River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  “Come along, Sonny, off we go. We are not wanted here,” he told his stallion and rode off quickly.

  On the way to town the wind had become very pleasant. A drop of rain fell on his face. He tried to forget the encounter with the sadhu and glanced at the verdant, refreshing landscape. The monsoons had arrived. Champa must be sitting on a swing in her orchard, singing rain-songs.

  The rainy season! Oh, the spell that the different seasons cast on one in this country! Each month had its own music and colours and scents. Yellow Vaisakh, when the mustard bloomed. Sizzling Jeth and Asarh, when wood-apples fell off langorous trees. Rain-filled Sawan and Bhadon. Kowar and Katak when autumn moonlight pours a cool paleness on his and dale. This was not his native land but he couldn’t escape the enchantment of the seasons.

  Kamal wondered again about the uncanny yogi. How was it that it was mostly Shaivite ascetics who found a certain affinity with the mystics of Islam? Was it because of their monotheism? Oh, well, he thought, I have had enough of the strange tales of Hindustan. Thank God, tomorrow I go back to the cosy retreat of the Royal Library in Jaunpur.

  “Alas, alas, Maulana Kamal, we have lost the war!” Cavalier Udai Singh Rathore shouted in agitation from the balcony of the serai’s gatehouse when Kamal entered the quadrangle. He was thunderstruck. This was the bad news the yogi had foretold in the morning. Cold sweat appeared upon his brow. Rathore rushed downstairs. Kamal dismounted. The courtyard was crowded, horses neighed, some women waited, cursing aloud. Lightning flashed in the sky.

  “Our Sultan has Saturn in his House, I always said so. Nobody listened to me,” someone complained sorrowfully. The crowd made way for the two officials as they entered the serai’s long dalaan.

  “How . . . how?” Kamal asked feebly.

  “Like this,” the Thakur took out his dagger. The scholar was taken aback. Rathore sat down upon a cot and drew a map of the battlefield on the mud floor, with the point of his weapon.

  “Look,” he said severely. “We are here . . . at Rapri. Highly strategic place, this. The old fox Bahlol attacks us from here . . . we retreat. And the Mother is very angry . . .”

  “Whose mother? Bibi Raji?” Kamal asked foolishly.

  “No, stupid, Bibi Raji must be turning in her grave. Mother Jamuna. She was furious and in flood. As we tried to cross the river, most of our army was swept away—in one go. All drowned.

  “So His Majesty marched towards Gwalior to get reinforcements from his vassals. On the way, bandits got us. Famous dacoits of Chambal valley. They looted what was left of the Sharqi army. Provisions, money, everything. The Gwalior Maharaj supplied troops, so we fought another battle at Kalpi. Lost again. Rewa Maharaj escorted the Sultan up to Jaunpur and there the Afghans swooped down and laid siege to Roshan Mahal.”

  Kamal gasped as the Rathore knight rattled off the list of disasters.

  “Queen Khonza and the ladies . . .”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Captured. Taken to Dehli.” Kamal turned pale. Rathore was an old friend and knew about Kamal’s romance with Ruqqaiya Bano Begum. He paused for a few moments, ostensibly studying his map with great concentration. He was trying to find the appropriate words to console the royal bookworm. As a man of action he could advise this dreamy young man to fight his way to Dehli and rescue the damsel in distress, but he knew poor Kamal was no daredevil. So he simply asked, “Shall I go and get her back for you?” He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, twirled his moustache and stood up.

  “No, no!” Kamal groaned. “How can you? It is not possible.”

  “All right.” He sat down again. “But you must not worry. The Pathans are like us Rajputs—they have a deep sense of honour. And they treat women with respect, like we do. Queen Khonza accompanied His Majesty to the front in the last war and was taken prisoner. King Bahlol chivalrously sent her back. Besides, you know well how the Pathans venerate you Syeds. They do not even marry Syed women because that would mean disrespect to the House of the Prophet. Our Royal Family is supposed to be Syed too, so Princess Bano is safe. They will probably marry her off to some poor Syed maulvi and ask her to keep praying for them for the rest of her life . . .”

  The crowd had moved in and was listening intently to the Rajput captain’s gruff, crisp account of the hostilities. The sharp-tongued bhatiari shooed the audience away and brought hot lunch for Kamal. He had lost his appetite. She urged him to eat.

  “Come on, Maulana Saheb, it’s not the end of the world. Floods, robbers, the capture of his Queen—no calamity can discourage our King. He is made of steel. And listen, Dilli’s throne belongs to his sasural, he is its rightful claimant. The son of a king, married to the daughter of a king. Who is this upstart horse-dealer, Billoo Khan, whose wife is the daughter of a common goldsmith? He must have borrowed money from her father for his stable-business before he eloped with her.”

  The crowd roared with laughter. The bhatiari was referring to Bahlol Lodhi’s beautiful queen, Hemavati, who was the mother of handsome Prince Sikander. The charismatic Hussain Shah was the dearly beloved king of his subjects, and they were staunch royalists.

  The Rajput scratched out a few dots from his map and shook his head sadly. “So we have retreated to the north. His Majesty is camping right here, near Behraich. He has sent me to fetch you. He wants to know if you have been able to decipher that ancient treatise on music . . .”

  The vanquished Sharqi army was encamped on the banks of the overflowing Rapti. In the distance, across the sea-green, rainy mist, lay Jetvan Vihara. It had been buried under the shifting sands and slush of two thousand years. The Buddha had once stayed here and preached of the impermanence of things.

  However, we are living in the present, and have enough for the time being.

  Abul Mansur Kamaluddin lifted the crimson curtain of the traditionally crimson royal tent. As a Syed, protocol did not require him to bow low before a king. “Assalam aleikum, Your Majesty,” he said calmly, standing ramrod straight.

  Hussain Shah put down his tamboura. He looked very pleased with himself, as if he had just composed an excellent bandish. “Waleikum assalam, Maulana. How are we this morning?” he said cheerfully. “Could you decipher that Ayodhya text?”

  15. A Poet and a Musician

  From Behraich, Hussain Shah and his knights marched down to Qanauj. Queen Khonza managed to escape from Dehli and rejoined her husband on the battlefield. The war zone was like a bustling township. Bazaars. Entertainers. Caterers. Mobile kitchens. Hakims and surgeons. Hordes of pack animals. Kamal had joined the King’s army on the move and was bewildered by the tenacity and resilence of human beings. In the ensuing battle fought near the confluence of the Ganga and the Kalinadi, the Afghans overwhelmed poor Hussain Shah again. In 1484 Bahlol captured Jaunpur and placed his son Barbak on the Sharqi throne. Hussain Shah was forced to flee to nearby Bihar.

  In a characteristic gesture of generosity, Bahlol Lodhi allowed him to retain his own crown lands in Mirzapur district. Hussain Shah regrouped his forces, attacked the Lodhis and lost once again.

  Hussain Shah’s daughter was married to a prince of Bengal, son of Sultan Allauddin Hussain Shah of Gaur. That Sultan helped his relative in distress. He requested the fugitive to accept a jagir in Bhagalpur district and live there as king-in-exile; even issue his own currency. Hussain Shah accepted. Many of his courtiers went on to Lakhnauti and found employment in Bengal.

  Kamal debated with himself: shall I stay on and remain a part of this military society even as a non-combatant, or shall I just go away?

  Go away? Where to? Nishapur?

  That name sounded a bit odd, now that he had started thinking of himself as a Hindustani. He was no longer a Vilayati. How could he be if he was chewing paan like a hegoat and the loyal Rajputs were picking betel leaves with him as an oath that they would die fighting for Hussain Shah? This custom was called ‘beera uthana’.

  This paan-culture was a very good culture. He was all for it, except that
although he wore a sword, he didn’t want to fight. This was the feudal age of constant warfare everywhere—West Asia, Europe, Russia, China, Japan. Men just loved to kill other men. Where could he go except to a Sufi retreat?

  Bahlol Lodhi died in 1489. He was succeeded by his swashbuckling son, Sikander, who was proud and stern and very different from his likeable father. The Rajput chiefs of the Eastern Kingdom were loyal supporters of Hussain Shah. Led by a chieftain called Joga, they refused to pay tribute to the Lodhi government.

  Sikander was a big-game hunter and sportsman. One morning, he was playing polo when the courier brought news of the Sharqi Rajputs’ rebellion. He threw away his polo stick and ordered his generals to prepare themselves. “We are marching down to Jaunpur. Right away.”

  “Sire, you haven’t had your breakfast.”

  “I’ll have my breakfast in Jaunpur,” he roared. They reached Jaunpur in record-time, ten days.

  Joga, the leader of the revolt, had just bathed and was sitting down to eat in his chowka when his men brought the information that a furious Sikander was approaching the city gates. Joga stood up quickly. He put on his wet clothes and rode off in the direction of his liege lord Hussain Shah’s fort in Bihar. Sikander chased poor Joga all the way and sent a note to Hussain Shah:

  Sir,

  Kindly hand over this Joga character to me and oblige.

  Thanking you,

  Yours truly,

  Sikander R.

  Camp, Somewhere in Bihar.

  Hussain Shah wrote back:

  Please note that Joga is my servant, just as your late-lamented Abba was my servant. But he was a soldier, albeit a commoner, so I deigned to cross swords with him. You are a silly child. I will not use my sabre, I will beat you with my shoes. Get lost.

  Sultan Sikander Lodhi could not believe his eyes when he read this reply. “When a person is heading for total ruination he takes leave of his senses,” he remarked ruefully.

  With the help of his Hindu zamindars Hussain Shah took on Sikander in a battlefield near Chunar. Although he was defeated he still did not surrender.

  Kamal could not stand more bloodshed and quietly ran away from Kohal Gunj. Hussain Shah’s people supported him till his very last battles against Sikander in 1492 and 1494. He was finally vanquished in 1500 and returned to Bhagalpur, grieving for the fair city of Jaunpur which the victorious Sikander had reduced to rubble. Sikander had destroyed Jaunpur in the east and developed a new city, Agra, in the west.

  Hussain Shah died in Kohal Gunj in 1505. After the fall of Jaunpur the centre of Hindustani classical music shifted to Gwalior, though the entire region extending from Jaunpur to Qanauj, Kalpi and the Vindhyachals continued to be called the ‘Hussaini Ilaqa of Melodies’.

  Ali had said, “The world is as worthless as the sneeze of a goat.”

  Nothing makes sense any more. The contradictions of human nature have ceased to baffle me. Sultan Sikander Lodhi is a good, sensitive poet. He writes excellent ghazals under the nom de plume, Gulrukh—Roseface—not an inappropriate name, for he is stunningly handsome. The Sufis see Divine Beauty reflected in good looks, so one mystic fell in love with him. Being a stern moralist Sikander promptly sent the poor fellow to jail. He is a scholar himself and is surrounded by ulema. He is an orthodox Muslim, yet he does not wear a beard.

  He is very interested in the promotion of education, yet he comes to Jaunpur and demolishes the city’s famous university and its colleges. And while the colleges were being ravaged Sikander Lodhi, the educationist, sat in his headquarters discussing the new syllabus for school children with his advisors.

  He has had the Rose Lake complex of palaces razed to the ground with a vengeance. Nothing left. In his frenzy he even ordered the demolition of the mosques but his ulema stopped him.

  Baghdad fell once again with the fall of Jaunpur. I, Abul Mansur Kamaluddin, live to mourn its loss, just as I grieved for the holocaust of Baghdad though it happened nearly three centuries ago. I have seen the passing of a great and liberal civilisation in my own lifetime, here in India. The Mongols were heathens who sacked Baghdad, Sikander is a Muslim who devastated Jaunpur.

  He is not egalitarian like his late father and has revived the pomp and grandeur of kingship. Being a puritan he has forbidden the entry of women into the shrines of saints—he says it leads to corruption. He has banned the annual Urs of Salar Maba of Behraich as grave-worship. He has put a stop to the worship of Seetla Devi, the goddess of smallpox. ‘How can an infectious disease be called a goddess?’ he thundered and ordered the demolition of the deity’s temples. It was explained to him that smallpox was considered a manifestation of the wrath of the goddess Kali. Sikander wouldn’t listen. That was a very unwise thing to do. Perhaps he wants to prove to his fellow Afghans that he is not influenced by his mother, Queen Hemavati.

  Ah, Jaunpur! What a liberal city it once was. Women went to college and to mosques which had separate galleries and halls for female congregations, like we have in West and Central Asia. And now I hear the mullahs and pandits of Kashi are persuading Sikander to declare Kabir Das a heretic . . .

  Sikander is also a good king in a way. He has brought about much peace and prosperity in the land and has streamlined the administration. He has recruited a large number of diligent Kayasthas to government offices. They are rapidly learning Persian to run the departments of revenue, etc. Sikander has successfully and finally vanquished his hereditary foe, and my King, Hussain Sharqi. Sikander is not fond of music. Still, he allows only one kind of raga to be played on the shehnai in his royal naubat khana—Hussaini Kenra!

  I think there is something for the wise to discern in that . . .

  He is a patron of the learned and yet he ordered the scholars of the Sharqi court to be presented before him, tied together with ropes made of their “turbans of eminence”. The order was carried out. I am glad I was not among them. But should I be glad that I ran away—leaving my seniors and my peers to face that disgrace? Should I celebrate my cowardice and call it my love for peace? Should I not have unsheathed my sword and fought in the streets of Jaunpur? I came away to Patna and sought escape in wine and music, but in the sound of the sarangi strings I heard the rattle of death. I watched pretty dancers and found dead women grinning.

  All manner of voices, words of strange songs, complicated sentences of dead languages created a whirlpool of din in my head. I was a famous linguist. Now I wish to forget all languages and become wordless.

  Where is my Unseen Mentor, my Guide? I recalled a Kabir song that Champa once sang— “The farewell drum of breath is beating night and day . . .”

  He stopped writing and slapped his notebook shut. He had not written in it for long years and now he realised there was not much left to write about, anyway. He paid the rent for his room at the inn, packed up and left for the waterfront. Ships were leaving for the east and west of Patna. He could still go to Gaur and get a job in the scriptorium of the Sultan of Bengal. That king was having the Mahabharata and other Sanskrit works translated into Persian. “I am an unemployed translator and linguist,” he could whine before the Sultan. But would he employ a renegade who had deserted his own master?

  “Abay, O! Get out of the way! Can’t you see we’re carrying a bridal palki aloft?” Somebody elbowed him rudely from behind. The crowds pushed him till he found himself standing in front of a man selling tickets.

  “Where do you want to go?” the man asked this bedraggled, miserable-looking person.

  “To Nowhere. Give me the ticket and keep the purse.” Kamal handed him his velvet kesa.

  Some crazy qalandar. The ticket-seller returned the purse to Kamal and let him board the ship.

  Kamal sat down in a corner with his travel kit which contained his unfinished Strange Tales and Marvels of Hindustan. Suddenly he had an urge to throw the book overboard. Then he recalled the Quranic precept—to lose all hope is kufr, denial of the existence of God. He alternately dozed and watched the colourful throng of voyagers a
nd still did not know where he was going. The ship was on its way to Prayag, beyond the city of Kashi. Many passengers had disembarked at Patna, many more came up the gangplank. Among the new ones there were some rich young men, a group of bairagis and a saffron-clad Buddhist bhikshu who always kept aloof. Kamal had finally met some bhikshus in Bihar.

  The rich young men of Patna played cards, the two merchants of Kathiawar remained engrossed in their fat ledgers, the wedding party sang boisterously. The bride was crying.

  “Listen, Champavati, you can make your choice here and now, if you agree to marry me. You’ll get such an interesting fellow in this life and you will be safe in the Hereafter.”

  “If my karma and sanskaras are such, I will become a Muslim and marry you . . .”

  “Sanskaras or no sanskaras, will you wait for me?”

  She laughed her silvery laugh and vanished in the moonlight.

  Somebody struck the strings of a dotara. Kamal rubbed his eyes, he had long been a victim of hallucinations and reveries. Champa was gone. He looked up. A tall and sturdy sadhu in a white robe loomed in front of him. He played his dotara with his left hand for his right had no fingers. He looked more like a Thakur than an ascetic. Maybe he was Sultan Sikander’s spy. Kamal was known to be one of Hussain Shah Nayak’s trusted officials. “Are you Maulana Kamaluddin of Jaunpur?” the sadhu asked gruffly. That confirmed Kamal’s suspicions.

  He nodded, too upset to speak. He didn’t want to be dragged back into that fearful arena of tigers fighting lions.

  “Don’t look so scared.” The bairagi sat down on a coil of rope. “You have guessed right. I was an officer in the Lodhi army but now I am spying for God. I fought against you chaps in the Battle of Kalpi and lost my fingers.” He spread his hand in front of a bewildered Kamal.

  “I passed with my victorious regiment through Ayodhya where she lived . . .”