by Brian Mooney
At all events, once you allow an orthodox Brahim to entrench himself behind any of these religious regulations – as I had innocently done in getting Canga Bahadur to cook for us – you are sunk.
It is an officer’s duty to ensure that proper arrangement are made for his men to be fed, and it is his privilege to inspect and sample the food which is served to them. I now determined on doing so. Foolhardily – it was done in a fit of genuine abstraction – I strode inside the sacred circle inscribed to ensure that no unorthodox person approached the food, and thereby contaminated it.
Nobody said a thing. I thought, however, that I detected a faint chilliness on Ganga Bahadur’s part. But it was only afterwards, when it was too late to rectify my mistake by cooking a second meal, that I learnt that Ganga Bahadur had insisted on all the food being thrown away on account of my having desecrated its ritual purity. The defence platoons, in consequence, went hungry.
Rightly or wrongly, I saw in this incident an attempt to unload on me an unjustifiable amount of opprobrium and an attempt to subvert my authority. I decided that I should have to watch Ganga Bahadur closely. My suspicions led to a most unfortunate misunderstanding between us which resulted in irrevocable consequences.
Our coaches were now drawn up alongside the principal platform. The men were mustered, paraded, roll-called, and then received the order to get on the train. Railway officials were busily checking details, but there was no sign of onlookers. It appeared that our security precautions had been a success. I reported to the Brigade Major’s compartment that Brigade Headquarters was present and correct and ready for departure. Masters was deep in Pilgrim’s Progress.
So that appeared to be that. My responsibilities were temporarily in abeyance. I could relax. I strolled down the platform, cautiously observing how the various ranks were adapting themselves to the situation. The train, with its confined quarters, had the character of a troop-ship. It was interesting to see how the different people established the atmosphere of their own space.
Masters, with Intelligence Officer John Hedley and Doc Whyte, had already made his compartment seem like the hub of the universe. It was military command-post, scholar’s study and religious oratory all in one, and was littered with books such as – prominently and perhaps symbolically – Pa radise Lost.
Next door, in a coupé (a small, two-bunk compartment), Joe Lentaigne had taken out his false teeth. He looked like an exhausted infantryman who has at last been able to remove his boots.
In my compartment, we juniors – Burmese Intelligence Officer Smithy, Rhode-James, young Lawrence and I – were demonstrating our own ethos. In spite of my admiration for Masters and all that he stood for, I regret to say that we never managed anything more impressive than an imitation of the Lower Remove at Greyfriars.
Chesty Jennings occupied a compartment with Briggo, Geoffrey Birt, and Frankie Turner. As they were all technical officers, it became like one of those clinical cubicles you find in huge edifices given over to the Civil Service.
The defence platoons were accommodated in a great, bare, third-class wagon at the back. They had stripped to their vests and underpants and were crawling all over it. They had rapidly split up into card-parties and the cry of bid and counter-bid, plus the soft slap of cards, indicated that gambling was in full swing. It was strictly against Military Regulations, but it kept them out of other, worse, forms of mischief. I shrugged indifferently and hurried to my own compartment.
We were evidently on the brink of departure. Up forward, the engine driver was leaning out of his cab and in the rear the guard, standing well clear of the train, had under his arms his furled flags. It seemed rather sad to be leaving so furtively.
From the station concourse, a tall, elegant, gentleman approached He was flanked on either side by two others. Their entrance was so carefully contrived and its timing so critical, that it was inconceivable that it could have been unplanned.
I stood irresolutely on the platform, undecided whether I ought to arrest them. What were these civilians doing in the station precincts – were they coming with us?
Suddenly form behind me on the train, one of the King’s Own Riflemen – better informed than I was – exclaimed brutally: ‘Christ! It’s the District Commissioner and the Deputy Collector. I seen ’em in the Club. That other one’s the Superintendant of Police. If those bastards ’ve come to see us, we must be important! We’re obviously done for! We’re finished!’
‘Good luck – best of luck – goodbye,’ these officers repeated, passing down the length of the train and saluting every one of us – British ‘other rank’ and Gurkha alike – with their cordial good wishes.
Lentaigne snapped-in his false teeth – his jaws closing over them like a vice – and scrambled out to do the honours.
But the climax of the occasion was yet to come. From behind the station fence, and drifting within the station concourse there suddenly appeared – at a wave of the Commissioner’s stick – the whole population of Jhansi’s principal bazaar. Each one them was carrying his tiny tribute of a single flower; or some, if they could afford it, a glowing marigold garland. The effect of such an unwarranted gesture by the common people, whom we British had always affected to despise, was overwhelming. I for one, surrendered to it unconditionally – to so many flashing, fleeting glances, and to so many darkly gleaming, velvety skins.
They came forward with that half-cringing, half-abject self-abasement which, in the humble Indian, has become habitual.
‘Why, Mahoboob, you old bugger! What the hell’re you doing here?’
‘Stiffen me, if it isn’t Juggat! Hey – Juggat Ram, come over ’ere, me little beauty! What’s this you got? A flower? Well, I’ll be buggered! Here, stick it in me button ’ole for us, will yer? No – ’arf-a-mo! I’ll stick it be’ind me fuckin ’ear. That’ll tickle yer!’
‘What do you make of it?’ I said, turning to young Lawrence.
‘Never seen anything like it,’ he replied. ‘It’s touching!’
The words were hardly out of his mouth, before a diminutive urchin – a shoe-shine boy – came up and presented him the most beautiful tuberose garland. Lawrence doffed his hat reverently and offered him his neck.
‘No – don’t,’ I blurted out, horrified at the symbolic gesture. It was too late. The ritual act was accomplished.
I regarded him with renewed respect. It must be wonderful to be thus chosen by the revengeful goddesses – the Furies. But did he realize the significance of being garlanded like this, like a sacrificial beast?
The only indication I received was that he was blushing.
‘Do you know ’im?’ I asked, accusingly.
‘Never seem ’im before in my life!’
The guard was shrilly blowing his whistle. ‘Come on, let’s get in!’
The departure bell in the station concourse was tolling. The engine let out several brief, impatient shrieks. The crowd disengaged itself. Young Lawrence and I clambered in. Suddenly the lights came on: inevitably, our departure had been delayed and it was night.
‘Well, lean out,’ I said irritably, ‘and say goodbye to your admirer!’ He did so and threw him a silver rupee.
The boy salaamed elaborately. ‘Khuda afiz! God’s blessing on the sahib! Sahib come back!’
Where are we – ham kahan pahunchgaya?’ Smithy shouted down at the section of bridge-guard sepoys posted beside the track, as the train edged past them.
They were not very communicative. It was against their orders to give away information. On a second, more imperative command, however, one of them did condescend to yell back ‘Kalpi!’
It sounded like ‘Balls to you!’, but Smithy promptly responded by replying, ‘Then this river must be the Jamuna!’
Faintly a voice confirmed, ‘Han, sahib!’
We were all astonished at Smithy’s accurate geographical knowledge. Readjusting the windows, we returned to our bunks. I remained for a long time hypnotised by the drumming of the wheels over the
track, then finally succumbed. The train dawdled along at its maximum speed of 40 mph and I fell asleep lulled by its thundering clanks.
I awoke with a start some time later, all my senses alerted. The train was ominously silent. It was so still that it could only have come to a halt. Raising the leather blind and lowering the window pane, then the mahogany ventilator slats and finally the steel shutter, I peered out. The chill, damp air of dawn struck at me, and a penetrating cold invaded the compartment.
We were drawn up at an uncannily deserted railway station. It was brilliantly illuminated and so solitary that is seemed insulated against everything human. Under the glare of the arc-lights it looked like an abandoned stage. A few old timetables pasted to a wall attracted my attention, giving hours of departure for place like Mymensingh or Monghyr. A clock opposite proclaimed four, but it was obviously a prop. Elaborately dressed and decorated, the place was waiting silently for the actors. I recognised that I was in a dimension of atemporality, unconnected with duration.
Time seemed to have stood still at that sidereal platform – an anonymous siding on the branch line to no man’s land. The great expresses might thunder through to Calcutta or Delhi and all the onlookers wave, but we would remain eternally arrested at this unidentified junction. There was an analogy with my personal predicament and of our present situation: we were to pursue our tiny private war remote from the main operations and denied even the recognition of ever having influenced them.
I groped under my bunk for some slippers, put them on, and ventured warily out. Prowling around this empty lot and peering into the compartments full of hissing sleepers made me feel peculiarly disembodied. The eerie atmosphere was doubly accentuated by everyone on the train having succumbed in frozen suspension, as if struck by a hypnotic spell.
A figure materialised floatingly at the far end of the platform and flowed undulating towards me. I assumed that, if not a ghost, it must be a railway employee.
‘Babu-ji! Hey, babu-ji – excuse me!’
‘Yes sir?’
‘What station is this please? Where are we?’
‘Have you come off the train?’ it demanded suspiciously, looking at the train with surprise and at me as if I had descended from Jupiter.
‘Yes, of course I do! Where do you think I came from?’
‘I’m sorry, sir!’ he said, recollecting himself. ‘This station is Canpur’.
He meant Cawnpore, of course, but he pronounced it according to the Hindustani fashion.
‘It’s no secret and I don’t know why I hesitated. Your presence slightly confused me. The passengers do not usually alight from the first-class compartments in the middle of the night.’
‘No? Well, I’m restless. I wanted someone to talk to. Everyone seems to be asleep. What time is it? Is that clock right?’
‘Do you know which way the train is routed?’ he said, ignoring my question.
‘I know it’s routed as far as Lucknow.’
He glanced uneasily down its length, as if wanting to say something. Towards the rear, some of the shutters were open and the windows were lowered. A pair of defence platoon feet protruded from one of them, challenging the train’s anonymity: they conspicuously sported their army boots. Most of the remaining windows of the train were closed and their shutters firmly in position, but it was evident that it must be a troop-train. It wore that air of secrecy which is inseparable from military security.
‘Are you an officer?’ the babu said, with sudden directness.
‘Yes, of course I’m an officer,’ I said impatiently, although it was by no means obvious. I was wearing a peacock-blue Dacca silk lunghi and gold-embroidered, Punjabi-style slippers. Over my shoulders I had thrown a Kashmir shawl, Indian fashion. I must have looked like nothing on earth.
‘I’ve never spoken to one,’ he said in open admiration, ‘though of course I’ve always wanted to. I’ve seen them from a distance. Oh, please sir, won’t you tell me where you’re going? You can confide in me. I admire you
British!’
He was plainly prey to an extraordinary excitement. I had the wit to realise that he must have been a Tantric, a worshipper of Kali, and that he was conceiving of me as the ultimate sacrifice – the human!
I retained sufficient presence of mind to gesture vaguely. ‘Over there! To the east, I suppose! Where else are all the troop trains going!’
Then my composure cracked too.
‘To the front – to war!’ I said tersely. ‘That’s where I’m going!’ He positively gasped with suppressed pleasure.
Having left Jhansi about seven o’clock in the evening, we crossed the Jamuna at Kalpi at midnight and reached Cawnpore at four, arriving at Lucknow at dawn, around six o’clock. We then proceeded, still in a northeasterly direction, to cross the Gogra river at Bahranghat into that rather wild and depopulated countryside which slopes down from the Himalayas to the Gangetic plain and which is known as the terrain.
Throughout the whole of one night the train forged across the district of Gorakpur. At dawn our locomotive was still steaming steadily eastwards at thirty miles an hour. Everyone slowly awoke.
I don’t know what means of communication were established between the officer commanding the train on the one hand and the guard and engine driver on the other. Perhaps they simply relied on their intuition. At all events, when the desire for tea, for a wash and shave, for obeying the calls of nature, had reached overwhelming proportions, the engine would pull aside into some wayside halt.
A sleepy station master issued from the main building, officiously buttoning himself into his uniform. From the windows of his adjoining cottage his wife peeped cautiously out, her curiosity so great that she did not even bother to veil her face. His children, boiling with suppressed excitement, clustered coyly around the door, their sloe eyes heavy with Collyrium. Soon, overcoming their shyness, they raced down the track to confront the unfamiliar soldiers with demands for chocolate, sweetmeats and paisa (coins of small denomination).
A convoy of bullock carts bumped across the level crossing, the exhalation of oxen-breath hanging hauntingly in the cold air. A heavy dew condensed over everything, saturating the bundles of maize-stalks lying on the ground and dripping from the eaves of the railway godowns. An ekka trotted smartly past, its passenger sitting immobile under the canopy like the Buddha. Fleetingly, my nostrils picked up the lovely rank nostalgic smell of unwashed horse.
Around the train itself, all was purposeful activity. Several physical functions had to be crammed within the narrow hour she remained there, principal among these being, of course, evacuating and eating. As the lavatory facilities of the train were inadequate for such a huge complement of soldiers, the orders had gone out to reserve them exclusively for emergencies. The lavatories were therefore kept locked and the keys deposited in charge of the NCO commanding each coach. It was imperative, therefore, for all ranks to take the opportunity presented by the morning and evening halts to have their mandatory crap. Before the train had even come to a halt the soldiers had swung down from it and gone swarming off across the fields with their packs of bog-bumf and their brass lotas.
The Brigadier advanced towards me down the track. ‘Morning, Baines.’ ‘Morning, sir.’
An enamelled mug containing his false teeth was in one hand, while in the other he clutched around him an extremely grubby dressing-gown. He was followed by his orderly, who carried a galvanised iron bucket.
‘All out – everyone out!’ ordered the NCOs in charge of the coaches, which the fatigue parties were already beginning to sweep out.
To the rear of the train had been attached a large, five-hundred gallon tank. This was now the object of our attention. Ganga Bahadur was there with the cook-house orderlies, drawing water for cooking the rice and the pulses. He stripped off down to his loin cloth and bathed almost naked in the cold water in these icy conditions – for the sun was not yet up – in order to ensure ritual purity for his cooking. I could not help admiring him for h
is devotion to detail.
We walked with Thaman Bahadur around the sidings in order to choose a suitable spot to set up the langra. ‘This will do, sahib!’
Thaman Bahadur sent the orderlies racing back to the defence platoon coach in order to bring up the rations, the cooking-pots, and the firewood and kindling.
‘Here’ I said helpfully, ‘you can use these bundles of maize-stalks to start the fire with. They are quite dry in the middle.’
Tej Bahadur was building three hearths with some bricks – one for ccha, one for dhal (pulses), and one for bhat (rice). We were not going to bother about roti (bread) as this was an early attempt at establishing a temporary cook-house and we were not yet very good at it. If we were not all back on the train in an hour, when it was ready to start, the officer commanding the train would forbid us to continue with our cooking. That meant we would all return to iron rations – a prospect none of us particularly relished.
‘Come on, Tej Bahadur,’ I couldn’t help saying irritably. ‘Get a move on! You are not building Jugatnath’s temple at Puri!’
Up forward, the locomotive – a fine specimen – was also the object of attention, but not on account of a veneration for antiques. Some brilliant extemporiser had discovered that the boiler possessed a tap. He dashed back to get his mess-tin and tea-bag. Then, greatly daring, he opened the tap. The result was a beautiful jet of boiling water – and glorious pot of tea. By the time I arrived on the scene, the whole of the King’s Own column was brewing up and Jack Masters had tacitly condoned the activity by having a shave. The engine-driver and fireman were beaming indulgently from their cab and there seemed no point in not joining in. I returned therefore to my compartment to get my razor.
Meanwhile, concurrent with these activities, the local inhabitants had foregathered. They were obedient to that impulse common among unsophisticated peoples to assemble like a herd of cows in the presence of anything unfamiliar. First to line the fence running along the railway siding and behind the godowns were the children. They stood there, observant, patient, well-behaved and obedient, staring seriously at the activity going on and apparently enchanted to discover that they could understand it. Thus they followed the tea-making, the cooking, the ablutions – even the trotting-out to have a crap! – with a delightful and intelligent interest, no doubt secretly relieved to discover that we possessed these activities in common!
