Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

This set of grievances was not new to Kesri. But the deserters also mentioned certain rumours that took him completely by surprise: they told him that dire omens and auguries were circulating in the battalion; an astrologer was said to have predicted disaster for the expedition; a purohit had declared that the Bengal Volunteers were cursed.

It worried Kesri that nobody had told him about these rumours: this was itself a sign that they had had a powerful impact on the men.

Had someone like Pagla-baba been attached to B Company Kesri would have been kept informed of everything that was being said amongst the sepoys. Moreover, Pagla-baba would have known exactly how to counter the omens; he would have found some alternative interpretation to reassure the men. That was why regular sepoy battalions were always accompanied by a mendicant — they were indispensable in situations like these.

But of course, the Bengal Volunteers were not a regular sepoy battalion: they were a motley group, assembled for a single expedition. As a unit they would not be together long enough for a pir or sadhu to find a place in their midst.

On the other matter — of instigators, abettors and conspirators — Kesri could get nothing out of the boys. They would not tell him whether they had been encouraged to desert by other members of the company; nor would they reveal the names of other men who had talked about deserting. Even severe beatings wrung no answers from them — and their very silence suggested that this kind of talk was rife in the battalion.

One of the deserters was from a village not far from Nayanpur: he was actually distantly related to Kesri by marriage. At the end of his interrogation, after a long, hard beating, the boy evoked that relationship, falling on the floor and clutching Kesri’s feet with his bloodied hands, begging for mercy.

It occurred to Kesri that had he been in the boy’s place he too might well have chosen to desert. But he knew also that he would not have set about it in such a stupid, thoughtless way — and this gave his anger a perverse edge as he kicked the boy’s hands aside.

Darpok aur murakh ke ka raham? he said. What mercy do cowards and fools deserve? Whatever happens to you, you should know that you have brought it on yourself.

As expected, the boys received sentences of execution by firing squad. Captain Mee decided that the firing squad would be provided by their own company and it fell to Kesri to pick the men. He made a few inquiries and chose exactly those men who were known to be friends or associates of the boys. He also elected to command the firing squad in person: it was distasteful but it had to be done.

March 18, 1840

Honam

Until Jodu appeared at my door I had no conception of how powerfully I would be affected by our reunion. It was not as if he and I had ever been friends, after all, and nor did we share any other connections or commonalities — of family, religion or even age, since Jodu must be a good nine or ten years younger than I. It was our flight from the Ibis that brought us together, but even as fugitives we’d spent very little time in each other’s company: no more than the few days during which we’d foraged for survival on the island of Great Nicobar, where our boat had washed up after our escape from the Ibis . After that we had gone our separate ways, with Ah Fatt and I heading towards Singapore, while Jodu, Kalua and Serang Ali had caught a boat to Mergui, on the Tenasserim coast.

Yet when Jodu stepped into my lodgings something dissolved within both of us and we wept as if we were brothers, reunited after a long parting. The shared secret of our escape from the Ibis has become a link between who we were then and who we are now; between past and present. It is a bond more powerful even than ties of family and friendship.

I had guessed that Jodu would be ravenously hungry and had arranged for Asha-didi to send over plenty of food — rice, beans, bitter melon, fish curry. Mithu had also made some luchis.

Everything was halal; I had made sure of that — and Jodu was grateful for it …

Seating himself cross-legged on the floor, Jodu began to shovel food into his mouth with his fingers, eating as though he were fuelling a furnace. But from time to time he would stop to catch his breath, and I took advantage of these pauses to ask how he’d found his way to Canton.

Jodu told me that on reaching Mergui, Serang Ali had decided that it was time for them to split up: his advice to Jodu and Kalua was that they travel eastwards. So Kalua had signed up as a lascar, on an opium ship that was heading towards the East Indies, and Jodu had joined the crew of a British brig — the shipmaster was none other than James Innes, whose intrigues would cause trouble for so many people, not least Seth Bahram!

I asked where Serang Ali was now, and Jodu said he didn’t know; at the time of their parting he had talked of going to a port called Giang Binh, on the frontier of China.

Of course, he too wanted to know what I had been doing since we last met, so I told him how Ah Fatt had run into his father, Seth Bahram, in Singapore, and how he had given me a job, as his munshi. Jodu was amazed to hear that I was in Canton with Seth Bahram through the months of the opium crisis — it is strange to think that our paths might have crossed in the foreign enclave last year, on the day when Jodu was taken to prison.

It didn’t take Jodu long to eat his fill — a starved tiger could not have been quicker to devour its food. But afterwards he showed no signs of torpor or sluggishness: to the contrary he seemed more awake and alert than ever, almost pulsating with energy. I hesitated to ask him about his time in prison, but the words came pouring out of him anyway.

The jail where he was imprisoned is in the Nanhae district of Guangdong. To my surprise, Jodu said that the conditions there were far better than those they had experienced before, when they were incarcerated in a cage, in a mandarin’s yamen. They were put on display in their cage, he said, like animals. People would come to look at them and prod them with sticks, shouting all the while: haak gwai! Gwal-Lo!

It was hell, he said, jahannum, narak .

Things got better after they were sentenced and sent off to the Nanhae prison. There at least they were not on show and the food was better too. In the yamen all they were ever given was rice and salt and rice-water. In the prison they were allowed a few scraps of vegetables as well. One day they were even given a bit of meat but Jodu suspected that it was pork and didn’t take it. The jailers asked why and the lascars told them that it was against their religion. That was when they learnt, to their amazement, that they were not the only Muslims in the prison, as they had thought. There were many others of their faith there — most of them Chinese! Some were from the community known as ‘Hui’, which is well-represented in this region. But there were Muslims from other places too, in and around China — Turks and Uzbegs, Malays and Arabs. These prisoners welcomed the lascars into their midst as if they were brothers. There are so many of them there that special arrangements have been made for them, by the authorities. They are allowed to cook their food separately. No one makes trouble for the Muslims because they are known to stand by each other.

Soon Jodu’s words began to flow with an almost uncontainable intensity: he started to pace the room as he talked, turning from time to time to fix his eyes on me.

I tell you, Neel-da, he said, only in Nanhae did I see what great good fortune it is to be born a Muslim. Wherever you go you find brothers, even in Chinese prisons! And wherever there are Muslims there is always a bond between us.