My Mother — Page 122
122 contemplated graver mischief he ran into the house through a wicket which he closed behind him. The gang moved to the main door of the house which had been fashioned out of stout wood and was studded with nails. Finding it unyielding to their assaults they tried to force a passage into the house through the side wicket. A couple of young retainers had been posted inside the wicket who warned the gangsters that the moment any of them succeeded in pushing his head through the wicket his head would be bashed in. From the mood and shouts of the gangsters, it was patent that once they succeeded in forcing an entry into the house, the lives and honour of the inmates—men, women, and children—would be put in grave peril. Thus, a state of siege ensued. My brother wrote out a brief report of the situation and charged a fleet-footed youngster to deliver it at the police station. The boy ascended to the roof of the house and jumping across to the roofs of adjacent houses arrived in a back street and made his way unobserved to the police station and delivered the report to the officer on duty who after glancing at it observed cynically, ‘Let these wretched Mirzais suffer. It serves them right. ’ After midnight the besiegers, getting bored, dispersed. Mother was at the time with me at Simla, and was naturally much perturbed when she learnt of the affair. I was anxious about the unsympathetic and unhelpful attitude of the police. The District Superintendent of Police was a bigoted Muslim and nothing good was to be expected of him. In this situation I wrote a letter to Sir Donald Boyd, Home Member of the Punjab Government, set- ting out the facts briefly, and suggested that in the interests of jus- tice and fairplay the District Superintendent of Police might be