doesn’t?’
‘I wonder, could you take me there? If it is not too far?’
‘Too far? What is too far in Amritsar? This is not a big city like your Delhi. Instead we have a small city, big with bombings and killings. No, I can’t take you there. There is a curfew on. Don’t you read the papers, or listen to the news?’
I am guilty. I don’t. The rawness I feel after my mother’s death doesn’t allow me to do anything that is not, in some way, connected with her. Ever since coming to Amritsar I have been restlessly pacing the old house. I wish bricks could speak. This must have been where Virmati slept, this must have been where she studied, this must have been the window Paro snivelled at. Those rooms have now been partitioned and divided into subunits with separate kitchens for each uncle and aunt.
The lichi and the mango orchards are all gone. The Urban Land Ceiling Act has transformed the huge gardens into little suburban plots. The fields where gaajjar-mooli grew have been replaced by ugly concrete houses. They have little gardens and tall hedges to fence out prying eyes. The hand-pump situated at a corner of the old, yellowing house now hangs dry and useless, with rust gathering around the handle. Everything has changed, become smaller and uglier, more developed.
*
The curfew did partially lift in two days. How terribly Kailash Mama drives, I thought, as we horned and lurched our way through the Amritsar bazaar. The car was an old Morris Minor and the seats had practically worn into the floor over the years.
‘They knew how to build cars, the British did. See how solid it still is, not like these shiny tinny Marutis you see everywhere today. Touch them and you have a dent‚’ shouted Kailash Mama, swerving to avoid a truck that roared past him on the narrow road.
‘This is a sturdy car‚’ I agreed, poking my finger absent-mindedly through a tear in the upholstery.
Mamiji gazed out of the window.
The way to AS College was very crowded, but ultimately not long. In twenty minutes we were there.
‘It is certainly centrally located‚’ I remarked.
‘Cycling distance‚’ said Kailashnath Mama, ‘though your mother came in a tonga.’
A high wall surrounds AS College. It has metal spikes at the top, and on top of that, barbed wire.
‘Why the barbed wire, Mamaji?’
‘One of the students was caught trying to blow up the place. A fanatic. He was planting a bomb in the lab when the lab attendant spotted him. They couldn’t dismiss him because of communal tension, so they quickly awarded him his degree, and sent him to his village. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than a second class, I believe. Meanwhile the governing body got very frightened about the security of the place, and put barbed wire all over the top. As though the spikes were not enough. Typical of the mindless idiots.’
*
The three of us are stopped at the spiked, barbed-wire gate and asked our business. To see the college, we said, which made the guard look even more suspicious. But we are well dressed, and used to a certain treatment. Reluctantly, he ushers us into the principal’s office.
It is a small room, cramped and poky. The damp, yellowing walls are randomly broken with mementoes of past significance, stern-looking principals, tarnished shields. Shiny brown and beige curtains hang limply over the barred windows. A huge desk takes up half the room, its Sunmica surface glittering with a design of wood whorls and lines. Bright blue rexine chairs surround it, while at the head sits the principal’s armchair, heavy, with dirty black cushions.
Kailashnath thought, how different the place was when the Professor Sahib was principal before Independence. Then the office was in the main portion of the college building. After he married Viru, I visited him once or twice in the college, so that Mati would not get to know. His room was a good one, big, windows overlooking the driveway on one side, and courtyard
‘I wonder, could you take me there? If it is not too far?’
‘Too far? What is too far in Amritsar? This is not a big city like your Delhi. Instead we have a small city, big with bombings and killings. No, I can’t take you there. There is a curfew on. Don’t you read the papers, or listen to the news?’
I am guilty. I don’t. The rawness I feel after my mother’s death doesn’t allow me to do anything that is not, in some way, connected with her. Ever since coming to Amritsar I have been restlessly pacing the old house. I wish bricks could speak. This must have been where Virmati slept, this must have been where she studied, this must have been the window Paro snivelled at. Those rooms have now been partitioned and divided into subunits with separate kitchens for each uncle and aunt.
The lichi and the mango orchards are all gone. The Urban Land Ceiling Act has transformed the huge gardens into little suburban plots. The fields where gaajjar-mooli grew have been replaced by ugly concrete houses. They have little gardens and tall hedges to fence out prying eyes. The hand-pump situated at a corner of the old, yellowing house now hangs dry and useless, with rust gathering around the handle. Everything has changed, become smaller and uglier, more developed.
*
The curfew did partially lift in two days. How terribly Kailash Mama drives, I thought, as we horned and lurched our way through the Amritsar bazaar. The car was an old Morris Minor and the seats had practically worn into the floor over the years.
‘They knew how to build cars, the British did. See how solid it still is, not like these shiny tinny Marutis you see everywhere today. Touch them and you have a dent‚’ shouted Kailash Mama, swerving to avoid a truck that roared past him on the narrow road.
‘This is a sturdy car‚’ I agreed, poking my finger absent-mindedly through a tear in the upholstery.
Mamiji gazed out of the window.
The way to AS College was very crowded, but ultimately not long. In twenty minutes we were there.
‘It is certainly centrally located‚’ I remarked.
‘Cycling distance‚’ said Kailashnath Mama, ‘though your mother came in a tonga.’
A high wall surrounds AS College. It has metal spikes at the top, and on top of that, barbed wire.
‘Why the barbed wire, Mamaji?’
‘One of the students was caught trying to blow up the place. A fanatic. He was planting a bomb in the lab when the lab attendant spotted him. They couldn’t dismiss him because of communal tension, so they quickly awarded him his degree, and sent him to his village. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than a second class, I believe. Meanwhile the governing body got very frightened about the security of the place, and put barbed wire all over the top. As though the spikes were not enough. Typical of the mindless idiots.’
*
The three of us are stopped at the spiked, barbed-wire gate and asked our business. To see the college, we said, which made the guard look even more suspicious. But we are well dressed, and used to a certain treatment. Reluctantly, he ushers us into the principal’s office.
It is a small room, cramped and poky. The damp, yellowing walls are randomly broken with mementoes of past significance, stern-looking principals, tarnished shields. Shiny brown and beige curtains hang limply over the barred windows. A huge desk takes up half the room, its Sunmica surface glittering with a design of wood whorls and lines. Bright blue rexine chairs surround it, while at the head sits the principal’s armchair, heavy, with dirty black cushions.
Kailashnath thought, how different the place was when the Professor Sahib was principal before Independence. Then the office was in the main portion of the college building. After he married Viru, I visited him once or twice in the college, so that Mati would not get to know. His room was a good one, big, windows overlooking the driveway on one side, and courtyard
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