LASHKAR by Mukul Deva

in Aligarh twelve years after the partition of India and Pakistan, which claimed the lives of untold numbers of innocents who happened to be caught on the wrong side of the border. Of course her siblings and she were subjected to all the gory stories. Not that they were overtly troubled by them. They were, after all, only children and their inherent innocence had not yet been corrupted by the rigid notions of adulthood. Most times, they even found it hard to remember which kids they could play with and which ones they were not allowed even to talk to.
    ‘Why can’t we play with them, Ammi?’
    ‘They’re kafirs, that is why.’
    ‘What’s a kafir?’
    ‘A kafir is a person who does not believe in the true God, child.’
    ‘Who is the true God?’
    ‘Haven’t I told you that a hundred times already? We worship the true God.’
    ‘What God do they pray to?’
    ‘I’m not too sure…they have dozens of them…’
    ‘And all of them are not real Gods?’
    ‘Hush!’ An exasperated cluck. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, Hamida. You will understand as you grow up.’
    But no matter how much she grew, Hamida didn’t understand. Her mother had no time to explain anything to her. As for her father, Zafar, a librarian’s assistant at the local university; his family and career had been destroyed by the Partition. He needed someone to blame for his woes. For this the kafir Hindu was a convenient and logical target. Hamida remembered vividly this constantly festering and seething cauldron of hatred, crime and poverty which they grew up in. Her father’s hatred turned her off religion. After all, how can a God in whose name one could hate, kill and maim so easily ever inspire faith and love in a child whose life was not mangled by riots and killings and who knew her Hindu neighbours as children like herself, as classmates and friends?
    There was also, of course, the undeniable fact that they all had many other, far more pressing problems than religion to deal with in those days, with survival being paramount. Just the simple act of surviving from one day to another took up most of their life and energy.
    Hamida had barely crossed her teens when her marriage was arranged to Nawab, the carefree and sports-loving youngest son of the neighbourhood butcher with a simple, ‘No matter how hard times are, they will always have something to put on the table.’
    Three months before her twentieth birthday she moved to her husband’s home, where her father-inlaw indulged his younger daughter-in-law with the same affection that he indulged his youngest son – letting him skip off from work to play cricket with the neighbourhood boys. Unfortunately the bubble lasted six months. It burst on the day Nawab’s father returned from the jumma prayers and suddenly keeled over. They rushed him to the hospital but he was already with Allah. ‘It was a massive heart attack,’ the doctor said. ‘He never had much of a chance.’
    His death was the harbinger of change. The relatives who had gathered to mourn had not even begun to depart when Mansoor, Nawab’s elder brother, laid claim to the butcher’s shop and asked Nawab to look for a job for himself claiming the family business was not doing too well.
    ‘Really? Why? I think it is doing pretty much the way it always did.’ Nawab was a little puzzled. ‘Abbu never said anything about it doing badly.’
    ‘Well, it is,’ Mansoor retorted curtly. ‘It is doing quite badly. In any case it is time you started doing something other than hanging aimlessly around the shop.’
    ‘Hanging around?’ Nawab’s face started to redden.
    It was pretty clear that Mansoor wanted him out. ‘Nawab miyan, you are a married man now with a family of your own. It is high time you stood on your own feet.’
    Watching the stand-off between the brothers, Nawab’s uncle Shafiq, who had come down from Lucknow, took Nawab aside and had a long talk with him.
    ‘He has been working at the same school