by Pete Ayrton
Lalu smelt the rich sunny smell which was in the air, and felt that the entrance of the harbour was a wonder such as only the heart could feel and remember.
‘Boom! Zoom!’The guns thundered from somewhere on land.
‘Oh, horror! The war is there!’
‘To be sure!…’
‘The phrunt!’
The sepoys burbled gravely, looking ahead of them, fascinated, in wonder and fear, intent.
But a Sikh N. C. O. said: ‘Have your senses fled? These are the guns of the Francisi warships saluting us.’
And, indeed, the convoy ships answered back acknowledging the greetings, and the booming stopped.
Before the ship came to a standstill, a number of French officers came up on board with some British officers and shook hands with the officers of the regiment. The French Sahibs looked like the Indians with their sallow complexions, but very solemn and sad.
The sepoys looked at them and wondered. They were afraid of talking in the presence of the Sahibs and stood silent or slipped away.
The shrill crescendo of the ship’s sirens shook the air with an urgent, insistent call.
Lalu was excited almost to hysteria and went down to look for Uncle Kirpu, Daddy Dhanoo or Havildar Lachman Singh, as he did not know what to do next. But the news had gone round that the sepoys would disembark here, rest for a day or two, then go by train to the front as soon as possible, for the Sarkar was anxious to avoid the disappointment which the troops might feel at not being allowed to rush and defeat the Germans at once. This relieved the tension somewhat, and soon he was hurrying to get ready to alight.
He sweated profusely as he exerted himself, and he felt a strange affection in his belly as thousands of throats on the harbour burst into an incomprehensible tumult of shouting. Then he rushed towards his bunk, losing his way going down the gangways, till he sighted Uncle Kirpu and ran up to him.
‘Slowly, slowly, gentleman, Franceville is not running away,’ Kirpu said, blinking his mischievous eyes, and shaking his sly, weather-beaten face in a mockery of Lalu’s haste.
‘Being a man of many campaigns, you feel there is nothing new,’ Lalu teased.
‘I don’t feel peevish and shy as a virgin, as you do, son,’ said Uncle Kirpu and patted Lalu on the back affectionately.
‘Where is Daddy Dhanoo?’ Lalu said with a pale smile.
‘First on deck in full war kit! Just to set the young an example!’ Kirpu said.
‘Let us hurry, then, and follow his example,’ Lalu said and pulled the protesting Kirpu.
As they emerged on deck, the quay seemed to be drowned in a strange and incongruous whirlpool: Pathans, Sikhs, Dogras, Gurkhas, Muhammadans in khaki, blue-jacketed French seamen and porters, and English Tommies. And there was a babble of voices, shouts, curses, salaams, and incomprehensible courtesies. He struggled into the single file which was disembarking and, before he knew where he was, stood on solid earth in the thick of the crowd, without Kirpu. The sepoys were all looking at each other embarrassedly, or talking to the Francisis, gesticulating and wringing their hands and turning away when they could not make themselves understood. The French carried on in their own lingo, imparting information in a tumultuous flow of words which all seemed like ‘phon, phon, phon, something, something…’to the Indians.
But they were kind and polite, these Francisis, bowing and smiling and moving their heads, their hands, and their bodies in broad gestures, unlike the reticent Tommies.
Lalu stamped his feet to see if the impact of the earth of France was any different from the feel of Hindustan. Curiously enough, the paved hard surface of the quay, under the shadow of gigantic ships, full of cranes and masts and steel girders, seemed different somehow, new, unlike the crumbling dust of India. He swerved, and began to tap the pavement, to jump, and caper out of sheer exuberance of spirit…
The quick darting notes of the bugles tore the air, and the sepoys ran helter-skelter with their heavy trappings, and began to get into formation.
Lalu spotted Havildar Lachman Singh, rushing towards the wide gates which opened into a road from the high wall of the quay. He ran after the N. C. O. His company was already forming while he had been procrastinating to find out the exact orders. ‘Fall in, son,’ said Lachman Singh with a kind smile on that brave, keen face of the Dogra hillman which Lalu had always seen sweating, owing to the energy which the sergeant put into whatever he had in hand, whether it was plying a hockey stick, instructing at the gymnasium, taking out a fatigue party, or doing any other regimental duty.
As Lalu was rushing into line, warmed by the kindness of Lachman Singh, Subah shouted ‘Oi, Owl Singh!’ and came and dragged him to his platoon.
‘Then, what is the talk – how do you like the land of France?’ Lalu asked, leaning over to Uncle Kirpu.
‘This land,’ said Kirpu with an amused smile, ‘this land is like all the others, it came to be with the coming of life, and will go down with death.’
‘How can the blind man know the splendour of the tulip!’ Lalu said.
‘There is one splendour in men, another in tulips,’ Uncle Kirpu answered.
Lalu was too enthusiastic about the adventure to feel as Kirpu felt, but he looked at the amused unconcern in the face of the experienced soldier who accepted fate with the resignation of a mild cynic, and who smiled at everything with a gentleness born of some hurt. Then he gazed at the lined, grave, Mongoloid face of Daddy Dhanoo, who had just outlived the accidents of time, space, life, and did not speak at all, as if he had become neutral, immortal. Their behaviour was so different from Subah’s blustering, and his own excited manner.
But the band struck up a tune for the route march, and the orders of the officers rang out, and the heavy tread of ammunition boots, the flashing of arms, the rustling of uniforms, transformed the air.
‘Vivonlesindu! Something, something…’ the cry rang out, above the ‘lef right lef’ of the N. C. O.s, from the crowd, which stood five deep under the awnings of tall, white-shuttered houses under the shadow of the harbour walls.
Lalu felt a shiver pass down his spine, and he felt shy walking as a man among men through a crowd of cheering spectators. But the cheering continued.
A Tommy cried back on behalf of the sepoys; ‘Three cheers for the French – Hip hip hurrah!’
The sepoys repeated: ‘Hip hip hurrah!’ ‘Hip hip hurrah!’ Lalu scanned the faces by the cafes, the dock gates, the huge sheds and warehouses with tear-dimmed eyes. An irrational impulse was persuading him to believe that the dirty, squalid outskirts of this town were a replica of the outer fringes of Karachi Harbour. The presence of trams, motors, ships, moorings and masts encouraged the illusion. And, as he peered into the narrow, filthy lanes where women and children stood crowded in the windows and on the doorsteps, under lines of dirty washing, as he saw the small, languid unkempt Frenchmen in straw hats and with flourishing moustachios, it all seemed so like the indolent, slow-moving world of an Indian city that he felt an immediate affinity with this country.
‘Vivleshindou! Vivongleshindu! Vivelesallies!…’ the cries of the crowd became more complex as the sepoys entered a square beyond the small fort which stood on top of a hill where the warehouses ended, and where the greenish sea made an estuary, congested by hundreds of small boats painted in all the colours of the rainbow. And Lalu almost stumbled and fell out of step through the wandering of his eyes among the faces of the women who shrieked and waved their hands at the pageant of the Indian Army.
‘Look out, heart squanderer,’ called Subah.
‘Can the blind man see the splendour of the tulip?’ Lalu repeated his phrase.
As the troops turned left, and marched up the hill along the Canebiere, the throngs multiplied on the broad pavements outside the dainty fronts of the shops, and of the beautiful high buildings decked with flowers. They were mostly women, and children, and lo and behold, as is the custom in India, they threw flowers at the sepoys while they cried: ‘Vivongleshindoos!
Vivangleterre! Vivelesallies! Vive…’
Lalu could not keep his eyes off the smiling, pretty-frocked girls with breasts half showing, bright and gleaming with a happiness that he wanted to think was all for him. Such a contrast to the sedate Indian women who seemed to grow old before they were young, flabby and tired, except for a cowherd woman with breasts like pyramidal rocks!… Why even the matrons here were dressed up and not content to remain unadorned like Indian wives, who thought that there was a greater dignity in neglecting themselves after they had had a child or two!
‘Vivonleshindou!’ a thousand throats let loose a tide that flowed down the hill from the mouths of the throngs on both sides.
‘What are the rape-daughters saying?’ asked Kirpu, playing on the last word affectionately to take away the sting of abuse latent in the classical curse of India.
‘What knows a monkey of a mirror’s beauty!’ said Lalu, adapting his phrase to the current description of the hillmen as monkeys.
‘You don’t know either,’ said Kirpu.
‘They are saying something about the Hindus,’ said Lalu.
‘What knows a peasant of the rate at which cloves are sold; he spreads a length of cloth as though he were buying two maunds of grain,’ said Subah to Lalu. ‘They are saying, “Long live the Indians”. I can understand, because I know Francisi.’
‘All guesswork and no certainty,’ said Kirpu sceptically.
‘Vivongleshindous! Vivelangleterre! Vivonlesallies!…’ the cries throbbed dithyrambically.
‘You don’t know the meaning of that, do you?’ said Lalu to Subah.
‘Ohe, leave this talk of meanings, you learned owls,’ said Kirpu. ‘Any fool can see that they are greeting us with warmth and hospitality. Come give a shout after me, “Long live the Francisis!”’
‘Long live the Francisis!’ the boys shouted, and the calls were taken up, followed by roars of laughter.
Now the enthusiasm of the women in the crowd knew no bounds.
‘Vivonleshindous!’ they shouted and laughed.
‘Bolo Sri Ram Chander ki jai!’ one of the Hindu N. C. O.s shouted.
And the sepoys echoed the call.
‘Allah ho Akhbar!’ someone shouted, and was echoed back by the stalwarts of the Muhammadan companies.
‘Wah Guruji ka Khalsa! Wah Guruji ki Fateh!’ shouted a Sikh somewhere. And the other Sikhs took up the call while someone, more full throated than the rest, added in a shrill tenor: ‘Bole so Nihal, Sat Sri Akal!’
And as a river in flood flows unchecked when once the dams of resistance have burst, so the calls of enthusiasm flowed across the tongues of the endless legion, emphasized by the stamping of determined feet, and punctuated with snatches of talk. And the long pageant, touched by the warmth of French greetings, inflamed by the exuberance of tropical hearts marched through this air, electric with the whipped-up frenzy, past churches, monuments, past rows of shuttered houses, chateaus and grassy fields, till, tired and strained with the intoxication of glory, it reached the racecourse of Parc Borely where tents had been fixed by an advance party for the troops to rest.
After a march past of various mounted English and French generals, a sudden halt was called. The general of the Lahore Division trotted his horse up to the head of the forces, adjusted a megaphone to his mouth, and shouted in a Hindustani whose broken edges gained volume from the incomprehensibility of his tone and emphasis:
‘Heroes of India. After the splendid reception which you have been given by the French, and the way in which you have responded with the calls of your religions, I have no doubt that you will fulfil your duties with the bravery for which you are famous!…’
The band struck up ‘God Save the King’, and all ranks presented arms. After which the various regiments marched off towards the tents allotted to them.
When they had dispersed and reached their billets, and began to take off their puttees and boots, they found that their feet, unused to walking since the voyage, were badly blistered.
‘Wake up, lazybones, wake up, it is time for you to say prayers,’Uncle Kirpu was shouting as he crouched in bed puffing at the end of an Egyptian cigarette.
‘They must be tired,’ said Daddy Dhanoo affectionately, as he wrapped the blanket round himself, shivering in the dawn, and invoking various names of God, ‘Om! Hari Om! Ishwar!’
‘If we don’t wake early we shall not get the ticket to heaven,’ said Lalu as he stretched his body taut like a lion, yawned and rose, calling: ‘Ohe, Subah.’
‘Who? What?…’ Subah burst, startled out of a fitful sleep, stared at Lalu with bleary, bloodshot eyes, and then turned on his side.
‘Has the bugle gone?’ Lalu asked, hurrying out of his bed as though he were frightened.
‘No, I was saying that you will be late for your prayers,’ said Kirpu.
‘Where does one say them?’ Lalu asked as he started to dress. ‘And does one say them seated on English commodes or crouching like black men who relieve themselves on the ground.’
‘God’s name is good!’ Daddy Dhanoo said before Kirpu had answered. And he yawned, his big eyes closing, while the various names and appellations of the Almighty multiplied on his lips, his mouth opening like that of a tired Pekinese. This was his way of evading discussion on the topic because he had been the butt of all jokes since he had slipped off the polished edge of an English style commode on the ship.
‘Om! Hari Om!’ Lalu parodied him. ‘May you be consigned to your own hell, and be eternally damned, Almighty Father of Fathers.’And he went out of the tent blaspheming.
Every blade of grass between the tents on the racecourse shone in the light of the rising sun, while a sharp cool breeze blew from where the blue line of the sky lost itself in the mist around the dove-coloured chateaus on the hills.
Lalu walked along, impelled by the superstition which he had practised in the village that to walk on the dew drops in the morning was good for the eyes.
He had not been out long before Subah came running after him.
A spoilt child, very conscious of his position as the son of the Indian head of the regiment, Subah wanted to go and pay his respects to his father, which usually meant that he wanted the gift of some pocket money. He persuaded Lalu to come with him by promising his friend a treat at the ‘Buffet’ outside the camp.
They sauntered along towards the tent of the Subedar Major, and then, seeing several important looking French and British officers gathered there, stood about discussing whether Subah should go up.
With characteristic impetuosity, however, Subah ran towards his father’s tent, while Lalu stood averting his eyes for fear of the officers. Lest he be seen nosing about, he began to walk away, assuming a casual expression as if he were just ‘eating the air’. Even that would be considered objectionable if he were seen by a Sahib. He hurried, because the imposing cluster of bell-topped tents spread the same fear in him as the secret, hedged-in bungalows of the Sahibs in Ferozepur cantonment, where it was an intrusion even to stare through the gates.
He hurried towards the latrines.
When he came out the camp was already alive as if it were an ordinary cantonment in India. Habitual early risers, most of the sepoys were hurrying about, unpacking luggage, polishing boots, belts and brass buttons with their spittle, washing their faces, cleaning their teeth with the chewing-sticks which they had brought from home, and gargling with thunderous noises and frightening reverberations, to the tune of hymns, chants, and the names of gods, more profuse and long winded, because the cold air went creeping into their flesh.
‘As if the hissing, the sighing and the remembrance of God would keep them warm!’ Lalu said to himself, feeling the incongruity of their ritual with the fashionable ‘air and water of France’. He showed his face to the sun and, out of sheer light heartedness, began to jump across the strings of small tents towards his own tent.
‘Ohe, where are you going?’ Uncle Kirpu shouted.
Lalu rushed in, put on his
boots quickly, adjusted his turban, and walked out again.
‘The boy has gone mad!’ exclaimed Kirpu to Dhanoo.
But the boy was exhilarated at being in Vilayat, thinking of all the wonderful shops that were in the streets through which they had passed yesterday, and the general air of elegance and exaltedness that surrounded everything.
A few Sikhs of No. 4 company stood combing their long black hair. He recalled the brutality with which the fanatics of his village had blackened his face and put him on a donkey when he had had his hair cut. The humiliation had bitten deep into him. They must look odd to the Europeans, he thought. And he wondered how many of them would have their hair cut while they were abroad or after their return to India. But the Sahibs didn’t like the Sikhs to have their hair shorn, as they wanted them to preserve their own customs, even though Audley Sahib had excused him when Lance-Naik Lok Nath had reported him at Ferozepur. But for Havildar Lachman Singh and Captain Owen, the Adjutant, he would have had to go to ‘quarter guard’, on bread and water for a week, and his record would have been spoilt. Instead of which Lok Nath’s promotion had been stopped and the Corporal had been transferred to another platoon, though that was more because Subedar Major Arbel Singh wanted to get his son, Subah, rapid promotion. The boy wondered when Lok Nath would wreak his vengeance on him…
A group of Muslim sepoys, belonging to his regiment, sat in a circle round a hookah, however, and some dark Hindu Sappers and Miners of the next regiment were jabbering in dialect as they baked chapatees within the ritualistic four lines of their kitchen, while a Jodhpur Lancer was gesticulating with his arms and his head as he explained something to a woman who – what was he doing?
Lalu stopped to listen.
The Sappers were using foul abuse. It seemed that the woman had walked into their kitchen.
‘Silvoup silvap…’ the woman said coming up to him.