Hot and hurting June days

Balvinder

AFTER chugging off from Rawalpindi, an Amritsar-bound train, overloaded with anxious and reluctant Hindu-Sikh migrants, halted for refuelling the steam engine with coal and water, at Lala Musa Junction. The train was stuck there for three days, as the engine driver, a Muslim, was persuaded by a frenzied mob to leave the station.

The ill-fated train, surrounded by a mob that was ready to attack anytime, was protected by a few armed military men of the Gorkha regiment.

With three kids, the youngest one me — just six months old — scarce food and water, what physical and mental agony my parents, along with hundreds others, must have passed through during those three longest days of their life, is much beyond my seemingly jammed imagination. No wonder, both word, harshest of the harsh, and colour, darkest of the dark, fail to portray their agonising rail journey.

However, I do gauge a bit of their suffering from the following strange fact. I am now 70 plus. During all these years, I have undertaken an endless number of train journeys. But believe it or not, I have never slept during any of my train journeys, short or long. The moment I would lie down on a moving train’s berth, I would feel giddy. I would feel relaxed only on getting up and sitting, fully awake! 

Though a non-believer, I often assume that our stranded train at Lala Musa must have moved forward, and relieved my parents’ agony a bit, on June 6 (1947).

The fateful June 6 (1944) is a prominently marked date in the annals of world history. It was the day when the Allied forces invaded Normandy during World War II and changed the course of history.

In the context of recent Indian history, coincidentally enough, it was again June 6 (1984) which has had a significant bearing on our local socio-political affairs, when Operation Bluestar,  ordered by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to remove a Sikh religio-militant leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and his armed followers, from the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar was concluded.

I hope that the long and hot June days in future would remain free of conflicts and agony the world over, and may they only spread the warmth of peace and prosperity.

(Titled Of an Extended June Solstice: 1947, the accompanying painting is my modest attempt to record the Lala Musa incident).