Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Sanjay realized that something had happened to him, that until now he had been content to let people enter his life and act upon him, and he had accepted their presence and their actions as natural phenomena, as stimuli to be reacted to spontaneously; but now he doubted everything: he considered himself curiously, examined his own emotions and sensations, listened to his own breathing, and the simplest action — drinking a glass of milk, sitting at dinner with the others — became an event difficult to get through because of his acute sense of himself, because everywhere there was an irony inseparable from existence.

So in the afternoons, when it was too hot for dictation, Sanjay eagerly ran down to the river, where he found the one chore he could lose himself in: he scrubbed and washed Gajnath with the one-pointedness of a meditation, lifting aside folds of skin and getting into the most hidden cracks, where minuscule creatures lived and fed. Sometimes Sikander and Chotta wandered by and sat at the water’s edge, quiet; their unusual stillness, without fail, broke Sanjay’s concentration, so that he felt he had to make conversation to relieve the awful burden of mounting silence. So he made flourishes with his pumice stone, and great splashes of water, and finally one day — anything was better than nobody saying anything — he was reduced to offering a note to Sikander to read to the mahout: ‘If Gajnath is the king of elephants, why does he serve us?’

‘Ah, Gajnath,’ said the mahout. ‘He is not only the king, he is the descendant of kings. Listen, in the great Akbar’s court, there were many elephants who were declared khacah, that is, they were to carry only the emperor. There was Koh-shikan, the Mountain-Destroyer; Uttam, the Amorous; Madan Mohan, the Heart-Ravisher; Sarila, the Polished; Maimun Mubarak, the Highly-Sedate; and many, many others, but of all these the captain-elephant was Aurang-Gaj. Aurang-Gaj was the beloved of Akbar, for his excellent proportions, for his courage and his loyalty, and he was given ten servants to serve him, and every day one hundred and sixty pounds of good foods. And so Aurang-Gaj carried his emperor at the most auspicious of occasions…’

‘Yes,’ Sikander said, reading from a note. ‘But all the same the great Aurang-Gaj could have squashed the emperor Akbar like a peanut, so why carry him?’

‘Because Akbar captured him.’

‘But how did Akbar capture him?’

‘By cornering him in a valley, then having other tame elephants box him in and lead him in.’

‘But why did these other elephants begin to serve Akbar?’

‘Because Akbar tied them to trees, and lashed them or starved them or anything else until the pain became unbearable, and then they decided that it was better to serve Akbar than suffer endlessly or die.’

‘And so they all gave up?’

‘They gave up nothing, they just decided to go on living. And so they served Akbar, but even the strong must grow weak, so that now Akbar’s descendants huddle in their peeling palaces in Delhi, and the children of Aurang-Gaj are scattered over Hindustan.’

‘But ever, did ever any of the elephants just say no, enough, no more?’

‘In a thousand ways, every day. They serve us, we are their masters, that much is obvious. But if you live with them long enough, you know they understand that in reality they are the stronger, but to openly refuse would result in destruction. So they are endlessly patient, and they endure, and when you want them to go fast they go just a little slower than necessary, and when you want them to do something, they pretend they don’t understand, oh, no, master, we are just dumb animals, we don’t understand anything. Their rebellion is in little things, because they understand that it is better to endure and survive than to say no and die.’

‘But Akbar loved Aurang-Gaj, and Aurang-Gaj loved Akbar?’

‘In a way, in a manner of speaking, and that is the strangest thing of all.’

Sikander and Chotta stood up then to watch the Englishwoman as she walked to her boat, which stood ready to take her back across the river; every afternoon, she came across with one of the younger Englishmen, to make her way to Sikander’s mother’s tent. Then, when Sikander’s mother refused her an audience, she sat on a folding chair, under an umbrella, sending in servant after servant with arguments and appeals to what she called ‘common sense’: the girls will be educated, they will be schooled in the best of environments, they will become polished mems and will marry the most eligible and powerful of men, surely you must consider what is best for them, for their futures. Receiving no replies, the Englishwoman would fold her chair, click shut her umbrella, and retreat over the river for the night, to return the next day. In the red tent, Sanjay would find Sikander’s mother in a rage, snapping at Ram Mohan as if he were the one who was trying to take her daughters away; even though she refused to meet the Englishwoman, she listened to each of her messengers avidly, her eyes downcast.

‘What does she think?’ she would burst out after the messengers left. ‘What does she think, a mother doesn’t worry about her daughters’ future? I know too well the sort of education they will give.’ A pause as another messenger came in. ‘I will not have them be made into something else.’

The two girls watched and listened quietly, their haughtiness quite broken by the experience of being at the centre of a struggle which caused such anger and grief; in fact it now seemed to Sanjay that they treated their mother with not a little affection as she plied them with food and encircled them with the watchful ferocity of a lioness. He was unable, ever, to find them alone, and was too shy to attempt a conversation in front of other people, but was content to watch as they played games of cards and parchesi with Sikander and Chotta, giggling and whispering to each other. They obeyed their mother instantly, without question, and seemed to enjoy their sessions with a local tailor and a jeweller, who outfitted them with bright ghagras and fine wrought-silver bangles and necklaces, so that they looked like little replicas of their mother. All this ended abruptly and without ceremony one hot afternoon, when everyone was dozing — Hercules strode into the tent, found the chamber where the girls were sleeping next to their mother, kicked aside two maids, lifted the children up by their arms with one hand, and when his wife pulled at the girls he hit her back-handed and knocked her over the bed. By the time Sanjay, Ram Mohan, Sikander and Chotta woke up he was already outside, handing the girls to two red-coated English cavalrymen who, escorted by English infantry, made their way to the river and across it. Hercules came back into the tent, brushing past his sons without a glance.

‘Have I not treated you well?’ he said to Sikander’s mother in his accented Urdu. ‘Have I not given you everything you needed? Have I not given you a house, servants, money? Have I not let you have your sons, as you wanted?’

She looked at him very directly, a small red mark on her right cheek, and said nothing.

‘The girls I wanted to look to, and I have been a good father to them. I want them to be educated, and to grow up as Englishwomen. That is the best thing for them, and that is what I have wanted for them. Do you understand that? I will go now to Calcutta with them, and leave them there in the care of friends. If you want you can come, be with them until we come back.’

She said nothing, and he turned smartly on a heel and walked out; she sat without moving, on the floor beside the bed, and the evening came with its slow loss of shape and outline, its smell of flowers and water, and then the night. Sanjay and the others sat beside Sikander’s mother through the dark, and Sanjay found that he did not need sleep, or even day-dreams: to watch her face, her eyes, as the shadows moved slowly, was enough. In the morning, when the birds began to call, she said in a very clear voice, suddenly: