This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach by Yashpal

Author:Yashpal [Yashpal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9788184758009
Google: P2Pd3rRhy40C
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2010-07-04T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 3

A TEEMING MULTITUDE OF HARRIED HINDUS, DRIVEN OUT OF THEIR homeland, was winding its way towards East Punjab in search of refuge. They travelled in vehicles and on foot, escorted by Indian soldiers. One such convoy arrived at a refugee camp in Amritsar. The passengers began to unload whatever little they had been able to carry with them. At the head of the convoy was a truckload of armed soldiers, and just behind it, a station wagon with the women rescued from Shaikhupura. These women had nothing to unload; all they had were the clothes on their backs. Led by Kaushalya Devi, this group was the first to enter the camp through a gate in the boundary wall.

The brightly lit compound echoed with the sound of human voices. Tents and bivouacs dotted the yard around a central building. People walked around busily and purposefully. Kaushalya Devi, with her group of women in tow, was heading towards a veranda at the front of the building when they heard a woman keening.

Under the electric light in the veranda a young woman sat sobbing loudly, her head and face shrouded in a soiled, torn dupatta. Two other young women sat next to her in mournful silence; under their dupattas, their faces expressed dejection and pain. Their dirty ragged clothes and their black dupattas were in the Muslim style, but were worn in a way that revealed that they were Hindu.

Recognizing the silent women, Kaushalya Devi pointed at the one who was wailing, ‘Isn’t that Chinti?’

One woman nodded. Kaushalya Devi was surprised, and said, ‘Hai, why? Didn’t they find the address of her family at the Loha Garh camp?’

The woman who had answered sighed deeply, ‘Her parents refused to take her back. We got her married off, they said, now she’s her in-laws’ problem. The parents are right,’ she sighed again slowly, ‘they had got rid of her as a burden.’

The women from Shaikhupura heard that. The woman’s reply upset them so much that they felt the ground shift under their feet. They lowered their heads. This was their first experience of how people greeted returning lost ones in the new country.

Kaushalya Devi busied herself with rewrapping her dupatta as she turned away from the sobbing woman, and said to the ones in her group, ‘Wait here, all of you.’ She hurried to a tent across from the veranda.

She returned as quickly and asked the two women, ‘Where has everybody gone?’

The women gave her no answer. Holding one corner of her dupatta between her fingers Kaushalya Devi went off again, brisk and businesslike, towards the right.

Men and women from the convoy, with children in their arms or on their shoulders, pulling along or carrying their belongings, began to enter through the gate. Their expensive-looking clothes were now crumpled and soiled. Exhausted middle-aged women, girls of tender age and soft-skinned young women came, hugging or holding sleeping or weeping children with one hand and balancing heavy bundles and baskets with the other. When they

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