Regretfully, they shook their heads and blew out clouds of cigarette smoke.
I stood up and tapped Malik on the shoulder. I was determined now that I would not let my past vanish without trace; I was determined to persuade them of its importance.
Come with me, I said. Let’s go into the library and look up the newspaper files for 1964. I’ll show you.
He grinned at the others and gulped down the rest of his tea. All right, he said. Let’s go.
We went into the quiet, air-conditioned gloom of the library and made our way to the shelves at the back where the bound volumes of old newspapers were kept. The volumes of the newspaper I wanted — a well-known Calcutta daily — were stacked along the third row of shelves. There were four massive volumes for 1964.
Do you remember the date? Malik said. Or even the month?
I shook my head. No, I said. I don’t remember.
Well, we can’t look through all of these at random, he said, nodding at the four volumes. It would take us days.
Then what shall we do? I said.
Maybe there’ll be a reference to it in a book or something, he suggested.
And what if we can’t find the right book? I said.
Then, Malik said patiently, we’ll have to assume that you imagined the whole thing.
He turned and walked off towards a row of shelves.
Malik knew that library fairly well; he’d been researching one thing or another there for several years. He stopped at a shelf and pointed. It was the section on the war of 1962. There were whole shelves of books on the war — histories, political analyses, memoirs, tracts — weighty testimony to the eloquence of war. He pointed out another set of shelves, smiling broadly: it was the section on the 1965 war with Pakistan.
At least we won that one, he said.
But after half an hour we still hadn’t found anything on my remembered riots.
Malik was bored now. He stole a look at his watch and gave me a friendly pat on my shoulder. I’ve got to get back home now, he said. Maybe some other day …
I nodded silently, unnerved by the possibility that I had lived for all those years with a memory of an imagined event. And then, as Malik turned to go, an odd little detail stirred in my mind, a faint recollection of the excitement I had felt while I was standing on the pavement that morning, waiting for my school bus to appear.
No, don’t go, I said, clutching Malik’s arm. I remember something now. It happened during a Test match — with England, I think. Do you remember that series? When that wicketkeeper who was dropped later scored a maiden century?
Yes, of course, he said laughing. Yes I remember that. It was Budhi Kunderan, wasn’t it?
Yes! I cried. Yes, that’s it — Budhi Kunderan. So it must have happened during the cricket season — perhaps January or February.
All right, said Malik. But this is your last chance — let’s go and look.
We went back to the newspaper section and took down the volume for January and February, 1964. Opening it, we began to go through the papers backwards, turning first to the sports pages. Soon Malik found a reference to the visiting English cricket team. A few pages later we stumbled upon a headline which said: MADRAS TEST BEGINS TODAY.
That’s it, I cried triumphantly. That was the day, I remember now. I listened to the commentary on the radio after I got home from school.
It was the edition of Friday, 10 January 1964.
Quickly we turned the limp, yellowing pages back until we came to the front page.
So where’s your riot? said Malik.
The lead story had nothing to do with riots of any kind, nor with Calcutta: it was about the 68th session of the Congress Party in Bhubaneshwar. Dazed and disbelieving, I read through a report which quoted a speech in which Mr Kamaraj, the party president, had extended an invitation to everyone who had faith in the ideology of socialism and democracy to come together in the common task of building a new society.
It looks, said Malik, as if your riots didn’t manage to make it to the front page.
But a moment later, I found what I had been looking for: a short report at the bottom of the page, with a headline which said: TWENTY-NINE KILLED IN RIOTS.
There, I said, pounding on the paper with my fist. There: Read it for yourself.
I stood back panting, light-headed with relief, and watched his face as he read the report. He read it once, slowly. A frown appeared on his forehead, and he went back to the beginning and read it through again.
Then he looked up at me and said: Didn’t you say the riots happened in Calcutta?
Yes, of course, I answered.
That’s strange, he said, tapping the open newspaper. Because these riots here happened in Khulna, in East Pakistan, across the border from Calcutta.
The floor of that quiet, familiar library seemed to drop away under my feet leaving me suspended in space. I would have fallen if Malik had not put out a hand to hold me steady. Holding myself upright with both hands, I leant over the desk and read the report.
It said the army had been called out the day before in Khulna, when a demonstration had turned violent and ended in a riot.
It’s strange, said Malik, looking at me curiously. It’s really very strange that you should remember a riot that happened in Pakistan.
Then he nodded and went away.
Long after he had gone, it occurred to me that newspapers carry the news a day late. I turned the pages to the edition of Saturday, 11 January 1964, and sure enough, there it was: a huge banner headline which said: CURFEW IN CALCUTTA, POLICE OPEN FIRE, 10 DEAD, 15 WOUNDED.
Indistinctly, through the white haze that was swirling before my eyes, I noticed another headline, at the bottom of the page. It said: KUNDERAN’S DAY AT MADRAS, UNBEATEN 170 IN FIRST TEST. And right above it was a tiny little box item in bold print, with the headline: SACRED RELIC REINSTALLED, which said ‘the sacred hair of the Prophet Mohammad was reinstalled in the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar today amongst a tremendous upsurge of popular joy and festivity throughout Kashmir’.
It was thus, sitting in the air-conditioned calm of an exclusive library, that I began my strangest journey: a voyage into a land outside space, an expanse without distances; a land of looking-glass events.
It is said that the sacred relic known as the Mu-i-Mubarak — believed to be a hair of the Prophet Mohammad himself — was purchased by a Kashmiri merchant called Khwaja Nur-ud-din in Bijapur (near Hyderabad) in the year 1699. The following year the sacred relic was transported to the valley of Kashmir. This is only one version of the provenance of the relic; there are several others. It is agreed, however, that the arrival of the relic was greeted by a great tumult of joy in the valley. People are said to have marched in their thousands from every part of Kashmir — even from such distant and remote eyries as the Banihal Pass — in order to get a glimpse of the relic. Later, the relic was installed at the picturesque Hazratbal mosque near Srinagar. This mosque became a great centre of pilgrimage, and every year multitudes of people, Kashmiris of every kind, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, would flock to Hazratbal on those occasions when the relic was displayed to the public. This is well attested, even by those European observers whose Christian sense of the necessity of a quarantine between doctrines was outraged by the sight of these ecumenical pilgrims. Thus, over the centuries, the shrine became a symbol of the unique and distinctive culture of Kashmir.
On 27 December 1963, two hundred and sixty-three years after it had been brought to Kashmir, the Mu-i-Mubarak disappeared from its place in the Hazratbal mosque.