by Amitav Ghosh
Late in the summer, Arjun’s friend Hardy stopped by on his way to his own post, atop the Khyber Pass. Hardy was a quiet, clear-eyed man of medium height and average build. Whether in or out of uniform he was always neatly dressed— with the folds of his turban layered in precise order and his beard combed tight against his chin. Despite his soldiering background, Hardy did not in any way resemble the Sikh warriors of military lore—he was soft-spoken and slow-moving, with an expression of habitual sleepiness. He had a good ear for a tune and was usually the first in the mess to learn the latest Hindi film songs. It was his habit—annoying to some and entertaining to others—to hum these melodies under his breath as he went about his work. These quirks sometimes brought him a little more than his fair share of ‘ragging’—yet his friends knew that there were certain limits beyond which he could not be goaded: although generally slow to take offence, Hardy was inflexible when roused and had a long memory for grudges.
Hardy had just spent a period of leave in his village. On his first night at Charbagh he told Arjun about some odd rumours that he’d heard during his stay. Most of his neighbours had relatives in the army, and some of them had spoken of incidents of unrest: troops were said to be resisting transfer orders abroad. In Bombay, a Sikh unit—a squadron of the Central India Horse—was said to have mutinied. They had lain down their weapons and refused to board the ship that was to take them to North Africa. Two men had been executed. A dozen others had been exiled to the prisons of the Andaman Islands. Some of these men were from Hardy’s own village: there could be no doubt about the reliability of these reports.
Arjun was astonished to hear this. ‘You should tell Bucky,’ he said. ‘He should know.’
‘He must know already,’ Hardy said. ‘And if he hasn’t said anything to us, it must be for a reason . . .’ They looked at each other uneasily and dropped the subject: neither of them mentioned these stories to anyone else.
A few months later the 1/1 Jats moved back to their battalion’s base at Saharanpur, near Delhi. With the descent into the plains the rhythms of their life underwent a dramatic change. The army was now expanding at a furious pace: regiments were raising new battalions and headquarters was looking everywhere for experienced personnel. Like every other battalion in the regiment, the 1/1 Jats were milked of several officers and NCOs. Suddenly they found themselves struggling to fill the gaps in their ranks. Newly recruited companies were sent up from the battalion’s training centre and a fresh batch of officers arrived, as replacements for those who’d left. The new officers consisted mainly of expatriate British civilians with Emergency Commissions—men who had until recently held jobs as planters, businessmen and engineers. They had little experience of the Indian army and its intricate customs and procedures.
Arjun and Hardy were both full lieutenants now and they were among the few regular army officers left in the unit. Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland began to depend on them more and more for the day-to-day running of the battalion.
First he saddled them with the job of forming a new administrative platoon. Then, sooner than anyone had expected, the battalion’s motorised transport was brought up to authorised strength. Three dozen fifteen-hundredweight trucks arrived, along with a dozen smaller lorries. It was discovered that the battalion had mule-trainers aplenty, but lacked drivers. Arjun was taken off the administrative platoon and appointed Motor Transport Officer. It fell to him to teach the new drivers the tricks of threading heavyweight trucks through Saharanpur’s narrow alleys and bazaars.
Even as the battalion was adjusting to its new vehicles, a shipment of armaments was sent up from New Delhi: 3-inch mortars, tommy guns and Vickers-Berthier light machine guns. Then came three Bren guns, with their carriers, six medium machine guns and five Boye’s anti-tank rifles, one for each company. Hardy was given the responsibility of running weapons training courses for the men.
Just as Hardy and Arjun were settling cheerfully into their new jobs, the CO turned everything upside down again. He pulled both Arjun and Hardy from their assignments and set them to work on preparing a unit mobilisation scheme.
By this time, most of Arjun and Hardy’s classmates from the Military Academy had already been sent abroad. Some were serving in North Africa, some in Eritrea (where one had won a Victoria Cross), and some in the East—Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore. Arjun and Hardy assumed that they too would soon be going abroad to join other units of the Indian army. When the CO asked them to draft a mobilisation plan, they took it as a sign that their departure was imminent. But a month went by without any further news, and then another. On New Year’s Eve, they saw 1941 in with a wan celebration. Despite the ban on shop talk at the mess, the conversation kept returning to the question of where they would be sent, east or west—to North Africa or towards Malaya.
Opinion was evenly divided.
Rajkumar was discharged from hospital with strict orders to remain in bed for at least a month. On returning home, he insisted on being moved up to a room at the top of the house. A bed was brought up and placed by a window. Neel bought a radio, a Paillard just like the one in the hospital, and placed it on a table, beside the bed. When everything was exactly as he wanted, Rajkumar lay down, with a wall of pillows against his back, positioning himself so that he’d be able to look across the city, towards the Shwe Dagon.
As the days passed the outlines of a plan began to take shape, very slowly, before his eyes. During the last war the price of timber had soared. The profits he had made then had sustained him for a decade afterwards. It was not too far-fetched to imagine that something similar might happen again. The British and the Dutch were reinforcing their defences throughout the East—in Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Java, Sumatra. It stood to reason that they would need materials. If he could build up a stockpile of timber in his yards, it was possible that he’d be able to sell at a good price next year. The problem was liquidity: he would have to sell or mortgage all his assets to find cash—he would have to get rid of the yards, the mills, the timber concessions, even the Kemendine house. Perhaps he could persuade Matthew to buy him out of Morningside: there might be some cash there.
The more he thought of it, the more plausible the plan seemed. The risks were huge of course, but they always were when anything important was at stake. But the rewards too could be very great; enough to clear his debts and finance a new beginning for Neel and Dinu. And there would be other advantages to arranging things in this way: all his assets would have been disposed of by the time he made his final move. After that he’d be free to leave—nothing to hold him back, nothing more to worry about.
One afternoon, when Dolly brought him his meal, he sketched his plan for her. ‘I think it could work, Dolly,’ he concluded. ‘I think it’s our best chance.’
Dolly had many objections.
‘How is all this to be done, Rajkumar? In your state of health, you can’t be up and about, travelling to Malaya and all that.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ he said. ‘Neel and Dinu will do the travelling—not me. I’ll tell them what they have to do. One of them can go upcountry; the other can go over to dispose of our part of Morningside.’
Dolly shook her head. ‘Dinu won’t agree. He’s never wanted to have anything to do with the business—you know that.’
‘He doesn’t really have a choice, Dolly. If I were to die today, he would find himself paying off my debts whether he liked it or not. All I’m asking is a few months of his time. After that he’ll be free to follow his own interests.’
Dolly fell silent, and Rajkumar reached out to jog her arm. ‘Say something, Dolly—tell me what you think.’
‘Rajkumar,’ Dolly said quietly, ‘this plan of yours—you do know what they call this kind of thing?’
‘What?’
‘Hoarding—war-profiteering.’
Rajkumar scowled.
‘Hoarding applies to essential commodities, Dolly. That’s not what I’ll be dealing in. There’s nothing illegal about my pla
n.’
‘I’m not talking about the law . . .’
Rajkumar’s tone grew impatient. ‘Dolly, there’s nothing else to be done. We have to take this chance—don’t you see?’
Dolly rose to her feet. ‘Does it really matter what I think, Rajkumar? If this is what you’re set upon, then this is what you’ll do. It is not important what I think.’
Late that night, when the whole house was asleep, the telephone began to ring in a hallway downstairs. Dolly got out of bed and ran to pick it up before it woke Rajkumar. She heard an operator’s voice, crackling down the line, telling her she had a trunk call. The instrument seemed to go dead for a moment, and then she heard Alison’s voice; it was very faint as though she were shouting across a crowded room.
‘Alison?’ She heard a sound that was like a sob. She raised her voice. ‘Alison, is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alison—is everything all right?’
‘No . . . there’s bad news.’
‘Is it Sayagyi?’
‘No.’ There was a sob again. ‘My parents.’
‘Alison. I’m so sorry. What happened?’
‘They were on holiday. Driving. In the Cameron Highlands.
The car went over an embankment . . .’
‘Alison, Alison . . .’ Dolly couldn’t think of what she was going to say next. ‘Alison, I’d come myself, if I could, but Rajkumar isn’t well. I can’t leave him. But I’ll send someone— one of the boys, probably Dinu. It may take a few weeks but he’ll be there. I promise you . . .’ The line went dead before she could say anything else.
twenty-six
The day before Arjun’s twenty-third birthday he and Hardy borrowed a jeep and drove down to Delhi for the weekend. Walking through the arcades of Connaught Circus, they ran into an acquaintance, Kumar, a debonair and famously fun-loving contemporary of theirs from the academy.
Kumar belonged to the 14th Punjab Regiment and his battalion was currently stationed in Singapore. He was in India only briefly, attending a signals training course. Kumar appeared distracted and preoccupied, very different from his usual high-spirited self. They went out for lunch, and Kumar told them about a very strange incident—something that had caused a lot of unease at headquarters.
At Singapore’s Tyersall Park Camp an Indian soldier had inexplicably shot an officer and then committed suicide. On investigation it was discovered that this was no simple murder-suicide: there were undercurrents of unrest within the battalion. Certain officers of this battalion had been heard to say that Indians should refuse to participate in this war: that this was a competition for supremacy among nations who believed it to be their shared destiny to enslave other peoples—England, France, Germany. There was much concern at headquarters: more than half the troops in Malaya were Indian and it was clear that the colony could become indefensible if unrest were to spread. Despite the incendiary nature of these rumours, the high command had decided on a judicious and measured response. All that was done by way of disciplinary action was to send one of the battalion’s junior officers back to India.
It so happened that the officer who was singled out for censure was a Muslim. When news of his punishment reached his battalion, a company of Muslim soldiers proceeded to lay down their weapons, in a show of sympathy. The next day many of the battalion’s Hindu soldiers also laid down their arms.
At this point the incident assumed a new gravity. For generations, the British Indian army had operated on the principle of maintaining a careful balance between the troops. Every battalion was constituted of companies drawn from different castes and religions—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jats, Brahmins. Each company had its own mess, run strictly according to the dietary rules of the group from which the troops had been recruited. As an additional safeguard, infantry divisions were so composed that Indian troops were always balanced by a certain number of Australian or British units.
That Hindu and Muslim troops could act together to support an Indian officer came as a shock to the High Command. No one needed to be reminded that nothing of this kind had happened since the Great Mutiny of 1857. At this point half-measures were dispensed with. A platoon of British soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was sent in to surround the mutinous Indians.
Thus far into the story Kumar had told them neither the name of the battalion concerned nor that of the officer who was to be punished. When at last he mentioned these, it became clear that Kumar, like the good raconteur that he was, had been saving his punchline for the last. It turned out that the battalion in question was a brother unit of the 1/1 Jats—a part of a Hyderabad infantry regiment. The officer who was being sent home was someone they had all known well at the academy.
Kumar concluded the story with an offhand observation: ‘Going overseas has disturbing effects on the troops,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘On officers too. You’ll see.’
‘Perhaps it won’t happen to us,’ Hardy said hopefully. ‘There’s no certainty that we’ll be sent abroad. They’ll need forces here too, after all . . .’
Arjun was quick to challenge this. ‘And what would that do for us?’ he said. ‘For you and me? We’ll sit out the war and our careers will be dead on their feet. I think I’d rather take my chances abroad.’
They walked away in silence, not knowing what to make of this conversation. There was something about Kumar’s story that defied belief. They both knew the officer who’d been punished—he was a quiet kind of man, from a middle-class family. He needed his job if nothing else. What had made him do what he’d done? It was hard to understand.
And if the story was true—and they were by no means sure of this—then the incident had other implications too. It meant for example that the other ranks were now taking their cues from their Indian officers rather than the High Command. But this was worrying—to them no less than to the High Command—for if the men were to lose faith in the structure of command, then the Indian officers too would eventually be rendered redundant. Only by making common cause with their British counterparts could they hope to prevent this. What would happen if there really were to be a fissure? How would the men respond? There was no telling.
Disquieting as the subject was, Arjun felt oddly exhilarated: it was an uncommon responsibility to be faced with such questions at the age of twenty-three.
That night they changed into kurtas and churidar pyjamas and went to a dancer’s kotha near Ajmeri Gate. The dancer was in her forties and her face was painted white, with eyebrows that were as thin as wires. At first glance she looked stony and unattractive, but when she stood up to dance the hardness in her face melted away: her body was supple and lithe and there was a marvellous lightness in her feet. As the tabla’s tempo increased she began to spin, whirling in time to the beat. Her gauzy knee-length angarkha corkscrewed around her, in tight spirals. The aureoles of her breasts stood outlined against the thin, white cloth. Arjun’s throat went dry. When the tabla sounded its climactic stroke, her index finger came to rest on Arjun’s forehead. She beckoned to him to follow her.
Arjun turned to Hardy in astonishment and his friend smiled and gave him a nudge. ‘Go, yaar, it’s your birthday isn’t it? Jaa.’
Arjun followed the dancer up a flight of narrow stairs. Her room was small, with a low ceiling. She undressed him slowly, picking at the drawstring of his cotton churidar pyjamas with her nails. When he reached for her she pushed his hand away with a laugh.
‘Wait.’
She made him lie face down on the bed and massaged a handful of oil into his back, her fingertips tripping over the knuckles of his spine in imitation of the rhythms of a dancer’s feet. When at last she lay down beside him she was still fully clothed. He reached for her breasts and she pushed his hand away: ‘No, not that.’ She undid her drawstring and guided him into her body, watching with a smile, as he lay on her. When he was done she slipped quickly away, and it was as though nothing at all happened: even her drawstring seemed instantly back in plac
e.
She put a finger under his chin and tipped his head back, puckering her lips as though she were looking at a beautiful child.
‘So young,’ she said. ‘Just a boy.’
‘I’m twenty-three,’ he said proudly.
She laughed. ‘You look sixteen.’
When Alison first broke the news of her parents’ deaths to Saya John, his response had consisted of nothing more than a slight smile. A series of questions had followed, asked almost playfully, as though the situation that was under discussion was at best a remote possibility—an imaginative hypothesis that Alison had propounded in order to explain her parents’ prolonged absence from the dinner table.
Alison had been so afraid of the impact the news might have on her grandfather that she had gone to great lengths to compose herself, caking make-up over the discolourations of her face and tying a scarf over her disarranged hair. Every eventuality that she could think of she had tried to prepare herself for. But the sight of her grandfather’s childlike smile proved beyond her bearing. She got up and ran out of the room.
Saya John was now in his late eighties. His lifelong regimen of early-morning exercise had served him well, and he was in relatively sound health. His hearing had not deteriorated greatly and although his eyesight had never been good, he was still able to see his way round the house and grounds. Before the accident his advancing age had occasionally betrayed itself in a tendency towards confusion. He would often forget things that had been said to him minutes before, while still being able to recall, in minute detail, events that had occurred forty or fifty years before. The accident greatly accelerated this tendency: Alison could see that contrary to his pretence, the news of her parents’ deaths had indeed registered on her grandfather’s mind. But his response was not unlike that of a child’s reaction to unwelcome noise: he had figuratively stopped his ears with his fingers, in order to shut out what he did not wish to know. With each passing day he spoke less and less. He would come down to eat with Alison, but he’d sit at the hardwood table in blank silence. Such sentences as he addressed to Alison, would begin, almost invariably, with observations like: ‘When Matthew comes back . . .’, or ‘We must remember to tell Elsa . . .’