Escape From Java and Other Tales of Danger Page 9

  The water was no longer very deep and they were soon gliding over flooded fields. In the distance they saw a village standing on high ground. In the old days, people had built their villages on hilltops as a better defence against bandits and the soldiers of invading armies. This was an old village, and though its inhabitants had long ago exchanged their swords for pruning forks, the hill on which it stood gave it protection from the floodwaters.

  A Bullock Cart Ride

  The people of the village were at first reluctant to help Sita and Vijay.

  ‘They are strangers,’ said an old woman. ‘They are not of our people.’

  ‘They are of low caste,’ said another. ‘They cannot remain with us.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said a tall, turbaned farmer, twirling his long, white moustache. ‘They are children, not robbers. They will come into my house.’

  The people of the village—long-limbed, sturdy men and women of the Jat race—were generous by nature, and once the elderly farmer had given them the lead, they were friendly and helpful.

  Sita was anxious to get to her grandparents, and the farmer, who had business to transact at a village fair some twenty miles distant, offered to take Sita and Vijay with him.

  The fair was being held at a place called Karauli, and at Karauli there was a railway station from which a train went to Shahganj.

  It was a journey that Sita would always remember. The bullock cart was so slow on the waterlogged roads that there was plenty of time in which to see things, to notice one another, to talk, to think, to dream.

  Vijay couldn’t sit still in the cart. He was used to the swift, gliding movements of his boat (which he had had to leave behind in the village), and every now and then he would jump off the cart and walk beside it, often ankle-deep in water.

  There were four of them in the cart. Sita and Vijay, Hukam Singh, the Jat farmer, and his son, Phambiri, a mountain of a man who was going to take part in the wrestling matches at the fair.

  Hukam Singh, who drove the bullocks, liked to talk. He had been a soldier in the British Indian Army during the First World War, and had been with his regiment to Italy and Mesopotamia.

  ‘There is nothing to compare with soldiering,’ he said, ‘except, of course, farming. If you can’t be a farmer, be a soldier. Are you listening, boy? Which will you be—farmer or soldier?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Vijay. ‘I shall be an engineer!’

  Hukam Singh’s long moustache seemed almost to bristle with indignation.

  ‘An engineer! What next! What does your father do, boy?’

  ‘He keeps buffaloes.’

  ‘Ah! And his son would be an engineer? . . . Well, well, the world isn’t what it used to be! No one knows his rightful place any more. Men send their children to schools and what is the result? Engineers! And who will look after the buffaloes while you are engineering?’

  ‘I will sell the buffaloes,’ said Vijay, adding rather cheekily, ‘perhaps you will buy one of them, Subedar Sahib!’

  He took the cheek out of his remark by adding ‘Subedar Sahib’, the rank of a non-commissioned officer in the old army. Hukam Singh, who had never reached this rank, was naturally flattered.

  ‘Fortunately, Phambiri hasn’t been to school. He’ll be a farmer and a fine one, too.’

  Phambiri simply grunted, which could have meant anything. He hadn’t studied further than class 6, which was just as well, as he was a man of muscle, not brain.

  Phambiri loved putting his strength to some practical and useful purpose. Whenever the cart wheels got stuck in the mud, he would get off, remove his shirt and put his shoulder to the side of the cart, while his muscles bulged and the sweat glistened on his broad back.

  ‘Phambiri is the strongest man in our district,’ said Hukam Singh proudly. ‘And clever, too! It takes quick thinking to win a wrestling match.’

  ‘I have never seen one,’ said Sita.

  ‘Then stay with us tomorrow morning, and you will see Phambiri wrestle. He has been challenged by the Karauli champion. It will be a great fight!’

  ‘We must see Phambiri win,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Will there be time?’ asked Sita.

  ‘Why not? The train for Shahganj won’t come in till evening. The fair goes on all day and the wrestling bouts will take place in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, you must see me win!’ exclaimed Phambiri, thumping himself on the chest as he climbed back on to the cart after freeing the wheels. ‘No one can defeat me!’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’ asked Vijay.

  ‘He has to be certain,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘I have taught him to be certain! You can’t win anything if you are uncertain . . . Isn’t that right, Phambiri? You know you are going to win!’

  ‘I know,’ said Phambiri with a grunt of confidence.

  ‘Well, someone has to lose,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Very true,’ said Hukam Singh smugly. ‘After all, what would we do without losers? But for Phambiri, it is win, win, all the time!’

  ‘And if he loses?’ persisted Vijay.

  ‘Then he will just forget that it happened and will go on to win his next fight!’

  Vijay found Hukam Singh’s logic almost unanswerable, but Sita, who had been puzzled by the argument, now saw everything very clearly and said, ‘Perhaps he hasn’t won any fights as yet. Did he lose the last one?’

  ‘Hush!’ said Hukam Singh looking alarmed. ‘You must not let him remember. You do not remember losing a fight, do you, my son?’

  ‘I have never lost a fight,’ said Phambiri with great simplicity and confidence.

  ‘How strange,’ said Sita. ‘If you lose, how can you win?’

  ‘Only a soldier can explain that,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘For a man who fights, there is no such thing as defeat. You fought against the river, did you not?’

  ‘I went with the river,’ said Sita. ‘I went where it took me.’

  ‘Yes, and you would have gone to the bottom if the boy had not come along to help you. He fought the river, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he fought the river,’ said Sita.

  ‘You helped me to fight it,’ said Vijay.

  ‘So you both fought,’ said the old man with a nod of satisfaction. ‘You did not go with the river. You did not leave everything to the gods.’

  ‘The gods were with us,’ said Sita.

  And so they talked, while the bullock cart trundled along the muddy village roads. Both bullocks were white, and were decked out for the fair with coloured bead necklaces and bells hanging from their necks. They were patient, docile beasts. But the cart wheels which were badly in need of oiling, protested loudly, creaking and groaning as though all the demons in the world had been trapped within them.

  Sita noticed a number of birds in the paddy fields. There were black-and-white curlews and cranes with pink coat-tails. A good monsoon means plenty of birds. But Hukam Singh was not happy about the cranes.

  ‘They do great damage in the wheat fields,’ he said. Lighting up a small, hand-held hookah pipe, he puffed at it and became philosophical again: ‘Life is one long struggle for the farmer. When he has overcome the drought, survived the flood, hunted off the pig, killed the crane and reaped the crop, then comes that blood-sucking ghoul, the moneylender. There is no escaping him! Is your father in debt to a moneylender, boy?’

  ‘No,’ said Vijay.

  ‘That is because he doesn’t have daughters who must be married! I have two. As they resemble Phambiri, they will need generous dowries.’

  In spite of his grumbling, Hukam Singh seemed fairly content with his lot. He’d had a good maize crop, and the front of his cart was piled high with corn. He would sell the crop at the fair, along with some cucumbers, eggplants and melons.

  The bad road had slowed them down so much that when darkness came, they were still far from Karauli. In India there is hardly any twilight. Within a short time of the sun’s going down, the stars come out.

  ‘Six miles to go,’ said Hukam Singh. �
��In the dark our wheels may get stuck again. Let us spend the night here. If it rains, we can pull an old tarpaulin over the cart.’

  Vijay made a fire in the charcoal burner which Hukam Singh had brought along, and they had a simple meal, roasting the corn over the fire and flavouring it with salt and spices and a squeeze of lemon. There was some milk, but not enough for everyone because Phambiri drank three tumblers by himself.

  ‘If I win tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I will give all of you a feast!’

  They settled down to sleep in the bullock cart, and Phambiri and his father were soon snoring. Vijay lay awake, his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the stars. Sita was very tired but she couldn’t sleep. She was worrying about her grandparents and wondering when she would see them again.

  The night was full of sounds. The loud snoring that came from Phambiri and his father seemed to be taken up by invisible sleepers all around them, and Sita, becoming alarmed, turned to Vijay and asked, ‘What is that strange noise?’

  He smiled in the darkness, and she could see his white teeth and the glint of laughter in his eyes.

  ‘Only the spirits of lost demons,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Can’t you recognize the music of the frogs?’

  And that was what they heard—a sound more hideous than the wail of demons, a rising crescendo of noise—wurrk, wurrk, wurrk—coming from the flooded ditches on either side of the road. All the frogs in the jungle seemed to have gathered at that one spot, and each one appeared to have something to say for himself. The speeches continued for about an hour. Then the meeting broke up and silence returned to the forest.

  A jackal slunk across the road. A puff of wind brushed through the trees. The bullocks, freed from the cart, were asleep beside it. The men’s snores were softer now. Vijay slept, a half-smile on his face. Only Sita lay awake, worried and waiting for the dawn.

  At the Fair

  Already, at nine o’clock, the fairground was crowded. Cattle were being sold or auctioned. Stalls had opened, selling everything from pins to ploughs. Foodstuffs were on sale—hot food, spicy food, sweets and ices. A merry-go-round, badly oiled, was squeaking and groaning, while a loudspeaker blared popular film music across the grounds.

  While Phambiri was preparing for his wrestling match, Hukam Singh was busy haggling over the price of pumpkins. Sita and Vijay wandered on their own among the stalls, gazing at toys and kites and bangles and clothing, at brightly-coloured syrupy sweets. Some of the rural people had transistor radios dangling by straps from their shoulders, the radio music competing with the loudspeaker. Occasionally a buffalo bellowed, drowning all other sounds.

  Various people were engaged in roadside professions. There was the fortune teller. He had slips of paper, each of them covered with writing, which he kept in little trays along with some grain. He had a tame sparrow. When you gave the fortune teller your money, he allowed the little bird to hop in and out among the trays until it stopped at one and started pecking at the grain. From this tray the fortune teller took the slip of paper and presented it to his client. The writing told you what to expect over the next few months or years.

  A harassed, middle-aged man, who was surrounded by six noisy sons and daughters, was looking a little concerned because his slip of paper said: ‘Do not lose hope. You will have a child soon.’

  Some distance away sat a barber, and near him a professional ear cleaner. Several children clustered around a peep show, which was built into an old gramophone cabinet. While one man wound up the gramophone and placed a well-worn record on the turntable, his partner pushed coloured pictures through a slide viewer.

  A young man walked energetically up and down the fairground, beating a drum and announcing the day’s attractions. The wrestling bouts were about to start. The main attraction was going to be the fight between Phambiri, described as a man ‘whose thighs had the thickness of an elephant’s trunk’, and the local champion, Sher Dil (tiger’s heart)—a wild-looking man, with hairy chest and beetling brow. He was heavier than Phambiri but not so tall.

  Sita and Vijay joined Hukam Singh at one corner of the akhara, the wrestling pit. Hukam Singh was massaging his son’s famous thighs.

  A gong sounded and Sher Dil entered the ring, slapping himself on the chest and grunting like a wild boar. Phambiri advanced slowly to meet him.

  They came to grips immediately, and stood swaying from side to side, two giants pitting their strength against each other. The sweat glistened on their well-oiled bodies.

  Sher Dil got his arms round Phambiri’s waist and tried to lift him off his feet, but Phambiri had twined one powerful leg around his opponent’s thigh, and they both came down together with a loud squelch, churning up the soft mud of the wrestling pit. But neither wrestler had been pinned down.

  Soon they were so covered with mud that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. There was a flurry of arms and legs. The crowd was cheering and Sita and Vijay were cheering too, but the wrestlers were too absorbed in their struggle to be aware of their supporters. Each sought to turn the other on to his back. That was all that mattered. There was no count.

  For a few moments Sher Dil had Phambiri almost helpless, but Phambiri wriggled out of a crushing grip, and using his legs once again, sent Sher Dil rocketing across the akhara. But Sher Dil landed on his belly, and even with Phambiri on top of him, it wasn’t victory.

  Nothing happened for several minutes, and the crowd became restless and shouted for more action. Phambiri thought of twisting his opponent’s ear but he realized that he might get disqualified for doing that, so he restrained himself. He relaxed his grip slightly, and this gave Sher Dil a chance to heave himself up and send Phambiri spinning across the akhara. Phambiri was still in a sitting position when the other took a flying leap at him. But Phambiri dived forward, taking his opponent between the legs, and then rising, flung him backwards with a resounding thud. Sher Dil was helpless, and Phambiri sat on his opponent’s chest to remove all doubts as to who was the winner. Only when the applause of the spectators told him that he had won, did he rise and leave the ring.

  Accompanied by his proud father, Phambiri accepted the prize money, thirty rupees, and then went in search of a tap. After he had washed the oil and mud from his body, he put on fresh clothes. Then, putting his arms around Vijay and Sita, he said, ‘You have brought me luck, both of you. Now let us celebrate!’ And he led the way to the sweet shops.

  They ate syrupy rasgullas (made from milk and sugar) and almond-filled fudge, and little pies filled with minced meat, and washed everything down with a fizzy orange drink.

  ‘Now I will buy each of you a small present,’ said Phambiri.

  He bought a bright blue sports shirt for Vijay. He bought a new hookah bowl for his father. And he took Sita to a stall where dolls were sold, and asked her to choose one.

  There were all kinds of dolls—cheap plastic dolls, and beautiful dolls made by hand, dressed in the traditional costumes of different regions of the country. Sita was immediately reminded of Mumta, her own rag doll, who had been made at home with Grandmother’s help. And she remembered Grandmother, and Grandmother’s sewing machine, and the home that had been swept away, and the tears started to her eyes.

  The dolls seemed to smile at Sita. The shopkeeper held them up one by one, and they appeared to dance, to twirl their wide skirts, to stamp their jingling feet on the counter. Each doll made her own special appeal to Sita. Each one wanted her love.

  ‘Which one will you have?’ asked Phambiri. ‘Choose the prettiest, never mind the price!’

  But Sita could say nothing. She could only shake her head. No doll, no matter how beautiful, could replace Mumta. Sita would never keep a doll again. That part of her life was over.

  So instead of a doll Phambiri bought her bangles— coloured glass bangles which slipped easily on Sita’s thin wrists. And then he took them into a temporary cinema, a large shed made of corrugated tin sheets.

  Vijay had been to a cinema before�
��the towns were full of cinemas—but for Sita it was another new experience. Many things that were common enough for other boys and girls were strange and new for a girl who had spent nearly all her life on a small island in the middle of a big river.

  As they found seats, a curtain rolled up and a white sheet came into view. The babble of talk dwindled into silence. Sita became aware of a whirring noise somewhere not far behind her. But, before she could turn her head to see what it was, the sheet became a rectangle of light and colour. It came to life. People moved and spoke. A story unfolded.

  But, long afterwards, all that Sita could remember of her first film was a jumble of images and incidents. A train in danger, the audience murmuring with anxiety, a bridge over a river (but smaller than hers), the bridge being blown to pieces, the engine plunging into the river, people struggling in the water, a woman rescued by a man who immediately embraced her, the lights coming on again, and the audience rising slowly and drifting out of the theatre, looking quite unconcerned and even satisfied. All those people struggling in the water were now quite safe, back in the little black box in the projection room.

  Catching the Train

  And now a real engine, a steam engine belching smoke and fire, was on its way towards Sita.

  She stood with Vijay on the station platform along with over a hundred other people waiting for the Shahganj train.

  The platform was littered with the familiar bedrolls (or holdalls) without which few people in India ever travel. On these rolls sat women, children, great-aunts and great-uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers and grandchildren, while the more active adults hovered at the edge of the platform, ready to leap on to the train as soon as it arrived and reserve a space for the family. In India, people do not travel alone if they can help it. The whole family must be taken along—especially if the reason for the journey is a marriage, a pilgrimage, or simply a visit to friends or relations.

  Moving among the piles of bedding and luggage were coolies; vendors of magazines, sweetmeats, tea and betel-leaf preparations; also stray dogs, stray people and sometimes a stray stationmaster! The cries of the vendors mingled with the general clamour of the station and the shunting of a steam engine in the yard—‘Tea, hot tea!’, ‘Fresh limes!’ Sweets, papads, hot stuff, cold drinks, mangoes, tooth powder, photos of film stars, bananas, balloons, wooden toys! The platform had become a bazaar. What a blessing for those vendors that trains ran late and that people had to wait, and waiting, drank milky tea, bought toys for children, cracked peanut shells, munched bananas and chose little presents for the friends or relations on whom they were going to descend very shortly.