Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Yet, in some ways Asha-didi is completely Cantonese: she doesn’t like to waste words or time. Minutes after she had shown me the room, she was busy seeing to its cleaning and refurbishment. A poultry-keeper tied the chickens into bunches, by their feet, and carried them away like clusters of clucking coconuts. Then a half-dozen of her sons, grandsons and daughters-in-law got to work, scraping feathers and excrement off the deck, mopping the bulwarks and moving lumber and equipment. Soon, bits of furniture began to appear: chairs, stools and even a charpoy that had travelled all the way to Canton from Calcutta.

Only after the furniture had been arranged did Asha-didi open the door at the far end of the room. That was when I le arnt that the bedroom had a little appendage. There’s a little baranda here, said Asha-didi. Come and have a look!

The ‘veranda’ was heaped with rotting beams, spars and ropes. I stepped out gingerly, expecting another unwelcome surprise — geese maybe, or ducks. Instead, the panorama of the city burst upon me like a breaking wave.

It was a clear day, and I could see all the way to Wu Hill, the ridge that overlooks Guangzhou; I could even see the great five-storey edifice at the hill’s peak: the Zhenhai Lou or Sea-Calming Tower. In the foreground, on the other side of the river, was the foreign enclave; the channel in between was crowded with vessels of many shapes and sizes: Swatow trading junks could be seen towering over rice-boats and ferries; and everywhere one looked there were circular coracles spinning from one bank to another (it is in these that I cross the river every day, for the price of a single cash-coin).

I could not have asked for more: to step out on that veranda is to have a perpetual tamasha unfolding before one’s eyes!

At night, when darkness falls on the city, the river comes alive with lights. Many of Canton’s famous ‘flower-boats’ float past my veranda, lanterns blazing, leaving behind sparkling wakes of music and laughter. Some of the flower-boats have open-sided terraces and pavilions, in which women can be seen entertaining their clients with songs and music. Watching them I can understand why it’s said of Canton that ‘young men come here to be ruined.’

The location too could not be better. The houseboat is moored by the shore of Honam Island, which is much quieter than the heavily built-up northern side, where the city of Guangzhou lies. The contrast between the two banks is startling: the north shore is densely settled, with as great a press of buildings as I have ever seen. On this side we have mainly woods and farmland, along with a few hamlets, monasteries and large estates. The surroundings are peaceful, yet Compton’s print-shop is within easy reach.

The houseboat is itself a constant source of diversion. Asha-didi’s sons sometimes come to chat with me, and often the talk turns to Calcutta. Most of them were very young when their family left Bengal to return to Guangdong but they’ve all preserved a few memories of the city. There’s not one of them who doesn’t remember a few words of Bangla and Hindustani and they all have a taste for masala. The little ones — Baburao and Asha-didi’s grandchildren — also ask about Calcutta and Bengal. The strength of their ties to India is surprising — I think it must have something to do with the fact that their grandfather and grandmother are buried by the Hooghly River, in the Chinese cemetery at Budge-Budge. This creates a living bond with the soil, something that is hard to understand for those such as myself, whose forefathers’ ashes have always been scattered on the Ganga.

Of Asha-didi’s children the one who lived longest in Calcutta is their eldest daughter, who everybody calls Ah Maa. She is perhaps a year or two older than me and has never married. She is very thin and her face has more lines than is merited by her age. Much like the unmarried aiburo aunts of Bengal, she looks after the young children and takes on much of the responsibility for the running of the househo ld. She is never idle for a moment, yet there is something a little melancholy about her. When I first arrived she was the only member of the family who seemed to resent my presence. She would never speak to me or even look at me; instead she would avert her face in the way that a Bengali woman might do with a stranger. This struck me as odd, because here in Canton women of the boat-people community do not keep purdah or bind their feet or observe any of the constraints that prevail among other Chinese. Nor indeed does she display any shyness in dealing with other strangers.

I had the feeling that the sight of me had re-opened some old wound. And just as it sometimes happens with an old scab, she seemed unable to ignore me. Sometimes she would bring me food from Asha-didi’s kitchen-boat. She would hand it over without a word: I could tell that there was something about me that troubled her but I could not think what it might be.

But two days ago she began to speak to me in Bangla, haltingly, as though she were dredging pebbles out of the silt of memory. Her ‘Calcutta name’, she told me, was ‘Mithu’. Then she told me her tale: as a young maiden in Calcutta she had come to know a Bengali boy, a neighbour. But both families had objected; her parents had tried to marry her off to a man from Calcutta’s Chinese community, but she, being stubborn, had refused him.

And so the years had gone by until it was too late for her to marry.

The night before their journey’s end, the recruits stayed up late. By this time they had developed strong bonds with each other. They were all of roughly the same age — in the mid-teens — and none of them had been away from their families before.

A couple of the boys were from remote inland villages and had seen even less of the world than Kesri. The most rustic of them all was a weedy fellow by the name of Seetul, and he was regarded as the clown of the group.

That night they talked about what lay ahead and what it would be like to be under the command of English officers. Seetul was the one who was most concerned about this. One of his relatives, he said, had recently visited a town where there were many Angrez. On his return he had told them a secret about the sahib-log — white-folk — something that could not on any account be repeated.

What is it?

Kasam kho! Promise you won’t tell anyone?

After they had all sworn never to tell, Seetul told them what his relative had said: the sahib-log’s womenfolk were fairies — they each had a pair of wings.

When the others scoffed he told them that his relative had seen proof of this with his own eyes. He had seen a sahib and memsahib going by in a carriage. Not only was she dressed in clothes that were as colourful as a fairy’s wings, but when the carriage came close everyone saw, with their own eyes, that the sahib had put his hands on her shoulder, to prevent her from flying away. There could be no doubt that she was a fairy — a pari .

Kesri and the others laughed at Seetul’s rustic gullibility — but the truth was that they too were apprehensive about encountering the sahib-log; they had also heard all kinds of stories about them, back in their villages.

But the next day, when they arrived at Barrackpore, the novelty of seeing the sahib-log paled before the utter strangeness of everything else. Even before the boat docked they spotted a building that was like nothing they had seen before — a palace overlooking the river, with peacocks on the roof, and a vast garden in front, filled with strange, colourful flowers.

Hukam Singh sneered at the awed expressions on their faces. The Barrackpore bungalow was only a weekend retreat for the Burra Laat — the English Governor-General: it was a mere hut, he said, compared to the Laat-Sahib’s palace in Calcutta.