re-rendered, freeing him evermore from the taboos of Qadian. Beeru wore the suit matching Dhumma's and Jagat's for the latter's wedding. Jagat looked at Beeru's face, black like his own, peering like an evil eye mask hung from a home and declaring he would forever ward off evil from Jagat's life. On their way to the cremation grounds with wood, Sukhia and Gamma stopped off at the khooh told Jagat that they had enough wood for three pyres.
"Build one pyre for three."
"What are you thinking, they are not related by blood, caste or marriage?" said Sukhia.
"That's what they would've wanted. That' what I want."
The clouds threatened rain possibilities.
Seeing just big pyre many Qadianians assembled in the cremation ground whispered; the Brahmin Kashi mumbled about Brahmin Preeti being on the pyre with a tarkhan Atma and Beeru jheer. Jagat decided to ignore him and others but the whispers increased as did their volume and facing the pyre and the crowd Jagat said,
"Qadianians, I hear the whispers. Atma was kike Preeti's father and Beeru like brother. Fatherhood and brotherhood have no caste or religion."
Sameer lit the kerosene drenched pyre, it crackled and embers flew. Soon the crowd began dispersing. Family and some friends remained a bit longer. Gamma and Sameer stayed behind to ensure the itinerant stray dogs of Qadian didn't disturb the ast, the ashes. Ast, also meaning sunset--an apt metaphor for the day in Jagat's life, were gathered.
The nascent Indian state wrestling with bloodshed couldn't guarantee his family's safety, so Jagat turned to his friend Jodh Singh who in the second decade of the 20th Century, had returned from Canada at the call of the Gadhar Party to free India. Trained in the art of violent revolution in Moscow he was a gun and bomb expert. Disillusioned and repulsed by partition, disowned by his own family for fear of British reprisals for his activism, he had retreated to a mud home in Tejpur, a few miles from Qadian.
"I'm sorry for all the deaths in your family; I hear about it yesterday and I was getting ready to come and see you."
"If you know, then you can see I need help."
Two days later Jodh was at the khooh with guns and supplies to stay until not needed.
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