Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh Read Free Book Online Page B

of a next-door neighbour all this time. ‘Was it communal? Is it all right for me to be here? I do not suppose I can do much if the village is all excited about a murder.’
    ‘Why, Babu Sahib, you have come to stop killing and you are upset by one murder?’ asked Meet Singh, smiling. ‘I thought you had come to stop such things, Babu Sahib. But you are quite safe in Mano Majra,’ he added. ‘Dacoits do not come to the same village more than once a year. There will be another dacoity in another village in a few days and people will forget about this one. We can have a meeting here one night after the evening prayer and you can tell them all you want. You had better rest. I will come back and tell you what happens.’
    The old man hobbled out of the courtyard. Iqbal collected the empty tin, his knife and fork and tin plate, and took them to the well to wash.
    In the afternoon, Iqbal stretched himself on the coarse string charpai and tried to get some sleep. He had spent the night sitting on his bedroll in a crowded third-class compartment. Every time he had dozed off, the train had come to a halt at some wayside station and the door was forced open and more peasants poured in with their wives, bedding and tin trunks. Some child sleeping in its mother’s lap would start howling till its wails were smothered by a breast thrust into its mouth. The shouting and clamour would continue until long after the train had left the station. The same thing was repeated again and again, till the compartment meant for fifty had almost two hundred people in it, sitting on the floor, on seats, on luggage racks, on trunks, on bedrolls, and on each other, or standing in the corners. There were dozens outside perched precariouslyon footboards, holding onto the door handles. There were several people on the roof. The heat and smell were oppressive. Tempers were frayed and every few minutes an argument would start because someone had spread himself out too much or had trod on another’s foot on his way to the lavatory. The argument would be joined on either side by friends or relatives and then by all the others trying to patch it up. Iqbal had tried to read in the dim light speckled with shadows of moths that fluttered round the globe. He had hardly read a paragraph before his neighbour had observed:
    ‘You are reading.’
    ‘Yes, I am reading.’
    ‘What are you reading?’
    ‘A book.’
    It had not worked. The man had simply taken the book out of Iqbal’s hand and turned over its pages.
    ‘English.’
    ‘You must be educated.’
    Iqbal did not comment.
    The book had gone round the compartment for scrutiny. They had all looked at him. He was educated, therefore belonged to a different class. He was a babu.
    ‘What honourable noun does your honour bear?’
    ‘My name is Iqbal.’
    ‘May your Iqbal [fame] ever increase.’
    The man had obviously taken him to be a Muslim. Just as well. All the passengers appeared to be Muslims on their way to Pakistan.
    ‘Where does your wealth reside, Babu Sahib?’
    ‘My poor home is in Jhelum district,’ Iqbal had answered without irritation. The answer confirmed the likelihood of his being Muslim: Jhelum was in Pakistan.
    Thereafter other passengers had joined in the cross-examination. Iqbal had to tell them what he did, what his source of income was, how much he was worth, where he had studied, why he had not married, all the illnesses he had ever suffered from. They had discussed their own domestic problems and diseases and had sought his advice. Did Iqbal know of any secret prescriptions or herbs that the English used when they were ‘run down’? Iqbal had given up the attempt to sleep or read. They had kept up the conversation till the early hours of the morning. He would have described the journey as insufferable except that the limits to which human endurance could be stretched in India made the word meaningless. He got off at Mano Majra with a sigh of relief. He could breathe the