Flood of Fire

by Amitav Ghosh

Then they came to the cantonment and the sight took their breath away. Everywhere they looked there were shacks, tents and long, low structures made of wood; in between were large parade grounds, where thousands of soldiers were at drill. Sahib-log could be seen everywhere, drilling, marching and lounging about, in uniforms of astonishing colours. But the most remarkable thing about them – the thing that made the recruits’ jaws drop – was that none of them had beards or moustaches. Their faces were completely smooth, their cheeks and lips as hairless as those of boys or women.

  The recruits’ journey ended at an empty tent where they were told to wait.

  At some point Seetul slipped away. The others were busy talking about the sights they had seen that morning and no one noticed his absence: their first inkling of it came when there was a sudden outburst of shouts, yells and shrieks, somewhere nearby. They ran out to see what had happened – and there was Seetul, being dragged towards them by a sentry.

  It turned out that Seetul’s stomach was upset and he had felt an urgent need to relieve himself. Not knowing where to go, he had decided to do what he would have done in his village – that is ‘look for a bush’, as the saying went. With a lota-ful of water in hand, he had set off to find a secluded place. After some searching he had found a convenient gap in a dense wall of greenery. Keeping a careful watch for passers-by, he had pulled up his dhoti; lowering himself to his haunches, he had backed into the gap and let fly.

  Unfortunately for Seetul the greenery happened to be the hedge of a colonel-sahib’s garden. Worse still, his performance had intruded upon a ladies’ picnic.

  The burden of the blame fell on Hukam Singh, who had neglected to show them where the latrines were. He would later make Seetul pay dearly for his error, but now, on the sentry’s orders, he took the recruits straight to the pakhana: this too was an astonishing sight and it made them wonder whether their bowels would ever move again.

  There were a few long ditches, and over them, platforms with rows of holes. A number of men could be seen, squatting on the platforms, lined up next to each other, like crows on a rope. The stench was overpowering and the rhythmic plopping sound that rose from the ditch was a constant reminder of what might happen to a squatter who lost his balance.

  Back in their villages the recruits were accustomed to going out to the fields and squatting in the open, with a breeze on their faces; moreover, even though they often went in twos or threes, for mutual protection, there was usually some greenery to afford each of them a little privacy.

  It made them squirm to think of being lined up like that, next to one another – but within a day or two they got used to it and quickly absorbed the unspoken protocols of the latrines, whereby certain rows were always reserved for seniors at busy times of the morning: recruits were the last in precedence.

  On their third day at the depot, Bhyro Singh appeared in person at the door of their hut. This was the first time the recruits had seen him in uniform. With his height extended by his helmet and his shoulders broadened by his epaulettes, he seemed twice his size.

  They followed him to a building that looked like a daftar: he told them to wait on the veranda and went inside. When he came out again, he was furious to find the recruits sitting in the shade. He berated them for sitting without permission and swore that they’d get a beating if they ever did it again: a Company sepoy could never sit unless he was expressly told to.

  They jumped to their feet, unnerved, and stood rigidly upright, shoulder to shoulder, not daring to move.

  In a while, an English officer appeared with a big stick in his hands. This further unnerved the recruits because they thought they were going to be beaten as a punishment for sitting down. But it was only a measuring stick, with a notch on it. The officer went down the line with it, making sure that they all stood taller than the mark.

  Kesri could not stop staring at the officer’s smooth, beardless face. He had nurtured his own moustache so carefully, from the day when the first hairs appeared on his lip, that he found it hard to believe that any man would choose to shave off something so precious. But when it was his turn to be measured he saw that the officer’s lack of hair was indeed a matter of choice rather than a curse of nature – there was a distinct stubble on his cheeks, so there could be no doubt that he regularly shaved his face.

  After they had all been measured, the officer sat down at a desk, picked up a pen and began to write. Kesri, like most of the other recruits, knew how to read and write in the Nagari script, but only with a slow and deliberate hand. The speed at which the officer’s pen flew over the paper was dazzling to his eyes.

  The sheet of paper was then handed to Bhyro Singh who now led them to another daftar. Kesri happened to be at the head of the line, so when they got there he was the first to be picked out. Bhyro Singh beckoned to him to step forward and left the others to wait where they were. He then led Kesri to a room that smelled pungently of medicines. An English doctor was waiting inside with two memsahibs, dressed in white. As soon as Kesri had stepped in, Bhyro Singh shut the door, leaving him alone with the doctor and the two women.

  The doctor now spoke to Kesri in Hindustani and told him to remove all his clothes – not just his jama but also his dhoti and langot.

  At first Kesri thought he had mistaken the doctor’s words. He could not imagine that it would enter anyone’s mind to ask him to strip himself naked in front of strangers – of whom two were women! But the doctor then repeated what he had said, in a louder, more insistent voice, and one of the women spoke up too, loudly dhamkaoing Kesri and telling him to obey the doctor and take off his clothes.

  Kesri had a sudden recollection of his father’s warnings about the Company’s army and how those who joined it would lose their dharma. He realized now that this was true and was assailed by a terrible onrush of remorse for not having heeded his father’s words.

  As these thoughts were flashing through his head, the doctor-sahib took a step towards him. It seemed to Kesri that the doctor was about to attack him and tear off his clothes. At that instant he made up his mind. He spun around, threw himself at the door, and flung it open. Racing past Bhyro Singh and the recruits, he sprinted towards the cantonment’s bazar.

  If he could lose himself in the crowd, he reckoned, he would be able to make his escape. And then whatever happened, would happen; if it came to that, he could always go back home.

  He ran as he had never run before. He could hear Bhyro Singh’s voice behind him but he knew that he was rapidly outpacing the havildar.

  But just as he reached the bazar, who should appear in front of him but Hukam Singh, with two other sepoys? He saw them too late to slip past: they threw him to the ground and held him down.

  Although the blood was pounding in Kesri’s head he could hear Bhyro Singh’s heavy tread.

  Haramzada! Bahenchod!

  Bhyro Singh was panting as he spat out the curses: Bastard, you think you can get away from me? Chootiya, haven’t I loaned you money and fed you for a month? You cunt, you think I’m the kind of man you can steal from and get away …?

  Kesri felt the havildar’s massive hand seizing the back of his neck. It pulled him to his feet and then lifted him off the ground. Then Bhyro Singh’s other hand took hold of his dhoti and langot and tore them off.

  A crowd had gathered now. Bhyro Singh hoisted up Kesri’s writhing body and turned it from side to side, showing the onlookers his underparts.

  Here, have a look – this is what the haramzada thought he would hide.

  Then he flung Kesri to the dust and gave him a kick.

  You’re no better than a runaway dog, Bhyro Singh spat at him. Don’t think you can cheat me like you did your father. You have no one to turn to now, and nowhere to go. This is your jail and I am your jailer – you had better get used to it.

  The bitter truth of the havildar’s words dawned on Kesri as he was covering himself with his retrieved clothes – with neither friends nor kin to come to his aid, he had become a kin
d of pariah as well as a prisoner. Only now did Kesri grasp that in choosing to run away from home, with Bhyro Singh, he had abandoned not just his family and his village, but also himself – or rather the person he had once been, with certain ideas about dignity, self-containment and virtue.

  For Kesri the significance of this incident was not diminished by the discovery that many recruits had suffered similar, and even worse, humiliations at the hands of NCOs. One of the lessons he took from it was that every soldier had two wars to fight: one against enemies on the outside and the other against adversaries on the inside. The first fight was fought with guns, swords and brawn; the second with cunning, patience and guile.

  The next few months were a blur of beatings, dhamkaoings and sleeplessness as the recruits were drilled into shape. Along the way there were many moments when Kesri might have run away had he not been so vividly reminded that he had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. But then at last came a day when the first four Articles of War, on the subject of desertion, were read out to Kesri and his cohort of recruits, after which they were administered the oath of fidelity in front of the regimental colours. From then on, even though they were on probation for one month more, without any salary or battas, things became a little easier because the recruits were now considered full-fledged members of the Pacheesi.

  It was in that month of continuing pennilessness, when the new sepoys had to subsist on an allowance of two annas per day, that Kesri discovered another, sweeter lesson in the memory of his humiliation by Bhyro Singh: he learnt that unexpected rewards were sometimes to be found amidst the rubble of defeat.

  One day while walking past the cantonment’s ‘red’ area – the ‘Laal Bazar’ – he heard a girl’s voice calling to him: Listen, you there, listen!

  The voice was coming from an upstairs window, in a tumbledown house that was known to be a lal kotha – a ‘red house’. There was a window ajar, on the floor above. When he stepped up to the house, it opened a little wider, revealing the painted face of a young girl. She smiled and beckoned to him to come up.

  He climbed up a narrow staircase and found her waiting at the top.

  What’s your name?

  Kesri Singh. And yours?

  Gulabi. You were the one, weren’t you, who was trying to run from Havildar Bhyro Singh that day?

  He flushed and retorted angrily: What’s it to you?

  Nothing.

  She smiled and led him into a room where there was a charpoy in one corner.

  Once inside he was overcome with panic; his many years of training in self-control was suddenly at war with his desire in a way that he had never experienced before. In his head there was an insistent voice of warning, telling him that to discard the disciplines of wrestling would come at a cost; some day he would pay a steep price for his pleasure.

  But he was helpless; flattening his back against the door, he said: Samajhni nu? You understand, no? I have no money.

  He was half-hoping that she would tell him to be gone, but instead she smiled and lay down on the charpoy. It doesn’t matter, she said. You can pay some other time. You’re not going anywhere and nor am I. We are both fauj-ke-ghulam – slaves of the army.

  Her face was delicately shaped, with rounded curves that were echoed by her nose ring. In her mouth there was a hint of the redness of paan and it made her lips look so full that she seemed to be pouting.

  Why are you just standing there? she said. Rising from the bed, she went up to him and unfastened the waist flap of his trowsers and pulled on the drawstrings of his jangiah.

  Young as she was, she seemed to know his uniform as well as he did: he looked down at himself and saw that his body was bare exactly from the bottom of his belly to the middle of his thigh.

  She seemed to think that this was all the unclothing that was necessary, and lay down again – but this only confused him further and he stood where he was, with his hands clapped over his crotch.

  A frown appeared on her face now, as if to indicate that she could not understand why he was still standing motionless by the door. She reached out, caught hold of his hand and pulled him towards her. He could take only small steps, because his trowsers were now snagged around his knees, and finally he just toppled over, collapsing on the bed.

  She smiled bemusedly: it was as if she had never before encountered a man who did not know what to do, and was hard put to believe that such a species existed.

  Her face grew serious as she helped him untangle his legs. Pahli baar? First time?

  He was about to lie, but then he saw that she was not asking in a belittling way, but only because it had not occurred to her that a man, a sepoy, could be confused and uncertain in these matters.

  She began to help him, guiding his hands into her gharara. But his fingers were soon lost in her skirts – he had never imagined that there could be so much cloth and so many folds in a single garment. In his dreams this part had always been easy.

  And even when his hands at last found their way to her limbs, nothing was as he had expected: those parts that he had glimpsed when women were bathing, or relieving themselves in the fields, seemed completely different now that they were joined together in another human being.

  At some time they both realized that they would never again be able to recapture the amazement and wonder of this moment – and even for her, who had already grown accustomed to being with men, his discovering hunger came as a surprise, so that she seemed to see her own body in a new light. At a certain moment she found, to her shock, that she was naked – she would tell him later that she had never been in such a state with a man before; it was something the other women would have despised her for had they known – but that day she was heedless of all restraint and this became a bond between them, for now they both knew a secret about one another.

  For many weeks after that day Kesri could not stop thinking about Gulabi. He went to her so often that his credit with the house ran out. When Seetul and the other recruits laughed and said, Piyaar me paagil ho gayilba? Have you become mad with love? he did not deny it.

  For a long time it was a torment to him that Gulabi was visited by other men. But eventually he grew used to it and it even gave him a grim kind of pleasure to know that her other clients were being cheated, because none of them would ever have from her what he had.

  It was not till some years had passed that she told him why she had waved to him from the window on the day when they met.

  You remember, Kesri, that time when you were stripped by Bhyro Singh? You were not the only one to be beaten that day.

  Who else then?

  After he had finished with you, he came to me – he took me into a room and after he had done what he came for, he slapped me and hit me.

  But why?

  She made an uncomprehending gesture. Kya pata? What do I know? But he’s done it to some other girls too. It seems to give him pleasure.

  Kesri thought about this for a bit and it made him shudder.

  I swear, Gulabi, he said. The day that Bhyro Singh dies I’ll give away a maund of sweets – that is if I don’t kill him myself first.

  She laughed: Don’t forget to give me some of those sweets. I can’t wait to taste them.

  For several days Zachary neither saw nor heard from Mrs Burnham: so complete was the silence that it seemed as though she had forgotten about arranging a private meeting with him. But just as he was growing accustomed to the idea that the meeting would never happen, a khidmatgar arrived with a parcel. There was an envelope inside, sitting on top of a fat book.

  October 10, 1839

  Dear Mr Reid

  I offer you my sincerest apologies for my prolonged silence. The news from China has been very disquieting of late and we have all been much preoccupied. But you must not imagine that I have allowed the affairs of the World to drive from my mind the Pledge I had made to you. Nothing could be further from the truth. You and your Sufferings are constantly on my mind: you could even say that I am haunted by
them.

  You will remember that I mentioned a doctor who has made a special study of your Affliction. His name is Dr Allgood and he has been sent here from England to attend to the lunatics in the Native and Europeans-Only Asylums (you will no doubt be interested to learn that it is the Condition from which you suffer that has driven most of the Inmates out of their minds). Not only is Dr Allgood one of the world’s leading authorities on your Disease, he has dedicated his life to its eradication. It is because of his Crusade that the people of this city have come to be alerted to the spreading Epidemic.

  It so happens that I had helped to arrange a few Lectures for Dr Allgood and am therefore well acquainted with him. Wanting to profit from his wisdom I had sought an Interview but this proved difficult to obtain for the Doctor is exceedingly busy with the conduct of his Researches. Yet, despite his many preoccupations, the doctor was kind enough to grant me some time yesterday and it is in order to communicate his advice that I have now picked up my quill to write to you.

  You will no doubt be interested to learn that your Condition is one of the principal areas of inquiry in modern medicine: it has come to be recognized as one of the chief causes of human debility. It is thought that the costs of the Disease, physical and economic, are of such magnitude that the Nation that first conquers it will thereby secure its position as the world’s Dominant Power. You can imagine then the urgency with which a remedy is being sought – yet, despite the best efforts of a great number of Doctors and Men of Science, there has as yet been little Progress. Dr Allgood assures me that there is every reason to hope that a Cure – perhaps even a Vaccination – will soon be found, but alas, none has yet been discovered. This was of course, a great disappointment, for I had hoped that he would be able to prescribe some soothing Tonics, Drugs or Poultices to help in combating the Seizures – but it appears that at present the best hope of effecting a cure lies in educating Patients and making sure that they become fully cognizant of the terrible consequences of this Disease.

  This being the prescribed mode of treatment, I shall endeavour to obtain books and other materials for you. Enclosed herewith you will find the first volume in your proposed course of Study. Bookmarks have been inserted in the chapters that particularly require your attention, and I urge you to commit these passages to memory. The Doctor says that it is most necessary in such courses of Study, that occasional Tests and Examinations be administered to make sure that the Patient has fully absorbed the prescribed lessons. To that end I will endeavour to arrange a private meeting to test you on your progress.