The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh

  The chowkidar went away, only to return shortly afterwards. ‘They won’t leave.’

  Bela happened to be at hand. Uma said: ‘Bela, go and see what the matter is.’

  Bela stepped out into the courtyard and began to walk towards the gate. She saw a man and a woman holding the metal bars. Then she heard a voice, saying her name, in a hoarse whisper—‘Bela’—and she looked closely at their faces.

  Uma heard a scream and ran out into the courtyard. She snatched the keys from the chowkidar’s hands. She went running to the gate and threw it open.

  ‘Look.’

  Rajkumar was kneeling on the pavement. He held out his arms and they saw that he was holding a child, a baby—Jaya. Suddenly the baby’s face turned a bright, dark red and she began to cry at the top of her voice. At that moment the world held no more beautiful sound than this utterance of rage: this primeval sound of life proclaiming its determination to defend itself.

  It was not till the latter months of the next year, 1943, that the first rumours of the Indian National Army began to reach India—but this was not the same force that Arjun had joined, in northern Malaya. The first Indian National Army had not lasted long. About a year after its founding, its leader, Captain Mohun Singh, had disbanded it, fearing that the Japanese were trying to take it over. The army was resurrected by Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist politician, who reached Singapore in 1943 by way of Afghanistan and Germany. Bose reinvigorated the Indian National Army, drawing tens of thousands of new recruits from the Indian populations of South East Asia: Arjun, Hardy, Kishan Singh, Ilongo and many others joined.

  At the end of the war thousands of members of the Indian National Army were brought back to India as prisoners of war. To the British they were JIFs—Japanese Inspired Fifth Columnists. They were regarded as traitors—both to the Empire, and to the Indian army, the bulk of which had continued to fight for the Allies, in North Africa, southern Europe, and finally in the British counter-invasion of Burma. The Indian public, however, saw the matter quite differently. To them imperialism and Fascism were twin evils, one being a derivative of the other. It was the defeated prisoners of the Indian National Army that they received as heroes—not the returning victors.

  In December 1945 the colonial government chose to bring charges against three members of the Indian National Army— the famous ‘Red Fort Three’: Shah Nawaz Khan, Gurbakhsh Singh Dhillon and Prem Sahgal. The country erupted with protests and demonstrations; support committees were formed all over India, despite an official ban. General strikes shut down entire states; students held huge public meetings defying curfew orders. In the southern city of Madurai two people died after the police opened fire on a demonstration. In Calcutta tens of thousands of people poured into the streets. They took over the city for several days. Dozens were shot by the police. In Bombay, naval ratings mutinied. For the Congress Party the trial was a windfall. The party had lost the momentum it had gained in the pre-war years and it badly needed an issue that would serve to mobilise the country. The trial provided just such a cause.

  Once the trial got under way, the prosecution quickly ran into problems. It was not able to produce any evidence to link the Indian National Army either with Japanese atrocities in South East Asia, or with the mistreatment of British and Australian prisoners of war. While it did prove that some Indian prisoners had indeed been mistreated, none of these cases had any link with the three defendants.

  On December 1, 1945, Bhulabhai Desai, the chief defence lawyer, rose to make his concluding address. ‘What is now on trial before this court,’ he said, ‘is the right to wage war with immunity on the part of a subject race.’

  There was essentially only one charge against his clients, he argued, that of waging war against the King. All the other charges, he claimed, were derived from the first. It fell to Desai to demonstrate that international law recognised the right of subject peoples to wage war for their freedom and this he did by citing a series of precedents. He showed that the British Government had itself recognised this right, when expedient, in cases that dated back to the nineteenth century. They had, for example, supported the Greeks and a number of other nationalities in rebellions against the Ottoman Empire; more recently, they had supported the Polish National Army and Czechoslovak rebels; they had similarly insisted on the right of the French maquis to be treated as belligerents even though the Government of Marshal Pétain was at that time the de jure and de facto Government of France. The trial ended with all three defendants being found guilty of ‘waging war against the King’. They were sentenced to transportation for life, but all three had their sentences commuted. They were set free and were received by tumultuous crowds.

  Hardy was by this time a national figure (he was later to become an ambassador and a high-ranking official of the Indian Government). He came to see Jaya’s grandparents in Calcutta in 1946. It was from him that they learnt that Arjun had died fighting in one of the INA’s last engagements—fought in central Burma, in the final days of the war.

  At this point in the conflict, the Japanese were in retreat and the Allied Fourteenth Army, under the command of General Slim, was advancing rapidly southwards. The Indian units in central Burma were among the last to continue resisting. Their numbers were tiny and they were armed with obsolete weaponry, dating back to the early days of the war. The forces they were fighting against were often mirror-images of what they themselves had been at the start of the war: most were Indians, often from the same regiments, often recruited from the same villages and districts. It was not usual for them to be fighting their younger brothers and nephews.

  The Indian National Army’s resistance at this stage was largely symbolic, undertaken in the hope of inspiring a revolt in the Indian army. Although they were never a serious threat to the victorious Fourteenth Army they were more than a minor irritant. Many fought and died with great courage, providing heroes and martyrs for the movement. Arjun was among those who had died a hero, Hardy said. And so had Kishan Singh. That was all they knew about Arjun’s death and they were content that it should be so.

  For the next six years Dolly and Rajkumar stayed with Uma, in her flat. The legacy of Rajkumar’s quarrel with Uma was forgotten and the baby, Jaya, became a bond linking every member of the household.

  Dolly took a job with an army publications unit, translating wartime pamphlets into Burmese. Rajkumar did occasional supervisory work at sawmills and timberyards. In January 1948 Burma gained her independence. Soon after this Dolly decided that she and Rajkumar would return to Rangoon, at least for a while. In the meantime, Jaya was to be left in Calcutta, with her aunt Bela and her other grandparents.

  Dolly’s eagerness to go back to Burma was due largely to the fact that Dinu had not been heard from in seven years. Dolly believed that he was still alive and she was keen to find him. Rajkumar expressed his willingness to go with her and she booked passages for both of them.

  But as the day approached, it became clear that Rajkumar was very far from being certain of his own mind. Over the last six years, he had grown very attached to his orphaned grandchild. More than anyone else in the house, it was he who undertook the responsibilities of her everyday care: he sat with her through her meals, walked with her in the park, told her stories at bedtime. Dolly began to wonder whether he would be able to sustain the pain of wrenching himself away from the child.

  The question was settled when Rajkumar disappeared, two days before they were due to depart for Burma. He came back after the ship had sailed. He was contrite and full of apologies; he said he had no memory of where he had been or why he’d gone. He urged Dolly to make another booking; he promised it would not happen again. In the meanwhile, Dolly had decided that it would be better to leave Rajkumar where he was—both for his own sake and Jaya’s. Uma for her part made no objection; she was content to have him stay on: he was very little trouble and often made himself useful round the house.

  Dolly went back to the steamship company’
s office and booked a single, one-way passage to Rangoon. She knew that Rajkumar would feel obliged to accompany her if he learnt of her plans. She decided not to tell him. She went about her daily business as usual. On the morning of her departure she cooked mohingya noodles, Rajkumar’s favourite dish. They went for a walk around the lake and afterwards Rajkumar fell asleep.

  It had been arranged that Uma would go with Dolly to the Khidderpore docks. Neither of them said much on the way; there was a finality about this departure that they could not bring themselves to acknowledge. At the end, when Dolly was about to board her ship, she said to Uma: ‘I know Jaya will be fine. There are many of you to care for her. It’s Rajkumar that I’m worried about.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, Dolly.’

  ‘Will you look after him, Uma? For my sake?’

  ‘I will; I promise.’

  At Lankasuka, Rajkumar woke to find a note on his pillow: it was written in Dolly’s careful hand. He picked up the note and smoothed it down. It said: Rajkumar—in my heart I know that Dinu is still alive and that I shall find him. After that I shall go to Sagaing as I have so long wanted to do. Know that nothing in this world will be harder to renounce than you and the memory of our love. Dolly.

  He never saw her again.

  forty-one

  As the only child in the house, Jaya had the run of Lankasuka when she was growing up. Her aunt Bela lived upstairs, inheriting the flat after her parents’ death. She never married and the everyday tasks of looking after Jaya fell mainly to her: it was in her flat that Jaya usually slept and ate.

  But Rajkumar was never more than one flight of stairs away: after Dolly’s departure, he continued to live on the ground floor, in Uma’s flat. He had a small room of his own, next to the kitchen, furnished sparsely, with a narrow bed and a couple of bookshelves.

  The only inessential object in Rajkumar’s room was a radio— an old-fashioned Paillard with a wooden cabinet, and a textile-covered grille. Rajkumar always took his afternoon siesta with the radio on—it was Jaya who usually turned it off, after coming home from school. The silencing of the radio would often rouse Rajkumar from his nap. He would sit up, leaning back against his pillow, settling his granddaughter beside him. When he put his arm around Jaya’s shoulders she would disappear into the crook of his elbow; his hands were huge, the skin very dark, marbled with lighter-coloured veins. The white hairs on his knuckles stood out in startling contrast. He would shut his eyes and the hollows of his face would fill with leathery creases. And then he would begin to talk; stories would come pouring out of him—of places that Jaya had never been to and never seen; of images and scenes that were so vivid as to brim over from the measuring cup of reality into an ocean of dreams. She lived in his stories.

  Rajkumar’s favourite haunt was a small Buddhist temple in the centre of the city, a place that Dolly had liked to visit too, in the past. This was where Calcutta’s Burmese community forgathered, and on special occasions Rajkumar would take Jaya there with him. The temple was on the fourth floor of a tumbledown old building, in an area where the streets were clogged with traffic and the air was dense with diesel smoke. They would make their way across town on a bus and get off at the stop for the Eden Hospital. They’d climb up the grimy marble stairs and when they reached the top, they would step into a hall that seemed a world away from its surroundings: full of light, perfumed with the scent of fresh flowers, its floors shining clean. On the floor there would be rush mats, woven in distinctive patterns: different from Indian mats, although at the same time, not dissimilar.

  The temple was always at its liveliest during the great Burmese festivals—Thingyan, the water festival that inaugurated the Burmese New Year; Waso, which marked the beginning of Thadin, the annual three-month period of fasting and abstinence; and Thadingyut, the festival of light, which celebrated its end.

  Once, when Jaya was ten, Rajkumar took her to the temple for Thadingyut. The temple was filled with people; women were bustling about in their longyis, preparing a feast; the walls glowed with the shimmering light of hundreds of lamps and candles. Suddenly, in the midst of the noise and the bustle, there was a hush. Whispers ran around the room: ‘The Princess . . . the Second Princess, she’s coming up the stairs . . .’

  The Princess stepped in and there was a quickening of breath, a nudging of elbows; those who knew how performed the shiko. The Princess was wearing a scarlet htamein and a kind of sash; she was in her late sixties, with her greying hair tied at the back of her head in a severe little bun. She was tiny, with a kindly face and black, twinkling eyes. She too was living in India then, in the hill-station of Kalimpong. Her circumstances were known to be extremely straitened.

  The Princess exchanged a few gracious pleasantries with the people around her. Then her eyes fell on Rajkumar and her face creased into a fond, warm smile. She broke off her conversations; the crowd parted and she made her way slowly across the room. Every eye in the temple was now on Rajkumar. Jaya could feel herself swelling with pride on her grandfather’s behalf.

  The Princess greeted Rajkumar warmly, in Burmese; Jaya couldn’t understand a word of their conversation, but she watched both their faces carefully, studying their changing expressions, smiling when they smiled, frowning when they were grave. Then Rajkumar introduced her: ‘And this is my granddaughter . . .’

  Jaya had never met a princess before and didn’t know what to do. But she was not without a certain resourcefulness; she recalled a movie she had recently seen—was it Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella?—and sketched the beginning of a curtsey, holding the edge of her dress pinched between finger and thumb. She was rewarded with a hug from the Princess.

  Later, people gathered around Rajkumar, wondering why she had singled him out. ‘What did Her Highness say?’ they asked. ‘How did she know you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve known her most of my life,’ Rajkumar said off-handedly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. The first time I saw her was in Mandalay and she was just six months old.’

  ‘Oh? And how did that come about?’

  And then Rajkumar would start at the beginning, going back to that day more than sixty years before, when he had heard the sound of English cannon rolling in across the plain to the walls of Mandalay’s fort.

  In a quiet corner of Lankasuka, there was a niche that served as a shrine to Jaya’s parents and her uncle, Arjun. Two framed photographs stood in the niche: one of these was a picture of Manju and Neel, taken at their wedding—they’d been caught glancing up from the sacramental fire, in surprise. The hooded veil of Manju’s sari had slipped momentarily from her head. They were smiling, their faces shining and radiant. The photograph of Arjun was taken at Howrah Station: he was in uniform, laughing. A second face was clearly discernible, over his shoulder: Bela told her niece that this was her uncle’s batman, Kishan Singh.

  Three times each year, Bela and Jaya would perform a small ceremony at their shrine. They’d garland the photographs and light incense. Bela would hand Jaya flowers, directing her to pay her respects to her mother, her father and Arjun, the uncle she had never known. But when Bela lit the dhoop sticks, there were always four bunches, not three. Without ever being told, Jaya knew that the extra one was for Kishan Singh: he too was among their dead.

  It was only when Jaya was ten years old, already conscious of a growing interest in cameras and photographs, that it occurred to her to ask her aunt about the pictures and who had taken them.

  Bela was surprised. ‘I thought you knew,’ she said in puzzlement. ‘They were taken by your uncle Dinu.’

  ‘And who was that?’ said Jaya.

  This was how Jaya learnt that she had a second uncle, on her father’s side—an uncle who had not been memorialised because his fate was unknown. In Lankasuka no one ever spoke of Dinu—neither Rajkumar, nor Uma nor Bela. No one knew what had become of him. He was known to have stayed on at Morningside until the last weeks of 1942. At some point after that he’d left for Burma. Nothin
g had been heard from him since. Privately everyone suspected that he had become yet another casualty of the war, but no one wished to be the first to voice this fear and, as a result, Dinu’s name was never mentioned in the house.

  Through the late 1940s, the shadows of the Second World War deepened over Burma. First there were protracted civil conflicts and a large-scale Communist uprising. Then, in 1962, General Ne Win seized power in a coup and the country became subject to the bizarre, maniacal whimsies of its dictator: Burma, ‘the golden’, became synonymous with poverty, tyranny and misgovernment. Dinu was among the many millions who had vanished into the darkness.

  Until the day of her marriage Jaya lived in Lankasuka, with Bela, Uma and Rajkumar. She married young, at the age of seventeen. Her husband was a doctor, ten years older. They were very much in love and a year after the wedding, they had a son.

  But when the boy was two years old, tragedy struck: his father was killed in a train accident.

  Soon after this Jaya moved back to Lankasuka. With her aunt Bela’s support, she enrolled at Calcutta University, took a degree and found a job as a college teacher. She worked hard to give her son a good education. He went to the city’s best schools and colleges and at the age of twenty-two he won a scholarship and went abroad.

  Now for the first time in years, Jaya had time on her hands. She resumed work on a long-delayed PhD thesis, on the history of photography in India.

  In 1996 Jaya’s college sent her to an art history conference at the University of Goa. On the way, while changing planes at Bombay airport, she was ambushed by one of the worst of all possible airport experiences: on arriving at the check-in counter she was told that her plane had been overbooked. If she wanted to be sure of a seat she would have to wait at least a couple of days; alternatively the airline would pay for a bus or a train.