by Amitav Ghosh
‘Do all of you face this then?’ Dinu asked Arjun. ‘Is it hard for you to be accepted as officers by your own men?’
‘Yes and no,’ Arjun replied. ‘You always have the feeling that they’re looking at you more closely than they would if you were a Britisher—especially me, I suppose, since I’m just about the only Bengali in sight. But you also have a sense that they’re identifying with you—that some of them are urging you on, while others are just waiting to see you fall. When I’m facing them I can tell that they’re putting themselves in my place, crossing a barrier that has become a great divide in their minds. The moment they imagine themselves past that line, something changes. It can’t be as it was before.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not sure I can explain, Dinu. I’ll tell you a story. Once, an old English colonel visited our mess. He was full of tales about the Good Old Days. After dinner I happened to hear him talking to Bucky—our CO. He was huffing and puffing and blowing through his whiskers. His view was that this business of making officers out of Indians would destroy the army; everyone would be at each other’s throats and the whole thing would fall apart. Now Bucky’s just about as fair and decent as a man can be and he wasn’t going to put up with this. He defended us stoutly and said his Indian officers were doing a very good job and all the rest of it. But you know, the thing of it was that in my heart I knew that Bucky was wrong and the old codger was right.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s simple. Every institution has its own logic, and the British Indian army has always functioned on the understanding that there was to be a separation between Indians and Britishers. It was a straightforward system: they stayed apart, and obviously both sides felt that this was to their benefit. It’s no easy thing you know, to make men fight. The Britishers found a way of doing it, and they made it work. But now, with us being inside the officers’ mess, I don’t know that it can go on.’
‘Why not?’
Arjun got up to pour himself another brandy. ‘Because it’s true what the old codger said: we’re at each other’s throats.’ ‘Who?’
‘Indians and Britishers.’
‘Really? Why? What about?’
‘Most of it is just little things. In the mess for instance, if a Britisher turns the radio to a broadcast in English, you can be sure that minutes later an Indian will tune it to Hindi film songs. And then someone will turn it back, and so on until all you can do is hope that it gets switched off altogether. Things like that.’
‘You sound like . . . squabbling schoolchildren.’
‘Yes. But there’s something important behind it, I think.’
‘What?’
‘You see we all do the same work, eat the same food and so on. But the chaps who’re trained in England get paid a lot more than we do. For myself I don’t mind so much, but chaps like Hardy care very much about these things. To them this is not just a job as it is for me. You see, they really believe in what they’re doing; they believe that the British stand for freedom and equality. Most of us when we hear big words like that tend to take them with a pinch of salt. They don’t. They’re deadly serious about these things, and that’s why it’s so hard for them when they discover that this equality they’ve been told about is a carrot on a stick—something that’s dangled in front of their noses to keep them going, but always kept just out of reach.’
‘Why don’t they complain?’
‘They do sometimes. But usually there’s nothing in particular to complain about. Take the case of Hardy’s appointment: who was to blame? Hardy himself? The men? It certainly wasn’t the CO. But that’s how it always is. Whenever one of us doesn’t get an appointment or a promotion, there’s always a mist of regulations that makes things unclear. On the surface everything in the army appears to be ruled by manuals, regulations, procedures: it seems very cut and dried. But actually, underneath there are all these murky shadows that you can never quite see: prejudice, distrust, suspicion.’
Arjun tossed his brandy back and paused to pour himself another. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, ‘something that happened to me while I was at the academy. One day a group of us went into town—Hardy, me, a few others. It started to rain and we stepped into a shop. The shopkeeper offered to lend us umbrellas. Without thinking about it I said, yes, of course, that’ll be a help. The others looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “What are you thinking of?” Hardy said to me. “You can’t be seen with an umbrella.” I was puzzled. I said: “But why not? Why can’t I be seen with an umbrella?” Hardy’s answer was: “Have you ever seen an Indian soldier using an umbrella?” I thought about it and realised I hadn’t. I said: “No.”
‘“Do you know why not?”
‘“No.”
‘“Because in the old days in the East, umbrellas were a sign of sovereignty. The British didn’t want their sepoys to get over-ambitious. That’s why you’ll never see umbrellas at a cantonment.”
‘I was amazed. Could this possibly be true? I felt sure there were no regulations on the subject. Cans you imagine a rule that said: “Indians are not to keep umbrellas in their barracks”? It’s inconceivable. But at the same time, it was also true that you never saw anyone with an umbrella at a cantonment. One day I asked the adjutant, Captain Pearson. I said: “Sir, why do we never use umbrellas, even when it rains?” Captain Pearson is a short, tough, bull-necked fellow. He looked at me as though I were a worm. Nothing could have shut me up quicker than the answer he gave me. He said: “We don’t use umbrellas, Lieutenant, because we’re not women.”’
Arjun began to laugh. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I would rather do anything than be seen with an umbrella—I’d rather drown in the rain.’
twenty-four
That year it seemed as though the monsoons had broken over Lankasuka well before the first clouds had appeared in the skies. Manju’s wedding was in late June, just before the coming of the rains. The days were very hot, and in the park in front of the house, the lake fell to a level where boats could no longer be taken out on the water. It was the time of year when even the rotation of the earth seem to slacken in speed, in anticipation of the coming deluge.
But within Lankasuka the wedding created the semblance of a strange climatic anomaly: it was as though the compound was awash in a flood, its inhabitants swirling hectically downriver, carried along by great tides of disparate things— people, gifts, anxiety, laughter, food. In the courtyard at the back, cooking fires burnt all day long and on the roof, under the bright tented awnings that had been erected for the wedding, there seemed never to be a moment when several dozen people were not sitting down to a meal.
The days went by in a storm of feasting and observances: the solemn familial commitments of the paka-dekha led inexorably to the yellowed turmeric-anointing of the gaye-holud. Slowly, much as the rising water of the monsoons overwhelms the chequerboard partitions of a paddy field, so did the steady progression of the wedding sweep away the embankments that divided the lives of the people in the house. Uma’s white-saried political associates pitched in to help, as did a great many khaki-clad Congress workers; Arjun’s friends at Fort William sent auxiliary detachments of cooks, mess-boys, waiters and even, on occasion, entire marching bands, complete with wrap-around brass and uniformed bandmasters; much of Manju’s college came pouring in, and so did a colourful throng of Neel’s acquaintances from the film studios of Tollygunge—directors, actors, students, playback singers, even the two terrifying make-up women who had dressed Manju on the day of her fateful audition.
Dolly too had a hand in stirring the mix. Through her years of visiting Uma in Calcutta, she had developed a close connection with the city’s Burmese temple. Small though this temple was, its past was not without lustre. Many great Burmese luminaries had spent time there, including the famous activist monk, U Wisara. By way of Dolly’s links, Manju’s wedding came to be attended by a substantial part of the city’s Burmese community—students, monks, lawyers and even a fe
w hulking sergeants of Calcutta’s police force (many of whom were Anglo-Burmese in origin).
Considering how oddly assorted these groups were, disagreements were relatively few. But in the end it proved impossible to shut out the powerful winds that were sweeping the world. On one occasion a friend of Uma’s, an eminent Congressman, arrived dressed in the manner of Jawaharlal Nehru, in a khaki cap and a long black sherwani, with a rose in his buttonhole. The elegant politician found himself standing next to a friend of Arjun’s, a lieutenant dressed in the uniform of the 14th Punjab Regiment. ‘And how does it feel,’ the politician said, turning to the soldier with a sneer, ‘for an Indian to be wearing that uniform?’
‘If you must know, sir,’ Arjun’s friend snapped back, matching sneer for sneer, ‘this uniform feels rather warm—but I imagine the same could be said of yours?’
Another day, Arjun found himself facing off against a strangely assorted crowd of Buddhist monks, Burmese student-activists and Congress Party workers. The Congressmen had bitter memories of their confrontations with Indian soldiers and policemen. They began to berate Arjun for serving in an army of occupation.
Arjun recalled that it was his sister’s wedding and he managed to keep his temper. ‘We aren’t occupying the country,’ Arjun said, as lightly as he could. ‘We are here to defend you.’
‘From whom are you defending us? From ourselves? From other Indians? It’s your masters from whom the country needs to be defended.’
‘Look,’ said Arjun, ‘it’s a job and I’m trying to do it as best I can . . .’
One of the Burmese students gave him a grim smile: ‘Do you know what we say in Burma when we see Indian soldiers? We say: there goes the army of slaves—marching off to catch some more slaves for their masters.’
It was with a great effort that Arjun succeeded in keeping control of himself: instead of getting into a fight, he turned round and marched away. Later, he went to complain to Uma and found her wholly unsympathetic. ‘They were just telling you what most people in the country think, Arjun,’ Uma said bluntly. ‘If you’re strong enough to face enemy bullets, you should be strong enough to hear them out.’
For the duration of his stay in Lankasuka, Kishan Singh had been allotted a small room that was tucked away at the rear of the house. At other times this room was generally used for storage, mainly food. Along the walls stood great, stone martabans, packed with pickles; in the corners were piles of ripening mangoes and guavas; hanging from the rafters, beyond the reach of ants and cats, were the rope-slung earthen pots in which the household’s butter and ghee were stored.
One afternoon, Bela was sent to the storeroom on an errand, to fetch some butter. The wooden door was slightly warped and could not be properly closed. Looking through the crack, Bela saw that Kishan Singh was inside, lying on a mat. He’d changed into a longyi for his siesta, and his khakis were hanging on a peg. He was sweating in the June heat, bare-bodied but for the ghostly shadow of the army singlet that was singed on to his chest.
From the pumping motion of his ribs Bela could tell that he was fast asleep. She slipped into the room and tiptoed around his mat. She was on her knees, undoing the strings of the earthen butter pot, when Kishan Singh suddenly woke up.
He jumped to his feet and pulled on his khaki tunic, his face turning red with embarrassment.
‘My mother sent me . . .’ she said quickly, ‘to fetch this . . .’ She pointed at the earthen pot.
With his tunic on, he seated himself cross-legged on the mat. He gave her a smile. Bela smiled shyly back. She felt no inclination to leave; she hadn’t spoken to him till then and it occurred to her now that there were many things she wanted to ask him.
The first question she blurted out was the one that was uppermost in her mind. ‘Kishan Singh,’ she said, ‘are you married?’
‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘And I have a little son. Just one year old.’
‘How old were you when you were married?’
‘It was four years ago,’ he said. ‘So I must have been sixteen.’
‘And your wife,’ she said, ‘what is she like?’
‘She’s from the village next to mine.’
‘And where is your village?’
‘It’s up north—a long way from here. It’s near Kurukshetra— where the great battle of the Mahabharata was fought. That is why the men of our district make good soldiers—that’s what people say.’
‘And did you always want to be a soldier?’
‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Not at all—but I had no choice.’
The men in his family had always lived by soldiering, he explained. His father, his grandfather, his uncles—they had all served in the 1/1 Jats. His grandfather had died at Passchendaele, in the Great War. The day before his death he had dictated a letter that was to be sent to his family, filled with instructions about the crops in the fields and what was to be planted and when they were to sow and when to harvest. They next day he had gone over the top of his trench, to save his wounded afsar, an English captain whose batman he had been for five years and whom he honoured above all men. For this he had been awarded, posthumously, the Indian Distinguished Service Medal, which his family had kept, in their haveli, in a glass box.
‘And to this day the afsar’s family send us money—not because we ask, nor from charity, but out of love of my grandfather, and to honour what he did for their son . . .’
Bela hung upon his words, drinking in every movement of the muscles of his face. ‘Go on.’
His father had served in the army too, he said. He had been wounded in Malaya, at the time of a rebellion. A stab wound had ripped open his side and pierced his colon. The army doctors had done what they could for him, but the wound had burdened him with chronic, crippling stomach pains. He’d travelled far afield, visiting experts in Ayurveda and other systems of medicine; the expense had forced him to barter away his share of the family land. He hadn’t wanted a fate like that for his Kishan Singh; he’d wanted his son to go to college and understand things; he himself had travelled the world—Malaya, Burma, China, East Africa—and had understood nothing.
Kishan Singh too would have liked to go to college, but when he was fourteen his father died. After that the option of school was no longer open: the family had needed money. His relatives urged him to report to the local recruitment office; they said that he was lucky to have been born into a caste that was allowed to enroll in the English sarkar’s army.
‘That was why you joined?’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And the women in your village,’ she said, ‘what are they like?’
‘Not like you.’
She was hurt by this. ‘Why? What do you mean?’
‘In a way,’ he said, ‘they are soldiers too. From the time they are little they begin to learn what it means to be widowed early; to bring up children without their men; to spend their lives with husbands who are maimed and crippled.’
Just then she heard her mother calling her name, and went running out of the room.
For the duration of the wedding, Rajkumar and his family were staying at the Great Eastern Hotel. (It was unthinkable, in light of their past hostilities, for Rajkumar to stay with Uma, as Dolly usually did.) It had been agreed upon, however, that Neel and Manju would spend their wedding night—their last in Calcutta—in Lankasuka, in Uma’s flat.
When the day came, Uma and Dolly prepared the bridal bedroom themselves. They went early to the flower market at Kalighat and came back with dozens of loaded baskets. They spent the morning draping the wedding bed with garlands of flowers—hundreds of them. While working, they reminisced about their own weddings and how very different they’d been. In the afternoon they were joined by the Second Princess, who’d made a special trip from Kalimpong: this completed the circle.
It was hot and they were quickly drenched in sweat. ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Dolly. ‘My wedding was easier.’
‘Remember Mrs Khambatta—with the camera?’
They sat on the floor, laughing at the memory.
As the day progressed, a hundred minor crises accumulated. Mainly they concerned odds and ends that someone had forgotten to buy: yet another dhoti for the purohit; a fresh handful of durba grass; a sari for a forgotten aunt—small but essential items. In the late afternoon Arjun was told to organise a quick shopping expedition in the family Jowett. Dinu, Uma and Bela were to go with him, each armed with a shopping list.
Arjun brought the Jowett into the courtyard and the others climbed in.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ Uma asked.
‘To the market at Kalighat,’ Arjun said.
‘Well, you’ll have to be quick then,’ said Uma.
‘Why?’
‘There’s a big demonstration today—we could get cut off.’
‘A demonstration?’ Arjun was taken by surprise. ‘What on earth is it about this time?’
This annoyed Uma. ‘Don’t you ever read the papers, Arjun?’ she said. ‘It’s an anti-war march. We in the Congress believe that in the event of another war Britain can’t expect our support unless they’re willing to provide a guarantee of Indian independence.’
‘Oh I see.’ Arjun shrugged. ‘Well, we’re safe then—it’ll take them a long time to get through all of that . . .’
Dinu laughed.
It took just fifteen minutes to get to the market, and within half an hour their shopping was done. They were on their way back, when they turned into a wide avenue and spotted the first of the demonstrators, approaching from a distance.