IT WAS STILL quite early in the day when Satnam started off on his daily routine. He made his way through the crowds for Guru Ram Das Serai, accompanied by Kanhaiya who had a basket of chapatis perched delicately on his head and was holding a bucketful of freshly cooked sabzi. The train last night had added hundreds of new families to the swelling ranks of refugees and Satnam had come prepared with almost twice his usual contribution of chapatis and dal.
Beginning at one end of the tightly packed row of refugees, he started to serve the food. Their numbers appeared to have doubled overnight, he reckoned. Each row had new faces—men, women, and children sitting with drawn faces as they kept a wary eye on the gunny bags, bundles and trunks nearby carrying all their worldly possessions.
A steady stream of locals was also trickling in to voice their sympathy for the plight of the new arrivals and enquire about the circumstances that had precipitated their departure from their ancestral homes. Their gut-wrenching replies would have melted the toughest of souls and it wasn’t uncommon to see tears in the eyes of the audience as the victims re-lived their horrors. Each tale of terror seemed worse than the previous one.
Several other generous-spirited volunteers had joined Satnam as they went about serving food to the destitute. Chapatis and dal were often supplemented with vegetables, and a few even brought some sweets and candies to cheer up the kids.
Satnam had made his way halfway down the hall when his eyes fell on a pair of refugees sitting quietly in a corner—an elderly man of around seventy and a slender girl who couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. They didn’t seem to have a lot of belongings with them, just a couple of nondescript sacks. The girl was sitting on one of them, while the old man had propped his back against the other one.
Moving amongst the refugees, Satnam had become familiar with their anguished expressions but there was something strangely haunting about the young girl’s face. Her gaunt countenance seemed to bear the shadow of death itself. The corners of her large, innocent eyes seemed to have acquired a permanent redness of the kind that comes from an endless flow of tears or perhaps from a dire lack of sleep. Her gaze was fixed on the infinite space beyond the courtyard as if looking for something precious she had lost aeons ago.
The girl’s elderly companion wore thick glasses, but his eyes were shut. A closer look revealed that his lips moved ever so slightly and as Satnam approached, he could hear a gentle voice float across:
‘O Saviour Lord, save us and take us across…’
Satnam set the bucket on the floor and Kanhaiya also paused beside him. He waited for a few moments, expecting that like the other refugees, these two would also extend their palms towards him to receive the chapatis. When neither paid any attention to them, he turned towards the girl and offered, ‘Here, Bibi! Please take some chapatis.’
The girl’s gaze lifted from its distant focus and turned towards him with the expression of one who has been abruptly awakened from a deep slumber. The old man also opened his eyes as the girl extended both arms to receive the chapatis.
Satnam plucked four or five chapatis from his basket, but his hand hadn’t quite reached its destination when the old man’s arm shot up. He could see some veins bulging prominently on his forearm and his hand had a slight tremor as it reached for the young woman’s outstretched arm and pushed it down. He didn’t speak a word, but his lips continued with their barely audible chant of ‘O Saviour Lord, save us…’
‘What was that about?’ Satnam wondered as he looked closely at the old man. He could see that some recent tragedies had left their scars on an otherwise handsome face that was embellished by a flowing white beard. Looking at his beard, Satnam presumed that he must be a Sikh, but further scrutiny revealed a band of white hair escaping the layers of his somewhat crumpled turban and extending all the way to his neck. His trimmed hair and the way he wore his dhoti suggested that the old man was a Hindu. He also wore a vest with a discreet black-and-white check pattern that roughly resembled a Nehru jacket, hinting that he might be a person of some distinction.
Satnam found it hard to reconcile the Baba’s distinguished bearing with the incongruous act of preventing the young woman from accepting his food. Looking again at the girl’s bluish lips, pale complexion and sunken cheeks, Satnam felt a twinge of anger at the Baba’s inconsiderate act.
How could he force the girl to pull her hand back? What kind of callous soul would do such a thing? And where were they from? What was their story? Satnam wanted to pose them the same kind of questions that he had heard others pose a thousand times to the refugees. But the presence of the young girl acted as a palpable restraint. He found himself unable to pursue the topic with the girl or with her elderly companion.
He reluctantly picked up the bucket and moved back towards the multitudes waiting to be served. But each step forward felt like it was being taken despite an invisible force that was pulling him back towards them. His mind stayed with them as he pondered to himself. ‘What a pair … a man who is clearly in the sunset of his life and a young girl who is weighed down by the burdens of her own youth! Are they the only two left? Did the inferno of communal violence consume the other members of their family? Maybe there’s no one left to look after this unfortunate pair! Nor did they seem to have any baggage. No bedding, no utensils for cooking or eating. It’s still quite cold in the evenings. Where would they sleep? How would they manage? And what’s wrong with me? How could I be so insensitive and walk away without offering to help? Why didn’t I stay back and ask the Baba if they needed something? But what about the streak of arrogance shown by the Baba? Just think about it. He is penniless and starving but won’t accept a bite from my kitchen. As they say, the rope’s burnt to ashes but the coil remains.’
Satnam returned home wrestling with these thoughts. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the two out of his mind. The image of the old man and the girl lingered as he went about his chores for the rest of the day.