Page 46 - Train to Pakistan

They shook hands. Meet Singh did not bother to introduce them. Iqbal pushed
the air mattress aside to make room on the charpai for the visitors. He sat down
on the floor himself.

‘I am ashamed for not having presented myself earlier,’ said the Sikh. ‘Please
forgive me. I have brought some milk for you.’

‘Yes, Sahib, we are ashamed of ourselves. You are our guest and we have not
rendered you any service. Drink the milk before it gets cold,’ added the other
visitor. He was a tall lean man with a clipped beard.

‘It is very kind of you …I know you have been busy with the police …I don’t
drink milk. Really I do not. We city-dwellers …’
The lambardar ignored Iqbal’s well-mannered protests. He removed his dirty

handkerchief from a large brass tumbler and began to stir the milk with his
forefinger. ‘It is fresh. I milked the buffalo only an hour back and got the wife to
boil it. I know you educated people only drink boiled milk. There is quite a lot of

sugar in it; it has settled at the bottom,’ he added with a final stir. To emphasize
the quality of the milk, he picked up a slab of clotted cream on his forefinger and
slapped it back in the milk.

‘Here, Babuji, drink it before it gets cold.’
‘No! No! No, thank you, no!’ protested Iqbal. He did not know how to get out
of his predicament without offending the visitors. ‘I don’t ever drink milk. But if

you insist, I will drink it later. I like it cold.’
‘Yes, you drink it as you like, Babuji,’ said the Muslim, coming to his rescue.
‘Banta Singh, leave the tumbler here. Bhai will bring it back in the morning.’

The lambardar covered the tumbler with his handkerchief and put it under
Iqbal’s charpai. There was a long pause. Iqbal had pleasant visions of pouring
the milk with all its clotted cream down the drain.

‘Well, Babuji,’ began the Muslim. ‘Tell us something. What is happening in
the world? What is all this about Pakistan and Hindustan?’
‘We live in this little village and know nothing,’ the lambardar put in. ‘Babuji,

tell us, why did the English leave?’
Iqbal did not know how to answer simple questions like these. Independence
meant little or nothing to these people. They did not even realize that it was a

step forward and that all they needed to do was to take the next step and turn the
make-believe political freedom into a real economic one.
‘They left because they had to. We had hundreds of thousands of young men

trained to fight in the war. This time they had the arms too. Haven’t you heard of