The Blood Divide by A. A. Dhand

Author:A. A. Dhand [Dhand, A. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473567900
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2021-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY

THE HOLIEST PLACE IN Sikhism, the Golden Temple, was as ever a calming site for the man everyone knew only as Sahib. He was sitting in his electronic wheelchair, listening to the soothing sound of the Granthis, the ceremonial readers who read continuously from the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib. Their prayers were being transmitted through speakers located in the lofty domes of the temple, a few kilometres from where he was sitting.

On first appearance, Sahib looked like a child, dressed from head to toe in a thin orange cloak on which were etched the religious symbols of the Khalsa: a circle and three swords. The cloak protected him from ultraviolet light, which was toxic to his skin, such as he had left. Seventy-two years ago, when he had been only twenty-one years old, Sahib had been doused in petrol and set alight – but not to die. That would have been too easy.

Sahib had suffered ninety per cent burns to his body and then been taken to the hospital by his aggressors and kept alive.

Not out of compassion.

No, as a reminder – a living message that would be spoken about for decades until he eventually died and his story became legend.

But in saving his life, his aggressors had created a force far more powerful than they could ever have imagined.

The guards outside his residence were waiting for instruction. So far, Sahib remained silent.

He moved his wheelchair slowly across the marble floor to the other end of his four-storey residence. Heading out on to the balcony, he made sure his body was shielded from the sun. From here, he could see the farm and the young boys practising sword-fighting in the fields, training to become the Khalsa one day.

Khalsa, the Sikh warriors. Sahib was perhaps the oldest one alive today.

The farm was twenty acres of sacred land. The boundary was close to the border of Pakistan and was constantly patrolled, although bloodshed was seldom these days, unlike in the 1950s and 1960s when daily skirmishes had resulted in loss of life.

The fields were bare now. The rice had been harvested, leaving the soil naked and exposed. Sahib had a workforce of almost a hundred men. They looked after the land like it was their own. The soil was sacred. It was where so many battles had been fought, all of them successfully. Those were the times when men faced each other with a sword.

Painful memories.

Especially of the night that changed everything. A terrible night of consequences, engineered albeit accidentally by white men who had vacated the region.

The British had divided India without any consideration for what would happen when they were no longer in charge. They didn’t much care. Through almost one hundred years of torment, they had ravaged the land and looted riches that would keep their empire wealthy for centuries to come.

No one perhaps could have foreseen the level of devastation that would be caused by the drawing of a single line on a map. The British lawyer tasked with doing it had never even set foot in India.

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