The Weary Generations (30 page)

‘We are starving now, can't you see?'

‘Cut off your thumb then, go on.'

‘I will,' the peasant said. The woman's screams shook the mud walls of the houses. ‘I will cut it here, in front of you,' the old peasant repeated.

‘Don't keep barking about it, do it,' the man taunted him.

The old man started trembling with the dumb rage of the powerless. All of a sudden, he turned around. He picked up a cleaver from inside the door of his house, placed his hand on the door frame and, before anyone could stop him, raised the cleaver above his head and with one precise stroke separated his thumb from the hand at the knuckle. He raised his thumbless hand, which was emitting a small fountain of blood, to the man on the horse and attempted to say something, but the words failed to come out of his twisted face, which opened and shut several times as if gasping for air. The peasant's old wife came flying out of the door, screaming, and fell on her husband. She gripped the little stump of the cut thumb and pulled it into her open mouth. Closing her mouth tightly around it, she began to suck it, vigorously swallowing the shooting blood. With a piercing cry from the depths of his chest, the old peasant finally spoke, addressing not the man on the horse but his three sons who stood supporting their father's body.

‘Hear, my sons. Claim a thumb for a thumb, every one of you.'

The horseman who had jumped down remounted, dragging the munshi up behind him. Without another word, they galloped away.

The news that the peasants of a village had refused to pay the owner's share and that his men were afraid to go back and demand it quickly spread, reaching Roshan Mahal. That Roshan Agha's son-in-law, the virtual head of Roshan Pur, was backing the peasants made matters palpably worse. Roshan Agha, although he had close friends who were at the forefront of the independence movement, was of necessity loyal to the interests of his class. And to defy the Landlords' Law was to strike a blow at its very heart. It was also on this occasion that Azra, who had been spending more and more time in Delhi in Naim's absence from the village and was coming under increasing silent pressure from her disapproving family, had her first argument with Naim.

‘Why don't you distribute your land before inciting others?'

‘It's not mine,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The land that I was supposed to look after for a time is your father's. This house is yours.'

‘You have your own land, haven't you?'

‘Just enough for our family.'

Azra sulked for a few days. She still loved her husband, and whenever he returned to Roshan Pur she came back. Yet she kept continually arguing that the British government would crush any physical uprising as they had shown, but that they could be more effectively pressurized by events that got publicity in the world. To this Naim replied that for ‘publicity' you need the participation of large numbers of people, and for that you need first of all to get them out. An occasion arose, however, that excited Azra's interest. It was the visit of the Prince of Wales to India.

All India Congress, seizing an opportunity of international significance, declared a boycott of the visit. Leaflets were distributed all over the country, asking people not only to stay away from public greetings being organized by the administration and from all the official functions in connection with the visit, but actively to demonstrate against it. The government, losing its nerve, banned the Congress Party and carried out widespread arrests.

Inside the big house in Roshan Pur, Naim and Azra lay alongside one another after a passionate hour of love, Azra lost in satiated thought and Naim having an occasional cigarette.

‘Shall we go to Delhi?' she asked.

‘It's the main venue. There will be a general strike, the city will be shut down, no point going there.'

‘There will be demonstrations, though.'

‘People will simply offer themselves for arrest.'

‘Oh no, no arrests, please. How about Calcutta? We can go to your uncle's.'

‘You know quite well he no longer lives there.'

‘Sorry. I forgot.'

‘Why do you want to go anyway?' Naim asked.

‘I want to see the prince. He is such a beautiful man.'

‘How do you know?'

‘He looks so nice in photographs.'

‘You can get yourself invited through your father to an official function and have your photo taken with him,' Naim said, with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

‘No,' Azra said after a pause. ‘It wouldn't be right. But you have contacts in Calcutta, I know.'

‘Yes, some.'

‘Let's go to Calcutta at least, please. Please, Naim, can we?'

Half asleep, Naim nodded.

‘But promise me one thing,' she said.

‘What?'

‘That you will not get yourself arrested.'

‘I will have no control over it if we go to a demonstration. Besides, it is party policy to fill the gaols.'

‘Of course you will have control if you are not at the place where they are making arrests. Please, Naim, promise me that.'

Naim smiled quietly. ‘All right. We'll see how it goes.'

Calcutta's Sadar Bazaar was gaily decorated with bunting and ceremonial arches as it was the main route through which the Prince of Wales's procession was to pass. The day had been declared a holiday in all educational institutions and government offices and, while most office workers and adult students had stayed away, young children from schools, boys and girls as well as their teachers, dressed in colourful clothes and carrying little paper Union Jacks, lined the route as far as the eye could see. Among them, strictly paced and armed with bayoneted .303 rifles, stood at attention Indian, Anglo-Indian and British soldiers. Police and army sergeants did their rounds up and down the road, keeping an eye on arrangements. On the footpaths behind these lines there were few onlookers. All the shops were shut and their signboards were turned over, showing blank metal and wooden sheets of all shapes and sizes. In this city of four million souls, all business had come to a stop.

Azra had written, in very large red letters ‘SWARAJ – FREEDOM' on an equally large piece of paper and folded it. The plan was to stick it with the help of a metal tack on to a suitably sized signboard from a shop and hold it up for the prince's party to see and then quickly withdraw into one of the side streets. They chose a spot by a shop with an easy-to-handle wooden signboard that hung, turned over, by a piece of string. Also, unknown to Naim, Azra had gone to a photographer's shop the previous day and arranged, on paying the required fee in advance, for a man with a camera to meet them. Walking up the bazaar before they chose the spot to stop, she was constantly looking around, but the cameraman was nowhere to be seen. She and Naim stood behind rows of Bengali schoolchildren, interrupted at one place by white children massed together, all of whom
were being instructed to practise waving their flags. Temporary gates, their bamboo stays completely wrapped in palm leaves and foliage, stood at regular intervals bearing big signs that read ‘WELCOME OUR BELOVED PRINCE OF WALES' and ‘LONG LIVE THE RAJ'. Occasionally, small groups of curious citizens emerged from one street and after a few minutes went into the next. The word was that the prince's procession was already on its way from Government House. As he stood there, Naim's mind went back to the time when as a child he used to pass here on his way to school. He remembered the bunch of coloured pencils he used to have in his satchel, each one a different colour of the rainbow, and an empty glass inkwell in his pocket which he had filled with butterfly wings of a hundred different colours. He used to take it out of the pocket of his short pants at night and slip it under his pillow. The inkwell stayed with him for a whole year, until one day, playing on the beach, he lost it. For a long time afterwards he didn't feel safe in his bed at night, as if he had lost a coat of armour. It surprised him to feel that after all these years the loss of the inkwell that sparkled in the sun with the colours of butterflies still grieved his heart like a lost love. He was brought back from his reverie by a voice near by. A man dressed in white, homespun-cotton kurta-pajama was loudly admonishing a few onlookers for breaking the boycott. His audience scurried back whence they came. The admonisher walked earnestly along the footpath, throwing a glance at Naim but stopping short of speaking to him upon seeing Azra with him. The movements of the police and military officers on the road quickened, indicating the imminent arrival of the prince's procession. There were ripples among the schoolchildren and their teachers, furious flag-waving and loud ‘cautions' from officers to the soldiers.

‘Where is the paper?' Naim asked.

‘Inside my blouse,' replied Azra.

At the far end of the long straight stretch of the bazaar the advance party, mostly security people on horseback, became visible. Naim turned and tried to pull up the signboard hanging below the eye-line of the soldiers. The string holding it turned out to be wound round a nail in the wall. Instead of trying to unwind the string, he gave it a couple of panicky tugs and managed to break it. As he returned to his place, he saw an open police lorry, in the back of which was sitting the man who had been telling people to go home, accompanied by two others dressed exactly as he was, all smiling. An armed soldier stood guard over them. The lorry thundered by.

‘Where is the paper?' Naim asked.

Azra gave no reply. She was looking intently towards the end of the road from where first signs of the approaching precession were beginning to appear. Soon after, the cavalcade came into view.

‘Where is it?' Naim hissed.

‘What?' asked Azra without taking her eyes from the road.

‘The paper,' Naim said fiercely.

‘Oh, here.' She fished out the folded paper from inside her blouse.

Naim snatched it from her hand, jerked it open with his right hand and tacked it on to the wooden board that he had gripped under his left arm. He handed the board to Azra, for it was she who was to hold it up as the prince's carriage passed, running a lesser risk, being a woman, of being arrested, as they had agreed. She took the board in one hand without looking and held it at knee level. Riders in ceremonial dress were now passing. There were about a hundred of them, riding four abreast, of all the religions and castes of India, wearing tasselled turbans and golden swords in their waistbands. Carrying shining spears in one hand while the other hand held the reins, they sat erect and solid on the backs of splendid beasts without a single inch of unbalanced movement this side or that as if they were mere extensions of their horses. The prince's carriage was now in clear view only a hundred yards up the road. The air crackled with the sound of horses' hoofs on tarmac and with the full-throated cries of sergeants, cautioning the soldiers standing on both sides of the road to be ready to present arms for a ‘salaami'. The noise of the schoolchildren filled the air. The whole world seemed to boom with the military band leading the procession.

‘Are you ready?' Naim asked Azra.

Azra did not answer, her eyes fixed on the prince's magnificent buggee drawn by six white horses. Her face glowing and eyes shining with extra sparkle, she appeared to be mesmerized. Just then a sign, written in electric light, was projected on to a tall gate a few yards ahead of the prince's carriage. It read, ‘Tell Your Mother We Are Unhappy'. The prince looked up, seemingly amused. The sign disappeared. The Governor of Bengal, sitting beside the prince, looked less amused. Facing the two men and with their backs to the front, sat two British women wearing large hats. They did not see the sign. A few yards along the route, the sign flashed again on top of the gate with the same words. Everyone, except the prince, looked back. The source of that light was not discovered – either then or ever. Immediately after this, out of a side street emerged a group of men, their faces blackened with coal dust, carrying long narrow tablets hung by a thread round their necks with writing on them in bright letters: ‘Tell Your
Mother We Are Hungry'. The prince did not turn round to look, but there could be no doubt that he was aware of them. The men quickly drew back into the street. From the next street, as the carriage came level with it, a small herd of cows was driven out. Slung round the cows' necks were also placards saying, ‘Tell Your Mother We Are Dry'. The royal carriage was now only a few yards from where Naim and Azra stood. ‘Hold it up,' Naim whispered to Azra. ‘Hold it up, hold it up. Azra, are you listening? Come on, hold it right up. Oh, for God's sake –'

The procession had passed. Azra did not move a limb. She stood frozen in her posture, her eyes locked upon the prince and his companions, the buggee, the two giant, resplendent guards standing on the footboards of the carriage on either side of him, still as statues. The procession now consisted of carriages, drawn by horses and even elephants belonging to the rajas and nawabs of southern India, high and low, trying to outdo each other in the flaunting of their splendour, their jewel-studded carriages and silk-dressed servants, but taking their place in the procession according to status, following in the wake of their future king. After having looked several times at Azra and the procession in turn, Naim felt paralysed too. The long line of people and animals passed. The soldiers kept standing at attention but the schoolchildren and their chaperons were starting to leave. The wooden board had slipped from Azra's hand and was lying on the footpath. She turned and looked up at Naim. Her eyes were dull and her shoulders, her back, the whole of her body had visibly sagged. She looked extremely tired and out of place. Naim put an arm round her and pulled her to himself. They started slowly walking back.

‘It's all right,' Naim said after a while.

T
HROUGHOUT THE YEARS
of his activism, Naim had been trying to instil in people a sense of their power to achieve things by a new kind of force – a force of resistance without violence. He hadn't been entirely successful in this within the national movement. At times he grew disheartened and returned to Roshan Pur to spend long periods of inactivity. But he always went back. Finally, in the middle of the monsoon season in the year 1924, he had the following experience, which drew him into a different world.