‘What station is it?’ a soldier would ask.
‘Dharam Pasa. Where are you going?’
‘To the front.’
‘What front?’
‘War.’
‘Where?’
‘Where your mother lives. Want to send a message?’
The soldiers would laugh.
‘Will we get horses?’ Abdullah asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ Naim replied.
‘I saw horses in a carriage up the train.’
‘Probably for officers.’
‘If they told me to bring my horse, I would.’
‘Ask your wife to bring it,’ someone in the carriage said. ‘You will have two bodies to ride then.’
Abdullah ignored the taunt. He pulled a wheat ear from underneath him. ‘Look,’ he cried,’ look what I found. The bastards took away somebody’s ripe crop and threw it in here.’
Naim quietly took it from Abdullah’s hand and rubbed it between his palms. The grains separated, and he blew away the chaff from his hand. ‘The odd grain goes with the straw, doesn’t it?’
‘The odd grain? What about your whole crop, and mine? Who knows where it is? Thrown into trains like this or eaten by the pigs – who knows?’
‘Maybe we too will be eaten by pigs soon,’ a morose-faced soldier said.
‘Stop talking like that. Here,’ Naim offered the grains from his palm to Abdullah, ‘eat them.’
Abdullah reluctantly took a few, leaving the rest for Naim. The wheat kernels were tasteless although slightly bitter, but crushed between strong teeth and mixed with saliva their flesh turned into sweetish milk. The two men’s jaws were working in unison like the limbs of soldiers on parade.
‘This turns into pure blood,’ Abdullah said after a while.
Naim nodded in agreement.
Swallowing the thick liquid of raw wheat, Abdullah uttered an anonymous oath to the air. Four men playing cards laughed loudly at the very moment that the sick man emitted an agonizing cry, punching himself in the belly. He turned over and began to grind his teeth on strands of dry grass.
‘Be patient,’ the huge peasant, who had been telling a ‘true story’ to his companions, said to him. ‘The train is going to stop soon.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know. I have a feeling for these things.’
‘So you can tell whether you are going to be killed or come back alive?’
‘Stop this idle talk,’ another said. ‘Give the man some water.’
A soldier put his water-filled canteen to the sick man’s mouth, but he pulled his face away, letting out a scream of pain.
‘Hey, don’t stand there looking at him like donkeys. Stop the train.’
‘Why stop the train? You want to throw him out?’
‘Yes, yes,’ others agreed with the first man. ‘Pull the chain.’
‘The chain?’
‘Yes, the chain. I have heard there is a chain and if you pull it the train stops.’
The story-teller took the lantern off its hook and went around the carriage looking up and down the walls. Many others followed him. Completing the round, he returned to announce: ‘There is no chain.’
‘This is a goods train,’ a quiet-looking young boy said. ‘ Not for people. Goods have no use for chains, don’t you see?’
The sick man had turned over on his back and lay straight, partially calmed, his groans now reduced to soft moans. After about a half-hour the train stopped. The soldiers congregated round the open door.
‘What station is it?’ They asked the usual question.
‘Why do you ask which station it is? What does it matter?’ the sad-faced men said.
‘I would like to know,’ the questioner said.
‘You are not leaving the train here or anywhere. You’re staying on it.’
‘So?’
‘So when your station comes you’ll be taken off. That’s it.’
‘Oi, why are you blocking the door?’ the sick man’s attendant said. ‘Clear a way, let the air come in.’
No one moved from the door. Abdullah got up and poked his elbow in the ribs of a man standing in the door. ‘Get away. Let me out.’ He jumped down. Several others followed him.
It was a small rural station. A dim lantern hung by the single door of the station building. Soldiers were jumping out of all the carriages on to soft, slightly damp earth that smelled freshly of rain. The steam engine, after emitting a couple of sharp hissing puffs, had fallen silent. They knew there was to be a ‘cross’ there, and they were sauntering up and down the station. A sudden noise arose from a carriage: ‘Kill it. Kill it.’ Shortly afterwards a soldier emerged with a small snake hanging by his bayonet. Everyone examined it and expressed his opinion: ‘Very poisonous. Full of venom.’ The man walked down the station and stopped in front of a carriage.
‘Here, Bhopalis,’ he said, offering them the snake at the point of the bayonet. ‘A gift for you from Balochis.’
Someone from that carriage fetched the lantern to the door. After a moment’s silence, there was laughter from the men. The man in the carriage knocked the dead snake off the bayonet with a kick of his boot and went back in.
‘What regiment is this?’ asked Abdullah.
‘Ninth Bhopalis,’ Naim said.
They walked on. Machine-gun barrels poked out of the MG Detachment carriages in their cloth covers. Soldiers, their legs sprawled across the barrels, slept. Next came the stretcher-bearers’ carriage, where they sat talking against the stacked-up stretchers. The last ones were horse carriages. The passenger train coming from the opposite direction thundered down and passed without stopping, whistling furiously. Only a few of its carriages were lit, their ceiling fans whirring. In them the passengers were sitting up, reading newspapers or just looking out. A woman in a first-class compartment stood, bent over in the window with her head and naked shoulders out, looking at nothing. Only one fat man, who seemed to be sucking something, looked vaguely astonished to see a goods train full of soldiers in uniforms.
‘Did you see her?’ Abdullah asked afterwards.
‘Who?’
‘The woman.’
Naim quietly smiled.
‘There was a woman in the train, I swear.’
‘Yes,’ Naim said.
They were unrolling their beds. The story-teller, his hand cupping his ear in the usual village-singer fashion, was singing the legend of Heer. As the train started to roll once again, the men began gradually, in the small hours, to fall asleep.
At Karachi harbour they boarded HMS Weighmouth. Naim’s company was on the upper deck while the machine-gun detachment and half of the Bhopali Brigade were accommodated lower down. Most of the peasant soldiers quickly fell victim to seasickness and spent their days sucking on lemons and throwing up. Their first stop came at Aden. They stopped for twenty-four hours while shiploads of soldiers kept arriving from other Indian ports. Out of Aden, they became part of an armada of thirty-five ships. In the Red Sea they were joined by three battleships. Once they got over the sickness the peasants, coming from the water-starved plains, were wonderstruck at the sight of the sea. The limitless expanse of water that altered its colour with changes in the sky overhead, the seagulls that dived into it, the fishes of all colours that broke the surface and sparkled in the sun, the movement of water that went on and on until it met the horizon, and floating on this the dozens of ships, with their muffled hooters, each ship fifty times bigger than the village they had come from, ships like cities – all this excited and enthralled them and drove thoughts of war from their minds. But soon the voyage ended. At Port Said they disembarked and boarded railway trains that took them to Cairo. They encamped at Heliopolis Race Course outside the city. On one side were low yellow and grey stone hills on which goats roamed delicately under a naked sun, on the other was spread out the city, its roads traversed by bedouin driving their donkey- and camel-carts, some selling vegetables, fruit and milk. On another side could be seen
a desert landscape. On the tinder-dry boulders of the hills and the shimmering cityscape, and upon the tired and tense faces of the soldiers too, a fierce sun rose each morning in full blaze, reminding the plains Indians of home. Once again, there were parades and more parades.
The company, having fallen in a half hour before, stood at ease awaiting further orders. Eventually, Captain Maclean appeared in the middle distance on a horse. The havaldar shouted ‘Attention!’ The soldiers shouldered their rifles and put out their chests to stand erect. The captain took two rounds of the company on his splendid Arab horse.
‘I once had a horse like that one,’ Abdullah whispered. ‘It swelled up with bad wind and died.’
‘Keep quiet,’ Naim whispered back.
The captain had some difficulty controlling his mount. Finally able to calm it down, he addressed the company.
‘Men, because of certain circumstances we have to stay here a few more days. I trust that we shall soon be on the battlefront. Keep yourselves fit and fresh. And you need not worry about your folk back home, they are being well looked after by the government.’
Through bared teeth, an angry sound came from the horse as it reared up on its hind legs. The captain, trying at the same time to control the horse and slip his hand back into the white glove that he had earlier taken off, dropped the glove to the ground. The havaldar ran to pick it up and hand it to the captain.
‘Company, route-march,’ came the shout from the havaldar’s red face.
‘I would fix that animal in a day if it was under me,’ the soldier standing next to Abdullah said while Abdullah was saying to Naim, ‘It is sister-fucking hotter here than at home.’
Route-marching, they crossed a stretch of sand and came to an oasis. A farmer, tilling a tiny area of land, stopped to look at them.
‘Does it ever rain here, or is its piss quite enough for the crop?’ a soldier asked, pointing to the plough-camel that cast a crooked silhouette against a blinding background.
Seeing the soldiers laugh, the Egyptian farmer smiled broadly, showing a gap where his front teeth once were.
‘No talking,’ shouted the havaldar.
‘Swine,’ a soldier said under his breath.
They returned from the route-march at noon. Abdullah took off his sweat-soaked shirt and flung it to the ground.
‘It’s four days since I last had a bath.’
A Punjabi soldier laughed bitterly. ‘My nose is full of sand.’
‘How do you breathe?’ Abdullah asked him. ‘Through my arse,’ the soldier replied.
A Pathan soldier, spreading his shirt out to dry in the sun, said to him, ‘Come and lie down here, you fill the tent with foul smell.’
‘The officers get water to bathe every day,’ someone said.
‘They have to, because they only wipe their arses with newspaper,’ said the Pathan.
They removed their clothes down to their underwear and lay down to smoke cigarettes.
Next morning, Naim was called up before the Brigade Major. He entered the major’s office, a green canvas tent that housed the tables and other paraphernalia of the major and his havaldar clerk.
‘I see that you are educated,’ the major said to Naim.
‘I have passed senior Cambridge, sir.’
‘From where?
‘St Xavier, Calcutta.’
‘Had any machine-gun training?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, you will. I am promoting you to the rank of lance naik. Report to the section commander, MG Detachment.’
From Cairo, after six days, they were moved by train to Alexandria, where they did little else but route-march for a further few days before once again embarking on HMS Weighmouth. Finally they all had a bath aboard the ship, which was now part of a reduced armada of twenty vessels. The Bhopalis were left behind. An English battalion was travelling with them on the ship. One sunny day, amid much hooting and whistling, their ship dropped anchor at Marseille. Cigarette-smoking men and women in bright dresses welcomed the English officers by kissing them on the cheeks, the officers in turn asking them amid loud cheers, ‘We are not too late, are we?’ They were followed from the ship by the officers commanding the Indian troops: Captain Maclean, Captain Asher, Lieutenant Browning. The sun’s pale rays out of the French sky slithered down the high brows and gold hair of the white officers whose nervous chins and blue-grey eyes shone with youthful life and health. These were the young men, some of them mere boys, for whom love burned eternally in many bosoms and whose rings gleamed many a year on young women’s fingers. Within a few months they would all be dead, killed or reported missing in action.
‘Les Indiens,’ said the French to each other, pointing to the dark soldiers.
The 3rd machine-gun section was made up of two guns, ammunition, twelve mules, sixteen soldiers, Lance Naik Naim, Havaldar Thakur Das and Section Commander McGregor.
‘The water here,’ said Thakur Das, head thrown back and mouth pressed to the small round canteen, ‘is sweet. And the food,’ offering the canteen to Naim, ‘is powerful.’
‘Powerful?’ Naim asked with a smile.
‘Yes,’ said Thakur Das. ‘Makes blood in the veins. And the women.’
‘They make blood in the veins too?’
‘Ha ha ha!’
After weeks of travelling in ships and trains and living in grey, sunbaked lands, the dark, fertile earth and green vistas of France, its brightly dressed women and men who raised their hats in greeting to the troops, had brightened up the soldiers’ mood, despite the tiredness in their limbs.
‘We are going to get new ammunition tomorrow,’ Thakur Das remarked.
‘What kind of new?’ Naim asked.
‘Number seven bullet.’
‘What happens to number six?’
‘Rejected. Condum. Look,’ he took a bullet from his belt, ‘you see, this is pointed. Number seven will be flat in the front.’
‘What difference will it make?’
Thakur Das paused for thought for a long moment, revealing his ignorance, before answering, ‘Listen, this one goes like this,’ he made an arc in the air with the bullet in his hand. ‘The new one goes straight as an arrow.’
‘What’s the advantage?’
Thakur Das was beginning to show signs of irritation at Naim’s questioning. He paused again. ‘The one that makes an arc hits nearer than that which goes straight.’
Naim wasn’t convinced by the argument but kept his counsel.
‘We are also getting new bayonets,’ Thakur Das informed him.
‘What kind?’
‘Same kind, only longer.’
‘I see the advantage,’ Naim said, smiling. ‘The longer it is, the further it hits.’
‘Exactly.’ Thakur Das suddenly became serious. ‘Are you making fun of me?’
‘No, no,’ Naim said.
Thakur Das lay down, facing the wall. ‘Section commander showed me all this,’ he said authoritatively.
They route-marched for miles the next day in a light rain. Then the rain stopped, the clouds lifted and by the time they returned to camp the sun had broken through. In his tent, Naim was trying repeatedly to strike a damp match. He was annoyed with himself. For the first time he felt bored.
‘Put it out in the sun,’ Thakur Das said, offering a dry box of matches.
‘When are we going to the front?’ Naim asked.
‘Soon.’
‘Soon, soon! Have you ever heard of anyone winning a war by route-marching?’
‘Be patient,’ Thakur Das said.
Imitating the havaldar, Naim repeated, ‘Soon!’
Thakur Das turned round with a quick movement. ‘Lance Naik Naim Ahmad,’ he shouted.
‘Yes.’
‘Stand to attention.’
Reluctantly, Naim complied.
‘How many rounds in a Maxim gun’s belt?’
‘Two hundred and fifty,’ Naim answered.
‘Weight?’
‘About –
er –’
‘Weight of the gun?’ Havaldar asked sharply.
‘Sixty pounds.’
‘At ease.’
Thakur Das went and stood at the tent-opening, his back to Naim. The light of the day faded suddenly. Clouds, thought Naim, absent-mindedly looking at the broad back of the havaldar that framed the opening.
Thakur Das came back. ‘Don’t ask too many questions. When war comes, it always comes too soon. Much too soon. When, where, how, all these questions, they make a coward of you. Sit.’
The two men sat side by side and lit cigarettes. Clouds chased each other across the sky, making the watery sun appear and disappear on the tent floor.
‘Don’t you ever ask questions?’ Naim asked after a while.
‘No.’
‘You are not afraid of dying?’
After a moment, Thakur Das replied, ‘I don’t think about it.’
‘What,’ Naim said, trying to appear solemn, ‘if I kill you now?’
Thakur Das made a tiny start. He began pulling at his cigarette. ‘You will not do that,’ he said in a slightly nervous voice.
‘I am only joking,’ Naim said.
Thakur Das finished his cigarette and leaned over to toss it out of the tent. ‘You talk of going to the front,’ he said. ‘There everyone is the same, with guns and live ammunition, you can kill me as easily as I can kill you. But we don’t, because it would be murder. Murder is different. You are going on your way and you kick over an anthill without giving it a thought. That is war. But if you see a single ant crawling up your arm, you don’t kill it, it would be murder. You carefully blow it away to the ground.’
The sun was out and its rays were creeping up the tent once again. In the pale light, Thakur Das looked restless.
‘You don’t feel the pain of dying in battle?’ Naim asked.
‘I don’t know. I have seen men dying like rats. You asked me whether I was afraid of dying. I don’t know about that either. I have two children. I will have no control over my wife when I am dead. My wife has a boy from her previous husband. I don’t, I have to tell you this, look at him as my own. When I die, my children will have no father. Or another father. I am afraid of that. A young boy like you cannot understand that. You only have fear of your own death.’
The Weary Generations Page 11