Toys of Gods

This trilogy of novellas presents a kaleidoscopic view of the consequences of the 1947 Partition of India for a family and it’s subsequent search for it’s destiny, it’s Karma, the survival of the fittest, as if the members of the family were Playthings of the Gods, created for their amusement. The ring of authenticity resounds like a church bell on a clear day in this fictionalised narrative based on the collective memory and personal experience of Prem Thadhani, who survived the holocaust of the Partition when he was four and his family. The narrative avoids being an autobiography by the Author’s resort to highly imaginative flights of fancy, which only succeed in adding to the richness of the exotic tapestry woven by him. The Author has known senior politicians and former Indian royalty. The resort to fiction also helps to protect their identity in this tale of traumatic times. The Author retains his optimism, his belief all will be well again, if not for him, then for his progeny. However, as he says, to tell his story without the occasional escape into fiction is far too painful. The narrative is about a family’s journey from riches to rags, from light into darkness till, after generations of struggle, it’s last, surviving member once again sees light at the end of the tunnel. He can now begin to hope for the revival of the family fortune, social status and happiness. The story is reinforced by an explicit belief in reincarnation and the implicit belief that every soul in every family has a Karma, an ordained objective to fulfil on earth. We have the free will to rebel against our destiny and go our own way for a while but, inevitably, in this life or the next, every individual and every family is pulled back to the correct path which will lead it to it’s goal, it’s reason for existence on earth. The Author uses this philosophy to take us on a roller coaster ride from the psychosis of fear which prevailed in Karachi during the Partition of India, to love and betrayal in the Himalayas, from the deadly embrace of elephants in the jungles of India, to mystical rites of lamas in Tibet, from incest and murder in New Delhi, to a spy in the Indian corridors of power, who thinks nothing of betraying his country to the Chinese, from Beirut, the crossroads of many countries, to an inscrutable Tibetan lady with a porcelain complexion, a cocktail in one hand and a smoking pistol in the other, from illegal triads in Hong Kong, to a young lama bearing precious, jewelled swords and above all, to the sense of betrayal at every other turn of events. The Author does not generally find fault with the British for the Partition of India, presumably because he knows his history. The betrayal is more personal. It comes from a person who seizes the opportunity to usurp the property of a friend in difficulty and then lord it over him, from a women who walks out on her lover without explanation and from a greedy elder brother, who hates his sibling for unwittingly falling in love with the women he thought was his. The sense of fair play ingrained in the British, which come through unambiguously, particularly where friendship is involved, lifts this refugee’s tale to a higher plane of optimism, of hope and brightness, instead of allowing it to sink to the depths of despair and darkness. Imagine the shock in Karachi among non-Muslims when they learned their predominantly Hindu city was allotted to Pakistan by the British against the general principal of an area being given to either one or the other country on the basis of its religious majority. Unprepared and over confident, the Author’s family was caught up in the riots in Karachi, some in retaliation to rumours of rape and murder of Muslim women across the border in India. The British tried to stem this growing violence with a flood of orders like the one forbidding possession of knives. When the Thadhani family foolishly failed to declare and surrender their well-known jewelled sword collection in time, they were warned by a friendly British District Magistrate, who had often been their guest at dinner, that as he would be inspecting their premises shortly, it would be in their own interest to get rid of the swords without further delay. Consequently, the entire immediate family drove out one night in cars to the beach with the swords sewn up in jute bags. It was hoped the tide would carry the sacks of swords out to sea and no one would be the wiser. The prominent family did not realise it was under watch by British security. They were observed. The swords were easily recovered later by the British at their leisure as the sacks proved too heavy for the tide to move. Out of gratitude and friendship for their former hosts who, in better times, had generously opened up their homes and hearts to them when they were homesick, the British decided to take the collection out of Karachi and place it in safe hands, to be used on another rainy day for the family’s benefit. The incident at the beach, indelibly etched in the memory of a four year old child, plays a key role in this story, after being imaginatively embroidered. The valuable swords did exist. They were dumped in the sea. We are told this is true. We can only guess how much of the rest is fiction. The Author’s preference for the usually upright British over the often unprincipled Indian, who can brush aside the closest blood ties in their greed to grab all, is clear. The British no longer rule India, but their sense of fair play has left behind an immutable mark on many Indians, as illustrated by this refugee’s tale.