The sheer contrasts of the squalor in the meandering lanes and alleyways with the big blocks of Parsee shops on the Grand Trunk Road where the European Sahibs went, and the Hindu shops in the Sadar Bazaar patronized by the sepoys and other clean, well-to-do people, impressed me then with the grandeur of our own lordly existence as that of a superior race who were privileged because of our high caste and the capacity to read and write. And I worshipped posters of Dunlop Tyres and Singer Sewing Machines and Pears’ Soap, as well as Gillette Razor Blades and all the paraphernalia of the Sahib’s and Babu’s existence in my aspiration towards the higher birth to be earned with the doing of good deeds …
Childhood is an age of acceptance and I had nothing to do but to yield to the happiness of the soldiers looting the stalls, the fervours of stalking down the little town as though I owned it, the radiance and warmth of the greeting and exchanges between the local merchants and my father, and the favours and gifts heaped on us, the children of the cantonment Samurai …
These happy, rich, hilarious and sad days, however, were not to be for very long.
For one day as my father took us all to a picnic arranged by his town friends on the banks of the Lunda by the boat bridge with my mother, Ganesh and Shiva, and as we sat devouring the luscious midday meal and ‘eating’ the fresh, cool snow-breeze that came to the grilling plains, wafting on the waters of the Lunda, an orderly came from the regiment, perspiring and breathless with haste, and said to my father that the ‘Karnel’ Sahib wanted him at the bungalow.
‘Oh, this bitch of a Sarkar!’ my father growled. ‘It will not let you rest for a moment even in this heat! What does he want me for at this time of the evening?’
‘They say war has broken out in Vilayat, Babuji,’ said the orderly lamely.
‘What war?’ my father exclaimed with a strained look in his face.
‘Jang! Jang! Larai!’ the sepoy said.
My father jumped to his feet, pale and red, took leave of his friends and hurried away, saying to my mother, ‘Mother of Harish, you take the boys home.’
‘We are undone,’ my mother cried as she collected us, bade farewell to her friends and hurried homewards.
As we came to the dusty white fringes of the road from amid the thick traffic of braying donkeys and neighing horses adjusted to tongas, from amid the creaking, croaking, squeaking, unoiled bullock-carts, from amid the smoke of smothered wayside fires lit by rugged Pathan caravan men and their red-cheeked wives for filling hubble-bubbles, came the sinister beat of a tom-tom followed by a chorus of calls: ‘Jang! Jang! Jang chir gaya! Jang! Larai!’
My mother looked towards the sun going down after an orgy of murder on the western sky and said, ‘The end of the Kaliyug has come.’
The report which the orderly had brought us while we were ‘eating’ the air on the banks of the Lunda was confirmed by the ‘Karnel’ Sahib and by orders from Army Headquarters the next morning. One half of the 38th Dogra Regiment was to be attached to the 41 st Dogras, a sister regiment, and to go to the war as part of the Lahore Division, the other half was to proceed to Malakand in Chitral, an outpost further up in the North-Western Frontier, to fortify the border against the menace of an attack through Afghanistan.
A sudden pall of sadness seemed to spread over the whole of the regiment with the arrival of these orders, and everyone waited anxiously for his fate to be decided, to know where he was to go. For it took some time for the companies which were to proceed abroad to be shunted off from those which were to stay at the Depot.
Almost one half of the men in the regiment had diarrhoea and fell ill, either naturally or with the artificial drugs they took to get themselves passed medically unfit for active service. And a few of them sought to sell what little land they or their relations had, to collect enough money to bribe themselves out of the contingent bound for the lands of death.
My father was also in a panic, because he did not know his fate. Babu Chattar Singh had fever and the relationship between our two families became suddenly very cordial, our parents visiting Gurdevi’s house twice a day. We children secured heaps of ‘oh kuch’ from the boxes in both homes.
‘The Karnel Sahib is staying with the Depot,’ my father told my mother one day as he sat in the kitchen eating his morning meal and speculating on his lot. ‘And he likes me. So the probability is that he will ask me to stay with him. On the other hand, Major Carr, the Ajitan Sahib, has volunteered to go to the war. And he likes me, too, and may persuade the Karnel Sahib that I go with him …’
Unlike the time after the outrage on Lord Hardinge, when he had wished and prayed that he might not be out of favour with the Sahibs, he now earnestly wished that they might dismiss him or ask him to retire.
But ‘if wishes could rain farmers would be kings’. And he lived in suspense for days. And, as he was the first recipient of orders and despatches from Army Headquarters, he was in an extremely nervous state, not knowing how to square his own and the sepoys’ fears with the optimism of the civilians in the country.
‘All the Rajas and Maharajas are falling over each other to offer themselves and their resources to the Sarkar,’ he told my mother. ‘The Aga Khan has offered himself as the first recruit and one Raja who is seventy years old has volunteered to go and fight. It is strange.’
‘Baji, where is the war?’ I asked as I sat listening intently to this solemn news.
‘Child, it is near Vilayat,’ my father said.
‘Why is it?’ I persisted in my inquiries.
‘Son, the Kaiser of Germany, the Sultan of Turkey and the Badshah of Austria, are on one side and the Angrezi Badshah and the whole world are on the other side.’
‘It is the Pandus and the Kurus again, as in Mahabharat,’ said my mother, brightening the fire in the fireplace by striking one fuel stick with another. She paused a moment, wiped the smoke from her eyes, sighed, shook her head and continued, ‘Isn’t it terrible for all this destruction to be! But if the Sahib, the Aga Khan, has really joined the Angrezi Badshah, as they say he has, then the Angrez log are bound to win. For he is the incarnation of Sri Krishna ji Maharaj …’
‘Hun, the Aga Khan—as if he is God! …’ my father protested.
‘You must not blaspheme,’ my mother said. ‘Who knows what miraculous powers the Aga Khan has? And who knows what invisible forces are at work in this war? …’
‘But, mother, the Pandus were only five and the Kurus a hundred,’ I argued according to the bent of my own logic. ‘Now if the Aga Khan is an incarnation of Sri Krishna, surely he would be on the side of the Kaiser and his colleagues rather than with the Angrezi Badshah and his allies!’
My father smiled at this irrefutable argument.
‘Holdar Maula Bux says,’ began Ganesh, speaking effortfully to bring himself into this discussion, ‘that the Sultan of the Toorks is like Tamerlane and has proclaimed a holy war to spread Islam in the world …’
‘Ohe, don’t go about listening to gossip in the regiment,’ father bullied him. ‘The Sahib logs are very strict in time of war against rumours …’
‘Acha, don’t shout at him everytime the boy opens his mouth,’ my mother protested. ‘There may be something in what he says.’
‘Oh don’t be a fool,’ my father said impatiently.
‘Whatever you say,’ my mother continued, convinced of her metaphysical explanations, ‘the world is rocking on the horns of the bull which supports it. Sri Krishna ji Maharaj will show his invisible hand. There will probably be an earthquake. For vice is flourishing over virtue. It is all the fault of these ferungis who have invented these injans … and who defy God …’
‘You are mad,’ said my father. ‘It is nothing to do with God.’
‘You may think that I am mad,’ said my mother, ‘but people don’t fight unless they are evil. This war was prophesied in the holy books: it was said that in the age of untruth, a conflagration of fire will sweep the world and then a new cycle will begin and then there will be more good
.’
‘Is it right, what mother says?’ I asked my father.
‘No, son, she is barking,’ he replied.
‘Acha, you will see when you are engulfed in the fire,’ she said.
Apparently her prognostications seemed not to come true, for my father received orders that he was to stay with the depot at Malakand in the Frontier. As my father knew that his war service would be an important asset when he returned from abroad, he was a trifle disappointed. In fact, however, he did not seem to care about anything as he seemed relieved to get the news and to end the suspense. And he resigned himself to all the readjustments necessitated by this event.
I sensed something of the great events which were impending in the world, but mostly through the myths and legends in which mother wrapped them. For the rest, we stared wide-eyed and uncomprehending at the troop movements and the packing of our own luggage in the strong light of the relentless sun which seemed to be laughing while everyone else was weeping. And our as yet timid, unawakened souls were bent, like our heads, in sadness. Amidst all the misery there was only one hope of happiness: we looked forward to seeing our home in Amritsar where we were to go with our mother and join a school. I, who longed for playmates of my own age, fancied I was going to a glorious new world, where aunt Devaki lived, and uncle Pratap, who had given me a taste for eating meat, and where our house was situated. And in my mind I traced the glorious curves of the wonder city of Amritsar, mixing the joy of anticipation with a taste for the new, the immense and the marvellous that stretched before me.
A Select Glossary
Acha
All right
Amreeca
America
Angrezi
English
Arré
(interjection) Oh!
Babas
Boys
Babus
Educated Indians
Baloo
Punjabi word for bear
Bandook
Rifle
Bania
Grocer; merchant
Barkat
Bati
Bowl for drinking water
Bhangi
Sweeper
Bhisti
A man who carries water
Bhunja’s shop
Shop in which gram is roasted
Bhuts
Ghosts
Budmash
Mischievous
Buk
Total nonsense
Chands
Riddle-songs sung at weddings
Charpai
String bed
Chir gaya
Begun
Chup raho
Keep quiet
Dholki
Drum
Durree
Cotton carpet
Fakir-Sain
Muhammadan holy man
Faluda
Kind of vermicelli eaten with ice cream
Ferungis
Foreigners, mainly Englishmen
Foj
Army
Git-mitting
Chattering
Han
Yes
Halwai
Sweetmeat-seller
Haveli
Big house
Havildar
Indian army rank, equivalent to a Sergeant
Houri
Fairy
Injans
Engines
Izzat
Prestige
Ja Be
Go
Jalebis
Fried sweet dumplings made of white flour and syrup
Jao
Go away
Jhund
Punjabi word for the headdress when it is extended over the forehead and the eyes of a woman to protect her from male stares
Ji-Huzoor
Yes-man; servile individual
Jinns
Spirits
Jirgas
Gathering of Pathan tribesmen
Kaliyug
The evil iron age which, according to the Hindu conception, is the age in which we live
Kana-phusi
Whispering secretively
Khana
Food
Khurpi
Hoe
Khansamah
Cook
Khuti
Hole in the ground
Kucha
Pair of shorts worn by a Sikh
Ladhia
Punjabi word for hero
Lashkars
Punjabi word for armies
Lat Sahib
Viceroy
Madari
Juggler or magician
Mali
Gardener
Malka
Queen
Manbhatta Khana
Favourite food
Mandala
Shrine for placing gods
Mem
English lady
Mujra
Dance recital by a courtesan
Munshi
A scribe
Mushtandas
Roughs; hooligans
Nadé
Boy
Natu
Native
Numbria
Of the same number; contemporary
Palla
Corner or border
Paltan
Regiment
Peras
Small cream cakes, a well-known sweet
Phulkaris
Rough ochre-dyed cloth, diapered with silk in the Punjab
Pilaus
Fried rice
Pirs
Religious leaders
Pradhan
Chief
Colloquial for master or boss
Roos
Russia
Sadri
A short jacket or waistcoat
Sala/salé
Brother-in-law, usually a term of abuse
Sarkar
Government; authority
Shahinshah
Emperor
Shamiana
Canopy
Siapa
Mourning
Syce
Groom
Tandurs
Ovens, also designates a cookshop or indigenous style restaurant
Tehmut
Sheet wrapped round the waist and legs, worn usually in the Punjab
Thathiar
Coppersmith
Thortha
Punjabi word for an earthen cup
Toorks
Turks
Turas
The crest of a turban tied as in the Punjab
Vay
Punjabi form of address for a male
Vilayat
Foreign country, usually designates British Isles
Yekka
A horse-drawn vehicle
Zoolum
Tyranny
* This short piece describes an average day in Mulk Raj Anand’s life as he approached his 100th birthday. It was written for me by Dolly Sahair, Mulk’s life-long associate and confidante, in March 2004. Dolly died of a heart attack on an Air India flight in May, while on her way to be with Mulk after a short visit to the US. Mulk died four months later.—ed.
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First published in the UK by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd 1951
Published by Penguin Books India 2005
Copyright © ‘Lokayta’ Mulk Raj Anand Centre 2005
Introduction copyright © Saros Cowasjee 2005
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ISBN: 978-01-4400-018-0
This digital edition published in 2012.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-452-0
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