he storm had passed, but the world still crackled.
Two days after the breach, the railway telegraph poles lay at drunken angles along the embankment, their wires sagging into brown floodwater. The post office in the nearest market town was a drowned brick box. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the District Board was arguing about culverts and compensation on paper that would not reach Sandalbar for weeks.
But above the Canal Bungalow, a different sound cut through the damp air.
Click.Pause.Click–click. Click.
The little wireless hut, once a curiosity Harrington had bullied the Public Works Department into trying, was now the only voice Sandalbar had to the outside world. An Anglo-Indian operator named Pinto sat hunched over the set, headphones crooked over one ear, his fingers tapping the brass key in a steady rhythm.
Jinnah stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching the dots and dashes flow.
"What is Montgomery saying?" he asked.
Pinto did not look up. "Line to Lahore still intermittent, Sir. But Headquarters received your first report. They say: 'ACKNOWLEDGED. RELIEF LORRIES DISPATCHED WHEN ROADS PERMIT. PRIORITIZE MAINTAINING ORDER.'"
"So," Jinnah said dryly, "we are blessed with both delay and instruction."
At least they are honest about which one matters to them, Bilal murmured.
"We will maintain order," Jinnah said aloud. "With or without their lorries."
He turned away from the hut. On the high ground below, the Sandalbar Estate was no longer simply an estate. Seen from the ridge, it was a small, improvised city.
Lines of tarpaulin-roofed shelters radiated out from the main yard. Smoke from communal cooking fires rose straight up into the washed, pale-blue sky. The pyramids of rescued wheat stood under canvas like squat temples. Somewhere among them, around two thousand people—Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian—were trying to remember how to live without fields beneath their feet.
1. Counting Losses
Ahmed caught up with him halfway down the slope, ledger under one arm, shirt sleeves rolled up.
"Sir, I have the first estimates," he said, slightly out of breath. "Chaks 99 and 134 have lost all standing crop. The others saved between half and three-quarters. No human casualties among those who moved. Two buffalo drowned because their owner refused to cut the tether until the last moment."
"Compensate the man for the buffalo," Jinnah said. "But make a note that in future all livestock is to be tethered with quick-release knots. Put it in the estate rules."
Ahmed blinked, but nodded. "Yes, Sir."
They walked along the new fence line where Farabis were hammering in posts taken from dismantled poultry runs. Children watched with wide eyes from behind their mothers' shawls.
"That wheat we brought up?" Ahmed continued. "If it dries properly under canvas, we can save perhaps eighty percent. But… Sir, paying full price for flooded harvest and fodder both—it will strain our funds."
Jinnah glanced at the stacks and then at the sea of faces around them.
"What will it strain more?" he asked quietly. "Our purse or their loyalty?"
Ahmed was silent.
You are buying more than grain, Bilal said, voice soft in his mind. You are buying memory. Ten years from now, they will not remember the price, only who opened the gates.
"Exactly," Jinnah said under his breath.
Ahmed gave him a puzzled look but did not ask.
2. The Assembly
By late afternoon, the estate bell—usually reserved for shift changes at the ginning shed—rang out over the camp in three slow strokes.
"Gather them," Jinnah had ordered. "All who can stand. Elders in front, women and men together. No one stays away unless they are sick or on duty."
The yard filled slowly, like a basin catching water. Men in turbans, caps, and bare heads. Women in bright, smoke-stained shawls. Barefoot children clutching tin plates. A few of the older villagers clung stubbornly to the idea of separate clusters, but the Farabis quietly redirected them until the crowd was one mingled mass.
On the verandah steps stood the estate staff.
Havildar Singh in his khaki, jaw set, hands behind his back.Evelyn in a rolled-up blouse and skirt, stethoscope already hanging at her neck.Mary, sleeves still dusted with flour from the kitchens.Pinto, wireless headset looped casually around his neck like a strange ornament.A Muslim clerk from Lahore with ink on his fingers.A Hindu munshi from Hoshiarpur clutching the account books.
They were different colours, different creeds, different accents—but today they formed a single line behind the man in front.
Jinnah stepped up onto a packing crate so even those at the back could see his face.
There was a murmur, a shifting, the sound of a crowd trying to decide whether it was afraid, grateful, or both.
He waited until they settled.
"When the water rose," he said, voice carrying clear even without shouting, "no one asked what your caste was before dragging you onto a cart. No one asked what your religion was before leading your buffalo up the hill. The flood does not know Muslim from Hindu, nor Sikh from Christian. It only knows low ground and high ground."
A ripple of uneasy laughter went through the crowd.
"We stand now on high ground," Jinnah continued. "Not only in earth, but in responsibility. I made you two promises without using the word."
He held up one finger.
"First: that as long as you are within the boundary of Sandalbar Estate, we will not let you starve. Your food, your fodder, your basic health—these are our concern. Mine, and those who stand behind me. You see this lady?" He gestured to Evelyn. "Doctor Sahib is from England. See that nurse? Mary is Christian. This Havildar here is a Sikh. Ahmed is Muslim. Pinto there"—he pointed to the Anglo-Indian wireless man, who tried not to grin—"is whatever the Government decides he is on any given day."
A ripple of real laughter answered that.
"But when they wear this," Jinnah said, tapping the plain brass badge pinned to Evelyn's pocket, to the Havildar's shirt, to Ahmed's chest, "they are Sandalbar. And when they speak to you in that capacity, you will obey them as you would obey me. Whether they are man or woman, Hindu or Muslim, British or Indian. On this estate there is only one rank that matters: those who carry responsibility, and those who accept order."
You are frightening them, Bilal warned gently.
"Good," Jinnah thought back. "Fear of chaos is worse."
Aloud, he raised a second finger.
"Second promise: that when the water goes down, you will not go back to your fields and find only ruin and debt waiting for you. You know the old way. The flood comes, the crop rots, the moneylender arrives with his little red book and his big black smile. He gives you seed on interest, and by the time your children are grown, the land is no longer yours."
Several elders nodded bitterly. A woman in the front hid her face.
"That will not happen here," Jinnah said, each word like a hammer blow. "Listen carefully. Your lost harvest is already logged. We will give seed for the next sowing—wheat, cotton, fodder—on loan without interest. You will sign your name or thumb-mark in Ahmed's register. You will pay it back in grain at harvest, at the same quantity we gave. Not double. Not plus British tax. The estate will carry the risk of failure, not your children."
A murmur swelled, incredulous and hungry at once.
"And if the harvest fails again?" an old man called out. "Will the Sahib give seed again?"
Jinnah met his gaze. "If the failure is from the sky, yes. If it is from your idleness, no. That is the condition."
You are drawing the line, Bilal observed. Good. A system of mercy still needs teeth.
He spread his hands to the crowd.
"This, then, is the bargain. While you are on Sandalbar land as flood refugees, you are under our protection. Any man who tries to take rent or tax from you without my written order—whether he is Zaildar or constable—will find the estate lawyers and the Farabis both waiting for him."
That got a different kind of murmuring.
"But in return," Jinnah went on, "you will follow our order. There will be no private hoarding. Rations will be issued by Mary and her staff, by list and by queue. Water will be drawn from the pumps in turn, not in a brawl. Livestock will be kept where the Havildar says, not tied inside your shelters. No one will light cooking fires inside the tents. At sunset, children will be inside the inner yard; after dark, no man will wander the women's quarters unless he has work and a lantern and a Farabi escort. These are not suggestions. They are rules."
He let his gaze sweep the crowd.
"If you hear of someone breaking these rules, you will not form a mob. You will inform the Farabis. They are here to keep order, not to terrorize you."
He paused, then added, voice lowering slightly but carrying even more weight.
"And finally—no man, in this crisis, will preach that his God is offended because his neighbour eats differently, or prays in another direction, or does not pray at all. If I hear even a whisper that someone is using hunger and fear to turn you against each other, I will put that person outside the gate and let the flood decide his fate. On this island, we survive together or not at all."
The silence that followed was heavy, but not hostile. It felt… thoughtful.
A boy somewhere at the back started clapping uncertainly, as if at a tamasha. His mother swatted his hand down, embarrassed—but the spell was broken enough that people began to breathe again.
Jinnah stepped down from the crate.
"Ahmed," he said in a normal tone that most still heard, "set up registration desks in the big shed. One for each village. Seed loan registers, ration cards, livestock tallies. Use our own men and one literate villager at each table. Havildar, your men will keep the lines straight. No pushing. No second turns."
"Yes, Sir," both men replied.
"And Doctor Evelyn," Jinnah added, turning to her, "set up your clinic at the far end of the yard. Anyone who wants to work on ration distribution or wireless duty must first pass your inspection. I will not have an epidemic because some stubborn fool coughs on everyone."
Evelyn's mouth twitched. "With pleasure."
He moved away then, allowing the machinery of order to begin grinding into motion.
3. The Rhythm of Dots and Lines
By evening, the estate felt different.
There were still cries, still small arguments, still children wailing for lost goats. But instead of amorphous panic, there were now queues. Men lined up at registration tables, caps in hands. Women queued at the ration tent, tin plates ready, children holding onto their dupattas. Even the goats appeared to understand that the new enclosures had rules: in here, fodder; out there, nothing but soaked earth.
On the verandah, Pinto had dragged his wireless table closer to the edge so he could watch the yard while listening for signals.
Jinnah joined him there, hands clasped behind his back.
"Any word?" he asked.
"Lahore says the breach is plugging slowly, Sir," Pinto replied, eyes on his notes. "They also say the Railways expect to run a single line again within a week, at reduced speed. Relief supplies… 'in due course.'"
"In due course," Jinnah repeated, looking down at the neat little lines of people. "I prefer our own schedule."
He watched as Mary scolded a man for trying to jump the queue, then handed his wife an extra piece of flatbread when she saw the baby on her hip. Farther away, Havildar Singh was gently but firmly separating three hot-headed youths who had begun a shoving match over who reached the seed table first.
You are doing something dangerous, Bilal said quietly.
"How so?" Jinnah asked him in the privacy of his mind.
You are proving that a small piece of India can run without their bureaucracy. Without their landlords. Without their priests deciding who eats first. Once people see that, they may not wish to go back to 'normal'.
"Then perhaps 'normal' needs replacing," Jinnah replied.
And if they cling to you instead of the institutions you are trying to reform? Bilal pressed. If they decide Sandalbar is the only place they will trust?
Jinnah's eyes drifted to the drowned horizon beyond the boundary wall.
"An island cannot hold a continent," he said softly. "But it can show the mainland that dry land is possible."
Pinto glanced up, mishearing. "Sir?"
"Nothing, Pinto. Continue your dots and dashes. Tell Harrington that Sandalbar is stable. No riot, no plague. Inform him that we will require seed shipments for ten villages. And tell him…" Jinnah's mouth twisted in a brief smile. "Tell him to charge it as 'preventive expenditure on public order'. That phrase will make his superiors feel comfortable."
Pinto grinned. "Yes, Sir."
The key began to tap again, translating Sandalbar's new reality into the cold, abstract language of imperial accounts.
That night, when the lanterns dimmed and the yard settled into the restless sleep of two thousand displaced people, Jinnah stood once more on the roof of the Bungalow.
The flood still lapped at the far line of trees, black under the stars.
Down below, the refugee camp breathed in a new rhythm: the clatter of ladles being put away, the occasional cough from the clinic tent, a Farabi's low whistle as he exchanged passwords with his relief.
You have given them rules in exchange for safety, Bilal said.
"That is what a state does," Jinnah answered.
But you are not a state.
"Not yet," he murmured.
He turned away from the dark water and went downstairs, where Ahmed waited with more ledgers, Evelyn with reports of fevers suppressed, and Pinto with fresh messages from a world that now seemed, to Sandalbar, much farther away than a breached canal.
For the people huddled inside the boundary wall, the map had shrunk. There was only one island that mattered now, and it ran on order—dots and dashes in the air, lines and queues on the ground, and a quiet promise binding it all together:
While you are here, we will not let you drown.