‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will drink from Auntie’s milk,’ pointing to a similar mud cupola by the door of Ali’s mother’s room.
‘No,’ Ali said, ‘don’t drink our milk. Here, take the reed, come, drink from here.’
Aisha sucked up the milk from the same pinprick of a hole, almost invisible, in the fat layer. As they came out the old woman entered the house and saw them. She ran after them.
‘Stop, thieves, I am going to deal with you. Thieving robbers, stop –’
They ran as fast as they could around the woman and jumped through the open door, not stopping until they reached the old pipal tree, and on its huge roots they fell, breathless, their eyes streaming.
‘Why are you crying?’ Ali asked.
‘My feet are burning,’ Aisha whimpered.
‘Hunh!’ Ali said disdainfully. ‘Excuses.’
‘Why, you are crying too.’
‘It’s only the dung smoke in my eyes,’ Ali said manfully. ‘I never cry.’
‘Rawal never cries,’ Aisha said. ‘He is a big man.’
‘You are small,’ said Ali to her. ‘You should never speak to him. I am small, only one year bigger than you.’
They sat there talking until they knew that their mothers would be up from their afternoon sleep to protect them.
The next day, Aisha and her mother were leaving. Ali’s mother had borrowed two mares from Naim’s house to take her guests back to their village. As mother and daughter mounted the horses and said goodbye, two villagers passing on the other side of the pond called out.
‘Chaudri Naim’s auntie, may God be with you.’
They knew that the woman was really Ali’s aunt, but Naim’s name was used as a matter of pride.
‘God be with you too,’ Aisha’s mother replied.
‘Used to be some woman when she was young,’ said one villager to the other afterwards.
Aisha’s mother was riding a few yards ahead of her daughter. Ali was walking alongside Aisha’s mount. ‘I will go with you,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Aisha asked.
‘There are wolves on the way. They kill the horses and steal young girls.’
‘Nobody can catch up with this mare.’
‘Wolves run faster.’
‘Do they eat girls?’
‘No, they make them servants for their wives. I know, I once saved a young girl from the jaws of a wolf.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
As the path levelled out, Aisha’s mount quickened its step. Ali started running with it.
‘I can run,’ he said.
‘Go back,’ Aisha, a good rider, said to him. ‘It will soon be at a gallop.’
‘Never mind, I can run as fast as the horse.’
Soon, however, the mare, with Aisha digging her heels in, galloped ahead, disappearing in a cloud of dust. Ali went some way after it, then ran out of breath. He sat down on the low brick wall of a nullah bridge. It was then that he realized he had lost his shoes. He started walking back, his eyes to the ground. He found one on the way to the village but saw no sign of the other. His mother saw his fallen face as he stepped into the house and ran to clasp him to her breast.
‘What is it, my child? Tell me. Why don’t you say something? Tell me, my love, what is it?’
‘I lost my shoe,’ Ali said after a while.
‘Never mind, it was an old shoe anyway, torn in the front. I will ask your brother to buy you new shoes.’
‘I don’t want shoes from him.’
‘Don’t say that. Your brother is a good man. You should go and spend more time with him.’
By the time his mother and all the rest of the village were asleep that night, the boy had forgotten about the shoe. But he could not sleep. There was loss in his heart. For a time he cried quietly in his bed, then he went to sleep.
CHAPTER 21
THERE WERE NO trials, no names or addresses, no court proceedings. Those arrested from all over were simply sent to different gaols, in some cases to other provinces of the country. After two days in his eight-by-six-foot cell, Naim had a distinct feeling that they had been locked up and forgotten. He didn’t mind the hard floor he slept on or the brick walls pressing in on him from all four sides – he had done it in the past, although a long time ago. It was the food he couldn’t swallow. The flour with which the thick, half-cooked roti was made had grit in it, and with it went a few grains of daal boiled in water containing no salt or chilli. He ate just a bit of it and, tired as he was after the events of the day, managed to fell asleep. When he awoke he knew the night had ended from the daylight coming in through the small barred window high up in the wall.
Strangely enough, he felt a connection with the place: they had taken away, as he entered the gaol, besides his shoes, belt and handkerchief, also his left hand. When he had protested, the gaoler said, ‘It is a hard object, can be used as a weapon. It is safe with us, will be returned when you go.’ Then the gaoler had laughed. ‘If you go,’ he had said. It came as a mild shock to Naim to hear it described as a ‘hard object’ and a ‘weapon’, so used had he become to feeling it as soft and alive, as much a part of himself as his other hand. He liked to believe that in this dreadful place his left hand was, as the man had said, tucked away in a safe place. In the absence of any light or hope inside his dark cell, this was one that gave him a vague sense of belonging; while the place held his hand, he was of it. Distressed by his deprivation, he was also somewhat comforted by the thought.
In the morning, two gaol officials opened the barred iron door of the cell and dumped a sack of wheat on the floor. ‘Finish it by sundown,’ ordered one, before they left, locking the door behind them.
The wheat was to be ground up as flour in the chakki – a heavy round stone slab atop a fixed stone base with a hole in it to pour the grain into and a wooden handle to turn it. Naim had no intention of doing it. But he found that anything, anything at all with which to busy himself, even the chakki, beckoned him to itself more and more as the time dragged on in the cell which offered nothing else whatsoever to do. The grinding required both hands, one to pour the grain into the hole and the other at the same time to turn the slab by the handle. With only one hand to do both jobs, Naim’s work slowed down. In the evening he got into trouble over it with the ward overseer, a ‘lifer’ given the overseeing job for having served some years of his term with more or less good behaviour.
‘What is this?’ the ward overseer asked. ‘You have not finished half of it.’
‘I have only one hand to work with. Look.’ Naim showed him the stump of his left arm.
It had no effect on the man. ‘This is no concern of mine. You can go and push it up your mother’s behind, you son of a bitch,’ the man said flatly in a voice that showed no anger.
Naim’s blood boiled. He got up and punched the ward overseer in the face. The man staggered, supporting his back against the bars of the door. His expression did not change, nor did he retaliate. He picked up the two sacks of flour and the left-over grain, and said as he left, ‘You will get your punishment. You wait.’
Naim was surprised not so much by his own action as by the lack of reaction in the other man. The next morning two gaol officials came and questioned him.
‘Did you strike the ward overseer?’
‘Yes,’ answered Naim. ‘He abused me.’
‘What did he say?’
Naim repeated the ward overseer’s words. There was amazement on the faces of officials.
‘You struck him just for that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think this is your mother-in-law’s house, you bastard? Come out, you will draw water for this.’
Naim’s mood brightened as he felt the fresh air in his nostrils and sunlight on his face. Then he saw a round enclosure in the middle of the prison yard surrounded by tall iron bars. Inside it were six men tied to a long, horizontal wooden pole, pulling it like oxen to fetch up water from the well dug in the centre. Naim
was led in. The gaolers gave instructions to the overseer – another man with a cloth badge on his chest saying ‘CO 19’ (convict overseer) – and left.
‘I cannot do it,’ Naim said as CO 19 advanced towards him with a rope. ‘I have the use of only one hand.’
‘Are you blind too, you cripple pig?’ the man said. ‘Do you see them pulling with their hands?’
Naim’s ruse didn’t work. He could see that the men pulled as oxen do, with their backs and legs, the rope looped over their shoulders and around the chest. His punishment lasted for three days, two hours each day. Naim finally understood that these men, gaolers as well as convicts, had no response left in them for their fellow men other than foul words, which came out without arousing any emotion in them. These harsh swearwords, the only tools these men lived by, had shed their meanings. When he realized this, Naim stopped taking what they said at face value as there was nothing behind the face.
At the end of three days Naim was horrified at the thought of going back to his cell, the chakki, the small barred window in the wall near the ceiling that showed only a still square of the sky during the day until a bird crossed it and the sky moved, and a rusty iron pot in the corner to use for answering calls of nature. During the ten-minute rest period he went and sat with CO 19. The overseer had a tiny piece of broken mirror in his hand, and with its help he was plucking white hairs out of his beard. As Naim sat alongside him the CO spread out his legs toward him, so that his new brown shoes, an extreme rarity in gaol, were right in front of Naim’s face.
‘Are you in for murder?’ he asked, concentrating on the mirror to pluck out hairs with his thick fingers.
‘No,’ answered Naim.
‘For thieving?’
‘No.’
‘For what then, sisterfucker? Did you rape her with your stump?’
‘No,’ Naim said. ‘I made a speech for swaraj.’
‘What is that?’
‘Freedom.’
‘Hah, freedom. I have sixteen more years to go,’ the man said, showing his sleeve which had the year of discharge written on it in ink. ‘I will be dead when my freedom comes.’
‘Not your freedom, the country’s freedom, the freedom of Hindustan.’
‘What good is it? My mother and father will be dead before it comes. Me too.’
‘Why then are you plucking white hairs from your beard?’ said Naim, laughing.
The CO turned to Naim. ‘Listen, you motherfucking stumpy, my beard is my own matter, nothing to do with you.’
‘Look,’ Naim said to him, ‘I mean no harm. Actually, I want to ask you a favour.’
‘You want some charas? I can get you as much as you like. You see my shoes?’
‘They are very nice,’ Naim said. ‘Where did you get them?’
‘The man was in for a short while for thieving. I supplied him with opium for six months. Before he was freed, he asked me what I wanted in return. I said my only wish was to have a pair of brown shoes, which I have never had in my life. He said, “Wait for three days, shoes will be outside the drain hole by the outer wall.” A CO can go up to the wall. Same with this mirror, you see, nobody but us COs can have them. They can cut themselves and others with these, so no ordinary pig can have them, you see. Well, exactly three days it was. I had a job pulling them in through the drain hole with a stick and rope, had to go down on my belly to reach them and bruised my skull. But in the end I pulled them in.’
‘They are very nice,’ Naim said to him. ‘I asked for a favour.’
‘Say it, dumbfucker.’
‘I want to carry on pulling water.’
‘What? Don’t want to go back to chakki?’
‘No. I can do the water chukker. I am getting used to it. It is easy.’
The CO thought for a moment, fixing Naim with a stare for the first time. ‘You will be back here anyway,’ he said slowly.
‘How?’
‘That,’ he pointed with his shiny shoe to Naim’s empty sleeve. ‘You can’t do your share of chakki.’
Harnam, CO 19, was right. Every two days Naim was back from the chakki to the water chukker. These two hours left him breathless, weak and tired. But these were the two golden hours of his life when Naim could get out of the rank, dark, narrow cell and feel the wind and light seep into his pores.
The news of Naim’s internment took a long while to reach Azra, who had been staying in Roshan Mahal. The whole village knew. But neither the munshi nor anyone lower than him had the courage to inform her. Naim had tried, without success, to get word to her through warders, discharged inmates, their visitors and any others he could find. Eventually she got suspicious. Naim had never remained out of contact with her for this long, always sending a letter or a message through a servant to let her know what was going on. She made a two-day visit to Roshan Pur, heard rumours, and finally got the truth by questioning Rawal, the munshi and others servants. Although she had led a life separate from her husband for years now, the spark of her love for him had never been extinguished in her heart. At the same time, still embarrassed before her family despite Naim’s years of work, she did not want the news of Naim’s incarceration to reach them, not just yet, if she could avoid it. Using her own contacts, it took her some time to find out where Naim was. Once she knew that he was in Lucknow gaol, she decided at once to go and see him.
But first there was one of Roshan Agha’s regular parties to get through, where his friends gathered at the big house for lunch once each winter – the other annual event being a dinner in the summer – and it had become a necessary part of Azra’s life to act as the official hostess in her father’s house. A big demonstration was also planned a few days later by the Congress in Lucknow against the Simon Commission. It was an opportunity for Azra at least to watch the demonstration, if not take part in it, and go to see Naim in gaol in the same town.
It was a bright winter day in Delhi, the sun shining warmly on the green lawns of Roshan Mahal, wrapping itself around the white columns and creeping inch by inch up the veranda and the large windows and into the drawing rooms. The guests had a choice of seating – sofa chairs laid under large parasols, armchairs on the verandas and stuffed chairs and settees in the rooms – before they would all go in and sit round two long dining tables for a sumptuous lunch.
Most of the guests, attracted by the winter sun, were sitting out on the main lawn, drinking orange juice. There were few white faces on this day, although a European woman wearing dark glasses was on the lawn, taking the sun. Outside the house a long line of behlis and two motor cars stood along the road. Hiding her troubled face behind a practised smile, Azra was attending to the guests who had already arrived and receiving those who were just coming in, informing them of the seating arrangements and also that Roshan Agha was sitting with friends in the drawing room. The guests were handed over to the white-uniformed servants and offered drinks. They chose their places to sit, sipping drinks and fingering pistachio nuts and other dried fruit in the dishes laid on every side table.
A behli came to stop at the main gate and three men alighted. Two of them were in the traditional Marhatta dress – round white pumpkin turbans and long white coats – and the third, a thin-faced tall man with pale skin wearing gold-rimmed glasses, in dark Western clothes. After exchanging a few formal words with Azra, the three men went straight to the drawing room, nodding but not stopping to greet acquaintances sitting on the lawn and verandas. Roshan Agha got up from his high-backed chair, received them warmly and sat them near him. The vigorous conversation that had been going at the time and had stopped for formal greetings started up again. Roshan Agha’s company in the room included large and medium landowners – Dr Ambedkar, who had estates in Oudh, Raja Sahib of Karam Abad, and others including an Englishman, while the two Marhattas were connected with the Servants of India Society. The talk so far had been carried along, with occasional promptings from the pipe-smoking Dr Ambedkar, chiefly by young Iqbal Singh, who, although owning an even less than mod
erate estate in Karnal district, had a respectable place in the present company owing to his intellectual status. Being a scholar, a published author and a serious political journalist, he was granted entry as honorary aristocracy. His latest topic had been literature and his hobby-horse Tagore, whom he thought second-rate.
‘He is a romantic folklorist, nothing more,’ he had been saying. ‘If Yeats hadn’t taken a fancy to his work he would not get published in English, let alone win the Nobel Prize.’
‘Come on, Iqbal,’ Dr Ambedkar said. ‘Romantic folklorist? Really!’
‘Look at his contemporaries in Europe. Far, far ahead of him. Take Rolland, the economic conscience that he possessed …’
At this moment the white woman in dark glasses, having had enough sun, had entered the room, making all the men stand up, greet and seat her in a comfortable chair. She immediately started talking in a low voice to the man sitting next to her.
‘What I don’t understand is why Indian children have their noses constantly running. I mean, the climate here being so dry, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the man said, slightly embarrassed.
‘But the French critics –’ Dr Ambedkar began to say.
He was cut short by Iqbal Singh. ‘Oh, the French critics, don’t talk about them, they are only good at starting ever-bizarre movements in literature and what-not. It is their chauvinism at work.’
‘Gothic architecture went from Asia to Africa …’ someone was saying.
The woman in dark glasses overheard this and shivered as if in horror. ‘Asia? Africa? Gothic? What nonsense!’ she said in an even lower voice to her companion, continuing a largely one-sided conversation. ‘Now their general behaviour, rude and rather primitive, could perhaps be labelled as Gothic.’ She uttered a small bark of a laugh. ‘But architecture? They have no architecture in Africa, you know.’
This bee-hum of talk was then interrupted by the arrival of the three guests from the last behli, the two Servants of India and the thin-faced pale man with spectacles. Iqbal Singh slowed down, seeing that they were now joined by one whom he considered his equal, the man with gold-rimmed glasses who was the editor of an English newspaper, and that the flow of talk would now inevitably tilt towards politics. During the brief pause that followed after everyone had retaken their seats, one of the Servants of India addressed the room without further ado.
The Weary Generations Page 25