Kamal hobbled to the door, holding a lamp in his trembling hands. He regarded the rowdy soldiers, greatly puzzled, as they advanced towards him menacingly. Poor old Kamal was now eighty-five. He held fast to the door. He had grown very feeble but he stood there mustering all his physical strength. He didn’t have a sword to defend himself. Slowly he tried to ponder over what these terrible men were saying. He would be taken to Gaur and gaoled, they said. He tried to think of the reason for this punishment. What had he done to be treated thus? He had no quarrel with either the Afghans or the Mughals, he merely wished to be left alone. As though the mere process of living hadn’t been tiresome enough! This was his country, his children had been born here, his dear wife lay buried here. He had put all his energy into making these fields bloom, spent years beautifying the language these men were speaking. He had written songs and collected stories and he was going to continue living right here. No one had any right to call him an outsider or a traitor.
The soldiers of Sher Shah’s army pushed and kicked the tottering old man and marched away laughing. Kamal fell down on the threshold. Slowly he mumbled the Qoranic Verse of the Dawn, ‘Return, O soul, to Thy Lord, accepted and accepting—’ Lying there in the lonely, moonless night of Amavas, he died quietly.
Dehli was called Indraprastha in the days of the Mahabharata, around 1000 B.C. Lord Krishna was probably a contemporary of Prophet King Dawood. How much water—how much water has flowed down since then, O Jamuna! Rai Pathora’s Dilli came to be known as Tughlaqabad in the days of the Turks, today it is called Shahjahanabad. The name is creating wonder in the shoddy courts of Europe. Commerce and industry are flourishing in the Mughal regime, the nations of Christendom are vying with one another to trade with the country of the “Great Mogor”.
For lack of stirrups, the Rajputs had been overcome by successive waves of horsemen from across the Khyber Pass; now, for lack of battleships, the Mughals have let the firangis slip in from the sea.
Bengal has become one great bazaar of European traders. This Sultanate was annexed by Akbar and his Empire extended across the land-mass of Hindustan. When years later, the decline began, the Mughal subedars or viceroys of Bengal, called Nawab-Nazims, declared their autonomy. Prophet Sulaiman had been granted sway over land and sea by Allah. He was also the king of djinns, paris and demons, and birds and animals. He could converse with them. He was also the richest man on earth. Once he said to God, “O Allah! I wish to invite all Thy creatures to dinner at my place.” God said, “Go ahead!” So an enormous feast was prepared. One fish came out of the sea and finished off the entire banquet. God said, “O Sulaiman! Only I can feed all my creatures.” Now, this parable does not imply that Siraj-ud-Daulah, Nawab-Nazim of Bengal, had ever claimed to be like King Solomon. It transpired however, that the Law of Taxila’s Chanakya began to operate once again. A whale called Admiral Watson came out of the sea. Siraj-ud-Daulah proved to be a small fish because Mir Jaffer, a crab, turned traitor. So Watson and Clive swallowed poor Siraj without even saying “Thank you.”
Now the magnificent waterways of Bengal are crowded with Englishmen’s trading vessels. They are the new overlords.
A strong wind rose and rocked the boat. The ferryman began to row with all his strength. Al though this was not the season when cyclones lashed the country like Jehovah’s wrath, young Cyril Ashley was perturbed. He picked up the flickering lantern and decided to help the poor old Blackamoor. He stood up and shouted, “Hello! Abdul, listen . . .”
All lower-grade Mussalmans were called Abdul by the firangis. This was one of their arrogant habits after they became victorious. They never bothered to pronounce the natives’ names correctly.
A feeble manjhi was ferrying the two Sahebs across the ocean-like river Padma. He looked up.
“My name,” he replied with dignity, “is Maulvi Abul Mansur Kamaluddin Ahmed.”
That was certainly a long name for such a puny little creature. Cyril was amused.
“Glad to meet you, Maulvi. I say, let me help you with the oars. May I?”
The boatman was surprised. This firangi was speaking in Bengali and was polite. Well, there are goras and goras.
“Thank you, Saheb,” he answered. “Allah is my Captain, I’ll manage.”
Cyril was touched. “Tell me,” he asked after a pause, “you are a maulvi—why are you plying a boat and in such rough weather?”
“For this,” the man patted his wrinkled stomach. “After Plassey, the maktabs have been closing down rapidly.”
“Oh,” Cyril murmured. He had unwittingly drifted into dangerous waters. Englishmen were not at all popular with the defeated and dispossed Mussalmans of Bengal.
Abul Mansur also did not speak and concentrated on his oars.
Cyril peered under the mat roof of the boat. It contained the entire water-borne world of boatman Abul Mansur: another smoky lantern, battered pots and pans, a prayer mat, a coconut hookah hanging from the wall. The Portuguese had apparently turned all natives into tobacco-smokers. Cyril returned to his seat. His friend and business partner, Peter Jackson, was snoring. How quickly this fellow fell asleep, wherever he could. A jolly, insensitive, self-satisfied, Hogarthian character!
For a moment Cyril Ashley felt a bit peculiar. What am I doing here? A chance meeting with this fellow had scooped him out of the lanes of Cambridge and London and put him, a giant among these dark Lilliputians, in this fantasy land called Bengal. And he had lived here for the last ten years. 1797 was already on its way out. Soon we will be stepping into the nineteenth century—amazing.
The wind had dropped. The emaciated boatman broke into a soft marfati-gaan1 as thanksgiving. They had safely reached the private jetty of zamindar Girish Chandra Roy, who had recently been granted the title of Raja.
1 Sufi song of East Bengal.
18. Cyril Ashley of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
He was twenty-two when he received his Bachelor of Arts degree and came out of the ivied quadrangles to face the world. He had been a brillant student and a promising poet. His father was an indigent clergyman, in charge of a village parish in a remote, peaceful corner of Surrey. Cyril had been able to complete his education through a scholarship given by the lord of the manor. He intended to become a schoolmaster and devote his spare time to writing poetry, but his father advised him to take up law.
Therefore, after going down from Cambridge, Cyril Ashley joined the Middle Temple in the City of London. Here, in neighbouring Fleet Street, journalists and wits assembled in coffee houses to discuss international affairs, foreign wars, the Turks, the Russians and India. The world was opening up. There was a lot traffic—people were going to the New World and to the East. Both offered enormous opportunities to get rich quick—especially the East which was backward and politically in a shambles. Russia was busy occupying large chunks of the Ottoman’s European Empire. Under the Mughals, India had become a rich industrialised country, exporting her textiles and luxury goods to Europe. But foreign trade was falling due to political troubles not only at home but in Persia and Turkey.
“The situation has become enormously beneficial to us,” Cyril was told when he strolled down to his favourite coffee house to take part in the hectic discussions. “We have already made short shrift of the Frogs and the chaps from the Low Countries. After the decline of the Mughals’ central authority everybody in India wants to capture power at Delhi. We have almost succeeded,” a journalist said to him one evening, and introduced him to a gentleman called Peter Jackson who seemed to have come straight out of a Hogarth painting. He was portly, and in early middle-age, exuding self-confidence and success. He spread his pudgy fingers which sparkled with rings . . .
“Diamonds of Golconda!” he chuckled.
A merchant from Qasim Bazaar, Bengal, he had come home on holiday. Over cups of South American coffee he told Cyril in a gruff monotone how many thousand pounds he had made out there, trading in indigo.
“What do you intend doing now, young man?”
he asked Cyril one evening.
“I would like to go to America and set up legal practice in New York.”
“We have lost America, dear friend, and gained India, almost simultaneously. There is some poetic justice in that, eh? Go to Calcutta. If you use your brains you will have pots of gold at the end of the rainbow before you can say Peter Jackson!”
India! Cyril had never thought of that. “Don’t the natives resent us?” he asked.
“Some do, some don’t. They are terribly disunited. Many have become our allies. There are natives who will befriend us and turn against their own people if they find some personal profit in it. Bengal has become a big market-place for us—full of new towns called English Bazaar, this Bazaar, that Bazaar . . . It is the economy of the Bazaar and Dastak which is the order of the day, and we have the upper hand thanks to men like Clive and Hastings.”
Peter proceeded to tell him about the dastak system and the network of Marwaris who worked as middlemen for the English. Cyril was bewildered and couldn’t understand a thing.
Peter Jackson said to him, “Look, I need an intelligent and highly educated fellow like you as a partner.”
“Virgil and Horace won’t be of much help in your dastak business, whatever it is,” Cyril responded, smiling.
“Listen, there is no money in poetry and everybody cannot become an eminent lawyer—you’ll have to slog and slog for years in dingy chambers before you get anywhere.”
Eventually, Mr. Jackson succeeded in persuading Cyril to come out to India with him. Law had turned out to be a terribly boring subject anyway. His new friend took him to see another friend who was a Director in the East India Company.
The Director was impressed. The following week Cyril received a letter of appointment as a Factor of the Hon’ble John Company. Came the day when Cyril Ashley bought his passage on board a gallant Indiaman and set sail from Tilbury.
When the white cliffs of Dover began to disappear over the horizon, he suddenly realised with a pang that England was left behind. He bade farewell to this other Eden where Cowper, Pope and Gray had lived and sung, and where Gainsborough and Reynolds had painted. The twilit landscapes of Turner, the primroses in country lanes, the sound of village church bells and the notes of chamber music rising from stately Georgian houses were all obliterated by time and distance.
This demi-paradise had never enjoyed such prosperity before. Palaces were being built, wealth was pouring in from Canada and Bengal and South America. New fashions were coming into vogue. The poor had become rich; the rich were richer. Everywhere there was only one thought in the minds of men—money, money, money. Cyril Ashley who had been a devotee of the Muse, was also setting out in pursuit of Mammon. The penniless scholar was going to shake the proverbial pagoda1 tree and gold coins would come showering down. Or he might be killed fighting some tribal chief, only to be buried in a nameless grave in a jungle.
He shuddered when he thought of the possibility. What did the future hold for each one of his fellow voyagers? Merchants, members of the Calcutta Council, the Chief Justice of Madras, a bunch of plain, unmarried girls of noble families who were travelling with their chaperones in the hope of finding good husbands in India? At dinner table the Captain narrated anecdotes of the wars with Hyder Ali. The English traders of Patna and Dacca were generally busy talking shop among themselves.
The boat entered the Bay of Biscay, and everyone discussed the French Revolution. ‘Old India Hands’ told Cyril all about the affairs of Oudh, Mysore and Arcot—all very unfamiliar names. But in no time he became quite well-versed in the history of the last three hundred years. He saw his first black people in coastal Africa. Renaissance paintings often depicted little black slaves standing in a corner. All Negroes were slaves, all Turks were ferocious. All Arabs were boorish. It takes all sorts to make the world.
Land, ahoy! The Colaba lighthouse was sighted.
Bombay!
India!
A century-and-a-half ago the customs officers of the Moghul government used to be nasty and arrogant to incoming Europeans at the port of Surat. But times had changed—now the East India Company’s flag fluttered proudly on the pier. Passengers came down whistling, in high spirits, and were immediately surrounded by a throng of little black men who started carrying the firangi’s heavy cabin trunks on their heads. Jackson was a well-connected person. He hired a carriage and told the hammals: “Presidency Magistrate’s bungalow, Malabar Hill.”
There were houses of rich Parsis on either side of the steep road. Strong-bodied Maratha women clad in purple saris walked gracefully on the sand, hawking coconuts. Malabar Hill was covered with bright tropical flowers. Rose-creepers bloomed over the red-tiled, wooden, double-storeyed bungalows of wealthy Englishmen. It had just stopped raining. The host came out to the porch to welcome them.
Raindrops fell from banana and coconut leaves while they had their tea, imported from China, in the pleasant veranda. In the course of conversation the host said, “Some Eurasian females are very pretty indeed, but never commit the folly of marrying a black girl unless she be high born. You can take them as concubines. Some English army officers have married Moor women of rank, but everybody cannot be so lucky.”
In the evenings they went out for long drives. There were vast tracts of green from Apollo Bunder to the Fort and Churchgate. Little pools of limpid water sparkled amidst clusters of coconut-palms.
The Presidency Magistrate introduced Cyril to two Parsi brothers who owned a ship-building company and spoke fluent English. The Parsis accompanied him to Surat to see the Factory. “This city used to be more prosperous than London according to visiting firangis,” a Gujarati bania told him, “Shivaji Maratha sacked it twice.”
They passed by an exquisite white mosque which Cyril’s host, an English Factor, referred to as the Moormen’s church. Then he saw a bunch of doe-eyed Gujarati women ambling along with sparkling pitchers on their heads. They were an enchanting sight.
Cyril Ashley approved of the women of India.
He returned to Bombay and waited for the next ship which was to take him to Madras. He was travelling alone, Peter Jackson would join him later in Calcutta. White domes of mosques and glittering pinnacles of temples peeped out of coconut groves surrounding the villages of Moplah Muslims, Nairs and Brahmins. They passed the Portuguese colony of Goa, then the ship cruised along the Coromandel coast. A bunch of noisy Frogs got on board at Pondicherry. They told Cyril gleefully that Tipoo Saheb had not only become a member of the Jacobin Club, he had even sent a donation to the American revolutionaries. “Il est certainment le premier roi moderne de l’Inde.”
Cyril, who knew his Voltaire and Rousseau, was interested. but his fellow Britons on board were not amused. The Indiaman cast anchor in the port of Madras from where it was to set sail a week later. Cyril came ashore and took a room in a hotel in White Town. Then he saw the palace of Walajah, the Nawab of Arcot, and St.Thomas’ Church. On the second day he lost his way and found himself in the Eurasian Town. He walked down the lane and noticed a tavern called “The Chinese Lantern”. A young girl stood on its steps. She was surprisingly beautiful. She looked at him and smiled with a certain melancholy. A black woman sat on a bench, husking rice. A child came forward timidly and said to him in peculiar sounding English, “Good morning, sir, Papa says please come in and have a drink—”
Cyril had been told to avoid meeting the half-castes. He thanked the child awkwardly, and walked on. After some time he saw the winsome Eurasian wench coming out of the house. She walked briskly ahead of him, turned round and flashed her sad smile again. She had eyes as large, dark and lustrous as the eyes of the Gujarati and Malabari women he had seen. The girl was much too attractive to be ignored. He hurried on and overtook her.
“Whither are you going, pretty fair maid?”
He took off his hat with a flourish and recited the first line of a Cornish folk song. The gambit was successful. The girl halted and laughed. Cyril had heard this song in a count
ry fair back home. Right now, the setting was also rustic, though tropical, and the maid was not fair but swarthy.
“I’m going to the well, sweet sir,” she said.
“Shall I go with thee pretty, fair maid?”
“Do if you will, sweet sir,” she said.
Instead, she asked, “Coming from London, sir?”
“How did you guess?”
“Some sailors came to my father’s tavern last evening.”
“Ah, indeed. We are on our way to Calcutta. Ever been there?”
“No, sir. We belong to Madras. My grandpa, he was an Englishman. He came ashore, like you, and never went back. He used to say he had come to India looking for the pagoda tree. Didn’t find it—he was unlucky. Then he married a Tamil Christian woman and opened an ale-house,” she spoke simply.
The story of Maria’s grandfather hit him hard. He could be just as unfortunate.
“Let’s sit down here, the sun is unbearable.” He went over to a bench near the cathedral gate. She hesitated a little, adjusting her black lace scarf over her head, and sat down obediently. The rosary dangled from her strong dark wrist. He stood before her with great dignity and poise as behoved a true Englishman. The girl looked up at him, waiting for him to speak again. He sat down and made small talk.
Suddenly something happened to Cyril’s otherwise normally functioning brain. It must have been the scorching sun (as he thought in later years). Without realising what he was saying, he blurted out: “I think you are the most exquisite creature in the world. You must come with me to Calcutta.”
“Oh, but sir, it is not possible.”
“Pray, why not?”
“My father, he will kill me. You are a real Englishman, and you may never like to even look at me after today. A lot of travellers like you pass through Madras,” she said pensively and plucked a leaf of the tall grass surrounding the bench.
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