CHAPTER 17
Reverend Ian Bainbridge, the Vicar of Pachmarhi, got off the Bombay mail at town of Piparia, and found his servant Shiva – a korku aborigine – waiting for him at the station with the pony trap. It was already afternoon and they set off on their journey immediately. A few miles out of town the jungle began and beyond the jungle, on the right, rose the Mahadeo Hills – a long wooded ridge with occasional summits rising above the ridge line. The road ascended gently, and the forest of teak and other deciduous trees roes thickly on both sides of it. It was a lonely road, with no sign of any habitation, and an hour later they were still in the forest, which gave way occasionally to open tracts showing: sometimes a forest pool deeply puddled by the hooves of forest animals, and sometimes a mountain stream that still showed a thin vein of water in the channel.
“How far are we from Matkuli Shiva?”
“Not far now saab.”
Sure enough the village of Matkuli came into view after a while. This was a long line of kuccha houses built along the road, adobe and wattle dwellings with rough country tiles on the roof, including a few small dives that sold tea and refreshments to weary travellers going up to Pachmarhi or taking the Chindwara road which turned left towards another group of hills on the far horizon. Matkuli had grown up as a watering hole for wayfarers but the Vicar did not stop at the village. The river Denwa, carrying the water of innumerable springs from the Pachmarhi hills now came into view just outside the village, its crystal clear water flowing over wide sandy bed which was crossed by a low bridge that often got submerged when the river was in spate. The gradient was now steeper. A short patch of forest and a straggling village appeared. Isolated homesteads stood in compounds fenced off with makeshift bamboo fences. Beyond the village was the Dak Bunglow that was their destination. This building stood on a small knoll amidst a clump of noble trees whose spreading crowns shaded it on all sides.
“Here we are Shiva. Get hold of the Khansamah, will you.?”
The Khansamah however was not so easily found. After much yelling and shouting he was roused from his sleep and rousted out of the row of outhouses at the back of the compound which served as his residence and the Dak Bungalow’s kitchen. The Khansamah was a Mohammaden gentleman by the name of Abdul. In many small upcountry Dak Bungalows the Khansamah combined the duties of the cook, the caretaker and the general factotum, and was usually a Mussalman because they had no scruples about cooking the meat and chicken and other game so loved by the sahibs.”
“Where have you been Abdul. Open a room will you. I think I will spend the night here. Too late to go up now.”
Abdul hesitated a little. “Only one room sahib.Other room taken.”
“Oh, you mean the haunted room. That’s quite all right ghosts bother a man of God like me. Go on, open it.”
This room was seldom if ever occupied, because it was said to be haunted by the ghost of a sahib who had died in it. The sahib had blown his head off after polished off a bottle of brandy and it was his ghost, if Abdul was to believed, which haunted the room. Neither the Vicar however, nor his aboriginal servant ever set much store by such tales. The room was soon occupied and the Vicar made himself comfortable. Abdul was ordered to cook a chicken and pulao and a bottle of brandy was opened as night came on. After filling his own glass with three fingers of brandy and water which was poured out by Shiva, the Vicar offered some of the drink to Shiva who drank out of cup, sitting down on the carpet by the Vicar’s feet. The vicar knew these proceedings would have been considered scandalous by his countrymen but he believed in the Biblical injunction, “Do unto others as you would unto yourself.”
They drank in companionable silence for a while. The stars shone brightly in the velvet gloom of the forest night, and the sound of drumming, borne on passing blasts of wind reached them now and then.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Shiva?”
“Sure do saab. All my people do.” Shiva was nominally a Christian and helped the vicar with chores in the church, but all his beliefs came from his forefathers, not from Christian theology.
“What happens to people when they die Shiva?”
“They go on living saab, some are born again and some go on living as spirits.. It all depends how you die. Those that die by their own hand, like the sahib who died in this room, become ghosts and haunt this earth until they are laid to rest. Those who are killed by wild animals ride on their shoulders and lead them to fresh victims. These ghosts are the worst, they are very bad, very bad indeed, and only a good bhumia can perform the rituals that are necessary to get rid of them. My uncle is a bhumia, he is a very powerful bhumia in fact.”
“Your uncle, oh you mean old Bhoopal who came to me with scabies and gonorrhoea gone bad. It needed strong medicine to get him going again, I can tell you that.”
“Sahib you too are a bhumia, a great white bhumia, the spirits fear you more than us. And the white God, whom you call Yesu, is powerful.”
“Tell me which gods you worship, you old heathen.”
“Sahib, to tell you the truth I worship my own gods. A man must bow before the gods of his fathers. My people have lived and died in their worship for generations and a man must keep faith with his ancestors. But I also worship Mahadeo who sits in the cave shrine at Jatashanker and whom the Hindus worship, I also worship Kali who wears a garland of skulls because I fear her, and I also worship the great white god when I am in church with you.”
The priest poured himself another drink while Abdul laid out the dinner. He was the only diner, and sat at the head of the dining table. The flickering light of a hurricane lantern provided the only illumination as the priest ate while Abdul waited at the table.
“How is the chicken saab?”
“As good as ever,” said the priest as he ate with relish the spicy, curried meant, flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg. “How is the Dak Baunglow ghost, anyone seem him latterly?”
Abdul did not appreciate the jocose tone. One should not be flippant when talking of ghosts, he thought. “No sahib. The ghost has not been seen at all this year. But you never know when he might appear, and tonight the night is dark.”
The priest sensed the slight apprehension in Abdul’s tone. “Don’t you worry Abdul. I don’t think your ghost will show himself to me. He never has so far.”
A thunderstorm came on at night, waking up everyone. The wind blew away some of the old tiles on the rafters and a big branch from one of the old tiles on the rafters and a big branch from one of the great Jamun trees broke during the tempest, coming down with a tremendous crash. But of the ghost there was no sign. The priest was a little disappointed for he took a scientific interest in the paranormal and had long south an encounter with the famous ghost. But he knew how to console himself when the hoped ghost. But he knew how to console himself when the hoped for miracle did not materialise, as it often did not. On such occasions he would argue that the rational and ordered structure of the universe was more of a miracle in itself, and a greater proof of God’s existence than a hundred so-called miracles.
As a result of the storm the morning dawned crisp and clear, and after a breakfast of porridge, omelette, and bananas, they set off on their climb to Pachmarhi. The forest was green and refulgent after the rain. The track climbed steadily, but the climb was quite pleasant with col morning air coming down from the hills and the prospect of green forest rides and verdurous slopes opening out on all sides. After a short climb they came to a deep gorge and glimpsed the Denwa, flowing far below through the rocky bed of the canyon. Now for the first time the high mountains of Pachmari appeared, seen fitfully through rifts in the gorge, their craggy summits looming darkly over the verdant scene.
How pleasant it all was, though the priest, as he looked at the forest and the hills. This is what all of India must have been like aeons ago, a vast wooded wilderness where man struggled to find a precarious toe-hold. There were prehistoric cave shelters in Pachmarhi, as there were in other parts of the Central Provinces. He wondered if prehistoric man saw the same prospect that was opening out before him. He probably did. This wasn’t the case with England, where once,” a squirrel could jump from tree to tree,” from one end of the island to another, but now one had to go to Sherwood or New Forest to find any semblance of wooded wilderness. He wondered if the same sort of spoliation would overtake India one day. “Not in my lifetime, not in my lifetime,” he muttered to himself as they went up the gently climbing road and a golden oriole went flashing past them and disappeared into the depths of the forest.
A couple of hours later the track emerged from the forest onto a small glade with an enormous bunyan tree in the middle. This bunyan was a real behemoth, a ‘green robed senator of the woods,’ whose auxiliary roots came down from the branches to form a girdle of buttresses and secondary trunks that covered a vast area around the tree. Small piles of stones, many of them daubed with vermilion smears, small rusted tridents, and red pennants on the branches were to found all round the tree. It was obviously a holy site of some kind.
The priest was familiar with such forest shrines, which abounded in the jungles round about Pachmarhi, still whenever he come across such places he felt a faint twinge of envy for people for whom nature in its grander aspects was still animated by spirits and incorporeal beings. These people were the original Wordsworthians, he thought, nature for them still lived and breathed and rocks and stones and trees were for them the abode of unseen beings. How very different, he though from the backpacker tourists with a volume of verse I the pocket of his anorak, who tramped the hills of the Lake District, trying to commune vainly with the same elusive spirits.
“What is this place Shiva?”
“This is the shrine of Bura Deo, saab. You see this statue here,” said the aborigine, pointing to a rude carving made from a small log of wood that was placed within a little grotto at the base of the tree. Bura Deo, he knew, was the great god of the Gonds, also worshipped by the Korkus, who followed the Gonds in this, as in most other things.
“But what are these cairns?”
“These heaps of stones are memorial cairns for our ancestors. Some are offerings to the spirits of the forest. This particular heap, for instance, was put up to placate the goddess of smallpox which afflicted the village of Pagara last year.”
“The village soon come in sight, as they emerged on a small plateau. There was an orchard here and a row of houses facing each other. This plateau was really a clearing in the forest, which must originally have been a dhaya clearing made by the slash-and-burn method of agriculture that these aborigines practised. It had become a permanent settlement over the years, owing to the flatness of the land and its comparatively greater fertility. The priest knew that Shiva kept on of his wives in this village. The other, older wife lived with him in Pachmarhi. “Are you going to stay on in the village Shiva? Go on you old rogue, you haven’t been here for a while. I can manage alone. In fact, I think I will enjoy the walk. You can bring the trap up with you tomorrow.”
“All right sahib, if that is your desire,” said Shiva with an impish grin that lit up his seamed and puckered face.
The priest walked on through the village. The plateau soon gave way to hillside and the jungle closed in around the track Yellow butterflies fluttered over the Flame-of-the Forest and Harra trees that were in blossoms. The priest felt light-hearted as he strode over the track. The sound of a motor vehicle, coming up the ghat could be heard. At last the vehicle came in sight, it was an army jeep, and it stopped as it came alongside.
Colonel Stanley, the commandant of the School of Musketry at Pachmarhi was driving the jeep. “Morning vicar, though it was you, from the look it. But fancy walking up all the way.”
“My dear Colonel, I rather enjoy the excursion, I assure you. The forest is delightful, is it not.”
The colonel looked around him rather blankly. “I suppose you could call it pretty, if you fancy this sort of thing. I do not. But hop in, I can’t let you go trudging up all the way.”
“Thank you my dear Colonel. This is very kind of you.”
“Some bad news Vicar,” said the colonel as they drove off,” you know corporal Vickers and his family.”
“Oh yes, I christened the twins only last year. Charming boys and a very nice family-regular churchgoers in fact. I trust nothing untoward has happened to them.”
“Well bad twins are dead. Influenza most likely. I had gone to Pipria to pick up some medicine that was supposed to come all the way from the regimental centre at Bombay, but I knew it would be no use. When I reached Piparia the police wireless had a message waiting for me. The twins were dead. I drove back immediately. Lucky running into you like this. We’ll have to hold the funeral at once, you know the heat.
“Of course, but this is a bad business Colonel, terrible.” The priest muttered and shook his head. He remembered the cherubic twins, blue eyed and golden-haired; the very picture of health when they were brought to him last year.
“Yes, it’s a bad business,” said the Colonel,” but this isn’t the first time, nor is it the last. India will keep exacting her price in blood from the keepers of the empire. This is no country for white men, vicar. But we still have to keep our heads down and get on with it. Can’t let the natives run natives run riot, can we.”
The vicar said nothing to this, but he sighed deeply. Running riot-it was a typical expression. He had a vision of tropical vegetation smothering everything in its wild luxuriance, running through the wicket fences and the orderly gardens that the English has planted, choking everything in its hot- house embrace. India reverting to the state of nature, of this running to seed, a carefully nurtured and cultivated demesne being overrun by the anarchic forces of nature. That was how most Englishman thought India would be without the benefit of their rule. And it was true that India took a terrible toll of the empire builders. First it was cholera, then typhoid, bubonic plague, pneumonia or some other virulent distemper that carried off the victim before he or she knew what the matter was, and now it was influenza or some other mysterious disease that resembled it, that was sweeping through India. Some called it war fever, for want of a better name. In some parts of the country, in the Kamaon region for instance, there were so many deaths that people had no timber to burn the corpses and the dead were just thrown into a ravine with a live coal placed in their month. It was, as the Colonel said, a bad business. And he was right, India was no place for white men, but that was only because they so stubbornly clung to their own ways and refused to change, dressing up for dinner in the tropical heat, drinking Port and Madeira by the gallon and gorging themselves on meat when the climate demanded temperance and a vegetarian diet. The local Hindu was abstemious when it came to food and drink, though self-indulgent when it came to sex, and it seemed to work all right for him. The Englishman in India, was often forced to be celibate due to the scarcity of while women, but made up for this loss by over indulgence in food and drink and this took its own toll. Still this was a hard country for the English, the Colonel did have a point.
They passed a village built around a charming lake whose dark waters had a tarn like quality and then they came to the end of their climb and emerged on the plateau of Pachmarhi. It was a wide, nearly flat plain with clumps of noble trees through whose arboreous mass peeped the spire of a church and the gabled roofs of several bungalows. At the margin of the plateau on three sides, the peaks of the Mahadeo range stood like sentinels.
The vicarage was close by the church, right across the road, and the Colonel brought his jeep to a stop before the red-roofed and gabled building. “Thank you Colonel. Do come in and have some refreshment. It must have been a tiring journey.”
“No time vicar. The funeral is at five in the afternoon. Got to get things moving. Look after Vickers and family. You know how it is.”
“I know. Well, I’ll be there at five. Good bye until then.”
“Good bye vicar.”
The cemetery down by the road to the Fairy Pool, where the funeral was to take place, looked exactly like a stage version of a Christian graveyard. At the entrance was a gothic gateway with a slate roof, decorated with fleur- de-lys finials, and a little lodge for the sexton attached to it. Cypresses were planted all round the boundary and along the central avenue that led into the cemetery and these trees with their sombre, dark, foliage grew to a flourishing height and girth here. Beyond the boundary was the jungle, still thick and unspoiled, and this added to the air of gloom and mystery. When the vicar reached the cemetery he saw the mourners gathered in a tight knot around the grave. The native servant. Shiva’s brother, who also performed the office of sexton when the occasion called for it, was learning on his spade. The graves were shaded by a cypress which had cast its dark needles copiously and the ground all about was carpeted with them.
His eyes clouded with emotion as the vicar looked at the little gathering. Although he had attended scores of such funerals it was always the same, even more so when, as today, he had to perform the service. He fingered his well-worn prayer book as he looked at the small crowd. At the front were the bereaved parents, the mother and some other ladies in black. There was a sprinkling of khaki and olive-green uniforms and also some figures in dark coats and hats from the civil station. One rather grand figure in a frock coat and stovepipe hat stood out from the crowed. He was Mr. Crump the financial commissioner of CP & Berar, holidaying in Pachmarhi, and here to show solidarity. Everyone was white and English. There were no brown faces, except that of the sexton.
“My dear brothers and sisters,” began the priest, “we are gathered here today to consign to earth little Charles Vickers and his brother James, both carried away betimes by the hand of death, which spares neither the rich nor the poor, neither the young nor the old. I know it is a hard thing to bury the young. To look one’s last on bright, cherubic faces which should have blossomed into manhood. Nor can I explain why God calls away those who are young and innocent. Death remains a mystery, no matter how we look at it. But I do know that there is a reason for everything that happens, and if it had pleased God in his wisdom to call these young children into his own presence, it must be because he loves them dearly and wants them to live forever as blessed angles in the kingdom of heaven.”
The priest paused briefly. It was hot and he was sweating under his surplice. Mrs. Vickers was sobbing loudly and some of the men had tears in their eyes. Some others were fidgeting, uncomfortable under their heavy clothing. He knew that everyone was keen that he should wind up quickly and he hurried though the rest of his address and was soon reading out the Prayer for the Dead from the prayer book that he carried.
“…….dust unto dust, ashes to ashes…….. here to rest, in sure and certain hope of resurrection and eternal life……… in the name of God the father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.” Clods of earth were shovelled in as the priest intoned the prayer and soon the ceremony was over. The mourners walked up and laid their wreaths and flowers on the graves. The men pressed Vickers’ hand wordlessly, the women clustered around Mrs. Vickers’ clucking ineffectually as she wept- inconsolable. She was comforted only when the priest threw a beefy arm around her shoulders and let her sag against his broad chest. There was something reassuring about his girth and large florid face.
As the mourners, straggled out of the cemetery the Colonel took the priest by the arm and drew him aside. “You are coming to the club tonight, vicar.”
“No, not really. I was thinking of turning in early. I’ve had a long day you know.”
“I know, but you’ve got to come. We need you to make up the table. You know doctor Smith is away. Gone to Hoshangabad to see the civil surgeon, and no one else can play bridge tolerably.”
“Well….”
“It’s done than. See you at eight. Good bye vicar.”
“Good bye Colonel. Good bye everyone, Good bye.”
The Pachmarhi Club, adjacent to the Old Hotel, was managed by the army. It was the usual colonial building with a gabled porch that stood within the shade of some stalwart bunyan and peepul trees. The porch led to a large hall, from which doors opened out to a billiards room, a card room and a passage beyond which were the tennis courts. The hall was hung with sporting prints and old lithographs of the Pachmarhi landscape including a rather striking representation of Chauragarh and the shrine of Mahadeo, the mountain towering over the wooded glen. All the rooms had fireplaces and chimney stacks, although Pachmarhi was seldom cold enough to warrant an open fire in the grate. As it was summer, it was rather stuffy in the card room. Tables had been laid out in the hall and the vicar was greeted warmly by the card players as he entered.
“Good evening, Vicar.’
“Evening reverend.”
“Good evening Colonel. Good evening to all you.”
Apart from Colonel Stanley the other bridge players were Sir Jonathan Winterman who was a retired civilian who lived in a cottage near Hog’s Back and Major Jones, the Colonel’s second-in-command.
“Glad you could come Bainbridge, it must have been lonely in the vicarage, especially after the funeral. Religion is cold comfort without a good dinner in your belly, eh vicar.” Sir Jonathan was a big angular man with a walrus moustache, and given to irreverence, gluttony and gin. He was tolerated because he had been the Chief Secretary of the Central Provinces, was a grand nephew of Gladstone, and knew everyone who was worth knowing in the Government of India. Most of the senior civil servants who now ran the show in Delhi had worked under Winterman as subordinates at one time or another.
“Still Marx was a fool to have said that religion is the opium of the masses. It is not their opium, it is their meat and drink. That’s why it is the bedrock of empires. Can you think of the Ottoman empire without Islam, the Spanish empire without the Catholic religion or of the British empire without Anglicanism. Of course you can’t.
“But Sir Jonathan, you must still admit that we have never imposed our religion on our subjects with fire and sword. The Turks did it, and so did the Spaniards, but we never did.”
“That’s true vicar, we don’t take our religion seriously, at least not as seriously as the Spanish or the Turks. Religion for us is at best a social obligation, at worst a collective hypocrisy, but with these others it is a deadly serious matter.”
“I don’t quite agree with you there Sir Jonathan, I take my religion seriously. So does every other officer I know,” said the Colonel.
“I am sure you do Colonel, but then you take everything seriously, including all the rot about the White Man’s Burden. If you did not the British Empire would be in trouble indeed.”
The Colonel flushed a deep purple and his eyes shone with anger. “My dear sir, so you realize what you are saying. Don’t you see that while you sit here throwing dirt on our religion and all the other things that we hold dear, it is the men in uniform who protect you from the natives who would gladly slit your throat for a pouch of tobacco.”
“You are quite right Colonel, but don’t get worked up. You won’t have to do the protecting forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that the Empire won’t last forever.”
“Damnations.How can you say so in that matter of fact way. Haven’t you spent your life in the service of the Empire.”
“I have, but I was only doing my job. It wasn’t I who built the Empire. It was the five percent interest that was guaranteed to British Capitalists who ran the East India Company that did it. No domestic investment could guarantee such as return. Think of that Colonel, behind all the heroism and self-sacrifice, behind all the fine words and the cherished illusions, it was this, this grossly mercenary motive that was the driving force of the whole enterprise.”
“There Sir Jonathan I disagree with you,” said the vicar.” I think you are too cynical. The British Empire has done more for India than the Indian could have achieved in a thousand year. Left to themselves they would still have been burning their widows and slitting each others’throats over medieval sectarian disputes. The British Empire may not endure forever, no empire does, but it will surely be remembered forever as a great enterprise – perhaps the Indians themselves will think of it as the best thing to have happened to them in the last thousand years.”
“My dear Vicar, I envy you your illusions. My tragedy is that I have lost mine. But that is a small matter. The bigger tragedy is that after what Dyer did in Amritsar, one of the major myths about the Empire has been shattered. The Colonel can still look me in the face and insist that it is all for the good of Indians, but who else will believe him. You can’t turn a machine gun on a thousand defenceless civilians and then say it is for their own good. That is why I say that end is nigh. However, I shan’t live to see it. Let’s finish the rubber so that I can go and get some sleep. These days my dreams are not pleasant.”
