Flood of Fire (41 page)
Authors: Amitav Ghosh
In the past Kesri himself had always celebrated Holi enthusiastically but this year revelry was the last thing on his mind. When
the day came he went to the Sepoy Lines with the men and did his best to keep an eye on them, quaffing hardly a tumbler of bhang. But to keep track of everyone was impossible: the festivities were too exuberant and there were too many people milling about. In the evening, when the ghanti was rung for roll-call, the head-count was found to be short by six men. Further inquiries revealed that four of the missing sepoys were merely incapacitated by bhang and ganja; this meant that only two men were missing. Captain Mee sent a report to the intelligence bureau and within minutes runners were dispatched to the city's roadheads and crossing points.
Kesri doubted that the two deserters would have the wiles to effect a getaway; they were both young, not quite twenty yet. Sure enough they were apprehended while trying to board a ferry.
Kesri spoke with Captain Mee and they agreed that the deserters would be court-martialled and that the maximum penalty â death â would be sought, as a deterrent to others. But they agreed also that it was important to find out why they had deserted, and whether they had been aided by others in the battalion. To that end Captain Mee arranged for Kesri to interrogate the boys himself.
Kesri questioned the prisoners separately and received more or less the same answers from both. Their complaints were not unfamiliar: the most important of them concerned their pay. It was now common knowledge that the expedition's Indian troops would be paid less than their British counterparts and this had become a matter of great resentment for many sepoys â Kesri himself was none too pleased about it.
It had long been a grievance with sepoys that they were paid less than white soldiers. Few were persuaded by the military establishment's argument that British troopers needed better pay because they were serving in a foreign country. Now the disingenuousness of this line of reasoning stood exposed: China was foreign to sepoy and swaddy alike; why then should the expedition's white soldiers earn more than them? But other than grumble there was nothing the sepoys could do: to make a bigger issue of it was to invite a court martial.
Another item that figured large in the deserters' list of grievances was the matter of inferior weaponry: they had taken the army's refusal to upgrade their guns as a slight on their izzat as fighting
men. This in turn had bred other suspicions: they had heard that their transport vessels, like their weapons, would be of inferior quality, more likely to go down in bad weather. They had also heard that in the event of a shortage of rations their provisions would be commandeered for white soldiers â they would be made to eat potatoes and other loathsome things; or else they would be left to die of starvation and disease.
This set of grievances was not new to Kesri. But the deserters also mentioned certain rumours that took him completely by surprise: they told him that dire omens and auguries were circulating in the battalion; an astrologer was said to have predicted disaster for the expedition; a purohit had declared that the Bengal Volunteers were cursed.
It worried Kesri that nobody had told him about these rumours: this was itself a sign that they had had a powerful impact on the men.
Had someone like Pagla-baba been attached to B Company Kesri would have been kept informed of everything that was being said amongst the sepoys. Moreover, Pagla-baba would have known exactly how to counter the omens; he would have found some alternative interpretation to reassure the men. That was why regular sepoy battalions were always accompanied by a mendicant â they were indispensable in situations like these.
But of course, the Bengal Volunteers were not a regular sepoy battalion: they were a motley group, assembled for a single expedition. As a unit they would not be together long enough for a pir or sadhu to find a place in their midst.
On the other matter â of instigators, abettors and conspirators â Kesri could get nothing out of the boys. They would not tell him whether they had been encouraged to desert by other members of the company; nor would they reveal the names of other men who had talked about deserting. Even severe beatings wrung no answers from them â and their very silence suggested that this kind of talk was rife in the battalion.
One of the deserters was from a village not far from Nayanpur: he was actually distantly related to Kesri by marriage. At the end of his interrogation, after a long, hard beating, the boy evoked that relationship, falling on the floor and clutching Kesri's feet with his bloodied hands, begging for mercy.
It occurred to Kesri that had he been in the boy's place he too might well have chosen to desert. But he knew also that he would not have set about it in such a stupid, thoughtless way â and this gave his anger a perverse edge as he kicked the boy's hands aside.
Darpok aur murakh ke ka raham?
he said. What mercy do cowards and fools deserve? Whatever happens to you, you should know that you have brought it on yourself.
As expected, the boys received sentences of execution by firing squad. Captain Mee decided that the firing squad would be provided by their own company and it fell to Kesri to pick the men. He made a few inquiries and chose exactly those men who were known to be friends or associates of the boys. He also elected to command the firing squad in person: it was distasteful but it had to be done.
March 18, 1840
Honam
Until Jodu appeared at my door I had no conception of how powerfully I would be affected by our reunion. It was not as if he and I had ever been friends, after all, and nor did we share any other connections or commonalities â of family, religion or even age, since Jodu must be a good nine or ten years younger than I. It was our flight from the
Ibis
that brought us together, but even as fugitives we'd spent very little time in each other's company: no more than the few days during which we'd foraged for survival on the island of Great Nicobar, where our boat had washed up after our escape from the
Ibis
. After that we had gone our separate ways, with Ah Fatt and I heading towards Singapore, while Jodu, Kalua and Serang Ali had caught a boat to Mergui, on the Tenasserim coast.
Yet when Jodu stepped into my lodgings something dissolved within both of us and we wept as if we were brothers, reunited after a long parting. The shared secret of our escape from the
Ibis
has become a link between who we were then and who we are now; between past and present. It is a bond more powerful even than ties of family and friendship.
I had guessed that Jodu would be ravenously hungry and had arranged for Asha-didi to send over plenty of food â rice, beans, bitter melon, fish curry. Mithu had also made some luchis.
Everything was halal; I had made sure of that â and Jodu was grateful for it â¦
Seating himself cross-legged on the floor, Jodu began to shovel food into his mouth with his fingers, eating as though he were fuelling a furnace. But from time to time he would stop to catch his breath, and I took advantage of these pauses to ask how he'd found his way to Canton.
Jodu told me that on reaching Mergui, Serang Ali had decided that it was time for them to split up: his advice to Jodu and Kalua was that they travel eastwards. So Kalua had signed up as a lascar, on an opium ship that was heading towards the East Indies, and Jodu had joined the crew of a British brig â the shipmaster was none other than James Innes, whose intrigues would cause trouble for so many people, not least Seth Bahram!
I asked where Serang Ali was now, and Jodu said he didn't know; at the time of their parting he had talked of going to a port called Giang Binh, on the frontier of China.
Of course, he too wanted to know what I had been doing since we last met, so I told him how Ah Fatt had run into his father, Seth Bahram, in Singapore, and how he had given me a job, as his munshi. Jodu was amazed to hear that I was in Canton with Seth Bahram through the months of the opium crisis â it is strange to think that our paths might have crossed in the foreign enclave last year, on the day when Jodu was taken to prison.
It didn't take Jodu long to eat his fill â a starved tiger could not have been quicker to devour its food. But afterwards he showed no signs of torpor or sluggishness: to the contrary he seemed more awake and alert than ever, almost pulsating with energy. I hesitated to ask him about his time in prison, but the words came pouring out of him anyway.
The jail where he was imprisoned is in the Nanhae district of Guangdong. To my surprise, Jodu said that the conditions there were far better than those they had experienced before, when they were incarcerated in a cage, in a mandarin's yamen. They were put on display in their cage, he said, like animals. People would come to look at them and prod them with sticks, shouting all the while:
haak gwai! Gwal-Lo!
It was hell, he said,
jahannum, narak
.
Things got better after they were sentenced and sent off to the Nanhae prison. There at least they were not on show and the food was better too. In the yamen all they were ever given was rice and salt and rice-water. In the prison they were allowed a few scraps of vegetables as well. One day they were even given a bit of meat but Jodu suspected that it was pork and didn't take it. The jailers asked why and the lascars told them that it was against their religion. That was when they learnt, to their amazement, that they were not the only Muslims in the prison, as they had thought. There were many others of their faith there â most of them Chinese! Some were from the community known as âHui', which is well-represented in this region. But there were Muslims from other places too, in and around China â Turks and Uzbegs, Malays and Arabs. These prisoners welcomed the lascars into their midst as if they were brothers. There are so many of them there that special arrangements have been made for them, by the authorities. They are allowed to cook their food separately. No one makes trouble for the Muslims because they are known to stand by each other.
Soon Jodu's words began to flow with an almost uncontainable intensity: he started to pace the room as he talked, turning from time to time to fix his eyes on me.
I tell you, Neel-da, he said, only in Nanhae did I see what great good fortune it is to be born a Muslim. Wherever you go you find brothers, even in Chinese prisons! And wherever there are Muslims there is always a bond between us.
Go on, I said, tell me more â¦
I think now that it was kismat that sent me to that prison, said Jodu, and I'll tell you why. One of our fellow prisoners, a Muslim, was a man of some influence.
Sometimes, on âId and other special days, he would bribe the prison officials and they'd allow imams from the local mosques to visit us. I don't know if you are aware of this, but in Guangzhou there is a very famous mosque and maqbara â the tomb of Shaikh Abu Waqqas, an uncle of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
Here Jodu stopped to point to a tower in the distance: its tip was just visible above the city walls.
Do you see that minar there? he said. It belongs to the Huaisheng mosque, built by Shaikh Abu Waqqas himself. People say it is one of the oldest mosques in the world. Pilgrims come from far and away to visit the mosque and the maqbara, from places as distant as Cairo and Medina. Sometimes the imam of the Huaisheng mosque would come to the prison to lead our prayers. One day, during Ramazan, he brought a foreign pilgrim along to see us. The pilgrim was a shaikh from somewhere near Aden, in the Hadramaut. He was a small man, very simple in appearance; his name was Shaikh Musa al-Adani, and we learnt later that he was a merchant who had travelled everywhere â all around Arabia, Africa, Persia and Hindustan; he had visited Bombay, Madras and Delhi, and had lived for two years in Kolkata. But I knew none of this then so you can imagine how astonished I was when he spoke to me in Bangla and told me that he knew me, and that it was because of me that he had come to visit the prison! I was amazed; I said: That's impossible; I've never met you, never seen you, never heard of you. The shaikh told me then that he had seen me in his dreams; he had had a vision of a young lascar from Bengal, who was a Muslim in name but had yet to understand the truths of the Holy Book. This angered me and I cried: What do you mean? Why are you insulting me? And he smiled and asked if it wasn't true, what he had
said? This made me still angrier and I told him he knew nothing about me and had no right to speak to me like that. He smiled and told me that I would soon understand the meaning of his words.
A few days later I got into an argument with one of the prison guards. He accused me of stealing something and came to hit me. I side-stepped and the guard fell down and hurt himself. He accused me of attacking him and the matter became quite serious: I was removed to the part of the prison where condemned men are kept. The guards told me that I too would be executed and I believed them â I had no reason not to.
Here Jodu stopped pacing and put his hand on my neck.
Neel-da, he said, do you know how they execute people here? They tie them to a chair and strangle them. I saw twenty or thirty men being strangled in that way. I thought that I too would be killed like that. You can imagine my state of mind; how afraid I was. But then a strange thing happened. It was the day after Bakri-Id. One of the guards was a Muslim: he took me aside and told me that he had paid a visit to the Abu Waqqas maqbara the day before; Shaikh Musa had given him a gift for me â a tabeez that he had removed from his own arm.
Here Jodu pulled back the sleeve of his tunic to show me the amulet: it is made of brass and is fastened just above the elbow of his right arm.
I tied it on, Jodu continued, and when I went to sleep that night I had a dream in which I saw myself on the Yoom al-Qiamah â the Day of Judgement â trying to answer for myself. Suddenly I realized that the fear that had taken hold of me was not of death itself, but of what would happen afterwards, when I would have to face the moment of judgement. And then, as I lay trembling on my mat, for the first time in my life I felt the true fear of God. I understood that even though I had gone through the motions of being a Muslim, my heart had forever
been filled with filth; my whole life had been steeped in shame and sin. I had been brought up in a house of sin; a house in which my own mother was the kept woman of an unbeliever, Mr Lambert; a house in which his daughter, Paulette, and I were allowed to run around like wild creatures, with no thought of religion, or even of hiding our shame from each other.
Through all this Jodu's tone was of testimony; it was as if he had temporarily stepped outside his skin and were watching himself from afar.
In a way I was like an animal, he said. My heart was ruled by lust and I thought of nothing but fornication, and of seducing women â this is how I had brought my fate upon myself, during the voyage of the
Ibis
. All of this became clear to me, and once I had understood it, my fear of death evaporated â no, you could say I longed for death, because I felt that whatever punishment was given to me would be well-deserved.
Now Jodu's voice fell to a lower pitch.
It was then, he said, that I submitted to the teachings of the Prophet and became a true Muslim. I was ready to die â I had no more fear of it. But strangely, a few days after my conversion â for that was what it was â I was removed from the cell of the condemned men and sent back to join my lascar crewmates.
Here Jodu paused to draw a deep breath; his voice was calmer now: it was as if a fever had flowed out of him with his torrent of words. I sensed that behind the disclosures there lay a need not only to confide but also to persuade: it was important to Jodu to convey to me the significance of his transformation, the full extent of which could only be apparent to those who had known him before.
You mentioned Paulette, I said quietly. Do you know that she too is in these parts?
The blood ebbed from Jodu's face as he turned to look at me: Putli? he said. Here? What do you mean?
I told him that Paulette was at Hong Kong, with an
English plant-collector â a friend of her father's who had more or less adopted her as his daughter.
Jodu was pleased to hear about her good fortune. I'm glad for her, he said. It wasn't her fault that she was brought up as a
kaafir
â¦
This made me smile. I said: I'm a kaafir too, you know.
Jodu laughed: Yes, I know you were born a kaafir â but you don't have to remain one forever.
I could only laugh.
Kaafir I am, I said, and kaafir I will remain. But let me ask you this. The Chinese are kaafirs too, and as you know they may soon be at war with England. That is why they are outfitting this ship they want you to work on, the
Cambridge
. If you accept you may find yourself fighting for the Chinese kaafirs. Could you bring yourself to do this, my friend, with a whole heart?
Jodu's smile grew wider. But why not? he said. Both sides are kaafirs: one worships idols and animals, like you Hindus do, and the other worships flag and machines. Of the two I would far prefer to fight for the Chinese.
Really? I said. Why?
It turned out that this was something that Jodu and his fellow Muslims had talked about at length in the prison at Nanhae. The prisoners from Muslim lands â Johore, Aceh and Java â had told the others about how the Europeans had taken control of their countries and how they wanted to grab still more.
The Chinese are the only ones who can resist the firinghees, said Jodu. The shaikh has told us that in a conflict between the Chinese and the Europeans it is the duty of Muslims to take the side of the Chinese.
The smouldering intensity in Jodu's eyes removed whatever doubts I may have had of his sincerity. I told him that the Chinese were unsure of his loyalties; they thought it possible that he and his friends might go over to the British.
He laughed and said they need have no concern on this score. If they wanted he and the other lascars would be
glad to to swear an oath at the maqbara of Shaikh Abu Waqqas.