I am far from home. Knee-deep in the salt pond, with a shovel and a barrel, the sun flaming upon my head like fire, raising blisters on my skin. I sense a boil bubbling on my feet as my eyes crawl beyond the treeline at the mound of a hill, waiting for the sun to set. Our time is here. Our only chance. The barber witch of the woods has whispered her secrets into all our enslaved hairs, but I alone stand and wonder what my role is.
You’re the bald one, her words echo beneath my skull. You are the most important of all.
Every morning, the line of plantation guards, each rooted ten feet apart, shouts, “call your number”. My number is a hundred and sixteen. Even if hundred and fifteen were to die the previous night and rot in the ditch, and be found nine days later with half his face chewed by maggots, I would still be a hundred and sixteen. My number just comes a little sooner with each passing day.
This night, I look at seven of us – coolies and girmityas. We generally avoid calling ourselves the s-word for the benefit of those whom we hope would one day flee and never again have to think of their pasts. The seven of us, we squat in a circle beneath a starless sky, our hands joined, foreheads touching, hairs as Guljari the witch had oiled and combed. Most of the plantation guards are inside the manor to submit their accounts to our master and overlord, Peter Hamilton, and get some… rest.
I immediately glance towards the campfire for a sign of my wife. She is not there.
My gaze then drifts toward the manor, and at its lamplit windows, flickering shadows and ominous noises. It’s time.
Of the seven, Alemoolah is closest to me – squatting to my right. He was warned by his zamindar in India to pay his dues or watch his corns burn. When he refused, his son was flogged in front of his eyes and later chased by the zamindar’s nine hounds into the forest. Eight hounds and a hand returned. And then the British arrived. They said they don’t do this slavery thing anymore. That they had learned from the mistakes the Americans had made. What they now have is a parchment titled “indentured servitude”. No slavery involved, they promised. Sounded simple to me. Must have sounded simple to Alemoolah as well.
Ever since Aleemoolah boarded the ship from Calcutta to Fiji, he has withered and uses only one good eye. With the other, I am not sure. It’s pale and ghostly. Open but unseeing. When he went to the barber-witch, Guljari, in the woods to have his beard shaved, she kissed the unseeing eye, brushed his hair, and plucked the ones that had to be shed, always whispering a word or two, like an assurance. She didn’t do that to me, I remember.
To Aleemoolah, she granted his bad eye with the gift to see in darkness, where no guard and their whips could prey.
To my left is Durga, who wanted no part of this at first. But when I hissed to remind her of her man who drowned himself two mooncycles ago, she sniffed and agreed to part with a single hair. I don’t know what Guljari spoke to her in the woods, but Durga had been gone a long time, I remember. We were lucky the guards did not count until the night. When Durga returned, she gave me a dirty smile and a wink, her lips tainted as though she had chewed at bloodroses, and I knew immediately of her curse.
Twice right from me is Bahadur; eyes like thin slits, and spindly like a twig. With each lash from the guards, he seems to crack a bone here or there. Walks like a melting candle. There’s not much left of him, to be honest, but he breathes just like the rest of us: in deep rattles at night. He has a thick mane of hair, much of which is dried blood now, and I sent him to Guljari to have it trimmed. He claims her scissors are the size of swords, but that when they graze the skull, they are softer than a lover’s kiss. I don’t remember it so, but then, what do I remember? To him, though, Guljari was gracious, and she scarred his back with her scissor, until blood trickled out and spilled onto the grass, where lay his clumps of hair.
I glance around and find Kesri. She gazes into the darkness, squatting beside Durga; she of lustrous hair, which no sun, rain, or a guard’s yank can mangle. The only one who is at home, if this bog can even be called that. Born and raised by a mother who perished under the phthisis, and made to believe in a paradise across the blackest sea, the kaala paani. It is easy to soak in dreams when we are born to the sound of whips and screams. Hamilton grants her the privilege of the kitchens, for her tenderness with the spices and the meat, and her songs to the squirrels and the horses. Guljari braided her hair in two long pigtails, quite like her own, and whispered in her ear to listen to the sounds of beasts under a starless sky.
Opposite to me is Sukhia, who always sleeps outdoors. He is a brahmin who held a good standing among his neighbors back in Sultanpur but lost everything on a sore evening of gambling, and was hauled onto the ship to Fiji. All through the voyage, his eyes never left his paperwork – that brittle contract that shattered long before we even spotted the islands. When he went to Guljari, she cut his hair out of pity, and gifted him his silver tongue, whose lies could never be caught by his owners.
Ever since he returned from the woods, he has donned a turban over his head, to hide the shame of having his brahmin hair cut by a woman at night.
Next to him is Ulfat, who was with child when she was forced to board the ship from Madras. When she reached the islands, our master, Hamilton, allowed her pension and rest until the child crawled out of the womb.
Several infections, screams, and fevers later, Ulfat’s child was born, only to die three days after on a stormy night. The following morning, Hamilton commanded Ulfat to start working on the plantations. When she blinked, he proceeded to pick her up by the hair and drop her on a heap of stones several times, and then kicked her and beat her with a stick. The guards, while they did not participate, stood and watched. Two of us were ordered to carry Ulfat to the hospital seven miles away – not on a stretcher or wagon. All the seven on a trail of jagged stones, and barefoot.
I have tried to forget that incident on many occasions, although my feet haven’t, but truth be told, we would not be here tonight, the seven of us under Guljari’s enchantment, had we not been thinking of that day every minute.
When Ulfat went to Guljari, she wept with her by the river and gave her a poultice of earthworms and pepper, ground and mixed in vinegar, to lighten her head. Then, as Ulfat’s hair fell with each cut, Guljari hummed in her ears an old hymn, and then turned to kiss her on the lips.
Since the time Ulfat has returned, she has not opened her mouth. As though preserving Guljari’s wet saliva.
That leaves us with just me. I am bald with a handlebar mustache and barely a stubble, but I went to Guljari too. I was the first of us. I wanted to take my wife as well, but she’s always in the manor, and when she comes out, she’s tired and sore and complains of making the long walk past the cane stalks to Guljari’s haunt. In the end, it was just me, with my shovel and my half barrel, and blisters to show, as though the guards should not doubt my intentions.
Guljari sits on a chair of jute and looks like an old spider. She is probably the oldest of us all in these plantations, and time has absorbed her into its fold and left the masters with no memory of her other than a silhouette of branches shrouded over the bark of a distant oak. When I asked of her family, she pointed to the ground where the earth was soft – at three mounds, two of which were not large enough to hold a dog or a calf. She vacated the seat and gestured to me to sit.
When the undergrowth blackened, I asked her.
Send the others, she whispered, like how leaves would sound if they could talk by scraping themselves against each other.
*
We are seven now, gathered in the bushes beside the line, waiting for our chance. The other girmityas are sleeping or talking amongst themselves inside their rooms. Bahadur the Spindle is the first to move. He spits on the soil before picking up a stone and striding towards the manor. He throws the stone. One of the glass panes on the window shatters, and the silence of the plantation stirs.
A dozen of the guards appear from their posts, followed by more from inside the manor. Girmityas from the lines spill out like pebbles from a broken jar, gathering in hundreds with their whispers and murmurs.
Firelight falls on Bahadur, who stands in the center of the courtyard, his hands splayed, awaiting his punishment. I am already moving.
Our master Hamilton stumbles out and stands beneath the frame of his door in a long robe, his hair a mess. He orders the guards to apprehend Bahadur and tie him to the bamboo pole jutting out of the ground in the middle of the courtyard. A round of fifty lashes is the norm, but something has irked Hamilton tonight. Probably the brazenness of it all. And so, he commands that Bahadur be lashed a hundred times.
While everyone’s eyes are on the bangla watchman, Aleemoolah has already crept inside the manor.
Inside, the first thing Aleemoolah does is douse the lanterns and snuff out the candles. The manor, in a matter of moments, is plunged into darkness. Ulfat reckons it is time for the dark to oppress Hamilton. She and Kesri follow Aleemoolah inside.
Out here, the first lash falls on Bahadur, and the sound of the whip cracks the sky. And then the second; and then the third…
After a while, Hamilton abandons the spectacle of Bahadur’s lashing and wades back inside the manor. Bumping into sides of tables and banisters, hands groping the thick air, he finally makes his way to his bedchamber.
But it is not my wife there but Durga, ebony face alight beside a single burning matchstick. She greets him with a smile.
The way she moves towards him is hypnotic, one hand stroking his chin, brushing past his cheek and settling upon his lips. Guljari’s spirit dances in the lone flame of the match. By the time the fire is extinguished, Hamilton has already pushed her onto the bed.
It takes twenty-five lashes for the guards to realize that not a single drop of blood has trickled out of Bahadur’s scarred back. Guljari has mended it with the spirit of metal. But a lashing once started cannot be stopped unless the master’s word says so. And without Hamilton, the guards are left with no choice but to rage on in that dying light of the plantation, the sound like a murder of cackling crows.
Chased in the darkness by a small horde of confused guards, Aleemoolah guides Ulfat into the kitchens. Kesri is already there, beside a lone candle, grinding the spices in the mortar with an iron pestle before sprinkling the mixture on to a steaming broth. Ulfat stares at each of the vats, and picks out the one with the silver filigree, larger and brighter than the others, the darkness barely giving it an appearance. For the first time since her return from Guljari’s haunt, she opens her kissed mouth to spit into the vat, before Kesri pours the broth over it.
Hamilton is lying on his back, panting. Beside him, Durga hugs her knees, staring at the open window, at the shrieks of the irate guards as their whips land on Bahadur like rain on stone. Slowly, weighing each word like a goldsmith, she says she’s hungry. Hamilton’s head turns towards her in the darkness, and she lights another matchstick. Together, before it douses, they garb themselves with what they can find and grope their way blindly to the kitchens.
At the door to the manor now stands the brahmin Sukhia, scratching his newly trimmed beard. He guides every guard that runs into him towards the great kitchens. Master Hamilton has summoned you all, he says, with his worm of a tongue. They believe him without a second thought. In the dark, he is glad they cannot see his face.
One by one, the guards abandon the circle around Bahadur, following their master’s call into the bowels of the manor.
In the kitchens, Hamilton feels his way around to his silver bowl on the table. He takes a sip of the broth, and feels Durga’s hand abandon him. The swarm of guards enters the kitchen at that time, and just as well, Durga slips out like a flicker of shadow.
As Hamilton’s poisoned shriek bursts through the manor’s windows several minutes later, I have already overcome the last of the guards lashing Bahadur.
My wife has returned. She helps me untie Bahadur and, together, the three of us hobble towards the stables. There, Kesri stands outside holding the reins to seven horses, a constant hum in her voice as sparrows circle overhead. Beside her are the dark-seeing Aleemoolah, the ebony-clad Durga and the poison-tongued Ulfat. I speculate Hamilton would have finished choking by now and died a purple death. Time, however, is as short as a breath.
Six of them mount their steeds; and before I can, Sukhia comes running and lays a hand on my shoulder, shaking his head. Guljari commanded me to give the guards your number, he says.
A hundred and sixteen.
Lumps form in my throat, but I shake them off. Allow them to dissolve. I take a deep breath and bend down to scratch the blisters on my feet. It’s been a long day, and even though I cannot see them, I pick myself up to gaze at the distant hills.
I then look at my wife on the horse, who is already in tears. Slowly I wrap my fingers around her hand, before drawing them back and nudging her horse forward, away from me. Aleemoolah guides the others through the woods, and in a swipe of darkness, they are gone.
I lumber through the courtyard towards the manor, where shouts and orders erupt from within. Eyes peer out of the lines, hundreds of them, like owls on a branch of birch, awaiting daylight and a life without Hamilton and the eternal salt ponds.
But they cannot take the blame for today. Someone will have to, but not them.
As I walk towards the door, half a dozen guards stream out, the foremost one pointing his rifle at me. He knows me. And yet, he asks me for my number.
A hundred and sixteen, I say.