Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

On waking in the morning, Manju would find Dolly on her knees, dressed in a frayed old longyi, wiping the floors with tattered shreds of cloth. They would work together, going through a couple of rooms each day, breaking off when the monks came by for their daily visits.

For Manju these mid-morning breaks were the best-loved aspect of daily life in Rangoon. She’d always known that Buddhist monks lived by collecting alms, but it came as a surprise to observe the ways in which this tenet, more or less abstract, came to be translated into the mundane mechanics of everyday life — into the workaday reality of a tired-looking group of young men and boys, walking down a dusty street in saffron robes, with their baskets balanced on their hips. There was something magical about the fact that this interruption came always at a time of day when the tasks of the household were at their most pressing; when there was scarcely room in one’s head but to think about what had to be done next. And in the midst of all that — to open the door and see the monks standing there, waiting patiently, with the sun beating down on their shaven heads: what better way could there be of unbalancing everyday reality?

Calcutta seemed very far away now. The flow of letters from India had suffered disruptions because of the threat of submarines in the Bay of Bengal. Steamer traffic between Calcutta and Rangoon had become so irregular that letters tended to arrive in bunches.

One such bunch brought news both of Arjun’s impending departure and of his arrival in Malaya. Dolly was very glad to hear of this development: ‘Perhaps Arjun could find out what’s become of Dinu,’ she said. ‘It’s a long time since we last heard from him.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll write. .’

Manju sent a letter to the address her father had provided— via army headquarters in Singapore. Many weeks went by without an answer.

‘Don’t worry,’ Manju said to Dolly. ‘I’m sure Dinu’s fine. We’d have heard if anything was wrong.’

‘You’re probably right.’ But a month passed and then another and Dolly seemed to become resigned to her son’s continuing silence.

The baby was now kicking urgently against the walls of Manju’s stomach and she had no attention to spare for anything other than her own condition. With the approach of the monsoons, the days grew hotter and the effort of carrying the child grew very much greater. Sooner than they had expected, the festival of Waso was upon them. Dolly took Manju on a drive into the countryside in a taxi rented for the day. They stopped in a wooded area off the Pegu road, and collected armloads of fragrant yellow padauk flowers. They were on their way back to Rangoon when Manju had a dizzy spell and fainted on the back seat.

After this episode the doctor confined Manju to bed. Dolly became her nurse, bringing her food, helping with her clothes, occasionally leading her around the compound. The days went by in a kind of trance; Manju would lie dreamily in bed, with a book beside her, open but unread. Hours would pass while she did nothing but listen to the sound of the pouring rain.

They were now well into Thadin — the annual three-month period of reflection and abstinence. Often Dolly would read to Manju, mainly from the scriptures — from such translations as she could find, since Manju knew neither Pali nor Burmese. One day Dolly chose a discourse by the Buddha, addressed to his son, Rahula.

She read: Develop a state of mind like the earth, Rahula, for on the earth all manner of things are thrown, clean and unclean, dung and urine, spittle, pus and blood, and the earth is not troubled or repelled or disgusted. .

Manju watched her mother-in-law as she read: Dolly’s long, black hair was slightly flecked with grey and her face was etched with a webbing of lines. Yet, there was a youthfulness in her expression that belied these signs of age: it was hard to believe that this was a woman in her mid-sixties.

. . develop a state of mind like water, for in the water many things are thrown, clean and unclean, and the water is not troubled or repelled or disgusted. And so too with fire, which burns all things, clean and unclean, and with air, which blows upon them all, and with space, which is nowhere established. .

Dolly’s lips seemed hardly to move, and yet every word was perfectly enunciated: Manju had never before known anyone who could appear to be in repose when she was actually at her most intently wakeful, her most alert.

When Manju reached the eighth month of her pregnancy Dolly banned Neel from any further travels. He was at home when Manju’s labour started. He helped her into the Packard and drove her to the hospital. They could no longer afford the private suite that Dolly and Rajkumar had taken before, and instead Manju went into the general maternity ward. The next evening she was delivered of her child — a healthy, sharp-voiced girl, who began to suckle the moment she was put to Manju’s breast. The baby was given two names — Jaya was to be her Indian name and Tin May the Burmese.

Exhausted by her labour Manju fell asleep. It was dawn when she woke up. The baby was in her bed again, rooting hungrily for her feed.

Holding her daughter to her breast, Manju remembered a passage that Dolly had read to her just a few days before: it was from the Buddha’s first sermon, delivered at Sarnath, two thousand and five hundred years before:. . birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, disease is sorrow, death is sorrow; contact with the unpleasant is sorrow, separation from the pleasant is sorrow, every wish unfulfilled is sorrow. .

The words had made a great impression on her at the time, but now, with her newborn daughter beside her, they seemed incomprehensible: the world had never seemed so bright, so replete with promise, so profligate in its rewards, so generous in its joys and fulfilments.

For their first few weeks in Singapore the 1/1 Jats were based at the Tyersall Park camp. This was the very place that Arjun’s friend Kumar had talked about — where a soldier had shot an officer and then committed suicide. In New Delhi the story had sounded unlikely and far-fetched — an extreme situation— like a report of a mother lifting up a car to save her children. But now that they were in Singapore themselves, with India half a continent away, nothing seemed improbable any more— everything appeared to be turned on its head. It was as though they no longer knew who they were, no longer understood their place in the order of things. Whenever they ventured beyond the familiar certainties of the battalion, they seemed to lose themselves in a labyrinth of hidden meanings.

It so happened that Kumar was in Singapore when the 1/1 Jats first arrived. One afternoon he took Arjun and Hardy to an exclusive club, for a swim. The pool was very crowded, filled with European expatriates and their families. It was a hot sticky day and the water looked cool and inviting. Following Kumar’s lead, Arjun and Hardy jumped in. Within a few minutes they found themselves alone: the pool had emptied as soon as they entered the water.

Kumar was the only one who was not taken aback. His battalion had been in Malaya more than a year and he had travelled all round the colony.

‘I should have warned you about this,’ Kumar said, with a mischievous smile. ‘It’s like this everywhere in Malaya. In smaller towns, the clubs actually put up signs on their doors saying, “No Asiatics allowed”. In Singapore they let us use the pool— it’s just that everyone leaves. Right now they’ve had to relax the colour bar a little because there are so many Indian army units here. But you may as well get used to it because you’ll come across it all the time — in restaurants, clubs, beaches, trains.’ He laughed. ‘We’re meant to die for this colony — but we can’t use the pools.’ Ruefully shaking his head he lit a cigarette.