The Chunni and the Kikar Tree

by N.J. Haus

The border the British scrabbled across the Punjab to partition India into two nations was not yet in effect when the great violence that would define the months of mid-1947 reached the area surrounding Rawalpindi.    

Amar Singh Kholsa was sixteen and attending a school at the eastern edge of a village twenty miles north of Rawalpindi when he noticed the mobs darken the fields like a swarm of locusts. In the beginning, no one panicked. Surely, a deal could be made. The Sikhs, and even many Hindus, had money for ransom. Debts could be forgiven to the village's few Muslims, though none of them were a part of the horde. At worst, safe passage out of the village could be arranged. Students gathered at the windows as a small group of men, including Amar’s father, Hari Singh, gathered to confront the leaders of the mob: burly goondas who walked like military men, some wearing the colors of the Muslim League.    

Amar had heard of the riots that had raged in Rawalpindi with Muslims on one side and Sikhs and Hindus on the other, but relations in his village had remained mostly amicable. His father was a Sikh and a moneylender of the Khatri caste; he was a well-respected man and always lent fairly, whether his debtor was Sikh, Hindu, or Muslim, and he attended their weddings and honored their traditions and holidays. In the evenings, the men would gather in the courtyard of his large haveli, passing a bottle of homemade liquor and playing games of Bhabhi and Seep.  

 But by mid-March, as the radio broadcasted increasingly violent news, the games were replaced by grim deliberation. Some Sikhs even echoed the “Pakistan Murdabad”—death to Pakistan—proclaimed days earlier by Master Tara Singh, but only in whispers outside of the village boundaries, for larger pro-Pakistan towns dominated the countryside. Others worried. Rumors of huge gangs, determined to make Pakistan a reality, circulated; accounts of looting, arson, and even cold-blooded murder of Hindus and Sikhs were not uncommon. Amar’s mother, a tall, proud woman named Prem Kaur, tossed her head at the quivering of the others. “What will we do?” They shuddered, “if the mobs come upon us as they did at the rail station in Rawalpindi? They say the men were killed and the women were violated in public and taken away. What has become of them, no one knows.”

“I will die before giving up my honor,” Prem Kaur declared and showed the other women how to make a poison that they could keep hidden in their chunni in case the situation became dire.   

Now, with a mob of what seemed like a thousand men trampling their crops, the dire situation advanced towards the village with grim menace. Just as Hari Singh and the leader of the goondas met, the clouds parted and revealed the sun. From the window, Amar cried aloud, for the field became lit like a sky full of glittering stars. Every man held a weapon—swords, machetes, axes, spears. At once, the goondas surged forwards, and the first one brought a blunt ax down upon Hari Singh’s head, splitting his skull and crumpling him to the ground. Ten others immediately leaped forth and began hacking his body to pieces with great overhead swings that splattered the sugarcane red and watered its roots with his blood. The others perished in the same way; their cries drowned quickly in choking gasps, and all that remained was the chop chop of thick metal striking their bones.    

Panic ensued. Schoolchildren ran into the streets. Men who had been preparing for such an attack rushed into their homes, emerging with weapons of their own, but everyone knew that fighting was useless against such a mob. Somehow, Amar found his two sisters among the bedlam and grasped each one by the wrist, stumbling blindly along dusty streets while bloodcurdling shrieks chased them from behind. One caught her foot on a stone and fell, and three men were instantly on her; they drug her small body over the stones and tossed her over their shoulders. Amar ran, weeping, into a narrow, empty lane, until he felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder.  

“Child, in here!” a voice insisted, and he was pulled through a doorway into a dim hovel, followed by his remaining sister, Amrita. The door slammed shut, and he looked into the face of his rescuer. He recognized the man but did not know his name, only that he was a Muslim, and Amar was afraid.  

“Do not be frightened,” the man said. “We are Khaksars; we have sworn to protect those in distress from these violent people who do not understand the true faith. Now hide, and do not let what you hear trouble you.”  

But Amar could not help but be troubled. For hours the massacre continued. Wails and moans penetrated the brick walls, and soon the shadow of flames danced upon the tattered cloth covering the window. Black smoke seeped through the opening, as thick as water, and the tortured screams quadrupled in volume, gradually decreasing until only angry, triumphant cheers remained. Amar became sick in a dirty corner and his sister clung to his waist.      

Night passed without sleep. The noises dissipated and the smoke faded to white, but it wasn’t until evening the next day that the Khaksar man opened his door in response to the dull rumble of approaching automobiles. Government soldiers with thick boots and green coats weaved through the slaughter, overturning bodies with sticks and yelling into empty doorways. One lifted Amar and his sister into a truck. “Do not look,” the Khaksar implored as he assisted the girl. “If you must remember, remember our home. Remember that some still have compassion in the midst of wicked times.”  

But Amar did look. Despite what the Khaksar had said, he knew he must. He must see what had become of his home; he must know what they did to his family.  Even if what he saw became horrors that revisited him every day for the rest of his life, he needed to know the truth of the barbarity they had endured.  

The scene uprooted his being. Everything was unimaginable horror. Bodies littered the street. Some were propped up by bloodstained planks which had been used to behead the victims. The entire village was permeated by the sweet, sickening smell of smoldering flesh and dry blood. When the truck rumbled past the place where his family’s haveli used to stand, Amar reluctantly scanned the carnage for a sign of his mother, but it was impossible; numerous human remains smoldered between the crumbling walls. The bodies were huddled together as if they had taken refuge there before succumbing to the blaze, and charred flesh peeled from their gaping skulls. Just as they passed beyond the westernmost wall, a flicker of red caught Amar's eye: a chunni embroidered with green and golden leaves. His mother's. It fluttered freely in the wind, caught on a spear that protruded from a corpse, the silken pouch of poison once hidden in its folds surely gone.  

Now Amar knew, and even in his grief he was glad that he knew. He held tightly to the images and let them stain his heart as the convoy brought them to the Rawalpindi station and put him on a train with his sister.   

Amrita Kaur huddled near her brother until they reached Amritsar. She did not draw close for affection but for security, for even at only 14 years old, she knew the peril of being a woman in troubled times. Always, it is the vulnerable who suffer most. Only two nights before, she had overheard the men arguing in the courtyard and eavesdropped on them through the leaves of a kikar tree. “The men will fight, or if we cannot we will make ourselves martyrs and take our own lives by the sword,” one said. “But what of the women? They cannot defend themselves. They will be raped and mutilated; the carnal hunger of these ruffians defies all morality.”

Another replied, “We cannot allow them to be taken; it would be a dishonor to our family and a stain to our pure daughters. If this happens, we must make them martyrs as well. I will begin with my own daughters; I will be the first to sacrifice.”

The man who had said this had been Hari Singh Kholsa, her own father. However, despite his declaration, his youngest daughter, barely twelve, had been taken by the mob. Amrita felt a hollow pain in her stomach when she tried to imagine her sister's ordeal, the captive of unknown men. She felt as if she would retch. Perhaps it would indeed have been better had she been killed by her own father's sword. But no one had consulted the women, and had Amrita not heard the voices through the kikar tree, she would have never known their plan. This was the way of things. Her mother had been proud to commit suicide; Amrita imagined a goonda piercing her with a spear, incensed that she dared thwart his lecherous intentions with death. Maybe her doubt in this sort of martyrdom made Amrita less honorable; nevertheless, she had survived, and she felt that every man who passed by eyed her with uncontrollable libido, as if they knew she was the one who had escaped their grasp.  

Relatives in Amritsar agreed to receive the siblings, but Amrita would soon find that their intentions were less than benevolent. After only a month in her adoptive family’s home, Amrita again heard two men's voices drifting through the leaves of a kikar tree, just as they had not long ago in her now-consumed village. Amrita knelt to prepare a dish of burtha and rice and listened, unseen. “I told him, do not worry, bhanja, only wait a few months,” her guardian uncle said, “I have discovered a young flower for you; she has a pretty face but still she walks on stick legs and has the chest of a child. I will send her when the road to Sodhiapur is safe, so that your children may have a mother to replace the one who has died. But he said he must travel here to see her first before he would accept—ungrateful boy! ...” And Amrita shook in trepidation, turmeric that stained her hand trickling slowly to the ground. She felt that, like her sister, she too was to be abducted by a strange man, and she marveled that all secrets heard through the kikar tree seemed to contain thorns.  

Amar acclimated to the transition with a grim disposition. When others asked for details of his ordeal he only gritted his teeth and the way he swayed reminded people so much of a cobra that they dared not ask again. He did not remember the Khaksar; his mind filled only with the red of the fluttering chunni and all that lay ravaged beyond it. To him, these images were Pakistan; these murderers were the true Muslims. The situation in Amritsar did little to quell his fury. In June, explosions wracked the city, and mohallas of either faction were set aflame. By July, the countryside brimmed with marauders: a Sikh mirror to the Muslim mobs in Rawalpindi. Police did nothing to quell the disturbances but assisted the criminals to whose sympathies they aligned. And still, no one knew where the border would be drawn.   

That knowledge arrived on August 15, 1947, the day the British fled the country they had bled for centuries and would now leave retching in their wake. The event was celebrated with murder. Lahore, only fifty kilometers from Amritsar and suddenly in a different country, fueled great columns of flame with the city's Gurdwaras for kindling. Squads of Sikhs called Jathas, made up of men who were trained in military weaponry, bombed Muslim-filled trains bound for Pakistan. 

Amar's silence would be broken by a commotion that woke the entire mohalla one September dawn. A ferocious brigade of armed men paraded the street and vociferated a brutal report: a train full of shell-shocked Sikh and Hindu refugees in blood-soaked clothing, many mutilated or missing limbs, had arrived from Pakistan. The train itself had been the target—senseless butchery of those already leaving their homes behind. “How can we leave such atrocities unavenged?” The passing mob urged. “They have stolen our country; they have abducted our women; they have murdered our brethren.”

“Do not go,” Amrita begged her brother as he watched the demonstration with the face of a lion.  

Amar turned upon her in fury. “Do you think me a coward?” He cried. “Or that I cannot protect my family's honor? Have you already forgotten our mother and father? I should be ashamed to be left alive and to do nothing to avenge their deaths.”

“Please, brother. Surely your conscience cannot allow it. These men are not soldiers; they attack the innocent ones who are like our mother and sister. I beg you, do not defile the memory of our family by doing such things.”

“There are no innocent. There is no conscience. This is war. They brought the war to our family; let it destroy theirs as well. It would be better to kill than to live in the same country as those who have slaughtered our people like animals.” And Amar descended into the crowd, letting the gate swing freely behind him.  

The Jatha was well-armed. A few carried rifles and pistols; others brandished swords which they lifted high in the air as though they were already victorious from battle. Someone put a sword in Amar's hand. It felt heavy and awkward; never had he held any weapon. His fingers were slender and dexterous, more accustomed to pushing chalk across a slate. He remembered tallying the interest of his father's borrowers and his father's promise to send him to work with an uncle who was a banker in Lahore as soon as he finished school. Now the bank was burnt, and his uncle had fled Lahore. That old reality was dead; partition was the new reality, a reality characterized by violence, and Amar thrust his sword into the air with the others.  

In a swarm that threw clouds of dust into the sweltering air, they mounted automobiles and sped southwards towards Ferozepur. Alongside the road, fresh ruts had been dug into the earth by multitudes of feet and overloaded wagon trains of entire Muslim villages hastening towards the new border. They followed the ruts until the smell of cow dung fires wafted in the air. Amar bounced between two burly men in the back of a jeep and flinched as it skidded to a stop where the figures of hundreds of men, women, and children squatted in a neglected field just to the west of the road, pausing for the midday meal.      

The screams began even before the first blood was spilt. The camp became an anthill with boiling water poured upon it; people bolted in every direction but were easily chased down and butchered from behind. Every slash of the sword found another neck, and riflemen galloped after the swiftest ones, crying the names of their own fallen kin before expunging their prey with multiple shots.  

It began to rain, thickly and heavily, and the water mixed with blood, becoming little red rivers that flowed between their feet. The blood was impersonal blood. It spilled from strangers, whose bodies strewn across the festering crust of earth began to rot as soon as they fell. Amar's sword swung with the others, but in his inexperienced hands it glanced away from limbs, slicing them weakly and allowing the victims to stumble forth until they were cut down by another blade. In this weakness, he was ashamed. He saw his father's cleaved skull and longed to deliver the same affliction. Perhaps it was a sin, but it was only one sin compiled among the sins of a nation, among the whole of humanity, and sin was such an immaterial thing. His sword had substance; his fury was as real as the red rivers beneath his feet.  

Amar gripped his sword anew. In his hands, the weapon gave him the power. No longer would he suffer; he would impart suffering upon his enemies. With it, he could kill his grief. He could demand payment from those who had destroyed his family and become a protector of his people. With this new strength, he ran, and in one great oscillation he brought his blade down upon the neck of a young man who desperately shielded his face with pleading, outstretched hands. This time his blow rang true. With great slashes he carved through screaming flesh. Red poured from above and from below, and in his passionate cleaves, he did not notice the scrap of bloodstained cloth that had caught on his sword. And as he swung his sword, the cloth waved and snapped, fluttering like a red chunni rippled by the wind.  

Rain also drenched the city of Amritsar, and Amrita took refuge under the kikar tree. Inside the house, a middle-aged man, greying at the temples, loafed and shoveled the roti she had made into his gut. Her husband. Thorns scratched her back and thin streams of water snaked from the branches and wet her clothing, but in a strange way the discomfort pleased her. And though she wept, Amrita knew that there was little time for weeping. The future bared upon her swiftly, and soon new thorns would replace the old in a never-ending procession until the end.  

About the author

N.J. Haus lives in Kansas City, where he enjoys writing, gardening, learning, and spending time in nature. He would like to acknowledge and thank his wife’s grandmother “Bibi” for her help and influence on this story. Although the story’s particular characters and events are entirely fictional, Bibi’s willingness to share her experience being uprooted from her home in Lahore during the partition of India was something those of us in younger generations needed to understand, and it greatly added to this story’s authenticity. Finally, the author would like to note that although the characters at the end of the story feel hopeless about the future, there are many like Bibi who lived through events like these and went on to live a long life filled with family, happiness, and love.   

About the illustration

The illustration is a photo of riots in Bombay. Provenance unknown.