Indu could be any young girl today, who finds her wings clipped and her dreams crushed by the expectations of her loving family, caring friends, and, of course, a society ostensibly reigning in her free spirit for her own good but really perpetuating decades of oppressive practices that have spelt the death of possibilities from taking flight since time immemorial.

Except that her story is set in the days preceding and succeeding India’s independence. Penned by a writer who has lived through it and traversed the decades, it is an extraordinary commentary on the continuing saga of subtle subjugations and limitations that are imposed on people who don’t, innately, bow down to dictated norms and outdated traditions.

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“Becoming the Storm”, the debut novel of Rami Chhabra, columnist, writer and journalist, is a measured critique of unquestioning, unthinking human values etched into collective consciousnesses that cripple the journey forward and that lurk like invisible but indestructible shackles. But it is brought out, without didacticism, through a captivating tale about an affluent Punjabi family, their friends, relatives and acquaintances living through and coming to grips with the turbulent times that Partition denoted.

The Singhs, a fictional family, placed in the historical context of Partition, are forced to migrate to Delhi from Pakistan when riots break out just before Independence in their hometown of Quetta.

The terrifying times are recreated by the author through her powerful, descriptive narrative. And while recounting the unfolding macro violence engulfing the times, she weaves into it the horrifying human propensities at play at the micro level. Shanti Singh, who has been put in charge of the evacuation of Indians, is sent on dangerous missions by vindictive British bosses and narrowly escapes being torched alive by a riotous mob.

Chhabra writes, “Shanti had been ordered to immediately proceed to Rawalpindi even though it was now well known that it was the epicentre of rioting with Hindus and Sikhs fleeing it in droves. The sporadic riots of earlier months had by this time become a full-fledged conflagration: millions were fleeing across upcoming borders by any vehicle they could get hold of or on foot. On both sides of the upcoming divide, the jam packed trains were being openly stopped, goods pillaged, passengers murdered….and when he reached Rawalpindi, a city in collapse and closure, colleagues there had been appalled to see him coming into the burning inferno and ordered his immediate return to Quetta, assigning him an armed escort. The journey to and fro had been marked by several narrow escapes from death only because the unchanged tabs on the military uniform he wore in those post-war years had been mistaken for a Pakistani officer.”

But then Chhabra’s prose is ultimately an inspiring story of the constant battle that the indomitable and invincible spirit wages on the propensities of domination and vengeance. The depiction of unspeakable hatred is always juxtaposed with its opposite … the bringing to the fore of unimaginable love and fellow feeling. The details of Partition’s horrors are interspersed with depictions of kindness and gratitude.

Eventually Shanti, who has taken a vow to not leave until the last Indian has been evacuated, is eventually escorted out of the country by a powerful Pakistani tribal chief who will never forget a favour Shanti had done for him. Escorting him to safety, the Muslim chief tells Shanti, “Singh Sahib, not a hair of your head can be harmed, not a single possession destroyed—not as long as this Khan and any man of this tribe lives.”

It is this perpetual propensity of the human spirit to rise above the ugly and journey into and move towards beauty that Chhabra explores through her seemingly simple story of a girl given to the idea of freedom during a time when oppression is the order of the day. Shanti’s daughter Indu’s path to freedom, at a time when India has achieved independence, is subjected to as many challenges and obstacles as her new country faces as it tries to emerge from years of subjugation. Her story indeed is a reflection of her country’s difficult journey to be truly liberated.

The story begins on a leisurely afternoon in the house of the Singhs, who have built a lovely bungalow with a beautiful garden in an upcoming and posh Delhi neighbourhood where the wealthy and influential people live. They include diplomats, journalists, lawyers, government and army officials, most of whom have migrated after fleeing Pakistan.

Chhabra, whose tale is based on an empirical experience of those times, gives the reader an incisive glimpse into how things were shaping up for the people grappling with a new reality.

While the older generation, including Indu’s parents Shanti and Rano, had expectedly imported their individual and innate value systems, whether liberal (Shanti—who wants his daughter to pursue higher education and be financially independent and not get saddled with husband and children and a domestic life) or rigid (Rano, who wants to see her daughter married and settled and is looking for a suitable boy), as they move into a new country, the younger generation finds itself growing up with new progressive ideals.

However, to Indu’s crushing disappointment, as she goes through life, a number of her college friends and, most dishearteningly, her boyfriend and now husband, whom she had considered liberal, turn out to be utterly confined to regressive traditions.

Chhabra’s depiction of Indu’s in-laws and their hold over their son are eye-openers as far as the sheer oppressiveness of many of our country’s still existing traditions are concerned. But charmingly, Chhabra takes some of the blow away from the shock through her witty and entertaining reportage, as it were.

For instance, the narration of how Indu’s mother-in-law reacts when she reluctantly visits the hospital after learning that she has become a grandmother to a girl rather than a boy is as hilarious as it is horrifying (horrifying because it is reflective of a still existing reality). “Reluctantly accepting the child, Maji looked down: ‘What to say, after all it’s only a girl’ She sniffed.”

Or sample another passage in which Indu has just moved into her husband’s house and is expected to not just touch the feet of her parents-in-law but perform the ignoble tasks of prostrating herself at their feet. “They had arrived at the house (of her in-laws). An oil brass lamp had been lit in the verandah and she had been made to prostrate on the dusty floor … at her father-in-law’s feet”.

There is an underlying and understated anger that informs these passages. Especially because Indu is expected to grin and bear it, and her upbringing does not allow her to disobey. However, the climax of Chhabra’s story is truly cathartic. And inspiringly spiritual.

Full of wit and depth in equal measure, not to mention picturesque descriptions of everything from food to fruits and flowers in delightful colour and flavour, Chhabra’s book is as entertaining a read as it is an incisive commentary on the clashing values and ideals that we Indians grapple with on a daily basis in our daily lives.

Spotlight

Becoming the Storm

By Rami Chhabra

Occam, 2024

482 pages, Rs 899/-