Flood of Fire

by Amitav Ghosh

  Yesterday afternoon, I went to visit my old haunts in Fanqui-town. It was startling to see how much the atmosphere here has changed in the short time that I’ve been away. Of the foreigners, only the Americans remain, and the shuttered windows of the empty factories are a constant reminder that things are not as they were before the opium crisis.

  The British Factory is particularly striking in its desolation. It is strange indeed to see this building, once the busiest and grandest establishment in Fanqui-town, all locked and shuttered, its verandas empty. Even the hands of the clock on the chapel tower have ceased to move. They are joined together at the twelve o’clock mark, as if in prayer.

  Also empty are the two factories that were occupied by the Parsi seths of Bombay – the Chung-wa and the Fungtai. I lingered awhile near the Fungtai: how could I not, when it is so filled with memories? I had thought that by this time Seth Bahram’s house would have been rented out to someone else – but no: the window of his daftar remains shuttered and a doorman stands guard at the Hong’s entrance. At the cost of a couple of cash-coins I was allowed to slip in and wander around.

  The rooms are much as they were when we left, except that a thin film of dust has collected on the floors and the furniture. It gave me an eerie feeling to hear my footsteps echoing through empty corridors – in my memories that house is always crowded with people, redolent of the smell of masalas, wafting up from the kitchen. Most of all it is filled with the spirit of Seth Bahram – I felt his absence very keenly and could not resist going up to the second floor, to look into the daftar where I had spent so many long hours with him, transcribing letters and taking dictation. Here too things are as they were at the time of our departure: the large rock the Seth had been gifted by his compradore is still in its place, as is his ornately carved desk. Even his armchair has not moved: it remains beside the window, as it was during the Seth’s last weeks in Canton. In that darkened, shadow-filled room, it was almost as if he were there himself, half-reclining, smoking opium and staring at the Maidan – as though he were looking for phantoms, as Vico once said.

  This thought gave me a strange turn and I went quickly downstairs, back into the sunlight. I thought I’d visit Compton’s print-shop, and turned into Old China Street. Once a bustling thoroughfare, this too has a sleepy and forlorn look. It was only when I came to Thirteen Hong Street, where the foreign enclave meets the city, that things looked normal again. Here the crowds were just as thick as ever: torrents of people were pouring through, moving in both directions. In a minute I was swept along to the door of Compton’s print shop.

  My knock was answered by Compton himself: he was dressed in a dun-coloured gown and looked just the same – his head topped by a round, black cap and his queue clipped to the back of his neck, in a neat bun.

  He greeted me in English with a wide smile: ‘AhNeel! How are you?’

  I surprised him by responding in Cantonese, greeting him with his Chinese name: Jou-sahn Liang sin-saang! Nel hou ma?

  ‘Hai-aa!’ he cried. ‘What’s this I’m hearing?’

  I told him that I’d been making good progress with my Cantonese and begged him not to speak to me in English. He was delighted and swept me into his shop, with loud cries of Hou leng! Hou leng!

  The print-shop too has changed in these last few months. The shelves, once filled with reams of paper and tubs of ink, are empty; the air, once pungent with the odour of grease and metal, is now scented with incense; the tables, once piled with dirty proofs, are clean.

  I looked around in astonishment: Mat-yeh aa?

  Compton shrugged resignedly and explained that his press has been idle ever since the British were expelled from Canton. There was little work in the city for an English-language printing press: no journals, bulletins or notices.

  And anyway, said Compton, I’m busy with some other work now.

  What work? I asked, and he explained that he has found employment with his old teacher, Zhong Lou-si, who I had met several times during the opium crisis (‘Teacher Chang’ was what I used to call him then, knowing no better). Apparently he is now a mihn-daaih – a ‘big-face-man’, meaning that he is very important: Commissioner Lin, the Yum-chai, has put him in charge of gathering information about foreigners, their countries, their trading activities &c. &c.

  In order to do this Zhong Lou-si has created a bureau of translation, Compton said: he employs many men who are knowledgeable about languages and about places overseas. Compton was one of the first to be hired. His job is mainly to monitor the English journals that are published in this region – the Canton Press, the Chinese Repository, the Singapore Journal and so on. Zhong Lou-si’s agents bring copies of these journals to him and he goes through them to look for articles that might be of interest to the Yum-chai or Zhong Lou-si.

  The subject that Compton follows most closely is of course the daaih-yin – ‘the big smoke’ – and it happened that he was going through an article in the Chinese Repository, on opium production in India. It was lucky for him that I came by for he was having trouble making sense of it. Many of the words in the article were unfamiliar to him – ‘arkati’, ‘maund’, ‘tola’, ‘seer’, ‘chittack’, ‘ryot’, ‘carcanna’ and so on. Compton had not been able to find them in his English dictionary and was at his wit’s end. Nor did he know of many of the places that were mentioned in the article – Chhapra, Patna, Ghazipur, Monghyr, Benares and so on. Calcutta was the one place he had heard of – it is known here as Galigada.

  I spent a long time explaining everything and he thanked me profusely: Mh-gol-saal, mh-gol-saall I told him that I was delighted to help; that it was but a small return for the many kindnesses that he and his family have shown me and for the long hours that I spent in his print-shop earlier in the year. It was wonderful to be back there again – Compton is perhaps the only person of my acquaintance who is as besotted with words as I am.

  Before the start of the march, Kesri had been told that it would take the advance guard about five hours to get to the next campsite. A scouting party had been sent ahead to choose a site on the shores of the Brahmaputra River. Kesri knew that by the time he arrived the camp’s lines would already have been laid out, with sections demarcated for the officers’ enclave, the sepoy lines, the latrines and the camp-bazar, for the followers.

  Sure enough, around mid-morning, after five hours on the road, Kesri’s horse began to flare its nostrils, as if at the scent of water. Then the road topped a ridge and the Brahmaputra appeared ahead, at the bottom of a gentle slope: it was so broad that its far bank was barely visible, a faint smudge of green. On the near shore, the water was fringed by a pale brown shelf of sand: it was there that the campsite’s flags and markers had been planted.

  A border of sand ran beside the river as far as the eye could see. Looking into the distance now, Kesri spotted a rapidly lengthening cloud of dust approaching the campsite from the other direction. At its head was a small troop of horsemen – their pennants showed them to be daak-sowars, or dispatch riders.

  A long time had passed since the battalion’s previous delivery of letters; almost a year had passed since Kesri had last heard from his family. He had been awaiting the daak more eagerly than most and was glad to think that he would be the first to get to it.

  But it was not to be: within minutes of spotting the battalion’s colours, one of the dispatch riders broke away to head directly towards the column. As the only mounted man in the advance guard, it was Kesri’s job to intercept the sowar. He handed his pennant to the man behind him and cantered ahead.

  Seeing Kesri approach, the rider slowed his mount and removed the scarf from his face. Kesri saw now that he was an acquaintance, a risaldar attached to campaign headquarters. He wasted no time in getting to the matter that was uppermost in his mind.

  Is there any mail for the paltan?

  Yes, we’ve brought three bags of daak; they’ll be waiting for you at the campsite.

  The risaldar swung a dispatch bag off his s
houlder and handed it to Kesri.

  But this is urgent – it has to get to your com’dant-sahib at once.

  Kesri nodded and turned his horse around.

  Major Wilson, the battalion commander, usually rode halfway down the column, with the other English officers. This meant that he was probably a good mile or two to the rear, if not more – for it often happened that towards the end of a day’s march the officers took a break to do some riding or hunting; sometimes they just sat chatting in the shade of a tree, while their servants brewed tea and coffee. That way they could be sure that their tents were ready for them when they rode into camp.

  To find the officers would take a while, Kesri knew, for he would have to run the gauntlet of the entire caravan of camp-followers, riding against the flow. And no sooner had he turned his horse around than he ran into a platoon of scythe-bearing ghaskatas – to them would fall the task of providing fodder for the hundreds of animals that marched with the column. Behind them came those who would prepare the campsite: tent-pitching khalasis, flag-bearing thudni-wallahs, coolies with cooking kits, dandia-porters with poles slung over their shoulders; and of course, cleaners and sweepers, mehturs and bangy-burdars. Next was the battalion’s laundry contingent, a large group of dhobis and dhobins, with a string of donkeys, laden with bundles of washing.

  After leaving the dhobis behind Kesri slowed his pace a little as he drew abreast of the ox-carts that belonged to the bazar-girls. He had long been intimate with their matron, Gulabi, and he knew that she would be upset if he rode past without stopping for a word. But before he could rein in his horse a claw-like hand fastened on his boot.

  Kesri! Sunn!

  It was Pagla-baba, the paltan’s mascot and mendicant: like others of his ilk, he had an uncanny knack for guessing what was on people’s minds.

  Ka bhaiyil? What is it, Pagla-baba?

  Hamaar baat sun; listen to my words, Kesri – I predict that you will receive news of your relatives today.

  Bhagwaan banwale rahas! cried Kesri gratefully. God bless you! Pagla-baba’s prediction whetted Kesri’s eagerness to be back at the camp and he forgot about Gulabi. Spurring his horse ahead, he trotted past the part of the caravan that was reserved for the camp-following gentry – the Brahmin pundits, the munshi, the bazar-chaudhuri with his account books, the Kayasth dubash, who interpreted for the officers, and the baniya-modi, who was the paltan’s banker, arranging remittances to the sepoys’ families and doling out loans at exorbitant rates. These men were travelling in the same cart, chewing paan as they went.

  It was the munshi who was in charge of letters: to him fell the task of distributing daak to the sepoys. As he was passing the cart, Kesri paused to tell the munshi that a delivery of post had arrived and he had reason to believe that he might at last have received a letter from his family.

  Keep the chithi ready for me, munshiji, said Kesri. I’ll meet you at the camp as soon as I can.

  The throng on the road had thinned a little now and Kesri was able to canter past the bylees that were carrying the paltan’s heavy weaponry – dismantled howitzers, mortars, field-pieces – and its squad of artillerymen, a detachment of golondauzes and gun-lascars. Next came the jail-party, with its contingent of captured Burmese soldiers, and then the mess-train, with its cartloads of supplies for the officers’ kitchen – crates of tinned and bottled food, barrels of beer, demijohns of wine and hogsheads of whisky. This was closely followed by the hospital establishment, with its long line of canvas-covered hackeries, carrying the sick and wounded.

  After leaving these behind, Kesri ran straight into swarming herds of livestock – goats, sheep and bullocks for the officers’ table. The bheri-wallahs who tended the animals tried to clear a path for him, but with little success. Rather than sit idly in the saddle, waiting for the herds to pass, Kesri swerved off the path and rode into a stretch of overgrown wasteland.

  This was fortunate for he soon spotted the battalion’s dozen or so English officers: they had broken away from the column and were riding towards the sandy ridge that separated the river from the road.

  They too saw him coming and reined in their horses. One of them, the battalion’s adjutant, Captain Neville Mee, rode towards Kesri while the others waited in the shade of a tree.

  ‘Is that a dispatch bag, havildar?’

  ‘Yes, Mee-sah’b.’

  ‘You can hand it to me, havildar. Thank you.’

  Taking possession of the dispatch bag, the adjutant said: ‘You’d better wait here, havildar – you may be needed again.’

  Kesri watched from a distance as Captain Mee trotted off to deliver the bag to the commandant. Major Wilson opened it, took out some papers and then slapped Captain Mee on the back, as if to congratulate him. Within minutes the officers were all pumping the captain’s hand, crying out: ‘You’re a lucky dog, Mee …’

  The sight piqued Kesri’s curiosity: had Captain Mee received a promotion perhaps? He had certainly waited for one long enough – almost ten years had passed since the last.

  It so happened that Mr Mee was Kesri’s own ‘butcha’ – his child – at least in the sense in which the word was used in the Bengal Native Infantry, which was to say that Kesri had been Mr Mee’s first orderly when he joined the battalion as a seventeen-year-old ensign, fresh from the Company’s military academy at Addiscombe, in England. Kesri was not much older than him but he had been a sepoy for three years already and had seen enough combat to consider himself a veteran. From that time on Kesri had ‘raised’ Mr Mee, instructing him in the ways of the battalion, teaching him the tricks of Indian-style kushti wrestling, nursing him when he was ill, and cleaning him up after riotous nights of gambling and drinking at the officers’ club.

  Many sepoys did as much and more for their butchas yet their services were often forgotten when those officers rose in the ranks. But that was not the case with Kesri and Mr Mee: over the years their bond had grown closer and stronger.

  Mr Mee was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a square-jawed, swarthy face and a receding hairline: his hearty manner belied an unusually sharp tongue and a quick temper. As a young officer his pugnacity had often got him into trouble, earning him a reputation as a regular ‘Kaptân Marpeet’ – ‘Captain Brawler’. Nor had the passage of time smoothed his rough edges; from year to year his prickliness seemed only to grow more pronounced, his manner more abrasive.

  Yet Captain Mee was in his way an excellent officer, fearless in battle and scrupulously fair in his dealings with the sepoys. Kesri in particular had good reason to be grateful to him: early in their association Captain Mee had discovered that Kesri secretly harboured the ambition of learning English and had encouraged and tutored him until Kesri surpassed every other member of the paltan in fluency, even the dubash. As a result Kesri and the captain had come to understand each other uncommonly well, developing a rapport that extended far beyond the battalion’s business. When Mr Mee needed a girl for the night, he depended on Kesri to tell him which members of Gulabi’s troupe were poxy and which were worth their daam; when he was short of money – which was often, because he was, by his own confession, always all aground, ever in need of the ready – it was Kesri he looked to for a loan, not the bankers of Palmer & Co. nor the baniya-modi.

  It was not uncommon for officers to be in debt for many of them liked to gamble and drink. But Captain Mee’s debts were larger than most: to Kesri alone he owed a hundred and fifty sicca rupees. In his place many other officers would have paid off their debts by dipping their hands into the regimental till, or by seeking a post in which there was money to be made – but Mr Mee was not that kind of man. Wild and intemperate though he might be, he was a man of unimpeachable integrity.

  Even though Kesri and Captain Mee knew each other very well, they both understood that their relationship was undergirded by a scaffolding of lines that could not be crossed. Kesri would never of his own accord have ventured to ask the adjutant why his fellow officers had congratulated him. But as it
happened, Captain Mee broached the subject himself as he rode up to dismiss Kesri.

  ‘A word with you, havildar? It’s something rather chup-chup, so you’ll stow your clapper about it, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That dispatch you just brought? It was for me. I’ve been ordered to report to Fort William, in Calcutta. The high command’s putting together an expeditionary force, for an overseas mission – I’d got wind of it and sent in my name. I’ll be commanding a company of sepoy volunteers. They’ve asked me to bring an NCO of my choice which is why I’m telling you all this. The only man I can think of is you, havildar. What do you say? Do you think you might want to come along?’

  Nothing could have been further from Kesri’s mind that day than to volunteer for an overseas expedition: after eight months of garrison duty in a remote outpost on the border between Assam and Burma he was exhausted and looking forward to some rest. But out of curiosity he asked: ‘To where will the force be going, sir?’

  ‘Don’t know yet,’ said the adjutant. ‘It’s still in the planning stages, but I hear the prize money will be good.’

  For a moment Kesri was tempted to sign on as a balamteer. ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Ekdum!’ said Mr Mee with a smile. ‘I’ve outrun the constable long enough: this may be my last chance to pay off my debts. Between the prize money and the travel battas I should be able to square things with everyone, including you. So what do you say, havildar? You think you might want to cut a caper abroad?’

  Suddenly Kesri came to a decision. ‘No, sir, too tired now. Sorry.’

  The captain pursed his lips in disappointment. ‘That’s too bad, havildar – I was counting on you. But think about it; there’s time yet.’