Half a Rupee: Stories by Gulzar

night. Like sheep and goats, on all fours, on their knees and elbows, they would go crawling, creeping, slithering through the lanes and escape to freedom across the maidan. Nasir managed to escape, too, along with his elder sister and mother. His father and grandmother had to stay still at the basement of the masjid.
    There was another village behind the hills—a village of mud houses. A few families took refuge there in a cowshed. The place was relatively silent—you hardly heard people here. Nasir’s father would periodically come, spend a few nights with them and then go back. And then once, he did not return. Nasir’s mother would often fall on her knees in supplication, trying to appeaseAllah, beseech him for his blessings, ask him for his indulgence to keep her family safe. Her eyes would be brimming with tears all the time. Nasir would lie on the floor watching his mother. He asked her once, ‘What blessings were you asking from Allah?’
    ‘I was asking Allah to keep your father safe, son!’
    Nasir kept lying there, kept looking at the vast expanse of the sky, and then softly asked, ‘Ammi, on which side is Allah on? Ours or theirs?’
    When he turned to look, his mother was long gone.
    One night, Nasir tucked his catapult into the folds of his salwar and groped his way back into the basement of the masjid through the labyrinth of tunnels. The scene that befell his eyes inside the masjid shook him to the core. He fell in a heap there itself. The entire masjid was in ruins. It was filled with rubble and when his eyes got accustomed to the darkness he could see the hands and feet of the dead people jutting out of the debris. When day broke, he began to move towards the main door. Then he saw a few men. They had wound their turbans around their noses and mouths. They had shovels and spades in their hands. Perhaps they had come to clean the debris. Nasir hid himself from them without being caught. When he came out he saw a cordon of people outside and he jumped into a truck parked against the wall.
    And then Nasir could feel halves and quarters of bodies and severed body parts raining down on him. He remained huddled in one corner of the truck under the human debris, afraid to move, afraid he would get caught. The sight was not all that unfamiliar. Half-torn,severed halves of carcasses, half-skinned, half-peeled bodies of animals he had seen arrive by the cartload at the local butcher’s. He stayed huddled in the corner of the truck. The truck began to move. God alone knew the shop of the butcher at which they would dump these bodies. Over the drive of a few hours that followed, Nasir either fell unconscious or fell asleep; he woke up when the truck emptied its load on a hill.
    He rolled down the slope; his fall broke only when he hit the bottom of the hill with a thud, and his eyes were forced open. He had fallen next to a huge pit that had been dug at the foot of the hill. The truck was returning after dumping its rubbish. The huge cliff stretched its head out in all its bald glory. Indomitable, the mountaintop reared its naked pate. He crawled out from under the inhuman remains of human lives. And like a scared vixen running for its life, he crawled up the slopes of the hill on all fours. Craters were open along the slope like mole-holes. He took refuge in a crater-like cave.
    From the top of the hill, it looked like a dumping yard. By evening the pit was full to its brim and they closed its mouth. That night Nasir slept in the cave. In the darkness of the night, he could hear some human voices slithering across the silent, sultry air. Perhaps there were people who lived in the adjoining caves. And then he saw a number of eyes glistening in the dark—wild rabbits perhaps. Nasir groped for stones. The catapult was still in the folds of his salwar; he pulled it out. He picked a sharp stone by touch and began to sharpen it against a bigger stone.
    One of his grandmother’s stories came to his mind: ‘In the