River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

They drove out on to Castle Road and turned towards Qaiser Bagh.

  “The Silver Pavilion!” Champa exdaimed to Gautam: “They are staging Inder Sabha out here. You were right!”

  They tiptoed into the Baradari. Inside, the silver floor and silver pillars shimmered fiercely in the light of Belgian chandeliers. King Vajid Ali Shah was playing Raja Inder. The Diamond Fairy sang in the Court of Inder:

  The pearls in her ears

  Against her raven hair

  Are like drops of rain

  In monsoon clouds.

  The Black Giant roared:

  I’ve brought this Prince from the land of Ind.

  Prince Gulfam sang:

  Dawn is here,

  Sing Bhairvin, love,

  Before the fantasy fades.

  Outside, illuminations twinkled on the Mermaid’s Gate and in the Chinese Garden. Now His Majesty King Vajid Ali Shah was dressed as Krishna and ‘Milkmaids’ danced the Ras Lila in the arbour. Fountains splashed perfumed water. The Autumn Fair continued in full swing.

  They came out of Qaiser Bagh and made for Chattar Manzil. A large number of cars were parked in front of this “European” club. It was Saturday night. “The Governor is here. I saw Capt. Frazer going in just now,” Kamal observed. On the last step of the staircase which descended to the river sat King Ghaziuddin Hyder, barefoot. He threw one of his shoes in the water and when it sailed out dancing, he clapped his hands to summon a page-boy. But no page-boy appeared. Only the sound of western dance music and laughter continued to stream out of the ballroom. So he bent over the water and picked up the wet shoe himself. Then he threw the other shoe into the river. Gautam respectfully offered him a cigarette.

  “No. We only smoke the ‘gurguri’. Who are you?” the King frowned.

  “Just . . . I . . .” replied Gautam confusedly.

  They left His Majesty playing with his golden shoes by the river and drove towards the Old City, beyond King George’s Medical College (where men were dying and being born incessantly). They went around town and came back to Badshah Bagh.

  The modern building of Tagore Library hovered massively over King Nasiruddin Hyder’s Canal.

  ‘Come inside,’ the building seemed to be saying. ‘Drown your sorrows in the ocean of books.’

  “Nonsense,” said Kamal, “I know better.”

  Hussainabad Clock Tower struck one in the distance. The waves rippled. An owl flew out against the moon.

  Gautam opened his left eye lazily and looked at the river. He was lying on the steps of Nirmala’s residence. Champa, Talat and Nirmala sat on the balustrade dangling their feet in the water. The boat passed. Inder Sabha’s ghazal faded in the distance.

  “Did I pass out?” Gautam asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “Yes, you did,” the cast of Inder Sabha-Quality Street replied in unison.

  42. The Sage’s Grove

  Professor Bannerjee was an economist of international repute. His bungalow on campus remained enveloped in romantic gloom. When, in the afternoons, his students dropped by they would find the old professor sitting under the seemal, deep in thought. His disciples would sit in a semicircle on the grass while he spoke to them in a soft, sad voice. Gautam Nilambar and Champa were frequent visitors.

  India was moving from crisis to crisis. As if the Bengal famine were not enough, communal politics had snowballed. One Sunday afternoon the students’ gathering was larger than usual. That day the newspapers had published Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory in detail. Kamal turned towards Champa. “I hear, Champa Baji, that you have also become a follower of Mr. Jinnah?”

  “No,” Champa replied coolly, “when I was a student in Banaras, I heard of Vir Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah. I was once told that I had no claim on Kashi because I did not put the caste mark on my forehead and my mother said her prayers to Allah in Arabic instead of worshipping Lord Shiva. And therefore it followed that my culture and my loyalties were different. I countered by asking, ‘Have you read Ghalib’s Persian Ode to Banaras?’ I was told that Persian was a foreign language. This was very heart-breaking. So I could have said to myself, why not Pakistan . . . ? But I didn’t. Frankly, I am quite confused about all this.

  “I used to sing Jana Gana Mana under the tricolour at Besant College, and I often felt that I was considered an outsider under that flag.”

  “Have you ever realised,” Professor Bannerjee mused as he watched a little sparrow sitting on a branch of the seemal, “that Hindu-Muslim riots were unknown before the arrival of the English? There used to be big, full-dress wars, but they were waged by rival political powers who happened to be either Hindu or Muslim. Of all the Mughal Emperors, Aurangzeb had the largest number of Hindu generals in his army.”

  “Sir, in my district the peasants still sing the ballad of Rana Beni Madho Singh, who died fighting for his queen and country. The queen in his case was Begum Hazrat Mahal. As a child, I remember seeing his great-grandson who would come riding on an elephant from his garhi to ours. He always spoke in dialect and was a quaint relic of the past. Special food was cooked by a Brahmin rasoia and he ate separately in our mardan-khana. All that was a part of peaceful co-existence,” Kamal said sombrely.

  “The British learnt one important lesson from the Mutiny of 1857—never allow the Indians to remain united. The result is there for us to see today,” Prof. Bannerjee continued.

  “Indians are the most excitable lot in the world. Look at the explosion today—they can go to any extreme in the name of religion,” said Champa.

  “The English also stitched alive rebel noblemen in pigskin and cowhide in 1857, as punishment,” Kamal reminded her.

  The Professor smiled. “Only a few Englishmen were guilty of that dreadful atrocity. The first thing we students did when we set foot in Britain was to have our shoes polished by a bootblack in Piccadilly. I did that, too.”

  “We can have a multinational state like the Soviet Union,” Kamal put in.

  “This is the trouble with you—all your arguments eventually lead to Moscow,” Champa retorted.

  “Champa Baji, I don’t want religion. India needs peace, and bread.”

  “Are you a very staunch nationalist, Kamal?” she asked him in awe.

  “Yes, every honest person should be a nationalist,” he answered. “How is it that all the great Muslim intellectuals and scholars and theologians of India are nationalists? Have they sold their souls to the devil? Have a heart, Champa Baji!”

  They got up and began strolling on the lawn. “For you, India only means the cities. You don’t even know that there is no communal tension in the villages,” Kamal went on. “Tell me, does His Highness the Aga Khan represent Muslim peasants and artisans? How is he different from Birla and Dalmia?”

  Talat crossed over and joined them. “Did you read today’s newspaper?” she asked her brother quietly.

  “Yes, I know, he replied, suddenly very crestfallen.

  “What happened?” asked Champa.

  “My father, Khan Bahadur Syed Taqi Reza of Neelampur has joined the Muslim League, basically because the Congress is against the landlords,” he said.

  “Kamal, if your father thinks the Muslims’ salvation lies in the establishment of Pakistan, you should have no quarrel with him at all. Don’t you believe in freedom of thought?” said Champa.

  “You cannot discard your motherland like an old coat,” Kamal shot back.

  “Come on, girls, let’s go for rehearsals,” Feroze called out from the gate. They took the Professor’s leave and made for their hostel. Gautam and Kamal watched them sadly as they moved off. How many more evenings were they going to spend here in the sage’s grove? The world was falling apart.

  43. The Forest of Arden

  The University women were staging their annual play in Lady Kailash Hostel. Feroze was the dialogue coach and chief prompter, Kamala was Anarkali, Talat, Dilaram and Enid Rae, Prince Salim. The Vice Chancellor and senior faculty members sat in the front rows, and the radio station orchestra playe
d background music. Now Nirmala was singing in Akbar’s Palace, now Enid stood at the trellised window looking out at the river, singing, ‘O happy boatman of the Ravi . . .’ Anarkali was saying, ‘The Crown Prince of India and in love with a servant-girl . . . How very funny!’ All this passed like a dream, then the curtain fell. The audience came out onto the driveway.

  Gautam said to Champa, “Are you angry with Kamal? He was quite rude to you that evening at the Professor’s place. I apologise on his behalf. Why are you so quiet?”

  “I am merely studying the various attitudes to living,” she said curtly.

  “Shall I throw some light on the subject?” Talat piped in, joining them near the banyan tree. She was still wearing Dilaram’s costume and hadn’t removed her make-up. “Tonight I was praised so lavishly for my acting that I wondered what kind of expression I should wear on my face while receiving compliments—dignity, cheerfulness . . . ? The trouble is that humility can be taken for an inferiority complex. If one is not modest, one is accused of being arrogant; if you talk to everyone pleasantly, you are flippant and flighty; if you remain cool and poised, you are either a bore or conceited.”

  Outside the warden’s bungalow the Vice Chancellor was talking to the hostel’s new warden, Dr Paranjoti. Talat continued, “Now take this good lady from down south. On hot summer days, when she goes out she wears a sola topi with her sari. She doesn’t mind if people think she’s eccentric. She knows she is not—she just finds a sola topi is better than a fancy umbrella. So, I’ve come to the conclusion, Champa Baji, that one ought to remain oneself. One should not endeavour to be what one is not. For instance, look at our dear old Gautam . . . When he speaks you feel you are in the market-place of Plato’s Athens, or that Kahlil Gibran is walking under the cedars of Lebanon . . . No, Champa Baji, just be yourself. Goodnight.” She ran back towards the hostel.

  Gautam laughed. “Isn’t this kid a magpie!” he remarked affectionately. They came out of the gate and began walking on University Road. Champa stopped at the Chand Bagh Crossing. “No, Gautam,” she said, “I am not angry with Kamal. You know I am not very popular with the Reza family and, anyway, I have no right to be angry with anyone.”

  “You want to be a martyr, too! Avoid self-pity, Champa, your problem is very personal. You are in love with Amir Reza, the rest is incidental. And your other problem is words,” he added darkly in his usual sage-like tone.

  “Words!” she repeated. “Talat was right. Here is a phoney prophet sermonising under the laburnums of Badshah Bagh.”

  “Champa Begum, shall we discuss all this over a nice hot cup of coffee at your place?” he suggested amicably.

  Champa lived in a cottage outside the I.T. College compound. They walked along the campus wall and heard the college soprano Cynthia’s voice rising out of the eucalyptus grove.

  Under the Greenwood tree

  Who loves to lie with me—

  “Here, in the Forest of Arden, they are rehearsing As You Like It,” Champa told him.

  “Ah! A few minutes ago we were in the make-believe world of Akbar and the Fort of Lahore, now we are in the Elizabethan age . . .” Gautam remarked. “And both were contemporaries!”

  “Who?” Champa asked absently while she unlocked the door of her cottage.

  “Akbar and Elizabeth.” Gautam sat down on a cane chair in the veranda and began listening to the tuneful song. Champa went in and, after a few minutes, came back with coffee. The full moon sailed in the blue waters of the college swimming pool across the guava grove.

  “It’s all so spell-binding,” said Gautam after Cynthia finished her song. “You share this place with a colleague?”

  “Yes, Sita Dixit. She is also a teacher. Her brother is Amir’s fellow officer in the navy.”

  Amir again. Gautam lit his pipe. The fact was, he realised with some alarm, that he had begun to resent Lieut. Amir Reza, R.I.N.

  “And you would go to the club and play golf if you became Begum Amir Reza?” he asked with feigned innocence.

  “Yes, why not?” she snapped back.

  He stood up, walked over to the hat-rack and looked at himself in the mirror. “Would any young woman fall so deeply in love with me? Come to think of it, I ain’t bad looking either!” he said jovially.

  “Doesn’t Shanta care for you as much?”

  Gautam was taken aback. “How do you know about her?” he growled.

  “Ah! A little bird from the western ghats told me. Uma Bhalekar, class-fellow of mine at Chand Bagh. She knew Shanta . . . you are in love with her but she is your first cousin’s wife.”

  Gautam quickly recovered from the impact of her revelation.

  “Yes. She was also a status-seeker. Very beautiful and a fairly well-known novelist in Marathi. She married my prosaic cousin who is in the Indian Civil Service and is posted in Maratha country. I saw her after her wedding and realised we should have met earlier. There is no divorce in Hindu law. She is a very liberated, bohemian sort of person and wouldn’t have minded having an affair with me, but I am solid, middle class and conservative. I don’t like women who smoke and drink and sleep around . . .” Champa had somehow compelled him to confess. “And she enjoys being an I.C.S. officer’s lady,” he finished.

  “Well. So Shanta is out. But you won’t even marry poor Nirmala! You would rather dwindle into an eccentric, jaded, phoney brahmachari-guru. You have the makings of a guru under that facade of bogus humility, the indulgent smile— Oh, Gautam, I feel so tired, and I must admit that despite your play-acting, or because of it, I find you very attractive. Ah! now you’ll think I’m not a one-man woman. Perhaps I’m not, I don’t know. Like Shanta I can’t marry you either—and both you and I have seen through each other. Your gang takes great pride in being brutally frank—Kamal calls his circle the ‘Thieves’ Kitchen’. You all think that only philistines are hypocrites, although nobody can be totally truthful except a lunatic. But now I also know that we are all exposed in the fierce light of one another’s perceptions. You’ll never find that half-light in which you can hide yourself. That fierce light is beating down upon me, as well, and you are seeing through me and I am seeing through you, that is why I know . . .”

  “. . .that I am seeing through you!” Gautam threw up his hands and burst out laughing. “O.K. I must rush home and write my column which will include a rave review of Talat’s Anarkali. And remember, vis-a-vis Amir Reza, that Salim’s fixation for Anarkali spelled disaster for both. Goodnight!”

  He jumped down from the veranda and disappeared.

  Merry laughter rose from the Forest of Arden. They had finished their rehearsal of As You Like It.

  The War in Europe was in its last phase.

  Lucknow’s fashionable shopping mall, Hazrat Ganj, was full of Indian and Eurasian WAC (I) girls. High Society had become more vibrant with the presence of smart young Indian officers of His Majesty’s armed forces. Coffee houses were buzzing with ardent young men discussing the latest political situation. Tehmina was doing her law, Champa had passed her M.A. and found a teaching job. The year was 1945.

  Lieutenant Commander Amir Reza had come home on leave and went to meet Champa in her cottage near Chand Bagh. She was on her way to Tagore Library, but got off her bicycle and started walking with him. Amir said to her, conversationally, “Would you like to live in a nice, airy flat in Colaba, Bombay, as Mrs. Reza?”

  Champa blushed.

  There is a little demon inside every intelligent human being which makes them do what it likes. Was it a demon or her conscience with a capital C? She couldn’t quite decide. Whoever it was, it whispered in her ear, ‘Say no’. She had also realised that all of them, despite being great leftists, were feudal at heart. They had all thought she was a social climber. She recollected with anger how Kamal had taunted her once for having fallen for Amir because he was upper-class, and how Gautam had called her a status-seeker. It also occurred to her that she had found Gautam Nilambar more attractive, the dark, brooding type. Amir’s flas
hy halo had somehow lost its shine.

  She remained silent for a few moments and then said, “No.”

  “Then why did you lead me up the garden path?”

  “Which garden path? Sorry, my English is not very good.”

  He was astonished. “Can you honestly say you did not flirt with me on the quiet, knowing well that I was to be married to your friend Tehmina?”

  “You can’t equate ethics with impulses. It was a passing phase, mere infatuation.”

  “After all that hoo-ha about our romance, how can you be so cynical,” he fumed. They had reached the Badshah Bagh Gate. “You’ve turned out to be quite commonplace and you have no moral courage. I also hear rumours about Gautam and a rich restaurant owner called Shahid Mirza. It’s disgusting.”

  Being a man of few words he did not argue with her and this was a public place. Everybody knew him. He had been called Shahzada Gulfam of Badshah Bagh. He waited for her to say something, but she kept quiet. He uttered an emotionless goodbye, almost like a smart salute, as though she were a battleship soon to sail out to some other war zone. Then he did an equally smart about-turn and marched down purposefully towards Gulfishan. Back home he began packing furiously.

  Tehmina had just returned from the University after doing her final law paper. Hectic family conferences took place in the house because she had now finished her education. Amir Reza had still not proposed. He left in the evening.

  Everyone got into a terrible temper at Gulfishan, and Kamal and Hari Shankar avoided Tehmina. Summer vacations had begun, Champa returned to Banaras and Tehmina’s family proceeded to Nainital. Hari Shankar and Kamal went off to Mussoorie for the roller-skating championships season.

  In July the elite returned from the hills, and the doors of Gulfishan were re-opened. Trees rustled in the moisture-laden breeze. One day, Amir Reza turned up unexpectedly and went straight into his aunt’s room. “Congratulations,” he said, “Tehmina Begum has become a lawyer.”