by Amitav Ghosh
‘See Pops,’ said Tipu giggling. ‘You’d have had a better trip if you’d taken a toke.’
* * *
When Horen fitted my glasses – freshly washed and dried – over my eyes, it was as though I had woken from a nightmare. I saw that I was standing next to a well that had a half-filled aluminum bucket perched on the rim. We were in a paved courtyard, facing what looked like a dwelling with a collapsed roof. One part of it was curtained off with a length of blue tarpaulin and looked as though it were still in use. In front of it lay a couple of pots and a cooking fire with fresh embers.
From the look of the place, said Horen, it seemed that Rafi had come by earlier in the day. He had hung up a couple of fishing nets outside the compound, and collected a pile of bamboo. He was probably somewhere nearby and would be back soon.
‘Where do you think he might have gone?’
Horen scratched his head.
‘There are a couple of spots downriver,’ he said, ‘where fishermen go at this time of year. Tipu and I could go look for him in the bhotbhoti, if you like.’
I seized eagerly upon the suggestion.
‘Yes, you should both go,’ I said.
‘And what about you?’ said Horen.
‘I’ll stay here. I need some time to look around.’
Horen nodded: ‘All right. We’ll be back soon.’
* * *
Only after they had left did I get to look around properly – and then suddenly it was as though everything I had gone through to get there – the mud, the humiliation, the chilly baptism – had all been worth it.
I discovered now that I was standing at the centre of a rectangular courtyard with my back to the temple, which was at the other end of the walled enclosure: it wasn’t till I had turned around that the facade came into view.
The building wasn’t large – no bigger than the familiar thatched huts of the Bengal countryside – and time had not been kind to it. Yet the structure was so unexpected – and so lovely – that the sight fair took my breath away.
The roof had the convex outline of an upturned boat, and it was this, I guessed, that had reminded Nilima of the temples of Bishnupur. Nor was that surprising, for everything about the structure – its burnt sienna colour, the shape of the roof, and the panels on its facade – spoke of Bengal’s most celebrated style of architecture, which had originated in the kingdom of Bishnupur in the seventeenth century.
This is a style which is perfectly attuned to the place in which it was born, in the sense that it echoes the shapes and forms of the Bengal countryside. It also makes ingenious use of the region’s most easily available materials. Rather than aspiring to the grandeur of stone (of which Bengal has very little) it relies instead on brick, made with the delta’s ample supplies of mud and silt. The rich colour of these thin, hard bricks is, to my eyes, one of the glories of the Bishnupuri style.
However, a shrine built of brick cannot be carved in the manner of the great stone temples of south and central India (or for that matter Cambodia and Java) – so the temples of Bishnupur discharge the function of storytelling (essential to all such structures) by means of terracotta friezes and bas reliefs. These are set into the walls like plaques or tablets.
The shrine in front of me was, of course, only a minor example of the Bishnupur style – but I was delighted to note that its facade was decorated with a good number of friezes. It struck me that if the building were indeed associated with the legend of the Gun Merchant, surely some of those panels would bear depictions of guns (or, rather, muskets).
All thought of my recent discomfitures, and my still damp clothing, now vanished from my mind: I was aware only of a tingling frisson of curiosity as I tucked up my lungi and approached the facade.
My main concern was that the panels would be too weathered to be legible – and this fear proved to be well founded, for the contours of the reliefs had indeed been greatly eroded by the passage of time. But soon, to my utter delight, I discovered that the outlines of the original reliefs (or so I presumed them to be) had been preserved nonetheless, and that too in a most curious fashion. Someone had traced over the outlines on the panels with great care, using shards of red pottery! I suspected immediately that these marks had been made with fragments of clay cups, like those in which chai used to be served at tea stalls everywhere in India – and on glancing down I spotted several bits of broken pottery lying scattered along the foot of the facade.
The tracings had the look of simple, crudely drawn hieroglyphs. Although some of the lines had begun to fade, they were mostly still legible. As with hieroglyphs, some symbols and motifs recurred again and again, in different combinations. The most prominent of these were a couple of turbaned figures, each paired with a distinctive symbol. One of these symbols was easy to decipher: it was an image of the palm of a hand, sheltered by a cobra’s hood. Guessing that this sign stood for the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi, I assumed that the figure with which it was paired represented the Gun Merchant. If this were correct, it would seem to follow that the second figure stood for the sailor, ‘Captain Ilyas’. I was fairly sure that this was indeed the case, but I could make no sense of the symbol that was paired with the sailor.
I had never seen this symbol before and could not imagine what it meant.
Some of the friezes were easy to interpret. There were several panels, for example, in which the Merchant and the Captain were shown to be seated in a boat: these were clearly intended to represent episodes from their travels. In one panel they were depicted with a number of shell-like objects: I took these to be conches, picked up at one of their ports of call. Another panel depicted a book, in the form of an illuminated palm-leaf manuscript. The penultimate panel, in which the Merchant seemed to be tied up, was also easy to interpret: this was presumably a depiction of the episode in which the Merchant was being taken to the Island of Chains to be sold as a slave.
But many of the figures and symbols were impossible to understand. For example, a panel with an image of a mound, sheltered by two palms; and another that seemed to be filled with fluttering flags and pennants. But the strangest symbol of all was a recurrent image of two concentric circles.
What could this possibly mean? And as if this were not baffling enough, in one of the panels the circles were overlaid with criss-crossing lines.
Equally puzzling was the absence of the things I had most expected to see – guns and muskets. There was only one suggestion of a weapon, in a panel that included a helmeted figure, armed with an elongated object, something that could have been a musket or a spear. I guessed that the image was a representation of a European pirate (or harmad as they were known in Bangla). The figure was certainly armed, but I could not be sure that his weapon was a gun.
I stared hard at each panel, trying to imprint them on my mind. Never had I so greatly regretted the absence of my phone: if only I had had it with me I would have been able to preserve these images forever. But let aside a phone, I had not even a sheet of paper, or a pencil, to make sketches …
I decided that as soon as the steamer returned, I would ask Horen to fetch my phone and camera.
* * *
So caught up was I in thinking about the shrine’s exterior that it was almost as an afterthought that I wandered through the arched gateway that led to its interior.
It was very dark inside and seemed even more so because of the contrast with the bright, mid-morning sunlight outside. But as soon as I had stepped past the gateway I knew, from the echoing of my bare feet, that I was in a cavernous, domed hallway, of a kind that is characteristic of this style of architecture: the interiors of Bishnupuri temples are often open, in the manner of congregational spaces, possibly because of Islamic or Christian influence. But exactly how tall or wide this space was I could not tell, for I was aware only of a slippery mossiness beneath my feet and a chilly, slightly fetid, dampness around me.
As I was looking around I became aware of a low, growling sound, somewhere behind me.
I spun around thinking that a dog had followed me inside. But no! Framed in the arched gateway was the face of a shaggy-haired boy who was staring at me in what seemed to be utter disbelief.
Who could this be but the much awaited Rafi? I was so delighted to see him that I hurried eagerly towards the entrance, crying out loudly: ‘Ei to! Here you are! I’ve been waiting for you.’
He began to back away fearfully as I approached and this did not entirely surprise me; I was, after all, a stranger, possibly an intruder. But still, his response was so excessive as to be almost amusing; he seemed to be seized by utter, eye-popping terror, as though I were some kind of monster.
‘I’m just a visitor,’ I said, in a soothing tone. ‘I’ve come from Kolkata…’
But this did not stop the boy’s retreat; he continued to back away from me until his withdrawal was halted by the rim of the well. There at last he came to a standstill. Dropping his eyes he began to breathe heavily, as if in relief at a narrow escape.
He looked to be in his late teens, with a lightly feathered upper lip and long, supple limbs. His face was narrow, with large, long-lashed eyes and a full deep-brown mouth that was downturned at both ends. His feet were bare, thickly coated with mud, and he was dressed in a frayed shirt and a faded cotton lungi that was doubled up above his knees. With his mop of unkempt hair and glistening, watchful eyes, he was at once feral and delicately graceful, like some wild, wary creature that could at any moment take flight.
‘I seem to have caught you by surprise,’ I said. ‘You’re Rafi, aren’t you?’
He nodded and straightened himself. ‘And who are you?’ he said; I noticed that his Bangla accent was marked with the rustic lilt of the Sundarbans. ‘What are you doing here, all by yourself?’
‘I’m Dinanath Datta,’ I said, in what I hoped was a soothing tone. ‘I just came to look at the temple. It was Horen Naskar who brought me…’
‘Is that so?’ said Rafi. ‘But where is he? I didn’t see his boat.’
‘He went to look for you,’ I said, ‘he thought you might be somewhere nearby. I asked him to find you.’
His wary eyes widened. ‘Keno? Ki chai?’ he said. ‘Why? What do you want with me?’
‘I just want to ask a few questions about the shrine.’
‘I don’t know that I can tell you anything,’ he said brusquely. ‘I never had much to do with the dhaam.’
‘But then who was it who traced the outlines on the walls?’
‘That was my mother’s doing,’ he said. ‘She died last year.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘Did she talk about the dhaam much?’
‘Only a little bit,’ he said, shuffling his feet.
I couldn’t tell whether he was telling the truth or being evasive.
‘But I’m sure your mother and grandfather told you stories about the place,’ I said, trying to encourage him. ‘Surely you remember something?’
‘Just a little,’ he said reluctantly.
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go look at the pictures together. Tell me what you remember.’
* * *
Perhaps Rafi’s memory was more tenacious than he imagined; or perhaps stories heard in early childhood are not easy to forget. In any event, once we started examining the panels he was able to identify many of the images and confirm several details.
It turned out that I had guessed correctly about the figure of the Gun Merchant and the symbol that he was paired with. I had been right, too, in identifying the other turbaned figure as the Merchant’s mentor and companion, Captain Ilyas – but as for the symbol that was paired with him, Rafi had no more of an idea of what it represented than I did.
But he did confirm my identification of the helmeted figure: this was indeed a pirate, none other than the leader of the harmads who had captured the Gun Merchant as he was fleeing overseas in order to escape Manasa Devi’s wrath.
But my interpretations had also been wrong in several instances, most notably in my reading of the panel with the shells. These objects were not conches but cowrie shells – and in pointing this out Rafi clarified a vital link in the legend.
The story went that after his capture by the pirates the Gun Merchant had been taken to a port and put up for sale, as a slave. That was when Captain Ilyas had entered his life: recognizing the Merchant to be an intelligent and well-travelled man, the Captain had bought him from the harmads and set him free. In return the Merchant had guided the Captain to an island that abounded in cowrie shells; that was where the two of them had amassed their fortunes.
Rafi’s mention of cowries set me thinking. I remembered reading somewhere that for many centuries cowrie shells had served as a currency throughout the Indian Ocean region and beyond. I remembered also that most of these shells came from a single island, the name of which I could not immediately recall – and nor was there time, for Rafi had moved on to another panel.
After collecting a trove of cowries, said Rafi, the Gun Merchant and Captain Ilyas had taken their shells to another land – and here he pointed to the panel that depicted a mound, sheltered by two palm trees. This, he said, was the ‘Land of Palm Sugar Candy’ (Taal-misrir-desh) and no sooner had they arrived there than they were set upon by poison-spitting monsters so they had been forced to flee to yet another land – and he pointed now to the panel that was covered with flags and banners. This was a place called the ‘Land of Kerchieves’ (Rumaali-desh) – but here too the Gun Merchant and the Captain had been dogged by misfortune. Manasa Devi had sent scorching winds against them and the land had become so dry that one day a burning wind had set their house afire, incinerating everything around them. The blame had fallen on the unfortunate travellers, and their neighbours had risen up against them and driven them away. It was now that Captain Ilyas had decided that they would go to the one place where they were sure to be safe from Manasa Devi, a place where there were no snakes – and this refuge was none other than Gun Island (Bonduk-dwip). It was this island, said Rafi, that was symbolized by the image of the two concentric circles: for not only was Bonduk-dwip an island, it was an island within an island – hence the circle enclosed by another circle.
And what of the image in which the circles were overlaid with criss-crossing lines?
Rafi scratched his head. ‘My grandfather told me about it once,’ he said. ‘But I don’t remember any more.’
It was clear from his tone that he had had enough of my questions. Turning his back on the shrine he made a gesture of dismissal.
‘Of course it’s all nonsense,’ he said, tossing his hair as though it were a mane. ‘There is no Land of Palm Sugar Candy or a Gun Island. It’s just a fairy tale. No one can rule over snakes.’
This was said with great vehemence, yet there was an undertone in his voice that led me to wonder whether his scepticism about the legend had something to do with some long-ago crisis of disappointment, maybe of the kind that besets children when they learn that there is no Santa Claus and no Toy Factory at the North Pole.
‘You’re right,’ I said, humouring him. ‘And it’s obvious, isn’t it, that this dhaam has nothing to do with Manasa Devi?’
His long-lashed eyes glinted, as if in puzzlement. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because,’ I said, ‘if Manasa Devi had anything to do with this place, surely there would be a snake around here, wouldn’t there? A cobra?’
I glanced at him again and saw, to my surprise, that his face had gone rigid. He was staring fixedly at me now, with a hand over his mouth.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Ki hoyechhe?’
Slowly his hand fell away from his mouth.
‘But there is,’ he whispered.
‘There is what?’
‘There is a cobra – inside the dhaam. It has been there many years.’
It was my turn to stare now, in disbelief.
‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘I went inside the dhaam – I didn’t see anything.’
> ‘It was right behind you,’ he said. ‘When you came out of the dhaam I could see it behind you. Its hood was raised and its head was above your shoulder. I’ve never seen it like that before; it never comes out when I’m here and I leave it alone too – it keeps other snakes and animals away. I never go in there – you must have disturbed it when you went in.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No – it’s not possible…’
At that moment I was absolutely certain that he was joking or deluded. It was simply unimaginable that I had stepped into a cobra’s lair; such things just don’t happen to people like myself – reclusive antiquarians who spend most of their waking hours staring at screens and old books.
At this point we were at one of the dhaam’s far corners, where the facade joined the compound’s surrounding wall: from that angle almost nothing was visible of the building’s interior, except the arched entrance and the darkness inside.
My incredulity at what I had just heard was such that my feet began to move of their own accord. Before I knew it they had brought me face to face with the entrance so that I could confirm, with my own eyes, that everything was as I had thought.
And then suddenly there it was, appearing out of the darkness like a whiplash, rearing up as if it had been waiting for me, the intruder, to show himself again.
Staring at it now, at a distance of only a few feet, I realized that it was no ordinary cobra but a king cobra – a hamadryad – of a size such that its upraised head was level with mine.
Its tongue flickered as I looked into its shining black eyes, and I became aware of a growling sound (I would learn later that this species does not hiss but emits this other sound instead).
I stood frozen, as if welded to the ground – yet, although it was well within reach of me, I am convinced, to this day, that the cobra would not have harmed anybody if not for what came next.
