Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

  But how are we going to get down there? said Sarju, in alarm – for the boat sat low in the water, well beneath the deck of the pulwar.

  Yes, how? cried Munia. I can’t jump that far!

  That far! A shout of mocking laughter came echoing back to them from the boat. Why, a baby could do it. Come, come – there’s nothing to be afraid of . . .

  It was the boatman speaking, in a quicksilver, citified Hindusthani that Deeti could just about follow. He was a stripling of a fellow, dressed not in the usual lungi and banyan, but in patloon pants and a blue vest that billowed around his wiry chest. His dark, thick hair had a coppery tint because of prolonged exposure to the sun, and it was held in place by a rakishly tied bandhna. He was laughing, with his head thrown back, and his bright, impudent eyes seemed sharp enough to pierce the cover of their veils.

  What a dandy of a fellow! Munia whispered to Deeti, from under her ghungta.

  Don’t so much as look at him, warned Deeti. He’s one of those townie flirts, a real bãka-bihari.

  But the boatman was still laughing, beckoning them on: What’re you waiting for? Jump, na! Do I have to spread my net, to catch you like so many fishes?

  Munia giggled and Deeti couldn’t help laughing too; it had to be admitted that there was something quite fetching about the fellow: perhaps it was the brightness of his eyes, or the carefree mischievousness of his expression – or was it the quirky little scar on his forehead that gave him the appearance of possessing three eyebrows rather than two?

  Ey! said Munia giggling. And what if we jump and you drop us? What’ll happen then?

  Why should I drop a thin little thing like you? said the boatman, winking. I’ve caught many fish that are bigger: just take a jump and see . . .

  This had gone far enough now, Deeti decided; as the senior married woman of the group, it was her duty to enforce the proprieties. She turned upon Kalua and began to scold: What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you step into the boat and help us climb down? Do you want this lecher of a lucchha to be putting his hands on us?

  Chastened, Kalua and the other men stepped into the boat and reached up to help the women down, one by one. Munia hung back and waited until there was only one pair of hands that was unoccupied – the boatman’s. When she made her jump, he caught her neatly, by the waist, and deposited her gently in the boat: but in the process, somehow, Munia’s ghungta slipped – whether by accident or design Deeti could not tell – and there followed a long instant when there was no barrier at all between her coquettish smile and his hungry eyes.

  How long the girl would have allowed herself this liberty, Deeti did not know and was not willing to find out. Munia! she said in a tone of sharp admonition. Tu kahé aisan kaíl karala? Why do you act like this? Don’t you have any shame? Cover up at once!

  Obediently, Munia draped her sari over her head and went to sit beside Deeti. But despite the demureness of her attitude, Deeti knew, from the angle of her head, that the girl’s eyes were still entangled with the boatman’s.

  Aisan mat kará! she said sharply, elbowing the girl’s flanks. Don’t carry on like this . . . what will people think?

  I’m just listening to what he’s saying, Munia protested. Is that a crime?

  Deeti had to admit that it was hard to ignore the boatman, for he was talking almost without interruption, keeping up a continuous patter as he pointed out the sights: . . . there to your left are the opium godowns . . . fine place to lose yourself, eh? . . . no end to the happiness to be found there . . .

  But even as he was speaking, he kept turning around so that Deeti knew full well that he and Munia were fencing with their eyes. In indignation, she appealed to the men: Look at how this launda talks! Are you going to let him get away with all his loochergiri? Isn’t there something you can do? Show him you have some spirit too – josh dikháwat chalatbá!

  But it was to no avail, for the men too were listening open-mouthed: although they had heard stories about the fast-talking haramzadas of the city, they had never seen one in person before; they were mesmerized, and as for remonstrating with him, they knew all too well that the rascal would only make a mockery of their rustic tongues.

  The boat made a turn from the river into a nullah, and in a while the boatman pointed to a grim set of walls, looming in the distance. Alipore Jail, he announced gravely; the most fearsome dungeon in the land . . . oh if you but knew of the horrors and tortures of that place! . . . of course, it won’t be long before you find out . . .

  Mindful of the many rumours they had heard, the migrants exchanged nervous glances. One of them inquired: Why are we going towards the jail?

  Didn’t they tell you? said the boatman, off-handedly. That’s where I’ve been ordered to take you. They’re going to make candles out of the wax in your brains . . .

  There were several audible gasps of alarm, to which the boatman responded with a cackle of knowing laughter: . . . No, just joking . . . no, that’s not where you’re going . . . no, I’m taking you to the cremation ghat over there . . . do you see the flames, and smoke? . . they’re going to cook the lot of you – alive at that . . .

  This too was met with gasps, which amused the boatman all the more. Goaded beyond endurance, Champa’s husband shouted: Hasé ka ká bátbá ré? What’re you laughing at? Hum kuchho na ho? You think we’re nothing? Want a beating, do you?

  From an idiot rustic like you? said the boatman, laughing all the louder. You deháti – one flick of my oar and you’ll be in the water . . .

  Suddenly, just as a fight was about to break out, the boat pulled up to a jetty and was tied fast: beyond lay a newly cleared stretch of shore, still littered with the stumps of recently felled trees. Three large, straw-thatched sheds stood in a circle at the centre of the clearing; a short distance away, next to a well, was a modest little shrine, with a red pennant flying aloft on a pole.

  . . . This is it, said the boatman, this is where you get off: the new depot for girmitiyas, just built and readied, in time for the arrival of the sheep . . .

  This? What’re you saying? Are you sure?

  . . . Yes, this is it . . .

  It was a while before anyone stirred: the encampment seemed so peaceful that they could not believe that it really was meant for them.

  . . . Be off with you now . . . think I’ve got nothing else to do?

  While stepping off the boat, Deeti was careful to herd Munia in front of her – but her protective presence did nothing to inhibit the boatman, who flashed them a smile and said: . . . Ladies, please to forgive any offence . . . no harm meant . . . name’s Azad . . . Azad the Lascar . . .

  Deeti could tell that Munia was longing to linger near the jetty, so she ushered her smartly along, trying to draw her attention to the camp ahead: Look, Munia – this is it! Our last place of rest, before we’re cast out on the Black Water . . .

  Instead of going indoors, to join the others, Deeti decided to pay a visit to the campground’s shrine. Come, she said to Kalua, let’s go to the mandir first; a safe arrival calls for a prayer.

  The temple was built of plaited bamboo, and there was something reassuringly domestic about its simplicity. Walking towards it, Deeti’s steps quickened in eagerness, but then she saw, somewhat to her surprise, that there was a stout, long-haired man dancing in front of it, whirling around and around, with his eyes closed in ecstasy and his arms clasped around his bosom as if he were embracing an invisible lover. Sensing their presence, he came to a stop and his eyes opened wide in surprise. Kyá? What? he said, in heavily accented Hindi. Coolies? Here already?

  He was a strangely shaped man, Deeti noticed, with an enormous head, flapping ears and a pair of bulging eyes that gave him the appearance of goggling at the world around him. She could not tell whether he was angry or merely surprised, and took the precaution of seeking shelter behind Kalua.

  The man took a minute or two to take account of Kalua’s imposing size and once he had looked him up and down, his tone softened a littl
e.

  Are you girmitiyas? he asked.

  Ji, nodded Kalua.

  When did you get here?

  Just now, said Kalua. We’re the first.

  So soon? We weren’t expecting you till later . . .

  Devotions forgotten, the man was suddenly thrown into a frenzy of excitable activity. Come, come! he cried, with hectic gestures. You have to go to the daftar first, to be registered. Come with me – I’m the gomusta and I’m in charge of this camp.

  Not without some misgivings, Deeti and Kalua followed him across the camp to one of the sheds. With barely a pause to open the door, the gomusta called out aloud: ‘Doughty-sahib – coolies are coming; registration proceedings must at once be commenced.’ There was no answer, so he hurried in, gesturing to Deeti and Kalua to follow.

  Inside, there were several desks, and one capacious planter’s chair, in which a large, heavy-jowled Englishman was presently revealed to be reclining. He was snoring gently, his breath bubbling slowly through his lips. The gomusta had to call out his name a couple of times before he stirred: ‘Doughty-sahib! Sir, kindly to arouse and uprise.’

  Mr Doughty had just half an hour before left the table of a district magistrate, where he had been served a large lunch, copiously lubricated with many brimming beakers of porter and ale. Now, between the heat and the beer, his eyes were gummed together with sleep, so that a good few minutes followed between the opening of his right eye and then the left. When at last he became conscious of the gomusta’s presence, he was in no mood for pleasantries: it was much against his will that he had been prevailed upon to help with the registration of the coolies, and he was not about to let himself be taken advantage of. ‘God damn your eyes, Baboon! Can’t you see I’m having a little rest?’

  ‘What to do, sir?’ said the gomusta. ‘I do not wish to intrude into your privates, but alas it cannot be helped. Coolies are arriving like anything. As such, registration proceedings must be commenced without delay.’

  Turning his head a little, the pilot caught a glimpse of Kalua and the sight prompted him to struggle to his feet. ‘Now there’s a burrasize budzat if ever I saw one.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thumping big fellow.’

  Muttering under his breath, the pilot lurched unsteadily to one of the desks and threw open a massive, leather-bound register. Dipping a quill, he said to the gomusta: ‘Right then, Pander, go ahead. You know the bandobast.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I will supply all necessary informations.’ The gomusta inclined his head in Deeti’s direction. The woman? he said to Kalua. What’s her name?

  Her name is Aditi, malik; she is my wife.

  ‘What did he say?’ Mr Doughty bellowed, cupping his ear. ‘Speak up there.’

  ‘The lady’s good-name is reported as Aditi, sir.’

  ‘ “Aditty?” ’ The tip of Mr Doughty’s nib touched down on the register and began to write. ‘Aditty it is then. Bloody ooloo name, if you ask me, but if that’s what she wants to be called so be it.’

  Caste? said the gomusta to Kalua.

  We are Chamars, malik.

  District?

  Ghazipur, malik.

  ‘You bloody bandar of a Baboon,’ Mr Doughty broke in. ‘You forgot to ask him his name.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Immediately I will rectify.’ Baboo Nob Kissin turned to Kalua: And you: who are you?

  Madhu.

  ‘What was that, Pander? What did the brute say?’

  As he was about to say the name, Baboo Nob Kissin’s tongue tripped on the final dipthong: ‘He is Madho, sir.’

  ‘Maddow?’

  The gomusta seized upon this. ‘Yes, sir, why not? That is extremely apt.’

  ‘And his father’s name?’

  The question flummoxed Kalua: having stolen his father’s name for his own, the only expedient he could think of was to make a switch: His name was Kalua, malik.

  This satisfied the gomusta, but not the pilot. ‘But how on earth am I to spell it?’

  The gomusta scratched his head: ‘If I can moot out one proposal, sir, why not do like this? First write C-o-l – just like “coal” no? – then v-e-r. Colver. Like-this like-this we can do.’

  The pink tip of the pilot’s tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth, as he wrote the letters in the register. ‘Theek you are,’ said the pilot. ‘That’s how I’ll put him down then – as Maddow Colver.’

  ‘Maddow Colver.’

  Deeti, standing beside her husband, heard him whisper the name, not as if it were his own but as if it belonged to someone else, a person other than himself. Then he repeated it, in a tone of greater confidence, and when it came to his lips again, a third time, the sound of it was no longer new or unfamiliar: it was as much his own now as his skin, or his eyes, or his hair – Maddow Colver.

  Later, within the dynasty that claimed its descent from him, many stories would be invented about the surname of the founding ancestor and the reasons why ‘Maddow’ occurred so frequently among his descendants. While many would choose to recast their origins, inventing grand and fanciful lineages for themselves, there would always remain a few who clung steadfastly to the truth: which was that those hallowed names were the result of the stumbling tongue of a harried gomusta, and the faulty hearing of an English pilot who was a little more than half-seas over.

  Although the prisons at Lalbazar and Alipore were both known as jails, they no more resembled each other than a bazar does a graveyard: Lalbazar was surrounded by the noise and bustle of Calcutta’s busiest streets, while Alipore lay at the edge of a deserted stretch of land on the city’s outskirts and silence weighed down on it like the lid of a coffin. It was the largest prison in India and its fortress-like battlements loomed over the narrow waterway of Tolly’s Nullah, well within view of those who travelled by boat to the migrants’ depot. But few indeed were the passers-by who would willingly rest their gaze upon those walls: such was the dread inspired by the grim edifice that most chose to avert their eyes, even paying their boatmen extra to warn of its approach.

  It was late at night when the carriage came to take Neel from Lalbazar to Alipore Jail. To cover the distance took about an hour as a rule, but tonight the carriage took a much longer route than usual, circling around Fort William and keeping to the quiet roadways that flanked the riverfront. This was done to forestall trouble, for there had been some talk of demonstrations of public sympathy for the convicted Raja: but Neel was unaware of this and to him the journey seemed like a prolongation of a special kind of torment, in which the desire to be done with the uncertainties of the recent past was at war with a longing to linger forever on this final passage through the city.

  Accompanying Neel was a group of some half-dozen guards who whiled away their time with ribald banter, their jokes being premised on the pretence that they were a marriage party, escorting a bridegroom to his in-laws’ house – his sasurál – on the night of his wedding. From the practised nature of their exchanges, Neel understood that they had enacted this charade many times before, while transporting prisoners. Ignoring their sallies, he tried to make the most of the journey – but there was little to be seen, in the darkness of the small hours, and it was largely through memory that he had to chart the progress of the carriage, envisioning in his mind the lapping water of the river and the tree-shaded expanse of the city’s Maidan.

  The carriage picked up speed when the jail came into view, and Neel willed himself to concentrate on other things: the howls of nearby jackals and the faint smell of night-time flowers. When the sound of the wheels changed, he knew the carriage was crossing the jail’s moat, and his fingers dug into the cracked leather of his seat. The wheels creaked to a halt and the door opened, allowing Neel to sense the presence of a multitude of people, waiting in the darkness. In much the way that the legs of a reluctant dog lock themselves against the tug of a leash, his fingers dug into the horsehair stuffing of his seat: even when the guards began to prod and push – Chalo! We’re here! Your in-laws are waiting! – they would not
yield. Neel tried to say he wasn’t ready yet and needed a minute or two more, but the men who had accompanied him were not of a mind to be indulgent. One of them gave Neel a shove that broke his hold; in stumbling off the carriage, Neel happened to step on the edge of his own dhoti, pulling it undone. Flushed with embarrassment, he tore his arms free, in order to rearrange his garments: Wait, wait – my dhoti, don’t you see . . . ?

  In descending from the carriage, Neel had passed into the custody of a new set of jailers, men of a wholly different cast from the constables of Lalbazar: hard-bitten veterans of the East India Company’s campaigns, they wore the red coattees of the sepoy army; recruited from the deep hinterlands, they held all city folk in equal contempt. It was in surprise rather than anger that one of them kneed Neel in the small of his back: Get moving b’henchod, it’s late already . . .

  The novelty of this treatment confused Neel into thinking that some sort of mistake had been made. Still grappling with his dhoti, he protested: Stop! You can’t treat me like this; don’t you know who I am?

  There was a momentary check in the motion of the hands that had been laid upon him; then someone caught hold of the end of his dhoti and gave it a sharp tug. The garment spun him around as it unravelled, and somewhere nearby a voice said:

  . . . Now here’s a real Draupadi . . . clinging to her sari . . .

  Now another hand took hold of his kurta and tore it apart so as to lay bare his underclothing.

  . . . More of a Shikandi if you ask me . . .

  The butt of a spear caught him in the small of his back, sending him stumbling along a dark vestibule, with the ends of his dhoti trailing behind him like the bleached tail of a dead peacock. At the end of the vestibule lay a torch-lit room where a white man was seated behind a desk. He was wearing the uniform of a serjeant of the jail, and it was clear that he had been sitting in the room for a considerable length of time and had grown impatient of waiting.