The rain eased a bit and visibility improved. Along an adjacent ridge there appeared an area that had been cleared for cultivation. Robert’s spirits lifted.
‘Somewhere near here there must be a Naga village. Look, it’s obvious the land has been cleared to plant rice or opium poppies.’
We got closer and saw that it was indeed a poor crop of rice mingled with some poppy plants.
‘I hope we meet some villagers,’ I said.
‘You’re joking, they’d probably scalp us!’
But it would have been a welcome break to talk to other people and perhaps take our minds off the trek. The next night we were again blessed, finding a fireplace with a few dying embers. Robert nursed a fire and though there was more smoke than flame we huddled around it.
My mother reached into the bushes and tore off some leaves, which she heated.
‘Move over here, Colin, and let me hold them to your shoulder wound.’
We had a little boiled rice and black tea and spent a lot of time scraping leeches off our bodies by the dim light of the flames.
The horrible creatures seemed to find every crevice. Their favourite spots were between the thighs and in armpits and we had to strip bare to get at them. I even had a large one on my head. Strangely, they kept well away from the putrid wound on my shoulder.
Around midday we crossed tracks with a Naga tribesman. Far from attacking us, he appeared shy and when my mother beckoned him over he approached gingerly. Mother, who could speak numerous dialects, communicated with him after a fashion. She tried to ask him the distance to the next village. He pointed to the ground, moving his whole hand seven or eight times. We did not know if he was talking about days, mountains or even rivers but he seemed to point in the right direction.
Robert and I examined his crossbow and even fired a couple of clay pellets from his ammunition. He was keen to handle Robert’s rifle, and when Robert fired one of his precious bullets into the air, the fellow got quite excited and beamed, displaying a set of blackened teeth. He headed off and we made camp for the night.
Mother then tried to explain what she had learnt from him. ‘He said his village was ahead, but that nobody lived there. I think he was saying that the refugees who reached there before the rains broke used guns and drove the villagers away. He and his tribe moved to another ridge, away from the trail.’
The news buoyed us all a bit. Meeting that lone headhunter encouraged us to keep going.
‘Just meeting another living person makes me realise the wilderness is not as empty as I thought,’ I said.
The jungle was alive and somewhere out there in the hills, there were people living happily in what to me felt like the worst place on earth.
‘That poor hunter hasn’t been too successful,’ Mother said. ‘He was carrying nothing but his crossbow. I hope he catches something so that his family can have some food.’
It was typical of Mother to think of others when we ourselves were close to starvation.
‘Well, he looks well fed,’ I said.
‘Yes, he looks well, but we should remember that he has to live in this region, whereas we are only passing through. We should be grateful he did not rob us of our meagre rations.’ We set off in the grey light, our spirits lighter. I had never imagined walking in slush and mud would be so demanding.
To think that in my earlier days there had been nothing I had liked better than the challenge of a flooded creek! The other danger was the debris that came down with the floodwaters, large trees and branches swept down by the swift currents.
The track was heading down into the next valley and once again we all negotiated the downhill on our backsides. It was painful having the back pack thumping against my wound. We crossed the river at the bottom, but it was too early to make camp. We chewed on some wet rice left in an oilskin bag and continued the climb up the next range, camping some way up. Darkness had beaten us and we just stopped on the side of the track and huddled together to keep warm. There was nothing else we could do.
The rain eased momentarily when we reached the top the next day.
‘We should keep going to make the next crossing anyway,’ Robert suggested.
When we reached the bank we two boys ferried Mother across first with our few blankets, planning to return for Ethel. The rain began to pour down again in sheets, and soon the water level rose just enough to make it too dangerous to return for Ethel. Any attempt to fetch her would have been suicidal. Mother was beside herself. She could not bear to be separated from her only daughter.
‘I am so afraid for her over there, alone in the jungle without any protection. It could be days before we get her.’
I took it badly too. I thought of my sister alone in the dark separated from us.
I wondered what she might be thinking. The only girl in the family, Ethel had been groomed since her early years to be our substitute mother. She was a bright and cheery person, loved by everybody who visited our home. She loved playing songs for visitors on the piano. She was physically strong and played several sports. When guests were invited to an afternoon of tennis at home, Ethel not only arranged the matches but the refreshments too. I recalled with glee the time she had spiked the barley water with gin. Poor Armanath, our house boy, who also doubled as ball-boy, had copped the blame. She was an organiser, and even the nuns at her school often called on her to help run functions.
Ethel had been very keen on the young cadet officer, Noel, who had driven her to Maymyo when our schools closed. His family were acquaintances and he often called at our place. He was a decent type of fellow, good-looking too, and his prospects in the army were bright. His father held a junior position in the Shell Burmah Oil Company and like us they were Anglos. Neither of these points went down well with my father.
After Father called off the romance, there had been a noticeable change in Ethel. She kept more to herself, and from the day we climbed aboard the army truck and left our home she had had very little to say or contribute. She more or less tagged along.
Now Robert shouted across to her.
‘Move away from the water, so we can hear one another!’
We attempted, without much success, to communicate throughout the night over the roar of the torrent.
The gods were kind and the water level dropped in the morning. The skies were still threatening when we hurried across to help our sister rejoin the group. My mother cried with relief. She held Ethel close.
Since we had been up all night we decided to rest and, while we sat around, two people arrived on the opposite bank. I recognised the man as a member of a family from Maymyo. The boys were good friends of ours and attended the same school. The couple attempted to cross over. The man was helping the woman, who appeared sick. I knew it would be difficult for them and called out.
‘Do you need any help?’
There was no reply. In a flash the woman lost her grip and was swept away in the fast current, screaming. Robert and I stood up, but any chance of running along the bank was out of the question, for we were too weak. The man crossed over and without any hint of recognition took off up the hill and disappeared into the jungle.
The sight of that poor woman struggling in the brown waters made a deep impact upon me. I had seen many dead and dying people but it was the first time I had seen someone washed to their death. As the man disappeared from sight our little party was too shocked to continue. Light rain was falling. I turned to my mother.
‘Why didn’t he recognise us? Why did he keep walking as if nothing had happened?’
‘Who knows, son.’
The whole scene played on my mind. Their family were good friends of ours in Maymyo. The four boys were frequent visitors to our home. Their mother was a delightful woman of Shan stock, who, like my mother, was well known in the town for her generous spirit. It was unimaginable that he had not even stopped to say a few words.
Some time later in Calcutta I recognised the same man among the crowd. I sang out his name and
hoped we could have a chat about our experiences. He heard me call and turned around to see me. Then he just kept walking on, as he had on that fateful day somewhere in the jungle in Burma.
Robert, the realist, said, ‘We’ve seen many hundreds die already, and there was little we could do to help or save them. Besides, we’re in a war and people die in war.’
‘It is a tragedy when the innocent have to be the casualties,’ my mother said.
The drama affected our mood profoundly. Silently we packed up and headed up the next climb. It was a heavy and difficult stage of the trek. The climb was steep and slippery. The mud was almost up to our knees and the smell of rotting matter, though distinct from the smell of rotten human flesh, was overpowering. The mud was fly-blown!
We had experienced the rain for only a couple of days and I had begun to realise how damaging water can be. Gone were the days on the plains, when we covered 20 or 30 miles a day. I could not bear to work out how much ground we were covering at this point, perhaps two to four miles a day.
Once again dead bodies appeared. It was horrendous trying to get past them. The track at best was only a few feet wide and we had to tread warily for fear of slipping and falling to the valley below. I recognised some more of our friends from Shimbuyang. We could not fail to look at their bodies, since every step had to be chosen carefully, whereas down in the plains, where many thousands had perished, we could skirt a corpse and not have to look at the dead person.
The rain continued relentlessly and the day got darker.
‘We’ve had enough for today,’ said Robert, who was leading.
We gathered with our backs to the side of the track. During the night I constantly worried that another group would come along and trample us. Each time I slid into the mud half asleep, I would wake up. I was wet, cold and exhausted, and more and more leeches clung to our bodies.
The other problem was the swarms of mosquitoes that took over the nights. The only way we could prevent our bodies being bitten away was to cover ourselves in mud. But then that too got washed off by the continuous downpour. We set off again after a sleepless night. Since it was impossible to light a fire, we had to keep going without even a sip of warm tea.
The path rounded the hill and we came across a couple of leantos made from branches and covered by leaves. There was a corpse, but fortunately it was quite far away from the shelter, so we decided to rest. The ground was drenched but underneath the large mound of ashes we discovered some hot coals. Robert and I set about reviving the embers and before long we had a substantial fire going.
‘We need to collect some water to make tea and cook what’s left of the rice, even if it has turned sour.’
‘There’s no way I’m going to scale down the mountainside to the creek.’
‘What about collecting the drips off the broad leaves of those trees?’
‘It’ll take ages, but it’s the only way.’
There was no way to dry our clothes, but the fire provided enough comfort to let us grab some sleep. I had thrown some heavy logs on, hoping they would provide sufficient warmth.
Despite rain throughout the night the fire stayed alight. We decided to stay another day. I explored the vicinity and was surprised to come across a carcass of a bullock. Some people before us had obviously killed it and carved it up for meat. Goodness knows how long it had been lying there, but its bones and some flesh were washed white.
‘Let’s try to get some meat off the bones. We can cook it in the ashes,’ Robert said.
We had no sharp instruments and all we could do was tear at the remaining flesh with our bare hands like carnivorous beasts. We managed to get some lumps off which we cooked in the coals.
‘You boys make sure it is well and truly cooked, even burnt, before you try to eat it,’ my mother said. ‘I’m worried it will make you ill.’
We made certain the lumps of meat and sinews were well and truly blackened before we set about chewing into the morsels. Our small meal was washed down with tins of hot black tea. Next day both Robert and I were violently sick. What little we had devoured the night before went straight through our systems. The belly pains were gut-wrenching, but we were determined to push on, always thinking and hoping that the next mountain would be the last.
‘I wish I’d never found the carcass,’ I moaned. ‘I knew it was riddled with maggots but I thought it would be all right if it was washed before cooking.’
Mother, a firm believer in natural medicine, produced her remaining strips of cotton cloth dipped in opium.
‘Take these, they will ease your stomach pains.’
We had to suck the blackish strips of cotton and swallow the saliva that was mixed with the drug. It worked wonders and before long the stomach cramps eased, though the diarrhoea persisted.
For the first time I saw that Robert was beginning to look sick.
‘Why don’t you get rid of the rifle? It’s completely useless now.’ ‘No.’
My shoulder wound flared up again and the only time I could get it treated was when we stopped at the end of each day, and only if there was a fire for Mother to heat some wild leaf to apply to it. The look on everybody’s faces said it all. I wondered how long we could keep it up. It did not occur to me to lie down in the ooze and slush and give up, yet I could not shut out the thought of what had gone through the minds of those poor people who had fallen by the wayside and perished. Were they sick, were they just tired or did the will to carry on burn out? We just kept dragging ourselves along. We had run out of matches and every campsite greeted us with a corpse or two and no semblance of a fire to stoke up.
The leeches were giving me a hard time. Every morning, before we set out, we would help one another scrape the bloody suckers off. It was horrible to see the bloated creepers burst open in a splash of red blood. Goodness knows, we had little to spare! Then I had another setback. I awoke one wet morning in a cold sweat. My body ached and the intense cold had my teeth chattering. I could not get up off the muddy ground.
‘Colin, try to get up! Please try.’
‘Please, let me rest.’
I experienced a strange feeling – a comfortable feeling – of drifting away. After some time the shivering ceased and I felt well enough to continue the trek. It was my first bout of malaria.
Chapter 9
The Naga Village
Miraculously, the rain stopped and for the first time in days the sun peeped through broken cloud. It is impossible to describe how our spirits lifted. The track remained a bog, but it was a relief to have a dry body. The unusual break in the weather continued for another day with a light shower or two falling at night. It was during this lucky break that we reached a crest and sighted distant smoke rising from the roofs of a cluster of huts.
‘Thank goodness. We can stay there for a few days.’
The very sight of smoke, which meant a fire, was enough to give us strength and hope.
We arrived at the Naga village in the middle of the afternoon. The thatched huts were set in a row of about 25 and the village was occupied by a small group of refugees. We scoured around for an empty hut and settled down exhausted but relieved. There were about 25 people besides us and before we carefully climbed into our hut, built on stilts and about eight feet off the ground, we begged for some food. But these poor people were in the same boat.
‘We have not eaten for days. We had hoped that any new arrivals would have food to share.’
Nonetheless, they were overjoyed to see us. They appeared weary and thin, yet the children’s gaunt faces lit up at the sight of strangers. They were a pathetic lot, as they sat around silently. What a change from the normal gatherings of Indian families in better circumstances, occasions for noisy chatter! We drank some black tea with them. They had been holed up in this village for days, living in fear of the Japanese soldiers rumoured to be heading their way.
We listened to tales of their flight from Rangoon.
One older man constantly wept as he talked about
his family, who had perished early in the trek. His wife and five young children had contracted cholera, we gathered, and had died.
‘My deepest regret is that I had no way of burning or burying the bodies of my loved ones. The pariah dogs will be chewing their bones,’ he wailed. Poor fellow, I thought. Even if he did get through to India, he still had hundreds of miles to cover before he would arrive at his village in South India.
Each hut had a single tree trunk in which steps had been hewn out as the means of entry. The village was situated a long way from water. It seemed the Nagas believed the evil spirits moved along fast-running streams. Unlike other villages in Burma, this one occupied a knoll.
It was dark inside our hut and no provision had been made for light to enter. We set about slowly getting it cleaned up. The fireplace at the end was a mountain of ash and unburnt timber. No doubt the previous occupants, surely refugees like ourselves, had just upped and moved on.
In the process of cleaning, Robert, who had been doing most of the work, pointed to the ceiling.
‘Look at that row of things hanging from the rafters. They look like coconuts.’
On closer inspection we discovered that the coconuts were human heads, blackened by the smoke. The hair of each head was visible, still hanging like threads.
‘Leave them alone,’ Mother said.
It wasn’t hard to do. There were more pressing needs than wor-rying about sharing a room with these relics.
It was a relief to feel dry. Without even considering the availabil-ity of food, we decided to stay for some time.
‘I’m sure we will find some edible plants to supplement our rations,’ Mother said.
Actually, there was nothing to supplement, save a bag of wet tea leaves.
‘I’m going to try hunting for animals or birds with my rifle,’ Robert said. Even as we spoke around the warm fire we could hear monkeys in the nearby trees. The next morning our South Indian friends gave us some water and for the first time in weeks we enjoyed a warm drink of black tea in relative comfort.
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