Flood of Fire (7 page)
Authors: Amitav Ghosh
They shook their heads: there was nothing. Bahram had left behind nothing but debts. Such were the circumstances that his flagship, the
Anahita
, had perforce been sold off at Hong Kong, to one Benjamin Burnham, an English businessman, for a price far below the vessel's value. Even the houses Bahram had built for his daughters would need to be sold. Fortunately she, Shireen, was provided for â she still had this apartment, in their family house; at least she would never have to worry about having a roof over her head. And her sons-in-law were both doing well; they had decided to put money into a fund that would provide her with a monthly allowance. She would have to economize of course, but still with a bit of care she would certainly be able to get by.
At this point an odd thing happened. A butterfly flitted through an open window, hovered over their heads for a bit, and then settled briefly on a framed portrait of Bahram. Shireen gasped and pulled off her veil: the portrait was one that Bahram had brought back from Canton many years before. It showed him in a dark blue choga, sitting with his knees slightly apart, his square face, with its neatly trimmed beard, looking startlingly handsome, a smile curling his lips.
Shireen had always believed that even the most trivial occurrences could be freighted with meaning; to her it seemed self-evident that when things happened in conjunction â even small things â the connections were never without significance. Now, even after the butterfly had flown away, she could not wrench her gaze from the portrait. Bahram seemed to be looking directly at her, as though he were trying to tell her something.
Shireen took a deep breath and turned to her brothers: Tell me; is there any chance at all that some part of my husband's investments may be recovered?
They glanced at each other and began to murmur in low, regretful voices, as if to apologize for quashing her hopes.
There was indeed a chance, they said, that some of the money might be recovered. Bahram was not the only foreign merchant to have his goods seized; many others, including several important
British businessmen, had surrendered their cargoes to Commissioner Lin. The authorities in London would not allow these confiscations to pass unchallenged: they were not like Indian rulers, who cared nothing for the interests of businessmen â they understood full well the importance of commerce. It was rumoured that they were already planning to send a military expedition to China, to demand reparations. If there was a war and the Chinese lost, as was likely, there was a good chance that some of Bahram's money would be returned.
But â¦
Yes? said Shireen.
But when the time arrived for the distribution of the recovered funds, there would be no one at hand to represent Bahram. There was sure to be a scramble for the funds and the other merchants would be there in person, present and ready to claim their share.
Shireen's mind cleared as she thought about this. But couldn't we send someone to represent us? she asked. What about Vico?
They shook their heads. Vico had already declined, they said. He was after all only Bahram's purser and had no standing either with the Canton Chamber of Commerce or the British government. The foreign merchants of Canton were a tight little circle, impossible for outsiders to penetrate. Bahram had himself been a member of that group, so they might well be sympathetic to his family's claims if approached by a blood relative â but unfortunately there was no one to play that part for Bahram.
Shireen knew exactly what was being implied â that things would have been different if she and Bahram had had a son to represent their interests. She had so long tormented herself with this thought that she had no patience for it now. But what about me? she said, blurting out the first words that came to mind: What if I were to go myself?
They stared at her, aghast. You?
Yes.
You? Go to China? You've never even stepped out on the street by yourself!
Well, why shouldn't I go? Shireen retorted. After all, your wives and daughters go out in public, don't they? Don't you boast to your English friends about how âadvanced' our family is and how we don't keep purdah?
Shireenbai, what are you talking about? It's true that our wives don't keep strict purdah but we have a certain standing in society. We would never allow our sisters and daughters to wander around the world on their own. Just imagine the scandal. What would people say?
Is it scandalous for a widow to want to visit her husband's grave?
At that point, they seemed to decide that she needed to be humoured and their voices softened.
You should talk to your daughters, Shireen. They'll explain the matter to you better than we could.
August 11, 1839
Canton
Yesterday I ran into Compton while walking down Thirteen Hong Street. Ah Neel! he cried. Zhong Lou-si wants to see you!
I asked why and Compton explained that Zhong Lou-si had been very impressed by his report on opium production in Bengal. On hearing of my part in it, he'd said that he wanted to
yam-chah
(drink tea) with me.
Of course I could not say no.
We agreed that I would come by Compton's print shop the next day, at the start of the Hour of the Rabbit (five in the afternoon).
I arrived a few minutes before Zhong Lou-si's sedan chair came to the door. He looked older than I remembered, stooped and frail, with his wispy white beard clinging to his chin like a tuft of cobwebs. But his eyes were undimmed with age and they twinkled brightly at me.
So, Ah Neel! I hear you've been learning to speak Cantonese?
Haih Lou-si!
Zhong Lou-si is not Cantonese himself but he has been in Guangdong so long that he understands the dialect perfectly. He was very patient with my faltering efforts to speak the tongue. I did not acquit myself too badly I
think, although I did occasionally have to seek help from Compton, in English.
It turned out that Zhong Lou-si had asked to meet with me for a special reason: he is composing a memorandum about British-ruled India â he used the word
Gangjiao
, which is the commonly used term for the Company's territories â and he wanted to ask me some questions.
Yat-dihng, yat-dihng
, said I, at which Zhong Lou-si said that rumours had reached Canton that the English were planning to send an armed fleet to China. Did I have any knowledge of this?
I realized that the question was deceptively simple and had probably been phrased to conceal the full extent of Zhong Lou-si's intelligence on the subject. I knew that I would have to be careful in choosing my words.
Among foreigners, I said, it had long been rumoured that the British would soon be sending a military expedition to China.
Haih me?
Really? Where had I heard this? From whom?
I explained that many men from my province Bengal â (
Ban-gala
is the term used here) â were employed as copyists and âwriters' by British merchants. There were some Bengali copyists even in the staff of Captain Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary, I told him. We often exchanged news amongst us, I said, and it was common knowledge that Elliot had written to the British Governor-General in Calcutta, in April this year, asking for an armed force to be assembled for an expedition to China. I told him that I had overheard Mr Coolidge and his friends talking about this recently, and they appeared to believe that the planning for the expedition had already begun, at British military headquarters in Calcutta. But nothing would be made public until authorization was received from London.
What did it mean, Zhong Lou-si asked, that the planning was being done in
Yindu
â India. Would the troops be British or Indian?
If past experience was a guide, I told him, it was likely that the force would include both English and Indian troops: this was the pattern the British had followed in all their recent overseas wars, in Burma, Java and Malaya.
This did not come as a surprise to Zhong Lou-si. He told me that as long back as the reign of the Jiajing Emperor, the British had brought shiploads of Indian sepoys â
xubo bing
he called them â to Macau. But Beijing had reacted strongly and the troops hadn't landed. That had happened thirty years ago. Ten years later, in the second year of the present Daoguang Emperor's reign, the British had come back with another contingent of Indian sepoys. This time they had briefly occupied Macau, before being forced to leave.
Then Zhong Lou-si said something that startled me: he said that at the time Chinese officials had concluded that the sepoys were slaves and the British did not trust them to fight; that was why they had left Macau without putting up much resistance.
But sepoys are not slaves! I protested. Like British soldiers, they are paid.
Are they paid the same wage as red-haired English troops?
No, I had to acknowledge. They are paid much less. About half.
Are they treated the same way? Do the Indian and British troops eat together and live together?
No, I said. They live apart and are treated differently.
And do the Indians rise to positions of command? Are there Indian officers?
No, I said. Positions of command are held only by the British.
A silence fell while Zhong Lou-si meditatively sipped his tea. Then he looked up at me and said: So the Indians fight for less pay, knowing that they will never advance to positions of influence? Is this right?
None of this could be denied.
Jauh haih lo
, I said: what you are saying is right.
But why do they fight then?
I did not know how to answer: how does one explain something that one doesn't understand oneself?
Something that no one understands? All I could say was: They fight because it's their job. Because that is how they earn money.
So they are from poor families then?
They are from farming families, I said. They come from certain places in the interior of the country. But they are not poor â many are from families of high rank and many of them own land.
This deepened Zhong Lou-si's puzzlement: Why do they risk their lives then, if not from necessity?
Look, I said, it is hard to explain, but it is because many of them are from clans â I could think of no word for âcaste' â that have always made their living by fighting. They give their loyalty to a leader and they fight for him. At one time their leaders were Indian kings, but some years ago it was the British who became the major power. Since then sepoys have been fighting for them just as they did for rajas and nawabs. For them there is no great difference.
But when they fight for the British, do they always do it sincerely, with their hearts in it?
Again I had to stop to think.
It is a hard question to answer, I said. The sepoys are good soldiers and they have helped the British conquer much of India. But at times they have also rebelled, especially when going abroad. I remember that about fifteen years ago there was a big mutiny, in Barrackpore, when a sepoy battalion was ordered to go to Burma. In general the sepoys from Bengal Presidency do not like to fight abroad. That is why the British often use sepoys from Madras for foreign campaigns.
Zhong Lou-si nodded thoughtfully, stroking his white beard. He thanked me for my help and said he hoped we would meet again soon.
Between Kesri and his sister Deeti there was a gap of eight years.
Five other children had been born to their parents in between: two had survived and three had died. Yet, even though Kesri and Deeti were the furthest apart in age, they were more like each other than any of their other siblings.
One thing they shared was the colour of their eyes, which was a light shade of grey. For Deeti this had been something of a handicap, for there were many credulous people in their village who believed that light-eyed women were endowed with uncanny powers. The feature did not have the same consequences for Kesri as it did for Deeti â in a boy, light eyes were considered merely unusual, not a disturbing oddity â but it still created a bond between them and Kesri was always quick to jump to Deeti's defence when she was taunted by other children.
Another thing they had in common was that they both grew up believing that kismat was their enemy. For Deeti this was because her astrological chart showed her to have been born under the influence of an unlucky alignment of the heavens. Kesri had a different reason: it was because he happened to be his father's oldest son.
In most families to be the first-born son was considered a blessing â and if Kesri had been a different kind of person he too might have considered himself lucky to belong to a family that followed the custom of keeping the oldest boy at home, to tend the family's fields. But Kesri was not one to be content forever in a village like Nayanpur, always running behind a plough and shouting at the oxen. From his earliest childhood he had loved to listen to the tales of his uncles, his father, his gurujis, his grandfather and all the other men of the village who had gone a-soldiering when they were true
jawans
â fighters in the prime of their youth. He never had any ambition other than to do what they had done: go off to serve as a sepoy in one part or another of Hindustan or the Deccan.
Since theirs was a land-tilling family, all the boys were taught to fight from an early age. The times were such that bands of dacoits and armed men were always on the prowl: even to go out to the fields meant carrying shields and swords as well as ploughs and scythes; how could you farm your land if you could not defend it?
Kesri and his brothers had started to wrestle when they were
very young. Not far from their village, there was a famous
akhara
â a gymnasium for the practice of various disciplines, of body and spirit. This one was attached to an ashram run by Naga sadhus, an order of ascetics who wore no clothing other than ash and were known as much for their valour in combat as for their practice of austerities. Distinctions of birth were a matter of indifference to Naga sadhus and it was, in any case, a hallowed tradition of akharas that differences of caste and sect were not recognized within their precincts: everyone who came there bathed, ate and wrestled together no matter what their circumstances in the world beyond.