I looked around. Here too the floor space had been neatly apportioned among the travellers and there was no room for a latecomer like me to spread my bedding. There was nothing for me to do but sit on my trunk and watch the magnificent expanse of the Ganga over which the steamer was now inching along. I had been thirsty for a good while now and the terrible ordeal of the last two hours had done nothing to ease it. But I had neither a glass nor a pitcher with me. In the hope of borrowing one from a fellow-Bengali I walked gingerly towards the steps that led down to the hold. As I stood at the top a deafening clamour assailed my ears, the likes of which I had never heard in all my living years. It sounded as if a gigantic cowshed, the one owned by King Virat of the Mahabharata perhaps, was on fire—such a snorting, bellowing, stomping, fuming, raving, raging, came from below. With a quaking heart I peeped down the hole and what a sight met my eyes! Each member of that vast sea of humanity was engaged in singing his national or provincial anthem with a ferocity that only matched his neighbour’s. It seemed as if the ship was carrying as its cargo all the musical talent to be found from Kabul to the Brahmaputra, from Kumarika to the distant borders of China.
I have heard it said that Shakespeare, the great bard of England, believed that the man who loved music was incapable of murder. But Shakespeare, possibly, hadn’t heard the kind of music that drove a man to murder. While I stood rooted to the ground, I saw a man making frantic signs to me from below. I climbed down and pushed my way through the crowd, ignoring the indignant looks and exclamations that followed me till I came to where he stood. When he realized that I was a Brahmin he folded his hands with great humility and introduced himself as the ‘famous’ Nanda Mistri of Rangoon. Beside him sat a corpulent woman in her forties with enormous red eyes rolling in her head above which her unnaturally thick eyebrows met—as fierce and bushy as a field of tussock.
‘Babu moshai,’ Nanda Mistri said, rubbing his hands. ‘This is my wi—.’
But before he could finish, the woman had lashed out at him as venomously as a hooded cobra. ‘Wife!’ she spat out the word. ‘He dares to call me his wife! Are you my wedded husband? I warn you, Mistri—don’t you dare ruin my reputation with your evil lies.’
I stared, shocked beyond belief.
Nanda Mistri went on rubbing his hands and trying to placate her. ‘Why do you lose your temper, Tagar?’ he asked humbly, ‘What is the difference? We have lived together for twenty….’
‘So what if we have lived together for twenty years? Does that make us man and wife? Since when has the daughter of a Boshtom-born been the wife of a Shudra? Have I ever let you enter my kitchen or touch my food? Not even my sworn enemy can say that of me. Tagar Boshtomi would rather die than besmirch the caste she was born into,’ and Tagar rolled her eyes at me in pride and triumph at her illustrious birth.
Put in his place, so severely, Nanda Mistri mumbled angrily, ‘You heard what she said, Babu? Caste! As if there is anything left of it after all these years. I am a simple man and I put up with her arrogance. Anyone else ….’ and looking into the eyes of his companion of twenty years he gulped and left the sentence in mid-air.
I borrowed a glass and departed. All the way back to my tin trunk I couldn’t stop laughing at the Vaishnavi’s logic. But immediately afterwards I reminded myself that Tagar was, after all, a foolish illiterate woman. There were many educated and respectable men in the cities and villages of Bengal who fell back on a similar logic when faced with the prospect of losing caste. But males—no matter what they do or say—are protected from mockery in our society. We laugh at women—never at men.
Towards evening, clouds started massing in the east and after midnight strong winds, accompanied by intermittent rain, set the ship rocking drunkenly. However, the morning dawned calm and clear and the steamer resumed its staid and stately motion over the blue water. I hadn’t suffered any ill effects, possibly because I had experienced the motion of a boat over and over again from my early childhood. I wondered how Nanda Mistri and Tagar had fared in the night. I went down to the hold as soon as it was light and found the pair sitting solemnly in their corner. The musicians of yesterday were sprawled all over the floor around them. It would obviously take them a little while longer to be able to sit up and resume their singing.
‘How did you pass the night, Mistri?’ I asked.
‘Well enough,’ replied Nanda with a yawn.
‘Well enough!’ Tagar bared her fangs at Nanda. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? It was the worst night of my life—Mago-Ma! * What a commotion!’
‘Why? What happened?’
Nanda Mistri grinned up at me. ‘Nothing much, Babu,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the Calcutta vendors prepare sade batrish bhaja? With three flicks of the thumb at the bottom of the cone they make the thirty-two-and-a-half ingredients jump and dance about till rice, beans, peas, chhola, matar, masur, arhar—all become as one. That is exactly what happened last night. We all rolled about the ship from this end to that. Fortunately, a true Boshtom-born doesn’t lose caste or else my Tagar—’
‘Again! You dare utter those blasphemies again.’ Tagar glared at Nanda like a wounded bear ready to spring.
Nanda apologized hastily and, pulling a long face, sat staring at the roof of the hold. A few yards away from them a pair of Kabuliwalas, coated with filth and grime from head to foot, were busily stuffing large pieces of roti into their tangled beards, quite oblivious of the fiery darts showered on them from Tagar’s saucer-like eyes.
After a while, Nanda got restive. ‘Are we never going to eat?’ he asked plaintively.
I was puzzled. ‘It is barely dawn,’ I said, ‘After a while ….’
‘We had a fine large pot of rosogollas with us,’ Nanda said tearfully. ‘I had been begging Tagar to open it ever since we boarded the steamer. “Let’s have some,” I said. “Why do we deny ourselves.” But would she listen? “I want to take it with me to Rangoon,” she insisted. Now take it with you to Rangoon if you can.’ (This to Tagar.)
Tagar made no answer to the charge. Snorting angrily she continued to roll her fiery eyes at the hapless Kabulis.
‘What happened to the rosogollas?’ I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.
Nanda glanced briefly at Tagar. ‘I don’t know that. All I saw in the morning was the broken pot, there,’ he pointed with his finger, ‘and the syrup all over the bedding—here, see. If you want more information ask those rascals,’ and he glared balefully at the Kabulis.
I was dying to laugh but I controlled myself with an effort: ‘Forget the rosogollas,’ I said. ‘Don’t you have chire with you?’
‘That we do.’ Nanda brightened visibly. ‘Show Babu moshai the chire, Tagar.’
Tagar kicked a small bundle viciously in my direction.
‘Whatever you may say, Babu moshai,’ Nanda said, recovering his bonhomie of a few minutes ago. ‘Kabulis may be unholy and unclean but they are true to their salt. They ate our rosogollas but they offered us a stack of their rotis in exchange. Put them aside carefully, Tagar. They may come in handy for your malsa bhog.’ *
I burst out laughing at Nanda’s joke but one look at Tagar and the blood curdled in my veins. Her face was mottled with fury and her voice, coming out of her deep chest, rumbled like thunder shocking the shipful of sleepers into a rude awakening.
‘You dare taunt me about my caste?’ she bellowed. ‘You rotten worm! You dare talk of caste with your vile Shudra mouth? I warn you, Mistri….’
‘No, no, Tagar,’ Nanda was the picture of abject humility. ‘I didn’t mean to taunt you. It was a joke—I swear on my head—it was only a joke.’
‘A joke?’ Tagar’s voice rose higher and to the thunder of her voice was added the lightning of her eyes. ‘What kind of a joke? You have the gall to tell me to use a mlechha Mussalman’s roti for my Govinda’s malsa bhog? Go stuff them into your Shudra stomach! Go feed them to your pig-father’s ghost.’
At this Nanda could contain himself no longer. He leap
t into the air like an arrow released with a twang from a tensed string-bow. ‘You filthy harlot!’ he screamed grabbing her by the hair. ‘You dare to utter my father’s name with your foul mouth?’
‘A hundred times! I’ll say it a hundred times, you son of a whore, if you dare bring my caste on your evil tongue.’ Tagar sprang to her feet and the two were locked in a deadly combat which threatened to shatter the very floorboards they stood upon. The battle raged on. The Hindustanis forgot their nausea and applauded enthusiastically. The Punjabis turned up their noses in disdain. The Utkals ran hither and thither squeaking like frightened mice. I stood rooted to the ground. Never in my wildest dreams had I believed such a vulgar display possible—particularly from people who belonged to my own community. I walked away from the scene, my face flaming.
As I came to the foot of the steps, the Jaunpuri darwan who had been watching enthralled, nodded approvingly at me. ‘Bengali women are good fighters, Babuji. They don’t give up.’
I couldn’t look him in the face. I ran up the steps back to my trunk on the deck.
Four
I HAVE NO IDEA OF HOW LONG THE BATTLE LASTED OR HOW IT ended; what the terms of the truce were and whether they were honoured, for I did not venture into the hold again. It was clear that Tagar and Nanda had led this cat-and-dog life for twenty years and there was no reason why they should not continue to do so—for another twenty.
All day tattered wisps of clouds blew from one end of the sky to another. Then, late in the afternoon, the wind dropped. A dense blackness, appearing on the horizon, spread rapidly like a stain over half the sky. I noticed the crew glancing fearfully upwards; then darting about their tasks with feverish haste.
I called an elderly sailor to my side, ‘O hé mian! * Will there be another storm tonight, do you think?’
‘Get down to the hold, moshai,’ he said, by way of a reply. ‘The captain says a cyclone is coming.’
Within a few minutes I realized that his warning was not an idle one. The deck passengers were ordered to enter the hold. Those who resisted were forcibly dragged from their places by the second officer and pushed down the steps. My trunk and bedroll were taken down but I eluded my protectors and slipped away. I couldn’t bear the thought of entering the hold for I had heard that when a severe storm or cyclone was imminent it was customary to seal the hold in the interest of the ship’s safety as well as that of its cargo. But safety did not appeal to me—not just then. I had never seen a cyclone—not even on land. I hadn’t an inkling of what it was like, to see, to hear, to feel—and the prospect of experiencing one at sea set me quivering with anticipation. I told myself that even if the ship broke into a million pieces and I was flung out to sea—it would be a wonderful death. Who would exchange that buoyant engulfing by the waves under the open sky for a slow squeezing out of life in a suffocating death trap in which thousands of humans dashed about like rats, cracking their skulls and drowning by inches. That was my first passage to Rangoon. I had no idea then, that monstrous sharks swarmed the waters about the king’s ships and that a sea-death might well follow a terrible ripping of flesh and a crunching of bones under the waves.
Towards dusk the mild drizzle changed into a heavy downpour and the wind increased in velocity. I decided to look for shelter. As I stepped onto the deserted deck I caught a glimpse of the captain examining the sky with a telescope. Afraid of being caught and sent down to the hold I slipped away again till, in my wanderings all over the ship, I found what I thought was an excellent hideaway. Piled one on top of another, at one end of the deck, were several immense iron crates with livestock in them. I climbed up to the topmost one. I was safe. Little did I know, then, what fate had in store for me!
By now the rain had become a lashing torrent and the gale was whipping up flecks of salt foam that hit my face and settled on my lips. The sky grew darker by the minute and the ship bobbed up and down on a steadily swelling sea. This is the cyclone, I thought. I had yet to discover the real thing.
Suddenly the ship’s whistle blew a blast so shrill and penetrating that a tremor ran through my frame. I looked up at the sky and was amazed to find the cloud cover gone. Before I could react to this strange phenomenon an unearthly rumble rose from the bowels of the sea and, gathering momentum, exploded against my ear drums with a deafening clap. And with that came the storm.
Nothing I had experienced in my life before or after was comparable to what I experienced then. There was a story my grandmother used to tell me often in my childhood, as I snuggled against her breast on dark winter nights, of a prince who had dived into a pond and brought up a silver box with the lives of seven hundred demons trapped in it in the form of a golden bee. And as he crushed the bee between his palms the demons, crazed with pain, had trampled the earth and rocked the sky in the last throes of death. Something of the kind was happening now but the demons numbered—not seven hundred but seven million and seventy.
The gale had become so violent that it threatened to tear the very earth from its axis. I had taken the precaution of tying myself tightly to the iron pole that rose from the deck or else I would have been blown away as lightly as a leaf. As it was, the wind strained and pulled against the wrapper which bound me, so viciously, that it threatened to snap any minute. The water around the ship’s hull bubbled upwards pushed by the water beneath. Gripping the pole with all my might I looked out to sea.
And then—my eyes viewed that which made me bow my head and utter a humble prayer. ‘My Maker,’ I murmured, ‘You gave me eyes with which to view your world. But, tonight, in your boundless bounty, you have shown me that which lay beyond my wildest dreams—that which is peerless among your creations.’ For, even as I looked, a vast body of water gathered itself from the heart of the ocean, and rising like a mighty mountain peak that threatened to shatter the sky, began gliding majestically towards the ship. Its crown of glittering phosphorescents shone like rows of jewelled lamps against the blue-black sky and in their light that darkly beautiful, that awesome, wondrous face was revealed.
My body and soul quivered in ecstasy. ‘Oh! Lord of the waves!’ I exclaimed, ‘though death at your hands be imminent let me spend my last moments feasting on your beauty.’
The ship’s whistle continued to blow in trembling spurts. The terrified voices of the sailors, calling hysterically upon Allah to save them from death, rose above it. The cataclysmic wave that was to engulf us—that which had been dreaded and awaited—was now upon us.
A deafening explosion rent the air and then the heavy velvet of salt water curled and foamed around me and above and beneath me. I thought the ship had sunk and that we had all drowned and were on our way to the subterranean chambers of the Sea King’s palace, there to feast and make merry as his guests. But in half a minute the ship crested the wave and the water gushed out. Wave after wave crashed against the ship, flooded the deck and ran out in a few seconds. Below me the sheep and goats bleated fearfully and the ducks and hens dashed their wings against the bars in a frantic attempt to escape a watery death. Then they fell silent. Clutching the iron pole with both hands I managed to elude death by drowning.
But now a new fear gripped me. If I had to stay here much longer, dripping water from head to foot, with the wind cutting into my flesh with blades of ice, I would certainly die of pneumonia. My teeth chattered in my head and my hands and feet turned numb with cold. I had to get out of the place and get out fast.
I thought of entering one of the pens but changed my mind. That was even more dangerous and the pen might well be my watery bier. The thing to do was to make a dash for one of the cabins in the thirty odd seconds that the ship crested the wave before it went down.
I untied the wrapper and slid down the pole but the cabins were not near enough to reach in one go. I had to crouch down on the deck thrice, as the great tidal waves threatened to sweep me out to sea, then get up and run again before I reached a second-class cabin. But the door was locked. I hammered with all my might but the iron door
did not yield an inch. Once again I ran, crouched, and ran again in the direction of a first-class cabin. This time I was lucky. The door opened. It was unoccupied. Heaving a sigh of relief I dashed in and sank down on the bed.
By midnight the rain and the gale had exhausted themselves but the sea roared on and wave after wave was hurled at the ship’s hull till the grey dawn glimmered over the eastern horizon.
When morning came I went down to the hold to find out how my travelling companions, particularly Nanda and Tagar, had fared in the night. Nanda had comically likened his experience of the night before last with the dancing of the ingredients in a cone of sade batrish bhaja and had confessed that they had returned to their original positions only a short while ago. I wondered how he would describe the events of last night.
As I descended the steps, a sickening stench of vomit and faeces rose like a cloud, assailing my nostrils so devastatingly that I could barely breathe. Before me, sprawled in unnatural shapes and positions, lay a field of bodies over which a gigantic grinder, of the kind women use to grind their spices, seemed to have rolled. The ship’s doctor was attending to them while jamadars cleaned up the mess. Doctor Babu looked me up and down. It was evident that he thought me a second-class passenger. Yet he feigned great astonishment. ‘You look quite fresh,’ he remarked. ‘Did you manage to get hold of a hammock?’
I shook my head. ‘What I got hold of was a crate—an iron crate. That’s why I look so fresh.’ Then observing the doctor’s astonishment, I added, ‘I am a third-class passenger like these others but, lacking their strength of body and will, I shrank from entering this hell of hells. I spent part of the night sitting on a crate among the chickens and ducks, and the rest in an unoccupied first-class cabin. It was a clear case of trespass.’
The story of my adventures entertained Doctor Babu so much that he instantly invited me to share his cabin for the rest of the journey. On my declining the offer he insisted on lending me his deck chair, which I accepted.
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