Shadow run Connaught Place “I was cursing myself for my predicament during the middle of that winter night in January, 05 when I was stranded on the Delhi Chandigarh highway.” “Why? What really made you to make that journey? “See my son had taken out my car, and then suddenly I got this call from my friend Malhotra at Chandigarh that Gurdeep was critically ill and I must come immediately. After finishing my dinner I started off for Chandigarh.Do you know how? I rode on my son’s motorbike and proceeded towards Chandigarh .It was freezing cold .You know that January nights are foggy in this part of North India, I had worn a top coat over my leather jacket, monkey cap, gloves and driving goggles.” We were lounging in Wimpy’s in Connaught Place when Sid was narrating his latest escapade over a mini meal of chicken nugget, cheese burger and hot coffee. Whenever I am in Delhi, I try to visit Connaught Place as it brings back my childhood memories.Connaught Place of fifties was having a sprawling park at the centre where now Delhi Metro hub is coming up. There was a dais at the centre of the park where army band used to play on Sunday evenings. We used to sit on the lawn and listen to the band, eat peanuts. There were not many cars those days, especially on Sundays, there were hardly any traffic, and popular mode of transport was Tonga. All the shops used to be closed on Sundays. So the army band and the green grass were the attraction for the people to come there. The magnificent sound of the army band used to reverberate along the circular corridor of Connaught place. Like every time, this time also I had gone to Connaught place while I was in Delhi. After purchasing the latest John Grisham novel “The Broker” from Gilgotia I proceeded for lunch to Wimpy’s and there I bumped on Sid after a long time. He had also come for lunch. After some small talk Sid narrated his strange experience. So, there we were taking our lunch when Sid continued with his narration. There was dense fog and that is quite normal in January. I started at about 10.30 pm from my house at Chittaranjan Park. I was driving at a cautious speed of 60km per hour in that foggy night. I had no trouble during the first two hours when I crossed Badarpur, Faidabad, and Panipat stretch but suddenly my motorbike stopped after Karnal.There I was in the middle of nowhere, the dhaba which I crossed was about 20km behind. Due to the fog there was hardly any vehicular movement on the highway. I tried to fiddle with the engine but failed. If it would have been Rajdoot motorbike of olden days then I could have stripped the engine. I have no idea about these Jap collaborated motorbikes. The fog had become denser and the visibility was practically zero. There was no shop or house nearby. Suddenly at a distance I could see a diffused light which was sporadically appearing and then disappearing. I thought my eyes were playing trick but still I walked towards that light. “Was it on the same side of the road where you were stranded? I guess due to the fast changing density of the fog the visibility of the light was changing,” I tried to find a cogent reason. “Yes, it was to the left of the road, when I reached with my motorbike to that place then I found that it was a small tea shop and an old person was dosing by the side of the hot chullah. He looked at me and invited me for tea.” “I have gone many times by that highway but those kind of small shops are no longer there,” I informed him. “I know, I was also surprised, I found there was no electrical connection. The source of light was a hurricane lamp. He informed me that I will not get any thing in that night and so I can as well spend the night in that shop. He had a charpoy; he offered me that to take rest. I had no choice. After a cup of tea I stretched myself on that charpoy.” “Terrible, I can imagine your quandary in that freezing temperature.” “Somehow with those layers of warm cloth and the anxiety of getting stranded there, the cold did not bother me much. After about an hour or so I heard some voices coming from the road. I got up; I noticed that there was a chauffeur driven Chevrolet car. There were two passengers, one in the front and the other one in the back. They were sardars, there turban was wrap around type. They were wearing regular dress like khalsa, lungi, kurta, kirpan with heavy kadas on their right wrist.” “Must be some royalty otherwise who else will maintain those vintage cars?” “Surprisingly the car was new; I approached them with my sob story. The gentleman at the back was sipping tea and he appeared to be the boss. I requested him to give me lift up to Chandigarh, I told him that I would leave the motor bike at the tea shop,” Sid continued with his narration. “He gestured me to come and sit in the back seat with him. I took my brief case and got in the car. After paying for the tea the driver started the car with the other passenger in the front seat with him. I started dosing after sometime, but I could hear them discussing in Punjabi how they had looted the treasury. I pretended as though I was asleep but remained alert. There was no Khalistani movement, and then who were these fellows. Were they terrorist dressed up as Khalistani.I was really scared.” “Oh, my god, you were really in deep shit .How did you escape from there,” I said excitedly. “Let me finish. I could hear the sound of an approaching automobile. They became agitated and decided to stop the car near a temple. They got down and requested me to go with them. I grudgingly got down from the car. I started sweating in that chilly winter night so I took off my top coat and was carrying that in my hand. While walking towards the back of the temple they were making plan to somehow take the looted money to some Joginder Singh of Fasada village near Chandigarh on the way to Shimla.” “I presume Joginder Singh must have been their leader.” “Yes, I could make out that. I guessed from their talk that now they had to change the plan and were trying to hide the loot. They dug a hole at the back of that Durga temple and hid the loot which was in a steel cash box. While digging they borrowed my top coat to kneel on, I had no choice. Then suddenly there were commotion and I could hear footsteps and some command in English. These three persons huddled together and looked at me. Then the boss came forward and told me that if anything happened to them then I must contact Joginder Singh and gave me his address. Then I started having a feeling that those were not terrorists.” “They must have been modern day Robinhoods, looting for noble purpose,” I said jokingly. “Suddenly I found a posse of policemen coming towards us, in panic I ran with them towards the field. There were shooting, I heard some screams ,sounded as though those cohorts of mine were hit .Without looking back I ran like hell towards the road. I stumbled on a boulder and fell, lost my senses. When I regained my senses then I found myself by the side of the road. Someone has parked my motorbike to the other side of the road. I went near my bike; the briefcase was strapped to the backseat. I turned back the bike and tried to start it. To my surprise it started smoothly.” “What about the tea shop?” “In my excitement I forgot about the teashop. The fog had thinned out, I did not see the car also, it was 6am in the morning, I drove off fast. I was in Chandigarh by 8am.I took a hotel room in Sector 5.’ “I contacted Malhotra and came to know that Gurdeep had expired, I narrated my experience to Malhotra.” “Did you search for Joginder Singh? What happened to your top coat?” I asked. “After attending the last rites of Gurdeep I requested Malhotra to help me in searching out Joginder.He was also curious, so he agreed.Oh, the top coat, I left behind when I was running away from that place where the loot was buried.” We took a break and finished the lunch in Wimpy. We ordered another round of coffee; I could guess that his experience was heading for a climax. He lighted a cigarette, I borrowed one from him. We were sitting by the window, could see shoppers walking by. At that time of the day the Connaught Place was bustling with activities. It was crowded with shoppers and tourists.Connaught Place is a magnificent doughnut shaped layout, running colonnades with diverse kinds of shops and establishments. I was getting shivers thinking about his plight that night when there were shooting around him. “Was the incident of killing reported in the news paper?” I asked. “No, I purchased The Tribune and all other news papers next day ,but could not find any mention of the shooting. Even the TV channels did not cover that. I was surprised.” “Might be for some security reason that news was blacked out,” I guessed. Sid continued with his narrative. We hired a cab and went out to locate Joginder Singh of village Fasada on the highway to Shimla from Chandigarh.It took us an hour to reach that villge.We enquired about Joginder Singh from a young man in a shop he could not tell us but he asked us to wait in the shop. He went out and brought his eighty years old uncle Natha Singh. Natha Singh became emotional when we asked about Joginder Singh. “Joginder Singh was most revered man of the village. He had fought against the British rulers. He was a member of the Gaddar party. But finally English caught him and sent him to Andaman’s for life imprisonment.” “That must be long time back, before independence. In that case those people whom you met, they talked as though Joginder Singh was around.” I butted in. “Yes, I was puzzled so I requested him to take us to the next of kin of Joginder Singh so that I can untangle the mystery,” Sid said. “We were taken well within the village. There was a dilapidated house and outside the house there was some commotion. We found a sardarji about sixty years old standing with his wife and scattered luggage around them. They were arguing with another sardarji who was standing at the door of the house.” Sid continued,”what we could make out was that the family outside had come from Andaman, they had lost everything in Tsunami but the cousin brother was not allowing them to come in the house as he had no place for them.” “It was really pathetic,” I said. “Yes, both me and Malhotra were emotionally moved.Natha Singh informed us that the man outside was the son of Joginder Singh .After India became independent Joginder Singh was out of Cellular jail. He settled down in Andaman Islands married a local girl. He started farming.Joginder Singh and his wife had died and his son was carrying on with the farming. But due to Tsunami the son lost all his farm land and decided to come back to Punjab, his ancestral place. The cousin brother has taken hold of the property and did not want to give their share.” “Then your encounter with that group on the way and their directing you to Joginder, everything appears to be a dream sequence or a ghost ride,” I said. Sid took a sip of his coffee and continued. I was totally in loss, there seemed to be a time warp. Those guys in the car indicated to me as though Joginder was still alive so I was witness to a sequence of events which happened in the by gone days, that was before independence of India. That was enacted for some purpose .I told same thing to Malhotra.We decided that we would go back to that place where I had that nightmarish experience so that we could get to the truth. We drove down to that place. It was very difficult to locate that temple as many houses were there around, which I had not seen on that particular night. I had seen only a solitary temple with no locale around. Finally we could locate the temple. It was having a boundary wall now, which was the reason why I took time to trace. The temple was more or less unchanged. We entered the temple compound through the gate. A beautiful garden had come up around the temple. There was a solitary priest in the temple in that winter afternoon. He nodded at us. We went inside the temple and offered puja.We came out and pretended to take round of the garden. While taking round of the garden I found my top coat lying at corner of the boundary wall to the left of the temple. We both rushed there. I was excited that I could find the place and also my top coat. Then we decided that we must now try digging the ground to see whether the cash box which was carried by those ghosts was really there or not. We could find a shovel in the garden. We dug the place where my coat was found. After digging a meter or so we found the cash box. We wrapped it in my coat. We had a choice to hand over the cash box to the temple but ruled that out as we knew that it would be swindled by the trustees. We could have taken it but that was also ruled out as it was shown to me by those people from the past for a special purpose with a specific instruction. On analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that those freedom fighters who really looted the cash box from the treasury wanted me to hand over the cash to the family of their leader Joginder Singh as the family was in dire strait after loosing everything to Tsunami. As a matter of fact I was used by them as a messenger to hand over the loot to Joginder’s son so that he could restart his life. This was their offering to their beloved leader. We drove back and gave that cash box to the son and of course with the full explanation. I personally felt very much ecstatic after that noble act. We were profusely thanked by the distressed family. I was totally flummoxed by the strange experience of Sid. I started having goose pimples thinking about his encounter with those ghosts and his taking part in a police encounter which must have actually happened sometimes before 1947.But Sid appeared to be very happy as he could come to some help to a Tsunami ravaged family. SNR