Chats on the Charles

“Are we going to die tonight, I asked Papaji?”  We sat on the cold asphalt road in front of our house.  Sporadic anti-aircraft bursts lit up the night, glowing red snakes slithering through the dark sky.  There were loud explosions in the distance, a thousand igniting firecrackers condensed into a moment.  The 1971 war with Pakistan had begun.

Moments earlier we had heard the piercing air defense sirens.  My father, the blue Murphy shortwave radio glued to his ear, came rushing in.  “The Pakistanis are bombing Chandigarh, we need to shut all the lights and get out of the house, he screamed.”  My grandfather, a survivor of two previous wars with Pakistan, took his time.  He gathered his blanket, adjusted his Kashmiri cap, picked up his Kanger, grabbed my hand and ambled outside.  He found a spot on the road, away from the house and the eucalyptus trees.  I sat in his lap as he wrapped the blanket around us.  He handed me the Kanger, its glowing red coal embers resembling the sky.  We settled down for a long night.

“No one is going to die, all will be fine,” he said calmly.  We were surrounded by nervous voices and anxious silhouettes.  With each loud explosion I would bury my head inside the cocoon of his blanket.  I tried to distract myself by running my fingers through the velvet on his cap, or around the wickerwork of the Kanger.  It was not working.  And then, in the pitch black night, Mrs. Boolchand’s porch light came on.  Everyone noticed it, the yellow rays stabbing at the darkness all around.

Mrs. Boolchand, our neighbor, was a bit of an enigma.  She was older than the other Professors and lived alone.  Her garden was overgrown, the hedges unkempt, the walkway bricks covered with moss.  She was stern, kept to herself, and never engaged with the kids that lived in the townhouses on E Street.   Retrieving the errant cricket ball from her lawn was an act of bravery.  Occasionally, she would have European visitors and would speak to them in a strange language.  In the conformist culture of Punjab University, she was the consummate outsider.

A roar went up as people saw the light come on.  I remember hearing loud arguments with neighbors as they implored her to shut the light.  Mrs.  Boolchand had had enough of the darkness and would not yield.  Soon we heard the all-clear sirens and everyone trudged back into their homes, the matter unresolved.

We woke up to rumors spreading like wildfire among the children.  Was Mrs. Boolchand a foreign agent?  Did she turn the light on to guide the bombs?  Or perhaps to signal to the Pakistani soldiers who could land on the street and massacre everyone.  Who were the foreigners that had visited her?  Was the strange language she spoke some kind of code?  The war had brought along with it the paranoia of the petrified. 

That afternoon a plan began to take shape among the older kids.  Billé, the toughest kid on the street, was our ring leader.  He was perfect for the job.  He went to a Hindi language government school and therefore seemed to enjoy the impunity that Catholic school boys like me could only dream of.  I admired Billé’s brashness.  When I got assigned my task, I felt a secret pride at being selected.  I was to be the lookout.

As darkness fell, the sirens went off again.  This time we were expecting the moment and came out of our home with practiced ease.  We shut off all the lights.  That night the anti-aircraft guns were silent.  I left my family and joined the other kids.  Billé showed me the stones he had collected.  I touched them carefully.  Smooth and precious weapons in our fight against the invaders.  I hid behind Mrs. Boolchand’s hedge and began my wait.  She sat alone on the pavement.  My heart was thumping.

After what seemed like an eternity she got up and started walking back up her walkway.  I waited.  Would she turn the light on?  Would she go back inside the house?  She reached her porch and on cue her light came on.  She opened her door and went inside.  I rushed to Billé , waiting a few houses over, and gave him the signal.  The plan was set in motion.

It must have taken a few stones before the light shattered and the children scattered.  Mrs. Boolchand came out of her house screaming but the culprits had long vanished.  All she could see was an innocent child sitting on the pavement with his grandfather.  She asked my grandfather if he had seen who had broken her light.  He said it was some children, blissfully unaware of the role his grandson had played in the plot.

Early the next morning I heard her cursing.  She was sweeping her porch and had apparently stepped on a shard of glass.  As I walked by her house, she called out. “Do you know who broke my light”, she asked.  It was the first time she had ever spoken to me.  I nervously replied I had no idea and then hurried on to tell my friends of the success of the plan.  We hugged each other as we celebrated the foiling of a nefarious plot to attack our neighborhood.

The war ended two weeks later.  Life began returning to normal.  Christmas came soon and with it the annual trip to Mrs. D’Souza’s house for the special holiday cider.  I never spoke to Mrs. Boolchand again.  She retired soon after and left.  A family with three children moved into her house.  I was excited to make new friends.

As the years went by her memory receded, yet that one night of the war remained vivid.  Over time her story came into greater focus.  My pride turned to guilt.  She was a Sorbonne educated Professor of French.  Her husband had died early and her two daughters were living in France.  Her only sin was to be different from all the families that inhabited that neat little street of townhouses.

In recent times I have thought a lot about Mrs. Boolchand and that night.  Hate, fear and divisiveness are in the Fall air.  They settle slowly, like rotten leaves, on our body politic.  We are told to be scared of the “outsiders.”  A caravan of a few thousand mostly desperate families is depicted as an existential threat to the strongest nation in the world.  Hard working immigrants are portrayed as the enemy within.  Fantastical conspiracy theories are concocted to delegitimize the “other.”  I remember having once given into this kind of fear and resolve that I will not make the same mistake again.

This week over one and a half billion people around the world will celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights.  In Indian tradition, it commemorates the triumph of the forces of enlightenment  over the forces of darkness.  As I light my lamp, I will hope its brightness continues to  illuminate a path for all who seek our “Shining City on the Hill.”  And I will say the words I have been wanting to say for a long time, “ I am sorry Mrs. Boolchand!”