Delhi (44 page)

‘Mirza Khizr Sultan.’

The third man follows the example of the other two. All three go back and huddle on the ox cart. The crowd watches the scene. You can see some people are getting very agitated. The
burr-burr
of anger becomes a roar. As the cart moves forward, the mob surges behind it.

Hodson Sahib turns round his horse, draws his sword and holds it aloft. ‘Halt,’ he orders. The mob halts and falls silent. Hodson Sahib orders fifty sowars to go ahead with the cart. He and Macdowell Sahib ride up to the mob. The mob withdraws step by step till it is back in the mausoleum gate. Hodson Sahib shouts at the top of his voice, ‘Lay down your arms.’

Another miracle of the Guru! They throw down their swords and muskets on the ground. It takes us two hours to collect them and load them on carts. Never in my life have I known hours like these! And never in my life have I known a man like Hodson Sahib Bahadur! He, as I am always saying, is one of a hundred thousand!

We ride at a smart canter to catch up with our party. There are gangs of armed men all along the road. The gangs become bigger and bigger as we approach the city. We plough our way through and join our party escorting the prisoners. All round us and upto the city walls is this armed mob shouting ‘
Allah-o-
Akbar
’ and brandishing swords at us. I pray to my Guru and promise to offer one rupee four annas at the Chandni Chowk gurdwara if my life is spared. The Guru hears my prayer. Hodson Sahib gallops up to the cart carrying the prisoners and orders it to halt. The
burr-burr
dies down. We are passing through a gate about half-a-mile from the city. On our right is the grey-black ruin of a Mussalman palace with that Buddhist column the one-eyed Rajab Ali was talking about; for the rest it is just a sea of heads, naked sabres and carbines. The sun is about to set. Hodson Sahib raises his hands and turns about in his saddle to speak to everyone. ‘Listen you people of Dilli,’ he roars. The people of Dilli listen. ‘These three men in our custody are murderers. These butchers have the blood of many innocent women and children on their hands. You will now witness the justice of the Company Bahadur. Stand back, see, and remember.’

The crowd falls back. Our sowars form a ring around the ox cart. ‘Get down all three of you and take off your clothes,’ orders Hodson Sahib.

The three men obey. Their faces are yellow. Their hands tremble as they remove their shirts. ‘Everything,’ orders Hodson Sahib again.

Their knees shake as they slip down their pantaloon-type pyjamas. These Mussalmans not only cut the ends of their cock, they also shave their pubic hair. I have never seen sadder looking penises hanging their circumcized heads as if in shame!

‘You Abu Bakr, step out in front,’ orders Hodson Sahib.

A heavily built man of about thirty-five comes up a few faltering steps. He covers his nakedness with his hands.

‘Nihal Singh, take that thing off this man’s arm,’ he orders pointing to a charm tied round Abu Bakr’s arm.

I wrench off the amulet and put it in my pocket.

‘Hand me your carbine.’

I give my carbine to the Sahib.

‘Sahib,
mat maro
—don’t kill,’ wails Abu Bakr, clasping his hands in prayer.

Hodson Sahib aims at his chest.
Thah
. Abu Bakr cries ‘
Hai
Allah
’ and collapses in a pool of blood.

The crowd is struck dumb with terror. Not one person moves. The other two prisoners are more dead than alive when Hodson Sahib shoots them through their heads.

We have three naked corpses sprawled in the dust; blood gushing from their wounds, saliva oozing from their gaping mouths, eyes turning to grey marbles. The thousands of armed men who watched the executions look as dead as the three lying at our feet.

Subedar
Man Singh raises his
kirpan
and shouts: ‘
Jo Boley So
Nihal.
’ We draw our kirpans and reply: ‘
Sat Sri Akal.
’

The corpses are loaded on the cart. We resume our ride back to the city. The crowd melts before us as the mist melts before the rays of the sun. We ride through Daryaganj. At Chandni Chowk we wheel left till we come to our gurdwara. We throw the three corpses on the steps of the gurdwara. We return to the Jamia Masjid to drink rum and eat goat’s meat. Lehna sings of the little old man who wanted to copulate with a she-camel.

Next morning I go to congratulate my Sahib for his great courage. I enter his room and salute. He is writing a letter (he writes a letter to his memsahib every day). ‘Well Nihal Singh!’ he says as if nothing had happened. When I don’t reply he asks, ‘What do you want?’

‘Sahib, I came to pay my respects and congratulate you for your great
bahaduri.
’

He nods his head and goes on writing, as if I am not there. I stand where I am not knowing what next to do. Then I ask: ‘Does Sahib require me for anything?’

He puts his letter inside an envelope, seals it and hands it to me. ‘
Dak.
’

I take the letter. Suddenly he looks a little happier. ‘Ask
Subedar
Man Singh to tell the sowars that the Sahib is very
khush
. Give them as much rum as they like. No more work for some time.’ After a pause he asks: ‘What are they saying in the camp?’

‘Sahib, each time your name is uttered people say
“Wah
!
Wah
!
”

He is pleased. Then I asked him of a story I had heard just before I left Jamia Masjid. ‘Sahib, is it true that the heads of the three men you shot were cut off and presented to the old king? What did he say?’

Hodson Sahib’s expression changes. He looks me in the eye. ‘Nihal Singh, where did you pick up that gossip?’

‘Sahib...People are saying...’

‘Listen’ he cuts me short. ‘The sahibs are a civilized people; they are not like the natives of Hindustan. They do not cut off people’s heads and present them on trays to their relatives. The Company Bahadur is just—strong but just. Understand!’

‘]ee huzoor
,’ I reply, I salute the Sahib and return to Jamia Masjid.

Bahadur Shah Zafar

A messenger was let into our dungeon to break the news of the deaths of our kinsmen and supporters. Our two sons, Mirza Mughal and Mirza Khizr, and grandson Mirza Abu Bakr were shot dead. We made no protest but only sent a petition that whatever was recovered by the sale of our property be expended on giving a proper burial to the dead. The bodies of Mirza Mughal, Abu Bakr and Khizr Sultan were interred in the mausoleum of Emperor Humayun. The
nawabs
of Jhajjar and Farrukhnagar who were hanged were buried in their family graveyards adjoining the tomb of Hazrat Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki at Mehrauli. The Raja Bahadur of Ballabhgarh, who was also hanged, being a Hindu was cremated at Nigambodh Ghat on the Jamna. Of the fate of our other sons and nephews and grandsons who were also executed we could not get any details save that their bodies were buried either at Nizamuddin or at Mehrauli. Amongst the thousands shot or hanged by the sahibs was our friend and poet Shaikh Imam Baksh ‘Sabhai’ and his two sons. No one knows what they did with their bodies.

An autumnal gale had blown through the garden that was once our kingdom. It uprooted every tree. We lost our peace of mind. We lost the will to live. As a captive bird beats its wings against the bars of its cage, we banged our head against the walls of our dungeon and lamented our fate. There was a time when the world seemed like a flower garden where the afternoon sun warmed the buds to unlock their treasure chest. The same world now exuded the stench of a hundred thousand rotting corpses. Here was a city bathed in the day by the sun, by the moon by night; here was a city in which lived women as beauteous as the houris of paradise. Who despoiled this city? Where has he taken away the loot? This was Delhi, the queen of all the cities of the world, now a ruined desolation. ‘O Zafar, what calamity has come to pass? Or is it that thy own youth hath fled?’

It would take an ink-well full of tears to write of the way we were treated. At all hours people peered through the windows to gaze at us as if we were some kind of animal. The gates of our dungeon would be suddenly thrown open for parties of sahibs. Our womenfolk hid their faces against the wall. We had to stand up and
salaam
every white man and woman. They taunted us: ‘You wanted to become Emperor of India, did you?’ Sometimes a young
gora
imitated the bleating of a goat. ‘
Budha
man where are your young wives?’ he would ask. And all of them would laugh. We accepted the insults as the will of Allah.

Our request for pen and paper was refused. We saved pieces of charcoal from our
hookah
and used the walls of our dungeon as our slate. We spent our time in prayer and in composing poetry.

In our younger days we had composed a verse on a lover’s complaint at being imprisoned and tormented by his beloved. These lines which had become very popular ran somewhat as follows:

Why should our beloved jailer not torment us?

May God not place anyone at anyone else’s mercy.

How appropriate were these lines when the jailer was not the beloved but an enemy!

The worth of the white man’s plighted word was soon made clear to us. He called us savages because our troops had killed white women and children. People who knew swore that we had done our best to prevent these killings. The sahibs refused to believe us. For the three dozen of their own killed they slew more than a thousand times three dozen. Despite solemn assurances conveyed to us by Rajab Ali, that one-eyed product of evil seed, that bootlicking bastard, we were put up for trial. The sahibs were our accusers, our attorneys and our judges. They lined up men who had eaten our salt—Hakeem Ahsanullah, the
dervish
Hassan Askari, Rajab Ali, Ghulam Abbas, Mukund Lai—to repeat parrot-wise what they had been told to say.

It grieves us to record that amongst those who turned their tongues against us was the half-caste, Ayesha Aldwell. We had risked our own life to save the life of this woman and her three daughters. This Ayesha’s mother had taken a
gora
husband. Ayesha had been brought up as a Mussalmani. But as she inherited a lighter skin from her father and from him learnt to
git mit
in English she passed off as a white woman and married an old gora. We could not save her husband. But as she recited verses from the holy
Quran
and made her daughters repeat the
kalima
, we were able to intercede on her behalf. We had hoped she would testify to all that we had done for her. She proved false to both faiths, the Muslim and the Christian. May Allah punish her!

Allah was our only witness. No mortal dared to open his mouth in our favour. They pronounced us guilty on all charges levelled against us. We were sentenced to be exiled from the land our ancestors had conquered and ruled for three hundred years. We would rather they had sentenced us to die and let our bones mingle in the sacred dust of Delhi.

Fourteen begums and our son Jawan Bakht agreed to share the misfortune of our exile. Later many of them changed their mind and on one pretext or another deserted us before we crossed the boundaries of Hindustan. Our beloved Zeenat Mahal stayed by our side. She remained our companion in the camel-litter of misery and our comrade in the closest of affection. We were reminded of the words our Holy Prophet used for his wife Khadijahi: ’When I was poor she enriched me; when all the world abandoned me, she comforted me; when I was called a liar, she believed in me.’

On our journey we composed the following lines:

My beloved tormented me so much

We were forced to leave our native land;

As drops wax from the burning taper

So as we quit the circle of life

Fell tears from our eyes.

The gardener forbade us sporting in his garden,

With laughter we came,

With wailing we parted.