Through the opening of the air duct, Neel too was listening to the women's songs, and neither then nor afterwards was he able to explain why it happened that the language he had been surrounded by for the last two days, now poured suddenly into his head, like flood water cascading over a breached bund. It was either Deeti's voice, or some fragment of her songs, that made him remember that hers was the language, Bhojpuri, in which Parimal had been accustomed to speak to him, in his infancy and childhood – until the day when his father put a stop to it. The fortunes of the Halders were built, the old Raja had said, on their ability to communicate with those who held the reins of power; Parimal's rustic tongue was the speech of those who bore the yoke, and Neel ought never to use it again for it would ruin his accent when it came time for him to learn Hindusthani and Persian, as was necessary for the heir to a zemindary.
Neel, ever the obedient son, had allowed the language to wither in his head, yet, unbeknownst to him, it had been kept alive – and it was only now, in listening to Deeti's songs, that he recognized that the secret source of its nourishment was music: he had always had a great love of dadras, chaitis, barahmasas, horis, kajris – songs such as Deeti was singing. Listening to her now, he knew why Bhojpuri was the language of this music: because of all the tongues spoken between the Ganges and the Indus, there was none that was its equal in the expression of the nuances of love, longing and separation – of the plight of those who leave and those who stay at home.
How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had strayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart.
The urge to use his remembered words was strong upon Neel that night and he could not sleep. Much later, after the women had sung themselves hoarse, and a fitful quiet had descended upon the dabusa, he heard a few of the migrants trying to recall the story of Ganga-Sagar Island. He could not keep himself from telling the tale: speaking through the air duct, he reminded his listeners that if not for this island neither the Ganga nor the sea would exist; for according to the myths, it was here that Lord Vishnu, in his avatar as the sage Kapila, was sitting in meditation, when he was disturbed by the sixty thousand sons of King Sagar who were marching through the land to claim it for the Ikshvaku dynasty. It was here too, exactly where they were now, that those sixty thousand princes were punished for their impudence, being incinerated by a single glance from one of the sage's burning eyes; it was here that their unhallowed ashes had lain until another scion of their dynasty, the good king Bhagiratha, was able to persuade the Ganga to pour down from the heavens and fill the seas: this was how the ashes of the sixty thousand Ikshvaku princes were redeemed from the underworld.
The listeners were dumbfounded – not by the tale so much as by Neel himself. Who would have thought that this filthy qaidi would show himself to be possessed of so much telling and so many tongues? To think that he could even speak an approximation of their own Bhojpuri! Why, if a crow had begun to sing a kajri they could not have been more amazed.
Deeti too was awake and listening, but she found little assurance in the story. I'll be glad when we're gone from this place, she whispered to Kalua. There's nothing worse than to sit here and feel the land pulling us back.
At dawn, with much greater regret than he had anticipated, Zachary said goodbye to Mr Doughty, who was now headed back to shore with his team. Once the pilot was gone it remained only to refresh a few supplies before weighing anchor and standing out to sea. The re-provisioning was quickly done, for the schooner was soon beseiged by a flotilla of bumboats: cabbage-carrying coracles, fruit-laden dhonies, and machhwas that were filled with goats, chickens and ducks. In this floating bazar there was everything a ship or a lascar might need: canvas by the gudge, spare jugboolaks and zambooras, coils of istingis and rup-yan, stacks of seetulpatty mats, tobacco by the batti, rolls of neem-twigs for the teeth, martabans of isabgol for constipation, and jars of columbo-root for dysentery: one ungainly gordower even had a choola going with a halwai frying up fresh jalebis. With so many vendors to set against each other, it took Steward Pinto and the mess-boys very little time to acquire everything that was needed by way of provisions.
By noon the schooner's anchors were a-trip and the trikat-wale were ready to haul on her hanjes – but the wind, which had been faltering all morning, chose just this time, or so the tindals said, to trap the vessel in a kalmariya. With her rigging taut, and her crew set to make sail, the Ibis lay becalmed in a looking-glass sea. At every change of watch, a man was sent aloft with instructions to sound the alert if any breath of wind should be felt to stir. But hour after hour went by, and the serang's shouted queries -Hawá? – met with nothing but deniaclass="underline" Kuchho nahi.
Sitting in the full glare of the sun, without a breeze to cool her, the schooner's hull trapped the heat so that down below, in the dabusa, it was as if the migrants' flesh were melting on their bones. To let in some air, the maistries removed the wooden hatch, leaving only the grating in place. But it was so still outside that scarcely a breath of air trickled through: instead, the perforations of the iron screen allowed the stench of the hold to rise slowly into the sky, summoning kites, vultures and sea-mews. Some circled lazily above, as if waiting for carrion, while others settled on the yards and shrouds, screeching like witches and peppering the decks with their droppings.
The rules for the rationing of drinking water were still new and unfamiliar to the girmitiyas: the system had not been put to any kind of test before, and now, as it began to break down, the patterns of order that had ruled the dabusa thus far broke down with it. By early afternoon, the day's allowance of drinking water had dwindled to a point where men were fighting for possession of those gharas that still contained a few sips. Egged on by Jhugroo, some half-dozen migrants climbed the ladder and began to beat on the gratings of the hatch: Water! Listen, up there! Our gharas need to be filled.
When the maistries came to remove the gratings there was a near riot: dozens of men scrambled up the ladder in a desperate effort to force their way out on deck. But the hatch was only wide enough for a single man to pass through at a time and every head that was thrust out of it presented an easy target to the maistries. Their lathis came crashing down on the girmitiyas' skulls and shoulders, knocking them back inside, one after another. Within minutes both the grating and the hatch were slammed shut again.
Haramzadas! – the voice belonged to Bhyro Singh – I swear I'm going to straighten you out; you're the unruliest mob of coolies I've ever seen…
The disturbance, however, was not entirely unexpected, for it was rare for a contingent of girmitiyas to adapt themselves to the shipboard regimen without some resistance. The overseers had dealt with this kind of trouble before and knew exactly what to do: they shouted through the gratings to let the girmitiyas know that the Kaptan had ordered them to muster on the main deck; they were to come up the ladder in orderly fashion, one by one.
The maistries directed the women to come out of the hold first, but some of them were in such a bad way that they couldn't climb the ladder and had to be carried up. Paulette was the last woman to leave the hold and she did not realize how unsteady she was till she stepped on deck. Her knees shook, as if about to buckle, and she had to hold on to the deck rail to keep her balance.