Flame Tree Road

by Shona Patel

  Dear Mr. Roy,

  It has been several months since our fateful meeting the day our steamer broke down near your village and you so kindly made arrangements with the locals to bring us to Silchar. The boat ride with the fishermen was harrowing to say the least and Griffiths will attest to that. But we managed to get back home safely, thanks to you putting us in the care of the trusted locals known to you.

  I am writing this letter because I have a proposition to make. It is a job offer. I am hoping you will consider it. If I recall, you are a Cambridge-educated barrister. The Central Government in Silchar is looking to hire law professionals such as you. The burgeoning tea industry in Assam has put a lot of pressure on the local government in Silchar. There are laws and charters constantly being formulated and revised, pertaining largely to the river transportation and local governance. The salary and perks I think will meet your approval. I can tell you more about the job after I hear back from you indicating your interest. I am hoping you can come to Silchar to meet with my colleagues and me to discuss this further. It will be my pleasure to host you as our guest for a few days. Please do send me your reply at the earliest.

  With very best wishes,

  Reginald Thompson

  District Commissioner

  The port town of Silchar, girdled by the Surma River, was located in the Barak Valley of Assam. Surrounded by the undulating hills of the tea-growing areas, it had grown into a prosperous town with a sizable European population, garrisons of military and a river port built on a bed of stones to dock incoming ships.

  While the British population lived quiet lives in carefully guarded bungalows along tree-lined enclaves, the rest of Silchar thrived with the disobedient randomness typical of small towns. The farther one got from town, the more the bamboo thickets unraveled, the roads lost their purpose and became skinny paths that disappeared into the rice fields and villages.

  Far from the fishy port and tucked deep inside an enclave lined with stately eucalyptus trees was the private residence of the district commissioner. Reginald Thompson lived in a gracious white-pillared bungalow with a perfectly manicured lawn bordered by a tall box-clipped hedge of flowering hibiscus.

  The front gate was unmanned, and when Biren clicked open the latch two blond Labradors set up a frightful din and raced toward him. They turned out to be surprisingly friendly, and with no further concern that Biren might be an intruder, they escorted him happily to the house, running around in circles, their tails thumping against his legs.

  A uniformed man met him at the front veranda and went inside to announce his arrival while Biren studied the row of mounted deer antlers on the walls.

  Reginald Thompson, dressed in jodhpurs and riding boots, entered the veranda. “Roy! Splendid to see you!” He shook his hand and led him over to a cane seating area surrounded by flowering wisteria vines. “Did you have a good journey? I trust you took the steamer, not a fishing boat?”

  “I did indeed,” Biren replied, sitting down. One of the dogs laid his chin on his knee and looked at him with beseeching brown eyes.

  “Perhaps you would care for some tea? Some of the best teas, as you know, come from the neighboring Cacher tea-growing district.”

  “Thank you, I would like that very much.”

  “Let me tell you a little about the job and our requirements,” said Thompson. “The candidate I am looking for has to be bilingual. I think you are well qualified in every respect. The second thing is certainly not essential, but it would be a big plus if you know how to ride.”

  Biren was a little puzzled. “I did take some riding lessons in England. I may be a little rusty in the saddle but I should be able to manage,” he said.

  “Jolly good,” said Thompson, sounding relieved. “You see, we have transportation challenges out here. The roads are often bad during the rains and sometimes we are required to go into villages. The only means of getting there is by boat or on horseback.”

  “What kind of work do you do in the villages?” Biren asked.

  “Well, we don’t do any work there, as such, but we have to go into the villages sometimes to investigate if there is trouble. As you know, different communities live side by side, peacefully most of the time, but every now and then there are disturbances. Typically, the villagers sort it out among themselves, but sometimes things get out of hand and the trouble starts to spread into town. Then the police are called in to manage the situation, but we can never figure out what the problem is or who started the trouble in the first place.

  “For one,” he continued, “we have a communications issue. The villagers speak in several dialects. It sounds very similar to what you were speaking with the boatman when we first met. What is it? Bengali or Assamese?”

  “It’s the Sylheti dialect—a mixture of Bengali and Assamese.”

  “See, this is why I think you will be an asset.”

  “Daddy!” A dainty little girl ran out of a room wearing a pink flowery frock, her hair done up in ringlets. A Siamese cat galloped behind her and twisted its tail between her legs.

  “Why, hello there, Enid. Are you all done with your lessons? Where are you going all dressed up, darling?”

  “Birthday party,” said the little girl, looking curiously at Biren.

  “Would you like to say hello to Mr. Biren Roy?”

  “Hello,” said the girl shyly. She tugged her father’s hand. “Do you like my new dress, Daddy? Oh, dear, I will be late for my birthday party! Goodbye!” She ran back inside with the cat chasing behind her.

  Thompson smiled and his eyes softened. “They grow up so quickly, don’t they? Before you know it, she will be off to boarding school in England.” He stroked his chin pensively. “I read with great interest your proposal to set up an English school for girls. I have been entertaining the same idea for a long time.”

  Education, Thompson explained, had become an important priority for the local government. A large population of Sylheti Bengalis had settled in Silchar. They were the Bengali babus who fulfilled the bulk of clerical duties in government offices. The Bengali babus were diligent paper pushers but more important they were English educated. Without them the central government in Silchar would cease to exist.

  “I find the Sylheti Bengalis as a community have a strong leaning toward English,” Thompson said. “If we want to attract and retain our clerical staff we must provide English education for their children here in Silchar.”

  “My father was a strong believer in English education,” admitted Biren. “He saw English as a window to the bigger world. He said otherwise we would remain frogs in a well, seeing only a small patch of the sky.”

  “Your father must be very proud of you.”

  Biren took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, my father did not live to see me fulfill his dream.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  The Siamese had wandered back into the veranda and taken a lively interest in Biren’s shoelaces.

  Biren tucked his feet under the chair. “So you have plans of setting up an English school in Silchar, then?”

  “That was my idea, but I have not had the time to develop it. There are already a few schools for boys in Silchar but none for girls. So my plan was to set up an English school for girls to begin with. If I had someone like you—young and energetic, with an interest in education—we can take this plan further. Initially this will be in addition to your regular office duties, of course.”

  Over a cup of tea, Thompson laid out the details of the job. It was an attractive offer. Biren’s job designation would be that of a junior assistant to the commissioner. Griffiths was the senior assistant, and there was another fellow as well who was away on a six-month furlough to England. The salary was generous, and Biren’s perks included his own private residence, which he was free to design and build on an open budget. His work woul
d involve a fair amount of travel to Calcutta and possibly England. While his residence was being built he would be accommodated at the government guesthouse with the riding stables within walking distance.

  “I would like to show you the office,” said Thompson. “It’s a five-minute walk from here. My colleague Davis is expecting us. After our meeting he will take you to our guesthouse. It’s located on the banks of the river. A marvelous spot. I am sure you will enjoy the view.” He got to his feet. “The bearer will show you to the guest room if you would like to freshen up, and I can meet you back here in the veranda in, say, fifteen minutes? Jolly good.”

  CHAPTER

  40

  Biren Roy was given a fine office on the ground floor of the big whitewashed government building with a grand view of the Surma River. He could not help but note all the chambers occupied by the Europeans were on the floor above. But overall he was pleased with his spacious office and his brand-new desk that still smelled of teakwood sap. From where he sat, he could glance over the top of the hibiscus hedge and see the fishing boats and river barges ply up and down the waterway. From his perspective they looked as if they were skimming over a bed of leaves.

  The first week at work was confusing and dull. A four-day polo tournament had just started at the Silchar Polo Club, and the bosses were gone all day. They did not delegate any specific work and Biren was left with a pile of files to study, none of which made any sense.

  Down the hallway was a buzzing hive of dhoti-clad Bengali babus, buried in their motley ledgers, and typists who clattered on steel typewriters with carbon-stained fingers.

  On the third day, Biren found a sickly looking fellow in khaki shorts with a boat-shaped cap on his head perched on a three-legged stool outside his office. The man jumped to his feet with an elaborate salaam. He introduced himself as Biren’s personal peon boy. His job was to bring Biren his tea, tidy the desk, ferry papers back and forth to the typists and other offices and doze on his stool trying not to fall off.

  The next morning, Biren found the four yellow pencils on his desk sharpened to murderous points, lined neatly beside his writing pad. His water glass, freshly replenished, sat under a lace doily with a beaded edge to keep out flies. The finger-moistening pad, inkwell and squares of sky-blue blotting paper were lined with military precision at the top of his desk, looking like soldiers awaiting orders. Biren twirled the three rubber stamps in their merry-go-round holder and wondered what he was supposed to use them for. The bumpy orange lettering on one rubber stamp read REVIEWED, the second read APPROVED and he was trying to decipher the third when a loud commotion ensued outside his office.

  A pompous ball of a human rolled in, tailed by the distraught peon boy wringing his hands. The man had introduced himself as Ganesh Pain, the town’s sweetshop owner. Pushing the peon boy aside, Ganesh Pain announced he had come to report the “blatant thievery of his nuisance-making neighbor, Nimai Das, who had pilfered and consumed his bamboo cabbage.” Biren, who was in the middle of admiring his nicely sharpened pencils and twirling the rubber stamps, was deeply perplexed.

  “A stolen cabbage, did you say?”

  “Bamboo cabbage,” Ganesh Pain corrected him sternly. “Why, sir, you have become too-much English to have forgotten your own native Sylheti delicacies?”

  Bamboo cabbage, Ganesh Pain reminded Biren, was a rare and coveted delicacy—a man-made vegetable, ingeniously grown by crowding the tender shoots of a bamboo plant inside an upturned clay pot.

  “I see,” said Biren vaguely, wondering where this lesson in cabbage farming was leading.

  “Four months,” said Ganesh Pain, “four months it takes to grow a bamboo cabbage. So can you imagine my distress, sir, when I saw all my pots broken and my cabbage vanished?”

  Biren tapped his pencil, wondering if this nature of crime came under his jurisdiction. He wrote cabbage, theft and Nimai, with a question mark on one corner of his new pad.

  “Do you have any proof that this Nimai is the culprit?” he asked finally.

  Before Ganesh Pain could answer, there were more loud voices, and soon several Sylhetis crowded into Biren’s office. The typewriters down the hallway stopped and a few nosy babus peeped around the fringes of the crowd, tittering. A hush fell as clipped footsteps came down the corridor and a swath cleared hastily for Reginald Thompson, who marched with big strides into the room.

  Biren jumped to his feet.

  “What is the matter, Roy?” Thomson’s voice was frosty. “What is all this commotion about?”

  Biren indicated Ganesh Pain. “This sweetshop owner has come to report a theft, sir,” he said, hoping to God his boss wouldn’t ask, “The theft of what?” But of course he did.

  “Cabbage? Cabbage!” Reginald Thompson thundered. “What kind of damn tomfoolery is this?”

  Reginald Thomson snapped his fingers. “Everybody out, please. And, Roy, report immediately to my office.” With that he turned on his heels and thundered up the wooden staircase, his hobnail boots hitting each step like a gunshot. Biren followed, embarrassed, past the stares of the babus who craned their necks over their typewriters to see him pass.

  Reginald Thompson’s office was the last room at the end of the hallway. The doorway was flanked by two slit-eyed Manipuri guards in khaki uniforms with crimson hats shaped like inverted flowerpots on their heads. They snapped to attention when they saw their boss, and a mask clipped over their features. Thompson crossed over to his desk and pulled out his chair with a screech while Biren hesitated in the doorway.

  “Take a seat, for God’s sake,” snapped Thompson.

  Stung by his curtness, Biren sat down.

  Thompson smacked a small brass desk bell on his desk with the palm of his hand. The shrill trring brought one of the foot guards scurrying.

  “Call Griffiths, sahib,” he commanded without lifting his eyes.

  Griffiths, pink faced, rushed in straightening his tie. His ruddy appearance, which Biren at first mistook to be boisterous good health, was in fact a terrible attack of prickly heat.

  “Good morning, good morning,” huffed Griffiths. “What was that dreadful racket downstairs?”

  “That is what we are here to talk about,” said Thomson grimly. He pinned Biren with a stern eye. “You need to be briefed on protocol, Roy. This office does not deal with the cabbage problems of the masses. I do not care who these people are, but they cannot rush into this office and turn it into a fish market. Is that clear?”

  He turned to Griffiths. “Have you briefed Roy on the water gypsy problem? You have sat on this case for months and made zero progress.”

  “I...” began Griffiths, only to be silenced by another brassy trring of Thompson’s desk bell.

  He waved them both away. “Kindly take Roy to your office and give him the files. I don’t wish to discuss this any further.”

  Perplexed, Biren followed Griffiths out of the office. What shocked him was the military-like hierarchy in the office. Rank was everything. The senior officers were all ex-army men, which explained their bossy behavior. Still, this would take some getting used to.

  “Sorry, old chap,” muttered Griffiths. “I should have warned you. Thompson is always in a rotten mood when he gets back from Calcutta. His has a terrible time dealing with the politics in head office. He is a good sort, really. Just stay out of his way when he’s in a bad mood.”

  “What is this water gypsy problem he was talking about?” Biren asked.

  “Ah.” Griffiths grinned. “That’s the albatross hanging around my neck. Now we’re handing it to you because we don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “What makes you think I am more capable than you are?”

  “Thompson seems to think so. That is why he hired you in the first place. Let’s just say, you are Indian and you have a much better chance of gauging situations and eliciting
information than we have. We both noticed how comfortable you were talking to the boatmen, and then you were comfortable talking to us, as well. That is rare. The locals clam up around us. Just think about it—if they trust you with their cabbage problems, chances are they will tell you other things.” He pointed to a door with A. W. Wells engraved on a brass plaque. “Here is my office. It still has the name of my predecessor. Fellow died from malaria two years ago.”

  Griffiths’s office had lumpy files sitting on both chairs across from his desk. “Throw those on the floor, will you? Have a seat.”

  Biren lifted the files. “Hold on,” Griffiths said, “pass me that one—the one with the blue paper sticking out. That’s right, that’s the one I need. All right, let’s see. Water gypsy problem.”

  Biren glanced at the file as he handed it to Griffiths. Bede/Water Gypsy was written on the spine.

  “The bedes are boat people. Nomads,” said Biren. “I guess you can call them water gypsies.”

  “Oh, so you know about them?”

  “Yes, they are common around these parts. They dabble in herbal medicine and magic healing. I have never known the bedes to cause any problem. They usually keep to themselves.”

  “Wait a moment, I’m trying to find the details.” Griffiths tipped his chair back and seesawed against the wall. Biren noticed the lime had chipped away where the chair bumped against it. Griffiths flipped quickly through the pages of the file. He grimaced, stretching out his chin, and stuck a pencil down the inside of his shirt collar to scratch his neck. “Damn prickly heat is killing me,” he grumbled. “I could hardly sleep last night.”

  “Try a neem paste,” suggested Biren. “It’s a home remedy.”

  Griffiths peered over the top of the file. “What is neem paste? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Neem is the margosa plant. It’s very common.” Biren pointed at the feathery branches outside the window behind him. “That’s a neem tree. It grows everywhere. My mother used to make a paste with water and apply it to the prickly heat. You will get instant relief.”