Karak Chaye

It’s the beginning of a new year-1947. It is a casual sunny day. Across the street, children are playing “gulli danda”. Today is a special day for Fateh and Saleem as their best friend Vishal was leaving for Dehli. Vishal’s biggest dream was to get admission in Dehli University and he finally did so they could well imagine his level of happiness and that was the sole reason for their gathering today. Going to dhaba for tea is kind of a daily ritual. None of them ever missed coming to dhaba and discussing everything over a cup of tea. Vishal is about to leave in an hour so they ordered another cup of tea while listening to chacha’s stories too. Chacha’s dhaba was famous for his “karak chaye” and “malaii bun”. People from other cities would also come at his dhaba and loved the ambience of this place.

They all have done their graduation together. Now, Fateh Singh runs his own grocery store and is quite satisfied with it. Saleem is a member of Muslim League. Saleem’s abba Imtiaz saheb is a landlord and true patriot and everytime Saleem tries to convince him to move to Pakistan, he ask Saleem to go alone. he clearly told him that he’d prefer to get killed and got buried in his own land. Saleem and abba had quite a few fights over this but none of them moved an inch from their perspective.

Anyways, life goes on. The situation of their area is getting worse day by day. Fateh often ask Saleem to move to Pakistan as it’s not safe for him to live here anymore and he promised to arrange everything once Saleem convinced Imtiaz Saheb to get along with him. As time passes on, it was getting difficult for Fateh to meet openly with Saleem as he has received several threats from extremist that they’d kill them both if he kept being a good friend to any Muslim. Fateh was quite worried and waiting for Saleem at his shop. It was then, when his cousin Baljeet came running and told him that Imtiaz Saheb got brutally killed by a group of extremist.

Fateh upon hearing this, ran towards Saleem’s home and begged him to move with him as he can’t wait anymore. Fateh took Saleem’s family safely out of the colony and provided every possible to make sure that he reached Pakistan safely.

With the help of Fateh’s cousin, Saleem managed to get a government job and house. He tried several times to contact Fateh but he couldn’t.

He also wrote letters to him and got no answer. A year passed by and he often miss having a cup of tea with Fateh and Vishal. One fine day, he received a letter from Vishal. The letter says that he’s trying to find his address from quite a long time but unfortunately, he couldn’t. And now with the help of his friend, he’s writing this letter to him. The letter begins with good news that Vishal got married a year ago and he further says that Fateh is no longer in this world anymore as some extremist killed him because he helped him. Vishal further says that he named his son after Fateh.

Saleem couldn’t read any longer and cried the hardest that day knowing that he could never pay back what Fateh has done for him and that few friendships are above any cast or religion.