“If the show goes as badly as I fear,” he told her stiffly, “then I’m going to stop. To hell with it! I don’t plan to spend my last years being humiliated in public in shows I wouldn’t pay to see myself.” Pachigam was much poorer than either of them could remember. Theatrical bookings were few and far between and since Pandit Pyarelal Kaul’s withdrawal from the position of vasta waza, chief cook, the reputation of Pachigam’s wazwaan had declined. Firdaus replied to her husband’s announcement with a few stiff words of her own. “So, if we’re going to be even harder up than we are now,” she said, “then it’s just as well I never developed any fancy ideas about living in style.” Abdullah knew she was complaining about his behavior, his failure to make her feel loved, but the words that would soften her heart stuck in his throat and he left for Srinagar saying, with a curt nod, “Quite so. The poor should never succumb to the dream of a comfortable life.”
The bus bringing the actors and musicians to Srinagar could not get to the depot on account of the crowds gathering in the city streets under the nervous eyes of the army and police. The bhands had to get out, carry their props and walk. There were already more than four hundred thousand people clogging up the roads. Abdullah Noman asked the bus driver what was going on. “It’s a funeral,” he replied. “They have come to mourn the death of our Kashmir.”
The curtain rose on the story of the good king Zain-ul-abidin, and Abdullah walked out onto the stage with a raised sword in one hand and a spear in the other, clenching the weapons tightly, ignoring the spears of pain shooting down his hands. He was leading by example for the last time in his life, sending a message to his bored, mutinous troupe. If I can rise above my pain then you can rise above your indifference. But the auditorium was three-quarters empty, and the few tourists who were sitting out there weren’t really listening to him, because through the walls of the theater came the muffled sound of the start of the uprising, the crowd of one million persons marching through the streets carrying flaming torches above their heads and bellowing Azadi! Sardar Harbans Singh was sitting with his son Yuvraj, a strikingly handsome young man whose modernizing inclinations were trumpeted by his shaven face and lack of a Sikh turban, in the middle of the otherwise empty seventh row. With the sense of a man plunging from a high pinnacle to his death Abdullah Noman fixed his old comrade with his fiercest, most glittering stare and launched into the play with all the power he had left. For the next hour, in the silent tomb of the auditorium, the bhands of Pachigam told a story which nobody wanted to hear. Several members of the audience got up and left during the show. In the intermission Sardar Harbans Singh’s son Yuvraj, a businessman who in spite of the worsening political situation was successfully exporting Kashmiri papier-mâché boxes, carved wooden tables, numdah rugs and embroidered shawls to the rest of India and to Western buyers as well, who supported him “as an act of ridiculous optimism, considering that the region is on the verge of going insane,” warned Abdullah Noman that things might get out of hand in the street and demonstrators might even burst into the theater. “You’re holding a sword and a spear,” Yuvraj Singh reminded Abdullah. “If they do get inside here, a word of advice? Never mind about the play. Throw the props down and run.” He himself would have to miss the second act, he apologized. “The situation, you understand,” he explained, vaguely. “One has one’s proper duties to discharge.”
In the hollow vacuum of the empty theater Abdullah Noman saw his troupe of disaffected youngsters give the performances of their young lives, as if they had suddenly understood a secret which nobody had explained to them before. The pounding drumbeats of the demonstration echoed around them, the chanting of the demonstrators was like a chorus crying doom, the menace of the ever-growing crowd crackled around the empty seats like an electric charge. Still the bhands of Pachigam went on with their show, dancing, singing, clowning, telling their tale of old-time tolerance and hope. At one point Abdullah Noman succumbed to the illusion that their voices, their instruments had become inaudible, that, even though they were declaiming their lines and singing their songs and playing their music with a passion they had not been able to muster for a long time, there was complete silence in the theater, the few scattered spectators sat mutely watching a dumb show, while outside in the streets the noise was already immense and grew louder by the instant, and now a second group of noises was superimposed on the first, the noises of troop transports, Jeeps and tanks, of booted feet marching in step, of loaded weapons being readied and finally of gunshots, rifle shots as well as automatic fire. The chanting turned into screaming, the drumbeats turned into thunder, the march turned into a stampede, and as the auditorium began to shake the tale of King Zain-ul-abidin silently reached its happy ending and the actors joined hands and took their bow, but even though Sardar Harbans Singh, the only person left in the audience, applauded as heartily as he could in the circumstances, his clapping hands didn’t make any sound at all.
For a time it was impossible to return home. Forty demonstrators had been killed. The situation in the streets was highly unstable, there were roadblocks and troops and armored vehicles everywhere, and public transport was not a priority. The bhands of Pachigam blockaded themselves inside the theater and waited. Sardar Harbans Singh refused to stay with them. “I’m going to sleep in my own bed, chaps,” he declared. “The wife would be most suspicious if I don’t. Besides which, I have my garden to attend to.” Harbans’s walled garden villa was one of the secret wonders of the city, and was believed by some to have been placed under an enchantment by a pari from Pari Mahal, a magic spell which protected it and all who dwelt there from coming to harm. But Harbans didn’t seem to need the assistance of fairies. He managed to find his way back to the old-town residence on foot in spite of the wildness of the city. Harbans was an intrepid old fox, knew all the city’s byways and back alleys, and came back every day without fail, immaculately turned out in achkan jacket and trousers, his silver beard and moustache trimmed and pomaded, to bring the company food and essential supplies. He was sometimes escorted by his son, but more often came alone, on account of Yuvraj’s unspecified “duties,” which turned out to involve the hiring and management of a private security force to protect his business premises and warehouses against looters and firebombers. Sardar Harbans Singh shook his head sadly. “My son is a person of high ideals and noble beliefs,” he told Abdullah, “who is obliged by the times to deal with guttersnipes and bounders, mercenary hooligans whom he hires to save our goods from other hooligans, and whom he then has to watch like a hawk in case they do the bad hats’ dirty work themselves. Poor fellow never sleeps, but never complains. He does the needful. As we all must.” Sardar Harbans Singh carried a silver-headed walnut swordstick and walked briskly through the unsafe streets, pooh-poohing the risk to himself. “I’m an old man,” he said. “Who would trouble to do anything to me when Father Time is doing such a dashed good job already?” Abdullah shook his head wonderingly. “You can know a man for fifty years,” he said, “and still not know what he’s capable of.” Harbans shrugged in self-deprecation. “You never know the answer to the questions of life until you’re asked,” he said.