First Light

by Sunil Gangopadhyay

  Hemchandra shouted for the mali Siddhiram, who was also the caretaker, in vain. Then, giving up, he picked up a stone and hammered at the ancient lock till it broke and fell to the floor. The door creaked on its rusty hinges and swung open to reveal an interior that left Bharat staring with dismay. Dust lay thick on everything and cobwebs hung in festoons from the walls. The floor was pitted with holes from which mice scampered gaily in and out. ‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you friend?’ Hemchandra asked with a smile. ‘Things will look quite different after a thorough cleaning and some repairs. Come home with me for the present. You can take charge of your new property when it’s ready for you. By the way, I hope you’re not afraid of ghosts. The house is supposed to be haunted. My grandfather kept a mistress here for many years and she died in this house. Members of my family claim that they have heard peals of laughter and the tinkling of ankle bells at the dead of night. That’s why no one comes here anymore.’

  ‘I’ve had close encounters with death so many times that I’ve ceased to be afraid of anything—natural or supernatural.’

  Bharat moved in within a week and adjusted to his new life with an ease that was amazing even to him. He gave up his city clothes and wore a checked lungi and singlet. He stopped shaving and soon a thick stubble appeared on his cheeks and chin. All day he pottered about, on bare feet, watering his shrubs, planting new trees and pruning old ones. Siddhiram, Bharat discovered, was a better cook than a mali and Bharat decided to switch roles with him. So while Siddhiram cooked and cleaned Bharat tended the garden. The evenings were spent in Hem’s company. The two friends sat together by the pond, now cleared of weeds and hyacinth, chatted of the past and made plans for the future.

  ‘We swore on the Gita to dedicate our lives to the country,’ Hem said one day. ‘But we haven’t kept our oath Bharat.’

  ‘What can we do by ourselves Hem?’ Bharat replied ‘Someone must give us the direction. Aurobindo Babu’s silence is uncanny. He seems to have given up hope. Shall we do the same?’

  ‘By no means. The boys of Medinipur haven’t given up the effort or the hope. Let us work with them. It may be that the lead for a great revolution will come from an obscure town like ours.’

  A few months later Satyendranath arrived in Medinipur and took on the task of restructuring the Samiti. Bharat’s house became the headquarters of the new aakhra and several boys, handpicked and initiated into the movement by Satyen, moved in with him. Here they received several kinds of instruction. Along with secret training in the martial arts they were given lessons in economics and history. Satyen explained the reasons for the country’s declining economy and regaled them with stories of other great revolutions of the world. While Satyen was engaged in educating the youth of the country Hemchandra went from village to village on a rickety bicycle trying to win over the common man. He began by targeting schools and schoolmasters. He had lengthy discussions with the latter out of a conviction that, if they could be fired with a desire for freedom, they would pass it on to their pupils. Bharat accompanied him quite often and never failed to be amazed at his drive and dedication. Unlike Bharat, Hem was married and had a family. Yet he spent months away from home without a murmur. Even more surprising was the fact that he never put himself forward or claimed the right to leadership. He worked in the shadows and allowed Satyen to bask in the limelight.

  One evening the whole group sat together in Bharat’s house talking of this and that when one of the boys said suddenly, ‘What has become of Curzon’s grand plan of the Partition of Bengal Satyenda? Why is no one talking about it anymore?’

  ‘The Bengali Babus were so fiercely opposed to it,’ another replied, ‘that the sahebs lost their nerve. It is possible that Curzon has changed his mind.’ Everyone’s face brightened at the thought. Everyone’s except Hemchandra’s. ‘I hope he hasn’t,’ he muttered sullenly.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Bharat asked curiously. ‘Surely you don’t endorse Partition! Don’t you realize that the plan is to divide Hindus and Muslims and bring Bengal to her knees?’

  ‘I realize that—of course,’ Hemchandra replied. ‘What you don’t realize is that an act of this kind is needed at this juncture. It will shock the people out of their lethargy. The sleeping nation will wake up roaring for revenge. It might be a good thing in the long run,’

  Even as he spoke a boy of about twelve came running into the room. ‘May I have a word with you Hemda?’ he cried, his face flushed with agitation. Hem looked at him indulgently. He was Khudiram, a very bright lad but wild and wilful and always up to some prank or other. ‘What is it Khudi?’ Hem asked smiling.

  ‘I want a pistol Hemda. Shall I go to your house?’

  ‘A pistol!’ Hemchandra exclaimed startled, ‘Whatever for?’ ‘I want to kill an Englishman. The magistrate slapped an orderly for no fault whatsoever. How dare he? The white-skinned firinghees think they can do what they like in our country! Why should we allow it?’

  ‘The sahebs are all powerful Khudi. If you as much as touch the hair of the magistrate the police will shoot you down like a dog.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense Khudi!’ Hemchandra said severely. ‘You’re too young to think of violence. Go home.’

  The boy’s face fell. He went away dragging his feet in disappointment. Hemchandra turned to Bharat. ‘Did you see that Bharat?’ he asked. ‘Khudiram is only a child but his blood is boiling with a sense of injustice. With a few thousand boys like him we can launch a struggle the like of which has never been seen in this country.’

  Bharat rose at dawn, the next day, and sauntered out into the garden. Plucking a twig from a neem branch he commenced brushing his teeth and examining each tree, bush and creeper running his hands lovingly over the leaves, flowers and fruits. The oleander was bending over under its wealth of blood red blooms. His heart lifted with triumph at the thought that this was his creation. The place where it now stood had been an arid patch overrun with dry scrub. He had cleared the land, dug the soil and planted the seed. He had watered it and watched it take root and grow to healthy, vigorous life. He turned his eyes to the banana clump. What a strange, wonderful green it was with the sun glinting on the leaves. Surely there wasn’t such a golden green in the world!

  Around eleven o’ clock, when Bharat was engaged in scraping out a mound of termites from the root of a mango tree, a boy came running in with a message from Hem. It was Khudiram. ‘Hemda has had an accident,’ he said. ‘He wants you to come to the loom house at once.’ The loom house was a simple shack situated at the other end of the town on one bank of the Kansai river and adjacent to the shrine of Hazrat Pir Lohani. Three handlooms had been set up here and a coarse type of cloth was woven by local weavers. Hem often held his meetings here. It was also a refuge for a number of boys who hated their homes and schools and had volunteered to work for the country.

  Bharat rose from his knees and, throwing his shovel aside, had just turned to go into the house when he heard a rustle accompanied by a hissing sound. Then, as he stood rooted to the ground, a giant cobra reared its head from inside the broken mound swaying from side to side and staring at him with beady eyes. Its long greeny black body slithered out slowly and coiled itself within inches of Bharat’s feet. Bharat’s blood turned cold. He looked around with dazed eyes for a stick but, before he could move, Kudiram had pushed him aside with a thrust of his strong, young arm. ‘Move away Dada!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll deal with this fellow.’ Picking up a handful of dust he threw it at the snake targeting the eyes. Then, like a skilled snakecharmer, he started circling round it picking up handfuls of dust and throwing them at intervals. The snake hissed louder in its fury and swayed more fiercely. But, being foolish and cowardly by nature, it couldn’t take the boy’s attack for long and tried to slither back into its hole head foremost. Now Khudiram sprang forward and grabbed it by its tail. Swinging it in the air with strong circular motions he dashed it against the rough mango trunk, over and over a
gain till, its bones smashed and broken, it lay on the ground—a lifeless mass of battered flesh and bits of glistening skin.

  ‘Why did you have to take such a risk?’ Bharat scolded the boy severely. ‘We could have killed it with a stick.’ Then seeing the boy’s face crumple with disappointment, he added, ‘Let’s go now. Is Hem badly hurt?’

  Reaching the shack they found Hem lying on a string cot with a bloodstained bandage on his brow. One foot, swollen to the size of a pumpkin, was coated with a mixture of lime and turmeric. ‘Why Hem! What happened?’ Bharat asked his friend in a burst of concern. But Hem did not bother to answer his question. ‘Satyenda has returned from Calcutta,’ he cried. ‘He has brought a number of newspapers with him. The Partition of Bengal is about to become a reality. But, do you know Bharat, the Bengalis are not weeping and beating their breasts. Or begging the rulers to desist. They are holding meetings in street corners and protesting against the Bill.’ Hemchandra sat up in his excitement. ‘Satyenda tells me that students have joined in large numbers and are going ahead with their slogan shouting right under the bloodshot eyes of the police.’

  ‘But how long can they do so?’ Bharat asked in a bewildered voice. ‘The British have weapons. We have nothing.’

  ‘There are kinds and kinds of weapons. Ours will be boycott.’ ‘Boycott! What is that?’

  ‘It means to denounce and abjure. The British are a nation of shopkeepers. The way to hit them where it hurts is to cripple their industries. Indians will take a pledge to stop using British goods. We’ll give up wearing shoes and stop buying their cloth. We’ll take to smoking bidis instead of cigars. And we’ll use country mollasses in place of white sugar.’

  ‘What shall we wear then? There’s no such thing as Indian leather and all our cloth comes from Manchester and Lancashire.’

  ‘We’ll wear khadams or go bare foot. And we’ll buy cloth from the mills of Bombay.’ Hem paused to take a breath and continued, ‘A huge meeting is being organized in the Town Hall of Calcutta on the seventh of August. Many eminent men are joining it. I’ve a mind to go. Will you come with me?’

  ‘No,’ Bharat replied after a moment’s hesitation. Hemchandra frowned. Then, almost as though he was speaking to himself, he muttered, ‘It’s going to be a historic occasion from what I hear. We’re close to something. Something really big! This is not the time to remain tucked away safely on a tiny farm. All right-thinking people should set themselves adrift on the mainstream and sink or swim with their countrymen.’

  ‘How will you go?’ Bharat asked bluntly. ‘Your foot is too badly injured for you to attempt anything so foolhardy.’

  ‘Go I shall—even if I have to crawl all the way. I’ll show myself to a doctor first of course. Calcutta doctors are wizards. I’m confident I’ll be able to walk in a few days.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Bharat said suddenly.

  ‘You don’t have to. Not for my sake at least. I don’t want your charity.’

  ‘You may not want it. But you’ll have to take it all the same.’ ‘No!’ Hemchandra shouted, his face flaming. ‘You stay here with your piddling bushes and creepers. I shan’t take you with me.’

  ‘You can’t prevent me from boarding the train,’ Bharat laughed, ‘Or from leaving it at Howrah. And there’s no law that decrees that I can’t walk by your side through the streets of Calcutta.’

  Bharat was as good as his word. Throwing a few things together in a bag he boarded the train to Calcutta accompanied by Hem. Then arriving at Howrah Station, he hired a hackney cab and drove straight to Dr Mahendralal Sarkar’s chamber in Bhabanipur. He had accompanied Shashibhushan there a number of times and knew the place. But, alighting from the cab, he looked around with a puzzled frown. The street outside had always been packed with carriages and people at this hour. But now the place looked quite deserted. Only two carriages stood waiting, a little distance away from the gate. Walking in they were informed that Dr Sarkar was examining a patient and would send for them in a few minutes. They would have to wait, till then, in the reception room.

  After half an hour or so the man returned and ushered them into the doctor’s chamber. Walking in first, with Hem hobbling behind, Bharat got a shock. A life-sized portrait of Dr Mahendralal Sarkar hung on the wall facing the door and in the vast leather chair, on whose seat Mahendralal’s enormous bulk had rested in the past, a stranger sat—a small midget of a man with a weaselly face, a toothbrush moustache and a pair of hornrimmed spectacles.

  ‘D-doctor Mahendralal Sarkar!’ Bharat stammered. ‘Is he …is he …?’

  ‘You must be new to the city.’ The man took off his spectacles and started polishing them with a handkerchief. ‘Dr Sarkar died several years ago. I was his assistant.’

  ‘But your man said—’

  ‘I’m Dr Sarkar too. Come, let me have a look at the foot. Tck! Tck! It’s a bad sprain but nothing that a week’s rest will not cure.’

  Applying some ointment he bandaged it neatly and said, ‘No moving about. And no climbing stairs. Stay indoors as far as possible.’

  Leaving the doctor’s chamber Bharat took the same cab and drove down to his old lodgings. By a stroke of good luck he was able to secure a room on the ground floor. Forcing Hem to lie down he sat in a chair beside him and ordered some tea. The mess lounge, in which the inmates relaxed in the evenings, was also on the ground floor and snatches of their conversation came floating in through the open door. Although Bharat had never associated with them, in the past, he knew the kind of talk the Babus indulged in. It was office talk mostly, spiced with juicy gossip about sexual exploits in the brothels of Rambagan and Hadh Katar Gali. But, this evening, he was surprised to hear them discussing the impending partition in voices seething with resentment and making plans to join the procession that would march to Town Hall. From their excited, agitated voices it was obvious that they were all raring to go.

  Bharat wondered how the change had come about. Bengalis were a peaceloving people, lazy and tolerant, and they loved status quo. They respected the British for bringing law and order to the country and upheld their right to rule. Many had wept inconsolably at Queen Victoria’s passing away. What had happened to them now? Why did the partition of their province, designed by their masters in the interest of better administration, incense them so?

  Next morning, to everyone’s surprise, news came that all the shops of the city were closed for the day. No call had been given for a hartal. The shopkeepers had taken their own decision. As the morning wore on the streets started filling with people and cries of Bande Mataram could be heard. Bharat was familiar with the song. The words had been penned by Bankimchandra and set to music by Rabindranath Thakur. But the crowds in the streets were not singing. They were repeating the first two words in a kind of shout. Bharat had never heard slogan-shouting in his life and he listened to it with wonder and a strange sense of exhilaration. ‘Send for a carriage Bharat,’ Hem ordered, ‘We must go to College Square and join the procession marching to Town Hall.’

  ‘But the doctor has forbidden you to move!’

  Hem dismissed the doctor’s orders with an impatient gesture. Looking grimly into Bharat’s face he said, ‘If you don’t do as I tell you I shall hobble out of that door and join the crowds. No one can stop me.’ Bharat sighed and went out into the street. Dodging the masses that kept pouring in from all sides he secured a carriage with great difficulty. The two friends got in and the horses inched their way slowly towards their destination.

  ‘Who got all these people here Hem?’ Bharat broke a long silence. ‘Someone must have organized all this.’

  ‘No one organized anything. The National Congress could have given a call but it didn’t. People are coming on their own.’

  ‘Most of them seem to be students. And see—they are the ones who are trying to maintain order.’

  ‘Students are the lifeblood of a nation; its real strength. Do you know why, Bharat? The ordinary adult has responsibilities and they weaken
his resolve. It is not so with the young. Youth is indomitable.’ Looking sadly down at his bandaged foot Hem sighed and continued, ‘To my dying day I shan’t cease to regret the fact that I couldn’t participate in this historic procession in the true sense of the word; that I couldn’t march shoulder to shoulder with thousands of my countrymen. Couldn’t I have chosen another time to take a toss from my bicycle?’ Bharat burst out laughing at this infusion of the comic in Hem’s lament. But Hem didn’t laugh. ‘Your legs are whole brother,’ he said to Bharat. ‘Why are you sitting in the carriage? Get down and walk with the rest. You can brag about it to your grandchildren in the years to come.’

  Bharat sprang out of the carriage. He was glad of it because now he got a better view of what was going on; There were people from every walk of life. Students and teachers, clerks and barristers, rich Babus and middle-class householders, Hindus and Muslims were walking side by side with not a thought for caste and class. The last were few in number but a tall, bearded Muslim cleric dominated the scene. Standing in the centre of the procession he was shouting Bande Mataram with great force and energy. On enquiring about the man’s identity from the people around him Bharat was told that he was the famous Maulvi Liaquat Hossain.

  As the procession approached Town Hall several others, longer and weightier, began converging from the lanes and bylanes and, within seconds, the place turned into a sea of people. The elders put their heads together and decided that, in view of the unprecedented numbers, three meetings with a common agenda would be held instead of one. A resolution would be passed and sent to the Viceroy demanding withdrawal of the irrational and infamous Partition of Bengal. And the populace would take a pledge to boycott all British goods till their demand was met. The crowds cheered and clapped at this announcement. Take off your shoes brother,’ Hem hissed in Bharat’s ear. ‘Spark off the boycott.’ Bharat leaped to the roof of the carriage at these words. ‘Friends!’ he shouted in a voice that sounded strange even to his own ears. ‘From this moment onwards I boycott everything British. I begin with my shoes.’ Stooping, he pulled off his leather pumps and swung them in the air. Then he flung them upwards as high as he could. This set off a frenzied flinging about of boots and pumps. Some took off their coats; some even their shirts Some dashed into the godown opposite and, carrying back armfuls of straw and jute stalks, proceeded to build an enormous effigy of Lord Curzon and set fire to it. And all the while cries of Bande Mataram filled the air as deep and terrifying as the roar of ocean waves.