Quite a few longest and hot
days of June have been etched sharply on the pages of world history.
For instance, it was on June 10, 1942 – when
all 172 men and boys above the age of 16 were shot by Nazis in a Czech village.
And June 6, 1944 was the day when Allied forces had invaded Normandy during
World War II, and changed the course of the history. In our local context June
3, 1947 marked the beginning of a new chapter of Indian history. It was on this
day when Lord Mountbatten had formally announced the Partition Plan for
India.
Coincidentally enough, it was June 3, 1984,
when Operation Blue Star, an Indian military operation to remove a Sikh
religio-militant leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers,
from the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar, Punjab, was started. This too
impacted the Indian history, particularly of Punjab, rather violently.
The declaration of the dreaded
division of India on June 3, 1947 triggered, somewhat naturally, a hysterical
exodus of people from both the sides of Punjab. The ill-conceived and
ill-planed migratory process, which unfortunately was painfully bloody, reached
its peak by mid-June.
The following scary migratory
story was enacted around our family of five, which was on its way to some
unknown destination, dates back to mid-June of 1947.
It was a burning day, both
literally and metaphorically, when an Amritsar bound train, loaded with
bewilderingly anxious Hindu-Sikh migrants who were unaware even of their
immediate future, chugged off from Rawalpindi. The train, which ran through all
small stations on its way, halted at Lala Musa Junction, for refuelling the
steam engine with coal and water.
The ill-fated train, surrounded by a
ready-to-attack-any-time crowd, was guarded by a handful armed military persons
of a Gorkha regiment. Frighteningly enough, the train was forced to remain
there, for three long days. For, the engine driver, who happened to be a
Muslim, was persuaded by the mob to leave the station without taking the train
along.
With three kids, the youngest one me being just six
month old, scarce food and water, what physical and mental agony my parents,
along with hundreds others, must have passed through during that extended 72
hour long June Solstice, is much beyond my seemingly jammed imagination.
No wonder both words, even harshest of the harsh,
and colours, darkest of the dark, fail to portray their physically painful and
mentally agonising rail journey.
However, I could perhaps gauge a bit of their
sufferings from two diametrically opposing positions that my parents were
holding in relation to their religious beliefs.
My mother was a deeply devoted religious person,
perhaps because she would believe that we could survive that dreadful long
train journey only because one of the train’s compartment was loaded with
nothing else than a large number of holy Sikh ‘granths’. On the contrary my
always-anguished father was a non-believer and thus never bowed before any
religious icon. May be because he held, perhaps rightly so, the
so-called God responsible for all their miseries.
I am 70 plus. During all these years I have
undertaken, routinely, endless number of train journeys, that includes my first
train journey from Rawalpindi to Amritsar, of which I have no conscious-level
memories.
Believe it or not, since I have attained
consciousness I never ever have slept during any of my train journeys, short or
long. The moment I lie down on a moving train’s berth I feel uncomfortably
giddy, and would relax only on getting up and sitting, fully awake!
Following my father’s footsteps though I am a
non-believer, I often try to find some celestial reason behind my above stated
strange behaviour, as no logical explanation seems to be there.
Hope and wish that every future Summer Solstice
would remain free of conflicts and agonies and spread, throughout the globe,
only warmth of love and peace!
