River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  Cyril felt with utmost urgency that it was truly and positively a case of Love At First Sight. He said with intense emotion: “Listen to me, my pretty maid,” while he recalled the lines of the Cornish song:

  “What if I lay you down on the ground, my pretty fair maid.”

  “I will rise up again, sweet sir,” she said.

  That night he returned to the palm grove in the Eurasian Town. He came back there the next night and the night after that. On the fourth day his ship was sailing for Calcutta.

  While he was getting ready to leave the White Town inn, it dawned on him that he had been unspeakably foolhardy. He couldn’t possibly marry a girl called Maria Teresa of the Eurasian Town of Madras. Peter Jackson had said repeatedly, never commit the folly of marrying a black girl. He hadn’t proposed to Maria yet but that stupid girl, in the manner of all Indian women, had already started considering him her lord and master. When he went to the cathedral garden to say goodbye to her, he was flabbergasted. She was waiting there with a bundle of clothes, all set to accompany him to Calcutta! Bringing forth all his powers of oratory and his poetic vocabulary, he convinced her that females were not allowed on board this particular ship, and that he would send for her as soon as he got to Calcutta. The Cornish song followed him to the sea:

  “What if I do bring you with child, my pretty, fair maid.”

  “I will bear it, sweet sir,” she said,

  “What will you do for whittles for your child my pretty, fair maid?”

  Yes, indeed, what would she do for whittles in case she had a child? He broke into a cold sweat for he was the son of a country parson, not a hardened sinner. He spent some restless nights on board. Then at the Captain’s table he heard more terrible news of Tipoo Saheb’s wars raging on the mainland. Once again the thought of getting killed in a strange country overwhelmed him. The fear of impending death helped reduce the guilt about the poor, half-caste girl he had seduced and abandoned in a palm grove in Madras.

  The ship reached Diamond Harbour. Cyril hired a boat. On the evening wind wafted the faint roar of tigers and the howling of jackals in distant forests. Calcutta was still far away. Cyril shut his eyes and tried to visualise the El Dorado where he was about to arrive at last. The city of gold! London of the East! Night was falling. The magic moon of Bengal sailed alongside, and boatmen were singing plaintively in their strange language.

  They approached Garden Reach. On the right bank Calcutta was bathed in clear moonlight. Banias waited for their new clients on the pier. Cyril came out of the motley throng, followed by an eager Bengali speaking pidgin English, who hired a palanquin for him and began acting as his agent. The Bengali took him to a boarding house run by an Englishwoman.

  Earl of Mornington, the Marquis Wellesley, resided at Belvedere in Alipore. Cyril had his offices in Writer’s Building. Indians, Portuguese, Armenians and Eurasians lived in Black Town. It did not take very long for Cyril Ashley to find his pagoda tree. He bought a pleasant bungalow overlooking the river, and started trading in indigo in the Mofussil. His Mohammedan munshee taught him Bengali and Persian and he moved in Calcutta’s high society. His palanquin-bearers were dressed in red uniform, the mace-bearers carried his silver-topped canes; mashalchis ran ahead of his sedan-chair with their torches when he went out at night. A hairdresser looked after his powder, pomatum and periwig. The hookah man prepared his hubble-bubble for him after meals. His Eurasian clerk, Joseph Lawrence, and the Baboo managed his office. The Baboo bore the name of Sarkar which was Persian for ‘head of works’. Many Hindu Bengalis he came across had Persian surnames indicating the designations their forefathers had held during the Mughal regime. There were Mazumdars and Taluqdars and Qanungos or ‘enforcers of law’. Everything seemed to turn into a caste or sub-caste in this land.

  Cyril’s outhouses were full of low-caste folk—gardener, grasscutter, groom, water-carrier, washerman and chowkidar— all Hindus. His tailor, barber, butler and cook were Muslim, and his private barge was manned by Muslim oarsmen. He belonged to the superior caste of Big White Sahebs. It was the same Cyril Ashley who used to ramble in the quiet lanes of Cambridge with a volume of Blake and Donne in his hand and compose heroic couplets leaning on the Bridge of Sorrows, counting his pennies after eating mashed potatoes in dingy pubs.

  The boat rocked on the turbulent waters of the Padma. This was the time of terrible cyclones. With some trepidation Cyril Ashley picked up the lantern and realised that the ferryman was rowing with some difficulty. Still he looked patient and serene for he was used to rough weather, floods, storms and all manner of natural calamities. Cyril Ashley tried to wake his friend Peter Jackson who had crawled under the mat roof and fallen asleep.

  1 Name of an Indian gold coin.

  19. The Abominable Customs of the Gentoos and Mussalmans

  The young Raja and his entourage and elephants awaited Cyril Ashley and Peter Jackson at the jetty. The Raja garlanded and welcomed the guests effusively. The Laat Saheb1 himself had sent the two Englishmen to attend the festivities as his representatives from Calcutta. The ferryman, Abul Mansur, and his boat disappeared in the darkness of the vast river.

  It was a lovely October evening. The Raja’s newly built Georgian mansion faced a large tank. Tables were laid out in the spacious veranda for the Sahebs to have their repast. There were no ladies to be seen—they lived in strict purdah. Cyril plonked himself down on an easy chair and extended his legs for his khidmatgar to remove his boots. His domestic staff had already arrived by another ferry and taken up their various duties.

  The fearsome chant of Hari Bol! Hari Bol! suddenly rose in the distance. Being a very still night, the words were distinctly audible. The Raja bellowed at his men: “How dare they . . . at this auspicious hour? Don’t they know I am going to have a celebration? Who is it?”

  “Sir, Bakshi Radhey Charan Mazumdar’s son-in-law has died,” the Raja’s aide whispered.

  It was a bad omen. The Raja was upset.

  A young man came running up, shouting, “Help! Help! O, Company Bahadur!” He was panting as he came up and fell at Cyril’s feet.

  The Raja frowned.

  “Get up. What’s the matter?” Cyril asked him kindly.

  “Sir, I just came to know that your honours have arrived . . . Please save my didi . . . She is about to be burnt alive . . .”

  “Oh, no, not that again! What is it? What is going on out here, Raja Saheb?” Cyril turned to his host.

  The Raja was about to say something when the newcomer cut him short. The white man’s presence had made him bold enough to interrupt the almighty Zamindar.

  “Please come with me and save her life!”

  “Don’t do anything in a hurry. Remember Job Charnock.” Peter, Cyril’s friend, philospher and guide, told him gruffly.

  He ignored the advice and got up to go.

  “Saheb! Where are you off to at this hour? The road is bad . . .” the Raja objected. Cyril elbowed him aside and rushed down the grand staircase. He got into a palanquin and told the young man to hop in. Then he ordered the kahars to run post-haste towards the village. The chant of Hari Bol! Hari Bol! was now mixed with the beating of the tom-tom.

  “Yes, tell me now—what’s the matter?” Cyril commanded the young man.

  “My name is Prafulla Kumar, sir, I am the only son of Bakshi Radhey Charan Mazumdar. We are very poor. We are an exceptionally luckless family. My eldest sister was visited by the goddess Sitala Debi . . .”

  “Visited by whom?” Cyril asked, even more puzzled. This was indeed a world full of unfathomable mysteries.

  “Sir, she had smallpox,” Prafulla hastened to explain.

  There was a big bump. Cyril held fast to the palki’s door. The kahars were running fast along the river bank. Cyril noticed that the Raja had sent his armed sepoys behind him, and they thundered ahead on horseback. A few years earlier it had been dangerous for Englishmen to travel unarmed in the countryside because of the Sanyasi insurrection. Things had cooled do
wn a bit now but this kind of trouble was not unexpected. Cyril continued to look out of the window, lost in thought. A group of Satyapir-Satyanarayan faqirs came into view.

  The boy Prafulla gazed at the river bank. He said wistfully, “My father says that on still nights like this one can sometimes see the curly-haired Satyapir,2 sandalwood paste on his forehead, a flute in his hand, walking along the river. My father often says that if he ever meets this particular god he will ask why he has been afflicted with all these misfortunes. But Sir,” Prafulla waxed eloquent, “for me you have appeared like an avatar of Satyapir-Satyanarayan . . .”

  Cyril felt uneasy. He was still not accustomed to Oriental exaggeration and hyperbole. A band of Muslim fakirs passed by, jingling their chains. “Allah-hoo-Allah-hoo,” they chanted sombrely when they saw the Company Bahadur’s procession going towards the cremation ground. To the scholar of classics from Cambridge the tall, black-robed figures appeared ominously like a Greek Chorus.

  Prafulla looked in their direction and laughed sarcastically. “For the last several Thursdays they have been coming to our village. My mother can give them nothing—our jars are empty. Everybody’s jars of grain are empty because of the famine,” he added. “These holy men had predicted for one of my sisters that she was a Padmini and that she would soon find a rich and distinguished man! On the contrary, Sir, there is no calamity or disaster that my sisters have not faced. This eldest didi who was poxed and jinxed, she was betrothed to a cultivator. He died. Now not even a pauper is willing to marry her. There are only two alternatives—she can be married to a peepul tree or to a dying man so that the stigma of remaining a spinster is removed and she acquires the status of widowhood.”

  “Married to a dying man?” Cyril repeated, astonished.

  Prafulla nodded. “It happens, once in a while. But my father refused both alternatives.”

  Cyril thought reasonably, well, we have death-bed marriages in England, too, for the sake of property. Then the Cambridge scholar and Orientalist-in-the making asked the young native, “Do the Mohammedans have such abominable customs as well?”

  “I do not know, huzoor, but I’m told that amongst the Mussalman aristocrats, if they do not find a man of equal status they marry the spinster to their Holy Book.”

  Cyril again paused and reflected judiciously, that in Europe believers in Popery send many an unwilling girl to become the “bride” of Christ. He asked Prafulla if it was the same sister, the jinxed one . . .

  “Yes. Last year a rich old man agreed to marry her but he already had two wives. He died this evening. Her stepsons want to consign her to the flames so that she gets no share in their property.”

  They had reached the house of mourning. A hush fell as the crowd saw the tall, young, firangi overlord step out of the palanquin. Suddenly Cyril remembered Peter Jackson’s warning. Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, had saved a woman from the funeral pyre and had married her. So help me God, what an unholy mess I have landed myself in.

  However, without a moment’s hesitation, he shouted, “Stop this outrage!”

  The Hari Bol! chanting and the beating of drums ended at once. The widow’s eldest stepson came forward. He stood, arms akimbo, and stared defiantly at the white Saheb.

  “You can’t stop it, Saheb,” he growled. “This is our parampara. Even Akbar and Jehangir didn’t succeed when they tried to stop the rite of sati.”

  “Akbar and Jehangir be damned. You are living in the Company Bahadur’s jurisdiction and not under your mad Nawabs and Badshahs’ misrule,” Cyril responded angrily.

  The Raja and Peter Jackson arrived on horseback.

  “You can’t interfere with our religious beliefs and practices. The Mughals didn’t, the Nawab-Nazims didn’t. Aurangzeb banned sati and behold, his empire was lost,” the man shouted back.

  “Nawab-Nazims were booted out by us,” Peter Jackson roared. “They got from us what they deserved. That ignoble tyrant and fool, Siraj-ud-Daulah is not around anymore, you know.”

  An old man who had been weeping, for his eyes were swollen, rushed out of the shadows and cried, “Saheb, don’t you say a word against the Aali Jah.”3 He was the unfortunate widow’s father.

  “Sir, please forgive him for the disrespect he is showing to you. He held a responsible post under Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. The defeat at Plassey has somewhat unhinged him.” Prafulla addressed the Englishmen in an abject undertone.

  Confusion worse confounded. Cyril was anxious to get out as fast as he could or else he might have to do what Job Charnock did.

  He heard the widow’s screams. She was being dressed up as a bride to accompany her lord and master to the other world. “Baba! Ma! Baba!” she was shrieking hysterically in blood-curdling despair. It sounded like the cries of the doomed coming out of Dante’s Inferno. Cyril got goose pimples. He bellowed, “I’ll have your property confiscated!”

  “Who are you? What authority do you have? You are not even the Collector of this district, a mere indigo planter.”

  The Raja hollered, “Shiril Shaheb is more important than the Collector. He has been sent here as the Laat Saheb’s emissary.” He waved a letter from Government House, Calcutta.

  “I’ll attach your lands. A new law is about to be passed against this gruesome custom!” Cyril lied. But it worked. The prestige of having a sati in the family was not worth the loss of one’s assets.

  The corpse had been tied with string onto a litter. The pall-bearers lifted it and proceeded towards the river. The widow was discreetly left behind. The Raja’s sepoys fired shots in the air, and Cyril Ashley and his entourage went back to the Raja’s mansion.

  1 The Governor-General

  2 The Bengali folk version of the Muslim mystical figure of Khwaja Khizr who, like St. Christopher, is believed to guide travellers who have lost their way. He is always dressed in green and is found walking along lonely river-banks after sunset.

  3 “Aali Jah Nawab-Nazim” was the Viceroy of Bengal’s official title, granted by the Imperial Mughals.

  20. The Confluence of Oceans

  “Ah, what an adventure-filled evening it was for you, old chap,” remarked Peter, sitting down at the breakfast table next morning.

  Cyril remained silent. Last night’s incident had saddened him. He came from a country where order and stability were the norms of daily life. Out here there was nothing but anarchy, conflict and an irrational attachment to tradition. From where do we start the social reforms in this ocean of inequity? He heard a noise and looked out of the window. The widow’s father was at the gate demanding to get in. Cyril recognised him and called out, “Send him in!”

  An orderly entered the morning room. “Bakshi Radhey Charan. He is half-mad, Sir.”

  “Never mind. Call him.”

  The man hobbled in. He was attired in a moth-eaten, crumpled robe of the Mughal era, obviously dressed for the occasion as behoved a gentleman of the Old Order. It was pathetic. Cyril felt a lump form in his throat.

  “I have come to thank Your Honour from the depths of my heart and soul for saving my child’s life,” the visitor said bowing his head.

  “I am glad that I could help,” Cyril replied haltingly in Bengali. He asked the visitor to sit down. The Bakshi carried a tiny embroidered folio with him which he presented ceremoniously to the young Englishman.

  “Saheb, this most precious heirloom I have brought as a token of my eternal gratitude.” He opened the velvet bag slowly and took out two calligraphed books. “I am told that you are deeply interested in Oriental literature, and that you have studied Sanskrit, Persian, and Urdu as well.”

  “Ah, yes, indeed,” Cyril replied modestly. “I am also trying to compile a Bengali-English lexicon when I get some respite from my official duties.”

  “That is why, Sir, I know you will value these books and perhaps render them into English—Prince Dara Shikoh’s Persian translation of the Upanishads. He translated it with the help of the pandits of Banaras. It is a rare copy. My gra
ndfather was a calligrapher in the scriptorium of Nawab-Nazim Aliwardy Khan at Murshidabad.

  “And this one, Saheb, is the Prince’s famous Majma-ul-Behrain, the Confluence of Oceans, in which Dara Shikoh compiled the precepts of Islamic mysticsm and Vedanta. The Prince was Emperor Shahjehan’s eldest son, Sire, he belonged to the Order of Qadri Sufis and called himself a fakir.”

  “He did,” Peter Jackson sniggered.

  “Are you sure you would like to part with these books?” asked Cyril, as he turned the pages of the volumes in fascination.

  “Take them,” Peter whispered in an aside. “You can send them later to the British Museum.” Cyril accepted the gift with genuine pleasure and gratitude. Raja Girish Chandra Roy swept in and proceeded to touch the old man’s feet. Cyril was surprised.

  The Raja said, “He is my guru. He taught me both Sanskrit and Persian in the village school.”

  “I’m told he was a soldier in Siraj-ud-Daulah’s army and fought at Plassey,” Cyril remarked.

  “It’s a long story, Saheb,” the old man sighed. “I am an old fossil, a relic of times gone by . . .”

  Now the Raja felt uncomfortable and wished the outspoken eccentric would leave quickly. He was fiercely loyal to the long-deposed rulers whose “salt” he had eaten. The Raja could not be rude to him because his tradition told him that a guru was like his father and a god. The Gora Sahebs could not understand these things, especially Jackson who was the typical rapacious, high-handed Company official and trader, so different from the gentle scholar, Shiril Shaheb. The Raja had joined the New Order, leaving people like Radhey Charan Mazumdar behind as the flotsam and jetsam of history. He told Cyril that as a young man his venerable guru had worked in the Military Accounts Department of Aliwardy Khan’s government, and had accompanied the Nawab’s grandson Siraj-ud-Daulah’s army to the fateful battlefield of Plassey. The Bakshi had failed to come to terms with the Hon’ble John Company’s dispensation. “I have acquired the reputation of being mad because I speak the truth and say things which people do not want to hear. Well, I may have become an eccentric, Sir, but I am not demented.”