Everyone needs water after they come through the mixing room, he said. Better you rest here a bit, Bhauji.
Gratefully, Deeti squatted in the shade of a mango tree while he pointed to the buildings around them: there was the wetting shed, where the poppy-leaf wrappers were dampened before being sent into the assembly room; and there, set a little way back from the other buildings, was the house where medicines were made – all kinds of dark syrups and strange white powders that were much valued by the sahibs.
Deeti allowed the words to roll around and away from her, until she was once again impatient to deal with the errand at hand. Come, she said, let's go. They rose to their feet and he led her diagonally across the courtyard, into yet another gigantic shed, every bit as large as the weighing room – with the difference that where the latter had been filled with the clamour of altercation, this one was sepulchrally quiet, as if it were some cavernous shrine in the high Himalayas, chilly, damp and dimly lit. Stretching away, on either side, reaching all the way to the lofty ceiling, were immense shelves, neatly arranged with tens of thousands of identical balls of opium, each about the shape and size of an unhusked coconut, but black in colour, with a glossy surface. Deeti's escort whispered in her ear: This is where the afeem is brought in to dry, after it's been assembled. She noticed now that the shelves were joined by struts and ladders; glancing around, she saw troops of boys clinging to the timber scaffolding, climbing as nimbly as acrobats at a fair, hopping from shelf to shelf to examine the balls of opium. Every now and again, an English overseer would call out an order and the boys would begin to toss spheres of opium to each other, relaying them from hand to hand until they had come to rest safely on the floor. How could they throw so accurately with one hand, while holding on with the other – and that too at a height where the slightest slip would mean certain death? The sureness of their grip seemed amazing to Deeti, until suddenly one of them did indeed drop a ball, sending it crashing to the floor, where it burst open, splattering its gummy contents everywhere. Instantly the offender was set upon by cane-wielding overseers and his howls and shrieks went echoing through the vast, chilly chamber. The screams sent her hurrying after her relative and she caught up with him on the threshold of yet another of the factory's chambers. Here he lowered his voice reverentially, in the manner of a pilgrim who is about to step into the innermost sanctum of a temple. This is the assembly room, he whispered. It is not for everyone to work here – but your husband Hukam Singh, is one such.
It could indeed have been a temple that Deeti had entered now, for the long, well-aired passage ahead was lined with two rows of dhoti-clad men, sitting cross-legged on the floor, like Brahmins at a feast, each on his own woven seat, with an array of brass cups and other equipment arranged around him. Deeti knew, from her husband's tales, that there were no fewer than two hundred and fifty men working in that room, and twice that number of running-boys – yet such was the assemblers' concentration that there was very little noise, apart from the pattering of the runners' feet, and periodic shouts announcing the completion of yet another ball of opium. The assemblers' hands moved with dizzying speed as they lined hemispherical moulds with poppy-leaf rotis, moistening the wrappers with lewah, a light solution of liquid opium. Hukam Singh had told Deeti that the measure for every ingredient was precisely laid down by the Company's directors in faraway London: each package of opium was to consist of exactly one seer and seven-and-a-half chittacks of the drug, the ball being wrapped in five chittacks of poppy-leaf rotis, half of fine grade and half coarse, the whole being moistened with no more and no less than five chittacks of lewah. So finely honed was the system, with relays of runners carrying precise measures of each ingredient to each seat, that the assemblers' hands never had cause to falter: they lined the moulds in such a way as to leave half the moistened rotis hanging over the edge. Then, dropping in the balls of opium, they covered them with the overhanging wrappers, and coated them with poppy-trash before tapping them out again. It remained only for runners to arrive with the outer casing for each ball – two halves of an earthenware sphere. The ball being dropped inside, the halves were fitted into a neat little cannonshot, to hold safe this most lucrative of the British Empire 's products: thus would the drug travel the seas, until the casing was split open by a blow from a cleaver, in distant Maha-Chin.
Dozens of the black containers passed through the assemblers' hands every hour and were duly noted on a blackboard: Hukam Singh, who was not the most skilled among them, had once boasted to Deeti of having put together a hundred in a single day. But today Hukam Singh's hands were no longer working and nor was he at his usual seat: Deeti spotted him as she entered the assembly room – he was lying on the floor with his eyes closed and he looked as if he had had some kind of seizure, for a thin line of bubbling spit was dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.
Suddenly, Deeti was assailed by the sirdars who supervised the packaging room. What took you so long?… Don't you know your husband is an afeemkhor?… Why do you send him here to work?… Do you want him to die?
Despite the shocks of the day, Deeti was not of a mind to ignore these attacks. From the shelter of her sari, she snapped back: And who are you to speak to me like that? How would you earn your living if not for afeemkhors?
The altercation drew the attention of an English agent, who waved the sirdars aside. Glancing from Hukam Singh's prone body to Deeti, he said, quietly: Tumhara mard hai? Is he your husband?
Although the Englishman's Hindi was stilted, there was a kindly sound to his voice. Deeti nodded, lowering her head, and her eyes filled with tears as she listened to the sahib berating the sirdars: Hukam Singh was a sepoy in our army; he was a balamteer in Burma and was wounded fighting for the Company Bahadur. Do you think any of you are better than him? Shut your mouths and get back to work or I'll whip you with my own chabuck.
The cowed sirdars fell silent, stepping aside as four bearers stooped to lift Hukam Singh's inert body off the floor. Deeti was following them out when the Englishman turned to say: Tell him he can have his job back whenever he wants.
Deeti joined her hands together, to express her gratitude – but in her heart she knew that her husband's days in the Carcanna had come to an end.
On the way home, in Kalua's cart, with her husband's head in her lap and her daughter's fingers in her hand, she had eyes neither for Ghazipur's forty-pillared palace nor for its memorial to the departed Laat-Sahib. Her thoughts were now all for the future and how they would manage without her husband's monthly pay. In thinking of this, the light dimmed in her eyes; even though nightfall was still a couple of hours away, she felt as if she were already enveloped in darkness. As if by habit she began to chant the prayer-song for the end of the day:
Sãjh bhailé
Sãjha ghar ghar ghumé
Ke mora sãjh
manayo ji
Twilight whispers