by Amitav Ghosh
‘What’s your name?’
‘Raj Rattan, sir,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘But everyone calls me Raju.’
‘You sure you want to go all the way to China?’
‘Yes, sir!’ cried the boy, his eagerness plainly visible in his shining eyes. ‘Please, sir.’
‘Oh all right then!’ said Zachary. ‘I’ll give it a try and see if it works out between us. Go git your things.’
The boy ran to the gharry and jumped in, leaving the door ajar. Zachary saw now that there was a woman inside: her head was hooded by her sari and he could not see her face.
‘Who’s that?’ he said to Baboo Nob Kissin.
‘Boy’s mother only. Has come for leave-taking purposes.’
For a minute or two the woman clutched the boy to her chest; from the angle of her head, it was clear that she was weeping. Then the boy whispered in her ear and she let go of him; he jumped out and came running back to the budgerow, with a small bundle slung over his shoulder. On reaching the top of the gangplank, he turned to look back at the carriage, where a glimmer of his mother’s sari could still be seen, in the crack of a window.
‘All will be well,’ Baboo Nob Kissin said to Zachary. ‘Do not worry. He is a good boy.’
‘I sure hope so,’ Zachary growled, ‘or I’ll bring him to his bearings soon enough.’
In the midst of all this, Zachary had forgotten about his letter to Paulette. It was Baboo Nob Kissin who reminded him: ‘And the letter for Miss Lambert? Better to give now since I will weigh anchors early tomorrow.’
‘Here it is,’ said Zachary, handing it over. ‘Please give it to Miss Lambert with my compliments.’
‘Do not fear, dear sir; it will arrive with blessings-message.’
‘And have a good voyage, Baboo.’
‘You too, Master Zikri – the Hind will come to Calcutta soon. It will not be long before we are reunited in China.’
‘I guess. Goodbye, Baboo.’
After the carriage had rolled away, Zachary turned to the boy and raised an eyebrow: ‘What the hell am I going to do with you, kid-mutt?’
With a cheerful smile the boy said: ‘Don’t worry, sir. There will be no problem.’
Surprised by his fluency Zachary said: ‘Say, kid-mutt – where’d you learn English?’
The boy answered without hesitation: ‘My father was a khid-matgar in an English house, sir; they taught us.’
‘Did a good job too. You’d better take your things inside.’
Now again the boy surprised Zachary, because he seemed to know exactly where to go.
‘Hey, kid-mutt – you ever been on this boat before?’
‘Why no, sir,’ said Raju quickly. ‘Never. But I have been on other budgerows.’
Zachary was glad to hear this. ‘Good. So you’ll be able to look after yourself then?’
‘Yes I will, sir. Please don’t worry about me. I will manage.’
The boy was as good as his word. Zachary saw no more of him till the next morning, when he went up to the budgerow’s upper deck to watch the Ibis setting off for China, with a steam-tug towing her downriver.
Raju was already there and they both waved as the Ibis sailed by.
Afterwards Zachary noticed that Raju had a paper kite in his hands.
‘Hey, where’d you find that, kid-mutt?’
‘It was in my cabin, sir,’ said the boy. ‘Someone had hidden it under the bunk.’
*
Within a day of leaving Bombay, the Hind ran into choppy weather. Many of the passengers were prostrated by sea-sickness but Shireen was an exception. On Rosa’s advice she chewed on a piece of fresh ginger and experienced no discomfort. The next day, heeding Rosa again, she changed into ‘English’ clothes. In practical terms the difference was not as great as she had been led to expect – but yes, she had to admit that her plain-cut black dress was indeed a little easier to manage than her sari had been. She was able to take several turns around the deck and the air was so exhilarating that she was loath to go back inside. After that, whenever the sun was up and the ship was not pitching too wildly she would step outside to pace the deck. She loved the feel of the wind in her hair and the touch of spindrift on her face.
The coast of northern Ceylon appeared off the Hind’s port bow after five days at sea. No sooner had the island been sighted than a strange fear took hold of Shireen: she began to wonder whether Zadig Bey would indeed join the ship as he had promised. There were no grounds for this concern – Vico had assured her that Zadig Bey was a man of his word – but somehow Shireen persuaded herself that something would go wrong and he wouldn’t appear.
When Colombo was sighted she hurried up to the quarter-deck, hoping to get a glimpse of the city. But a disappointment was in store: it turned out that Colombo, for all its fame as a port, did not have a proper harbour; ships had to anchor at a roadstead, well out to sea. That was where they were provisioned and unloaded, by flotillas of bumboats, bandar-craft and lighters.
All that Shireen could see of the city was a distant smudge, and this too fuelled her anxiety. She stayed on deck, scanning the waters, examining every bandar-boat that approached the ship – and it was not till she spotted Zadig Bey, sitting in the prow of a lighter, that her fears were finally set at rest.
Now Shireen became anxious about what people would think if they knew that her rendezvous with Zadig had been pre-arranged. She retreated quickly to her stateroom and did not emerge again until later in the day. When she ran into Zadig she feigned surprise, and to her great relief he responded in kind: ‘Is that you, Bibiji? How amazing! What a coincidence!’
Later, when they were taking a turn around the maindeck, she thanked him for humouring her but he shrugged her words off with a laugh. ‘I assure you, Bibiji – I was not pretending. My surprise was real.’
‘But why?’ she said. ‘You knew I would be on this ship, didn’t you?’
‘Well frankly, I wasn’t sure you would go through with it, Bibiji,’ said Zadig. ‘And besides I didn’t expect to find you looking so much at home here – walking around without a veil, dressed like a memsahib and smiling at everyone.’
She blushed and quickly changed the subject, asking him if he had received any more news from China.
‘Yes, Bibiji,’ said Zadig with a smile. ‘I had written to a friend of mine in Macau, asking him to find a place for you to rent. I received a letter from him a few days ago: you will be glad to know that he has found a nice house for you, in the centre of town.’
‘Really? And who is this friend?’
‘His name is Robin Chinnery, Bibiji.’
‘Does he live in Macau?’
‘He used to, but of late he has been helping some botanist friends with their nursery, at Hong Kong.’
After that, when the Hind set sail again, Shireen and Zadig began to take their walks together, on deck. One day Zadig said: ‘Do you know, Bibiji, this is how your late husband and I became friends? We used to walk together on the deck of a ship, the Cuffnells. Bahram-bhai loved to promenade on deck.’
Shireen had no inkling of this. It seemed unfair to her that Zadig should know so much about her husband and her family when she knew next to nothing about him.
‘Tell me about Colombo, Zadig Bey,’ she said. ‘Are your children there too? Your family?’
Zadig fell in step beside her, with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Yes, Bibiji, my son and daughter live in Colombo too. They are both married, with children of their own – they are all I have by way of family.’
A few more steps brought them to the starboard deck-rails where they stopped to look towards the horizon. Then Zadig cleared his throat awkwardly: ‘Actually, Bibiji … what I said is not true. In Egypt, where I was born, I have another family … and other children.’
For a moment Shireen thought she had misheard. ‘Another family? I don’t understand. Do you mean you had been married before?’
‘Yes, Bibiji – but it’s not so simple.’
>
‘Then?’
‘Bibiji – what happened is this. I was married off very young, to my cousin. The marriage was arranged within the family, mainly for reasons of business. It did not work out very well, although my wife and I had two sons and a daughter. I was always travelling, because of my work – and it happened that while passing through Colombo once I met Hilda. She was a widow, a Catholic. I began to spend more time in Colombo, and then my son was born.’
Shireen gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘So this woman in Colombo – she was not your wife …?’
‘She was my common-law wife, Bibiji. But in time it was she who became the woman to whom I felt I was really married.’
‘And your real wife? What became of her? Was she … abandoned?’
‘No, Bibiji!’ Zadig protested. ‘It wasn’t like that. In Cairo we lived in the midst of many relatives, in the family compound – just as you do in Bombay. My wife was not alone – and I settled most of my property on her, and on our children. She was well looked after.’
Shireen’s ears were beginning to burn. ‘So you left your wife, your children to go and live with …?’
She could not bring herself to say the word ‘mistress’.
‘Bibiji, the children I had with Hilda were mine too – and the fact that they were not recognized as such, by law, meant that they needed me more. There was no family in Colombo to look after them. Surely I could not have left them to their fate?’
Shireen felt her gorge rise, and had to lean against the bulwark.
‘What’s the matter, Bibiji? Are you all right?’
Turning her back on him, Shireen rushed off to her stateroom. Fortunately Rosa wasn’t there: Shireen threw herself on the bed and closed her eyes.
Over the next few days Shireen could not bring herself to step out on deck again. Her mind kept returning to the plight of Zadig Bey’s wife: an abandoned woman who had been forced to bring up her children by herself, while her lawfully married husband went off to live with another woman, in another country. She tried to think of what her own life would have been like, if she had had to live out her years in the Mestrie mansion as an abandoned wife. Her family would have been sympathetic of course, but she knew she’d have been crushed by the shame alone.
She realized now that this fate might well have befallen her as well: Bahram too must have contemplated abandoning his family in order to live with his Chinese mistress and his illegitimate son. He and Zadig had to have discussed the matter and he must have been tempted to follow his friend’s example.
The thought sickened Shireen, making her feel that she never wanted to have anything to do with Zadig Bey: the man was a libertine, a rake, a luccha.
When she finally resumed her walks on deck she made sure that Rosa was always with her. If they happened to come across Zadig Bey, she would acknowledge his greetings with a polite nod, without saying a word in return.
The coldness of her demeanour surprised Rosa, who said: Bibiji, are you not speaking to Mr Karabedian? Why?
It’s not proper, said Shireen curtly. Word may get back to Bombay.
Rosa gave her a shrewd look but did not dispute what she had said.
It was not till the Hind was approaching Calcutta that Shireen again found herself alone with Zadig Bey, by chance one day. Crossing the deck, he came straight over to her.
‘Bibiji, I’m sorry if I offended you that day. I should not have spoken as I did.’
She bit her lip, to keep it from quivering. Suddenly the question that had been circling in her head these last many days burst out of her mouth.
‘Zadig Bey, tell me: did my husband ever think of doing what you did? Did he think of leaving me and my daughters and going off to live with his … with his mistress?’
Zadig answered with an emphatic shake of his head. ‘No, Bibiji! That is one thing I can assure you of. You and your daughters were too important to him. He would never have done what I did – he was a different man.’
Although this did much to set Shireen’s mind at rest it did not entirely assuage her misgivings about Zadig. She continued to avoid him until the Hind arrived in Calcutta.
But once the ship had dropped anchor it became harder to stay out of his way. They were both shown around Calcutta by members of their own communities and it turned out that there was a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing between the Parsi and Armenian families of the city. What was more, they all lived in the same area and the Parsi agiary on Ezra Street, where Shireen daily went to pray, was just around the corner from the Armenian Church on Old China Street. Since Zadig was often there it was hard to avoid him. When they met it was easier to behave in a normal way than to be unnaturally stiff and distant.
Soon enough, they were again pacing the Hind’s quarter-deck together.
*
Four days after the Hind dropped anchor in Calcutta, Captain Mee took Kesri and a team of camp-followers on board, to make preparations for the company’s embarkation.
Down in the steerage-deck two large compartments and a few cabins had been set aside for the Bengal Volunteers. One of the cumras was assigned to the sepoys and the other to the camp-followers. Both cabins were cavernous, spanning most of the length and width of the ship; yet, even when empty, they appeared cluttered and congested, partly because the ceiling was so low that a man could not stand up straight without knocking his head. Moreover the compartments were divided up by long lines of upright beams, from which hammocks were suspended in double rows, one above the other.
Kesri disliked hammocks and was quick to commandeer a cabin for himself. Not only was it equipped with a bunk, it even had a small window. The stench of bilgewater was already strong in the steerage deck and Kesri knew from experience that the smell would get far worse when the Hind was at sea and her insides were all churned up. A breath of fresh air would seem like the rarest of luxuries then.
The Volunteers’ last morning was spent mostly in the garrison’s hospital: regulations called for every sepoy to clear a medical examination before boarding a transport ship. Afterwards, B Company mustered on a parade ground and Captain Mee made a brief speech, through interpreters. He told the sepoys that they were embarking on a historic mission and would gain great honour. In China they would have many opportunities to cover themselves with glory, he said, and the trophies they brought back would be treasured forever in their homes.
The talk of history and glory made little impression on the sepoys. They listened impassively, their faces even stiffer than usual. Only when the captain announced that he had arranged for money to be distributed, as advances on salary payments, did the sepoys liven up. Accountants from the company’s daftar were in attendance and the men quickly formed lines at their desks; also in attendance were shroffs who could arrange for remittances to be sent to Bihar, through hawala networks. As always the sepoys sent most of their money home, keeping only a little for themselves. This, in the end, was what mattered to them most, neither history nor glory, but the sustenance of their families, back in their villages.
Later in the day there was a dangal, a wrestling tournament that Kesri had organized in the hope that it would take the sepoys’ minds off their impending departure. He himself played the part of referee, and even though the event went by without incident, Kesri could tell that the participants’ hearts were not in it: the bouts were like practice sessions and there was little cheering.
Afterwards the company’s pundit, who was also travelling to China with them, performed a puja followed by a recitation of the Hanuman Chaalisa.
Kesri had hoped that the familiar ceremonies would help the men get past the untoward happenings of the last few weeks – desertions, executions, omens and the like. But instead the rituals seemed to deepen their sense of foreboding: even from the way they prayed, Kesri could tell that their minds were filled with misgiving.
Later that evening the company’s daftar sent over a half-dozen munshis to transcribe the sepoys’ last letters home.
Tomorrow we will leave for Maha-Chin and we will soon return, with abundant prize money and also bonuses for overseas service. The Honourable Company Bahadur has made ample provision for us and we will be well looked after so you must not concern yourselves about me. When I return I would like to buy more land with my prize money to add to our family’s holdings. I hope the poppy harvest on our lands was good this year. Have you been able to pay off the loans that the Company’s arkatis gave? For the rest of the year, until it is time to plant poppies again, you should grow rice, mustard and vegetables on my fields. Please tell my children and their mother that I will soon be back, with many gifts.
Although the men listened attentively, few of them echoed Kesri’s optimism. When it was their turn to dictate letters most of them struck a note of resignation.
Tomorrow our paltan will leave for Maha-chin to fight for the Honourable Company Bahadur. We do not know when we will return. Tell Babuji and Ammaji not to worry. My health is good, although last month I was in hospital with a fever. If I die do not grieve – I will go wearing a warrior’s garb, sword in hand. In my absence it will fall to you to look after my children and their mother. If there is any delay in obtaining my pension then you should send someone to petition the district officers in Patna. In addition there will be arrears of salary and prize money. Do not fail to recover everything. It should be enough to provide for my children till they are grown.
And:
We are going to a place that is very far. We know nothing about it. If I do not return I want to make sure that my field with the mango tree goes to my brother Fateh Singh. I am filled with sorrow that I have not fulfilled all my obligations to my family. For that reason alone will I regret my death. Other than that it is the duty of every Rajput to give up his life for the honour of his caste. I am ready for what may come.
