And we say, ‘Let us rush behind Bhatta’s sugar canes, there they cannot catch us, for if they come to one row, we will slip into another,’ and we stumble and rise again, and we hold to our children and the night-blind, and we duck and we rise again, and, our eyes fixed on the soldiers, we rush towards Bhatta’s sugar cane field. And when we are there, Satamma says, ‘The snakes, the snakes!’ and we say, ‘If our karma is that, may it be so,’ and we huddle behind the sugar cane reeds and we lie along the sugar cane ditches, and we peep across the dark, watery fields, and the children begin to say, ‘I am afraid, I am afraid,’ and we say, ‘Wait a moment, wait, and it will be over soon.’ And, our hearts tied up in our sari-fringes, we gaze beyond the dead harvest growth, and the crowd still moves forward towards the gaslights, and by the gaslights the coolies still bend their heads and cut the harvest, and a man is there, crying out, swearing away — their maistri. And the nearer the crowd comes to the coolies the louder is the shout, ‘Gandhi Mahatma ki jai! Inquilab Zindabad! Inquilab Zindabad!’ And suddenly we see shadows moving in the Skeffington Coffee Estate, shadows moving like buffaloes on a harvest night, and not a voice comes from them, and we say, ‘Surely, they are not our men,’ and yet we say, ‘The Skeffington coolies will not let us down.’ And then, as the pumpkin moon is just rising over the Beda Ghats, there comes a sudden cry from the top of the Bebbur mound, and we jump to our feet and we ask, ‘Oh, what can it be, what?’ and a flag is seen moving in the hands of a white-clad man, and the police boots are crunching upon the sand, and we say somebody is running towards the barricades — but who? And the crowd is still by the Bebbur field, and the flag is still there, and there is a furious cry coming from the Bebbur mound gate and a crash is heard, and we hear the coolies rushing at the barricades and they, too, have a flag in their hands and they blow a trumpet and shout out, ‘Vandè Mataram! Mataram Vandè!’ and there is an answer from the crowd below, ‘Inquilab Zindabad! Inquilab Zindabad!’ and between them is Rangè Gowda’s big field and the Bebbur field and the triangular field.
And of a sudden the coolies of the city stop work and at a command the lights are all put out, and there is nothing but the rising moon and a rag of cloud here and there and all the stars of night and the shining dome of the Kenchamma temple, and the winking lantern from the Skeffington bungalow. And the Skeffington coolies, black with their white dhotis, tumble and rush down, and there is another shot in the air, and this time we see the flag of the coolies flutter as they advance towards the crouching barricades; and a white officer is there, and there is surely a horse beneath him, for he is there, he is there, he is everywhere, and one of the soldiers cries out something from the barricades, and the coolies answer one and all, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and then someone sets fire to a dhoti and throws it at the soldiers, and there is a long, confused cry like that of children, and we see lathis rising and falling, darting and dipping like fishes, and the coolies shout out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! To the fields! To the barricades, brothers!’ And the crowd below, wading through the harvests, shouts back, ‘Say, brother, Inquilab Zindabad! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ And they seem so near the Skeffington coolies that they have just to jump and they will be at the top of the mound and the Skeffington coolies have just to jump down and they will be with the crowd, and between them stand the city coolies, white and bearded and motionless. And when the Skeffington coolies shout again, ‘Inquilab Zindabad! Inquilab Zindabad! Say, brother, Inquilab Zindabad!’ a volley spits into the air, and in the silence that follows, there is a voice that shouts out, ‘Stop, or we shoot.’—’Shoot!’ answers one of the coolies, and a shot bursts straight at him, and another and yet another, and there are cries and gasps, and people beat their mouths and lament, and the crowd below feels so furious that, shouting ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ they run forward, and the police can stop them no more, and they jump over field-bunds and tumble against gaslights and fall over rocks and sheafs, sickles, and scythes, three thousand men in all, and from the top of the mound soldiers open fire.
And there follows a long tilting silence, and then yells and moans and groans again. And we say, ‘No, we can see this no more, we, too, shall be with them.’ But Lingamma says she is feeling like doing something, and Lakshamma says her heart is fainting, and Nanjamma says, ‘I’ll be with the children.’ So Vedamma and Seethamma and Lakshamma and I, we go up behind the crowd, and the bullets scream through the air, like flying snakes taken fire, they wheeze and hiss and slash against the trees, or fall hissing into the canal, and Vedamma gets a bullet in the left leg, and we put her on the field-bund, and we tear up a little paddy and we lay her on it and she says, ‘Rama-Rama, I’m dying — Rama-Rama, I’m dying,’ and we say, ‘No, it’s only the leg,’ but she says, ‘No, no,’ but we know it is well, and there is such a cry, such a lamentation from the crowd, that our hearts are squeezed like a wet cloth, and we say, ‘Vedamma, Vedamma, stop here and we will get some help.’ And already in the big field men are being bandaged, and we say, ‘Brother, brother, there is a woman wounded,’ and somebody says, ‘Ramu, go and see her.’ And a Volunteer hurries torch in hand to bandage Vedamma, and we see already, two, three, four stretchers bearing away the wounded, and they say the Congress ambulance is there, that it had slipped through swamp and jungle, and the wounded would be carried to it. And we say, ‘How are things going, brother?’ and the Volunteer says, ‘They are resisting,’ and we ask, ‘And women, are there some women?’ and he says, ‘Why, there are many.’—’And you are a city boy?’ we ask—’Yes, yes, sister,’ he says, and we say, ‘We’ll follow you,’ and he says, ‘Come,’ and we run behind him, and the shots fall here and fall there, and in the darkness we can see a white group of men moving up, a white group of city boys, and behind them are women, and behind the women the crowd again, and the wounded shriek from this field and from that, voices of men and boys and old women, and above it all rises from the front ranks the song:
And the flame of Jatin,
And the fire of Bhagat,
And the love of the Mahatma in all,
O, lift the flag high,
Lift the flag high,
This is the flag of the revolution.
And the Skeffington coolies cry out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’; and the coolies of the harvest take it up and shout, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we are near them and they are near us, and they say something to us and we do not understand what they mutter, and we say, ‘Mahatma, Mahatma, Gandhi Mahatma!’ and they put their mouths to our ears and say, ‘Gandhi Mahatma ki jai!’ and, ‘Punjab, Punjab!’ But our ears are turned to the firing and we strain our eyes to see the coolies on the mound, the coolies of the Skeffington Coffee Estate, but all we hear are shouts and shrieks and yells. Then suddenly from the Himavathy bend there is such a rush of more coolies that the soldiers do not know which way to turn, for the city boys are still marching up, and women are behind them, and the crowd behind the women, and there are the coolies across the barricades; and there is such joy that a wild cry of ‘Vandè!. Mataram!. ’ gushes from the valley to the mountaintops and all the moonlit sky above us. And the white man shouts a command and all the soldiers open fire and all the soldiers charge — they come rushing towards us, their turbans trembling and their bayonets shining under the bright moon, and our men lie flat on the fields, the city boys and the women, and the soldiers dash upon us and trample over us, and bang their rifle butts against our heads. There are cries and shrieks and moans and groans, and men fly to the left and to the right, and they howl and they yell and they fall and they rise and we rise, too, to fly, but the soldiers have seen us, and one of them rushes towards us, and we are felled and twisted, we are felled and we are kicked, we are felled and the bayonets waved over our faces — and a long time passes before we wake and we find Satamma fainted beside us, and Madamma and I, who were soaking in a ditch, crawl past her. And then there is a shot, and a fleeing man nearby is shot in the chest and he falls over us, and the moon splashes on his moustached face, his peasant blanket soaked in blood, and he slowly lets down his head, crying ‘Amma, Mother! Amm — Amm!’ and we wipe the saliva from his mouth, and we put our mouths to his ear and say, ‘Narayan, Narayan,’ but he is already dead. There is no more charging now, but a continuous firing comes down from the Bebbur mound. The moon still shines and with it the winking light of the Skeffington Coffee Estate.