River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  In the crowded reading rooms of Calcutta’s public libraries Gautam had gone through the English ladies’ diaries published in the magazines of London during ’57–58. Bookshelves were full of novels, poems and general reminiscences coming out from England. In the smoking rooms of exclusive clubs, in drawing rooms of the Civil Lines across the country, in the mess bars in cantonments, civilians and war veterans narrated their horrible experiences. They talked of the loyalty and bravery of their native subordinates, domestic servants and sepoys, and the brutality of the rebels. After Hyder Ali and Tipu, Tantiya Tope, Kunwar Singh and Danka Shah were the new bogeymen in the nurseries of Anglo-India.

  How much can one know? The nawab had quoted Sauda. How would Gautam know about the Urdu poets Sauda, Mir, Nazir and Insha and the overtly political poetry they had written after the rise of British power in India? Or Mus-hafi, who had openly said in a couplet: “How cunningly the Firangis have taken away the glory and wealth of Hindustan!” Who had heard of them in Britain? Lord Byron could sing of the Isles of Greece, stir the West and go off to fight the Terrible Turk. The Greeks were admired for their War of Independence, but 1857 was condemned as the native rebels’ mutiny.

  The nawab drew the string of his tiny purse and took out a pinch of chewing tobacco.

  Today in 1868, who knew of the anti-British native press of pre-Mutiny years? On May 31, 1857, Dehli Urdu Akhbar had challenged two English newspapers: “Where are the boastful Englishman and The Friend of India? Now they should see how the so-called stupid and incompetent natives have routed the high and mighty Britons.”

  The native Christian compositors of the English Delhi Gazette were slain while they were typesetting the news of the outbreak of insurgency at Meerut. The office was destroyed, the paper closed down. In June 1857 the leaders at Delhi drafted a democratic constitution using English terminology. General Mohammad Bakht Khan, C-in-C, was appointed “Lord Governor General Bahadur”. His High Command included General Talyar Khan, Brig. Sheo Charan Singh, General Thakur, Brig. Jeo Ram, Brig. Misra, General Sidhari Singh, Brigade Major Hira Singh and Maj. Gauri Shankar. An order was issued from the C-in-C’s office to all units to attend the general parade at 4 p.m. on August 14, 1857.

  One Urdu paper wrote: “Our soldiers should not loiter in the capital because Hazrat Dehli’s water induces lethargy. Once you take a stroll in Chandni Chowk-Jama Masjid-Dariba area and taste the laddoo and qalaqand of Ghantewallah halwai, you begin to take it easy.

  “. . . Mirza Birjees Qadr, the boy king of Oudh, and Maulvi Ahmadullah, alias Danka Shah, have ordered the Chakladar of Gorakhpur and all administrators to courteously bring the Sikh queen, mother of the deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh of Punjab, from her exile in Nepal and re-install her on the Khalsa gaddi of Lahore.” (The plan was foiled by Rana Jung Bahadur.)

  Sirajul Akhbar proudly carried the Court Circular from the Red Fort and reported the daily engagements of an active and conscientious monarch. In July ’57 the paper’s title was changed to Akhbarul Zafar—News of Victory. On July 12 it carried the following: “Some Englishmen disguised themselves as lehnga-clad females and got into a bullock cart (at Jhajjar). How are the mighty fallen! These were the people who did not even nod in acknowledgement when a native salaamed them . . .”

  The populace could not hate the firangis enough—they were arrogant and insulting. And they had tried to subvert their faith by greasing the sepoys’ cartridges with cow’s fat and pig’s lard. The sepoys were ordered to cut these with their teeth. That, of course, was what ignited the uprising but there were other reasons as well. Economic exploitation, high taxation, dethroning kings and chieftains which made for general unemployment, the missionaries’ insensitive verbal attacks on the religions of the people . . . The resentment had been building up over the years. The pent-up anger exploded in the macabre catastrophe of 1857—it all boiled down to ‘Kill the Firangi and save your Din and Dharma’. In Dehli an elderly woman rider in green fought alongside men, shouting “Din! Din!” The Urdu press reported that the king awarded her another horse.

  Maulvi Mohammed Baqar was the editor of Dehli Urdu Akhbar. Principal Taylor of Delhi College sought shelter in the editor’s house, and Maulvi Baqar made Taylor disguise himself as an Indian woman when the mob arrived to lynch him. Before he escaped through the back door, he gave Baqar a bundle of papers and said, “If Delhi is re-taken by us, give these papers to the first Briton you meet.”

  The mob got to him and beat him to death.

  During those months of independence, the dak system was excellently maintained between Delhi and Lucknow. Urdu news weeklies were being published regularly. Begum Hazrat Mahal sent her Vakil with one lakh fifty thousand rupees, a crown and jewels to his Majesty Bahadur Shah II in Delhi.

  The Urdu papers printed fairly accurate reports from all the battle-fronts, gleefully publishing the news of the murder of Englishmen and the burning of their bungalows and establishments. When the rebels’ occupation of Agra was celebrated in the Red Fort, Indian musicians also played an orchestra of westem instruments, but the euphoria and excitement did not last long.

  After a fierce battle Dehli was recaptured by the English in March, 1858.

  Maulvi Baqar kept his word and gave the bundle left by the late Taylor to an English colonel. He read Taylor’s note scribbled in Latin—Maulvi Mohammed Baqar did not try to save my life. Baqar was summarily shot by a firing squad. His son, Mohammed Husain Azad, lived to become the author of the famous history of Urdu literature entitled Aab-i-Hayat, The Waters of Life.

  Lord Canning, the first Viceroy of British India, told his Council that the indigenous press had been inciting the people to mutiny before 1857. Heavy censorship was imposed on the vernacular papers, but some poignant poems lamenting the destruction of Dehli and Lucknow were published in Urdu. The erstwhile Mughal capital was now called Dehli-i-marhoom, the late lamented Dehli. The two deposed kings, Bahadur Shah and Vajid Ali Shah, wrote heartrending ghazals and mahavis. Mirza Ghalib wrote of his deep sorrow in his letters to friends.

  But some Urdu poets began penning odes to governors and viceroys. Human nature would never change, men would continue to hate and kill one another, thought Gautam. Men at war turn into wild beasts, and in this war religion and race rule on both sides. After the English defeat at Chinhat, Lucknow, Lord Clyde had said, “It is a matter of great shame, as all Christiandom is watching us.”

  The mutiny had begun in the Bengal army, but the bhadralok and new zamindars of Bengal remained loyal to the British. Gautam Nilambar Dutt was among the eminent bhadralok of Calcutta, convinced that the uprising was quixotic. All these queens and kings had only wanted to regain their lost thrones, though for the populace they symbolised independence and became the leaders of a full-scale patriotic war.

  The solid fact remains, thought Gautam, that after 1857 the English ushered India into the modern age.

  Some of the stories of native brutality against Englishwomen and children later proved to be false or vastly exaggerated, but the savagery of the English revenge was mind-boggling. Even as an Anglophile Gautam couldn’t justify what the English did during those terrible days. They indiscriminately executed whomever they could even before the natives began slaying them; now the British authorities were saying that the Muslims went to the gallows with pride and derision and the Hindus looked indifferent, as though they were going on a long journey.

  Gautam stole a glance at his friend who sat motionless, lost in thought. It was all very well for the English press to publish cartoons of General Bakht Khan and laugh at his title of “Lord Governor-General”—but wasn’t his defeat extremely heartbreaking? For the first time Gautam felt he understood the native rebels’ feelings, and the point of view and trauma of people like Nawab Kamaluddin Ali Reza Bahadur of Neelampur.

  Dusk fell, it had become chilly. The nawab rose to his feet and said, “Khuda hafiz, Nilambar Mian. Next time we meet, I’ll tell you about the two years I spent in England and France. And I
must tell you something—the English are a fine people in their own country, they become a different species as soon as they cross the Suez.”

  He got into his buggy and drove away towards Matia Burj, where poor Vajid Ali Shah had created another miniature Lucknow in a house he had named Radha Manzil. Gautam watched the tiny carriage disappear in the gathering mist. Highland pipers passed by playing Gautam’s favourite Scottish air. Soon Calcutta would start getting ready for its famous Christmas season. Pax Britannica! How swiftly law and order had been restored in India! Peace! It is so wonderful. It also proved the new Darwinian theory of Survival of the Fittest!!!

  1 Till recent times the Rastogi banias of Lucknow managed the spendthrift Muslim elite’s financial affairs.

  2 Ghol-i-biyabani, or agiya baital, who are supposed to be invisible on dark nights except for their fiery eyes.

  28. Champabai, Chowdhrain of Lucknow, Photograph by Mashkoor-ud-Daulah, 1868

  Upon returning home from a meeting one day, Babu Gautam Nilambar Dutt was told by his gardener that Nawab Kamman Saheb had come from Matia Burj, waited a while, and just left. Dutt Babu rushed out of his gate and looked up and down the street. A very old man was walking away slowly, bent over his stick. He was dressed in spotless white muslin and wore a dainty little embroidered muslin skull-cap. His carriage stood at the street corner. Dutt Babu hastened to call him back.

  The old man halted. “Ah, Nilambar Mian! It’s good to see you,” he said, “this may be our last meeting, for all you know.”

  “Why, Nawab Saheb? As it is, we see each other very rarely, I’m so dreadfully busy all the time.” He led the august visitor back to the double-storeyed Dutt House.

  “My friend,” the nobleman entered the chintzy, wall-papered drawing-room, “I came to say goodbye. I would like to go to Kerbala again and die there, but I hate to desert my King-in-exile.”

  Gautam pulled the silk cord to ring the bell. A servant came in. “Tea,” the master said briefly. His daughter played an English music-hall tune on the piano upstairs.

  “Nawab Saheb, you will be glad to know that my son, Manoranjan, is going to Lucknow’s Canning College as lecturer in law,” Gautam informed him.

  “Masha Allah! Masha Allah! How wonderful.” They chatted for a while.

  After a pause Nawab Saheb said, “Here, I have brought something for you as a memento of lost times.” Slowly he took out a small sepia photograph from his angarkha pocket and gave it to Dutt Babu. The host put on his rimless glasses. He couldn’t recognise the face, so turned the tiny picture over and read at the back: Champa Bai, Chowdhrain. Photograph by Mashkoor-ud-Daulah, Qaiser Bagh, Lucknow, 1868.

  Gautam looked at the photo again—a dignified old lady in an elaborate gharara sat on a plush chair, smoking a water-pipe.

  Nawab Kamman noticed the immense sadness on his friend’s face. “Yes, Nilamber Mian, that’s it. This is what Time the Old Crook does to pretty women.”

  “What does ‘Chowdhrain’ mean?” Gautam asked sombrely.

  “Well, in her middle age, she became the head or chairwoman, so to speak, of the tawaifs of Lucknow. It is a very prestigious position in their society. The Chowdhrain solves their problems and settles their disputes, and her decrees and decisions are binding on them. Champa Jan also had access to the Royal Court and was received there with courtesy. Then came the catastrophe. During the Mutiny her house was looted, her wealthy patrons killed. She rented a small room and went to seed. She could not cope with the trauma of the destruction of Lucknow, so she hit the bottle.

  “The new British administration of the city ordered all courtesans to have themselves registered and obtain a license from the municipality. They were made to get themselves photographed, attach a copy each with their licenses, and display their ages and rates on their doors. This was outrageous and they found it extremely insulting, because most of them were not whores—they were highly respected performing artistes. Anyway, they had to obey orders and so they had themselves photographed in Mashkoor-ud-Daulah’s studios.

  “Poor Champa Jan was no longer in that category but she was the Chowdhrain. She got herself photographed and gave a copy to a friend of mine who was coming to Calcutta. She said, ‘Give it to Babu Saheb with my humble salaams.’

  “She could not remember your name, she was suffering from memory lapses as well. My friend gave me this picture thinking I might know who she meant.”

  Gautam looked shaken.

  “Like many courtesans, the poor woman has come to a bad end,” Nawab Kamman continued ruefully. “I am told her hangers-on and relatives fleeced her of every last penny she had. After she gave up drinking she got addicted to opium and, eventually, she became a beggar.”

  “Beggar?” Gautam repeated in horror.

  “Yes, Nilambar Mian. Some courtesans become queens, some mendicants. This is kismet.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Is she alive?” Gautam asked.

  “Oh, yes. I’m told she is seen with other beggars at Char Bagh Railway Station. Earlier, they said she used to wait anxiously for the train arriving from Calcutta and peer at every passenger’s face. Now she has become almost senile and does not do that. Well, that was the last news I had of her from my cousins from Lucknow.” He sighed deeply. “I would have brought this photograph to you earlier but I read in the papers that you were away for quite some time in England.” Nawab Kamman sighed again. “If you go to Lucknow, don’t try to seek her out—let your dreams remain intact. Now, I must take your leave. Khuda Hafiz, Nilambar Mian.”

  The host accompanied the Nawab to his carriage and returned to the parlour. He put Champa Bai’s photograph behind a shelf and looked around, not knowing what to do next. He had acquired a place in the sun, as he told Champa he would on the day he departed from Lucknow in 1823. He had become a prosperous printer and publisher. His wife belonged to one of the best Brahmo families of Calcutta and he had fine children. He was a prominent member of the anglicised bhadralok society. What more could life offer him?

  He walked around the room. The walls were lined with book-racks. Books and more books, newspaper files, law magazines and folios, reports and resolutions of various committees and conferences. Everywhere there were problems—and he had found their solutions.

  Had he found their solutions . . . ? He felt suffocated in the stuffy room. Gas lamps shone dimly in the streets. He stepped out into the garden. These are the nights when one can hear the swish of unhappy ghosts flying by, he thought. A dog slept soundly by the edge of the tank. If Gautam had believed in the transmigration of souls he would have thought the dog was someone’s condemned spirit. He went in again. From a revolving almirah he took out Toru Dutt’s Poems and read:

  Oecho whose repose I mar

  With my regrets and mournful cries

  He comes . . . I hear his voice afar,

  Or is it thine that thus replied?

  Peace! hark he calls!—in vain, in vain.

  The loved and lost, comes not again.

  He shut the book and took up a report of the Joint Select Committee of the House of Commons.

  A few weeks later he read in the newspaper that Nawab Kamaluddin Ali Reza Bahadur of Matia Burj had passed away peacefully in his sleep.

  29. Sunset and Sunrise Over the Gomti

  A ‘suited-booted natoo juntulman’ stepped out of the interclass compartment, carrying a carpet-bag. A coolie went in and picked up his luggage. A few English and white-skinned Eurasian families alighted from I and II class “Europeans Only” bogies. A row of fully covered palkis stood on the platform with their kahars, to carry purdah ladies from the zenana compartments. Eurasian guards and ticket-checkers walked to and fro on the crowded platform. The coolie led the passenger, Mr. G. N. Dutt, to the gharry-stand outside. Then he shouted, “Hey, come along, Lachhman.”

  An old man kept sitting on the coachbox of a phaeton while a youngster jumped down and salaamed the new arrival with great courtesy. “Huzoor?”

&
nbsp; Mr. G. N. Dutt took out a trans-Gomti address. His son Manoranjan Dutt, taught law at Canning College Aminabad, and lived across the river. Lachhman clambered up to the coachbox again.

  “Babuji coming from Allahabad?” The new capital of the north western province was full of such Bengali babus who worked in the government.

  “No, Calcutta.”

  “Who is it?” the old man asked Lachhman with an air of secrecy.

  “Juntulman from Calcutta,” Lachhman replied.

  “May I speak to him?”

  Lachhman turned around and said, “Huzoor, Gunga Din Chacha here begs permission to have a word with you. He is quite deaf. You’ll have to shout.”

  Gunga Din! The name rang a faint bell. But Gautam Nilambar recalled that it used to be a common name among the shagird-pesha, the servant class of Lucknow.

  “Yes, of course,” he replied. “Ask him if he ever drove a carriage in Ghaziuddin Hyder’s time.”

  Lachhman relayed the question to the old man.

  “No, sarkar, I was a mehra, a palki-bardar, at Farah Bakhsh, then in Qaiser Bagh. After the Bad-i-Bahari left the garden, autumn set in—”

  Lachhman gave the reins to his aged companion and explained, “Huzoor, old Chacha here means to say that after Sultan-i-Alam left Lucknow in his carriage called the Breeze of Spring—”

  “Yes, yes. I understand,” Mr. Dutt said a bit impatiently. He had heard all of this melodrama and poetry from his weepy friend, Nawab Kamman, till the old aristocrat died. Gautam knew that even the unlettered commoners of Lucknow spoke a literary language, but he was surprised that the bloodbath of 1857 had not changed them. Then he felt uneasy as he realised that, like Nawab Kamman, old Gunga Din was also crying silently. Gautam had been a devotee of Reason all his life. Trained by Englishmen he had come to believe that in order to survive and win, you must be strong. Look at all the East—wallowing in tears and sentimentality. He pursed his lips, as was his wont.