[sacw] SACW Dispatch #1 | 23-24 Oct. 00 [India Special]

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1.
23-24 October 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

[India Special]
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#1. India Pakistan Partition: remembrances that spill across time-and borders
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#1.

Outlook
30 October 2000

PAKISTAN/TRAVELOGUE

The Persistence of Memory

Another country, an ancestral village, and remembrances that spill across
time-and borders

By Kalpana Sahni

Just two days after my arrival in Lahore, I was hurtling along the
Lahore-Islamabad motorway at 5 am with my friend Rasheeda. Our destination
was Bhera, the ancestral town of all the Sahnis, or rather the Khukrain,
which includes nine castes: Sahni, Sethi, Anand, Suri, Kohli, Bhasin,
Chaddha, Sabharwal and Chandhok.

For our post-Partition generation, Khukrain and Bherochis (those from
Bhera) were unusual-sounding words that occasionally cropped up in
conversations of the older generation, including my father Bhisham Sahni
and his brother, Balraj ji (the actor Balraj Sahni).

Signboards of vaguely familiar places flitted past us: Lala Musa,
Gujranwala, Chakwaal. They held no associations for me. And Bhera? What did
I know of this town? I had heard that it once was a flourishing trading
centre on the Jhelum. Some Bherochis claim the battle between Porus and
Sikander was fought near Bhera and that Porus was a Khukrain Sabharwal. A
few others are convinced that Alexander was so impressed by the valour of
the Bherochis that he returned to Greece with five brave Bherochis, whose
successors still live there.

Chetan Anand, the film director, went even further. My father recalls how
he always boasted about his profile: "See, this is the classical Greek
profile". We Bherochis are Greeks! Some others unequivocally state that the
Khukrain originate from Khorasan. A more recent encounter with Bhera was
through my father's historical novel, Mayyadas ki Madi, set in Bhera: the
havelis, the Diwans and the railway line that ended in this town. On this
particular journey I wasn't concerned with sifting facts from fiction for I
had no idea of the borderline. All I knew was we were heading for my
father's ancestral town which was, as my Lahori friends had assured me, a
mere two-hour drive from Lahore.

A board on a red-brick structure announced 'Bhera Restaurant' although
there was no sign of any habitation on either side of the highway. The car
sped on. The landscape changed. Low hills arose in the horizon. We must be
approaching it, I thought. But we were soon told that we had overshot our
destination and had to proceed back to where the restaurant was and take a
detour from there.

Our journey for the next three hours was along a kutcha road. And pretty
soon I was certain the Partition days must have been an exception in
Bhera's history. Nobody could possibly have either visited or exited from
Bhera since Alexander's time. Not along this road, at any rate. I
understood why some Bherochis insist the actual name is Be-rah (without a
road). Another plunge into a pothole rearranged my insides and cleared my
head. I had another revelation. None of my Lahori friends had the foggiest
idea about the whereabouts of Bhera! Their knowledge was confined to the
restaurant they regularly zoomed past on their way to Islamabad.

We finally reached Bhera after a gruelling five-hour journey. Meanwhile,
Rasheeda was unsuccessfully trying to discover the location of the Sahni
Mohalla which was supposed to have existed. We took a side lane that led to
an open area surrounded by two and three-storied havelis with protruding
balconies-all with intricate woodcarvings. The houses stood amidst the
rubble of solitary walls. My father mentioned abandoned homes where only
the doors, with locks hanging, remained. Door after door after door-and all
with big locks. No walls, no roofs, just rubble behind them. Had he
referred to the time when the Jhelum changed its course and the town went
to seed, gradually losing its importance as a trade centre? I was now
beginning to doubt the existence of a Sahni Mohalla. It was then the
miracle occurred.

"You mean Sahniyan da Mohalla?" asked a man who had materialised out of
nowhere. "I'll show you." We could barely keep pace with this person who
strode confidently through the maze of narrow lanes. Finally he stopped
and, with his stick, pointed towards a house on the crossroads.

"There, Sahniyan da Mohalla begins from that house onwards." With these
words he disappeared just as miraculously as he had appeared.

A partly broken-down double-storeyed house peered over the wall. I was led
into a courtyard where four women of different age groups were busy with
their chores. When they discovered I was a Sahni from India, they engulfed
me with their warmth and love. "Please sit in the shade," said one. "Would
you like some milk or lassi?" asked another.

I waited for a brief pause to slip in my question. "Do you still say
aasaan-jaasaan?" The reply: "Of course. That is how we Bherochis are
recognised wherever we go. We have only to open our mouths to give
ourselves away."

We all laughed. Then, with a perplexed look on her face, the youngest of
the four turned to me and asked, "Do people in Delhi also speak like us?"

"If they are Bherochis, yes. And there too the other Punjabis immediately
recognise who they have in their midst," I said.

None of the women recalled the past for they belonged to the post-Partition
generation. They had bought this house about 30 years ago. It had been a
beautiful house, but the recent flood had destroyed a part of it. I looked
around and couldn't rein in my flights of fancy. Could this be the house my
grandfather grew up in? Was that the balcony from where my father played
pranks on the passers-by on the road?

This locality is still called Sahniyan da Mohalla as is the adjacent,
Sethiyan da. The women couldn't enlighten me on the Sahni families, but
they sent for someone. Mir Mohammad was a gaunt old man in a lungi. Despite
his grey beard and walking stick, his shoulders were not drooping as he
walked up to us with a broad smile and twinkling eyes. He had barely sat
down on the charpai in front of me before he let loose a volley of
questions.

"You've come from India? Really? I don't believe it! From Delhi? And you
are a Bherochi you say? A Sahni? What's your father's name? And your
grandfather's?" And then Mir Mohammad reeled off a string of names of
people he recalled from the Sahni clan: Mohan Lal Sahni, Diwan Ganpath,
Diwan Jaigopal, then Pal and Jiya Sahni. None of the names rang a bell. As
for me, I couldn't go beyond my grandfather's name. The old man tried to
console me. "Numerous families had moved to Rawalpindi," he said. "Did you
know the Sahni clan was the largest and richest one in Bhera? There were a
thousand houses in the Sahniyan da Mohalla."

A thousand houses! All Sahni, and all related to each other! There we were
in India, scattered in different parts of the country, rarely meeting one
another, and here were a thousand houses! I imagined children growing up
with hundreds of cousins, uncles and aunts. Then there must have been the
countless relatives in the neighbouring mohallas of the Anand and the Sethi
families. Didn't all the Khukrains intermarry? "Many people from the Sahni
families went abroad to study," Mir Mohammad continued. Perhaps it was
another of those Bherochi jokes, but it was said the British distinguished
three types of Indians who went there to study: the Hindus, the Muslims and
the Sahnis.

"It could be because the British had opened a school in Bhera? Did you know
that an angrez was invited for the mahoorat of this house?" And Mir
Mohammad proceeded to relate the story.

"This was the grandest house in the Sahniyan da Mohalla. For the mahoorat,
the owners bought bales and bales of red fabric which they spread all the
way from the railway station to the house. They didn't want their chief
guest to soil his shoes on our kutcha road. So, just imagine, this angrez
stepped off the train and straight on to the red cloth. You should have
seen how pleased he was with the reception! He left in a very good mood and
even praised the house."

Mir Mohammad laboured in the fields of Malik Suraj Kaul for a salary of
nine rupees. And again he amazed me with his memory for names. He recalled
every member of the family: the sons-Jagmohan, Manmohan, Susheel and
Minnoo; the daughters: Phallaan and Kamla Rani. All of a sudden, the old
man broke off and turned to me. "Meeting you has brought back all the
Hindus of Bhera before my eyes."

He was silent, his head bent. Then he picked up his thread of
reminiscences. The family he worked for had adopted him. Mir Mohammed
affectionately recalled his Hindu teacher. "But I will never forgive them
for one thing. Two months before Partition the Suraj Kaul family went to
Murree. They never returned. I couldn't so much as hug them before their
departure." Tears welled up in his eyes. "Please try and locate them. I
have failed. Someone said that they are in Ghaziabad."

After another pause, he continued, "Life's never been the same since the
Hindus left. We always used to celebrate each other's festivals. There was
a sense of camaraderie amongst all the Bherochis, regardless of whether
they were Hindus or Muslims. I remember how my father once took me to a
mela. What is the name of that festival when giants are constructed and
then burnt?"

"Dussehra."

"Yes, yes, Dussehra. See, I've even begun to forget the names. We went up
to the halwai's stall. The halwai, a good friend of my father's, gave me a
stern look and said, 'I don't give mithai to Mussalman children.'

'Which Mussalman kid do you see out here? This fellow?' my father retorted.
'Are you referring to him? He is no Mussalman. His name is Ashok.'

'Oh, is that so? In that case there's no problem,' and with a

wink and a grin the shopkeeper handed me a fistful of jalebis. My father
and the halwai were laughing as they watched me gobble up the jalebis."

Once again Mir Mohammed's eyes brimmed with unshed tears. "We used to laugh
and joke with each other. Together we celebrated each birth and together
mourned every death." Mir Mohammed accompanied us on a walking tour of the
Sahniyan da Mohalla. The railway station was just beyond the town wall, on
the other side of the mohalla. Like many of the British-made railway
stations, this one also seemed frozen in time. A train had just left. Men
were carrying out crates of merchandise. I wandered to the end of the
platform and sat down on a deserted bench. Not far from it was the yellow
board with its black lettering in bold letters: Bhera. It was supposed to
have been the last town along the railway line. The old rail tracks were
overgrown with grass. Were they the ones on which the British officer's
train arrived?

I looked around in search of the hillock from where the Bherochis watched
the approaching trains. The landscape was flat-no sign of even a mound. Yet
another of my father's fantasies had floated and merged with my Bhera
experiences. But the station and the platform were a reality, weren't they?
I was overpowered by conflicting emotions-a sense of belonging and a sense
of loss. Happiness intermingled with nostalgia and grief. I sat alone on
the bench, crying.

When I returned to Delhi, my father told me that apart from a month during
his elder sister's wedding, he had never lived in Bhera for any length of
time. My cousin hurled the choicest abuses when she heard of my trip. Why
hadn't I told her? Why

hadn't I re-read my uncle's travelogue to Pakistan? She had photographs of
our house, which my uncle had visited in 1962. Moreover, he had met a
cousin in Sargodha.

I have to return to Bhera. But before that, I must locate the family of
Malik Suraj Kaul.

(By arrangement with Friday Corporation)

(Kalpana Sahni is a professor of Russian literature at jnu, New Delhi. She
is the daughter of Bhisham Sahni and niece of Balraj Sahni.)

It was the house (above) where the Sahniyan da Mohalla began, a family
street, a thousand houses, and all Sahni!

All of a sudden Mir Mohammad broke his story: "Meeting you has brought back
all of Bhera's Hindus before my eyes."

In the end, it was a coalescence of experience and fantasy, intense
belonging and loss. The grief of a lost home.

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