Goddess of Fire

by Bharti Kirchner

  “Leave her alone.” The priest dropped his shawl on the floor, displaying his bare muscled chest. “Come hit me then.”

  “Don’t you dare hit our priest,” said another man dressed in a yellow waistcoat. “Let me have the joy of striking at you instead.”

  Clenching his fist, the defender of the priest wove through the audience and lunged at his opponent, pushing him away from the priest. Many in the immediate area hurried to their feet to avoid being injured.

  As the two kicked and punched each other, people all around me yelled. I heard someone’s plaintive voice cry out, “Calm down. In the name of Shiva, calm down.” Another man joined in the fight. The crowd watched, their eyes enlarged, their mouths open in shock.

  I could take it no more. I lifted my voice and shouted, “Stop! With due respect to the Nawab, stop!”

  The Nawab had returned. The echo of my voice bounced around the hall as he approached his throne. He frowned at the crowd, raised a hand, and commanded, “Take your seats. Stop yelling. Those of you who have caused chaos will be punished.”

  A group of uniformed guards rushed in, seized the fighting party, and whisked them out of the door. I assumed they would be locked up.

  “Pay no attention to their misbehavior,” the Nawab said to me in a deep, pleasant, yet forceful voice. He paused and addressed the entire assembly. “A generation ago, Emperor Jahangir had passed a law to abolish sati, but his law is not being obeyed. There are social forces against it, which makes the job of enforcing it difficult. I am personally opposed to sati. I will not allow such a practice to continue. I would also like to reenact the Widow Remarriage Provision of the law.”

  A woman applauded. “We sing your praise for delivering justice.”

  The Nawab nodded in her direction. “The law might take time to enforce, but my men will counsel the elders of each village. We will let the people know that those who violate the law will be punished.”

  “Our Lord’s commands shall be obeyed,” said a man in the crowd.

  A courtier came forth and spoke to me on behalf of the Nawab: “We will have a talk with your in-laws. They will be punished for performing sati, and we will compensate you with a mohur, even though we realize that this is not enough to repay you for the pain inflicted on you.” He handed me a large shiny gold coin. “You may now be seated.”

  I bowed as I received the generous gift, cupping my hands around it. My throat felt tight. The heavy coin was made of pure gold and inscribed in flowing calligraphy. I looked up from it and almost saw the God of Good Fortune, a celestial figure, bluish and ethereal, appearing before me and smiling.

  At that moment, I examined my heart’s longings in a new light. Much as I wanted to return to the loving embrace of my family, my destiny no longer lay with them. I thrived on the bustle of business in our Factory, in this town. But what talents did I, a humble servant, have that allowed me to dream of a better future in the Factory? Well, at least I was eager to learn and not completely lacking in intelligence. I could pick up the intricacies of the trading business; I surely could. Then I would be able to act for the benefit of my downtrodden people. By extending a helping hand to them, I would also perhaps heal my own wounds. A feeling of glorious possibilities swept over me.

  The doors to the hall were flung open. An imperial messenger burst into the room, his white loin cloth and vest filthy with soot. He stood before the Nawab. Gasping, his chest heaving, he laid his hand on his breast and bowed low.

  “A thousand pardons, Your Lord.” He said, catching his breath. “I am sorry to interrupt, but I have a critical matter to report.”

  “Continue,” the Nawab said.

  “A fire has broken out in the market. It has already destroyed at least five tents and several bamboo huts and, unless brought under control, it will reach the nearby houses.”

  “My shop! Is it still there?” A man in the audience jumped to his feet and ran through the door.

  The room buzzed with questions and shouts of dismay. My insides knotted as I thought of the poor merchants and their wives and children out on the streets with no shelter.

  “No one has ever seen a blaze of this size,” the messenger continued. “Shopkeepers are rushing to the river with their pails, but the process is too slow. We need help to extinguish the fire quickly. We need to move the women and children to safer quarters. Your attention to this matter is urgently requested.”

  Did Teema go to the market this morning? Might she be in danger? I stood up and began to rush from the room after the others, but the Nawab’s voice stopped me.

  “Order, order,” the Nawab called out. Turning to his officers, the Nawab said, “Dispatch help immediately on horseback.” Rising from his seat, he faced the audience. “Will you all be willing to aid your fellow citizens in containing the fire?”

  “Yes, Your Lord,” a chorus of voices roared.

  “Go forth then,” the Nawab announced. “This meeting is adjourned. Peace be upon you.”

  “But I want to present my petition,” a woman cried out. “I came all the way from the village of—”

  Her plea was drowned by a hundred voices showering over the Nawab. “And on you also be peace.”

  The whole assembly streamed out of the door. Horsemen galloped out.

  “Can we go to the market quickly?” I asked a palanquin bearer. “I want to find a friend and help others.”

  “No,” a porter said. “We’re taking you back to the Factory—Job sahib’s order.”

  “You see, I must—”

  “That will not be wise,” the porter interrupted me. “There is looting in progress, pandemonium. We will be punished if we don’t take you back safely. Please get in.”

  As we passed by the market, we could see people running back and forth with buckets of water. Columns of dense black smoke curled upward, and the stench of burning thatch pervaded the air. Timber-framed houses creaked as they crashed to the ground. A child howled. Distressed voices of people rose in the distance. Wild dogs barked. I listened for Teema’s voice. Was she there or was she safe in the Factory?

  Red-coated horseback riders wearing helmets leapt through the smoke. Birds screeched from treetops. Flames coiled up—crimson and gold, with a dark center— like in another deadly fire scene not long ago.

  I shut my eyes.

  ELEVEN

  “Do you know what started the market fire?” Idris asked everyone in the kitchen the next morning. “A hookah! A careless smoker not minding his hookah. A hundred stalls and two hundred houses gone.”

  He also informed me that Teema had been seen consoling a group of women whose husbands had lost their shops.

  With the news still ringing in my ears, I walked over to the verandah for my twice-a-week English lesson. Charles sahib appeared wearing a high-crowned black hat, white doublet with shell buttons, and white breeches reaching to his knees. My cooking must have helped him. His face had regained its pinkish hue, but it was still a trifle blotchy. His sparse, flat, straw-colored hair peeked from under his hat, combed for a change.

  “Describe the bazaar fire in English,” he said casually. His piercing eyes seemed to be indulging in their usual pastime of searching for a mistake, an opportunity to ridicule, or to identify a victim. I’d gotten Job sahib cleared at the Nawab’s Court; it must have surely angered him.

  “I didn’t see much of it, sahib.”

  “You’ve seen other fires.”

  Sweat gathered in my armpits. I liked English words and phrases. They came from a distant island, sounds that were hard, precise, and dripping with confidence. But on this occasion, the words, phrases, and sentences describing a fire scoured my throat and I felt the heat they discharged. “A fire rises, destroys,” I began.

  “Don’t you call it the fire god?” the sahib barked out with typical impatience, “or is it a goddess? Doesn’t your fire goddess only destroy?”

  “No, sir, our fire goddess also brings new life, new hope. Some wild flowers grow well
near ashes.”

  “For simple folk like you, hope is important,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. My eyes must have asked a question, for he added, “A simple folk is one who does simple tasks. Tell me what you do all day.”

  “I get up, I bathe, I cook, I clean, but I’d like to take on more import-ant tasks, sahib, if I were allowed to.”

  “A cook and a servant, that’s your fate. We, the sahibs, do the import-ant tasks.”

  “What are they, sir?”

  “You want to know?” He unleashed phrases commonly used by the Factors: taking inventory, receiving a shipment, meeting with local merchants, making payments and recording them in ledger books. Although I didn’t fully follow the significance of each and every task, I welcomed the new vision that opened up before me: the daily life of a Factor.

  “That will be all for today,” he said.

  I stood, thanked the sahib, and bowed out.The next three lessons went similarly, my struggles with English pronunciation non-ending, but I hung on. Several afternoons later, as we finished and I was ready to step away, Charles sahib glanced up at me and barked out in Bangla, “Wait.” He paused. “Your soups are good, I feel much better, and I also might add that you’ve made a bit of progress in your English conversation. I didn’t expect it.”

  I bowed my head and allowed the flattery to slide over me, then realized he’d given me a chance to express myself. “I study whenever I have a spare moment, sahib.” Seeing that he was listening to me, his head cocked, I spilled out more in a mixture of Bangla and English. “I practise English with whoever I can find.”

  Charles sahib gestured with a short pudgy hand. “I’d wager that you can’t find too many people. How many locals speak English fluently? They ask us why we don’t pick up their beautiful mother tongue. Well, we try. Most of us can speak some Bangla or Persian, beautiful or not, but they don’t seem to understand our accents. And, Lord help us, there are so many dialects. Of course, we have Tariq to do the interpreting, but he has other tasks to perform.”

  Interpreter. I imagined myself seated amidst traders and brokers, voices soaring, mingling, and crashing as I discovered the nuances and helped them reach an agreement, switching between languages efficiently.

  “I would like to know more about the duties of an interpreter, sir.”

  “It’s a tough job. Your people don’t seem to make good interpreters.”

  “Why so, sir?”

  “Two fellows we hired left because neither could handle the pressure of negotiating for hours on end. One didn’t like the rough behavior of the traders. Of course, we have to be careful who we hire. One chap added in things we didn’t say. Later, he admitted he did it for laughs, and since that time, we’ve been picky about who does this important work for us. Without an interpreter no negotiations can happen.”

  While Charles sahib went on, I envisioned a different kind of life opening out before me, if I could ever find a way to be placed in such a position. Tending the kitchen, inspecting the food supplies, and scrubbing the floors consumed my hours, but I could do so much more. I’d garner a better wage too as an interpreter. I’d be closer to Job sahib and function in the universe in which he operated. It warmed me, the thought of proximity to the man whom I admired but rarely saw. I smiled, imagining myself doing translation work for the Company, English words bubbling in my throat.

  Hearing the sound of footsteps and a familiar greeting, I reined in my fantasies and looked up. Charles sahib stopped speaking and followed my gaze. Job sahib was coming toward us, wearing a loose-fitting red waistcoat buttoned with rubies and a pair of ivory trousers. A silver sword rested in a scabbard at his waist. I felt shy and awkward. Why? Was it the magnetic pull of his masculinity?

  Job sahib looked as though he had something on his mind. His shoulders were stiff, and a kind of heaviness seemed to have settled around his eyes. I smiled spontaneously, drawing nearer to him out of a natural inclination, deeming his arrival here to be a most fortunate occurrence. Then I berated myself and took a step back. Should I be studying him so minutely?

  I saw a frown cross Charles sahib’s forehead at the appearance of his superior, but quicker than a sparrow hopping to another perch, he got hold of himself. His expression became welcoming as he returned his superior’s greeting.

  Job sahib shifted his attention to me and folded his hands in namaskar, the local gesture of respect. I did likewise, pleased at being treated with deference.

  “I must praise you for clearing the charges against me at the Royal Court,” he said in Bangla. “It helped to have the Nawab hear your story firsthand.”

  “It was an honor, sir.” I blushed.

  “And I hear you’re picking up English much faster than we’re learning Bangla,” he said with a faint smile, his voice ringing with a note of sincerity. He glanced at Charles sahib and nodded politely, acknowledging the other man’s contribution to my learning.

  I accepted the compliment, looked up into Job sahib’s eyes, and mumbled, “Well, I still can’t say everything I want to say.”

  Eyes twinkling, Job sahib smiled at me a little more broadly. “And what is it that you haven’t said to me that you’d like to say?” His face had softened. His eyes drank me in as though I was the only person standing there, as though Charles sahib had disappeared.

  I bit my lower lip and felt the color rushing to my cheeks. Could he read my mind?

  At this point, I considered taking leave to hide my embarrassment, but I remained rooted to the spot. Silly as it might sound, I felt responsible for Job sahib’s physical safety. No one trusted Charles sahib, none of us from the servile class. He could change at a moment’s notice, turn into a tyrant. Even though he tutored me and we’d established a rapport of some sort, I, too, regarded him with deep suspicion.

  The moment passed. Charles sahib was watching us, his face pinched, an artificial smile on his lips.

  “I went over to the bazaar this morning,” Job sahib said, addressing us both in Bangla. “The fire has all but burned itself out, but there was so much ash and debris that I almost didn’t recognize the place.” He shook his head and his eyes clouded over with pain.

  “That’ll affect our commercial interests,” Charles sahib said.

  “I’m worried that many hawkers have lost their livelihood,” Job sahib said. “It’s our duty to help them get reestablished.”

  “We don’t owe them anything,” Charles sahib said sharply.

  How callous of the man! I spoke before I could hold back the words. “I believe it will be necessary to help the merchants get back on their feet,” I said in Bangla, wishing I could have spoken in English. “They supply our daily needs. Already we’re short of provisions.”

  Charles sahib looked at me unkindly and began to correct me for my disrespect, but Job sahib cut him off.

  “I have a plan to give them aid,” Job sahib said. “But the Company can only spend so much money. We can’t cover it all.”

  It bothered Job that one of his major competitors, the formidable Dutch East India Company, whom he called the ‘Dutch menace’, planned to give bigger aid. They would, of course. They’d arrived in Hindustan earlier than the British East India Company, thus gaining a head start, and successfully built up an intra-Asian trade network in the last half-century, extending as far as Japan. They traded raw silk, saltpeter, spices, opium, and indigo dye, just like the Company, but with the experience they had acquired in Asia, they far surpassed it in magnitude. Not only did they have bigger warehouses, but had also adapted well to the nuances of conducting business here, established a number of trading stations, and developed an extensive network of trading relationships. The closest Dutch trading post was in Chinsura, a town adjacent to Hooghly, a little too close for his comfort. Their goal would obviously be to eliminate the English as a competitor as they’d done with the Portuguese earlier.

  He didn’t say all this that day, keeping his thoughts to himself, to shelter the frail but determined girl
before him.

  I wasn’t aware of his thoughts or the facts at that time, but I was ready with my response, as though I were an important player in this enterprise. My English lessons had helped in an unexpected way. The hard consonants and their implosive sounds as well as the demanding vowels had made me feel confident, even when I wasn’t speaking the language.

  “To start with, we could buy quantities of grain to feed people,” I said in a voice rising high with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, and a citizen’s council could be formed,” Job sahib said. “It could decide how to distribute the food and find housing for the homeless.”

  “In the long run, in my humble observation, this type of aid can only help the Company,” I replied. “We, the people of Hindustan, melt when kindness is extended to us. We remain indebted forever. And we repay many times over.”

  I was still shaking with excitement from expressing so much when Arthur sahib, the Third Factor, appeared. Big-cheeked and ruddy, he took Charles sahib aside, conferred with him for a moment, and they departed. Job sahib and I were once again alone together in this ornate, marble-floored verandah lined with rose bushes and jasmine climbers.

  “If it’s not too audacious of me to ask this, may I discuss another matter of importance with you?” I asked.

  I was violating yet another unspoken custom. Household servants and their masters didn’t discuss matters of importance as equals. An iron screen stood between us, layers of propriety certainly, but also differences of skin colors.

  The sahib looked startled but pleased. Smiling, he extended an arm toward a chair and nodded. “What do you wish to speak about?”

  “I know I still have a long way to go,” I said, making it sound like a normal request. “I..I’d like to have a better position. I’m capable of it, working toward it, Job sahib.” I switched to English and said, “I want to be an interpreter.”

  Job sahib sat back a little, an indulgent smile on his face. “An interpreter!”

  I drew in a big gulp of air and spoke in Bangla, more assertively. “I understand local customs and manners, what people really mean when they are negotiating. I could be very useful to the Company.”