LOVE IN THE TIMES OF TERRORISM

I, Baldev Singh Sahni, am responsible for the death of my child. And my grandchild too, the one not yet born, that she carried in her womb. It is exactly a month after she died, over there, in mid-Atlantic, that these gloomy morbid thoughts keep coming back to me, again and again. These thoughts paralyse me, through shock and fear.

When I had first come here, the population of expatriate Indian community was so small that everyone knew about everyone else. Over the years, things have changed. I was just twenty – three when I came here, with dreams in my eyes and strength in my arms to cut through the sardonic waves of pain and pessimism, the ones that have carried away the bodies of my daughter and many others. These Atlantic waves have defeated me today. They have, in fact, defeated all the Indians in this land, in this city of Toronto. Has this also happened back in India? But where is Anna?

Anna, do you recall the time when we first met?

I call out to Anna. We both, the sad parents, have been ruminating over our past life together, trying desperately to clutch at straws that otherwise would have been blown away by this hurricane that has been unleashed by the crash.

Anna refuses to be drawn out of her reverie today. She wants to keep her counsel. Since the last few days, she has been rummaging through each of the articles of the house, moving meticulously through each room and stripping and piling things used by Maya – cataloguing them, stuffing them with deodorants, placing moth repellents strategically and packing them neatly. She is going about it with a maniacal zeal, possessed as if with some sort of devilish dream.

Once upon a time, I too had possessed this sort of energy. It had been during those early years of my stay at Toronto. I would work for up to twenty hours a day, non-stop, My colleagues, amazed at my capacity and tenacity to go on working at the operating table, without seemingly requiring any rest, for hours together had given me the nickname – Dr. Devil Singh. Later, I do not recall when, but I did become Dr. Devy Sawhney. Dr. Baldev Singh Sahni was lost in the labyrinths of time.

How could I tell my colleagues that it was not merely my will and tenacity that drove me to test the very limits of my physical endurance? I was driven by dreams. And to a large extent, fear. Fear of failure. I did not wish to go back to the hell hole in Ludhiana. I would have preferred dying in an alien land than accept defeat and go scurrying back to the house in which each morsel dished out by my aunt was laced with acerbic remarks.

I realise now that work in itself has a capacity to heal scars. It keeps the senses occupied. Moreover, if it is creative enough, then it works better than any known anaesthesia. Probably Anna too is searching for such anaesthesia in her present work, that which will numb her pain.

I had first met Anna at the Gurdwara. It was attraction at first sight. As soon as I met her, I knew she was the one for me. For three weeks I had followed her but each time when an opportunity presented itself, I would be tongue tied. On one fateful day, I summoned all the courage that was at my disposal and visited Mr. Shamsher Singh Bedi, reputedly the biggest landlord amongst expat Indians in Toronto, to seek his consent to marry his daughter, Anna.

Anna was hardly nineteen. I was twenty eight. The marriage was solemnised in the Gurdwara amidst the chanting of Gurbani. It was a big cultural event, that wedding of ours, since Pandit Ravishankar had consented to play sitar to the accompaniment of the hymns. It had been extensively covered by the local newspapers. Much like the way the newspapers now are covering the crash that has taken place in mid-Atlantic, taking the lives of all the passengers on board.

Oh Maya, you were a trained swimmer. Is there any chance that you could have swum ashore to one of the smaller islands in the mid-Atlantic? The Irish Government has been pretty helpful. They have flown many sorties to locate the wreckage off the coast of Cork, and locate survivors, if any. Yet, could there be any chance that they have missed you After all that ocean is the size of couple of continents put together. With all sorts of sharks and piranhas ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I shudder involuntarily at the incursion of such thoughts that race across my cranium. Yet, the fact of life is that such things happen. Like the time when Anna started to have labour pains at that unearthly hour, 3 AM. I was then so unsure of the fraternity of doctors that I refused to leave her side even when she had been ushered into SCU. Anna had given birth to a baby girl in the early hours of dawn, when the sun was just breaking through those clouds of darkness. We had named her Maya.

Twenty two years have fled past since then. It seems as if I had landed at this place just yesterday. All the memories come flooding back to me as if some reel of silent movie is being projected against the bones of my skull through a projector in fast forward mode.Why did fate choose us for target practice? I have never deliberately hurt anybody! I have conscientiously worked to help people in distress and have generally followed ethical standards. What part did karma play in all this?

Maya had been a good student. A cheerful happy go lucky kind of girl she was. She did not give us much trouble when she was growing up. Though she was wilful and generally naughty as a child, it was not something that is not expected of a lively child. Moreover, it was easy to convince her by logical reasoning and thus make her abide by the standards that prevailed. She was not given to tantrums. And that had been the case till that infatuation of hers when no reasoning or persuasion could dent her will.

Around a year ago, Ajit Virk had come into our lives. It was that fateful year in which the Golden Temple had been stormed by the Army in order to flush out Bhindranwale and his cohorts. To give the devil his due, Bhindranwale had become a very smart operator. First, he convinced the powers in Delhi that he would neutralize the Akalis in the state. Delhi allowed him a free reign. In fact, one of the leaders of the ruling coalition then had gone on record with eulogies for the guy, painting him in the hues of a religious saint. This despite the fact that the state police chief had been shot dead on the steps of Golden Temple by his band of followers. The genie which had been unleashed needed its share of blood. Now it sustains on sussurating whispers and innocent lives.

Ajit had come to me with a letter for me from his mother. I had known his mother since my days in Ludhiana. She was the wife of my closest buddy, Dr. Komal Virk, who had, as the letter had gone on to inform me, died of cardiac arrest the same year. Komal and I were classmates when we were graduating from the University.
The letter had specifically mentioned about Ajit and his past. The lady, with extremely honourable intentions, had informed me in that letter about his proclivities and sympathies to the extremist cause. Ajit had graduated as a chemical engineer from Chandigarh. However, due to some reasons, he had not found decent enough employment for more than a year. During this period of unemployment, he had probably befriended some of the boys from Khalistani Tigers. As it normally happens in such cases, with things getting a little too hot for him in Ludhiana, he had been forced to pack his bags and leave the place.

I knew, I could have turned down his request for lodging with us. Instead, I could have helped him by getting him accommodation in one of the hostels attached to the Gurdwara. I could have saved myself from this onerous responsibility today. Despite Anna's opposition, who had every reason to be alarmed over his past, I had allowed him to stay in the guest room in our house. My adamant attitude had gotten the better of my judgement then. My deep sense of loyalty towards my friend, now deceased, had, in fact blinded me to all the faults of Ajit. I also thought he deserved a second chance given that he may have passed through some emotional turmoil. Exasperated by this decision of mine, Anna had withdrawn into a cocoon of her world till it lay shattered at our doorstep.

Ajit had, from the very beginning, behaved in an extremely gentle fashion and had tried to never give us, his hosts, any reason to complain, except when he would disappear for a day or two without informing us about it or later disclosing his where about during those couple of days. He did this disappearing act couple of times. Anna resented these disappearances and kept insisting that her instinct indicated that Ajit was up to some nefarious activity and this was more than merely a general tendency of one so young to try to live according to his or her own diktats. However, I felt that he was beginning to reconnect with his life and it was not a right time to jettison efforts to bring him back to mainstream.

Ajit. Ajit. That name still rings in my ears. Komal Virk had helped me during the leanest period of my life. It was at his address that my passport, and later the Canadian Visa, had been delivered. I had not wanted my Uncle or Aunt to know about my plans till I had finally crossed all the hurdles of buying air ticket. I had saved pennies. I had scrounged. I had once asked Komal to join me in this venture. He had simply smiled disarmingly and replied—'I love the smell of this land far too much to be able to grow at any other place'.

We both, Komal and myself, were born in Lahore, I had crossed the border that had suddenly sprung up as a thirteen year old, along with my Uncle and Komal 's family. I never met my parents after that migration. The blood of my parents, like the blood of Komal's grandparents and his elder sister, has been mingled in those flower buds that bloom today in India.

This is the tragedy that befalls man. It always so happens that the children repudiate that very logic and basis of life that their parents had chosen. While Komal loved the smell of the land, Ajit, his son, had to flee from the same land.
Maya and Ajit had grown friendly over the period of the year. Neither Anna nor myself had thought much of this budding friendship till one day, when Maya decided to accompany Ajit on his trip to Gurdwara. It clearly indicated her willingness to be seen in public along with Ajit. It was a sign of events to follow.

Maya had, by her own choice trained under Pandit Raviraj in Indian Classical music. She had also then decided to take up Western Classical music as her Major in the University. She did sing well. I mean whenever she sang a Shabd or Kirtan in the Gurdwara, there would not be a soul in the Gurdwara who would not be moved by her rendering of the hymns. It had started as fun, this practise of Maya singing in Gurdwaras. Later on, she had begun to get invitations from cross-country locations for not only singing in Gurdwaras but also sing hymns in the Church. Maya, I love your voice. I love your chirpy smile. Even that imperious haughty look that you some times acquire to maintain aloofness whenever you so want it, I miss your laughter, I miss your joviality. I miss all that and much more.

Twenty-two is hardly the age to die. At twenty-two I was dreaming of the life that lay ahead of me in distant land. In Ludhiana, life begins only after one reaches the threshold of twenty-five years. At least that was the case when I was there. Maya was snatched away from us at that age when she had not even begun to think of the future.

”Allow me to live the way I want to live”. Maya had told her mother when Anna had begun to object to her growing friendship with Ajit. Anna always resented the fact that Ajit, despite her prodding, had never once apologised for his actions of the past and thus to her, it indicated that he had not yet made a clean break from his past. This, according to Anna, had made him equally culpable of being a partner in crime – of killing innocent bystanders. That was the reason why Anna did not want Maya to hobnob with him. The tension in the relationship, between the mother and daughter had grown until it began to manifest itself in body language. Both were headstrong individuals.

”Stop behaving like a stubborn hog dammit. She is old enough to know what she wants. She will have him with your consent if possible and without it if necessary”. I had to intervene to maintain a semblance of domestic peace.

Maya was not ready to wait. Maya was not ready to accept our words of caution and patience. It was as if she had been driven mad. Probably, love is the socially accepted form of madness. Lovers are born, not made. Reason does not apply to them. It denies them the simple consolation of a normal life. The intense belief in the image of the person loved, the intimate act of gnawing at your own being when denied access to that image of the loved one, the ability of the lovers to conjure up the world that is dominated by goblins who bring pain on the wings of air breathed, all this can never be suppressed or even correctly articulated, it can merely be felt. That was how Maya was. She moved in the world of her own, a world of make believe in those early months of 1985, until reality forced that world to fracture.
Around two months ago, Maya had informed Anna about her pregnancy. Maya and Ajit had by then, already arrived at a decision.

“Maya would go stay with my mother for a few days. It is to seek her blessings for our marriage. She would be back in few weeks and then we would get married at the Gurdwara here”. Ajit had said this to us when we had sat down to have dinner one fine evening. Permission had not been sought. We had been informed. So we, the Parents, had no choice but to keep quiet and keep to our own lives.

Maya was to fly to Bombay. Air India Flight 182. June of eighty five. Tickets had been booked by Ajit for he had taken over the management of their affairs.

The report that has been published in Toronto Star reads some what like this :”All the three hundred and twenty-nine people abroad the 747 Jumbo jet of Air India,
Flight Number 182, enroute to Bombay from Toronto have been killed when a terrorist bomb exploded in the plane. The plane and all its passengers went down off the coast of Cork, Ireland. It is being reportedly said that the bomb was put in one of the bags. The X ray machines were out of order and handlers had put it abroad the plane with only a cursory check”.

All the information that I have gleaned from the reports and the note that I carry in my pocket confirm my suspicions. Ajit has disappeared after leaving that fateful note for me. Ajit never came back to house after he had helped Maya board the airplane at Toronto airport for what he knew was to be her last journey. I have not yet handed over the note to the police. Not yet.
That note is in my pocket and it scalds the skin of my chest where ever it touches. I haven’t shown the note to Anna too. I am afraid; it will force her into more extreme position towards me. As it is, she holds me responsible for the death of her child.

“Sorry Uncle, we will need to sacrifice many more lives before we can teach those bastards in Delhi a few lessons.” That is what Ajit has written.

“Yes, go on, teach them a lesson by shedding the blood of innocents. You have indeed avenged the damage to the Golden Temple. Today you have killed eighty-four children to consecrate your temple. Besides these eighty-four children, I also know of one foetus that has been killed to appease your gods. That foetus was my grandchild. Are you happy with the oblations offered via these sacrificed lives!” I shout, silently, in my head, at those tidal waves that bring misery to me. I want to shout at Ajit as well but he is nowhere to be found.

It had been easy for him. This conspiracy. Since he did most of the packing, he would have conveniently hidden the explosives in the luggage of Maya. What is galling is that he used the faith of an innocent girl to carry out his foul deed. He abused the hospitality extended to him by this family. By me.

Where would he be now? “Ajit, you have stabbed me. You have drenched all my dreams with the blood drawn from the foetus of my grandchild.”

I am angry. My Sikh blood boils and seeks revenge.

“Today I take a vow. I will hunt you down Ajit Virk. You better be aware. I will track you down and kill you in cold blood and let hyenas eat your stinking flesh. I shall seek you out whether you hide in heaven or hell. This I swear on my grandchild.”