As the voice droned on, it seemed to Neel that the judge's words too were turning into dust so that they could join the white cloud that was circling above the wig. Neel's schooling in English had been at once so thorough and so heavily weighted towards the study of texts that he found it easier, even now, to follow the spoken language by converting it into script, in his head. One of the effects of this operation was that it also robbed the language of its immediacy, rendering its words comfortingly abstract, as distant from his own circumstances as were the waves of Windermere and the cobblestones of Canterbury. So it seemed to him now, as the words came pouring from the judge's mouth, that he was listening to the sound of pebbles tinkling in some faraway well.
'Neel Rattan Halder,' said the judge, brandishing a sheaf of papers, 'it appears that despite the waywardness and depravity of your nature, you do not lack for adherents and supporters, for this court has received several petitions in your favour, some of them signed by the most respectable natives and even by a few Englishmen. This court is also in receipt of an opinion, offered by pandits and munshis who are learned in the laws of your religion: they hold that it is not lawful to punish a man of your caste and station as others are punished. In addition, the jury has taken the extraordinary and unusual step of commending you to the merciful consideration of the court.'
With a gesture of dismissal the judge allowed the papers to slip from his hand. 'Let it be noted that there is nothing this court values more than a recommendation from a jury, for they understand the habits of the people and may be aware of mitigating circumstances that have escaped the attention of the judge. You may be assured that I have subjected every submission placed before me to the most serious scrutiny, in the hope of discovering therein some reasonable grounds for diverting from the straight path of justice. I confess to you that my efforts have been in vain: in none of these petitions, commendations and opinions, have I been able to discover any grounds whatsoever for mitigation. Consider, Neel Rattan Halder, the view, offered by the learned pandits of your religion, that a man of your station ought to be exempted from certain forms of punishment because these penalties might also be visited on your innocent wife and child by causing them to lose caste. I freely acknowledge the necessity of accommodating the law to the religious uses of the natives, so far as it can be done in a manner consistent with justice. But we see no merit whatsoever in the contention that men of high caste should suffer a less severe punishment than any other person; such a principle has never been recognized nor ever will be recognized in English law, the very foundation of which lies in the belief that all are equal who appear before it…'
There was something about this that seemed so absurd to Neel that he had to drop his head for fear of betraying a smile: for if his presence in the dock proved anything at all, it was surely the opposite of the principle of equality so forcefully enunciated by the judge? In the course of his trial it had become almost laughably obvious to Neel that in this system of justice it was the English themselves – Mr Burnham and his ilk – who were exempt from the law as it applied to others: it was they who had become the world's new Brahmins.
But now there was a sudden deepening in the hush of the court, and Neel raised his eyes to find the judge glaring directly at him again: 'Neel Rattan Halder, the petition submitted in your favour implores us to mitigate your sentence on the grounds that you have been a person of wealth, that your young and innocent family will lose caste and be shunned and ostracized by their kinsmen. As to the latter, I have too great a regard for the native character to believe that your kin would be guided by so erroneous a principle, but in any event, this consideration cannot be permitted to have a bearing on our reading of the law. As to your wealth and your position in society, in our view these serve only to aggravate your offence in our eyes. In pronouncing your sentence I have a stark choice: I can choose either to let the law take its course without partiality, or I can choose to establish, as a legal principle, that there exists in India a set of persons who are entitled to commit crimes without punishment.'
And so there does, thought Neel, and you are one of them and I am not.
'Being unwilling to add further to your distress,' said the judge, 'it is sufficient to say that none of the applications made on your behalf have suggested a single proper ground for altering the course of the law. Recent precedent, in England as well as in this country, has established forgery to be a felony for which the forfeiture of property is an inadequate penalty: it carries the additional sanction of transportation beyond the seas for a term to be determined by the court. It is in keeping with these precedents that this court pronounces its sentence, which is that all your properties are to be seized and sold, to make good your debts, and that you yourself are to be transported to the penal settlement on the Mauritius Islands for a period of no less than seven years. So let it be recorded on this, the twentieth day of July, in the year of Our Lord, 1838…'
Soon, by virtue of his prodigious strength, Kalua became the most valued oarsman on the pulwar and he alone, among all the migrants, was allowed to take turns whenever the weather permitted. The privilege pleased him greatly, the strain of rowing being more than amply compensated by the rewards of being on deck, where he could watch the rain-freshened countryside going by. The names of the settlements on the banks made a great impression on him – Patna, Bakhtiyarpur, Teghra – and it became a game with him to compute the number of strokes that separated the next from the last. Occasionally, when some storied town or city came into view, Kalua would go down to let Deeti know: Barauni! Munger! The women's enclosure boasted more than its fair share of windows, being endowed with two, one on either bow. With each of Kalua's reports, Deeti and the others would prise the shutters briefly open to gaze upon the settlements as they approached.
Every day at sunset, the pulwar would stop for the night. Where the banks were dangerously unpeopled, it would drop anchor at midstream, but if they happened to be in the vicinity of some populous town, like Patna, Munger or Bhagalpur, then the boatmen would attach their moorings directly to the shore. The greatest treat of all was when the pulwar pulled up to the ghats of some busy town or river port: in the intervals between showers of rain the women would sit on deck, watching the townsfolk and laughing at the evermore-outlandish accents in which they spoke.