Sea of Poppies (30 page)

Lalbazar Jail lay upon Calcutta's crowded centre like a gargantuan fist, holding the city's heart clenched in its grasp. The severity of the jail's exterior was deceptive, however, for behind its massive red-brick façade lay a haphazard warren of courtyards, corridors, offices, barracks and tope-khanas for the storage of weaponry. Prison cells were only a small part of this enormous complex, for despite its name, Lalbazar was not really a centre of incarceration but rather a lock-up where prisoners were held while under trial. Being also the administrative headquarters of the city's
constabulary, it was a busy, bustling place, constantly enlivened by the comings and goings of officers and peons, prisoners and darogas, vendors and hurkarus.

Neel's quarters were in the administrative wing of the jail, well removed from the areas where other, less fortunate, prisoners were detained. Two sets of ground-floor offices had been cleared out for him, creating a comfortable apartment with a bedroom, a receiving room, and a small pantry. Neel was also allowed the privilege of having a servant with him during the day, to clean his rooms and serve his meals; as for food and water, everything he ate and drank came from his own kitchens – for his jailers could scarcely permit it to be said that they had obliged the Raja of Raskhali to lose caste even before his case was brought to court. At night the doors of Neel's apartment were lightly guarded, by constables who treated him with the greatest deference; if sleep eluded him, these sentries would keep him entertained with games of dice, cards and pachcheesi. During the day Neel was allowed as many visitors as he wished and the zemindary's gomustas and mootsuddies came so often that he had little difficulty in prosecuting the estate's business from the confines of the jail.

Although grateful for all these concessions, the privilege that mattered most to Neel was one that could not be publicly mentioned: it was the right to use the clean and well-lit outhouse that was reserved for officers. Neel had been brought up to regard his body and its functions with a fastidiousness that bordered almost on the occult: this was largely the doing of his mother, for whom bodily defilement was a preoccupation that permitted neither peace nor rest. Although a quiet, gentle and loving woman in some ways, the usages of her caste and class were, for her, not just a set of rules and observances, but the very core of her being. Neglected by her husband, and living sequestered within a gloomy wing of the palace, she had devoted her considerable intelligence to the creation of fantastically elaborate rituals of cleanliness and purification: it was not enough that she wash her hands for a full half-hour, before and after every meal – she had also to make sure that the vessel from which the water was poured was properly cleaned, as also the bucket in which it had been fetched from the well; and so on. Her most potent
fears centred upon the men and women who emptied the palace's outhouses and disposed of its sewage: these sweepers and cleaners of night-soil she regarded with such loathing that staying out of their way became one of her besetting preoccupations. As for the sweepers' tools – jharus made from palm-leaf bristles – neither sword nor serpent inspired a deeper unease in her than these objects, the sight of which could haunt her for days. These fears and anxieties created a way of life that was too unnatural to be long sustained and she died when Neel was only twelve years old, leaving him a legacy of extreme fastidiousness in regard to his own person. So it was that for Neel, no aspect of his captivity held greater terror than the thought of sharing a shit-hole with dozens of common prisoners.

To get to the officers' outhouse, Neel had to pass through several corridors and courtyards, some of which afforded glimpses of the jail's other inmates – often they seemed to be fighting for light and air, with their noses pressed against the bars, like trapped rats. These sightings of the hardships suffered by other prisoners gave Neel a keen sense of the consideration that he himself had been afforded: it was clear that the British authorities were intent on reassuring the public that the Raja of Raskhali was being treated with the utmost fairness. So slight indeed were the inconveniences of Neel's imprisonment at Lalbazar that he could almost have imagined himself to be on holiday, were it not for the ban on visits from women and children. Yet even this was no great loss, since Neel would not, in any case, have permitted his wife or son to defile themselves by entering the jail. Elokeshi, on the other hand, he would have been glad to receive, but there had been no news of her since the time of Neel's arrest: it was thought that she had slipped out of the city, to avoid being questioned by the police. Neel could not rightfully complain about so well-judged an absence.

The ease of his incarceration was such that Neel was hard put to take his legal difficulties very seriously. His relatives among Calcutta's gentry had told him that his was to be a show-trial, intended to persuade the public of the even-handedness of British justice: he was sure to be acquitted, or let off lightly, with some token punishment. They were insistent in assuring him that he had no
cause for anxiety: great efforts were being mounted on his behalf by many prominent citizens, they said; everyone in his circle of acquaintance was extending their reach as far as they possibly could: between all of them they would almost certainly be able to move some important levers, maybe even in the Governor-General's Council. In any event, it was unthinkable that a member of their class would be treated as a common criminal.

Neel's lawyer, too, was cautiously optimistic: a small fidgety man, Mr Rowbotham had the bristling pugnacity of one of those hirsute terriers that could sometimes be seen in the Maidan, straining upon a memsahib's leash. Generously eyebrowed and lavishly whiskered, almost nothing was visible of his face except for a pair of bright, black eyes and a nose that was of the shape and colour of a ripe litchi.

Having reviewed Neel's brief, Mr Rowbotham offered his first opinion. ‘Let me tell you, dear Raja,' he said bluntly. ‘There's not a jury on earth that would acquit you – far less one that consists mainly of English traders and colonists.'

This came as a shock to Neel. ‘But Mr Rowbotham,' he said. ‘Are you suggesting that I may be found guilty?'

‘I will not deceive you, my dear Raja,' said Mr Rowbotham. ‘I think it very possible that such a verdict will be returned. But there's no reason to despair. As I see it, it's the sentence that concerns us, not the verdict. For all you know, you could get away with a fine and a few forfeitures. If I remember right there was a similar case recently when the penalty consisted of nothing more than a fine and a sentence of public ridicule: the culprit was led around Kidderpore sitting backwards on a donkey!'

Neel's mouth fell open and he uttered an appalled whisper: ‘Mr Rowbotham, could such a fate befall the Raja of Raskhali?'

The lawyer's eyes twinkled: ‘And what if it did, dear Raja? It isn't the worst that could happen, is it? Would it not be worse if all your properties were to be seized?'

‘Not at all,' said Neel promptly. ‘Nothing could be worse than such a loss of face. By comparison, it would be better even to be rid of my encumbrances. At least I would then be free to live in a garret and write poetry – like your admirable Mr Chatterton.'

At this, the attorney's ample eyebrows knitted themselves into a puzzled tangle. ‘Mr Chatterjee, did you say?' he asked in surprise. ‘Do you mean my head clerk? But I assure you, dear Raja, he does not live in a garret – and as for his poetry, why this is the first I've heard of it . . .'

I
t was at the riverside township of Chhapra, a day's journey short of Patna, that Deeti and Kalua again encountered the duffadar they had met at Ghazipur.

Many weeks had passed since the start of Deeti and Kalua's journey, and their hopes of reaching a city had foundered, along with their raft, in the treacherous labyrinth of sand-shoals that mark the confluence of the Ganga with her turbulent tributary, the Ghagara. The last of their satua was gone and they had been reduced to begging, at the doors of the temples of Chhapra, where they had arrived after walking away from the wreckage of their raft.

Both Deeti and Kalua had tried to find work, but employment was hard to come by in Chhapra. The town was thronged with hundreds of other impoverished transients, many of whom were willing to sweat themselves half to death for a few handfuls of rice. Many of these people had been driven from their villages by the flood of flowers that had washed over the countryside: lands that had once provided sustenance were now swamped by the rising tide of poppies; food was so hard to come by that people were glad to lick the leaves in which offerings were made at temples or sip the starchy water from a pot in which rice had been boiled. Often, it was on gleanings like these that Deeti and Kalua got by: sometimes, when they were lucky, Kalua managed to earn a little something by working as a porter on the riverfront.

As a market town and river port, Chhapra was visited by many vessels, and the town's ghats were the one place where a few coppers could sometimes be earned by loading or unloading boats and barges. When they were not begging at the temple, it was there that Deeti and Kalua spent most of their time. At night, the riverfront
was much cooler than the town's congested interior, and that was where they usually slept: once the rains came they would have to find some other spot, but until then this was as good a place as any. Every night, as they made their way there, Deeti would say:
Suraj dikhat áwé to rástá mit jáwé
– when the sun rises the path will show itself – and so strongly did she believe this that not even at the worst of times did she allow her hopes to slacken.

It happened one day that as the eastern sky was beginning to glow with the first light of the sun, Deeti and Kalua woke to find a tall babu of a man, well-dressed and white-moustached, pacing the ghat and complaining angrily about the tardiness of his boatman. Deeti recognized the man almost at once. It's that duffadar, Ramsaran-ji, she whispered to Kalua. He rode with us that day, at Ghazipur. Why don't you go and see if you can be of help?

Kalua dusted himself off, folded his hands respectfully together, and stepped over to the duffadar. A few minutes later he returned to report that the duffadar wanted to be rowed to the far side of the river, to pick up a group of men. He needed to leave at once because he'd received word that the opium fleet was arriving and the river was to be closed to other traffic later in the day.

He offered me two dams and an adhela to take him across, said Kalua.

Two dams and an adhela! And you're still standing here like a tree? said Deeti.
Kai sochawa?
Why are you stopping to think? Go, na, jaldi.

Several hours later, Deeti was sitting at the entrance to Chhapra's famous Ambaji temple when she saw Kalua coming up the lane. Before she could ask any questions, he said: I'll tell you everything, but first, come, let's eat:
chal, jaldi-jaldi khanwa khá lei
.

Khanwa?
Food? They gave you food?

Chal! He elbowed away the hungry throng that had gathered around them and only when they were safely out of sight did he show her what he had brought: a leaf-wrapped package of succulent satua-stuffed parathas, mango pickle, potatoes mashed with masalas to make aloo-ka-bharta, and even a few sugared vegetables and other sweets – parwal-ka-mithai and succulent khubi-ka-lai from Barh.

After the food had been devoured, they sat a while under the shade of a tree, and Kalua gave her a detailed account of all that had happened. They had arrived on the far side of the river to find eight men waiting, along with one of the duffadar's sub-agents. Right there, on the shore, the men had entered their names on paper girmits; after these agreements were sealed, they had each been given a blanket, several articles of clothing, and a round-bottomed brass lota. Then, to celebrate their new-found status as girmitiyas, they had been served a meal – it was the remains of this feast that had been handed to Kalua by the duffadar. The gift was not given without protest: none of the recruits were strangers to hunger, and replete though they might be, they had been shocked to see so much food being given away. But the duffadar had told them they needn't worry; they would have their fill at every meal; from now on, until they arrived in Mareech, that was all they needed to do – to eat and grow strong.

This assertion had evoked much disbelief. One of the men had said, Why? Are we being fattened for the slaughter, like goats before 'Id?

The duffadar had laughed and told him that it was he who would be feasting on fattened goats.

On the way back, all of a sudden, the duffadar had told Kalua that if he had a mind to join up, he would be happy to have him: he could always use big, strong men.

This had set Kalua's head a-spinning. Me? he said. But malik, I'm married.

No matter, said the duffadar. Many girmitiyas go with their wives. We've had letters from Mareech asking for more women. I will take you and your wife as well, if she wants to go.