Why I like "Train to Pakistan" ?Well, it is a perfect novel.The true magnum opus of such a celebrated authour.Khuswant Singh is famous for his stories of love, lust and sex, best represented in "The company of Women" and to a great extent in "Burial At Sea". But how can a reader imagine that the writers of the two novel were really same! This novel cantained everything in equal proportion.
The epicentre of the novel is Mano Majra, a small village devoid of the antipathy between Hindu and Muslim despite the opposite current in rest of the country.But the seeds of poison are sown and they start growing . It doesn't take much time for a man to turn a beast. During the troublesome time of partition , the country receives countless corpses of Hindu people across the border in the train from Pakistan.In the river Sutlej, the vilagers of Mano Majro find cadavers and are baffeled by the situation.Already Ramlal, a well-to-do hindu money-lender, was murderd by Malli and his gang.The suspicion falls on Juggut Singh, the son of a late dacoit, who is entrapped in the love of Nooran, the daughter of Immam Baksh, the mullah of the village mousque and a poor weaver by profession..A foreign-returned communist also reaches the venue to enlighten the people and fulfil his political ambition.Iqbal, the communist has deep hatred for the bourgeois administration . He wants revolution and thereby fame to construct a political career.People are misled and in a highly emotional phase they succumb to the proposal of killing the muslims who will board the train to Pakistan as a revenge for the attrocities perpetrated on the hindus in Pakistan. "What have the muslims here done to us for us to kill them in revenge for what muslims in Pakistan are doing?" was the question of meet Singh, bhai of the village gurudwara. The question remained unanswered. People are ready to kill the muslims and they fasten a rope above the surface of the train's roof so that the people on roof would fall in the lap of death.Hukum Chand , the magistrate and the sub-inspector are unable to do anything in this chaotic situation as "The bullet does not pause and consider.This is Hukum Chand.I must not touch him." Finally its Jugga, the former dacoit who sacrifices hislife and saves the life of many.
We must expect the typical Indian English from Khuswant Singh who took enormous pains to translate even obsceneties of some of the characters. The villagers and that too a sikh village dwellers can't but speak in the language of the soil. So we find the realistic and photografic representation on the part of the language.
This novel is not a work of fiction or imagination.Nothing but the proper names can be passed as untrue in the novel. Mano Majra is the microcosm of entire India where once existed a harmonious relationship between the two arch rival communities of the given era. Imam Baksh was right in quoting "Not forever lasts the spring." We can also say that Mano Majro is the symbol of anyplace where hatred poisons mutual love and affection existing between cohesive races. The depiction of the incident of lizard and the fly in the house of Hukum Chand symbolises the changing relation between the malefactor and the victim. Sometimes the hindus ane the victims in the hands of the muslims and sometimes vice verca.However the treatment of actions is euphemistic though not at the expense of realism.The negative capability is a great art of Khuswant Singh which he used magnificiently to make the characters lifelike. At the culminating point of the novel where the readers are on the zenith nof suspense and horror, the curiosity of Meet Singh for the air matress is super humourous by virtue of its incongruity.
Ultimately it was niether the civilised , fame seeking-communist who mioght have done sacrifice only if there had been vedeo coverage and afterlife like the protagonists of films, nor the circumspect prudential Hukum Chand, the magistrate but the man who came to the redemption of the innocent muslims was Jugga budmash who had the real love for humanity for all his failings.
UMESH PATRA
M.A.(PREVIOUS)
BHU
