By Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed

Daily Times July 01, 2014

Lost Generations: A Historical Novel Author: Manjit Sachdeva Publisher: Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2013

Manjit Sachdeva’s debut novel about Sohna and his descendants covers a span of almost 200 years: 1790 to 1984 CE. Born into a Hindu Arora household of a Rawalpindi village, he shows no talent for its cabinetmaking trade. He is instead gifted with a melodious singing voice. His father deems that a liability and gives him away to a family of Sikh musicians where he becomes Karam Singh. He catches the eye of Maharaja Ranjit Singh who makes him a musician at his court in Lahore.

The novel moves forward into 1941. Sohna’s great grandson, Bhag Singh, is a prosperous wholesale cloth merchant. He lives in a 16-room mansion in central Rawalpindi. He is ‘cursed’ by the birth of three daughters — Rani, Guddi and Nikki — from his second wife. The last one is born premature and their mother dies a day after she is born. Kartaro, Bhag’s overbearing mother, wants him to marry again. Bhag did have a son, Sucha Singh, from his deceased first wife, but Kartaro wants more grandsons. Lajjo, a beautiful 19-year-old orphaned girl from a poor family becomes the third wife of Bhag, who has crossed 40. When Lajjo announces her pregnancy, expectations rise to feverish pitch for the birth of a son but she too gives birth to a girl, Jassi. Unlike others in the family, Jassi is dark-skinned and thus a liability. Everyone is shattered and the poor girl has to bear taunts and ridicule all her life from her sisters.

Meanwhile, the partition takes place. Bhag and his family arrive in Delhi penniless, traumatised by the murder of some close relatives by Muslim raiders. Bhag and his sister’s husband, Diler Singh, raid the house of a Muslim family, kill the men, rape a young mother carrying an infant boy and take over the house. Sucha, Bhag’s son from the first wife, is a witness to that crime. He is ordered to get rid of the woman who pleads for mercy and offers her body to Sucha as a reward. He takes advantage of that opportunity.

Bhag tries to revive his old wholesale cloth business but receives no support from local traders. He then sets up a modest retail cloth business. He suffers a heart attack in 1950 and becomes progressively bedridden, irritable and difficult. Sucha advises his stepmother, Lajjo, to start administering opium to the old man. She agrees hesitatingly.

Sucha sets up his own business of supplying Punjabi food recipes to restaurants and dhabas (eateries). Lajjo helps him with the chores. On one occasion, he sees his crippled father and Lajjo copulating and that incites anger and vile passion. He seduces his petrified stepmother. She threatens to kill herself if it is ever repeated. However, she becomes pregnant, dupes Sucha into believing that Bhag is the father and when a son, Ranjit, is born in 1954, celebrations on a grand scale take place. 

Sucha opens a women’s garment shop. He employs female assistants whom he seduces, even making one of them, Raj, pregnant, while he simultaneously caters to bored middle-aged women customers. His relatives learn about his orgies but Sucha remains unrepentant. Eventually Rani, Guddi and Nikki are married into refugee families. Their ordeals continue with the births of girls or boys who are born with some congenital disease or the other. Sucha marries Rosy but learns to his consternation that she was seduced by her brother-in-law. Guddi is raped by Rani’s husband and Nikki also goes through similar trauma. 

Jassi is despatched to a hostel where a Muslim Indian air force pilot, Saeed Ali, falls in love with her. The two want to marry but the thought is taboo and anathema for Indian society and establishment. The author captures that predicament in a remark by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who, when he is told about the case, says that India is a secular state and so what is wrong with a Sikh and a Muslim falling in love? However, the establishment overrules such a match and Nehru wrings his hands saying that India would not be secular for another 100 years. Jassi is pregnant while Saeed Ali is posted far away, never to be allowed to return. Her family is devastated to know she is carrying the child of a Muslim. A solution is found whereby Sucha’s wife leaves Delhi ostensibly to visit relatives in Dehradun, where she stays till Jassi gives birth to a girl. Rosy is declared as the mother of the child.

Jassi finds work but her boss, her classfellow Meeta’s husband, Gullu, demands sexual gratification and exploits her. Eventually, she meets a nice man, Raminder, an engineer who belongs to a refugee family from Lahore. The novel climaxes with the infamous carnage of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. As rioting breaks out, Raminder is trapped on the way back to home from office. A mob surrounds him. His pleas that he and his family were partition refugees who had always voted for Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party, and had considered India their only home while it was the Jatt Sikhs of East Punjab who were the standard bearers of the Khalistan movement, fall on deaf ears. He is mercilessly burned to death. Jassi moves to his parents’ place in Patiala. She is pregnant and the novel ends.

Sachdeva captures with great skill the tragedy of Sikh refugees. Besides the sizable loss of life and property, the exodus from Rawalpindi and other parts of western Punjab also resulted in their distinct cultural identity being submerged within the larger mass of the Sikh Jatts of East Punjab. With brutal candour he critiques the misogynist values and beliefs related to honour, prestige and status permeating such middle class Sikh society. The dowry issue, extravagant weddings, overly religious pretensions and superstitions are woven into a plot comprising several other characters as well. The predicament of the lost generations is conveyed graphically with sympathy and imagination in this epic novel. It should be read widely.