soorma singh

Balwant Singh

        Where I was standing there was yet no rain; but I could hear it beat down on the corrugated-tin roofs of the houses on the hillside. It sounded almost like a procession of singers marching up towards me. It was apparent that in a few moments the rain would spread over the entire hill. Those familiar with this phenomenon could be seen hurrying towards places of shelter.

The sky was overcast and the damp in the air was like a wet sponge. I did not want to turn back. I looked up at the shelter where ponies were swishing their tails to keep away flies. The flies went from one pony to another and then settled on the face of their owner.

I quickened my pace. One could never tell with the rains in the hills! It could be pouring and a minute later the sun would break through. I could do worse than spend quarter of an hour in the pleasant company of a herd of pack-horses.

The gentle pitter-patter of the rain drops turned into a roar. People scurried in different directions; only those who had raincoats and hat covers were unconcerned. They had to get their money’s worth! It was amongst this lot that I first espied Soorma Singh.

Soorma Singh had no raincoat, nor cover for his turban; he did not even have an umbrella. He had dark sun-glasses. He wore coarse hand-spun shirt, loose kneelength kaccha and a pair of Indian style slippers on his feet. His turban consisted of a couple of yards of plain white cloth wrapped untidily round the head; on his right wrist was a thick, steel bangle, the Sikh kara. He had a staff in his hand and was walking briskly along the road. He obviously wanted to escape the rain, but I concluded he was unwilling to share the company of hill ponies.

I was wrong. He walked alongside another person, placed his hand on the other’s shoulder and said something to him. The other man took him by the hand and conducted him to the pony shed. It was then that I realised that Soorma Singh was blind.

Just as it is customary among Hindus to name blind men Soordas and among Muslims to call them Hafizjee, the Sikhs give their blind the name Soorma Singh.

Soorma Singh was still a few paces from the shed when the rain began to come down in a torrent. It did not drench Soorma Singh, but at places his shirt stuck to his body and rain drops glistened on his moustache and beard. The first thing he did was to take off his glasses and wipe the dark lenses with an enormous hankerchief. He put them back on his nose after carefully readjusting the shafts behind his ears. He stood with his staff, a few paces from me.

The man who had helped Soorma Singh to the shed turned back into the rain. His foot slipped and he fell heavily on his seat. A strange reward for a good turn! The man roared with laughter, rose with alacrity and proceeded on his way planting his feet more firmly on the ground.

Soorma Singh’s mouth was half open; one of his canine teeth showed distinctly. It must have been a diseased tooth filled in by the dentist; the filling had gone and only a muddy cavity remained — somewhat like the hollow sockets of his eyes.

I stared at him as if he were a denizen from another world. Some instinct made him aware of my presence and he took an uncertain step in my direction. A pony neighed. Quickly he retraced his step — believing he had mistaken the pony for man.

I was staying in the local gurdwara; anyone can stay in a gurdwara for four days without paying anything. Thereafter, all that is necessary is to make an offering of a rupee to the Holy Book. That is good for a month. It even entitles one to a separate room. In this gurdwara most rooms had an attached kitchenette. On the ground-floor there were four bathrooms and latrines made of corrugated sheets: the stink pervaded the floors above. The living rooms were in the rear; the large prayer hall was on the top-floor — well beyond the foul odours of the latrines. The gurdwara gate opened on the metalled road. By the gate was a small free dispensary.

I was given a room on the middle floor without an attached kitchen. My servant, a boy from the hills, made my tea and cooked my meals on a stove in the room.

Although the gurdwara was in a congested locality, the adjoining houses did not crowd around it. Mule trains bringing loads from the plains were constantly passing in front of the gurdwara. It was only at 10 a.m. when the sweepers had cleaned the latrines and sprinkled phenyl that the place was free of smell; by then the mule caravans would reach the top of the hill. One could hear their copper bells from a distance. As they passed the gurdwara this became a loud jingle-jangle mixed up with their snorting. The odour of the latrines was replaced by the odour of mule-droppings.

The gurdwara, with its motley collections of pilgrims and other guests in its dozen rooms, was a small world of its own.

I was not on visiting terms with any of the other residents, but there were some one could not avoid. Next door to me were two brothers, both Sikhs. The only way I could tell which was the older was by their beards. The older man’s beard reached down to his navel; the younger one’s covered his chest. Besides that, the elder brother’s beard was almost grey: the younger one had only a few silver streaks in the mass of black. Both had their heads covered with loosely tied turbans and wore long, shapeless coats. They started their mornings by spreading out trays full of medicinal herbs and arguing about their merits at the tops of their voices. They spent the whole day hawking these herbs. Even if their herbs did not cure people, they did not kill them either. No one came to charge them with homicide. Every evening they would grind hashish and drink a cup or two of bhang. Occasionally they had guests — usually the caretakers of the gurdwara. And if the brothers had a good day in the bazaar, they brought sweets to offer their guests, along with the potion brewed from the green herb.

I had to pass the main kitchen on my way out of the gurdwara. I always exchanged a few words with the two Nihangs who had assumed charge of the langar feeding arrangements.

In the days when Ranjit Singh was Maharajah of Punjab, Akali Phula Singh had enlisted Nihangs and fought fierce battles with the Afghans and Pathans. The Nihang fraternity had descended from those warriors. But now there were no battles to fight. So they simply consumed bhang. The word Nihang means crocodile; the two men in the kitchen certainly resembled these monsters. The only work entrusted to the Nihangs was to cook lentils and vegetables and bake chappaties on the large, flat iron grill. This was the Guru’s kitchen where everyone had to be fed free — whether for a day or for a month no one could prescribe. The Guru’s kitchen was like a club where the only qualification for membership was a ravenous appetite.

The gurdwara also had a granthi; everyone addressed him as Gyaniji. Every visitor had to see him; without his permission no one could stay in the premises. Every evening when he went round to inspect the rooms we exchanged news. He wore a white turban and carried a saffron scarf about his neck with which he constantly wiped his nose; he always seemed to have a cold — or at least the illusion of one. He rubbed his nose so often that it had become raw and inflamed. His voice was feminine and melodious. He spoke so softy that people had to strain their ears to catch his words.

At 10 p.m. it started to rain.

My neighbours, the vendors of medicinal herbs, were celebrating. It seemed that they had done well with their stomach powder which they claimed could help digest even wood or stone. There was quite a crowd in their room. And they all spoke in Punjabi at the top of their voices, hurling full-blooded abuse at each other. The tone of bravado and the slurring over words left no doubt in my mind that they had imbibed liberal quantities of the green herb. All at once they stopped talking. I sat up with a jerk. A voice laden with pathos sang a couplet of Tegh Bahadur, the 9th of the Sikh’s ten gurus:

Worry not about death; all who are born must die;

Worry only over events which are not likely to pass.

I had heard this sloka many a time in the gurdwaras but it had never affected me the way it did that night, sung in that melancholy voice.

Suddenly the lights went off. There was a roar of protests from different rooms. Some of the residents were prepared for the eventuality and had provided themselves with candles; others ran out to the bazaar to buy them. The singing next door did not betray any concern over the crisis.

I shut the book I was reading and flung it on my bed. I went out of my room and stood by the railing. I ignored the malodorous vapours coming up from the latrines. I looked inside the open door of the neighbouring room. They had a fat candle burning in the centre. Around the candlelight I could see a variety of beards like a circle of watches around a cauldron. It was then that I noticed that the singer was no other than Soorma Singh. Even in that hour of the night he wore his dark glasses. His long hair had slipped out from under his turban and was scattered about his pock-marked face. He lifted his face towards the ceiling as he sang. I could see the muscles of his neck flex as his voice rose or fell.

I stayed out on the balcony till Soorma Singh stopped singing.

The two Nihangs were very conscious of their importance. They spent their day in the kitchen. Whenever they met a new visitor they would tell him: ‘We were on our way to Hemkund. We stopped here because this is also the abode of the Guru. Gyaniji won’t let us leave.’

On the way to Badrinath beyond Rishikesh is the lake Hemkund. It was here that the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh, meditated before he decided to come into the world. Whenever the Nihangs were upset they packed up their belongings and threatened to leave for Hemkund. Then Gyaniji would come, blowing his nose into his scraf, and persuade them to stay. The Nihangs were easily persuaded. Gyaniji would then return to his room — blowing his nose into his scarf.

It did not take very much to upset the Nihangs. They had never worked in a kitchen. But there was nothing else they could do; so they were charged with the duty of cooking the meals. The first thing they did in the morning was to light the fires of the cooking range. Those for cooking the sacred halva had large cauldrons on them; another fire, equally large, was filled with black lentils and third one had a cannister of water for brewing tea. Someday the lentils were like clear soup. Somedays they had more grit than salt; on others it was just grit without any salt. And if they had nothing to do, the Nihangs would take their long iron prongs and pace about the kitchen, like warriors at sword-play.

In the afternoons and evenings, the kitchen became the centre of great bustle and activity. There was never a shortage of beggars who spent the time between meals picking lice out of their rags. There were two reasons for their assembling before the food was ready. One was to get round the Nihangs and the other, to get their share of the lentils: as the lentil cauldron emptied, the proportion of grit in what remained increased.

Soorma Singh’s main duty was to sing hymns. In his spare time he took it upon himself to impart religious advice. After every two sentences he would exclaim, ‘Wahe Guru, wahe Guru.’

The Nihangs were crude rustics with little respect for anyone — least of all for Soorma Singh. Nevertheless Soorma Singh would go uninvited to the kitchen and take his seat on a board, a little removed from the fire. He was well aware of the fact that no one paid any heed to what he said; nevertheless he could not refrain from proffering gratuitous advice on the art of cooking. His major complaint was the excess of salt in the lentils. This used to irritate the Nihangs who had no doubt whatsoever in their minds that they were the best cooks in the world. Who was Soorma Singh to tell them what to do! If he grumbled about the food, they would snap back at him. ‘Oi, you think your bloody woman is cooking for you!’

Such remarks evoked many a smile. But the taunt about his wife produced a thunderous expression on Soorma Singh’s face. He would grind his teeth and mutter, ‘I hate talking to women.’

‘Ho, ho,’ one of the Nihangs would roar, giving his moustache a twist, ‘You won’t talk to women; and women won’t have anything to do with you.’

Soorma Singh’s ear would go red. Once the Nihangs started on this subject, there was no stopping them. ‘This Soorma Singh is a dark horse. If you don’t believe me you can see him at it any morning after service. When the women sit in the courtyard to take the sun, old Soorma Singh finds his way into their midst. He loves women’s gossip; isn’t that so, old Soorma? What do you get out of hearing old wives tales? ...and Mr. Soorma Singh keeps a hawk’s eye on the other end of the courtyard; that’s where the women wash their clothes. He keeps wandering about the place. He runs into one, trips over another. Great man you are, Mister Soorma Singh, a truly great man.’

The Nihangs would join the palms of their hands and make deep obeisance. Then the other would take over the narrative... ‘Only the other day... isn’t she the wife of that fellow Sajjan Singh?...the big buxom wench! Well, she was washing her clothes. Our dear friend Soorma Singh proceeded that way on the pretext of fetching water from the tap. And then let his foot slip so that he fell squarely on the lady. He was too hurt to be able to get up in a hurry. That one is a bit of a shrew. She wrenched off the turban of Sardar Bahadur Soorma Singh, caught him by his large top-knot, dragged him out of the bathroom and clipped him on his skull with her slipper, four or five real sharp ones. Meanwhile her husband arrived on the scene. He was in a rage. He would surely have sent Soorma Singh to the next world but for the people who intervened and restored peace. Poor, poor Soorma Singh! Take off your turban and let’s see how many hairs remain on your scalp after the shoe-beating.’

The roar of laughter would frighten the mules tethered outside the gurdwara. Someone would break in gently. ‘The poor fellow can’t see a thing. Even if a woman were to stand in front of him without a stitch of clothing on her, what difference would it make to him?’

This was never said to help Soorma Singh but to encourage the Nihangs. One would say with great conviction. ‘He doesn’t have to see anything; he gets all his fun by the sound. He can tell a women’s age, her looks, her secret desires — everything, by the way she speaks...’

There was a small balcony on the second floor. It was not plastered; lines of cement ran zig-zag across the bare brick floor. Along the wall were four bathrooms without doors; the bathers could be seen from the outside. Each bathroom had a tap. Water ran in them only for a couple of hours of the day; for the rest, if one turned on the tap, all one would get was a few spluttering sounds. In the middle of the balcony was a platform built round a wooden mast on which hung a very limp, a very beard-like, triangular saffron flag. If the breeze was strong, the flag would unfurl and display the emblems of the Khalsa — the circular quou with sabres crossed beneath it. At one end of the balcony was a curved steel railing; from this railing one got a view of the valley with the kites wheeling below. One could also see the road winding up the hillside through the damp vegetation, and long lines of mules with the muleteers holding on to the tails of their beasts to haul themselves up.

I caught sight of Soorma Singh in a shaft of sunlight, coming towards me. He was wearing a clean white turban and a freshly washed shirt. Instead of his native slipper he had a pair of shining pumps on his feet. He still wore his dark glasses — he probably slept in them.

I happened to be in the shop of Bhutia. His wares consisted of an assortment of things of Bhutanese make — kitchen utensils, cheap jewellery, idols, metal trays and other bric-a-brac. The Bhutia had taken me for a rich man and raised his prices so high that I had lost interest in his goods and was looking at the hillside. There were no houses on the other side of the road: only a twenty-feet-high wall made of rough blocks of stone that ran along the embankment. The wall was covered with moss and a large number of lady-birds crawled on the moss; it looked a green carpet with tiny red flowers.

That was when I saw Soorma Singh. I was surprised at the pace at which he walked; even people who could see, seldom walked as fast. Either he did not know how people walked or he wanted to give the impression that he could walk as well as those who could see. As he passed by me, I noticed that he had a cage dangling in one hand. Inside the cage was a green parrot peering out of the bars.

‘That parrot,’ the older Nihang told me later, scratching the hair on his chest, ‘means the world to Soorma Singh; its all he has — it is his father, mother, sister, son, wife, elder-uncle, mother’s brother, brothers...everything.’

The Nihang spoke with great contempt. He did not realise that Soorma Singh’s lonely life had impressed me. He didn’t even bother to look my way. He was watching the lentil cauldron which was boiling over, like lava pouring out of a volcano. Streaks of lentils flowed down the side of the cauldron and sizzled to a dry stop as they were scorched by the fire below.

There was no point my telling the Nihang what I thought of Soorma Singh. To be quite truthful. I had not really given much thought to Soorma Singh. Only when I ran into him, did I dwell on him for a few moments. I could tell from the expression on the Nihang’s face that he was eager to talk to me. To encourage him I asked: ‘Can the parrot talk?’

‘Yes Sir! Soorma Singh has taught him a lot of things.’

‘Soorma Singh recites couplets of Guru Tegh Bahadur. He must have crammed his parrot with verses of Bulhey Shah and Baba Farid,’ I suggested.

‘No sir... he has not taught his parrot any such thing.’

‘Nihang Singhji, what has he taught his parrot to say?’

‘It says: “Come Sardar Manjeet Singhji.” That’s his real name...no one bothers with his real name. He is just Soorma Singh to everyone. Some people even call him Soormua Singh.’ The Nihang smiled and explained his joke. ‘Soormua means one with a pig’s snout.’ He continued. ‘He’s taught the bird many other things. Sentimental sentences and words of love.’

The younger Nihang took up the narrative. ‘My friend has also taught the parrot many kinds of abuse — “Soorma is a woman chaser; Soorma Singh is a great rascal; Soorma Singh is a real bastard...” ’

I wanted to change the subject. There was no way of doing so except by breaking out in loud laughter.

The elder Nihang noticed my discomfiture. He made a wry face and said. ‘Sir, this Soorma Singh is a big nuisance. He does not like lentils. If I cook a vegetable, he turns up his nose; and he finds faults with our chappaties. It never crosses his mind that we are not cooks. He should take the name of the great Guru and eat whatever is placed before him.’

I agreed that Soorma Singh should eat whatever came from the Guru’s kitchen without making a fuss. ‘If Soorma Singh does not like the gurdwara food, why doesn’t he cook his own?’ I asked.

‘That’s exactly what we feel too. But Gyaniji indulges him too much. He sings a couple of hymns in the morning service and Gyaniji thinks he is the greatest singer in the world. He has given Soorma Singh a separate room to live in.’

The other Nihang butted in, ‘You can hardly call it a room! Next to the latrines is a tiny store-room to stack wood, coal, flour, lentils and other kitchen rations. In one corner of this room Sardar Soorma Singh has laid his charpoy and hung his parrot cage.’

One night at about 10 p.m. the parrot began to squawk. I had never heard the bird before, but that night it was screaming as if a tiger had entered the cage. Many people came out of their rooms to find out what had happened. Then Soorma Singh also began to yell at the parrot. We could not hear what they were saying to each other.

The uproar continued for some time. Then Soorma Singh’s voice could be heard crying — ‘Help! Murder! He’s killing me.’

I took my flashlight and ran down the stairs. I saw the older Nihang run out of Soorma Singh’s room and disappear in the darkness of the latrines.

Soorma Singh continued to scream for help. Other people came on the scene. We took Soorma Singh to the first floor. He was suffering from shock. It appeared that one of the Nihangs had stolen into his room in the dark and tried to strangle him with his scarf.

Gyaniji was aroused by the din and came on the scene. The older Nihang who had quietly slipped back into his room was summoned. He explained that all he had done was to take food to Soorma Singh’s room and then returned to his own. He did not know what transpired after he had left.

It was obvious that the Nihang was lying. Even so someone came to his defence. ‘Soorma Singh is always bothering these poor chaps. They spend all their day serving in the Guru’s kitchen and then His Lordship expects to be served in his room.’

Soorma Singh leapt to his defence with all the power in his lungs. ‘All these fellows gang up in the kitchen to make fun of me; the Nihangs are particularly nasty to me. Sometimes they urinate in my lentil soup; at other times they’ll deliberately char my chappaties and slap them on my face. Just now when one of them brought me dinner he said “Here, you bastard, you parasite”...’

There was a commotion. Soorma Singh abused the Nihangs with all his might. Gyaniji pleaded with him, ‘If you go on yelling like this, you will lose your voice. How will you be able to sing tomorrow morning?’

The exchange of hot abuse was followed by soft words of peace. The Nihangs again threatened to leave for HemKund. Gyaniji dissuaded them from doing so. He wiped his nose with his scarf. My neighbours, the vendors of medicinal herbs, took Soorma Singh to their room while Gyaniji cooled the tempers of the Nihangs and sent them back to their quarters.

A few days later there was another party in the room next door. Amongst the distinguished company I espied the two Nihangs and Soorma Singh. Green jade cups were being passed round. I could also hear endearing abuse such as is used by friends for each other. This was Soorma Singh in a new incarnation, so different from the Soorma Singh of everyday life. His turban had fallen off his head and lay entangled between his legs; his beard was scattered untidily; his top-knot had loosened and his long hair lay about his shoulders; his dark glasses lay in his lap. He was flailing his arms like a windmill and bellowing like a mad bull. One would have thought that the houris of paradise were performing a nautch right in front of his sightless eyes. The party were pleading with him for couplets from Bulhey Shah or Baba Farid.

Soorma Singh made a few attempts to sing, but he was too drunk to get the notes right and the attempts ended in a camel like hurrumph. The failure angered Soorma Singh. He leapt to his feet, slapped his chest: ‘Hai, I am smitten!’

A chorus of voices demanded : ‘True Emperor! who could dare to smite you?’

Soorma Singh was in a world of his own. All he could say in reply was to repeat ‘Hai, I am smitten!’

The Nihangs sprinkled some cold water on Soorma Singh’s head — ‘You are hot in the head Soorma Singh! Repeat the name of the great God, Wahe Guru.’

The drops of cold water acted like magic. He put his hand over his ear and in his tear-laden voice sang:

‘Farid wake from the slumber! thy beard hath turned grey.

The future lies ahead of thee, the past is passed away.’

The men began to sway in ecstasy; their beards also swayed with them. Their eyes closed and a drunken stupor overcame them. Once Soorma Singh had begun, there was no stopping him; wherever his voice carried, it cast its spell. He had a vast repertoire of slokas beginning with ‘Farid, wake from thy slumber!’ He sang into the late hours of the night.

It was the magic of Soorma Singh’s voice which compelled an agnostic like me to go to the prayer hall every morning.

The gurdwara prayer hall was very spacious. Its bare white walls dazzled the eye. The floor was covered with coir matting on which was spread a blue durrie with a red border. On one side of the hall on a raised platform was the holy Granth. Usually Gyaniji sat on the platform. Behind him would be a boy waving the fly whisk. Above the Granth was a coloured awning festooned with red and yellow tassels. A couple of dozen large pictures were hung on the walls; some of these were of the Sikh Gurus; other depicted scenes from Sikh history.

When Soorma Singh entered the crowded hall, the congregation would be tense with excitement. On these occasions Soorma Singh dressed with great care; a clean white shirt and chooridars of handspun khaddar, a round white turban on his head, a blue scarf round his neck — and the dark glasses with their lenses and frame glistening brightly. He also wore socks on these occasions. Instead of his staff, he would have his tambourin which he used as an accompaniment. People said that Soorma Singh’s renderings of the sacred hymns had pierced many a deaf ear and guided the listeners along the true and narrow path of religion.

This was not very incredible. If confirmed agnostics like me could be moved, those who were only wavering in their faith must surely have had their doubts cleared... I must admit that although his singing used to disturb me, it instilled peace in the minds of most people. I could seldom catch the words of the hymns. His voice had the force and flow of a hill torrent, the deep gloom of unseen, unknown caverns of the ocean ...I cannot really describe the quality of his voice except that to me Soorma Singh was nothing except his voice. It reflected his loneliness, his utter solitude in the wide, wide world, his agitated search, his unquenched thirst, his unappeased hunger; it was the cry of his soul, an agonising cry which rang through the melody of his songs...

The sun had set behind a haze of clouds; only a dim glow lit the mountains.

The foreman gave my belongings a quick appraising look and asked, ‘How many coolies will you require?’

‘One.’

‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes, I am alone.’

He began calculating the load the coolie would have to carry. I was on my bed reading a book; my small attache case was hidden underneath. I shut the book and explained, ‘There is only one bedding roll and a small suitcase.’ I got up and lifted the edge of the bed sheet. The foreman bent down to gauge the size of the case. ‘That will be two rupees, Sahib.’

‘How long will it take to get to the bus stand?’

‘Fifteen minutes less than an hour.’

‘Don’t forget I have to get on the 8.00 a.m. bus. The coolie should be here by a quarter to seven.’

‘Accha Sahib.’

The words ‘accha Sahib’ kept going round my head long after the foreman had gone. When I found the page of my book, I had to close the book. Once again there was an uproar. There was always an uproar of some kind or the other. It could be hymn-singing, quarrels between the women, the screaming of children. But this was from the ground floor, from Soorma Singh’s room. Were the Nihangs up to their tricks again?

My one thought was to save the voice of Soorma Singh. I leapt out of bed and went to the door. I saw the two Nihangs in the kitchen sipping tea out of their porcelain mugs. ‘What is the racket?’ I asked them.

They paused and listened. I ran down the steps. The noise was coming from Soorma Singh’s room. A small crowd had collected there. I looked in. A fat, ugly woman of about thirty-four was squatting on a charpoy with Soorma Singh on his knees on the floor beside her. A Sikh with a goatee was slapping Soorma Singh about the face.

This fellow was an urban type — short, pot-bellied, flabby, with small thin arms and hands like squirrel’s claws.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded a chorus of voices.

The Sikh with the goatee panted, ‘This man was staring at my wife...even after I told him to look the other way.’

In short, Soorma Singh’s crime was to have stared at the loathsome creature with eyes like hard-boiled eggs and a skin the colour of mud.

Gyaniji threaded his way through the crowd and came up to the man with the goatee. He put out his inflamed proboscis and protested. ‘Sir, this is Soorma Singh, he has no eyes. How could he have been gaping at anyone? There was no other room vacant, that is why I put you in his room. Where else can the poor fellow go?...’

Soorma Singh’s glasses had fallen off but his assailant had not bothered to look at his eyes. His wife was very cross and scolded her husband — ‘You never wait to find out anything before you get down to fisticuffs.’

The Sardarji was like a deflated balloon; he looked exactly like a squirrel with a beard. It was obvious that he was dominated by his wife. Some explanations were offered; the Sardarji picked up his bag and slipped out to go to the bazaar to buy vegetables, Gyaniji went to the door and spoke to the onlookers, ‘Gentlemen go and do your own work... this is not juggler’s performance.’

Gyaniji’s thin nasal voice commanded respect. The crowd dispersed. Gyaniji turned and admonished the woman with the bulging eyes, ‘Sister, Soorma Singh has a golden voice. You have arrived today; come to the service tomorrow morning and listen to him singing hymns. There is such magic in his voice that many who have gone astray, have been brought back to the path of righteousness.’

Just then the parrot made a few uncomplimentary remarks about Soorma Singh. Gyaniji glowered at the bird. His nose was as red as the parrot’s beak.

Gyaniji explained to the woman that this was the Nihang’s handiwork. Soorma Singh’s cup of sorrow brimmed over. He voiced a whole catalogue of the misdeeds of the Nihangs. The woman asked, ‘Soorma Singhji, whose word shall I accept, the Gyaniji’s or the parrot’s?’

‘That’s a very odd question to ask,’ protested Gyaniji and left the room still mauling his nose.

A small multi-coloured bird landed on the window sill and danced a pirouette.

There was tenderness, humility and sweetness in the woman’s voice; it pierced through the deep dark of Soorma Singh’s world like a shaft, making a silver track as it went — a path which appeared to Soorma Singh to be leading to his goal.