Four Miles To Freedom: Escape From A Pakistani POW Camp

150 Pages·2014·3.08 MB·English

by  Faith Johnston

Published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright © Faith Johnston 2013
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EPUB ISBN 9788184005073
For Manbir and for all those who suffered loss or separation because of the
1971 War
Contents
Prologue
Map of Northwestern India and Pakistan
Indian Air Force POWs in Pakistan: December 1971
Rawalpindi (Midnight, 12 August 1972)
Near Jullundur (10 December 1971)
Capture
Rawalpindi (13 August 1972)
Christmas Day (1971)
Settling In
Peshawar (13 August 1972)
The Map
Waiting
On the Road to Jamrud (13 August)
False Start
Grewal
Scrounging
Welcome to Khyber (13 August)
The Simla Conference
The Wall
Landi Kotal
The Tehsildar
Aftermath
Lyallpur
Home
Epilogue
Timeline: Bangladesh War of Independence and Indo-Pakistan War 1971
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Two years ago I sat in Dilip Parulkar’s spacious living room in Pune, listening.
Dilip was holding a tiny recorder in one hand, leaning forward in a low carved
chair. It was late morning and he had just come in from tennis. Still wearing his
tennis shorts and jacket, this sturdy man with his square, handsome face and
ready smile had now turned his energy to another task. He was starting to tell me
the story of how he and two other airmen escaped from a POW camp in
Pakistan. I found it strange that he didn’t begin at the beginning; instead he dove
into the tale very near its end.
‘We were sitting on the roadside, over a culvert, wondering whether to hide.’
But the matter was not immediately urgent, he said, for though it was broad
daylight, there seemed to be no one else for miles around. The landscape on the
approach to the Khyber Pass was barren and stony. When they looked down the
road they could see the hills that marked the beginning of the pass to
Afghanistan (and safety), but for miles around them, the land was almost flat.
The only habitations visible were a few walled enclaves in the distance. Dilip
wasn’t sure if they were small villages or clan compounds.
‘So there we were, the three of us, taking a breather, thinking we might soon
scoot down the embankment and into the culvert and spend the day hiding there,’
he went on. ‘Then, in the distance, I saw someone riding across the field on a
bicycle. The bicycle was heading straight for us so all we could do was wait as it
approached. Obviously it was too late to hide.’
‘It was a boy in his teens and a very friendly fellow,’ laughs Dilip. ‘Curious,
too. He wanted to know who we were and where we were from. I tried asking
him a few questions, but nothing could divert him for long.’
As a foreigner living in India, I had no trouble imagining this boy and his
barrage of questions. India, like Pakistan, is full of gregarious young people who
love to question strangers. I meet them every time I step out my door.
The conversation ended when the boy walked onto the road and flagged down
a bus, not for himself but for his new friends. He was very concerned. Here were
three men returning to their native country after a long absence—men who
didn’t know the lay of the land at all. ‘You can’t walk all the way to Landi
Kotal,’ he told them. ‘It is much too far to go on foot.’
Thus three Indian pilots who had planned to hide in a culvert until sunset,
ended up making their way up a winding road, then through a long narrow gorge
to the summit of the Khyber Pass, in broad daylight on the roof of a bus.
After my introduction to a story that Dilip had told many times over the last
forty years, but had never written down, I knew we needed to go back and start
again, at the beginning. And I knew the effort would be worth my while. I loved
Dilip’s humour and his sense of the absurd. This would not be a stuffy, pompous
story of battles fought and demons conquered. In fact demons would be in rather
short supply in this story. Instead, it would be the tale of a man who had a dream
he almost realized, told in a string of vivid, unpredictable moments, like life
itself.
Faith Johnston
September 2013