by Amitav Ghosh
Somewhere on the journey, soon after Zeynab had swung through the Red Sea in a great arc and tacked close to the coast between Dhofar and Makalla, a very old man appeared in the ship. Nobody saw him arrive; he was just there one day. Nobody wondered, either, for there were boats enough drawing alongside Zeynab on that stretch of the coast, though always under the cover of darkness. He was a small man, with a gritty, hollowed-out face. He wore a string vest, a hat like in American movies, and khaki trousers many sizes too large for him (there were plenty of British soldiers in those parts, some dead). Nobody knew his name, for he couldn’t talk. His tongue had been torn out from the roots; he would wag the stump for anyone who cared to look. Nobody needed to ask how it had happened: there were more wars than villages along those shores.
Fikry, the dark, towering nakhuda of Zeynab, was said to know all about him. But despite Zindi’s efforts he never gave anything away, not even his name.
In the end the old man was named by the half-dozen boys of various ages who manned Zeynab. His one possession happened to be a Japanese umbrella, a thing of great mechanical beauty, which grew at the press of a button from a foot-long stump into a vast canopy, as shady as a banyan tree. It was dubbed, naturally, the Japanese Miracle, and it gave him his name: Abu Karamat il-Yabani.
He of the Japanese Miracle never lost his smile, all through the days after Makalla when they swung out again towards the open sea and their barrels of fresh water were found to be empty; nor even afterwards when they ran out of food somewhere in the Red Sea, along the Eritrean coast, and not one of the boats Fikry waited for in three different places turned up. Even then he kept smiling, though for everyone else it was nothing less than torture to have to watch the fires of the fishing villages on the coast and smell the delicious warmth of cow-dung smoke on empty stomachs.
Provisions reached them soon after, but then they had to suffer a torture of another kind. Fikry decided one evening that a coastguard or some other busybody had sniffed their trail. So with a few powerful bursts of her engines (rescued from a Centurion tank somewhere in Iraq) Zeynab lost herself in the basaltic maze of the Dahlak Archipelago. For the next few days they had to pick their way through hell. While two boys hung over the prow examining the colour of the water and shouting instructions to Fikry, at the wheel, they had to sit motionless as those tortured, jagged anvils of rock flung themselves at the boat’s side; watch while the magnificent, muted colours of the coral reefs leapt up without warning to scrape Zeynab’s prow.
It was somewhere there that a tail of sharks attached itself to Zeynab. No one knew what drew them: perhaps it was the sight of those two boys hanging so close to the water. It couldn’t have been the meagre remains of their rice-and-lentils meals.
No, said Fikry, they hang close because they like the smell of human shit. And, certainly, it was under the holes in the stern that they usually hung, jaws snapping, waiting for fresh turds.
All through those days the old man never once stopped smiling. He and Alu were drawn to each other by their silences, and soon they were spending the days sitting together on a little ledge near the stern, silently meditating under the banyan shade of the Japanese Miracle.
Things grew a little better after the Dahlak Archipelago. But their progress was still slow; for Fikry, in his keenness to stay safely away from the main shipping lanes, kept them close to the mangrove-encrusted shores where they had to pick their way through unpredictable sand-shoals. In the stretch between Trinkitat and Suakin they swung out towards the main shipping lanes again, to avoid Port Sudan, and somewhere there Fikry sniffed the air one morning and said: Big ships ahead – I can smell them. He laughed at the alarm his announcement caused: Nothing to worry about – these fish are too big to stop for shrimps like us.
Soon they saw it: like a city in the sea; so vast that it took a full half-hour to climb over the horizon, emerging gradually, in layers, until even at that distance it was like a marine skyscraper, dwarfing the little flotilla of destroyers in its wake. It grew vaster and vaster as it ploughed towards them. They could see planes on its flat deck now, and tiny men in uniform, and towers and turrets.
Those are guns, said Fikry, not these water-pistols we’re selling.
They were all crowded along the sides of Zeynab now, watching in silent awe. As it drew closer its flat deck became part of the sky above them and they could only see the curving black steel of its side. Even its bow wave was higher than the tallest mast in Zeynab. When it was almost level with them Abu Fahl let out a great yell and Zaghloul tore off his scarf and waved it in the air. Next moment the tiny Zeynab erupted into shouts and whistles and cheers.
He of the Japanese Miracle was watching, too, but he had ducked down and was squinting over the railing, his face screwed small like an angry boy’s. Then suddenly he leapt to his feet, gabbling incoherently in bellowing grunts and snorts, and waved the Japanese Miracle in the air. As the aircraft-carrier drew level with Zeynab his gabblings rose to a frenzy. Before anyone could stop him he threw one leg over the railing, swung his arms back and hurled the Japanese Miracle at the vast ship.
And just then, while his hands were still in the air and his leg was hanging precariously over the side, the aircraft-carrier’s bow wave hit Zeynab and tossed her up. The old man tottered and clutched wildly at the rail. But the timber was wet, his hands slipped, and with a last terrified grunt he fell.
Even before he struck the water it had erupted with the thrashing of sharks’ tails.
Alu was closest to him and he shouted: He’s gone over. He whipped round and reached for a rope. But no sooner had he picked it up than it slid out of his hands. He tried again; and again, like water, the rope poured out of his hands. So he stood there frozen, staring at his hands in helpless horror.
Do something, Kulfi shrieked. Throw him the rope.
He looked up then, and said: I can’t.
Instead it was Abu Fahl who ran there and flung a rope over the side. They could still see the old man, though the water around him was already frothing with blood. A shark rammed into him and dived but an instant later it was snapped in half by its own kin and its severed head floated grotesquely to the surface with a khaki-clad leg still clamped between its jaws.
The old man’s head was still above water, his fear-crazed eyes crying for help. Abu Fahl flung the rope out and the old man lunged with the last reserves of his strength, but the rope danced past his hands on a wave. Abu Fahl threw it out again and this time it went straight to him. They saw his fingers clawing, closing on the rope. Abu Fahl heaved and Zaghloul caught hold of the rope, too, and they hauled it in together, as quickly as they could. They saw his hands, his shoulders, his head, rising safely from the water. Then two sharp fins scythed through the water and afterwards, when the foam cleared, the head, the torso and the shoulders were all gone but the hands and arms and bloody, ragged stumps were still clinging to the rope as though the old man had willed them all his dying strength.
Abu Fahl and Zaghloul covered their faces and prayed.
Later Kulfi went up to Alu, and in front of the whole ship she hissed: Why didn’t you do anything?
In answer he held up his hands and they all saw that his thumbs had gone rigid and the skin had begun to sag on them like the fuzz on fallen apricots.
Kulfi spat on the deck, and held his hand up for everyone to see. Look, she said, you’re looking at the most useless thing in the world – a weaver without thumbs.
She pulled his hand back and slapped his face with it. Hold them up in front of you, she said. They’ll remind you that you can never do anything again. All you’ve got left now are your eyes.
This is how it had happened.
Dr Mishra brought up the matter first, giving Mrs Verma an initial tactical advantage.
Verma, he said, addressing himself to her thin faded husband, as he always did when he wanted to say something important to her. Do you have any ideas for this celebration they’re planning at the hospital?
Startled, Mrs Verma almost spilt the dal she was ladling into Mrs Mishra’s plate (for Mrs Mishra would have nothing to do with the meat curry; vegetarianism was the only issue on which she had ever dared to go against her husband’s declared wishes).
Not that Mrs Verma was surprised: a couple of their Algerian colleagues had already dropped a few hints to her about a get-together. She had expected it, for at about the same time last year they had organized a small celebration to mark the second anniversary of their arrival in El Oued. Since they were to leave in a few months she had taken it for granted that they would do something of the same kind this year; on a larger scale, if anything. But she had taken great care not to mention the matter in Dr Mishra’s hearing. She knew it was going to be a long battle, and she had no intention of hampering herself by choosing her ground first. And now Dr Mishra had conceded her the advantage.
Her husband, following his instructions, said nothing. Instead, Mrs Verma, choosing her words carefully, said: Well, Mishra-sahb, why don’t you tell us what you have in mind?
She knew perfectly well of course: what he had in mind was a repeat of last year.
Last year all the doctors, nurses, and even a few patients, had gathered in a large room in the hospital. First, a couple of their Algerian colleagues had said a few nice things. Then Dr Mishra, with the help of an interpreter, had made a speech.
He began by talking matter-of-factly about how happy he and all the other Indian doctors were to have had this chance to live and work in Algeria for a while – and to earn plenty of money, he added in an undertone (that raised a laugh). He commented on the good sense of the Algerian government in compulsorily repatriating half their salaries to India in foreign exchange. It showed, he said, a genuine understanding of the needs of developing nations (tactfully he said nothing about how the French doctors in Algeria were paid much more than they were, simply for being French). But, then, he went on, it was only to be expected, for they had all seen for themselves how, almost alone among the oil-producing nations, Algeria had forsworn ostentation and concentrated on bettering the lot of the common people; how, in such marked contrast to some neighbouring countries he could name, in Algeria one sensed everywhere an energetic purposiveness, a belief in the future.
But it was only after that, when he began to talk about the Algerian revolution, that he spoke with real emotion. He talked of how he had followed every event in the course of the revolutionary movement in the fifties and sixties; of his great admiration for Ben Bella (causing more than a little embarrassed foot-shuffling in the audience). With a softly confiding wonder that seemed very strange in a man usually so trenchantly cynical, he told them how moving it had been to work in a country that had literally risen from ashes; how it still staggered him to think that this very country had survived one of the most savage wars of this century; that it had lived through the whole wretched catalogue of technology-taught horrors – concentration camps, organized genocide and all the rest – that had been inflicted upon it by the French. It was nothing less, he said, than a testimony to the strength of the human spirit that a people who, of their meagre sixteen millions, had lost one whole million, had yet gone on to face the future without bitterness.
As a socialist, he ended, his voice breaking, it had filled him with pride to work in such a nation.
His emotion was very real. He had meant every word he said, and his audience was moved, despite the falterings of the translator. For months afterwards everybody they met talked about Dr Mishra’s speech.
It was not that she objected to what he said, for of course it was all true. But, still, at the end of his speech she had had to stifle a laugh.
Maithili Sharan Mishra a socialist! Even while he was saying it, she had heard old Hem Narain Mathur’s voice in her ear, telling her how bright young Murali Charan Mishra had come back to Lucknow in the thirties with a degree from the London School of Economics in his pocket, the Indian Masses on his lips, and a Scottish pipe in his mouth. That was the kind of socialist he was.
His son, too, for all Lucknow had known that young Maithili Sharan’s one ambition was to follow his father into politics. Only, by then, old Murali Charan knew better, and even though his decades of fancy footwork in various legislatures had earned him more money than people could even begin to guess at he had ultimately forced his son into the safe certainties of the medical profession.
It was not that Mrs Verma was self-righteous politically; her father had talked to her too often about the ugliness of socialist in-fighting. But certainly, if anyone had a right to point his finger at Murali Charan Mishra, it was old Hem Narain Mathur. For he was a real socialist, as true as the new-ploughed earth, and he had died in unsung obscurity while Murali Charan Mishra was still fattening himself on ministerships. It was a debt which had to be paid some day.
In 1933, a few confused months after he left Presidency College, Hem Narain Mathur gave up a fine job with a tea company and plunged into Bihar’s villages with Swami Sahajanand and the reactivated Kisan Sabha movement. Often it was a forlorn and lonely life: in the villages he battled vainly to explain his theories, the glories of science, and his vision of the future (which he only half-understood himself); and back at the innumerable party conferences and congresses he battled no less vainly to explain to Murali Charan Mishra and the party theoreticians that people were not atoms to be dealt with in formulae.
And while he was away, organizing that movement or this, at some conference or the other, the party was always splitting and splintering. At the centre of it all was Murali Charan Mishra, his pipe hidden under his various man-of-the-people disguises, reading out his evolving theses – first, on the Uneven Development of the Economy; then on Progressive Bourgeois Nationalism; and finally on the need for a Guiding Hand at certain stages of history, and the absolute necessity for an immediate tactical alliance with the classes and parties in power.
And so, while Murali Charan Mishra climbed his way up the political ladder on the rubble of the crumbling socialists, Hem Narain Mathur grew old before his time, torn between certainty and history. He wasted away with the obscurest of diseases, bewilderment, as he watched the world spinning beyond his grasp; as old comrades began to out-scoundrel scoundrels once they had been given a whiff of power; as fledgeling peasant unions withered inexplicably away or simply vanished in puffs of smoke as the membership was roasted alive by landlords. He had one final surge of energy in the fifties when Ram Manohar Lohia kindled the last spark of hope in the socialists. But by that time he was already too ill and too tired to carry on long; all that he really longed for was the solace of his bookcase, of J. C. Bose and Huxley, of Tagore and Darwin, Hazlitt and Science Today, and of course of that beacon which still lit those unsteady shelves – the Life of Pasteur. His mind was made up for him when his wife died suddenly of meningitis, leaving him with a daughter to bring up on his own. It was then that he took a job in a small government school in Dehra Dun. And there he lived out the rest of his time – a tired old man who, as he said so often, had only one worthwhile thing left to do. And that was to introduce his two redeemers, his old bookcase and his growing daughter, to each other.
But right till the very end he had stayed a socialist; never once was he tempted by the simple-minded attractions of cynicism. Lying on his deathbed with the spoonful of holy water from the Ganges already at his lips, he had found the strength to place his daughter’s hand on his bookcase and say: My love, make my failures the beginning of your hopes.
If anyone had a right to object when Murali Charan Mishra’s son called himself a socialist, it was her father’s daughter.
To tell you the truth, said Dr Mishra, I thought it went off quite satisfactorily last year. He was a short, stout man in his early fifties, with a round face and a bushy, unkempt moustache. His head was shinily bald, except for a crop of curly hair which ran along the top of his neck to his eartops. He was never still: a crackling, restless energy coursed incessantly through him, sparking o
ut of his bright, bespectacled eyes and keeping his hands continually busy.
Some more meat, Mishra-sahb? Mrs Verma said, emptying a spoonful into his plate.
So, Verma, what do you think? Dr Mishra said, a little too loudly. I don’t see the need for a change. Shall we just have the same kind of thing again this year?
Dr Verma did not look up from his plate; nor did he by the slightest gesture acknowledge that the question had been addressed to him. Mrs Verma busied herself with the rice: she had to be careful now; she could tell that he had already guessed something; that he was trying to draw her out. She laughed briefly: It was very nice last year, Mishra-sahb, really wonderful. And, of course, if you feel strongly …
She left the sentence strategically unfinished and turned to Mrs Mishra: No more rice, Manda-bahen? Then have some prickly-pear custard – we got them from our own cactus. It tastes just like mango really, if you don’t worry about the smell too much.
Dr Mishra was ripping a chapati into minute pieces. So, then, Verma, he barked, you do have some other idea, do you?
Not exactly an idea, Mrs Verma said smoothly, but, yes, I did think that this year we could have something a little less cerebral … something lively … Of course, we must have your speech, too; we can’t possibly do without it. But in addition, if we could have something on the stage maybe, just something small to give everyone a glimpse of our country and our culture, our village life …
So that’s your idea, is it, Verma? Dr Mishra snorted.
Dr Verma sleepily mopped his plate with a chapati.
So you want to give them a glimpse of ‘our culture’, do you? Dr Mishra said. What exactly did you have in mind, Verma, could I ask? A pageant of the costumes of Indian brides perhaps, like the bureaucrats put on for foreigners in Delhi? We could dress up our elderly Miss K. and our own shy little brides, and you and I could be the bright young grooms, couldn’t we?
