Chittagong Summer of 1930

by Manoshi Bhattacharya

  He was on his way out when Didi ran up from behind and thrust a letter into his hands.

  It was 2.30 p.m. Meeting at the new HQ which was Master-da’s residence as of now. Nirmal-da, Ambika-da, Master-da and Ganesh were already present. There was some light banter and then the serious discussion began. Ganesh read out his plan down to the minutest of details and rehearsed verbally. Who was to be where, when and how were communications to be maintained.

  Master-da had a few questions. ‘Our Baby Austin will carry weapons and go with the team, attacking the club. Is the car running well? Who will drive it first? If he gets hurt who will drive it next? And what about Ananda? He drives well, there is no doubt, but compared to the size of the car he is still very small, very young.’

  Every last detail was gone over. A six-cylindered car, powerful enough to rip the heaviest of doors open, was required; Lokenath2 and his team were out that very moment, acquiring a taxi that suited the purpose. A second car would be required but sadly Heramba Bal’s own Dodge was in the workshop as was Makhon’s six-cylindered Essex. Hour-by-hour reports on the progress were being sent in.

  The two teams that were to uproot the train lines had already been despatched to the site. They had taken up their positions and were awaiting the hour. The small teams that were to distribute the leaflets were ready and waiting, and the three small teams detailed to cut the telegraph wires had set out. Everybody’s morale was up. Despite the problem with the cars it did not make sense to delay the date of action.

  ‘Once the city has been taken, all gun shops will be attacked and emptied to arm the citizens who will come forward.’ Announcements would be made over the megaphone. ‘The Imperial Bank and the jail should surrender without too much fuss. And the final item on the agenda is dinner. Ananta has made an advance payment for maangsho-bhaat for sixty-four at Makleshwar Rahman’s restaurant.’ Ganesh ended his brief.

  The meeting ended at about 4 p.m., but neither car had been repaired until then … news came that they wouldn’t be repaired before 6 or 6.30. An air of worry descended on the group.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Ganesh, ‘we will capture another taxi in time.’

  Master-da looked at Ananta. ‘We will fill those British mouths with ash. We will get those cars, no matter what. And if things come to such a pass, once Ananda’s Chevrolet comes in from the telephone office, it will be despatched to the AFI armoury to help open the doors.’

  The meeting was over. Everyone stood up. The next meeting would take place during the action. Ananta handed Master-da the letter.

  Master-da,

  A revolutionary’s greetings. I will not trouble you with my hurt feelings at this last moment. Your wish is my command. Bless me that I will be worthy of the responsibility you have given to me. I wish a long life for you.

  Didi

  Master-da smiled ruefully. ‘Didi is really cross. But tell me what can I do? The future will judge us. Perhaps a day will come when the sisters will take the lead and leave us brothers far behind.’

  He called for attention. That lovely deep voice, it induced a great sense of peace.

  ‘We will lay down our unimportant lives in the cause of the motherland and jump in like braves. We will occupy the enemy’s fort and fly the flag of victory. No matter how, no matter what the cost, we want the city.’

  The whole house seemed to have been turned upside down. Holdalls containing bedding and three trunks lay in the middle of the floor. Dada, Didi and Boudi were busy packing. The servants had been given leave … the family was going away on holiday. Baba and Ma were back. They were sitting as if stunned out of their wits. Baba opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. Ananta briskly touched their feet and turned to his boudi.

  ‘You have my things?’

  Ma followed behind, with Baba trailing helplessly. A wave of self-importance flashed through Ananta’s heart. This was a live reenactment of Jona o Probeer. Drama! Drama was Ananta’s lifeblood. How many times had he listened to the record at Pishemoshai’s home … Probeer taking leave from his mother to go to war; asking for her blessing … a thousand times at least? Pishemoshai was the only person in Chattogram who owned a gramophone. Now Ananta was Probeer and Ma was Jona.

  ‘What is happening today? What are you about to do? Tell me, Baba, tell me all. What will happen, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do not be impatient; you will get to know everything in time, in a couple of hours the whole world will know.’

  ‘Let the world know what it will, tell me now, what is to become of you? Tell me the truth.’

  ‘Why are you so worried? Calm down. Ki hotey paarey? Cholera, plague or TB … nothing more than that?’

  ‘Look … I was saying …’ But Baba’s voice broke.

  Ananta picked up his things, went into the other room and shut the door. When it opened he was standing before them dressed in khaki; stars and crossed swords gleaming on the epaulet; blue-andsilver collar tabs at his throat; cross belt and a row of medals across his chest; holsters at the waist; boot-patti and leggings; and in his hands, a golden helmet with a splendid feather. It was the uniform of a British army general.

  Ma was breathing heavily. She had seen him in uniform many times but even she could see that there was something special about this one. Her eyes were drawn to the handkerchief-sized black velvet badges with the two native flags and silver embroidery around the edges … the ones she had sown through the night because Ganesh had pestered her so. The Volunteer Vahini was going to Sita Kund to help out, he had said.

  Baba, who had been a silent spectator until now, said with difficulty, ‘Look, are you not hurrying into things? Is the country ready? Have you thought it out? Is it correct to do something like this now?’

  The kobi3 whispered into Ananta’s head:

  Orey nobeen orey aamar kaancha

  Orey shobooj orey obooj

  Aadhmorader ghaa merey tui baacha

  Rokto aalor mode mataal bhorey

  Aajkey jey jaak boley boluk torey

  Sakal badha helay tuchcho korey

  Puchchoti tor uchchey tuley naacha.

  Ay duronto ay rey aamar kaancha.

  Oh my new one, oh my raw unformed one

  Oh green one, oh one who does not yet understand

  Strike the half dead and restore them to life.

  In the drunkenness of the light of this blood-red dawn

  Today, let whoever say what they will

  Let every obstacle be reduced to nothing

  Lift your tail and make it dance

  Come my restless one, come my raw unformed one.

  But there was no need to hurt Baba any further. Instead he said, ‘When will it be the right time? For those that have bowed their head for two hundred years … when will the time be right for them? Bless me. Your son will die tonight for the motherland. Forget your sadness. Feel proud.’

  Baba looked as if he had been struck. But he recovered quickly and said, ‘My blessings for each one of you. Not death. Return victorious.’

  Ananta bent to touch his feet and Ma burst into tears.

  ‘What if I lose you forever? How will I live without you?’ She could speak no more but gasped in a desperate bid to control her tears, aware that crying was an ill omen.

  ‘Don’t break down. Where will I get my courage from? Calm me. Tell me not to be afraid. Tell me to be brave. You have always helped us, so why do you hesitate now at this final moment. Smile. Laugh and say … go, go running and destroy the enemy … take your oath: Do or die.’

  Dada pushed his way through and fixed the talwar to his belt.

  ‘Boudi, Boudi, where are those cartridges … it’s getting late.’ Boudi had been hovering all this while in the background, the bag ready in her hand … but what else could he have said to her in farewell?

  Didi handed over the pistol. ‘Move forward. Let not one bullet go waste.’ Ananta put the pistol away and whispered into her ear, ‘These were Master-da’s last words today … I ha
ve left the breechloader at home. Use it without hesitation if required. I know your aim is never off mark.’

  He bent to touch their feet one last time and Ma burst into fresh tears and clasped him to her breast. ‘The badge you have sown will be my raksha kabaj,’ he whispered. He crossed the uthon and turned once more to wave at them. They stared back rigid and immobile. The moment Ananta crossed the sitting room they suddenly came to life, hurrying behind him. As he got into the car, Ma cried out from the top of the steps. ‘No, no, it cannot be. I bless you. Death will not be able to touch you. You will return victorious.’

  The new Chevrolet was standing in the compound facing the road. Ananta started it and looked back one last time. On seeing his face she raised her hands skywards and said in tearful voice, ‘My blessings. No one will be able to touch you.’

  The car rolled out. His favourite lines from Jona and Probeer came to mind:

  Akkhay kirit sheerey tabo pado dhuli

  Matrinaam akkhay kabaj bukey

  Shommukh shomorey morey bimuk kay korey morey

  The invincible crown on my forehead is nothing but the dust of

  your feet

  Ma’s name that is the invincible shield across my breast.

  Who can face me in war, who can force me to turn back?

  The car rolled out of the gully and entered the wide road. He hadn’t asked as to where they were going and nor had they burdened him with the details. Didi and Dada were there to look after them. After all, didn’t Anandomoth teach that revolutionaries have no mother, no father, no home? Their only mother was the motherland.

  JOHN YOUNIE

  Steamers were a comfortable mode of travel. The Younies had embarked at Khulna on the evening of 18 April with their three daughters, Chrissie the nanny, several servants including Johur and Yakub, 100 pieces of furniture, two dogs and a cow. Milk supply, they had been warned, could be difficult in Chittagong.

  John stood by himself on the deck, watching the setting sun cast its spell on the waters. They were moving up the estuary formed by the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna at the south-west corner of the Dacca district. The main channel ran onto the Bay of Bengal as the Meghna, but to the west of it lay a great V-shaped tract – a deltoid area intersected by umpteen rivers and khals – some large some small. Dorothy was suddenly beside him. She had tiptoed up, unwilling to break the magic of the moment. ‘All tightly asleep … the little bairns,’ she whispered as she snuggled into the crook of his arm.

  It had been one long week of hectic packing and ‘redding up’. The bungalow, the drawing room in particular, had been turned into a horrible mixture of byre, threshing floor, carpenter’s shop and a Whiteaway Laidlaw export department. The books, which imparted a civilized look to the room, reposed snugly in their tin-lined chests, perfumed with many camphor balls; the dismantled wall shelves turned into disconsolate planks, while pictures and rugs had simply disappeared before his eyes. It had been Dorothy who had done it all. He had leant back in his chair, figuratively patting himself for having dictated that last large judgement, while she had rushed back and forth between cases of crockery and glass fill, a lusty Elspet demanding to be fed and the blankets and clothes that he had personally intended to supervise.

  The steamer crawled slowly upstream against the current, calling at little landing stages. They had reached the last one when the flame faded from the western sky and darkness descended at a single stroke. The searchlights came on, lighting up the dark sullen waters ahead, the silence broken by the churning of the paddle wheels and the monotonous refrain, ek do tin – bam mile nahivi, quaintly chanted by the native in the bows, as he cast the lead.

  ‘They have to be built with an extremely shallow draught, you know,’ John broke the silence. ‘The river bed is treacherous and your Indian pilot knows that at any moment he may slip out of sixty feet of water into six. What was a ten-foot-deep channel one week may easily become a one-foot one or dry up altogether by the next. This is especially true during the rains, when the river overflows, depositing the silt it is carrying, and creating crowds of low-lying chars. They have to constantly take soundings and often, despite all these precautions, they’ll barge on to a sandbank and be a whole day in getting off again.’

  Despite being a big twin-decked, flat-bottomed, ungainly paddle wheeler, the steamer moved gently.

  ‘Will we be able to take a look at your house in Barisal?’

  John tightened his grip around her shoulders. ‘We will sail past it early in the morning … I will point it out … it is the best one in the station and probably the best I will ever be allotted in my life. A really first-class, two-storeyed bungalow … the river barely 300 yards to the south, with the maidan – a tolerable nine-hole golf course – and a tank between them.’

  Dorothy remembered. The years of separation were as if they had never been, for between them had flown voluminous letters, bridging the miles as if they never existed.

  He had written:

  Imagine yourself, looking out southwards at night from my upstairs verandah: across the tank in the foreground, the Bell Park and then the river. Picture a great bright Bengal moon overhead reflected in the waters of the tank and causing a great broad path of light across the ripples of the Barisal River. See also the feathery forms of casuarinas along the riverside, boldly outlined against the gleaming silver of the river. He had drawn a little sketch by the side. And you would have said, he had added, isn’t it beautiful and I … yes, yes, but this is September and wouldn’t you prefer sleeping to looking out upon the Barisal moon all night?

  So many times had she read the epistles and so tenderly had the words been locked away in her heart.

  ‘The electric fans did come but until then, sleep was a fickle jade that wanted a lot of wooing,’ he smiled, as if reading her thoughts.

  Downstairs there had been an office room, a large dining room and drawing room with a fireplace in each, while the upstairs had two very large bedrooms with dressing rooms and a third smaller bedroom – in all John had enjoyed a compact, well-built, modern bungalow, set so as to catch the prevailing southerly breeze. The life of a grass widower in Barisal was spent mostly at work and he had summed it up thus: One bloody murder after another; I had to order the stringing up of another fellow last week; if the criminal classes of Krishnagar were bad, they are little saints compared with the local products.

  ‘It was a lonely time for you and you hated the food.’

  ‘Potol and lady’s fingers? Who ever did come up with the idea of calling them lady’s fingers? But you,’ he smiled tenderly, ‘living at the time in the land of plenty, wouldn’t have remembered the tasteless garbage that garnishes the monsoon mourghee in the Bengal mofussil. Fortunately for me, Donovan offered to share his weekly basket of vegetables that came in from Darjeeling – a most noble collection of green peas, leeks, carrots, cabbage, French beans, broad beans, asparagus and what not. And,’ said John triumphantly, ‘we had ice! All thanks to Donovan … at two annas per seer … about two pounds approximately … brought down from Calcutta for the club and we could help ourselves to it. Very satisfactory, what?’

  The Barisal Club was a good one with three pucca tennis courts, billiards table and bridge ad lib and a decent-sized European population with nearly ten resident British families.

  ‘But as a place, it is stiff with missions and churches,’ he laughed. ‘There are the Oxford Missions with three or four Oxford brothers and some fifteen, I think, Oxford sisters and a church. There are the RCs with another church and the Baptists with theirs. I had gone to the English service one Sunday and it was more like Totland Christ Church at the Isle of Wight than Ayre’s Low Church with responses and psalms and what not. But very good, all the same. The Oxford sisters also run a women’s hospital …you would have been interested.’

  Dorothy had got an MD from Aberdeen University for a thesis on the failure of lactation and had been looking forward to working with the tribal women. It was the only wa
y of interacting with Indian women. Socializing between the communities was a rarity even though a number of them held senior posts and worked alongside. For John it had been limited to Major Thakur, the Punjabi civil surgeon at Barisal and his Swedish wife. His prescriptions of bed rest, a particularly foultasting jug soup and liquid quinine had kept him going and kept his recurrent attacks of malaria at bay.

  ‘No solid work can be done for child welfare without the slow development of public opinion and months and months of hard work among the people by really keen and competent voluntary workers,’ continued John. ‘… unlike that moth-eaten scheme instituted by Lady Lytton – the National Baby Week: a series of lectures, sermons, essay competitions and baby shows! The only part of the scheme for which the slightest enthusiasm had been shown was the essay competitions for which gold and silver medals had been offered. And a fat lot of good did babu so-and-so’s essay, in beautiful flowery English, do to the thousands of wretched diseased infants that spawn over the alluvium.’

  Johur was rigging up John’s camp cot on the deck, tucking the mosquito net deftly under the mattress. It was time for Dorothy to return to the cabin. They would be up early to breakfast with Donovan, the district magistrate and collector at Barisal, before making their way to Chittagong. Chrissie was their chief worry. John hoped that the seventeen-year-old would cope, considering there would be none of the entertainment she was used to in England. The bioscope, that had been introduced late in 1928, had proved itself popular with the Aryan brother but letting Chrissie off by herself was out of the question, let alone the fact that the mere suggestion was scandalous. Dorothy had laughed outright at his description of the help engaged by the Taylors: A cheery, red-haired young thing that plays tennis in bare legs with those little socks over the top of her tennis shoes.