Calling Sehmat

HARINDER SIKKA CALLING SEHMAT PENGUIN BOOKS Contents Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Epilogue Acknowledgements Follow Penguin Copyright PENGUIN BOOKS CALLING SEHMAT Harinder Sikka is currently the group director, strategic business, Piramal Group. After graduating from Delhi University, he joined the Indian Navy. He was commissioned in January 1981 and took premature retirement in 1993 as a Lieutenant Commander. He recently produced a film, Nanak Shah Fakir, which won acclaim at the international film festivals in Cannes, Toronto and Los Angeles. The film won three national awards, including the Nargis Dutt Award for best feature film on national integration. Calling Sehmat is his second book. It is being made into a film, Raazi, by Meghna Gulzar, scheduled for release in May 2018. Sikka lives in New Delhi with his family. Prologue In the semi-darkness of dawn the muezzin called out, ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar . .’ His passionate, full-throated appeal to the Almighty broke the stillness of the new day and slowly Maler Kotla began to stir. As if on cue, the sun gasped through the horizon, flushing the rapidly brightening sky with redness. Yet another day crept into the lives of its residents. Except for one. Standing tall and in full glory, the white marble haveli surrounded by lush green lawns had lost its main occupant in the wee hours. For the villagers, especially the women, it was not a mere structure of stone but a symbol of peace, a shrine which they could visit any time and be heard. With the arrival of the new day, the imposing bungalow of Sehmat Khan quietly slipped into mourning. Tej Khan, the elderly matriarch, and now the only other permanent occupant of the sprawling house, took one last look at her daughter, blissfully calm in death, and quietly closed the bedroom door. Blinking back tears, she made her way to the telephone and fumbled through the painstaking effort of calling up Samar Khan. As soon as she was greeted with a curt, ‘Yes?’ she said, ‘Ammi passed away in her sleep. Come home.’ She heard the faint sound of a tortured sigh from Samar’s end before he hung up. It was proof of the huge shock he had received. She too put the receiver back into the cradle. On the other end of the line, Samar Khan was shrouded with a sorrow that seemed to choke his very being. Two days ago, he had come to Delhi on duty from his field station in Amritsar and had requested a weekend leave. He had recently been promoted to the rank of Captain and had excitedly ordered new uniform and badges in which he intended to present himself to his mother. Sehmat had always felt proud and happy to see her son dressed smartly in military uniform. Gasping, he shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He would have to take on the responsibility of a lone surviving son, but it was easier said than done. His mind was in anguish, his vision blurred; tears welled up as if to distance themselves from the grief that ravaged his body. It seemed a lifetime before Captain Samar Khan could collect himself and call his Commanding Officer, Brigadier Parthasarthy, to seek permission for an emergency leave. As Samar Khan packed his bags with the essentials needed for the most poignant battle of his life, his Commanding Officer called up that one family member of Sehmat Khan whom she chose to live away from. One of whom no one was aware . Meanwhile, Samar Khan, dressed in his new uniform, got into his white Maruti car and was soon making his way through the barren streets of Delhi to National Highway 1 that would take him to the destination that was still an enigma to him. For once, the young Captain’s sensitive mind did not register the vivid tapestry of life in India, as village after village and small and large towns melted away. Instead, his mind ran through a kaleidoscope of images, sounds and fragrances associated with his mother . Sehmat Khan. She was an enigmatic beauty who came into his life when he was merely seven. Ammi, with her serene, almond-shaped eyes and tiny, soft hands; Ammi, with her white chiffon dupatta, edged with fine white lace; Ammi, who made a face when he teased her about her mesmerizing looks; Ammi, who grinned impishly, as she held out keys to the car she had gifted him two years ago; Ammi and her gods, heady on fragrant sandalwood incense sticks; Ammi, who stubbornly ignored him as he yelled at her to shift out from her godforsaken Maler Kotla; Ammi and her soothing, soft voice; Ammi, the most beautiful Indian spy who single-handedly ravaged Pakistan’s security system . Four and a half hours later, turning southwards from Ludhiana, Samar Khan manoeuvred his car through the dusty, narrow roads that brought him closer to his mother. Approaching Maler Kotla, he was struck for the umpteenth time by how little the town had changed over the past two decades. His mother often mentioned that the town had not changed in three centuries. ‘The women of our villages must be educated if our country has to grow,’ she often remarked. Samar couldn’t agree more. A few hours from Delhi, and he observed the changing profile of women, from office-goers to the ones living in abject poverty, becoming slaves to the system. But why did his mother choose to settle down in Maler Kotla of all places? He knew the answer deep within, even if it would never convince him. He remembered Sehmat telling him the history of Maler Kotla and why it was so protected by the Sikhs of Punjab. The princely state of Maler Kotla came into being in 1454 CE when the Governor of Lahore and Sirhind, Sheikh Sadruddin Sadr-i-Jahan, married the daughter of Sultan Bahlul Khan Lodi of Delhi and was given a cluster of villages in dowry. In the early eighteenth century, the predominantly Muslim region had witnessed a surge in the population of Sikhs and Hindus, won over by the teachings of Guru Nanak. The Governor of Sirhind, Nawab Wazir Khan, captured the young sons of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh guru, after the battle at Anandpur, and agreed to release them on one condition: they embraced Islam. With a conviction that belied their age, Zorawar and Fateh Singh, the nine and seven-year-old sons of Guru Gobind Singh, expressed a desire to embrace death instead. Baffled and amazed at the audacity of the two young boys, Wazir Khan did not hesitate to order that the proud boys be walled in for slow death. Aghast at his cruelty, Sher Mohammed Khan, the nawab of Maler Kotla and a distant relative of Wazir Khan, protested vehemently and walked out of the court, but his protests were in vain. Sher Mohammed, however, earned blessings from the tenth Sikh guru for his display of humanity and courage. Since then Maler Kotla had remained under the protective umbrella of the Sikhs and had prospered. Such was the power of the blessings of the tenth Sikh guru that even during the bloodiest of the Hindu-Muslim riots post Independence in 1947, Maler Kotla was peaceful, even as the rest of the nation was nearly torn apart. Manoeuvring through the sleepy town flanked by the prosperous cities of Ludhiana, Patiala and Nabha, Samar drove into Maler Kotla without even glancing at the vast fields of cotton, aniseed, mustard, paddy and wheat. At almost every passing milestone, he saw one tall structure or the other in the shape of a gurdwara, temple or a mosque, an indication of how deeply spiritual the population was. And almost on each occasion, one thought overpowered his mind, first slipping in insidiously, fading away, and then returning with disturbing vengeance. ‘Why can’t the rest of the country learn from these people what it means to be an Indian?’ he muttered under his breath, as if to give vent to his bridled anguish, his fingers gripping the steering wheel. ‘How long will we suffer this caste and religious divide at the hands of our politicians?’ He had answers to none of these questions. His only hope was his mother, but she had left him without even saying goodbye. With this, his thoughts turned to his mother. Ever since he was born, Samar had witnessed numerous problems that she had to face due to the caste divide. Even though he remained a mute spectator on each such occasion, his mind recorded every incident and carried it forward like a recurring deposit in a bank. The final leg of the journey was the most difficult yet. The intense heat of the summer and the grief in the atmosphere were telling on his handsome features. As his vehicle closed the distance, often reduced to a near crawl because of the potholed roads and dirt tracks, Samar began to feel the same tightening of his chest that had gripped him when he had heard the news of his mother’s death. Curious village women eyed him from beneath their bright dupattas. The destination of this white Maruti, bearing a Delhi registration number, was probably obvious to them as his mother was a known figure. Samar brought his dusty car to a halt in front of the gates of his mother’s home and honked for the gardener to open it. Through the bars of the gates, he could see his grandmother sitting on a cane garden chair, motionless, waiting.

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