Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Veena saw Priya clutch the necklace round her neck. Her mouth was open and she was gasping. Bhaskar looked at his mother and grandmother. He could not grasp what was happening, but he was terribly frightened. Ram Vilas, seeing that Priya was being crushed, tried to move towards her, and Bhaskar toppled off his back. Veena managed to get hold of the boy. But old Mrs Tandon was nowhere to be seen — the crowd had swallowed her up in its helpless and irresistible movement. People were screaming now, clutching at each other and stepping on each other, trying to find their husbands and wives, their parents and children, or flailing around for their own survival, desperate to breathe and to avoid being crushed. Some pressed forward into the nagas, who, fearing to be crushed between them and the spectators on the other side, laid into them with their tridents, roaring with anger. People fell, blood pouring from their wounds, on to the ground. At the sight of blood, the crowd reacted with terror, and tried to turn back. But there was nowhere to go.

Some people at the edges of the ramp tried to slip through the bamboo barricades and scramble down to the ditches on either side. But last night’s storm had made these steep slopes slippery, and the ditches themselves were filled with water. About a hundred beggars were sheltering by the side of one of the ditches. Many of them were cripples, some were blind. The injured pilgrims, gasping for breath and clawing for a foothold on the slope, now came tumbling down on to them. Some of the beggars were crushed to death, and some tried to flee into the water, which soon turned into a bloodied slush as more of those who were trapped on the ramp sought this, their only route of escape, and fell or slid on to the screaming people below.

At the foot of the ramp, where Veena and her family were trapped, people were maimed or dying. Many of the old and infirm fell to the ground. Some of them, exhausted by the long journey, had little strength to withstand the shock or the pressure of the crowd. A student, unable to move, watched helplessly nearby as his mother was trampled to death and his father’s ribs crushed. Many people were literally squeezed to death against each other. Some were suffocated, some succumbed to injuries. Veena saw one old woman, blood pouring out of her mouth, suddenly collapse near her.

There was complete and dreadful chaos.

‘Bhaskar — Bhaskar — don’t let go of my hand,’ cried Veena, clutching him tightly. She had to gasp out every word. But they were thrust to and fro by the great terrified injured mass all around them, and she could feel the weight of someone’s body force itself between her hand and his.

‘No — no—’ she screamed, sobbing with dread. But she felt the small hand slip, palm first, and then digit by digit, out of her own.

Within fifteen minutes more than a thousand people were dead.

Finally the police managed to communicate with the railway authorities and stop the trains. They set up barriers on the approach routes to the ramp, and cleared the area below and around the ramp. The loudspeakers started telling people to go back, not to enter the Mela grounds, not to watch the processions. They announced that the remaining processions themselves had been cancelled.

It was still not clear what had happened.

Dipankar had been among the spectators on the other side of the main route. He watched with horror the carnage that was taking place less than fifty feet away but — with the nagas between him and the ramp — there was nothing he could do. Anyway, there was nothing he could have done except get killed or injured. He did not recognize anyone on the ramp, so tightly packed was the crowd. It was a hellish scene, like humanity gone mad, each element indistinguishable from the other, all bent on a kind of collective suicide.

He saw one of the younger nagas stab furiously at a man, an old man who had in his terror tried to force his way to safety on the other side of the procession. The man fell, then rose again. Blood was streaming from wounds on his shoulder and back. With horror, Dipankar recognized him as the man whom he had met in the boat, the hardy old pilgrim from Salimpur who had been so insistent upon the correct spot for bathing. The man tried to struggle back, but was flung down by the crowd as it surged forward again. His back and his head were crushed by the trampling feet. When the crowd next surged back at the point of the tridents, the mangled body of the old man remained, like a piece of debris washed up by the tide.

Meanwhile, a number of VIPs and army officers, who had been watching the great spectacle of the processions from the ramparts of the Brahmpur Fort looked down in disbelief at the scene far below them. The panic began so suddenly, and the whole thing was over so quickly, that the number of motionless bodies lying on the ground when the terrified mob had finally been able to ooze away was unbelievable. What had happened? What arrangements had gone wrong? Who was to blame?

The Fort Commander, without waiting for a formal request, immediately sent troops down to help the police and the Mela officers. They began to clear bodies away, to take the injured to the first-aid centres and the corpses to the Pul Mela Police Station. He also suggested immediately setting up a central control room to deal with the aftermath of the disaster. The temporary telephone exchange that had been set up for the Mela was taken over for this purpose.

Those VIPs who had wanted to bathe on this auspicious day were on a launch in the middle of the Ganga when the captain came up to them in great agitation. The Chief Minister and Home Minister were standing side by side. The captain, holding out a pair of binoculars, said to the Chief Minister: ‘Sir — I fear there is some trouble on the ingress ramp. You might wish to take a look for yourself.’ S.S. Sharma took the binoculars wordlessly and refocused them. What had looked like a slight perturbation from a distance suddenly came alive to him in all its horrifying actuality. His mouth opened, he closed his eyes in distress, and opened them again to scan the upper reaches of the ramp, then the ditches on either side, the nagas, the embattled police. He handed the binoculars to L.N. Agarwal with the single word: ‘Agarwal!’

The Home Minister’s first thought was that in the ultimate analysis he might be held responsible for this calamity. Perhaps it is unjust to consider this thought atypically unworthy. Even in the worst calamities of others, some part of our mind, often the one that is quickest to respond, tries to brace itself for the vibration that will reach us from the epicentre. ‘But the arrangements were perfect — I went over them with the Mela officer myself—’ the Home Minister was about to say, but a second thought stopped him in his tracks.

Priya. Where was Priya? She had planned to go to the Mela today with Mahesh Kapoor’s daughter — to watch the procession, to bathe. Surely she was all right. Surely nothing could have happened to her. Torn between love for her and fear of what might have happened, he could not say a word. He handed the binoculars back to the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister was saying something to him, but he could not understand what he was saying. He could not follow the words. He hid his head in his hands.

After a while, the fog in his mind thinned out, and he told himself that there were millions of people at the Mela today, and that the chances, the real chances, of her being one of the unfortunate people caught in the stampede, were very small. But he was still sick with worry for his only child. May nothing have happened to her, he said to himself. O God, may nothing have happened to her.

The Chief Minister continued to look grim, and speak grimly to him. But apart from the sharp tone, the Home Minister caught nothing, understood nothing. After a while he looked at the Ganga. A few rose petals and a coconut were floating on the water near the launch. Pressing his hands together he began to pray to the holy river.