Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

A few people stared but otherwise no one paid attention. The warden fumed, with his hands on his hips. ‘Look at them; they think it’s a bloody circus. .’

There was a small patch of garden in front of the bank. Months before, slit trenches had been dug between the ornamental palms. But in the meantime evil-smelling pools of moisture had accumulated in the trenches, along with white-haired mango-pits and other bits of refuse. People balked at jumping in.

Rajkumar went back up the steps to see if the bank had opened. Just then the air-raid sirens went off, for the third time. Now everyone took notice. The traffic on the streets came to an abrupt halt. There was no panic and no running for shelter. Instead people climbed out of their trams and buses and stood on the streets in a half-disbelieving daze, looking skywards, shading their eyes against the light. Several men came up the stairs to stand beside Rajkumar: the bank’s threshold commanded an excellent view of the surroundings.

‘Listen.’ A low steady droning became audible in the distance.

The sound lent a sudden and ominous credibility to the idea of an imminent air raid. There was a moment of uncertainty and then panic swept like a gale down the streets. People began to run. Some darted indoors, others hurried away, dodging through the stalled traffic. The foul-smelling trenches at the corner were filled in seconds.

Somewhere nearby, a woman let out a howl of pain. Spinning round, Rajkumar saw that the baya-gyaw cart had been upended at the bottom of the steps; the vendor’s pot had tipped over, spattering her with boiling oil. She was running down the road, shrieking, clawing at her clothes with both hands.

Rajkumar decided not to brave the panicked crowd. Instead he braced himself against the bank’s heavy doors. The distant drone changed into a loud rhythmic noise. Then the first planes came into view: tiny specks, approaching from the east. The city’s anti-aircraft guns opened up with a dull, thudding sound. The guns were few and they were concentrated mainly in the vicinity of Mingaladon airport and the military cantonment. But there was something reassuring about the thought that the city’s defences were operational. Even in the midst of the panic, many people could be heard to cheer.

The bombers changed formation as they approached the eastern peripheries of the city, dipping lower in the sky. Their fuselages opened and their cargo of bombs began to descend, trailing behind the craft like glinting, tinsel ribbons. It was as though an immense silver curtain had suddenly appeared over the eastern horizon.

The first bombs fell several miles away, the explosions following in evenly spaced rhythmic succession. Suddenly there was a booming sound, several times louder than all the preceding blasts. From somewhere in the eastern reaches of the city, a huge cloud of black smoke mushroomed up towards the sky, almost engulfing the bombers.

‘They’ve hit the oil tanks,’ someone said, ‘on the Pazundaung Creek.’

Rajkumar knew at once that this was right. His stomach lurched. The city’s main oil reservoirs were on the far side of the creek, well within sight of his timberyard. He looked up at the bombers and saw that they were making another run over the same area. He realised now that they were not bombing blindly: they were targeting the city’s long waterfront, aiming for its mills, warehouses, tanks and railway lines.

Suddenly Rajkumar thought of the elephants, working in his yard. He recalled how unpredictable these animals were in their response to noise. It sometimes took just a single sharp sound to stampede a herd. Once, in the old days, at a teak camp, he had witnessed such a stampede; the echo of a gunshot had startled an old cow elephant into producing a distinctive trumpeting note; this had triggered an instinctive response in the herd. There had been a lot of damage and it had taken the oo-sis hours to regain control of their animals.

What would happen if a team of elephants were to panic inside the log-jammed confines of a timberyard? It was unthinkable.

Rajkumar could no longer bear to remain where he was. He set off on foot, in the direction of Pazundaung. The bombs were coming closer now, falling in curtains, floating towards the city’s centre. Suddenly a bullock-cart appeared directly ahead, racing at him down the footpath. The runaway bullocks were foaming at the mouth, showing the whites of their eyes. The driver was screaming, holding on to the sides of the cart. Rajkumar jumped aside just in time to let it pass by.

A flight of planes was passing directly overhead. Rajkumar looked up into the bright, clear December sky. They swooped downwards and their bays opened. Strings of bombs appeared, falling sidewise, catching the light, sparkling like diamonds.

There were no trenches nearby. Rajkumar crouched in a doorway, holding his hands over his head. The air shook and he was aware of the sound of shattering glass.

He lost track of how long he stayed there. He stirred only when he felt a warmth at his back. Turning around he saw a dog, pushing against him, whimpering in fear. He thrust the dog aside and stood up. Columns of smoke were climbing into the sky from all around him. He thought of Dolly, Manju and Jaya, his grandchild. He glanced in the direction of Kemendine and was relieved to see that that part of the city was relatively unaffected. He started to walk in the other direction, towards his timberyard, in Pazundaung.

On Merchant Street a marketplace had been hit. Fruit and vegetables lay scattered along the sides of the road. Already beggars and ragpickers were scratching through the debris. He noticed the burnt-out remains of a shop and recalled, almost with a sense of nostalgia, that this was his favourite place to buy tandoori chicken. A blast had driven a set of skewers through the clay walls of the oven, breaking it in half, like an eggshell. He heard a man’s voice calling for help. He hurried on. He had no time: he had to get to his yard in Pazundaung.

He passed the storefront of Rowe and Co. The windows were shattered and there were gaping holes in the walls. Looters were climbing in through the gaps. He could see the store’s Christmas tree lying aslant on the floor. There was an old woman working busily beside it, her face white with talcum powder. She was picking cottonwool off the floor, stuffing it into a sack.

In front of the telegraph office a water main had been hit. A ten-foot-high jet was spraying into the sky. There was water everywhere, gathering in puddles, flowing down the road. A whirlpool was swirling around the mouth of the shattered main.

People had been crouching along the walls of the telegraph office when the water source was hit. Many had died. Dismembered limbs could be seen in the pool that was spinning around the main: there was a child’s arm, a leg. Rajkumar averted his eyes and walked on.

Approaching Pazundaung, he saw that both sides of the creek were blanketed in flames. While still a good distance away he spotted the perimeter walls of his yard. They were shrouded in clouds of smoke.

Everything he owned was in that place, all that he had ever worked for; a lifetime’s accumulation of labour stored as a single cache of wood. He thought of the elephants and the bombs falling around them; the flames leaping from the well-stacked wood; the explosions, the trumpeting.

It was he who had concentrated all his holdings in this one place — that too was a part of the plan — and now the bombs had claimed it all. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered so long as Neel was unharmed. The rest were just things, possessions. But Neel. .

He turned into the alley that led to his yard and saw that it was filled with swirling clouds of smoke. On the skin of his face, he could feel the scorching heat of the fire that was raging through his yard. He shouted into the smoke: ‘Neel.’