River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  Gunga Din straightened his back and said in formal Urdu, “My lord, send me to Calcutta, kindly. On account of my King lives there.”

  Lachhman laughed. “Sir, don’t you worry about old father Gunga Din’s plea. He makes the same request to everybody who arrives at the railway station from Calcutta.”

  “Does he often cry like this?” Gautam asked the lad.

  “Sometimes. The city is full of such old fogeys. This is nothing, sir. We have these touring actors who stage Inder Sabha from village to village and the audiences shed tears, remembering Akhtar Piya. I was very small when the disaster struck so I don’t remember anything, except that when the Sahebs blew up Machhi Bhavan all Lucknow was shaken by the explosions, and I trembled like a puppy and howled and howled. Amma says that many pregnant women aborted their babies, and a lot of people died of heart failure.”

  Gautam shuddered. “Is the King alive, sir?” Lachhman asked. Gautam nodded. He was very much alive and writing doleful poetry in Matia Burj, though poor Hazrat Mahal had died in Nepal in 1869.

  The phaeton was coming out of the railway station compound when it stopped with a jerk. The coachman yelled: “Why don’t you get out of my way, you bag-of-bones?” An old woman hobbled up and stretched out her gnarled hands. Wrapped in a thin, tattered dulai she started droning mechanically—“Give us a pice for the sweet sake of Ali. May you never know any other sorrow except the sorrow for Hussain . . .” The beggar woman repeated the common form of blessing prevalent in Shia-oriented Lucknow—“May God give you no other grief except the grief for Hussain . . . One pice, only one pice.”

  Gautam Nilambar froze. The late Nawab Kamman had told him about Champa Jan who had become a beggar at the railway station and waited for passengers from Calcutta. He shivered as it struck him that this mendicant could be Champa. Was she? He adjusted his glasses and peered out. She stood on the roadside like a shadow.

  “Don’t you give her a pice, my lord,” Lachhman leaned sideways and whispered to him from the coachbox. “She’s addicted to opium and she pesters all railway passengers like this. Spends her alms on the stuff.”

  Gautam took out a fistful of Victoria coins from his purse.

  She opened her eyes very wide at the sudden sight of sparkling silver. Then she regarded the old Brown Saheb sitting in the carriage. A destitute, toothless woman had been waiting unreasonably at the railway station for an old man to come back. She did not recognise the eminent, elderly gentleman who looked much younger than his age because he was wealthy and had no personal worries. Life had treated him kindly.

  She shook her head. “I don’t need so much, just a little for my daily dose.”

  He gave her a rupee. She clenched her fist tight and whined: “My lord! May you celebrate your great-grandchildren’s weddings. I have been ruined by the Mutiny. O, you patron of the lowly . . . During the Royal regime, I rode out on my own elephant. May Allah bless you.”

  Lachhman whipped the horse and the carriage moved forward. He guffawed. “She owned an elephant! Excellent excuse some people have made out of the Mutiny. All kinds of riff-raff claim to have been people of consequence before 1858.”

  Champa stared at the rupee in the gloom of the evening. Then she sneaked into a by-lane and stopped before an opium den where addicts sat in dim corners with their heads between their knees.

  Gautam Nilambar looked back once and saw her standing under the street lamp. She was still gazing at the coin. Her hair shone like a lot of silver and her face was covered with deep furrows. The skin of her arms sagged. She wore a patched gharara and her quilted stole was full of holes.

  He leaned against the cushions and closed his eyes. Where does Beauty go after it slides off the face of a lovely woman? Does old age turn women into a different species? Why are old men venerated and women ridiculed as hags? Why didn’t I run after her and ask her to sit next to me in this carriage and take her home? Why did I leave her standing all by herself under a gas lamp? Despite his learning and wisdom and worldly experience, Gautam realised he had no satisfactory answers to these questions. He felt extremely agitated and gasped for breath. The victoria proceeded smoothly on its way to Badshah Bagh. The signboards on the new, gaslit roads bore the names of British generals who had conquered Lucknow twenty years ago.

  Singharewali Kothi or Water Chestnut House loomed on the other bank of the Gomti. Babu Manoranjan Dutt lived on the ground floor, as a tenant; the landlords, called Raizadas, lived upstairs. They were the descendants of Rai Mehtab Chand, a nobleman in the court of Nawab Saadat Ali Khan, the fourth ruler of Oudh. Nilambar Dutt’s phaeton crossed the bridge and turned towards the kutcha river-bank road. After a few minutes the carriage entered the gates of the quaint-looking mansion whose three small turrets had given it the name of the three-cornered water chestnut. Gautam had not informed his son that he was coming—he wanted to give them a surprise.

  That night, after Manoranjan Dutt and his wife and children had gone to bed, Gautam Nilambar came out of his room and watched the river. After a while he walked down the mud track. The temple of the monkey god Hanuman was visible through the arches of the bridge. Monkeys slept on the trees above. Fiery-eyed agiya betals followed him, the ghosts of his memories. He had witnessed so much. What else was there left to see? The river was flowing. Houses stood on its banks. These houses had names and there were people sleeping inside. The people had names, too. Some houses were built of stone, stones also lay scattered on the shore. Time was flowing, time was arrested in the stones. Flames rose from the burning ground. Who knows how many persons had died tonight?

  Gautam kept on walking, the cremation grounds were in front of him. Kali danced on the Burning Ghat, Kali who gathered the entire universe into herself at the end of its cycle. Only those who had annihilated desire could worship her fearlessly, or so said the red-robed priests of Kalighat.

  “All desires are burnt to ashes in the charnel field. Kali, who is beyond intellect and speech, turned the Universe into Nothingness, void into Puran. Puran which is Light and Peace . . .

  “Kali, whose dress is space, is space herself, for she is infinite. Her powers are infinite, she is higher than Maya for she created the world by becoming Maya herself.

  “In the Burning Ground she stood on the white body of Shiva. Shiva was white for he was Swaroop, and destroyed the demons of Maya and self. He didn’t move, for he was above change. Kali was the Manifestation of his change. Shiva didn’t change but was present within every change. Kali danced in the smoke of the flames. She was Durga, and Tara, and Dhumvati. The Burning Ground was the ultimate reality of life,” said the red-robed priests of Kalighat.

  Gautam had been a Brahmo for long years. He could not get rid of Kali. And nobody had answered his questions. He stood at the bridge watching the dim flames of the funeral pyres. Then he returned to Singharewali Kothi.

  30. The Bridge

  When it struck five in the morning the lady of the house got up and woke the maidservant who was asleep on a mat near the bedroom door. The lady of the house said, “Hurry up. Nirmal Bitiya’s school re-opens today, her motor lorry will be here soon.” The mehri rubbed her eyes and rose to her feet. She wound her long hair into a coil and waddled like a goose towards the tap. Now she would fill brass pails with water and place them in the bathrooms, lay out his shaving things for the master and Hari Shankar Bhaiya, and proceed to make tea. Another day had dawned.

  Birds had begun to twitter in the weedy garden. A bullockcart passed by. The milkman came along, aluminum buckets dangling from his bicycle handle. The lady of the house went into the Thakurdwara in the eastern tower. The room was airless and warm with the peculiar stuffiness of the rainy season. Lord Krishna stood in his formal stance, holding his little brass flute inside the little brass temple upon the altar.

  Singharewali Kothi, the double-storeyed mansion of the Raizadas of Ibrahimpur, had seen better days. Now it looked bare and unkempt. Several cots lay along the wall of the upper floor veranda. A large c
hina vase with a tulsi plant stood on the adjoining roof of the river-side portico. Two teen-aged girls slept soundly under the photograph of a shaven-headed, rotund high-priest of Gorakhnath.

  A young man of about nineteen was fast asleep in the third tower facing Moti Mahal. A table fan buzzed on the bedside table. All four windows of the tower were open and a pleasant breeze filled the congested room. Its built-in shelves were stacked with English, Persian and Urdu books. Urdu and English journals were scattered on the threadbare cotton duree, Penguin New Writing and art quarterlies which came out from Calcutta lay in a corner. Neckties were trailing down from the tennis rackets; socks were stuffed in a box of tennis balls. A portrait of a young and handsome Jawaharlal Nehru adorned the cornice. The walls displayed group photographs of the University Union, 1938–39, 1939–40. Then there was the youngster holding a trophy, playing Macbeth, rowing in the University Regatta. High above the mantelpiece hung a faded group photograph of the staff and students of the Law Faculty of Canning College (now called the University of Lucknow). The young man’s father was present in the back row, wearing the long coat and black round velvet cap worn by Hindu gentlemen. It was called the Babu cap. He had funny, drooping moustaches, and stood behind his teacher, the late Manoranjan Dutt, son of the well-known social reformer, G.N. Dutt of Calcutta. With his hands upon the silver top of his cane, Dutt Babu stared hard into the camera. He had also been a tenant of Singharewali Kothi. The photograph was taken in 1898 when Dutt Babu retired from his illustrious teaching job.

  Munshi Mehtab Chand, the Raizada ancestor, glowed dimly in oils in the drawing room downstairs. He sat on a gilt chair with stylised plush curtains in the background. He wore the robe of honour of the Court of Nawab-Vazir Saadat Ali Khan.

  The third tower was used as a music-room.

  This house was the centre of the universe for its inmates. From here loved ones were carried out in the form of corpses, and bridal palanquins were brought in. Festivals were celebrated, children were born, people quarrelled and made up, laughed and wept. All this happens in every household. The dwelling watches the spectacle in silence and nobody listens to its wordless story. It is forever competing with Time. Let’s see how far you can come with me, continue being my witness, says Time. The House keeps quiet. Years pass. The seasons return again and again. The House remains anchored like a brave little ship in the river of time. Often it is carried away by a strong current and is lost forever.

  Singharewali Kothi had been built by Munshi Mehtab Chand who was awarded the title of Rai and was one of the pay masters or Bakshis of the army in the government of Nawab Saadat Ali Khan. Now his great-grandson, a barrister of less than average monthly income, lived in it. The barrister had one son, Hari Shankar, and two daughters, Laj and Nirmala. He spent most of his time on Congress politics, attended mushairas and wrote learned articles on Urdu poetry. In his spare time he also visited the law courts. There was some income from the agricultural land he owned in a nearby district. The family had not prospered in modern times; still they carried their hereditary nawabi title of Raizada with a certain aplomb.

  At this moment he was sleeping under a mosquito net on the open roof of the riverside portico adjoining the back veranda. The sound of his wife’s wooden sandals woke him up. This was the only troublesome habit his dear spouse had. Early in the morning she disturbed everybody’s sleep with her numerous noisy activities of opening the almirahs, closing the pantry, walking back and forth from one room to another on her wooden sandals. Then she would enter the Thakurdwara and start reciting the holy book aloud, and that woke everyone up properly.

  Trilochan, the water-man, got ready to sweep the rooms. The beddings were folded. “Get up, Bitiya, you are going to have morning classes from today,” Jamuna Mehri, the maid servant said to the younger girl who sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. She took out a wrist-watch from under her pillow. “Golly, it’s five o’clock,” she exclaimed in an English-school accent.

  The older sister, Lajwati, turned in her bed, languidly opened her eyes and looked at the river. She was about eighteen and went to Isabella Thoburn College, which reopened later.

  Their brother Hari Shankar emerged from his tower-room, dragging his slippers dopily, and looked at the river and the bridge. The bridge connected the private world of this house and the river with the larger world outside. That other world was also his own. He stretched his arms and yawned. Then he picked up a towel from a chair and went to his bathroom, humming a Pahari Sanyal song. The younger sister, Nirmala, came out dressed in her school uniform of white blouse, navy blue tunic and red belt. Jamuna Mehri handed her a glass of milk and an apple. The La Martiniere Girls High School’s “motor lorry” honked its horn. The vehicle was mostly fully of ruddy-faced English girls. Laj appeared on the balcony. An Indian teenager popped out her curly head and shouted, “Hellow, Didi. I’ll come in the evening.”

  After the school bus left, Jamuna Mehri handed another glass of milk and two bananas to the son and heir, Hari Shankar, who drank the milk, threw away the bananas and dashed out like a runner clearing the hurdles. He hung his notebooks with a flourish on the handle of his bicycle and darted off in the direction of the University. The domes and turrets of the palatial red-stone buildings of the campus were slowly emerging from the early morning mist.

  31. Shahzada Gulfam of Badshah Bagh

  “In the evening when the sun went down behind the roseapple trees, my victoria arrived at the Moti Mahal bridge. This was the time I returned after my classes at Marris College of Hindustani Music. Then Gunga Din, the coachman, would sometimes turn around and ask, ‘Bitiya, would you like to go to Singharewali Kothi?’

  “I am narrating this story from this point on,” said Talat as she recounted her family saga to her friends of a winter evening. They sat in front of a log fire in a flat in St. John’s Wood in London. The time was 1954. “There are many ways of telling a dastan,” she said. “How shall I begin? I don’t know which characters are more important. Where did this story start? What was the climax? Who was the heroine? How should she have ended up? And who was the hero? Who is the listener of this story, and who is the narrator? My older brother, Kamal, used to say that one day he will sit down and decide about all this. But he hasn’t even been able to decide about himself. ‘Yes, I’ll go’, I would tell Gunga Din. He turned the victoria around and descended onto the kutcha road that branched off from the end of the bridge. This uneven track was grandly called Riverbank Road. It used to be very quiet. The shamshan ghat lay some distance away. The river reflected the silver palace called Moti Mahal and the golden-domed Chattar Manzil and the Imambara of Shah Najaf. The river flowed politely under the stairs of these royal buildings. Once in a while a canoe would go past in this green, liquid silence. There was a Hanuman temple under the bridge and the place was crawling with playful holy monkeys. At a little distance there stood Singharewali Kothi, so called because of its three turrets. The steps of this house also descended to the river.

  “One evening when I reached Water Chestnut House I found Laj’s wedding lehnga being stitched by her aunts. One of them asked me, ‘And when is your sister getting married?’ I got flustered because my elder sister Tehmina’s forthcoming marriage to our cousin, Amir Reza, had run into rough weather.

  “Now I pass the candle to my brother Kamal, who will tell you the story of . . .”

  “Amir Reza’s dad, Sir Zaki Reza was my father’s first cousin. Amir was an only child,” Kamal took up the narration.

  “After the First World War, a lot of Central European and White Russian refugees were floating around in India. Madame Nina, who was engaged as Amir’s governess, was one of them. She had abandoned her husband. As it happened, a few months after Madame Nina’s employment as Cousin Amir’s nanny, Lady Reza passed away. No foul play was suspected because our Fatima Chachi died of typhoid, too. Amir was brought to our house, Gulfishan, in Lucknow.

  “He was seven years old and inconsolable. Sir Zaki took him to Swi
tzerland for his schooling—our Chacha thought a total change of environment would help the child forget his mother. Not surprisingly, Madame Nina continued to work, now ostensibly as Uncle Zaki’s secretary, in Allahabad. He wouldn’t have married her anyway, though he trusted her completely. In any case, she was a Roman Catholic and could not get a divorce from her estranged Russian husband. Uncle Zaki left the house in charge of Madame whenever he went to Europe to meet his son. In the summer of 1935, while he was in Switzerland, he died of a stroke. In Allahabad, Madame Nina decamped with most of his valuables, and couldn’t be traced again.

  “In 1936, Amir Reza returned to India. He was now a stunningly handsome young man of eighteen. My parents travelled to Bombay to receive him at Ballard’s Pier. When he arrived at Gulfishan he took me and Talat in his arms and wept. He kissed Tehmina lightly on her cheeks, as relatives do in the West, and he was surprised to see her blush.

  “Anyway, all of us became very fond of him and did our best to make him feel that he was not a homeless orphan. He was a very rich orphan, indeed, because he jointly owned a great deal of common Reza property. Being the elder son of the family he was called Bhaiya Saheb—I was merely ‘Bhaiya’. Uncle Zaki had no real brothers or sisters. His house in Allahabad had long been locked up. His loyal coachman, Gunga Din, had come down to Lucknow with his victoria to work for us. When he touched his young master’s feet, Amir recoiled.

  “He was a European boy, and as days went by he felt more alienated in his Indian surroundings, but he never spoke about his uneasiness. He couldn’t understand the emphasis we placed on family relationships, and above all he simply could not accept arranged marriages. When he learnt that his late parents and mine had decided that Tehmina would marry him when they grew up, he felt too embarrassed to say no—probably because he was living with us.