who killed your family, who burnt your home, who upset your mental balance … Listen, listen carefully to what they are saying.’

‘I can’t make out anything. There is too much noise. “Kill! Kill!” Save me, save me, doctor.’

‘Now, now. Listen carefully, look carefully, try to remember. Who are these people who are burning your home and killing your people? You have to take revenge. Revenge!’

And it was as if a danger alarm sounded in my brain: Now, now the doctor is going to find out whether I am a Hindu or Muslim or Sikh. Now! Now!

‘I am a Muslim. I have killed the sardar sahib’s relatives, looted the shop of the Punjabi Hindu youth who saved my life in the train. I have killed thousands of Hindus and Sikhs…

‘I am a Hindu. I have killed hakim sahib’s son and thousands of other Muslim men, women and children…

‘No! No!’ I screamed. ‘I don’t want to know who I am. I don’t want to become a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh. I want to remain just a human being.’ I jerked my eyes open, breaking the spell of the doctor’s soft and soothing voice. I ran away from the counselling room, leaving the doctor too bewildered to say anything.

‘I am a Hindu!’

‘I am a Muslim!’

‘I am a Muslim. I am a Hindu.’

‘What am I? Who am I?’

‘I am no one. I am everyone.’

‘I am a Hindu. I am a Muslim.’

I ran as if from a plague, but these voices pursued me, haunted me wherever I went.

I didn’t know through which locality I was passing when a tough-looking individual stopped me. ‘Eh, saala, where do you go? And who are you?’

He was a Muslim mawali. I could read murder in his eyes and see the deadly knife in his hand. But I was far too preoccupied with my own problem, as I kept muttering to myself: ‘I am a Hindu. I am a Mus—’

Before I could complete the word ‘Muslim’ his knife had pierced my back. The same wound that you can still see.

‘Kafir ka bachcha,’ I heard him say as I reeled and, with great effort, saved myself from collapsing completely. I continued to walk, though I was leaving a red trail of fresh blood behind me. You don’t believe it? Then don’t. In the moment of my death, I don’t need a certificate from you.

Yes, as I was saying, I continued to walk, stumble, drag myself till I was in some other locality. This time, I was challenged by a Hindu goonda. ‘Eh, who are you? Hindu or Muslim?’ he asked, taking out a kukri from the folds of his dress.

I continued to mutter my fatal catechism: ‘I am a Muslim. I am a Hin—’ This time, before the word ‘Hindu’ was uttered, the sharp blade had slashed my stomach.

So now you know how I got those two wounds. I have been stabbed both by a Muslim and a Hindu. That’s why, doctor sahib, you cannot save me. Nor can any one of you, you who are so impatiently waiting for me to die. Indeed, the truth is that none of you want to save me. Not one of you. You would, of course, like to take revenge for my murder. If, with my last breath, I declare I am a Hindu, these gallant Hindus would immediately decide to kill four innocent Muslims in retaliation; if I declare I am a Muslim, these chivalrous Muslims would like to wreak vengeance on the entire Hindu community.

And I am laughing because I have remembered who I am. All my memories have come back to me – the beautiful eyes of my wife, the innocent ways of my child, both of whom I saw being killed before my own eyes. That is how I came to lose my memory. Yes, I remember everything now – my fields, my village, my friends, my neighbours – now, when I am dying. In the moment of death one remembers everything.

But you, my friends, you are waiting in vain. Never, never will I tell you whether I was a Hindu or a Muslim. Neither my Muslim murderer nor my Hindu assassin would ever know which of them killed a member of his own community ‘by mistake’! This is my revenge, not only against these two, but against all those Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs who killed thousands of human beings like me, who have degraded and disgraced the fair name of my beloved Punjab.

Was I a Hindu or a Muslim? Was I a Muslim or a Hindu?

This question will haunt them day and night. In cities and in villages, in the hum of the machines in factories, in the clatter of the trams and buses and the thunder of trains, in the musical creaking of the Persian wheels and the village oil mills, they will incessantly hear this one fearful question: ‘Was he a Hindu or a Muslim?’ Neither they nor their children nor the children of their children will ever know peace. Terrible, very terrible, will be my revenge.

Do you still want to know why I am laughing—long after my death?