The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh

  The Glass Palace

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Circle of Reason

  The Shadow Lines

  In an Antique Land

  The Calcutta Chromosome

  Dancing in Cambodia and Other Essays

  Countdown

  The Imam and the Indian

  The Hungry Tide

  Sea of Poppies

  The Glass Palace

  AMITAV GHOSH

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published by Ravi Dayal Publisher 2000

  Published in Viking by Penguin Books India and Ravi Dayal Publisher 2008

  Copyright © Amitav Ghosh 2000, 2008

  All rights reserved

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 9780670082209

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For sale in India, Bhutan and Nepal only

  Typeset in Sabon by InoSoft Systems, Noida

  Printed at Gopsons Papers Ltd, Noida

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.

  To my father’s memory

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  part one

  Mandalay

  part two

  Ratnagiri

  part three

  The Money Tree

  part four

  The Wedding

  part five

  Morningside

  part six

  The Front

  part seven

  The Glass Palace

  Author’s Note

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  pp. 16–17: adapted from W.S. Desai, Deposed King Thebaw of Burma in India, 1885–1916, Bharatiya Vidya Series, Vol. 25, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1967 (appendix VII, p. 119)

  p. 95: adapted from Patricia Herbert, The Hsaya San Rebellion (1930–1932) Reappraised, Monash Univ., Melbourne, 1982 (p. 5)

  p. 372: from Majjhima Nikaya [adapted from The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan, ed. W.T. de Bary, Vintage, New York, 1972; p. 27]

  p. 373: from Samyutta Nikaya [adapted from The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan, ed. W.T. de Bary, Vintage, New York, 1972; p. 16]

  part one

  Mandalay

  one

  There was only one person in the food-stall who knew exactly what that sound was that was rolling in across the plain, along the silver curve of the Irrawaddy, to the western wall of Mandalay’s fort. His name was Rajkumar and he was an Indian, a boy of eleven—not an authority to be relied upon.

  The noise was unfamiliar and unsettling, a distant booming followed by low, stuttering growls. At times it was like the snapping of dry twigs, sudden and unexpected. And then, abruptly, it would change to a deep rumble, shaking the food-stall and rattling its steaming pot of soup. The stall had only two benches, and they were both packed with people, sitting pressed up against each other. It was cold, the start of central Burma’s brief but chilly winter, and the sun had not risen high enough yet to burn off the damp mist that had drifted in at dawn from the river. When the first booms reached the stall there was a silence, followed by a flurry of questions and whispered answers. People looked around in bewilderment: What is it? Ba le? What can it be? And then Rajkumar’s sharp, excited voice cut through the buzz of speculation. ‘English cannon,’ he said in his fluent but heavily accented Burmese. ‘They’re shooting somewhere up the river. Heading in this direction.’

  Frowns appeared on some customers’ faces as they noted that it was the serving-boy who had spoken and that he was a kalaa from across the sea—an Indian, with teeth as white as his eyes and skin the colour of polished hardwood. He was standing in the centre of the stall, holding a pile of chipped ceramic bowls. He was grinning a little sheepishly, as though embarrassed to parade his precocious knowingness.

  His name meant Prince, but he was anything but princely in appearance, with his oil-splashed vest, his untidily knotted longyi and his bare feet with their thick slippers of callused skin. When people asked how old he was he said fifteen, or sometimes eighteen or nineteen, for it gave him a sense of strength and power to be able to exaggerate so wildly, to pass himself off as grown and strong, in body and judgement, when he was, in fact, not much more than a child. But he could have said he was twenty and people would still have believed him, for he was a big, burly boy, taller and broader in the shoulder than many men. And because he was very dark it was hard to tell that his chin was as smooth as the palms of his hands, innocent of all but the faintest trace of fuzz.

  It was chance alone that was responsible for Rajkumar’s presence in Mandalay that November morning. His boat—the sampan on which he worked as a helper and errand-boy—had been found to need repairs after sailing up the Irrawaddy from the Bay of Bengal. The boatowner had taken fright on being told that the work might take as long as a month, possibly even longer. He couldn’t afford to feed his crew that long, he’d decided: some of them would have to find other jobs. Rajkumar was told to walk to the city, a couple of miles inland. At a bazaar, opposite the west wall of the fort, he was to ask for a woman called Ma Cho. She was half-Indian and she ran a small food-stall; she might have some work for him.

  And so it happened that at the age of eleven, walking into the city of Mandalay, Rajkumar saw, for the first time, a straight road. By the sides of the road there were bamboo-walled shacks and palm-thatched shanties, pats of dung and piles of refuse. But the straight course of the road’s journey was unsmudged by the clutter that flanked it: it was like a causeway, cutting across a choppy sea. Its lines led the eye right through the city, past the bright red walls of the fort to the distant pagodas of Mandalay hill, shining like a string of white bells upon the slope.

  For his age, Rajkumar was well-travelled. The boat he worked on was a coastal craft that generally kept to open waters, plying the long length of shore that joined Burma to Bengal. Rajkumar had been to Chittagong and Bassein and any number of towns and villages in between. But in all his travels he had never co
me across thoroughfares like those in Mandalay. He was accustomed to lanes and alleys that curled endlessly around themselves so that you could never see beyond the next curve. Here was something new: a road that followed a straight, unvarying course, bringing the horizon right into the middle of habitation.

  When the fort’s full immensity revealed itself, Rajkumar came to a halt in the middle of the road. The citadel was a miracle to behold, with its mile-long walls and its immense moat. The crenellated ramparts were almost three storeys high, but of a soaring lightness, red in colour, and topped by ornamented gateways with seven-tiered roofs. Long straight roads radiated outwards from the walls, forming a neat geometrical grid. So intriguing was the ordered pattern of these streets that Rajkumar wandered far afield, exploring. It was almost dark by the time he remembered why he’d been sent to the city. He made his way back to the fort’s western wall and asked for Ma Cho.

  ‘Ma Cho?’

  ‘She has a stall where she sells food—baya-gyaw and other things. She’s half-Indian.’

  ‘Ah, Ma Cho.’ It made sense that this ragged-looking Indian boy was looking for Ma Cho: she often had Indian strays working at her stall. ‘There she is, the thin one.’

  Ma Cho was small and harried-looking, with spirals of wiry hair hanging over her forehead, like a fringed awning. She was in her mid-thirties, more Burmese than Indian in appearance. She was busy frying vegetables, squinting at the smoking oil from the shelter of an upthrust arm. She glared at Rajkumar suspiciously: ‘What do you want?’

  He had just begun to explain about the boat and the repairs and wanting a job for a few weeks, when she interrupted him. She began to shout at the top of her voice, with her eyes closed: ‘What do you think—I have jobs under my armpits, to pluck out and hand to you? Last week a boy ran away with two of my pots. Who’s to tell me you won’t do the same?’ And so on.

  Rajkumar understood that this outburst was not aimed directly at him: that it had more to do with the dust, the splattering oil and the price of vegetables than with his own presence or with anything he had said. He lowered his eyes and stood there stoically, kicking the dust until she was done.

  She paused, panting, and looked him over. ‘Who are your parents?’ she said at last, wiping her streaming forehead on the sleeve of her sweat-stained aingyi.

  ‘I don’t have any. They died.’

  She thought this over, biting her lip. ‘All right. Get to work, but remember you’re not going to get much more than three meals and a place to sleep.’

  He grinned. ‘That’s all I need.’

  Ma Cho’s stall consisted of a couple of benches, sheltered beneath the stilts of a bamboo-walled hut. She did her cooking sitting by an open fire, perched on a small stool. Apart from fried baya-gyaw, she also served noodles and soup. It was Rajkumar’s job to carry bowls of soup and noodles to the customers. In his spare moments he cleared away the utensils, tended the fire and shredded vegetables for the soup pot. Ma Cho didn’t trust him with fish or meat and chopped them herself with a grinning short-handled da. In the evenings he did the washing-up, carrying bucketfuls of utensils over to the fort’s moat.

  Between Ma Cho’s stall and the moat there lay a wide, dusty roadway that ran all the way around the fort, forming an immense square. Rajkumar had only to cross this apron of open space to get to the moat. Directly across from Ma Cho’s stall lay a bridge that led to one of the fort’s smaller entrances, the funeral gate. He had cleared a pool under the bridge by pushing away the lotus pads that covered the surface of the water. This had become his spot: it was there that he usually did his washing and bathing—under the bridge, with the wooden planks above serving as his ceiling and shelter.

  On the far side of the bridge lay the walls of the fort. All that could be seen of its interior was a nine-roofed spire that ended in a glittering gilded umbrella—this was the great golden hti of Burma’s kings. Under the spire lay the throne room of the palace, where Thebaw, King of Burma, held court with his chief consort, Queen Supayalat.

  Rajkumar was curious about the fort but he knew that for those such as himself its precincts were forbidden ground. ‘Have you ever been inside?’ he asked Ma Cho one day. ‘The fort, I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Ma Cho nodded importantly. ‘Three times, at the very least.’

  ‘What is it like in there?’

  ‘It’s very large, much larger than it looks. It’s a city in itself, with long roads and canals and gardens. First you come to the houses of officials and noblemen. And then you find yourself in front of a stockade, made of huge teakwood posts. Beyond lie the apartments of the Royal Family and their servants— hundreds and hundreds of rooms, with gilded pillars and polished floors. And right at the centre there is a vast hall that is like a great shaft of light, with shining crystal walls and mirrored ceilings. People call it the Glass Palace.’

  ‘Does the King ever leave the fort?’

  ‘Not in the last seven years. But the Queen and her maids sometimes walk along the walls. People who’ve seen them say that her maids are the most beautiful women in the land.’ ‘Who are they, these maids?’

  ‘Young girls, orphans, many of them just children. They say that the girls are brought to the palace from the far mountains. The Queen adopts them and brings them up and they serve as her handmaids. They say that she will not trust anyone but them to wait on her and her children.’

  ‘When do these girls visit the gateposts?’ said Rajkumar. ‘How can one catch sight of them?’

  His eyes were shining, his face full of eagerness. Ma Cho laughed at him. ‘Why, are you thinking of trying to get in there, you fool of an Indian, you coal-black kalaa? They’ll know you from a mile off and cut off your head.’

  That night, lying flat on his mat, Rajkumar looked through the gap between his feet and caught sight of the gilded hti that marked the palace: it glowed like a beacon in the moonlight. No matter what Ma Cho said, he decided, he would cross the moat—before he left Mandalay, he would find a way in.

  Ma Cho lived above the stall in a bamboo-walled room that was held up by stilts. A flimsy splinter-studded ladder connected the room to the stall below. Rajkumar’s nights were spent under Ma Cho’s dwelling, between the stilts, in the space that served to seat customers during the day. Ma Cho’s floor was roughly put together, from planks of wood that didn’t quite fit. When Ma Cho lit her lamp to change her clothes, Rajkumar could see her clearly through the cracks in the floor. Lying on his back, with his fingers knotted behind his head, he would look up unblinking, as she untied the aingyi that was knotted loosely round her breasts.

  During the day Ma Cho was a harried and frantic termagant, racing from one job to another, shouting shrilly at everyone who came her way. But at night, with the day’s work done, a certain languor entered her movements. She would cup her breasts and air them, fanning herself with her hands; she would run her fingers slowly through the cleft of her chest, past the pout of her belly, down to her legs and thighs. Watching her from below, Rajkumar’s hand would snake slowly past the knot of his longyi, down to his groin.

  One night Rajkumar woke suddenly to the sound of a rhythmic creaking in the planks above, along with moans and gasps and urgent drawings of breath. But who could be up there with her? He had seen no one going in.

  The next morning, Rajkumar saw a small, bespectacled, owl-like man climbing down the ladder that led to Ma Cho’s room. The stranger was dressed in European clothes: a shirt, trousers, and a pith hat. Subjecting Rajkumar to a grave and prolonged regard, the stranger ceremoniously raised his hat. ‘How are you?’ he said. ‘Kaisa hai? Sub kuchh theek-thaak?’

  Rajkumar understood the words perfectly well—they were what he might have expected an Indian to say—but his mouth still dropped open in surprise. Since coming to Mandalay he had encountered many different kinds of people, but this stranger belonged with none of them. His clothes were those of a European and he seemed to know Hindustani—and yet the cast of his face was neither that of a
white man nor an Indian. He looked, in fact, to be Chinese.

  Smiling at Rajkumar’s astonishment, the man doffed his hat again, before disappearing into the bazaar.

  ‘Who was that?’ Rajkumar said to Ma Cho when she came down the ladder.

  The question evidently annoyed her and she glared at him to make it clear that she would prefer not to answer. But Rajkumar’s curiosity was aroused now, and he persisted. ‘Who was that, Ma Cho? Tell me.’

  ‘That is . . .’ Ma Cho began to speak in small, explosive bursts, as though her words were being produced by upheavals in her belly. ‘That is . . . my teacher . . . my Sayagyi.’

  ‘Your teacher?’

  ‘Yes . . . He teaches me . . . He knows about many things . . .’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Where did he learn to speak Hindustani?’

  ‘Abroad, but not in India . . . he’s from somewhere in Malaya. Malacca I think. You should ask him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You will call him Saya, just as I do.’

  ‘Just Saya?’

  ‘Saya John.’ She turned on him in exasperation. ‘That’s what we all call him. If you want to know any more, ask him yourself.’

  Reaching into her cold cooking fire, she drew out a handful of ash and threw it at Rajkumar. ‘Who said you could sit here talking all morning, you half-wit kalaa? Now you get busy with your work.’

  There was no sign of Saya John that night or the next.

  ‘Ma Cho,’ said Rajkumar, ‘what’s happened to your teacher? Why hasn’t he come again?’

  Ma Cho was sitting at her fire, frying baya-gyaw. Peering into the hot oil, she said shortly, ‘He’s away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the jungle . . .’

  ‘The jungle? Why?’

  ‘He’s a contractor. He delivers supplies to teak camps. He’s away most of the time.’ Suddenly the ladle dropped from her grasp and she buried her face in her hands.