Over the years, Gulzar has worn many hats and each of them with distinction. He has been a filmmaker, scriptwriter, lyricist and fiction writer as well as poet. Of late, he has confined himself to the written word — poetry and fiction — and the theme that haunts him is the traumatic events that took place in the wake of Partition, mainly in Punjab and Delhi. On the 70th anniversary of the division of the subcontinent, the noted Delhi-based writer Rakhshanda Jalil compiled some of Gulzar’s poems and short stories in a collection titled Footprints on the Zero Line. The volume had limited value on our side of the border because the poems and stories translated into English were accompanied by the original in Devnagri script, which — as the expression goes — is Greek to Pakistani readers.

There was a need for the collection to appear in the script in which Gulzar had originally penned these pearls: Urdu. Realising this, the author himself stepped in and had the book published in Pakistan under the title Qadam Zero Line Per.

The volume opens with a salutary foreword by Pakistani litterateur Shakeel Adilzada, written in a verbose style which is, unfortunately, poles apart from Gulzar’s simple one. One also wishes that the erudite writer could have referred to some of the poems and short stories contained in the collection to prove his own points. The book begins properly with a poignant poem in which Gulzar declares he is standing on the Zero Line (the border between India and Pakistan) with the sun behind him and his shadow falling on the Pakistani side of the border. He finds his father waiting for Punni (the pet name bestowed on Gulzar by his father). The old man declares that after his death, he had ‘shifted’ back to Dina and was on the border to take his son back to the small town in Jhelum. Those who have come to ‘receive’ the poet take him first to Lahore, where the hustle and bustle of the city disturbs him. The only place for peace and quietude is Dina. Gulzar recalls how Dina was once a calm qasba (a term used for a large village in Urdu) and remembers the excitement of watching trains carrying troops during the Second World War stop for a while at what used to be a makeshift railway station.

A collection of poetry and short stories by Gulzar about Partition have finally been published in Pakistan in the script in which he wrote them — Urdu

The old lane where his house happened to be is still there, but its back entrance — which opened out into a field — has been sealed off. He meets no one he had known as a child. In the last stanza Gulzar returns to the Zero Line; this time he is facing India but his shadow, now falling in Pakistan, entreats him to return to what is his home and his native land, after his death.

The four poems that follow are no less moving and also take him back to the town of Dina, to which the volume under review is dedicated. Arguably, the most heart-rending poem is the one where Gulzar recalls the mad character Bishan Singh from Saadat Hasan Manto’s immortal story Toba Tek Singh. Bishan refuses to cross the newly created border and stands on the Zero Line for hours until his body cannot take it anymore. He falls down and dies. Gulzar concludes the poem by saying that Bishan often calls him to Wagah, repeating his gibberish line “Ooper di gurh-gurh di moong di daal di laaltain” while cursing both Hindustan and Pakistan.

The section of fiction opens with Ravi Paar, a heart-wrenching short story that ranks among the finest pieces woven around Partition. It narrates the story of a couple with newborn twins perched precariously on a goods-train, heading at a snail’s pace towards Amritsar. One of the babies is unable to bear the rigours of the hazardous trip and dies, but his mother clutches him along with the other one to her breast. As the train passes over the bridge on the river Ravi, a fellow passenger advises the father, Darshan Singh, to throw the dead infant into the river so that it will become easier for the couple to carry the living child. Darshan finds sense in the advice. In a split second he picks up the living child, mistaking him for his dead sibling, and throws him into the river.

Another story of mistaken identity is set in Bombay’s local train where, during a Hindu-Muslim riot, a young Muslim hides himself in an empty carriage. At one of the stations a passenger steps into the compartment, unknowingly frightening the one already hiding behind a bench. As the new entrant closes one door after another, the Muslim passenger, taking his co-traveller to be a Hindu, pushes him out of the moving train. The one falling down yells ‘Ya Allah’, leaving the aggressor shocked and crestfallen.

All other stories with Partition and post-Partition backgrounds exude the sadness and helplessness of people affected by it, directly or indirectly. Just like his poems, Gulzar’s pieces of fiction, be it LoC or Do Fauji, leave us wondering why, when all the rage and rancour relating to the two World Wars have dissipated, the hostile relationship between Pakistan and India doesn’t seem to end, even though the common people on either side bear no grudge against each other.

Added like a postscript is a dialogue between Gulzar and the well-known Urdu short story writer Joginder Paul. They narrate their experiences of the traumatic period and pay tributes to writers such as Manto and Krishan Chander who enriched the fiction related to that period.

The reviewer is a senior journalist and author of four books, including Tales of Two Cities

Qadam Zero Line Per
By Gulzar
Maktaba-i-Daniyal
ISBN: 978-9694190877
177pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 6th, 2018