The Refugee by K A Abbas-Detailed Summary

The Refugee by K A Abbas-Detailed Summary

About the Author

K.A. Abbas is a famous Indian novelist, journalist, film director and script writer.. He was born in1914 in Rajasthan, Haryana. He was honoured with the Padma Shree award in 1969. He is also known for his two volumes of shrot stories: Rice and Other Stories and One Thousand Nights on a Bed of Stone.

About the Story

The Refugee is a tale of the wounded psyche of of the thousands of people, who had to leave their homes and all which they had with them at the time of the partition of Hindustan. The displaced people had to suffer physically, mentally and also economically. Many people lost their lives due to communal riots that broke out in several parts of the country. The writer K.A. Abbas narrates the story giving vivid details of the memories that haunt the mind of ‘Maanji’, a Sikh woman who had lost not only her home and property, but also the emotional ties with her neighbours and relatives at Rawalpindi.

Let’s begin the story:

The narrator begins the story by telling the reader about the intensity and the extent of the horrendous and unforgettable event of the Partition of Hindustan in 1947.

He uses the metaphor of storm to cause the impact of the unprecedented () event. As a strong storm scatters thousands of dry leaves and throws them at distant places, the Partition of India did the same. It displaced thousands of people from their homes to other places of the country: from Delhi to Karachi, from Karachi to Bombay (Mumbai), from Lahore to Delhi, from Rawalpindi to Agra, from Noakhali to Calcutta, from Lyallpur to Panipat, from Panipat to Montgomery, etc.

The Partition caused irreparable loss to peoples of India at both levels: physical and psychological. It also shattered the old joint family system beyond repair..Age-old friends were separated from one another almost forever. Even many family members were separated and many lost their lives in the storm of this partition. Millions of people uprooted from their ancestral homes were forced to live in the wilderness of alien places.

The narrator mentions that it all happened in the months of August-September of the year 1947.

Now the narrator tells us about two weak and old women, who were driven by this storm to Mumbai, that is hundreds of miles away from home-towns.

One of these two women is the narrator’s mother, who had come from Panipat, and the second one is his friend’s mother, who had come from Rawalpindi. It was a strange co-incidence that they reached Mumbai on the same day.

The narrator’s mother and the other woman and children of the family was evacuated from Panipat in a military truck and brought to Delhi. Firstly, they had to stay for three weeks in a small room with two other families to Mumbai in a plane as it was still unsafe to travel in train.

The narrator’s mother, along with her old husband travelled in a refugee caravan from Pindi to Amritsar. From there, they reached Delhi and finally they reached Mumbai.

The narrator called his mother ‘Amma’ and his friend’s mother ‘Maanji’. Here the narrator now proceeds to tell us about ‘Maanji’s ancestral house, her economic status and her generous nature.

She had a double-storey house in Rawalpindi. She lived in the upper part of the house. There were some shops on the ground floor. Those were on rent to Muslim shopkeepers or artisans. Most of Maanji’s neighbours belonged to the Muslim community.

The people belonging to different communities like Muslim, Hindu and Sikh showed a very close bonding of relationship. The Muslim women living in the neighbourhood called the old Sardarni ‘Behnji’ while the woman of the younger generation addresses her as ‘Maanji’ or ‘Chachi’. That was the pattern of living there in Rawalpindi and all over Punjab.

“Maanji had never visited any other place while living in Rawalpindi, which was her small world she always knew. Her son worked first in Lahore, then in Calcutta and finally in Mumbai. These big cities were for far off worlds for her. She never wanted to send her son away from her. So she would often say to her son:

“What’s the use of earning money, my son, when in those cities you get neither pure milk nor ghee, neither apricots nor peaches, neither grapes nor apples. And baggoogosha?Why in the city they don’t even know what that is!?”

Maanji’s family had a buffalo of their own, which gave ten seers of milk every day. They used to prepare butter and distribute buttermilk to the whole of neighbourhood. All thanked her and would say:

‘May your son live a thousand years, Maanji. But the very mention of the word ‘son’ would remind her of her son eating hotel food in a city and that would make her feel sad.

Maanji also had a piece of agricultural land that was given to some farmers on lease. They would produce wheat, maize or bajra. Maanji had a small bit of regular income from the rent of shops. Milk, butter and ghee were also available at home. Thus, the old couple lived a contented and peaceful life.

In June 1947, the newspaper published the news of the impending (sure to happen) Partition. It did not disturb or even worried Maanji or the old Sardarji, her husband.

The narrator says that the peaceful folk like them never bothered about politics. It did not matter to them whether the country would be named Hindustan or Pakistan. Their only concern was to live peacefully and friendly with their neighbours.

If there had been inter-communal riots in the past, she would say: ‘It was a fever of the mind, son, which seized the people now and then.’

The narrator says the fire of hate and violence spread more fiercely than ever before in the year of 1947, but even then, Maanji was sure that it would soon cool off. Her son from Bombay would write asking Maanji & Sardarji to come to him, but Maanji was not ready to abandon her beloved Rawalpindi. Many of her relations and neighbours, who were Sikh & Hindu, left their homes and went to East Punjab, but they continued staying in their house. Whenever anyone said that it was dangerous for Sikhs to live in West Punjab, she would say, “Who will harass us? After all, the Muslims who live around us are all like my own children, Aren’t they?”

But very soon, Maanji’s concept of brotherhood was shattered when the Muslim refugees from the East Punjab reached there with bitter feelings of revenge and hate in their hearts. The situation in Pindi became dangerous for the Hindus and the Sikhs and some Maanji’s Muslim neighbours pleaded with her to go to a safer place. But still, there were some who reassured her that they would protect their life and property even at the cost of their lives.

In particular, Maanji remembers a Muslim tailor, one of their tenants; for his loyal dedication.

He kept a watch day and night on their house. “May he live long!”, she always blesses him. She says: ‘He truly helped us like a son and saved us.’

In the next paragraph, the narrator again highlights Maanji’s generous and kind nature. He says that in Mumbai, where she was at present living, some of the refugees from East Punjab were also staying. Maanji was so much moved to see them in pitiable condition that she sent them donations of food stuffs, clothes, blankets, bedding, etc.

It never occurred in her mind that they were Muslims and were considered enemies of her own communities. She also did not think that she might suffer the shortage of foodstuffs very soon if she started distributing them to others.

But one day, something happened that shattered her faith of living in brotherhood. She saw that a tonga-wallah was stabb3ed to death just in front of her house. She came to know as to why he was killed. She said, “It was bad enough that the tonga-walla was killed. They killed him because he was a Hindu—but they did not spare even the horse.. You know, a horse has neither religion nor caste. And yet, they went on stabbing the poor animal with their daggers till the poor, dumb creature bled to death. Then I knew the madness had gone too far, and human beings had become something else, something horrible and evil, that we could no longer feel safe in Rawalpindi.’

She tells the narrator that it was the reason why she had to leave Rawalpindi. She locked up the house, leaving everything behind and she was unable to believe that she was abandoning her hearth & home for ever. She was still keeping a ray of hope in her mind that the prevalent madness would go off (subside) one day and then she would return to her home in Pindi.

She further adds that by the time they reached Delhi, her eyes had seen horrible things that made her believe that it was impossible for them to go back to Rawalpindi again. On reaching Bombay, the yearning to return to Rawalpindi turned into a memory that kept haunting her mind and creating pain in her aged heart.

The narrator now tells us how the displaced people lived in prosperity at their previous home-places and how they were forced to live in poor conditions. Maanji used to live in a house of six spacious rooms, wide verandahs and big courtyard. But in Bombay, she had to live along with her husband and a son in a single room tenement (). A dhobi occupied the room on one side and coal-shop on the other. The kitchen was made in a small room and it also served as a dining room, bathroom and store-room.

The narrator says that when his friend lived there alone, he had created a mess in the room, books, newspapers, dirty linens, and unwashed tea-cups that lay scattered everywhere. But now, his mother made the room, though it was small, spotlessly clean and everything well arranged.

Beds are covered with white sheets with embroidered pillow-cases. The floor shines with constant scrubbing and no particles of dust can be found anywhere.

Maanji had two male and one female servants. But, she cooks food herself with her own hands, washes the dishes and sweeps the floor herself.

The narrator also describes her hospitality. She always keeps smiling. She welcomes her sons’ friends whenever they come and never let them go without at least a cu-p of tea.

Maanji had to leave all her life’s savings and possessions at Rawalpindi. Now, from a prosperous landlady in Rawalpindi, she has become a refugee in Bombay, but her hospitality was never lost.

Maanji had a short stature with frail (weak and thin) body. Her complexion was fair and her hair had almost turned white after the partition. Her health was not so good.

She often gets attacks of asthma and neuralgia (). In spite of that, she never sit idle. She sleeps just for six hours at night. She is the first to get up and the last to go to sleep. Throughout the day, she is always found busy doing one thing or the other like cooking, darning or mending her husband’s old clothes, making tea or lassi for a guest. One cannot believe by seeing her face that she is a refugee who has suffered so much and lost everything in her previous house.

She still remembers Muslim neighbours with affection and it brightens her face when her husband reads a letter received from Rawalpindi. Sometimes a soft and cold sigh escapes her lips as she says:

“Your Bombay may be a great and grand city, son. But we can never forget our Rawalpindi---those pears, apricots, and apples, those grapes and melons and baggoogosha that you never get in Bombay…”

After saying that, she becomes silent and tears start bubbling her tired and old eyes. It seems that in her heart, there is neither anger nor self-pity, but only memories---memories that are soft like ripe apricots and fragrant like Baggoogoshas…”