City of Djinns. William Dalrymple

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       THREE

      ‘OUR VILLAGE was famous for its sweets,’ said Punjab Singh. ‘People would come for miles to taste the jalebis our sweet-wallahs prepared. There were none better in the whole of the Punjab.’

      We were sitting on a charpoy at International Backside Taxi Stand. For weeks I had been begging Balvinder’s father to tell me the story of how he had come to Delhi in 1947. A stern and sombre man, Punjab would always knit his eyebrows and change the subject. It was as if Partition were a closed subject, something embarrassing that shouldn’t be raised in polite conversation.

      It was only after a particularly persistent bout of badgering, in which Balvinder took my side, that Punjab had agreed to relent. But once started, he soon got into the swing of his story.

      ‘Samundra was a small and beautiful village in District Lyallpur,’ he said. ‘It was one of the most lovely parts of the whole of the Punjab. We had a good climate and very fertile land. The village stood within the ruins of an old fort and was surrounded on four sides by high walls. It was like this.’

      With his hands, the old man built four castle walls. From the details that he sketched with his fingers you could see he remembered every bastion, every battlement, each loophole.

      ‘Our village was all Sikh apart from a few Hindu sweepers. Our neighbours were Mahommedan peoples. We owned most of the land but before 1947 we lived like brothers. There were no differences between us …’ Punjab stroked his beard. He smiled as he recalled his childhood.

      ‘On the 15th of August 1947 the Government announced Partition. We were not afraid. We had heard about the idea of Pakistan, but we thought it would make no difference to us. We realized a Mahommedan government would take over from the Britishers. But in our Punjab governments often come and go. Usually such things make no difference to the poor man in his village.

      ‘Then, quite suddenly, on the 10th of September, we got a message from the Deputy Commissioner in Lyallpur. It said: "You people cannot stay. You must leave your house and your village and go to India." Everyone was miserable but what could we do? All the villagers began loading their goods into bullock carts. The old men were especially sad: they had lived their whole lives in the village. But we were young and could not understand why our grandfathers were crying.

      ‘In the villages round about the Mahommedans heard we were being forced to move. Many came and said: "You must stay, do not go," but others were thinking dirty thoughts. They wanted to take our possessions.

      ‘At about six or seven o’clock on the morning we were due to leave, too many Muslim peoples—perhaps five or six thousand—suddenly appeared outside our fort, waving their swords and calling us dogs and infidels. The watchmen shut the gates. Inside, there were only nine hundred of us, including old women and childrens. We had no weapons. We thought we would be killed.

      ‘Then the Pradhan [head] of the Sweet-Makers said: "We have no guns but we have our pans and our sugar and our water. Let us make jalebis for our Muslim friends." Some of our people thought that the Sweet-Maker had gone mad, and they shook their heads and tore the bristles from their beards. They said: "This is crazy man. The Mahommedan peoples will not go away when they taste our delicious jalebis. Instead they will come inside and kill us." These old men were very sad and went off to the gurdwara to say their prayers.

      ‘But the Sweet-Maker took his assistants up on to the battlements and he built a big fire. He boiled the water in a pan and he added the sugar. He stirred the mixture until it was thick and flies were buzzing all around. He told the other mithai-wallahs to take their pans and to make jalebis over the other three gates. His assistants did as he said.

      ‘Down below, the Mahommedans had a tree trunk and were running with it against the great gates of the fort, but the gates still held. Eventually the mixture was ready, and the Pradhan shouted down: "You like our jalebis?" and he tilted his pan over the parapet. The boiling sugar poured over the wicked Muslims and they were all burned alive.’

      Punjab beamed a bright smile: ‘All day and all night these dirty Mahommedans tried to find a way to enter the fort, but whenever they tried to get near the gates the sweet-makers gave them a taste of our celebrated jalebis. Then, some time about two a.m. the second night, our peoples saw headlights coming towards us across the fields. It was the British army. They had seen the fires of the sweet-makers burning on the battlements and had come to investigate. The convoy was led by an English colonel. He fired six shots into the air and the Mahommedan fellows ran off into the night as if their Shaitan [satan] was after them.

      ‘The next day the English colonel evacuated us in his trucks. We were only able to take one small bag each, and we had to leave all our carts and goats and sheep and buffalo and oxen. This made us very sad, but at least we were alive. The colonel took us to Amritsar and from there we caught the train to Delhi. Ah! To me Delhi was a wonderful town. I was amazed by all the beautiful cars in the streets. All the Mahommedan tonga-wallahs had gone to Pakistan, so I decided to become a taxi-wallah. This is the job I have been doing ever since.

      ‘After that day, for good luck, my brother Kulwinder began to make jalebis. He still has a shop in Begampur and I have heard some people say that he makes the best jalebis in all of Delhi …’

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