Seven Summers Read online

  My father alternately admired me and warned me against such forwardness. This depended on whether he felt himself to be in the good books of the Sahibs at a particular time or to be in slight disfavour with them. But the tremendous terror that the Sahibs inspired among the people, though modulated to a kind of respect in the case of my father because he was constantly in touch with them, yet partook of awe enough to dictate a general sense of caution, circumspection and a hush-hush attitude towards them. Of course, he had enjoined us always not to come into the office until the Sahib logs had left, or, if we had to deliver an important message, to come on tiptoe and never to talk loudly but in whispers. And he had expressly forbidden us to go anywhere near the Officers’ Mess or the Sahibs’ bungalows. But he seemed to have a shrewd sense of humanity besides his discipline, and permitted us to receive the condescension of a pat or a smile if he saw that it was only as between an elder and a child, and his sense of pride at our receipt of a favour inclined him to permit liberties such as he would otherwise have punished with a rebuke or even a slap.

  We were quick to see the inconsistency of his pleasure at our social successes and his general hush-hush attitude. And, within the limits of good behaviour inculcated through a strict upbringing, we did what we liked, salaaming the Sahibs sometimes with a mischievous impunity and laughing as their backs were turned, straying into their gardens and rifling a bunch of red roses or going to Muhammad Din, the khansamah, and bringing a double roti, a loaf of English bread, to eat at home.

  A welcome relief in the somewhat monotonous life of the cantonment was always provided by the arrival of a strange, and, to us children, a legendary man, named ‘Dumbri’, who hovered over the barracks for days like a spectacular ghost.

  He was a tall, gaunt man with a pink, hawk-nosed face and square shoulders, but his most distinguishing attribute, the one that shocked and delighted one immediately he appeared, was the patchwork uniform he wore, a khaki shirt, a blue turban, long worn-out breeches, all sewn out of coloured rags, his skin covered with red puttees, and a pair of Indian shoes on his large feet—habiliments manifestly made up from the remnants of discarded clothes which the sepoys gave him as to a fakir. And the most marvellous, the most wonderful thing about him was his wooden rifle on which were nailed coins of almost all the countries of the world, collected, he said, from the Sahibs during his yearly tours of all the cantonments of India.

  ‘Dumbri! Dumbri! Ohe Dumbri has come!’ the sepoys shouted as they saw him. And they greeted him with laughter and jokes, while the children followed him about, anxious to hold his rifle and to inspect all the coins studded on it.

  Dumbri answered all these greetings by suddenly coming to attention and yelling: ‘Order up! Show Arms! Stand teeze!’ And, executing his own order, he would lift his rifle up to his shoulders, slap it on the butt with a resounding slap, which frightened the sparrows and the crows, and hold it rigid before him as the sepoys used to do on the arrival of a Sahib on the parade maidan.

  For this extraordinary feat he expected a reward according to the means and the status of the person he accosted, a nickel anna from a sepoy, a silver eight-anna piece from an NCO, a rupee from an Indian officer and five rupees upwards from an English officer.

  And if the person so accosted gave him an article of clothing in addition to the money, he would begin automatically to rehearse bayonet practice with loud, wild yells, which were an exaggerated rehearsal of the sepoys’ usual practice with the sacks at the end of the gymnasium.

  At this stage the audience tried to dismiss him, or to persuade him tactfully to sing one of the English songs in his repertoire. Whereupon he opened his mouth wide like the jaws of hell and burst out with a parody of one of the Angrezi Tommy’s marching songs, or of a Dogra hillman’s folk song.

  But once anyone gave him money he lingered and repeated various parts of musketry drill in order to eke more money. And he seemed to put his whole heart and soul into it, shouting and getting red in the face and sweating as he exhibited his skill, so that the tamasha became a rather macabre and horrible performance.

  ‘Stand teeze!’

  ‘Shun!’

  ‘Lef-ri! Lef-ri!’

  The shrill cries resounded in the air until a crowd gathered. Then he would spit on his hands and, holding his wooden musket tightly, begin:

  ‘Be a man! Man’s duty is to kill!’ he raved, frothing at the mouth, his pink face colouring a deep red and his whole body going rigid to perform the brutal onslaught.

  ‘If the enemy hangs on or retaliates, strike him on the head with the butt of the rifle, kick him in the guts, and fell him. Then dig the bayonet into his belly, deep, deep, but take it out to see that the enemy is punctured and bleeds to death. One, two, three, go …’

  And then he executed the movements in accordance with his own dictates.

  The sepoys laughed to hear and see his mockery of the exact formula which the NCO’s taught them. And we children thought all this great fun and regarded Dumbri as the greatest ‘Jarnel’ in the world for showing us how to kill—except for little Bitti, who was apparently frightened by the movements and cried.

  ‘Have some tea,’ a Havildar would say to distract Dumbri. But it was not certain whether he would stop his maniacal exhibition, have tea, or go further on his quest for money. No one could tell the whims of a fakir!

  The NCO’s liked Dumbri and his displays and quoted him as an example of soldierly valour to all the raw recruits for months after he had come and gone. And they concocted all kinds of stories and legends about his feats in the various wars in which he was supposed to have fought.

  ‘He is the son of a Jarnel Sahib by a Pathan mother,’ one said.

  ‘He is the Pir of the tribesmen in the Mohmand territory,’ another opined.

  ‘He shook hands with Badshah George Panjam at the Delhi Durbar,’ a third volunteered the information. ‘I saw him do it myself.’

  ‘But why does he go about in those patched-up clothes like a beggar if he is such an exalted person?’ asked a recruit.

  No one could answer that question. And the memory of Dumbri faded in the haze of forgetfulness that wrapped the earth and made it seem that everyone and everything had its place in this world of ours, howsoever mad and absurd, till Dumbri turned up again next year to startle the dull, somnolent life of regimental routine with his weird and brutal heroics.

  On rare days our father took us for an afternoon walk to the boat bridge on the Lunda, as the river Kabul is called in Nowshera because it is a mischievous waterway, capricious and uncanny in its ferocious passage to join the Indus at Attock.

  I loved to run along the pathway which led through the old dry river bed, past the school and fuel stall to the Sadar Bazaar and the boat bridge, at the heels of my father, prattling incessantly and asking questions. It made me feel proud and strong to be seen walking along thus, seeing my father saluted by all and sundry, especially as the pathway no longer led to the prison of a school but to the freedom of the colourful, variegated brick-built town with its narrow streets full of crowds of Pathans with long rough tunics, baggy salwars, untidy turbans and frayed velvet waistcoats, punjabi merchants who had adapted themselves to the styles and speech of the Frontier and looked equally ferocious, sepoys from the Brigade, a sprinkling of Tommies with folding caps placed at ‘natty’ angles on their well-brushed hair as they walked in twos flashing silver-mounted canes, stood outside ragshops or slunk into the corners of the prostitutes’ bazaar.

  Greeting friends and acquaintances, and greeted by them, exchanging a word here in the crush, stopping in a corner there to hold a long conversation with a sepoy or an NCO, who had wanted a favour done but dared not be seen going to the office or our quarter in the barracks, laughing and joking, our father led us beyond the bazaar across the stretch of a lepers’ asylum, past rows of fruit stalls whose owners hawked juicy stumps of sugar cane covered with flies, and beggars who whined for a pice as they exposed their verminous wounds, to the Gra
nd Trunk Road where droves of donkeys went raising clouds of dust and obscuring the windowpanes of English-style shops with their long jars of peppermints and coloured fruit drops, cakes, pastries and chocolates.

  The river was too fast and dangerous for bathing, except on festivals when lifeboats were kept ready to rescue anyone whose feet slipped and who was carried along by the swirling current. But my father liked to sit and take the air in one of the hundred boats which supported the footbridge which connected the Sadar Bazaar with the old village of Nowshera.

  I was much taxed by various metaphysical problems about this river: where it came from and where it went. For at this stage of my life I was in the mood to connect everything with everything else and to seek a justification for everything, drunk with the instinct to know and possess. My father explained that it was rainwater which came in tributary nullah from the hills and the melted snow of the mountains and that it went to the Indus and ultimately joined the sea.

  From seeking emotional justification to action occupied only a very short interval of time in my life. And, of course, at the very mention of the word sea I was ready to strip and swim to the sea. On being told that I did not know how to swim, and that the river was deep and the sea deeper, I tried to prove that I would surely evaporate into a rain cloud on the way and come back in that form to the exact place I had started from, if the worst came to the worst. My father succeeded in diverting my attention and, anyhow, the silent, good Ganesh held me by the lapel of my tunic from any desperate adventures into the unknown. I was now perplexed by the problem of how the water moved and why the alarming velocity of all the rivers flowing into the sea did not make the sea overflow and flood the earth over everyone’s head. My father explained that there had indeed been a titanic flood in the world thousands of years ago and that vast spaces of the earth now covered with water had been dry land and vice versa.

  The phrase about the vast spaces of the world puzzled me and I stood overawed and oppressed, my little head bursting to know all, without pestering my father with any more questions lest he should brusquely say, ‘Acha, now sit down and let me rest in peace.’ But I could not content myself and said, with a trace of resentment in my voice:

  ‘Father, why are there so many things in this world? Who made the world? And why is it not possible to know everything?’ My father merely smiled at my impetuosity and patted me affectionately in a way that seemed to indicate that he was pleased with me. And he was inclined to be kind and offered of his own accord to buy us a melon from one of the Pathan stall-keepers who sat in the open market under the shadow of the Grand Trunk Road.

  We were full of enthusiasm when the bargain was made and waited eagerly to receive the huckster’s profit in the form of an extra little melon which the stall-keeper sometimes gave and which we wanted to take home as a present for little Bitti. Our father was restrained because not only did he have to part with a little money, but he had to choose one of the most uncertain fruits in the world. It may be as sweet as honey or may turn out to be insipid, with the taste of rhubarb and magnesia. My father had a sure enough sense of the fruit and sat sounding melon after melon with the knuckles of his right hand as if he were testing clay pitchers to see if they were ‘pukka or kucha’. And he conducted the bargain with such a flair for haggling that he got it at half the quoted price and contrived to obtain not one little melon for Bitti but three little melons as huckster’s profit, so that each of us could have a plaything. I felt the proudest and happiest child to be the son of such a father.

  During these days of freedom from the continual fear of the schoolmaster’s rod, we, who had begun to love the fervours and favours of a more sympathetic world, often sought escape in any prank which offered the glamour of a wild adventure. Daredevils that we were, nothing seemed to frighten us, neither earth, nor sky, nor policemen, nor sepoys on duty.

  One morning, after much whispering together, Ganesh and Ali, who were in greater difficulties at school for their weak memories than myself, and who had therefore taken to truancy, took me into their confidence and suggested that we should all absent ourselves from school and go to the maize fields by the river Lunda.

  ‘We haven’t done our home tasks, little brother,’ appealed Ganesh, turning humble quite suddenly. ‘And we shall be beaten if we go to school. And you are late too. Look, the sun has reached the zenith; and you will be flogged for that if for nothing else. So you come with us and we shall give you some maize stalks.’

  For a moment I hovered between the fear of going to school and the guilt of turning truant. But the condescension of the older boys seemed to open the prospect of my eligibility to the world of their sports, and the maize stalks seemed exciting.

  ‘I shall give you a lapful of red berries,’ said Ali at this juncture in an affectionate tone. ‘I know a bush which hasn’t been touched by anyone yet.’

  That decided me and I went with them.

  After wandering about in different parts of the old, dry river bed, running capers, collecting the nicest stones for marbles, climbing berry trees and filling our pockets and our laps with the ripe red fruits, and searching for bird’s nests, we crept into the maize field and sat down in a little clearing, hot and per spiring, and ate the fruits which we had gathered. Then we collected the best maize stalks and looked for a way to roast some. But none of us had matches and it seemed dangerous to light a fire in a dry field.

  During the adventures of the morning, and while we had been eating the fruit we had gathered, we had been happy and had completely forgotten that the school existed. Now that there was nothing to do we all felt ill at ease, and began anxiously to wait for the time to pass so that we could go home. But the trouble was how to coincide our departure with the time at which the school closed. An early return home would arouse suspicion. And yet we could not go and ask anyone the time because some sepoy might see us and tell our parents.

  We looked at the sun to measure the time by the distance it had travelled since the morning, but were unable to arrive at a correct estimate. Then we stole out by turns to the edge of the field and looked towards the pathway which led from the school to the barracks to see if any of the other boys of the regiment were returning home.

  After a wearying suspense, during which the possibilities of our getting into trouble if we met a crowd of boys going home became oppressively vivid, we sighted Rehmat, the armourer’s son, walking along alone. We made haste to overtake him and bribe him with the offer of some maize stalks to keep him quiet when he got back to the barracks.

  But as we emerged from the field, the Pathan owner, who happened to be shooting sparrows with his catapult, saw us and ran after us.

  The maize stalks that we had hidden in the folds of our tunics and trousers to take home obstructed our movements and began to drop out.

  Ali and Ganesh ran fast and slipped away to the road on the offside of the field. My legs, however, had not carried me far before I was captured.

  The farmer bound me hand and foot and threw me on the dust by the side of his cot. I shrieked, imagining that he was going to murder me forthwith.

  Red with fear, sweating and sobbing, I lay there absolutely certain that my last hour had come. And no entreaties on Rehmat’s part would persuade the Pathan to release me.

  But Ganesh and Ali had hurried to my father’s office and told him a story of how I had been caught for poaching on my way back from school.

  My father came and secured my release. And he was about to take me to task when the terror of a beating on top of the ordeal I had been through gripped me. After the first slap or two I was unable to suppress the truth about my accomplices in crime. So I blurted out the whole story of how I had been persuaded to truancy.

  Ganesh came in for a savage beating with a hockey stick that night, while I was temporarily in my parents’ favour.

  Ali’s mother too dealt with her son effectively by turning him out of the house, so that he slept in a sentry’s pillbox that night.

>   After my betrayal of them, Ganesh and Ali were deeply resentful of me, shunning me and persuading all the boys of the regiment to do the same. And I found myself isolated more than ever.

  I wreaked my revenge on them one day by telling my father that Ganesh and Ali had thrown my shoes into the river Lunda. Actually what had happened was that these two had refused to take me with them to see the regimental hockey match and I had viciously hit upon the stratagem of hiding my shoes under the mat in our living room and of accusing Ganesh of having thrown them into the river. After father, who was fed up with our bickerings and very concerned over the wanton loss of my shoes, had given a sound thrashing to Ganesh, I pretended to have discovered the shoes accidentally under the mat and put it about that he had taken them anyhow but had only hidden them and had boasted of having thrown them in the Lunda.

  This led to the complete ostracism of my spiteful person, as I had broken the boy’s code of honour about telling tales to the elders, and I was left to myself more than ever.

  Of course, there were compensations. Some sepoy would see me standing alone and would give me a pice or take me to the little regimental bazaar and treat me to the Dogra hillman’s favourite treat, hot milk with jalebis, at the confectioner’s shop, or some fruit from the greengrocer’s stall, or a piece of crude sugar, gur, from a bania’s shop, gifts which my mother had forbidden me to accept because she said one of these sepoys might do black magic on me, but which I nevertheless enjoyed without any concern for the diseases they might bring.

  I would wander off to the armourer’s smithy and sharpen bits of iron on the flint which rested in a wooden case by the Quarter Guard till I could see Kramat Ullah, the eldest son and assistant of the armourer, who had promised to make me a tricycle out of some spare parts he said he had. Often he was out playing hockey at this time, but when I did see him he was busy making a motorbike for himself and put me off, asking me to come the next day.