Born Again

“Terrorists kill 11”, the headlines screamed. The bus had been travelling from Amritsar to Gurdaspur. It had been stopped short of Veela Bajju and the gun totting pair had made the driver turn along the canal into the narrow muddy path. I could see the sandy path; Kikkar trees lined the canal, shrubs and bushes added to the thicket. Some eucalyptus and Jamun trees fell away in varying heights along the descent from the path to the fields around 50 metres below.

I could see some children running, two girls and three boys as the boys stripped off their clothes till they were in their underpants and jumped into the clear water of the canal. A thin dark wiry boy with a heavy knot of hair on his head followed and watched the agile swimmers with the girls. He was breathing heavily and took two puffs from the inhaler that he carried everywhere. He had just recovered from a serious attack of asthma and wasn’t a keen swimmer anyway, preferring to spend his day immersed in the adventures of the characters of the books he read.

There was blood there now, growing, staining the pale brown mud turning it darker. A splash in the canal followed by another as two of “the members of one community’ fell in, still spluttering with life while the bullets in their livers and intestines and lungs lay motionless having wreaked their damage, the air rushing into punctured lungs building up the pressure so that the muscles of inspiration had to work harder to draw in air through the windpipe. I wondered who they were. I couldn’t see them clearly, the faces could be anyone’s. Were they from the village? No, the bus was going to Gurdaspur so they were probably from the city. The bus was running late after they had a small snag just out of Amritsar. Luckily they weren’t far from the workshop so the driver took them in and the passengers alighted grumbling and sat sunning themselves in the evening sun. It was becoming a little chilly, there were only two middle aged women and a couple of teenage boys, the rest being men returning from business in the city. Few people traveled these days and those that did took the morning or afternoon buses.

The last time I went home to Veela had been two months back and I still got goosebumps when I thought about it. A pall of gloom descended on the bus as it left Chandigarh and headed towards Batala. From Batala I took another bus. There was an old man from the village who recognized me and greeted me asking after my father. Having gone for school to Chandigarh and now college as well, I often failed to recognize people from back home, my memory stamps of faces had been pushed into the further recesses of my mind, the more accessible spots being taken up by memories of my suffocating, gasping for breath, being rushed to the hospital and waiting for what seemed to be interminably long periods of time while my grandfather rushed to get the injections which would magically open up my lungs again letting the life-giving air in. They had said the attacks would get better as I grew, yet I was 18 now and they still occurred with unfailing regularity, almost like clockwork, twice a year.

My father said that the police were doing the killings. That Bhindranwale would never order or sanction any such mayhem. Yes, he preached that we, as Sikhs, as the pure had lost our way, had lost our religion, the youngsters giving up tradition for fashion. Cutting their locks for fashion, giving up our identities as warriors of the faith. We had fought the mughals humbling their Emperors by steadfastness in sticking to our religion even in the face of grotesque torture as the fifth and ninth Gurus had done; yet now we were deviating from our religion. As for these Hindus, they had always treated us as second-class citizens and it was time we stood up fro our rights.

Suddenly dark blue and orange turbans were sold by the dozens, beards were no longer trimmed, friends became avidly religious, the blue and orange and flowing beards became the new fashion. I stayed away from them, former friends arousing a fear in me as I watched turn into rabid Sikhs, their minds taken over the mass hysteria in the air, infectious sparing few. I worried for my sister, an avowed rebel who went against the stream, swimming madly upstream always. They banned trousers for girls so she wore them not seeing what they had to do with religion. They didn’t, I told her, but these men were not talking of religion, it was all about power and control,

I watched all this from outside but she got involved in questioning the validity of the religious aficionados. I retreated, shut myself up, an outsider watching the going ons. I hadn’t made many friends in Chandigarh. The boys went out daily, on their motorbikes and scooters, going where the girls were. I was not someone the girls would look at, they didn’t even notice me, a scrawny dark Sikh with an ever-growing knot of hair that stood out from the confines of my turban even. It was a major task washing my hair, my grandmother would help me but I tried to do it myself, in an attempt to avoid her exclamations over my protruding ribs and scapulae, embarrassed by her comments about my body to all and sundry. I wanted to end it all. Cut off my hair, not seeing how having this weighty encumbrance sitting on my head helped to make me a better human being. It identified me as a Sikh, no doubt, still I would prefer to look like a Madrasi ( south Indian), I didn’t mind that. Lately though another thought had taken over my mind. I had thought of suicide earlier but now it was in my head incessantly.

I would walk to college and crossing the roads, watching the buses whizz past made me want to launch myself in front of them, stand in front of the oncoming bus facing it with my arms askance. It was almost irresistible, the thought and it made my heart beat faster, gave me a rush, a heady feeling. I walked on with the rest but apart from them, watching them go by, already in a separate world. I watched as the serious students sat in the front rows concentrating, the others as they played their pranks secure in the knowledge of inheriting their father’s businesses. All seemed the same to me, immersed in the world. I wondered, studying hard would get me places, I could try for the civil services as my relatives tried to persuade me to consider it. Yet it all seemed inconsequential, frivolous even.

I didn’t believe in God and I wondered, if I had to live for another 60 years and then die, then why not now? I went along with my parents in their religious beliefs not wishing to hurt them but I didn’t believe any of it and I came to realize more and more that going along with them despite being a non believer was not the path for me. Was that life, to go along for the sake of not hurting others? They were religious people, surely they would see how we all need to be who we are, even if we choose to die. That was being too optimistic, I knew they wouldn’t see it that way. They would see it as a big betrayal, as a big let down by the son they had expected so much from.

As I lay in bed and masturbated at night, one of the few things that made me feel alive, I wondered. I could go and jump into the lake. My health had made sure I never learnt swimming. I could see my body as it rose to the surface on the third day, my stomach swollen from the gases of death, my knot having come undone and flowing all around my head, some leaves entangled in the dark brown tresses, like Ophelia almost, only dark and hairy and male. My mother looked at me, eyes swollen from the crying, uncomprehending. Vacant eyes forevermore. My father looked angry, wanting to kill me again, never the son he desired but no other to make up for the loss. My sister, the fighter, floated to the surface briefly for a time swimming with the current now, gasping, she would be all right though. That is when I decided. I got up, washed my hands clean of the semen, opened my hair, the scissors were old and I had a time of it cutting the tresses till the hair lay all around. Then I took my roommate’s razor and shaved my beard off nicking myself in a few spots, the blood falling in spots on the newspapers I had spread to catch my hair. Hair and blood, I masturbated again. It was an initiation. Hair and blood and semen.

It was 5 am outside, the sky was still dark, it was cold outside, I usually wore double the clothing most of the other boys did but today I didn’t feel cold. I had been born again. I did look like a south Indian without all the hair, in fact even I could hardly recognize myself. I disposed off the hair in a bin in the adjacent hostel and cleaned up my room. I wrote a note, “ Leaving, Don’t worry, I’m alright. Don’t look for me.” I caught the bus to Delhi, away from the gloom that hung over Punjab, the gloom of death. I walked the entire day, saw a movie, ate an ice cream, and had a drink. It was my first, a beer, my father didn’t drink and I had never thought of it before. When it was dark, I caught a taxi to the river. I stood on the banks looking at the water down below. I thought I saw three heads bobbing up and down and laughter as the boys swam in the canal by Veela Bajju. The two girls and I stood and watched them, having fun by proxy, by just watching them. I had never joined them before, but I had left the past behind now. I was fresh, anew. I wanted to swim, laugh with them. I jumped in.