Kakar - Indian Identity

In the memories of my childhood, the season is always summer. Blazing hot, dry, and invariably dusty, it is the special summer of small district towns in West Punjab, an area that now lies in Pakistan. Each of the townsDera Ghazi Khan, Multan, Lyallpur, Sargodhawhere we would live for two to three years before my father was transferred to another town, indistinguishable from the one we had just left, have coalesced in my memory into one quintessential town. This is a town without character, neither old nor new, and no one is interested in its past history or its future prospects. Through the nostalgic haze of childhood, I can still summon up images of the towns cheerful dirtiness: its narrow, crowded bazaars lined with open, flowing gutters carrying childrens pee, vegetable peelings and eggshells bobbing on the surface of the inky-black water. I can see the flies clustering on mounds of raw brown sugar in eating places where the chipped enamel plates with their blue borders are never clean enough and the smell of fried onions, garlic, cardamom, cloves and turmeric is embedded in the very walls.

The town is also the central market for surrounding villages. After the harvest, ox-carts loaded with gunny bags full of wheat or stacked high with sugarcane stream in. Their arrival is announced by the chiming of small bells that hang around the necks of the oxen drawing the cart, placidly ignoring the mangy, yelping dogs attempts to provoke them. On market days the farmers are accompanied by their gaily-dressed women and excited children, giving the drab town a touch of shy festivity. These large family groups move deliberately from one shop to another, looking at the wares without expression, unhurriedly bargaining for their small luxuriescoloured glass bangles for the women, a piece of cloth for a childs shirt, a burnished copper pot and brass tumblers for the family kitchen.

As a child, I was as much an outsider to the bazaars as any child from the village. We lived a couple of miles away from the heart of the town in what was called the Civil Lines. The Civil Lines and its military counterpart, the Cantonment, were to be found in many towns. They were creations of the British whose rule was approaching its end in the period of which I write, the early 1940s. The houses in the Civil Lines, built at the end of the last century, were sprawling single-storeyed affairs with acres of ground and a number of servants quarters. Lawns and flower beds, a vegetable garden, a pond or a well, groves of fruit-bearing trees (I particularly remember the blood-red oranges of the grove in Sargodha), were often a part of the estate. Not many Englishmen were now left in these towns. There was the deputy commissioner, of course, the chief representative of the Raj, a virtual lord over the half-a-million or so Indians who lived in the district. Then there was the superintendent of police and perhaps the chief medical officer, who were still Englishmen. All the other higher functionaries of the provincial government living in the Civil Lines, together with a couple of lawyers and doctors, were Indians. My father was one of these Indians, a magistrate dispensing justice in the district court and carrying out the tasks of civil administration in the villages.

Generally, I was content to play within the grounds of the house with my friends, mostly the servants children. Climbing trees to eat unripe guavas that inevitably led to stomach-aches, trying to hit pigeons with pebbles from a slingshot, fishing in the pond for non-existent fish with a thread tied to a twig at one end and a bent pin at the other, the secret delights (and fears) of sexual games with Shanti, the sweepers six-year old daughter in one town and Kishen, the washermans precocious five-year old in another, kept me happy enough. The visits to the towns bazaars were outings I thoroughly enjoyed but did not desperately long for. Whenever I did go to the bazaar, though, accompanying a servant on a shopping errand, I quite liked being pampered by the shopkeepers, who all knew me as the magistrate sahibs son. I took this pampering for granted and confused it with the love I felt was my due as the only son of doting parents.

The pamperings continued in the village to which I often accompanied my father on his official tours. These tours, lasting from a week to a fortnight, were virtual expeditions. Bullock carts, and (in some districts) camels, loaded with tents, camping equipment and foodstuff, set off early in the morning while we followed more leisurely with a retinue of servants, policemen and court clerks. By the evening we would reach our destination, a village where my father would inspect the records, hear complaints and adjudicate disputes. In the falling darkness, which became magically alive with moving pinpoints of light given off by fireflies, cooking fires were lit, pleasantly scenting the air with the smoke from burning wood and buffalo-dung cakes. A stream of visitors and favour-seekers from the village would call on my father in our tent. From hundreds of years of experience as a conquered people, the villagers were well-versed in the arts of flattery, and making complimentary remarks about me was a part of their practised repertoire. By the age of six, I knew that the fawning I received from others in our retinue or from the villagers, was not always love, and that I was not the centre of everyones world; of course, my sister had been born by then.