Four Miles to Freedom Page 6

  And so his work began. In the interval between tea at five o’clock and dinner at seven thirty, while the others played cards or carrom or chess, Parulkar would stand with his back turned, as if looking out the window, pull out one of his eating utensils (either knife or fork), and work on dislodging the already crumbling mortar around the window frame. He carefully replaced the large chunks, but the smaller bits he ground under his feet. Below the window was a raised square of crumbling concrete, slightly sloped towards a drain in the wall. At one time the space had been used by Muslim staff for washing their feet and hands and heads before their daily prayers. Now it came in handy, for it was in such a state of deterioration that no one, not even the sweeper, would notice a little extra debris.

  While Dilip worked on his window, the others pretended not to notice. They really didn’t want to be implicated. The war was over. They were being treated decently. Why rock the boat? But no one except Bhargava tried to stop him.

  Dilip began other preparations for escape. He used part of his allowance to buy dried fruits—raisins and apricots and dates—that he would take with him. He grew a beard, believing that would help him blend in with the local population. And he was picking up some words and phrases in Punjabi and Pashto. Hindi and Urdu and Punjabi are so closely related that communication in the prison was never a problem, but learning the local lingo was a matter of fitting in. When he broke out he might have to ask directions or answer a question. He would have to watch his words very carefully.

  As much as a map and a feasible escape route, what he really needed was a partner, preferably someone whose Punjabi was better than his own. Dilip, like his cellmate Chati, was from Maharashtra, and while he understood Punjabi and Urdu and could make himself understood, his accent might give him away. He needed someone else to do the talking. And that person would have to be very fit. They would have to walk all the way to the border, hiding in the daytime and walking by night. They couldn’t risk taking public transport.

  It hadn’t taken Dilip long to decide that Grewal was the best candidate. He was one of the tallest prisoners and certainly the strongest, and he was a Punjabi. He could even pass, as far as his looks went, for a Pathan. Grewal was tall and fair, like the Pathans, and he had grey eyes from his English mother. Even though Dilip had not yet decided whether to head east to India or west to Afghanistan, he knew that if he chose Afghanistan he would have to pass through the Northwest Frontier Province and that was Pathan territory.

  The more Dilip thought about it, the stronger was his belief that with Grewal along, the whole enterprise would have a much greater chance of success. But so far Grewal was as sceptical of the enterprise as all the others. No matter how much charm Dilip employed, Grewal stood firm. He saw the whole thing as a crazy idea. Surely, if they just sat tight, they’d be home by summer, in any case.

  Waiting

  Late in February news came that the medical cases were to be repatriated. It was the first news of any sort and raised all their spirits. At the MI Room, Jafa, Kamat and Singh prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. At the camp, Bhargava used some pooled cash for sweets to celebrate the departure of Mulla-Feroze, whose wounded arm had almost healed. The remaining POWs were happy for their colleagues and for themselves. Action was being taken. The ‘national and international forces’ that Dilip had mentioned in his letter to Inder Khanna were finally producing results. They knew that once the medical cases were repatriated, they would be next.

  However, there were the usual glitches. Mulla-Feroze was taken to the airport four times. For some reason the first three flights were aborted. Then they learned that he had been the only airman repatriated and the other three were still in hospital. They debated why Mulla-Feroze had been exchanged and the others left behind. Could it be that the Pakistani authorities assumed Mulla-Feroze was Muslim because of his name? If so the joke was on them because he was actually a Parsi. Or perhaps they believed Mulla-Feroze, as a junior officer, was less of a threat to Pakistan? On the other hand, his wound had been serious, and when they met Mr B—in December, all the POWs had supported his repatriation on medical grounds. The repatriation of Mulla-Feroze, who was now in good shape, would remain a mystery. Like everything else in their present world, the decision was completely out of their hands.

  The ICRC plane that took Mulla-Feroze home returned to Pakistan with the first batch of mail. When the Red Cross representative arrived at the camp, all the prisoners met him once again in the interrogation room. It was another man, not Mr B—and they were far more interested in getting their mail and parcels than they were in a long conflab.

  When they were questioned about their treatment, they mentioned the obvious deficiencies of their camp: one toilet and shower for the lot of them, and the same tasteless food day after day, trucked in from the enlisted men’s mess though they were all officers. But they admitted the camp staff were treating them decently and that the medical care had improved (though Pethia was still no better). They were all pleased when the rep told them that he believed the treatment of POWs, on both sides of the border, was the best he’d seen in any conflict.

  ‘This can be used to your advantage,’ he told them. ‘When the authorities here know that their own prisoners are being treated well, they are more inclined to treat you in the same manner. We call this “simultaneous reciprocity”.’ It was a term they would remember and use later on.

  After the formal part of the meeting, the Red Cross rep distributed the mail. They were disappointed to find that there were no parcels. Some of the POWs received four or five letters but Bhargava received none. He thought of his wife Anu and their two children waiting for him at home. What could have happened? Had there been some disaster and no one wanted to inform him? He was beside himself. ‘You can read my letters if you like,’ said Dilip. Grewal made the same offer, and Bhargava took them up on it.

  Those who did receive letters found that all of them had been written before anyone had received their letters. All the news was more than a month old and some of the letters had sentences blacked out by the censor. Dilip received letters from his parents and sisters but nothing from his friend Inder Khanna. Shortly after the mail arrived, he wrote to Inder again.

  IAF Officers POW Camp

  Rawalpindi, Pakistan

  7 Mar ‘72

  Dear Inder and Pamma,

  Last week we got our first batch of mail and was slightly disappointed not to find one from you … perhaps you did not receive the earlier letter which I wrote from here.

  The mind goes back to the palmist and her rather gloomy forecast that you would be badly injured about this time in life. I for one have only believed the good things palmists have to say and rejected the rest. Consequently I do fervently hope that when we next meet, soon, we shall have a good laugh and scoff at miserable predictions.

  Both ’65 and ’71 have been eventful years for yours truly. The chance of ending up in a POW camp had never crossed my mind but this is also a great experience as long as one does not make it a habit.

  Life at this camp is better than tolerable. We spend the whole day from after breakfast to 5 p.m. in a small walled compound. The day passes playing carrom, chess, bridge—which I learned just before the Ops—we also have some lively games of 7 tiles and a little bit of non-hard-hitting cricket. The ball must not leave the compound.

  The food is certainly adequate, in fact almost every single one of us has put on weight since we came here. We even had a tape recorder for a few days but it went out of order and we haven’t seen it for almost a month.

  Now that the first batch of mail has arrived we are all anxiously waiting for parcels to follow, and above all we all wait for news about repatriation. The other day some sick and wounded were exchanged. Only one pilot from this camp managed to get his name on that list and even as I write he is probably having himself a gala time in Delhi or Bombay. Now since that exchange has started could our turn possibly be far behind?

  If one must
look for advantage of this miserable period of our lives, it is in all the money lying accumulated in India. Here amongst us is a pilot who took furlough and hitchhiked around Europe last year. Both of us are crazy about physical fitness and games. As a result we have decided to make it to the Munich Olympics together. That would be the most befitting way to wash this bad taste out of our mouths.

  All the V Best to both

  affly

  Dilip

  As usual, Dilip was inclined to focus on the positive and make light of the negative. Usman Hamid had given them a tape recorder and one tape on New Year’s Eve. They had played the tape over and over again until the recorder gave out a few weeks later. Having some music had boosted their spirits for a while. And now they had received their first letters with promises of parcels to come. As for their IAF pay cheques accumulating in their accounts at home, only the bachelors (Dilip, Grewal, Chati, Sinjhi and Pethia) could expect a windfall. The other POWs were married men. Barring any bureaucratic glitches, their monthly pay cheques were being sent to their wives.

  There was other good news but there was no way Dilip could tell Inder about it in a letter. One day in mid-February, when Usman Hamid dropped in to check on his charges, he tossed Dilip an Oxford School Altas. ‘To plan your trip,’ he said. ‘I’ll collect it in a week or so.’

  But he never did collect the atlas. Soon after his visit Usman Hamid was posted out. A little later they heard that he had become an ADC to the Chief of Air Staff.

  Many years later, when he read Sami Khan’s Three Presidents and an Aid, Dilip learned just how close to the centre Hamid was during the early, uncertain days of Bhutto’s presidency. On 3 March, after only a few weeks as ADC to Air Marshal Rahim Khan, Hamid and his boss were summoned to a meeting at Bhutto’s residence, along with the chiefs of staff of the army and the navy. Bhutto had decided to clean house. While all the ADCs were kept closeted together in one office, Bhutto dismissed his army and air force chiefs and had them removed from the premises to secret locations. Then he swiftly made new appointments. The new air chief, Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry, had been serving as the managing director of Pakistan International Airlines. Now he was suddenly at the top of the military hierarchy. Perhaps that’s why he decided to keep Usman Hamid on as ADC.

  After studying the Oxford Atlas’s map of Pakistan and consulting the scale to measure distances, Dilip figured he should head northeast to Poonch. Poonch, the closest town in Indian-controlled Kashmir, was approximately 100 kilometres from Pindi, as the crow flies. He would have to cross the Jhelum River but it would be during the dry season (before June) so he didn’t see that as a problem. What he really needed was a more detailed map of railways, roads and bridges, though he might have to avoid those in any case. He kept the atlas under the blankets on his charpoy for future reference.

  Shortly after the departure of Mulla-Feroze and the arrival of the first mail, Jafa, Kamat and Tejwant Singh returned from their long sojourn at the Chaklala MI Room. It was good to have them back. Kuruvilla, who missed his meat and had ordered tinned meat several times through one of the lascars, now requested a bottle of whiskey. What arrived was not whiskey but Murree gin, which they used for their furtive celebration. The compliant lascar’s name was Aurangzeb. He was an elderly man, unshaven and generally careless about his appearance, but always obliging. The POWs liked to joke about their Aurangzeb, so different from the puritanical Mughul emperor Aurangzeb, who had once ruled India. Luckily their Aurangzeb was more flexible. A courageous chap, too, they thought, knowing the strict Islamic stance against liquor.

  The POWs had been sorry to lose Usman Hamid and they never liked his replacement, Squadron Leader Wahid-ud-din. Wahid-ud-din was a tall, boisterous fellow with rough manners—‘an I specialist’, they called him because he was inclined to be boastful. When they learned he was a grounded pilot they had even less respect for him. One day, soon after the three came back from hospital, Wahid dropped in, and in the course of conversation referred to ‘East Pakistan’, which was now Bangladesh.

  ‘Is the man talking in the past tense?’ quipped Jafa, looking around at his colleagues.

  Wahid was apoplectic with rage and threatened to put Jafa on charge. This incident was another strike against him, as far as the POWs were concerned, and there were more to come. When Wahid later told the prisoners that he was bringing members of his family to visit them, they were not pleased. ‘We were being treated as a curiosity,’ says Dilip. ‘We felt like monkeys in a cage.’

  They had had a few visits from PAF officers before this, including the commander of the Chaklala base. You could call them duty visits. Most of the PAF officers knew they could have been in the same boat themselves and might have appreciated having a few visitors to cheer them up.

  ‘We may be enemies in the air,’ one chap said, ‘but we can be friends on the ground. If you ever need anything, let me know.’ These turned out to be empty words, since the Indian POWs never saw the Pakistani officer again.

  There was almost always a certain awkwardness in these visits, even from men of goodwill, for Pakistan had lost badly in the war and the superiority of the IAF had been an important factor. If the talk turned to history, that could be a minefield, too. The 1947 Partition of India had been a horror—they might all agree to that. If they went any further and tried to discuss the reasons for Partition or the responsibility for its results, they were soon mired in disagreements.

  Jafa, Tejwant Singh and Bhargava enjoyed visits from Pakistani pilots they had trained with overseas. Singh and Bhargava had trained on the Sabre in the States, and Jafa had been to Staff College in the UK. No awkward conversations during these visits, just jokes and reminiscences about old times. The other POWs were there, too, in Cell 5, witnessing the fun. Jafa’s friend came with his wife, who remarked that prisoner morale seemed high despite the difficult conditions. ‘And Jafa,’ she said,’ I can see you haven’t lost your charm.’

  The pilot who had trained with Singh and Bhargava in the States came alone, but at the end of the visit he surprised everyone by announcing that his wife was waiting in a car outside. ‘Since you are my brothers,’ he told his two friends, ‘please do me the honour of coming to meet her.’ The corporal on duty agreed to the request and accompanied the two prisoners outside the gate. Everyone was aware that the PAF pilot, a strict Muslim, had done something exceptional to express his friendship.

  At some point in March or April the new Air Chief, Zafar Chaudhry, paid a visit accompanied by his ADC, Squadron Leader Usman Hamid. It was an informal early morning affair with the two men visiting senior officers in their cells, but hurried as the visit was, those who received Chaudhry remember him as being genuinely concerned about their welfare.

  The visit of Wahid’s family, which the prisoners had dreaded, turned out to be one of the most memorable visits of all. It may have been in May or June. The weather had already warmed up. At teatime Wahid drove into the courtyard with his whole family in the car. From Cell 5, where the prisoners had assembled as usual, they saw two women and several children step out of the car. The door to the cell was unlocked and the visitors filed in. Wahid introduced the ladies as ‘my wife and my sister-in-law’. The women were not veiled and were dressed in typical Punjabi salwar kameez. But no one was interested in the women’s clothes, only in their lovely faces. The room was crowded and the visit did not last long but none of the prisoners has ever forgotten it. These were the first women and children they had seen in months and they found them all very beautiful. Two of the children were twin girls, maybe seven or eight years old.

  After a few minutes one of the ladies began to weep. ‘My brother was in the army and is a prisoner in India,’ she told them. ‘I wonder how they are looking after him?’ The prisoners tried to assure her that the Pakistani POWs were being looked after very well, from what they had heard. ‘Don’t cry,’ they told her. ‘He will be fine.’ After the family left the prisoners realized that maybe their appearance—rumpled
clothes, some with beards, others unshaven (only a few of them took the trouble to shave on a regular basis), some wearing canvas shoes—had disturbed the woman. They didn’t look like officers at all.

  The next day Wahid arrived with a sumptuous lunch cooked by his wife and her sister. The attendants unloaded the containers from his car and set them on the table for everyone to share. For a few days after the feast they were inclined to think Wahid wasn’t such a bad fellow.

  Throughout March the POWs continued to spend all day in the courtyard. On occasion, when Wahid was absent, Rizvi would sit down and play a game of chess, and how he loved to win! Otherwise it was the same routine: a few energetic games of seven tiles followed by French cricket in the morning and cards or board games in the afternoon. Towards the end of March temperatures reached 30 degrees in the afternoons. A few POWs returned to their cells to nap or read but they all gathered for tea at five o’clock. After tea Dilip would stand at the window, his back to the door, as if looking out. He was making progress. He estimated the wall was at least 25 cm thick. He could already insert his knife up to the hilt in some spots. All he needed now was a little more work and a good sandstorm.

  Some days, from the courtyard they could see children flying their kites from the roof of a building nearby. One day a kite floated into the courtyard. Its string had been cut in competition and both sides raced to retrieve it. Soon there was a pack of boys at the wall and one of the POWs reached up to hand the kite back. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A few days later some boys brought a kite and spool to the wall so the POWs could fly one of their own kites. Jafa, who knew the Urdu script, wrote their address on it: No. 3 Provost & Security Flight, Mall Road. For a few days the POWs had fun flying the kite in competition. When its string got cut, they heard it had been delivered back at the gate, but they never saw it again.