Page 44 - Train to Pakistan

it towards the dak bungalow when he noticed a Sikh soldier watching him from

the sentry box at the end of the bridge. Iqbal changed his mind and walked
boldly up to the rail embankment and turned towards Mano Majra station. The
manoeuvre allayed the sentry’s suspicion. Iqbal went a hundred yards up and

then casually sat down on the railway line.
The passing express had woken Mano Majra from its late siesta. Boys threw
stones at the buffaloes in the pond and drove them home. Groups of women

went out in the fields and scattered themselves behind the bushes. A bullock cart
carrying Ram Lal’s corpse left the village and went towards the station. It was

guarded by policemen. Several villagers went a little distance with it and then
returned along with the relatives.
Iqbal stood up and looked all round. From the railway station to the roof of the
rest house showing above the plumes of pampas, from the bridge to the village

and back to the railway station, the whole place was littered with men, women,
children, cattle, and dogs. There were kites wheeling high up in the sky, long

lines of crows were flying from somewhere to somewhere, and millions of
sparrows twittered about the trees. Where in India could one find a place which
did not teem with life? Iqbal thought of his first reaction on reaching Bombay.
Milling crowds—millions of them—on the quayside, in the streets, on railway

platforms; even at night the pavements were full of people. The whole country
was like an overcrowded room. What could you expect when the population

went up by six every minute—five million every year! It made all planning in
industry or agriculture a mockery. Why not spend the same amount of effort in
checking the increase in population? But how could you, in the land of the Kama
Sutra, the home of phallic worship and the son cult?

Iqbal was woken from his angry daydreaming by a shimmering sound along
the steel wires which ran parallel to the railway lines. The signal above the

sentry’s box near the bridge came down. Iqbal stood up and brushed his clothes.
The sun had gone down beyond the river. The russet sky turned grey as shades
of twilight spread across the plain. A new moon looking like a finely pared

fingernail appeared beside the evening star. The muezzin’s call to prayer rose
above the rumble of the approaching train.
Iqbal found his way back easily. All lanes met in the temple—mosque—

moneylender’s house triangle with the peepul tree in the centre. Sounds of
wailing still came from Ram Lal’s house. In the mosque, a dozen men stood in
two rows silently going through their genuflections. In the gurdwara, Meet