The sweat was trickling down our foreheads as it was a humid September day. Most of the students were sitting in a slouched manner, with their hands folded or staring outside the window in an attempt to escape the lecture of Ms Mahnoor, the history teacher. At this moment, Anaya also found nothing more interesting than watching the birds fly by.

“Ms Anaya, if you are done with counting the leaves on the tree outside the window, I need your focus on the Rowlatt Acts of 1919. Do you have any idea which page are we on?” came the voice of her teacher, taking the attention of everyone, except hers.

Zainab nudged Anaya and she immediately removed her hand from under her chin and sat up straight as she looked around embarrassed, and unable to answer.

“Well, ma’am I ... I zoned out I’m sorry.”

“Then you’ll have to work even harder on the assignment,” said the teacher disappointed, as she turned towards the class, “I need you all to research on the Amritsar Tragedy, which was a consequence of this Act; and students, please note that this is a marked assignment. You all need to realise that your freedom to be able to gaze out of a window peacefully came for a price that your ancestors paid. Class dismissed.”

The students stood up instantly as they had already packed their bags and went out into the corridor. As Omar was walking out of the class with his best mate Farhan, he said, “Great! Another assignment is to be completed on the weekend. I mean, why do teachers always ruin our weekends?”

Farhan smiled, but said nothing. Farhan, Omar, Anaya and Zainab were best friends because their mothers were high school friends as well. So, Omar suggested that they should all do the research together at his house. All agreed and decided on the time.

On the set day and time, all of them met at Omar’s house and greeted his mum, then went inside Omar’s room. Just then their doorbell rung, Omar opened the door and saw a courier man with a parcel in his hands and Omar’s name written on it. Omar was excited as he thought it was a present from his uncle who lived abroad and promised him a few days ago that he would send Omar a present.

Omar was so excited to open the present that he ran into his room and showed it to his friends. However, Omar was a bit puzzled as there was nothing more written on the box — no address, no stamp, just his name. Anyway, as he unwrapped the parcel he found a box inside and as he opened it, a bright yellow light pierced their eyes and all they could hear was “VROOM!”

When they opened their eyes, they saw a massive machine standing in the empty space. It was decorated with an intricate design and colours. Omar looked in the box and found a vintage worn-out letter folded in the box and in which it was written, “My dear grandson Omar, this is a time machine — an invention which I made but I could not travel in it. I’m passing it forward to you. Take good care.”

It was a message from his grandfather who passed away just after the independence of Pakistan. He was a great scientist, but he kept his research and all the work hidden from the world.

Zainab immediately stood up and said, “I think we should have a look inside the machine.”

Anaya agreed, so Farhan and Omar followed them and saw that it was a machine with complete control panels and two screens. But there were two prominent green buttons labelled with “Past” and “Future”.

Omar looked at others in disbelief as if they were in a sci-fi movie so Farhan advised him to press “Past” as they had an assignment of the past.

The kids were not scared; in fact, they were excited. They pressed the ‘Past’ button. The time machine took a whirl and zoomed. Anaya felt dizzy and Farhan was about to throw up when they felt the machine just stop. As they looked outside from the window, they could not believe their eyes for they saw a dinosaur busy munching something raw.

Zainab was sweating out of fear so she grabbed Anaya’s hand, all the four friends looked at each other. They noticed there was a keyboard and on the screen appeared, “Enter year, month, date”. Omar entered, April 13, 1919. They knew that before this date, Amritsar, a city in Punjab state of India was put under martial law and was handed over to General Dyer.

This was the perfect time to see things happening in real-time. The machine vroomed again and in a few seconds, it came to a stop. They looked out from the window and saw it was night time, and they had stopped in some kind of a ground, they could see some people at a distance.

They knew they were right on the spot.

General Dyer had banned all public meetings and protests in the city, but there were still many people out there who didn’t know about this. All four friends slowly came out from the time machine and looked around; they slowly walked towards the crowd at a distance. They remained hidden so that their actions could not have any effect on history. They read the board written Jallianwallah Bagh, a public garden, which only had one entry and exit point, it was surrounded by 10 feet high walls. The crowd was estimated to be between 10, 000 and 20,000 people, many had come to attend the Sikh Baisakhi festival from neighbouring villages, unaware of the ban and others had gathered for a protest against the arrest of two nationalist leaders, Satya Pal, and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew.

Anaya noticed that a marching voice was coming from the narrow entrance and gestured to her friends to look in that direction. Leading them was General Dyer, who blocked the only exit and without warning, ordered his troops to fire at the unarmed crowd including children. This wreaked complete havoc, because it was the only entry and exit point and there was no way out.

It was the most terrible scene to witness. All four friends hugged each other and cried. The indiscriminate firing went on for about 10 minutes until the 1650 rounds of ammunition were exhausted. Zainab sat on the floor, mourning the deaths of all the innocents.

This was enough, as the kids could not remain composed any more. All of them went back to the time machine and sat dejectedly on their seats and pressed the button “Present”.

The machine vroomed …. and they were back in Omar’s room.

When the friends came out, the machine vanished. The kids didn’t show any amazement, because the brutal scene was stuck in their minds.

The people there died because they had dared to protest. Today, a peaceful protest is considered as our right. This is the power of freedom. But sadly, we all take the struggle of our ancestors for granted.

After their tour, Omar searched for the consequences and found that General Dyer was simply ordered to leave the military, but with no punishment. And that this tragedy was also one of the causes behind the Satyagarah movement of Gandhi later on.

All the kids completed their assignments well, since it was not just an event from the history books to them. They resolved to stand firm in defending the dignity of Pakistan. They believed it was the responsibility of the whole nation, not just one person.

Published in Dawn, Young World, Aug 12th, 2023