River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  Gunga Din sat on the chabutara, contentedly smoking his bidi. When he finished he threw the butt away and climbed onto the coachbox. As the phaeton moved out of the gate Nirmala’s and Master Suraj Baksh’s voices rose alternately in the stillness of the evening. Teacher and disciple were repeating the phrase Aad anant, ant, nit, bhed naad ke—Everlasting are the mysteries of sound . . .

  Gulfishan stood midway between Isabella Thoburn and Karamat Hussain. Its garden had a profusion of flowers and the house’s name, in Persian, meant a spray of roses.

  From the front gate a little canal ran all along the compound wall till it reached the back garden where it joined up with the cement cubicle of the tube-well motor. Close by was a doll house made of bricks. Originally built for Tehmina, who was now an undergraduate, it had been “inherited” by Talat and survived the vandalism of the young hooligans, Kamal and Hari. Talat and Nirmala had only recently given up playing with dolls; when they played “house-house” Nirmala’s dolls came over as guests. Last time Talat hosted a “hundkulia party” the two ruffians turned up and proceeded to demolish the little chulha, scattering the miniature pots and pans. “Why have you wrecked my kitchen?” Talat asked tearfully.

  “Just for the heck of it!” Hari replied.

  Tehmina rushed out shouting, “You bullies, aren’t you ashamed of yourselves, terrorising helpless little girls?” and chased them out with a hockey stick.

  The two schoolboys ran off, laughing. Both Kamal and Hari had been thoroughly spoilt by their doting mothers and thought they owned the world. They would raid guava orchards and compensation money would promptly be sent to the owner the very next day by fond parents. One night they removed the detachable name-plates of the neighbourhood bungalows and put them on the wrong gates, another time they went “Ganjing” on camel back. Now they had joined the University and their high spirits found a legitimate channel in Inquilab, Zindabad!

  The phaeton entered the porch of Gulfishan. A servant quickly appeared and carried Talat’s tamboura inside.

  Kamal sat on the back veranda doing his homework. Begum Reza and her widowed sister-in-law squatted on the prayer takht under an arch, telling their beads. Water-pitchers covered with jasmine garlands stood in a row on their stands in a corner. Refrigerators had not arrived in most Indian homes yet.

  Tehmina passed through the corridor linking the house with the pantry and kitchen. Hussaini the cook followed her, carrying a wooden pail of ice-cream.

  It was an utterly peaceful domestic scene. Kamal was unusually quiet too, concentrating on his maths. Talat went up to him and said hesitantly, “You look very serious—what are you up to?”

  “Get lost,” he replied.

  “Let the poor boy study,” admonished her mother.

  “Yeah. And get me some ice-cream,” Kamal ordered his sibling.

  A tonga arrived in the portico. Out-of-station cousins trooped in, bag and baggage. Joyful greetings followed and soon everybody proceeded to the dining-room. Then they would sleep outside, ladies on the back chabutara, men on the front lawn, all under white mosquito nets. Surahis of cool water covered with Moradabadi katoras would be placed at each bedside. If it rained servants would materialise at once to carry the cots and bedding onto the verandas.

  Life was safe and secure, with no uncertainties.

  Relatives kept drifting in and out all the time or stayed with the family for months together. Across the back lawn stood a neat little cottage inhabited by Qadeer, the chauffeur, and his wife. The adjoining outhouses contained the cook, the bearer, the syce, gardener and maid-servants of all ages and temperaments. The service area had been screened off by a row of mulberry trees. Sometimes Ram Autar, the gardener, stuck his sickle in the trunk of a tree and looked at the sky thoughtfully or produced strange guttural noises to scare the parrots away from the mango and guava trees.

  Washermen lived outside at the back of the compound, and a betel-leaf seller’s kiosk and a temple stood at a distance. On Sunday mornings the ‘native Christian’ girls of Isabella Thoburn College visited the washermen’s houses and distributed toffees and holy pictures, and sang Methodist hymns in Urdu, set to English tunes.

  There were many houses like Gulfishan down the road. The same kind of exceedingly refined people lived in them. They all had motor cars and their daughters went to convent schools and I.T. College and their sons studied for the competitive examinations of the Imperial Covenanted Services.

  Gulfishan’s cook was called Hussaini—most cooks were called that. Washermen were known as Nathu; all bearers answered to the name of Abdul. Syces were usually Gunga Din. Night-club violinists were known as Tony, fathers had such names as Syed Taqi Reza Bahadur or Aftab Chand Raizada. (Fathers in novels as well as in real life—that is why they say that novels portray our lives. Otherwise one could write any number of fantasies, don’t you think?)

  Qadeer, the chauffeur, hailed from the eastern-most district of Mirzapur. Once he had a brainwave of buying a camera. He collected a lot of English photography magazines and pestered everyone in Gulfishan to read out the price lists. It was his secret ambition to own a camera and he had been saving up for one religiously over the years. One day he finally did it. He bought a camera for one hundred and fifty rupees complete with tripod, a backdrop and other such stuff. Husband and wife set up a little ‘studio’ in their bamboo-walled courtyard and began photographing furiously. Qadeer took countless pictures of Tehmina and Amir and Kamal and Talat and every other resident of Gulfishan, including the cat. He had a romantic bent and nobody dared disagree with his ideas. Tehmina playing the sitar against the crudely painted backdrop of a palace with full moon, peacocks, swans and fountains; Tehmina in a thoughtful mood, holding a pen; Kamal standing with his cups and trophies which he had won in college debates; Amir looking decorative with his tennis racket. Mother and Aunt Zubeida reclining on sofas; Laj and Nirmala dressed up as Radha and Krishna; Hari Shankar gravely reading a fat book.

  These post-card size pictures cost Qadeer eight annas each and were bought enthusiastically by their models at treble their cost. The couple spent all their spare time in the dark-room in their cottage. On hot summer days when everybody was fast asleep, one could hear Qadeer’s voice rise from his cottage singing the ballad of Alha-and-Udal. He sat on the threshold of his room beating time on an empty petrol tin, singing away happily. Qamrun, his wife, sat in a corner, crocheting. As soon as she spotted someone from the bungalow coming down to pay them a visit, she covered her face with her sari in case the visitor was a male, and began preparing a betel-leaf. Fair and attractive, she belonged to the same district of eastern U.P. as Nirmala’s mother. She was often invited to Water Chestnut House. Whenever Mrs. Raizada came to Gulfishan, Qamrun was immediately sent for from her cottage. Dressed in a coloured sari of coarse cotton she would gracefully ascend the terrace and her silver anklets would announce from afar that Qamrun Nissa had arrived. Then Mrs. Raizada and Qamrun would spend hours chatting happily in their Bhojpuri dialect.

  Qadeer and Qamrun were children of peasants. Before he became a chauffeur, Qadeer was an ardent Kisan Sabha worker and preached the use of the spinning wheel in his village. This was when young Jawaharlal, the Cambridge-educated son of Motilal Nehru, was bent upon uprooting the landlord-peasant system and travelled from village to village making speeches. Who knew the evils of the zamindari system better than Qadeer who had suffered under it for years?

  So, when Kamal and his comrades held elaborate discussions on the lawns of Gulfishan, Qadeer hovered around on the pretext of fixing the table-fan or serving cold drinks, and tried to understand these learned arguments. His father had been beaten to death by the zamindar’s men, when he failed to pay the land revenue permanently fixed by Lord Cornwallis a hundred and fifty years ago. The rest of the family had been ejected from the land, so Qadeer had gone to Calcutta where he had become a cleaner in a motor garage and later got a job as a driver. Back in the village his family continued to starve.

&n
bsp; The Indian National Congress launched the No Tax Movement and it caught on like wildfire in the villages. The landlords were on the government’s side against the peasants and the Congress. Qadeer couldn’t understand the goings-on in big cities. Kamal and his friends maintained that the real reason for people’s restlessness and disintegration was economic. The government gave it a Hindu-Muslim twist so that the masses could be diverted from the root cause. Qadeer understood.

  Qamrun came to the bungalow after lunch, carrying her little son on her waist, and joined the long and langorous gossip session in the begum’s bedroom. Talat’s mother would be lying on the divan reading an Urdu women’s magazine, Aunt Zubeida and a visiting female relative, if any, might be reclining on the prayer settee or the four-poster. The massive paandan of filigree silver would be lying open in front of them.

  “Aha, Driver’s Wife! Do sit down,” one of the ladies would greet her.

  She would salaam gracefully and squat on the carpet. One of them would offer her a betel-leaf.

  At four, Kamal, Tehmina and Talat returned from their classes and suddenly the drowsy house came to life. Tea cups jingled in the dining-room, and one was also handed to Qamrun. At about this time Qadeer brought Taqi Reza Bahadur from the Chief Court which he attended almost every day. Litigation against fellow landowners or members of their extended families was a favourite pastime with zamindars. At the sound of the car Qamrun pulled the sari over her face, picked up her sleeping son and ambled back to her cottage.

  Apart from Mrs. Raizada, Qamrun had another dear friend in Ram Daiya, the gardener’s little wife. Ram Daiya was not blasé like the city-bred maid-servants of Gulfishan. She didn’t sing filmi songs like Talat’s ayah Susan did, she was of the Mali caste and also belonged to Qamrun’s part of the province. Like Qamrun, she had been married at the age of twelve and her husband, Ram Autar the gardener, was a full twenty years older than her. When he brought her from his village she had alighted from the ekka wrapped in a red Japanese-silk sari and weeping copiously; she was taken into the bungalow and presented before the ladies in order to bow low and say bandagi. Later, Qamrun had gone to the outhouses and begun talking to her in Purbi to put her at ease.

  Gunga Din, the coachman, was a middle-aged widower. He loved his victoria and looked down upon Qadeer’s silver-grey Chevrolet. His was one of the few surviving victorias in Lucknow, the last of the old leisurely order. Gunga Din suddenly acquired enormous importance when the war broke out and petrol was rationed. Now he teased Qadeer good-humouredly: “Why don’t you drive your wonderful motorgarry now, Mister? Look at me—I don’t bother about the German-wallah. No Hitler-Phitler can affect my Typhoon.”

  33. Warren Hastings Bahadur’s Haveli

  A few days before the seventh standard annual examination Talat came down with double pneumonia. She was heartbroken at the thought of losing a year, but during her convalescence she leaned against the bolster and queened it over everyone. Kamal procured a rickety film projector and clips of ancient silent movies from somewhere for her amusement. Shadows of dead years flickered on the screen, but Jean Harlow-Charlie Chaplin-Zubeida-Sulochana failed to entertain her. Hari Shankar was a clown and tried out his mimicry, but she was not amused.

  One morning Hari jumped in through the French windows of the morning room and spoke in the manner of the European Ward nurses of King George’s Medical College.

  “And how are we today?”

  “Bad,” Talat sniffed.

  “Tut, tut.”

  “Hari, why are you grinning like a Cheshire cat?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Instead of losing one year we are gaining three. We are going to Master Saheb’s School in July ’40, and appearing for Japani matric as a private candidate. And, hey presto! I.T. College in July ’41 . . .”

  Talat blinked. “Tatterwalla School on Barrow Road?” She hopped off the divan bed and danced in sheer joy. Then she stopped. “Hey, knowing you as I do, is there a catch in it?” she demanded.

  “No catch, cross my heart and hope to die,” he said like a schoolboy and jumped out of the same windows.

  Pre-war Japan flooded British India’s markets with cheap goods, including silks and georgettes. Inexpensive things were referred to as ‘Japanese’, and high school without matriculation for girls was also called ‘Japani’.

  Master Saheb was an old-world Kayasth teacher who had opened his school a year earlier in the quiet and elegant residential area of Barrow Road, Lal Bagh. As soon as Nirmala heard that Talat was soon going to join I.T. College via a short cut, she declared war on her family. Therefore, she was also withdrawn from La Martiniere School and sent off to do her Japani matric.

  In Lucknow, history is yesterday. La Martiniere College is housed in General Claude Martin’s palace, ‘Constantia’; La Martiniere Girls’ High School is still called Khurshid Manzil. King Nasiruddin Hyder’s Observatory is now a bank. These European-style buildings connect with the era when English notables received grandiose titles from latter-day monarchs in Delhi and Lucknow, who could do little else. Nawab Cornwallis Azimulshan Madarul Maham Sarkar Company Angrez Bahadur. Saiful Mulk General Martin. Embadul Daulah Afzalul Mulk John Bailey Saheb Bahadur Arsalan Jung. Ashraful Omra Lord Myra . . .

  Warren Hastings Jasarat Jung, Nawab Governor-General Bahadur of Fort William-in-Bengal was popularly known as “Hastan Bahadur, Firangi Subedar Bengal”. He was later tried in England for his misdeeds. Nawab Sade Jehan, mother of Shuja-ud Daulah and his widow, Nawab Bahu Begum, mother of Asaf-ud Daulah, were remarkable women. Nawab Bahu Begum had established a Department of Higher Studies in her palace in Fyzabad. Hastings extorted millions of rupees from Begums who had sided with Maharajah Chait Singh of Banaras against him. The ladies had summoned their zamindars and rajahs for assistance when they confronted the Governor-General. His troops persecuted the Begums’ own battalion, flogged the Urdu-beginis—women soldiers—and forced them to surrender the treasure.

  Master Saheb belonged to Nawab Bahu Begum’s Fyzabad. He heard from his elders that Hastings had interned the formidable royal ladies in this very haveli in Lucknow, so he rented this now dilapidated stately home from its present owners for his school. Master Saheb coached his flock for the matriculation examination of Banaras University, where girls could be offered Hindustani music or botany instead of mathematics. A bamboo lattice covered with a dense creeper of morning glory served as the compound wall and accorded the name, Tatterwalla School, to this delightful institution.

  On the 1st of July 1940, Talat picked up a very excited Nirmala from Singharewali Kothi and was driven by coachman Gunga Din to their new school. Master Saheb was a thin man of about forty who limped a little and was held in great esteem and affection by his pupils and their parents. His wife taught botany. Before school began the girls assembled in a big room in the gatehouse and sang Iqbal’s Sare jahan se achha Hindustan hctmara. Master Saheb stood in one corner and listened to the song with a solemn expression on his face. A sincere and staunch Congressman, he was a representative of mainstream Gandhian nationalism.

  There was yet another aspect of the new nationalist movement that was making its presence felt—some people had openly begun talking of Ancient Hindu Culture and the Glory-that-was-Islam. How was Indian culture to be defined? Was it a ruse for Hindus to enslave the Muslims? Could ‘real’ Indians only be Hindus? Were Muslims unholy intruders who should be treated as such?

  Nobody had ever asked Mirzapur’s Qamrun Nissa and Ram Daiya their opinion on these matters. The ancient Hindu-Buddhist-Jain, the intermediary Turco-Mughal-Iranian and the latter-day British features of Indian civilization were so intermingled that it was impossible to separate the warp and woof of the rich fabric. The jingoistic attempts of chauvinists to ‘purify’ this culture were creating bad blood and confusion. In Lucknow, however, communal harmony was taken for granted—it could not have been otherwise.

  Talat and Nirmala had been brought up in the hybrid Indo-British culture of the upper-middle
classes. They merged in the homely Hindustani-Oudhi atmosphere of Master Saheb’s school with the same ease with which they had mingled in the pucca English set-up of La Martiniere. Nor did Master Saheb’s Persian-Urdu culture clash with his orthodox Hindu religion. One Kayastha girl still came in a curtained tonga. On Vishwakarma, when Hindus of different castes worshipped the tools of their various trades, the Kayasthas continued to worship their qalamdans—pen-and-ink stands which had always been the tool of their profession.

  Thirteen-year-old frock-clad Talat was the youngest of thirty girls from the old families of Lucknow. Half the students were Muslim but most of them did not observe purdah, and had taken up classical music as a subject. Times were changing fast. Master Suraj Baksh taught music, Talat strummed the tamboura.

  The Urdu-Persian Maulvi Saheb was a tottering gentleman of Old Lucknow. He held the degree of Maulvi Fazil—maulvi meaning a scholar, not a priest. This maulvi was a Kashmiri pandit whose forefathers had come to Lucknow from Kashmir in the early years of the nineteenth century, attracted by the nawabs’ patronage. His community had produced many famous Urdu poets, novelists, lawyers and doctors.

  Maulvi Kaul taught the Urdu course prepared by Maulvi Mahesh Parshad, head of the Department of Urdu and Persian, Banaras Hindu University. When Maulvi Kaul fell ill Master Saheb asked Hari Shankar to teach in his place. (Hari Shankar was now doing his M.A. in Persian.) After a few days he began teaching with great solemnity and was officially known as Chhotey or Junior Maulvi Saheb. He overawed the girls with his bad temper and discipline.

  Amidst the row of ‘English’ shops on the Mall in Hazrat Ganj, an ancient gate leads to Maqbara Compound. Inside its vast quadrangle stands the mausoleum or maqbara of Amjad Ali Shah, father of Vajid Ali Shah. The Imambara had temporarily been converted into a church when General Outram conquered the city in 1857, and Lord Cannon attended divine service in its precincts. After some time it was given back to the Muslims to resume their dirge for Imam Hussain, to which now was added a silent mourning for their lost kingdom. Many Christian converts had occupied the compound while the Imambara was being used as a church and their descendants, as well as new Christian tenants, continued to live in the outhouses of the quadrangle.