Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

This was one of those scores of stories surrounding my father. Somewhere in 1946, when the British were almost certain to leave India, a mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy. My father was one of the mutineers.  

In my dreams, I imagined this story. 

“You are drunk.” I interrupted Abhishek. “No. I’m not, buddy. It’s a fact.” He reiterated. “You mean to say that every individual who dies, someone, somewhere takes birth at that point of time as that person’s reincarnation?” I asked in disbelief and disgust in my voice and he nodded.

“Nonsense. Sheetal, take him home, and don’t let him drive.” I advised his wife. “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” He murmured the Shakespearian line in a rather wobbly modulation to prove his point.

He looked back as he was walking out of the door in a serpentine gait and said, “Boss. Mark my words. Put someone’s date and time of death on social media and in case you find the person matching it, you would see striking similarities between the two.” I gestured for his wife to take him away. His wife held his arm and somehow shoved him into the car and drove away.

“You shouldn’t have let him have so much. I am sure Sheetal didn’t like his getting drunk.” My wife said with great annoyance after they had left. “He wasn’t drunk. I know him very well. But what he was saying was just nonsense. How can everyone who dies be reincarnated as someone who was born at that very moment? These are mere figments of imagination.” We retired for the day.

My mobile started ringing early in the morning. Still deep in sleep, I extended my arm on the bed side table, grappling for the mobile. I managed to press the green button and held it near my ear. “Hello.” I managed to utter the word, still in my sleep. “Sorry sir, I will call you later.” He hung up.

I had forgotten about it until I got another call from the same caller. “Is it a good time to talk, sir.” The caller, a male voice said from the other side. Anticipating it as a ‘sales call’, I answered with a flat voice, “Yes. What is it?”

“Sorry to bother you, sir, is your father called Mr. Anil Roy?” Asked the caller in a typical Punjabi-Hindi accent. I was rather taken aback. “Yes. That’s right. But he died in 2007.” I quipped thinking that it must be a sales pitch of a sort for my father for an insurance package, or something similar.

“I know sir.” He replied. Now I was getting curious. “Okay. So, what is it to do with my father?” I asked. “Was he part of the 1946 Naval Mutiny?” He asked me and my curiosity doubled. “Yes, he was. But how do you know about it? Are you writing a book on the naval mutiny?” I asked.

“No sir.” He took a long pause as if he was preparing himself to divulge something uncanny. “I don’t know how to put it to you, sir.” He took another long pause. I waited in excitement. “My daughter Shivangi says that she is the reincarnation of your father.” He said. I hung up.

I sat frozen until my wife came with a cup of tea. “What?” She yelled at me as she kept vigorously shaking me. “I told you not to have so much beer.” She admonished me, banging the cup of tea on the bedside table, and started walking out of the room.

“There is a chap who called up to say his daughter is dad’s reincarnation,” I uttered the words with no modulation. She stopped, took a while to grasp, turned back, and almost shouted, “What?” Without saying a word, I kept nodding in slow motion, as if I was hypnotized.

“Reincarnation of your father?” She repeated as a reassurance raising her voice. I nodded once again. I could hallucinate Abhishek laughing loudly at me as if saying, “Didn’t I tell you!”

“Who was he?” My wife asked. Now she was looking visibly disturbed, worried, and perhaps a little scared. She sat beside me, kept her hand on my shoulder, and said, “It could be a prank.” She took a little pause and said with confidence in her voice, “It must be Abhishek.” She concluded.

My mobile phone rang again. Suddenly there was pin-drop silence. We looked at each other as if we were waiting for some kind of a ‘ransom call’. It seemed hours had passed since the mobile phone was ringing and we were haplessly looking at it, too paranoid to pick it up.

“Look here, man!” My wife took the phone and said loudly. “If it is a prank, I will call the Police and get you behind bars.” She waited for a while as if the caller was trying to pacify her. Soon she handed the mobile to me.

She gestured for me to put the mobile on the speaker and I did. “Yes,” I said.

“I am extremely sorry sir for spoiling your day. But please try to understand.” He took a pause and we could hear him weeping. “Don’t worry. It’s just that we got a little paranoid.” I consoled him, imagining his plight.               

“She’s our only daughter, our only child. She is just 15.” He spoke, still with a lump in his throat. “What’s your name? Where are you from?” My wife interrupted. “I am from Paschim Vihar. Jwala Heri. My name is Tejinder Singh Bhalla. I own a hardware shop. You are from CR Park!” He uttered all in one breath.

“No, we shifted out of Delhi to Jaipur about 4 years ago,” I informed him politely. “Oh! I thought I would come and meet you today.” There was a pause once again. “Would you mind if I visit you in Jaipur? Maybe tomorrow?” The desperation of a father was audible from his voice.

“Sure!” My wife replied immediately. “Thank you, Madam. I am obliged.” He broke down again. “Mr. Bhalla. Don’t worry. We will sort out everything together. Your child will be fine. My husband is extremely fond of children. I am sure he will bring her back from the mess.” My wife assured Mr. Bhalla and we ended the conversation.

We WhatsApp-ed our address and location to Mr. Bhalla and kept the phone down. “Should I call up Abhishek and tell him about it?” I asked my wife. “No. Let Mr. Bhalla come tomorrow. Let’s hear from him and then we can tell Abhishek. I’m sure he’ll also be surprised to hear a ‘real-life’ story of reincarnation, and that too of your father.”

It was barely a quarter past ten in the morning the next day and the intercom rang. “Sir, Mr. Bhalla from Delhi is here to meet you. Should I send him?” The guard asked. “Yes,” I replied and kept down the phone.

Soon the doorbell rang and as I opened the door, a middle-aged Sikh gentleman, all in white was standing with folded hands in front of me. “Good morning, sir! Myself Tejinder Bhalla.” He wore a white Shirt, a pair of white trousers, a white turban, and a pair of white shoes. Though he looked neatly dressed, there was something amiss.

His eyes were moist and his beard was slightly unkempt. It appeared that he hadn’t slept the previous night and then had driven for about 5 hours. “Please come in. You want to freshen up. It’s been a long drive.” I held him gently on his shoulder and directed him to the sofa.

By then my wife appeared from the kitchen. Seeing her Tejinder stood up with folded hands and suddenly started crying like a child. I hugged him, patted him, and kept saying, “Everything will be fine, Mr. Bhalla. Don’t you worry?” Being born and brought up in Delhi, I had also picked up a slice of the Punjabi-Hindi accent.

It took a while for Mr. Bhalla to settle down. Now we were served with tea and some sandwiches. “I’ll take long to explain it. Please bear with me.” He said apologetically. “You have come from so far. Please tell us in detail.” My wife said. We settled down to hear about the reincarnation of my father.

“My grandfather had migrated from West Pakistan after partition.” He started narrating. “And my father had migrated from East Pakistan before partition.” I interrupted. My wife raised her hand to stop me from interrupting further. “Sorry.” I apologized.

“Unfortunately, my grandfather had survived longer than my father. My father died almost at my age in 2001, even before my marriage. My grandmother couldn’t bear the shock of the death of her son and died the same year.” Mr. Bhalla paused to take a sip of tea.

“My grandfather died in December 2019 at the age of 93. My daughter used to call him ‘Dadda’ (grandfather) since her birth and was extremely close to him. My grandfather was a strong man who would go for a morning walk every day and take my daughter with him. They were just inseparable.” He took another pause.

“When was she born?” I broke the silence and he came out of his stupor. “2007.” He replied. “And which month and date?” I asked. “30^th July.” He replied and I looked at my wife and asked, “And, at what time of the day?” I asked in a low decibel. “Morning, sometime around 7-7:30.” I looked at my wife and she looked at me, but we divulged nothing.

That was exactly the year, date, month, and time when my father died.  

“She was rather a very introvert and a withdrawn child. She would never throw tantrums like most other children. She didn’t have any wants.” He started narrating.

He took the last bite of the sandwich and the last sip of tea. “Will you have some more tea?” My wife asked. “No. Thank you, Madam.” He kept the cup on the table and started narrating again. “She was very good in her studies and used to stand 1^st or 2^nd. We were never worried. But trouble started after my grandfather died.” He stopped to grasp some air.

“Since his death, she has changed.” He paused. We could sense that the story was going to take a tangent. We could sense trouble was brewing. “She was always a loner and never got along with anyone. She didn’t have friends. It seemed that her world was engulfed in her Dadda. With his demise, a vacuum was created.”

The doorbell interrupted the conversation. “Must be the maid.” My wife got up and opened the door. She gave a few instructions to the maid and returned to the sofa. “Sorry, please. So, you said a void was created after your grandfather’s death.” She said.

“But what about the reincarnation?” I asked, rather impatiently. “I will come to that later.” Mr. Bhalla replied indicating that this was the prelude to the reincarnation story.

“We first noticed her detaching herself from us. She was an introvert and withdrawn right from her childhood days, but she would never miss her school.” He took another pause. “Excuse me.” My wife said and left for the kitchen.

We kept looking towards the kitchen and a while later she came back carrying three cups of tea. “Sorry Madam. I’m bothering you.” Mr. Bhalla said with folded hands. “Don’t say that Mr. Bhalla, we are family now,” I said holding both his folded hands.

“Leave aside the formalities, let’s hear about your daughter.” My wife said rather sternly. Mr. Bhalla smiled and nodded his head. “Okay! My wife has started noticing some changes in her behavior since then. As I would be away in the shop, she was the one who would inform me about her.” He said with a voice mixed with agony and sorrow.

“One day when I came back home, my wife said that she heard some noises from her room as if she was speaking with someone. When she entered the room, she found her standing on the bed holding his Dadda’s walking stick in the air, as if holding some kind of a flag or placard.” He kept both his hands on his face and started weeping.

“Sir, that was the day I stopped going to the shop and within a couple of months there was a complete lockdown in India due to Corona.” He raised his head and narrated. “So, you could now stay back at home and watch your daughter,” I asked.

“It was a double trouble for me. On one hand, my business was getting ruined due to the lockdown and on the other, my daughter’s mental health was deteriorating. I broke the lock of her room so that she was unable to lock herself.” He took another pause. I gestured him towards the cup of tea and he fetched it. He took a short sip as if he was in a hurry to tell his story.

“She was very good at computers and would take online classes. We tried to be with her always, and it wasn’t a problem due to the lockdown. Then she slowly started telling stories about our independence struggle. She started talking about Bhagat Singh. We never doubted and rather felt proud about it.”   

“Then somewhere during the middle of last year she started talking about the Naval Mutiny. I am not quite educated and thought she must have been studying about it and was hence narrating the stories. We would listen to her with apt attention to make her happy.” He paused for a moment.  

He raised his head and looked at both of us in rotation, hung his head, and said loudly, “And then during January this year, she suddenly dropped the bombshell by saying that she is none other than Anil Roy, the lead mutineer at HMIS Chamak during the Naval Mutiny of 1946.”

“What?” We shouted in chorus. He nodded violently. “Yes, Madam. Now we realize that she was not narrating a story, but she was part of the story.” He said.

“For the past couple of months we would hear her shout, ‘Down with British imperialism’, ‘Inquilab Zindabad’, ‘Hindustan Zindabad’, ‘shed blood to get freedom’, ‘Vande Mataram’ from her room. We got scared and I called my brother from Bangalore.” He narrated as we were looking at him with our eyes almost popping out.

“She would mostly be calm when we are around, so we aren’t leaving her alone. But now, I think, she has lost it. She would tell us stories about how ‘he’, as in your father, got everyone together and then organized the mutiny at Chamak.” He stopped to grasp some air.

“My brother is an IT expert. He had scanned her computer and found that her Google search history was full of materials related to the naval mutiny. Surprisingly, she had copy-pasted portions that talked about your father in a Word document.” He said.

“Now, when I tell you about my grandfather, you will be able to link him with your father.” He looked at me with a smiling face and I returned it with a pair of questioning eyes. “My brother had found an old and battered trunk of our grandfather from her room. It was full of old cardboard folders with paper cuttings from the naval mutiny and about your father and his so-called wrong-doings in instigating the mutiny in HMIS Chamak.” He inhaled some air.

“In one of those several paper-cuttings, we found the name of our grandfather mentioned; ‘Mr. Sukhvinder Singh was found assisting Anil Roy to spread the news for assembling in the morning and was arrested.” He stopped and looked at us.  

“He was part of HMIS Chamak where your father had led the mutiny. I have never heard of it from my grandfather and hence couldn’t connect with it.” He said.

“Yes. HMIS Chamak was one of the five shore establishments for radar training. My father was one of the trainees. He was just 20 then.” I looked at him, now with moist eyes, and said.

Now it was my turn to narrate. “My father had narrated the stories of the mutiny to us in great detail. The revolt had started from HMIS Talwar at Bombay and had spread across like wildfire.”

“But my grandfather had never told us anything.” He interrupted. “Perhaps owing to our difficult situation and the early demise of my father, we were too busy meeting our ends. I had started assisting my father in our hardware shop just after passing out from school. But I had let my brother study.” He was now much calmer and more composed.

“Naval mutiny is one of those many unknown or rather untold chapters of India’s freedom struggle.” I barged in again. “Interestingly, my father used to say instead of supporting the mutiny, the Indian National Congress and the Indian Muslim League had condemned it openly. Perhaps they were too paranoid to let go of their anticipated power in the event of freedom, which was almost around the corner.” I said with a heavy heart.

“There were five shore establishments in Karachi and HMIS Chamak was one of them. They were located on the island of Manora and at the southern end of Karachi city was the Keamari Jetty.” I started narrating like a storyteller.

“The planning among the ratings had started at Chamak and I am sure your grandfather was also part of it.” I continued as Mr. Bhalla listened with wide eyes. “They had decided to hold a meeting of all establishments in the evening. All establishments meaning rating from Chamak and Bahadur would proceed from Manora Jetty while those from Hindustan and Travancore would assemble out the jetty in the morning.”

“My father had explained how marching ratings were greeted with clapping by the inhabitants of Manora island, mostly fishermen to show their solidarity with the mutineers. The British had already passed a ‘shoot to kill’ order.” I paused and looked at Bhalla-saab.

“Did she talk about all these?” I asked. “Well. Not exactly. But she talks about ‘court-martial’. She said I would have been dead long ago had I been ‘court-martialed’.” He looked up and said, “I don’t understand all these.”

“Yes. She is right.” I replied. “My father, along with Hiralal and Akbar Ali was handed over the court-martial orders.” I stopped and looked at Mr. Bhalla for him to continue.

“I don’t know anything, sir-ji! Please save my child.” He uttered these words in Punjabi and started crying. I kept my hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t worry Bhalla-ji. One of my childhood friends is a top-notch Psychiatrist in Delhi. His name is Dr. Udayan Chug. I’ll consult him and I promise, your child will be fine in no time.” I assured him.

We had lunch together and he left for Delhi. A while after he left, I picked up my mobile and connected with Udayan. “What a pleasant surprise!” Udayan exclaimed. “I need your professional help bro,” I said and explained the entire story of Shivangi.

“It’s a case of dissociative identity disorder. I guess she has been overwhelmed by her great-grandfather with all kinds of stories. Perhaps the stories around the Naval Mutiny were the latest. Maybe just before he died and was fresh in her memory. With his demise, she was taken into it.” He paused.

“Are you having food? Should I call you later?” I asked. “No. I’m having coffee.” He took a sip that I could hear.

“She must have been reading about your dad and hence started hallucinating about him in her subconscious mind. You said she is a loner. Hence there was no outlet for her and she got engulfed in the character of your dad. He became the hero in her and she became the hero in turn.” He paused, perhaps to take another sip.

“Is it curable?” I asked. “Yes, indeed. Somehow, she has to be taken out of the naval mutiny. She would perhaps not know what your father did after the mutiny. You can take her out of it.” He concluded. “Me?” I almost screamed. “Yes.” We concluded the conversation soon.

***

We were standing in front of the door with a nameplate that read ‘Bhallas’. I rang the bell and Mr. Bhalla opened the door. “She is inside. Please come in.” He almost whispered.

A pretty, lanky little teenage girl appeared from the bedroom and stood at the doorway. It seemed time had stopped. We were as if frozen at where we were.

“Dad!” Suddenly I shouted and ran towards the little girl and hugged her tight, taking everybody by surprise. “Where did you disappear after the mutiny?” I almost shouted in her ear.

“Leave me!” Soon she screamed back at me trying to release herself. I was still holding her tight, not letting her go. “Pappa!” She peeped over my shoulder and shouted in search of her father. I released her and she ran towards her father and held him tight.

“He is Anil Roy’s son, your son, my child,” Mr. Bhalla said. “Who’s Anil Roy?” Uttered Shivangi to our great relief. She hid her face deep into her father’s chest and he held her as tight as he could.