The ferries were running late, most likely due to whatever was occurring further upriver. By the time one arrived the sky was already ochre, presaging the onset of dusk, and as the boat sailed north, the few passengers on board fell into an unnatural silence as the dark pall of smoke hanging over the northern suburbs came closer.
‘Gãlō,’ tutted a man close by. ‘Purō shohōr ta gãlō,’ – and at that point I found it difficult to dispute his sentiment that the whole city was finished.
On the left bank, the lights of Howrah began to emerge, blinking solemnly. The smoke was heavier here, the air tinged with the scent of burning. Then, as the boat rounded a bend in the river, out of the haze appeared the great bulk of the station, steady like a rock in the midst of a sea of lorry lights. It was then that I began to appreciate the true horror of what was happening.
Our ferry might have been all but empty, but those arriving from upriver sat low in the water, weighed down by a mass of bodies and possessions. At the ghat-side the boats queued, waiting to disgorge their passengers and behind them, on the east bank, Calcutta burned.
I worried for my family in Shyambazar, and consoled myself with the thought that communal violence, like most violence, tended to be carried out upon the poor, and that the better off, regardless of religion, generally came through the whole episode more or less unscathed.
The ferry eventually reached the quayside, tying up beside another which had docked at the jetty, and we passengers had to jump from one boat to the next in order to reach the gangplanks over the slick black mud of the riverbank.
No one was checking tickets at the landing. The few men of the ferry company were overwhelmed by the sheer number of souls, carrying everything from blankets to livestock, fighting to reach the station. Instead the booths stood empty and the turnstiles clattered round unmanned. I joined the lines of the destitute, streaming through the gates and made for the station.
The station approaches too were a maelstrom, as the waves of bodies pressed to gain entry against a cordon of sepoys, while other detachments, ferried in from the outlying areas, waited for army lorries to take them to their assignments across the city. At certain points the cordon blossomed, the single ring of troops expanded into groups of men checking the papers of those seeking to enter. At these points, rudimentary lines were forming and a semblance of order beginning to take shape.
I looked on from my vantage point, wondering what the criteria for entry would be. Maybe they were allowing entry only to those already holding a ticket. Maybe it was a system based upon destination, with access granted only to trains leaving within the hour. Whatever it was, I realised that as a nationally renowned politician, Gulmohamed was more than likely to be able to talk his way inside, whereas I, a fugitive from my own colleagues, would doubtless find it more difficult. For all I knew, Gulmohamed may already have arrived and made his way past the cordon and into the station. Nevertheless, I still had to try to find him before he boarded the Bombay train.
I joined the ranks of those queuing at what seemed the shortest line. Ahead, some two hundred souls stood snaking down to the riverbank. The queue moved in the manner of a newborn foal, every so often shuffling a few uncertain steps forward before stuttering to a halt once more. The act of queuing, at least in a line of my own countrymen, had become somewhat foreign to me. In the native districts of Calcutta, a policeman generally would not have to. Yesterday, I might simply have waltzed to the front, brandished my papers, made up some story and passed through without a second thought. But that was yesterday and it was staggering to comprehend just how precipitously I’d fallen since then.
Yet I had to do something. At the rate this line was moving, Gulmohamed would be in Bombay before I reached the front of it. I required a speedier method of ingress. It was then that I had my flash of inspiration.
Leaving my place in the line, I ran for the front of the station, to the area that usually functioned as the taxi rank but had now been commandeered by the military for use as a loading point, where soldiers arriving on the troop trains boarded the lorries for dispatch across the city. Here the cordon was thinner, irregular and porous on account of the fact that behind it were whole battalions of troops. No unauthorised civilians had much hope of entering the station past them. But not all civilians were unauthorised.
To one side stood the men I was looking for, their thin, red-shirted bodies huddled close in conversation. Grim-faced, they smoked their bidis and disapprovingly surveyed the scene.
At first the exodus from the city must have seemed to them a godsend. With such numbers making for the station, some with all their worldly possessions on their backs, it should have been a time for these men, the porters of Howrah station, to make hay. They could charge double, treble or ten times the usual rate to transport goods into the station and someone would still pay it. But then the army had arrived and restricted access. Now the men stood around listlessly, smoking and waiting when they should have been making a small fortune.
I ambled over, watched warily by several of them. Men are curious creatures. Some are essentially unknowable, while others have their souls written on their faces. I selected the one with the kindest expression – an older fellow in a grimy red turban and with stiff silver bristles on his chin.
‘Dada,’ I said in Bengali, ‘I need your help.’
I explained to him that my wife and child had arrived shortly before the army had closed access and were waiting inside the station. I’d had to tend to my ailing mother, and had been delayed in reaching here and was now stuck on the wrong side of the cordon. From my pocket I took ten rupees from the twenty that Gulmohamed’s niece, Ayisha, had lent me. I held out the note and asked to swap clothes.
Five minutes later, I was dressed in his sweat-coarsened red shirt and turban, and with my eyes down I headed for a gap in the military cordon.