Divided Destinies

It was the time of partition. Trains on both sides of the border were totally full, bursting with people, ferrying them to the promised lands. A small station in north India. A train was standing on the platform. People were jam packed. A buzz hung in the air. It was a scene of tearful farewells. Parents were taking leave of their children; children were taking leave of their parents. Homes were being left behind. Belongings were packed in cotton bedspreads and trunks. Anxious words were being exchanged and faces tense with thoughts of the future. The engine whistled and sent out a puff of smoke. The carriages jolted. The frenzy increased. Words became louder and more anxious. A mother and father were about to leave their children behind. They were standing on the platform. The four of them drew close to each other in a final embrace. The hands wrapped around one another and the eyes were moist. They weren’t speaking-there wasn’t much to say. However, they tarried under their emotions for just a while longer. The engine whistled once again and the train started moving. Amid shrieks of anxiety the parents tore themselves off from their children and started running beside the train, and the next moment would have managed to clumsily clamber into the coach. At this precise moment somebody inside changed his decision and decided not to leave after all. He jumped out; their paths collided, and the parents were thrown on the rail tracks. In a flash the wheels sliced over them, first over the man’s body and dividing it into two parts, then over the woman’s neck and arm, which she had put across the rail to steady her fall. The shrieks of the children were lost in the prevalent din. Some people in the compartment bent down to see what happened and recoiled, while people sat oblivious in other compartments, and mothers expressed constant misgivings for the children they had left behind, and were chided by their husbands for their anxious solicitude.