Free River Town Chronicles by Leighton Hazlehurst Page B

sir. What language are you speaking?” When I replied we were speaking English, he looked stunned and disappointed. “I don’t understand a word you are saying.” I explained that American English sounded different, like the different dialects of Hindi sound different from one another. He looked doubtful, but let the matter rest.
    About three hours after we left the station, the Sardar let out a couple of sharp snorts, opened his eyes and belched. He looked around and seemed disappointed to find himself in a crowded second class compartment instead of wherever he had been in his dreams. He rubbed both eyes and yawned as he slowly raised himself to a sitting position. He looked around sleepy eyed at the people standing in the crowded aisle, streched his arms out wide and scratched himself. “Sardar jii, where are you traveling to,” a villager dressed in dhoti and kurta asked in a local village dialect. “Meerut. I’m going to Merrut,” replied the Sardar speaking in Punjabi. The villager nodded his approval and looked away, as if relieved to find out that the Sardar would vacate his monopoly of the train compartment’s bench after a few more stops. The Sardar stood up and pulled down a small suitcase from the overhead luggage rack and placed it on the bench. He was a large man, over six feet tall. The passengers in the aisle backed away to give him room. He sat down, opened the suitcase and inspected its contents. He pulled out a small mirror and looked at his reflection. Then he gathered up his hair in his hands and swirled it around, tying it in a knot on top of his head, before taking another glance in the mirror. He took a long piece of pink cloth from his suitcase and wound it around his head into a turban. The children were fascinated by the Sardar’s routine. He smiled at them and asked them in flawless, British accented English where they were going. “To Delhi,” Tim replied. The Sardar told him he should visit the State of Punjab and the Golden Temple in Amritsar. “Then your visit to India will be complete.” Others in the compartment murmured their agreement and there began a general discussion of the glory of the Punjab and the Sikhs. The Sardar seemed pleased, and continued to look at his reflection in the mirror. Just before reaching the train stop in Merrut, he pulled on a pair of pants and shirt from his suitcase and slipped into a pair of black loafers. He adjusted the pink turban once more and made his way to the exit door of the compartment. The train pulled up to the stop in Merrut, the Sardar exited the train and a crush of bodies lurched forward to fill the void left by the Sardar’s abandonment of his uncontested place on the bench.
    There were many stereotypes of Sikhs held by some Hindus in the area. They were considered by some to be unpredictable, sometimes docile, sometimes arrogant and hostile. Those who held these stereotypes thought the best policy was to avoid confronting them, as the passengers in the train compartment had done. Even their language, Punjabi, carried a message. Sometimes when Roshan and I traveled together, Roshan would switch from Hindi to Punjabi to gain the upper hand in any confrontation, as if to say “don’t mess with me” even though he belonged to a Hindu merchant caste and had very little contact with Sikhs.
    We slept sitting up during the rest of the trip to Delhi, arriving in the late afternoon. We pushed our way through the crowds onto the train platform and towards the taxi stand outside the station. We climbed into the first unoccupied taxi we found and headed for the bungalow I had reserved at Fonseca’s. We couldn’t wait to take long, hot, soaking baths in the tub, and the children were trying to remember what a flush toilet was like. We would, for a short time, be free from our life in River Town and the wrath of Kaga. We longed to eat western food and roam the bookstores and