A Baroque Experience

Dr. Roopali shares an interesting experience of how she met two Sardarjis, at Vienna Railway Station, a warm welcome and hospitality into their abode and more. An exclusive for Different Truths.

The train silently slipped into Vienna Railway Station. My heartbeats had been slow waltzing for some time now. This is the beautiful city where Johann Strauss’ music had turned the muddy waters of the Danube eternally blue. This was my dream city. I was traveling in Europe for days from one place to another sometimes with a friend and sometimes with friends and this time alone. This was going to be my time. My waltzing heart suddenly stopped dead in its tracks as the door slid open and a voice greeted me with “Sat Sri Akal”. A young man in an orange turban eagerly walked up and helped me down with my rucksack.

He asked me to wait while he made a phone call from a booth. It was a very short call. “Hotal? Bilkul nahi ji! You, my guest. Chalo, tuhannu sadde pind le chalde ne!” So that is how I found myself in Makhan Singh’s rattletrap car heading for an unknown destination. I still marvel at how I went off without a thought for my safety with this brother of mine from my land so far away to what he so lovingly called “Sadda Pind.” “My villeege,” he explained. I had travelled by Eurail to Vienna to listen to Strauss and other great classical musicians. A very detailed travel book said one could listen to orchestras and local bands in various music halls and parks all over the city. But this truth seemed different. The boisterous, excited Sardarji from the heart of Punjab I had not bargained for. Curiosity, a desire to see a new place like an Austrian village, a tongue craving spicy pickle after days of bland food, the warmth of India…something inexplicable made me say, “Chalo, let’s go!”

Rattle-rattle the trap on four wheels merrily rattled along. Its green Rexine seat cover peeling a little here and a little there. The magnificent city of Vienna with its spiralling towers, the baroque architecture, the quintessential city of arts and music rushed past as I held my breath. My travelling friends were going to regret not coming here with me. Suddenly, I was rudely jostled awake from my dreamlike Blue Danube state, and thrust into a nightmare! The cassette tape Makhan Singh had lovingly shoved into his “deck” was now belting out a familiar Bollywood number “Arrey hai hai yeh majboori, yeh mausam aur yeh doori. And Teri do takiyan di naukri te mera lakhon kaa saawan jaaye…etc etc” and Makhan Singh was rocking from side to side. His turbaned head moved with such joy.

We left the city of my dreams far behind and drove for what seemed like miles into the beautiful countryside towards the anticipated “pind!” Suddenly, the rattletrap came to a speeding jerky stop. On either side were tall trees. Makhan Singh took off his shoe and threw it up into a tree. Down rained the plumpest darkest of red cherries I had ever seen! And I grabbed them off the wide metal road, wiped them on my kurta and ate them up greedily! We left the rest of the cherries behind, got back in the leather-torn rattletrap, and soon found ourselves in a picturesque village with rows of picture-postcard houses with sloping roofs and orange-red geraniums growing on either side of the entrances. The mud thatched riggedy-raggedy village houses in India receded as I gingerly entered one of the homes escorted by Makhan paaji and was warmly welcomed by a kind young Punjabi lady and two lungi-clad Sikh gentlemen. The lungi-clad gentlemen were drinking out of a bottle called “Chivas Regal”. They were not wearing turbans. One of them had very light skin and blue eyes. He was proudly introduced as Angrez Singh.

He looked like a Viking. Makhan Singh took off his turban and to my surprise, he too had short cropped hair.

I refused the offer of a drink from the bottle, and hungrily grabbed the cup of masala tea and onion pakodas made by Pinky Kaur, who had married Makhan Singh’s brother Jarnail Singh by calling upon the Holy Book, the Guru Granth Sahib as witness. A few more swigs from the bottle, another cup of tea, and some more pakodas later they told me how they brought her from a pind in Punjab all the way as a German language student. Every six months they went into neighboring Germany and re-entered Austria. In this manner six years had gone by. There was a baby now – Kirtan Kaur. The state maternity system paid for everything, including a large hamper of baby food for the child.

Makhan Singh and Jarnail Singh worked in the nearby zoological entertainment park, minding the Cockatoos and the koalas! It was a great life compared to the life they had led back home in Bathinda. Angrez Singh sold junk jewelry on the pavement near the railway station where I had met Makhan. When the police vans came around, he would quickly wrap his wares in a sheet, cram them into a backpack and take off. He seemed quite happy. He smiled all evening. I seemed to have known them always.

That night, I slept dreaming of mustard fields and my caring hosts on tractors during Baisakhi when the harvest season came around. There was much singing and dancing. Sometimes I was there for them. In those dreams.

The next morning, I tottered into the kitchen hoping to make myself a cup of coffee. There at the stove was a total stranger. A portly Punjabi lady brewing adrak chai. I stood there blinking. Pinky Kaur had morphed into this woman. She ignored me so I hastily withdrew, only to bump into a burly dark skinned Sardarji. He too ignored me. I panicked.

Where were Makhan Singh and Jarnail Singh? Where were Angrez Singh and Pinky Kaur? I peeped into a room and found them sipping tea.

“Aaji, tussi jagg gaye?” There is somebody else in the kitchen, I blurted.

“Oh-who koi aur loki haigge ne. Assi share karde haan!”

 They lived like strangers with strangers from their far away mustard fields. They had nothing to do with them. Yet they shared a kitchen.  

Later, after eggs and paratha Jarnail Singh and Makhan Singh took me in the rattletrap car to the zoological park where they minded the parrots. I asked them if they would take me to the park where they played Strauss every evening. They drew a blank but promised to take me there later in the day after they showed me the cages with goats, a well of death, parrots and other exotic birds. The travel book had exaggerated. The park had a bandstand, and a local juvenile band was playing “One way ticket to the moon!” And a group of people were dancing. Strauss was nowhere to be found.

And just like that, I was soon back at the station. As I waited with a heavy heart to board the train Jarnail Singh put his hand on my head and said, “when you go back to India, if you meet my parents, please don’t tell them I have cut my hair.” Somebody had squeezed my heart and brought tears to my eyes. Makhan bhai had disappeared into the phone booth. The train slowly moved out and with misted eyes I bid goodbye to Vienna and its “swaying mustard fields and its five rivers.”

A month after I returned, still steeped in the hospitality and love of my countrymen in far off Austria, I wrote of my visit to the quaint village and the Sikh family and snail mailed it to a well-known newspaper for its Sunday edition. It was published and well received. A couple of weeks later two letters were redirected to my address by the same newspaper office. Both the letters written on separate dates asked me to describe the people I had met, and if their actual names were so and so.

A chill went down my spine. Who were these letters from?  Why were these strangers writing to me? The letter writers they said were looking for some guys who had in a land dispute murdered their brother and vanished without a trace.

I tore the letters into shreds.

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