by Tabish Khair
Haldi Ram: Habibullah heard a threat in those words, Amir babu; the mean always consider wisdom a threat. Habibullah knew that he could not allow your uncle to take the matter to the panchayat. He turned and rode away, but his men, as if by his order, fell upon your uncle andShahid babu. We were running towards the spot then. We were still half a kos away, but we could see what was happening. Your uncle had not expected such a premeditated crime from Habibullah and his men. He realized this only when they stabbed Shahid babu, who was standing by his side. Then your uncle fought like the brave man he was. He snatched a lathi from one of his assailants and defended himself. But alas, there were about twenty of them and he was alone. By the time we reached the spot, he had been stabbed and beaten to death. I... I...
Headman: There were only seven of us, Amir babu. And we had only a couple of lathis between us; we are not fighting men. But this Haldi Ram, this tiny Haldi Ram, would have thrown himself on Habibullah’s henchmen and clawed their eyes out had I and the others not held him back by force.
Haldi Ram: I wish I had died there. I wish I had died with that noble man...
Headman: Don’t be a fool, Haldi Ram. No, Amir babu, no, do not stand up. Hold him, boys. Yes, yes, hold him, hold him down. Do not let him run into the village and get himsef killed. Habibullah’s men are waiting for him. He has gone too far this time to stop ... Listen, Amir babu. Listen to me, for the sake of my white hair, for your uncle’s sake. Habibullah had the bodies carted to the outskirts of his property, and he has buried all three in one grave next to the abandoned well, the one below the neem tree. He has proclaimed: No one digs in my land without my permission. If anyone wants to dig here, let him beg my permission first. He wants you and Hamid babu to accept his power, and if you refuse to do so, if you take him on, his men have been instructed to kill you. Listen to me, Amir babu, calm down. Do not get yourself killed...
They held me down, jaanam; they tied me to the khaat until I promised not to run off in a rash bid to avenge my family. Those good men who had stayed awake all night to save me and Hamid Bhai. Had they not intercepted me and held me until my fit of anger and ranting subsided, I would not be writing this unreadable, never-to-be-sent letter to you. If it were not for those half-starved, half-naked men and women, people we considered dirty and uncultured, perhaps I would have lost that faith in humankind which Mustapha Chacha instilled in us and which, at times, I feel is still in danger of slipping away.
We say in our parts that a tiger never attacks a human being until his first taste of human blood. And once a tiger has tasted human blood, he never attacks anything else. It is like that with the powerful: once they have tasted blood, they feast more and more upon the weak. Perhaps it was the same with Habibullah: over the years his atrocities had been increasing; a labourer whipped here, a tribal woman abducted there, and it had finally fed to this, the premeditated murder of his only rival in the village. Or perhaps, as the headman suggested, it was not like that. Perhaps a minor dispute of the sort that his family often had with mine went out of hand, a thoughtless blow proved fatal, and Habibullah and his henchmen were left with no choice but to finish the job. Whatever it was, there they now fay, hastily buried under loose earth in the lands of Habibullah, not even accorded a decent funeral.
I knew I did not have the strength to accost Habibullah or recover the bodies. But I also knew that once my cousin Hamid Bhai, in many ways as straightforward and innocent of deception as his father, arrived, we would have to try — and sacrifice our lives in the process. Revenge I had nothing against, for revenge is the last resort for those whom the law fails. But to lose your life in the process, that, jaanam, seemed unnecessary. And yet, what else could I do?
18
Sometimes, reading those books in my grandfather’s library, I would wander out to the small veranda attached to it. There, the plaster on the walls was peeling; lines of industrious ants crowded the corners of the floor, cobwebs netted the corners above. I would sit in the shade and look out: an ageing garden and a driveway covered with reddish gravel. Sunlight, bright and warm. Birds twittering. A gecko on the wall or a lizard, bobbing its red head, scuttling across the driveway. Sitting there, I would read about the damp, dark streets of London in Dickens or Collins. I could never imagine them. What would darkness and cold like that entail? Would birds sing in a place so bleak? If I imagined it, I would imagine it as a late evening in my hometown — and I would sense the imprecision of imagining it as a wide sky full of flitting bats, as walls on which geckoes stalked insects under low-watt bulbs. But I never had that problem with the characters in the books. Even when I could not hear them speak their many dialects, I always saw them with their recognizable defects and demands, their human frailties and inhuman strengths. I saw the way they walked, the way they stood, at times, even the way they thought. Or so I felt.
And so, when the time came, I had little trouble seeing the man Shields brought with him. He was angular and one-eyed; the black patch that covered his bad eye imparted to him a rather forbidding look. Not surprisingly, he was introduced to John May as One-eyed Jack, which, May intuited, was just the latest in a series of names that had been worn, like borrowed or stolen clothes, by this gaunt man. He did not enquire about his real name. And that was just as well, for One-eyed Jack did not always remember the name he had been christened with — or, at least, was liable to offer different versions on different occasions.
They had agreed to meet under the clock at Charing Cross, May preferring to stay away from the Prize of War out of a vague sense of precaution. If this One-eyed Jack did not prove to be game for anything, as Shields had billed him, at least John May would not feel exposed on home territory. He could buy him a drop or two and sound him out in one of the neighbouring taverns, or better still, walk with him a bit and, if the conversation was worth it, stop at a cheap place somewhere else, perhaps the Great Mogul on Drury Lane.
One-eyed Jack did look like he was capable of undertaking all and everything, but John May was doubtful of his capacity to execute anything. Even this early in the afternoon, Jack reeked of alcohol, which appeared to have spilled down the threadbare long-coat of a vaguely naval cut from the previous century that he sported over slightly more fashionable trousers, both obviously procured at a rebate from the thieves’ quarter of Saffron Hill and Field Lane. There was a kind of languor in his gait that May correctly associated with opium. But he was deferential, which John May appreciated, he addressed Shields as ‘sir’ and May as ‘guv’nor.’ And he was a big man, obviously born and brought up in the countryside and not on the streets of London, a shoulder taller than Shields, some inches taller than May, though most of him was skin on bones, hanging loose like clothes on a scarecrow.
John May walked the two into the crowd that milled around Charing Cross, dislodging his coat corners from the grip of an old hag who had seen him looking at her: he had got into the habit of looking at the skulls of the poor and the strange. This woman had a perfectly normal skull though, with a great head of tangled hair, swarming with vermin. She tagged after them, pleading, ‘Husban’s laid with fever an’ I’ve four small chil’ren at ’ome, won’t yer give a poor woman a ’ap’ny, sir? Only a ’ap’ny for a poor woman as ain’t ’ad a bit of bread between er teeth since esty mornin.’..’
Could one even talk, let alone plot, in this crowd, this roaring vortex in the heart of London, wondered John May. Or perhaps this was exactly where one could plot, so rife was the air with voices and sounds, the bustle of horses and omnibuses, the ladies and gentlemen trying their best to walk in bubbles through the milling crowd, the foreigners with their myriad tongues, the country squires riding in from Cumberland or Westmorland, the servants, grooms and lackeys running about, the waiters in the taverns shouting their orders, the potboys, beggars, lascars, hawkers, tinkers, gypsies, that omnipresent West Indian blackie wrapped in his strange garment, made of the rigging and sails of ships, who sang and sold handwritten songs signed ‘January Monday.’.. Who would, who could
overhear in the midst of this din?
At the moment though, John May was letting One-eyed Jack talk. Egged on occasionally by Shields, Jack was telling May about his previous jobs, trying to impress on him both his reliability and his willingness to do ‘anything, two capacities that were difficult to conjoin. Jack’s voice sounded almost educated, but it was loud and harsh, like a policeman’s; it appeared he had done everything, from sailing to serving to ‘dog-stealing.’ The latter, he explained, consisted of working with a woman.
‘This is how it’s done, guv’nor’, boomed One-eyed Jack, keeping easy pace with Sheilds and John May despite the aura of alcohol emanating from him. ‘The woman looks for a mug, any drunken or stupid sorta fellow. She stops him in the street and talks to him, encouraging him to get familiar like. When he does so, she relieves him of his money or jewellery, and is usually not caught, y’know. If he notices and makes a noise, her bully comes up and knocks him down, exclaiming, "What you talking to me good wife for?" I worked as a bully for six years, guv’nor, and I always knocked down my man fair and square.’
‘But not always, as I gather from your lost eye’, quipped John May dryly.
‘Oh, guv’nor, I knocked him down alright, y’know, but there was three of his friends in the crowd. I knocked down one of them too, but then I was stabbed in the eye with the sharp end of an umbrella...’
Shields was looking at John May with a satisfied expression on his face. His beady eyes seemed to say, I told you this is our man for the job.
For between them, Shields and John May had agreed that there was a job to be done. And that it would require three people: two for the main task, and one as lookout.
19
Amir Ali passes John May and his companions on Charles Street. They do not know him and he does not know them yet. He is on his way back from the phrenology meeting to which Captain Meadows had taken him, and he is walking fast because he is dressed in an Indian manner, with a turban and a flashy cummerbund over his kurta and angarkha. He is feeling a little cold; it is the wrong costume for the climate, no matter what the season. But more than that, he is afraid of being mobbed by urchins and drunks. He never dresses in rich Indian clothes when out in the city on his own, preferring to dress in the pyjamas and shirts worn by many of the lascars he had met during his voyage to England. He had slept below decks with the lascars and other lowly sailors, the skipper of the ship not allowing any ‘mixed breed or nigger servants, other than ayahs’ in attendance on the higher decks after nightfall. Except for the three nights that Captain Meadows lay hallucinating with fever: no one else had wanted to spend the nights in his cabin for fear of infection and miasma.
On landing in London, Amir had discovered that Indian dresses invited needless attention — sometimes flattering attention, from the beggars and riffraff who trailed him under the impression that he was a prince or nabob. And sometimes more caustic attention from urchins, pickpockets and, once, a group of drunken youths who besieged and berated Amir Ali for being an ‘Oriental despot’ who kept women like cattle in his harem.
But Captain Meadows insists on dressing up Amir Ali as a ‘real Indian’ on the occasions when he displays him at dinner parties, luncheons, or meetings of various societies. Actually, thinks Amir Ali, the dresses the Kaptaan had procured before they sailed from Calcutta were far more elaborate and rich than anything he had ever worn before, and they had a distinctive Awadhi cut to them, a style not common in his village or in the regions around it.
Usually, Captain Meadows lets Amir ride back to the house with him on such occasions, sitting next to the coachman, but today the Captain had to stay longer for a debate. And as it was the third time that Amir had been taken to the imposing new building of the much-endowed London Society of Phrenology, Meadows was certain that he would be able to find his way back. In any case, the Captain was aware that Amir spent longer hours in the city each passing week, and as the ex-Thug was not exactly in his employment, there was no reason to prevent or resent it as long as he was available, when required, to finish the narrative of his life. Captain Meadows hoped that the notes he had been taking would, indirectly and cautiously, for he could not afford to openly antagonize the powerful, illustrate and defend his liberal position on phrenology and related matters.
Phrenology — now that is something Amir Ali does not really understand. Though it is not altogether alien to him: even in the village they had sayings like, if your feet are big, you are a farmer; if your head is big, you are a leader. That made some sense, for sometimes experience did bear it out. But the minute distinctions that the Kaptaan and his colleagues make and argue over, the fixed relations that they establish, Amir can only...
‘Jahaajbhai, jahaajbhai’, comes the shout from the other side of the street. He stops and looks, but cannot see beyond a foot or two into the dense throng of humanity, coaches and cabs. Then he hears the voice again, speaking in Hindustani, ‘Wait, wait, jahaajbhai, wait a minute.’
Amir had made friends with some of the lascars on the ship that brought him and Captain Meadows to England and sometimes they referred to him as they referred to other lascars on the ship: as a ‘ship-brother.’ Amir knows that it is a designation that matters to the lascars; many of them consider a jahaajbhai in the light of a real brother, and are willing to stand by him to the last. But the ship that brought Amir to London about a year ago was scheduled to sail back, via Cape Town, within a fortnight. As far as he knows, all the lascars are back in Calcutta by now.
Then, dodging between the wheels of coaches and horses’ hooves, pivoting elegantly to avoid getting entangled in the petticoats of women or the canes of men, there comes a walking advertisement: a tall beanpole of a man, with a greying, forked beard, sandwiched between two boards, one hanging in front of him and one behind, both advertising a pantomime. A tall, misshapen hat sits on his balding head, with a large cardboard hand (advertising the same pantomime) jutting out of it like a feather in a cap. There are so many boardmen in this part of London, advertising everything under the sun, getting tickled in the nose or spattered with mud by practical jokers, that Amir would have walked on if the walking advertisement had not, with difficulty, for he is truly tied to the boards, shouted again, ‘Oho, Amirbhai, jahaajbhai, oh you look like a prince, nawabzada!’
It is then that recognition dawns on Amir. Only one of the lascars, in an ironic acknowledgement of Amir’s purer Urdu and better education, called him ‘nawabzada, or for that matter, addressed him solely in Urdu.
‘Gunga! ’ exclaims Amir. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were all going back to Calcutta...’
‘So we were, so we were, nawabzada, until that dog-turd of a skipper took a recount and realized that there were six more than he required. So he discharged all six of us, the pig; he kept slimy Fakru’s larger gang of lascars and put me and my men on the pilot’s boat to the wharf and sailed off...’
Amir has heard similar stories. The ports of Europe are full of lascars who had been signed up in Asia or Africa and discharged in Europe. The lucky ones find employment on a ship sailing back to their part of the world, the less lucky set sail for other parts, and the unlucky ones linger on at the docks, some of them as helpless as fish on dry land, the others drifting, like Gunga, in and out of various jobs. But most gangs of lascars stick together, even on land, with a tenacity that is surprising in men who by and large do not come from the same place, belong to the same religion or speak the same language.
Gunga’s band, Amir recalls, contained seven men, three from Bihar and Bengal, one Malay, one Chinese and two Arabs, all of them managing to communicate with the help of some kind of pidgin: two of them, the Chinese and one of the Arabs, had died on the way to England, leaving Gunga with five companions and placing him at the disadvantage of having too small a gang of lascars to bargain with. For the lascars mostly board as a gang, working and cooking together, considering themselves bound by ties closer than that of blood.
Gunga, however, is e
bullient as ever: ‘But look at you, nawabzada, you have been adopted by the Queen of England!’
‘Appearances are deceptive, brother. I am still in the employment of the Kaptaan.’
‘Kaptaan Khet-Khaliyaan? Don’t tell me! I thought he was to free you in a few days, once you had told him about your days as a Thug...’
‘Almost, Gunga. We are almost done. I am looking around now, for other opportunities.’
‘But you told us the Kaptaan had promised you a passage back.’
‘ He has, brother. And he will keep his word: he is a man of principles. But I do not wish to go back...’
‘Not go back? Are you ill, brother? What’s wrong? What son-of-a-pig in his right mind would want to stay here, in this land of cold and rain, this city of the half-empty stomach and the unexpected kick?’
Amir shakes his head. Gunga is about to say something, but a figure in the crowd catches his attention. He moves away.
‘I have to run, jahaajbhai. I can see a policeman headed this way, and they usually push us boardmen off the pavements. When can we meet again? The others would want to see you too...’
‘Qui Hy’s place, in the afternoon, three days from now?’
‘Mai’s place? Qui Hy’s?’
Amir nods, but Gunga is already twisting, turning, dancing his way through the crowd. A lanky man, he is strangely graceful in his movements, and there is still in him, even on land, the motion of someone used to scampering up the lines of a ship. He has the reputation of being one of the best foretop men who ever sailed the seas, dancing up and down the ratlines, glued to the ropes without the least effort on his part, always perfectly balanced and always with a joyous shout, though the joy in his voice is seldom reflected in his eyes, which are brown and hard, accustomed to seeing too much.
