Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

‘If you must know, sir,’ Arjun’s friend snapped back, matching sneer for sneer, ‘this uniform feels rather warm — but I imagine the same could be said of yours?’

Another day, Arjun found himself facing off against a strangely assorted crowd of Buddhist monks, Burmese student-activists and Congress Party workers. The Congressmen had bitter memories of their confrontations with Indian soldiers and policemen. They began to berate Arjun for serving in an army of occupation.

Arjun recalled that it was his sister’s wedding and he managed to keep his temper. ‘We aren’t occupying the country,’ Arjun said, as lightly as he could. ‘We are here to defend you.’

‘From whom are you defending us? From ourselves? From other Indians? It’s your masters from whom the country needs to be defended.’

‘Look,’ said Arjun, ‘it’s a job and I’m trying to do it as best I can. .’

One of the Burmese students gave him a grim smile: ‘Do you know what we say in Burma when we see Indian soldiers? We say: there goes the army of slaves — marching off to catch some more slaves for their masters.’

It was with a great effort that Arjun succeeded in keeping control of himself: instead of getting into a fight, he turned round and marched away. Later, he went to complain to Uma and found her wholly unsympathetic. ‘They were just telling you what most people in the country think, Arjun,’ Uma said bluntly. ‘If you’re strong enough to face enemy bullets, you should be strong enough to hear them out.’

For the duration of his stay in Lankasuka, Kishan Singh had been allotted a small room that was tucked away at the rear of the house. At other times this room was generally used for storage, mainly food. Along the walls stood great, stone martabans, packed with pickles; in the corners were piles of ripening mangoes and guavas; hanging from the rafters, beyond the reach of ants and cats, were the rope-slung earthen pots in which the household’s butter and ghee were stored.

One afternoon, Bela was sent to the storeroom on an errand, to fetch some butter. The wooden door was slightly warped and could not be properly closed. Looking through the crack, Bela saw that Kishan Singh was inside, lying on a mat. He’d changed into a longyi for his siesta, and his khakis were hanging on a peg. He was sweating in the June heat, bare-bodied but for the ghostly shadow of the army singlet that was singed on to his chest.

From the pumping motion of his ribs Bela could tell that he was fast asleep. She slipped into the room and tiptoed around his mat. She was on her knees, undoing the strings of the earthen butter pot, when Kishan Singh suddenly woke up.

He jumped to his feet and pulled on his khaki tunic, his face turning red with embarrassment.

‘My mother sent me. .’ she said quickly, ‘to fetch this. .’ She pointed at the earthen pot.

With his tunic on, he seated himself cross-legged on the mat. He gave her a smile. Bela smiled shyly back. She felt no inclination to leave; she hadn’t spoken to him till then and it occurred to her now that there were many things she wanted to ask him.

The first question she blurted out was the one that was uppermost in her mind. ‘Kishan Singh,’ she said, ‘are you married?’

‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘And I have a little son. Just one year old.’

‘How old were you when you were married?’

‘It was four years ago,’ he said. ‘So I must have been sixteen.’

‘And your wife,’ she said, ‘what is she like?’

‘She’s from the village next to mine.’

‘And where is your village?’

‘It’s up north — a long way from here. It’s near Kurukshetra— where the great battle of the Mahabharata was fought. That is why the men of our district make good soldiers — that’s what people say.’

‘And did you always want to be a soldier?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Not at all — but I had no choice.’

The men in his family had always lived by soldiering, he explained. His father, his grandfather, his uncles — they had all served in the 1/1 Jats. His grandfather had died at Passchendaele, in the Great War. The day before his death he had dictated a letter that was to be sent to his family, filled with instructions about the crops in the fields and what was to be planted and when they were to sow and when to harvest. They next day he had gone over the top of his trench, to save his wounded afsar , an English captain whose batman he had been for five years and whom he honoured above all men. For this he had been awarded, posthumously, the Indian Distinguished Service Medal, which his family had kept, in their haveli , in a glass box.

‘And to this day the afsar’s family send us money — not because we ask, nor from charity, but out of love of my grandfather, and to honour what he did for their son. .’

Bela hung upon his words, drinking in every movement of the muscles of his face. ‘Go on.’

His father had served in the army too, he said. He had been wounded in Malaya, at the time of a rebellion. A stab wound had ripped open his side and pierced his colon. The army doctors had done what they could for him, but the wound had burdened him with chronic, crippling stomach pains. He’d travelled far afield, visiting experts in Ayurveda and other systems of medicine; the expense had forced him to barter away his share of the family land. He hadn’t wanted a fate like that for his Kishan Singh; he’d wanted his son to go to college and understand things; he himself had travelled the world — Malaya, Burma, China, East Africa — and had understood nothing.

Kishan Singh too would have liked to go to college, but when he was fourteen his father died. After that the option of school was no longer open: the family had needed money. His relatives urged him to report to the local recruitment office; they said that he was lucky to have been born into a caste that was allowed to enroll in the English sarkar’s army.

‘That was why you joined?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And the women in your village,’ she said, ‘what are they like?’

‘Not like you.’

She was hurt by this. ‘Why? What do you mean?’

‘In a way,’ he said, ‘they are soldiers too. From the time they are little they begin to learn what it means to be widowed early; to bring up children without their men; to spend their lives with husbands who are maimed and crippled.’

Just then she heard her mother calling her name, and went running out of the room.

For the duration of the wedding, Rajkumar and his family were staying at the Great Eastern Hotel. (It was unthinkable, in light of their past hostilities, for Rajkumar to stay with Uma, as Dolly usually did.) It had been agreed upon, however, that Neel and Manju would spend their wedding night — their last in Calcutta — in Lankasuka, in Uma’s flat.

When the day came, Uma and Dolly prepared the bridal bedroom themselves. They went early to the flower market at Kalighat and came back with dozens of loaded baskets. They spent the morning draping the wedding bed with garlands of flowers — hundreds of them. While working, they reminisced about their own weddings and how very different they’d been. In the afternoon they were joined by the Second Princess, who’d made a special trip from Kalimpong: this completed the circle.

It was hot and they were quickly drenched in sweat. ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Dolly. ‘My wedding was easier.’

‘Remember Mrs Khambatta — with the camera?’

They sat on the floor, laughing at the memory.