The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

I purchased a copy of the Times of India from the A.H. Wheeler book stall, which also had on display Mr Kipling's works in their distinctive green covers (Indian Railway Library, Rs 1) for the amusement of passengers with long journeys ahead. As I paid the stall-keeper and tucked the newspaper under my arm, I got a glimpse of a small thin man in dirty white tropical 'ducks' and an oversize topee. He darted out of an inter [20] waiting room door and suddenly vanished in a crowd of Sikh cavalrymen. FerretFace! Was it really him? A lot of people in this country wore oversize topees and dirty 'ducks', but again…

Before I could sort my thoughts out properly someone tapped me on the back of my shoulder, startling me.

'Oh! It's you, Mr Strickland,' I exclaimed, much relieved.

'Now listen to me, Hurree. I've managed to get a first class coupe for two from the government quota, so you can travel with Mr Holmes without any problems from other European passengers.'

'Oh, there will be no problems, Sir.'

'I don't know, Huree. I'm not easy in my mind about letting you and Mr Holmes make this journey.'

'But why, Mr Strickland? We agreed that…'

'I know Mr Holmes is safer out of Bombay, but a moving train does seem like an ideal place for another attempt…'

'Not to worry, Sir. I will maintain a constant vigil.'

The Frontier Mail roared into the station, only a few minutes behind its scheduled arrival time of 1.45 a.m. The sleeping figures on the platform sprang to life. The normal hubbub of the station now rose to a terrific crescendo as yelling passengers gathered up their boxes, bedding-rolls, children and relatives, and made a mad dash for the carriage doors and windows. A collective insanity seemed to overtake the vendors, coolies and beggars as they shrieked and howled to attract custom or charity.

We collected Sherlock Holmes from the first-class waiting room. Assisted by a porter wearing the red regulation shirt and brass arm band, who carried our few items of luggage on his head, we jostled our way through the teeming crowd and finally got to our carriage. As a precaution against dacoits Indian trains do not have corridors, and each carriage is entered independentiy from the platform. A rowdy group of tough-looking British soldiers -'tommies' from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment – occupied the carriage immediately behind ours.

'Are you armed Mr Holmes?' enquired Strickland.

'I have a hair-trigger. I thought it as well to carry it.'

'It would be a considerable relief to me if you would keep it near you night and day, and never relax your precautions. Huree is an old hand at this kind of thing and you can rely on him implicitly.'

'Most certainly. Well, Au revoir then, Strickland. I cannot thank you enough for your help.'

'Goodbye Mr Holmes,' said Strickland as the train began to move down the platform and the child beggars made last frantic efforts to elicit alms from the passengers on the train. 'Goodbye Hurree. Mind you don't get careless.'

Shooing away the littie beggars hanging onto the carriage windows, I leaned back in my seat and fanned myself with the newspaper as the train pulled out of the station on its long journey to Peshawar, at the foot of the Khyber Pass. The train would be proceeding via Deolali, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Bhopal, Jhansi, Gwalior, Agra, Delhi, Umballa, Amritsar and Lahore, but we would have to get off at Umballa and take a pony trap to Simla.

Mr Holmes had his head out of the window and was looking down at something outside. After a littie while he pulled his head in and, settiing back in his seat, lit his pipe. I put my luggage away neatly on the overhead rack, and popped a paan into my mouth. Chewing it slowly I cast my mind over the events of the day. All of a sudden I remembered Ferret-Face.

'Something the matter, Hurree?' Holmes's calm voice broke into my reverie. 'You look like you've just swallowed a thrupenny bit.'

I told him about seeing Ferret-Face at the station.

'But I really could not be sure, Sir,' I said. 'It all happened so dashed quickly.'

'Hmm. Still, it would be imprudent not to regard it as a fortuitous warning. Moran now probably knows of our flight from Bombay.'

It was not a very comforting thought. To be subjected once again to murderous fauna and expanding bullets, especially within the narrow confines of a moving railway carriage, was a trifle rich for my blood. But Sherlock Holmes thankfully diverted my mind from such distressing cogitations by diverting the conversation to more comforting and scholastic directions.

'Ethnology being your metier, Huree,' said Holmes, 'could you kindly tell me whether the representation of an open hand has any symbolic meaning in this country?'

'An open hand? Well, it is a commonly known symbol of the goddess Kali.'

'Pray, enlighten me as to the details.'

'Well, Mr Holmes, Kali is certainly not your usual benign divinity. No indeed. She is the very fierce and terrifying aspect of Devi, the Supreme Goddess; probably the most virulent deity in the Hindu pantheon. She is depicted as a hideous hag smeared in blood, with bared teeth and a protruding tongue. Her four hands hold, variously, a sword, a shield, the severed hand of a giant, and a strangling noose. Her rites involve sacrificial killings – at one time, of humans. Kali is supposed to have… aah… developed her taste for human blood when she was called upon to kill the demon Raklavija.

'But it is all gross superstition and savagery, Mr Holmes, quite unsuitable for the scientific mentality. I, myself, am a Brahmo Somajist, [21] eschewing such barbarity and esteeming instead the noble principles of reason and humanism, as expressed in the Upanishads, which represents the true philosophic teachings of uncorrupted Hinduism.'

Taking his pipe out of his mouth, Sherlock Holmes leaned forward.

'Interesting,' said he, 'but does this fiend or the open hand symbol have any connection with something other than mythology – with crime, maybe?'

'Why, yes, Sir. She was worshipped by the Thugs.'

'Ahh… I remember reading about them a few years ago. Some kind of professional murderers – were they not?'

'Yes, Mr Holmes. They were members of a well-organised confederacy of assassins who travelled in gangs throughout India for more than three hundred years.'

'Pray, continue,' said Holmes, as he leaned back on his seat, placed his fingertips together and closed his eyes.

'The modus operandi of these dastardly murderers was to worm their way into the confidences of wayfarers and, when all was hail-fellow-well-met, strangle them from behind with a handkerchief that had knotted into one of its corners (to give it a better grip) a silver coin consecrated to Kali. All this was done according to certain ancient and rigidly prescribed forms and after the performance of special religious rites, in which the consecration of the pickaxe and the sacrifice of sugar formed a prominent part. Although their essential religious creed was worshipping Kali, there were traces of Islamic practices present in their rituals. The fraternity possessed a jargon of its own called Ramasi. They also had signs by which its members could recognise each other.'

'When did the authorities learn of the existence of this organisation?'

'Definite evidence of Thuggery was only secured when Lord William Bentinck was the Governor-General of India; that would be around the 1830s, at the time of the Company Bahadur – The Honourable East India Company. His Lordship appointed Captain Sleeman to do the needful regarding this outrageous defiance of British Law. Infiveyears no fewer than three thousand Thugs were caught and convicted; one of them admitting to no less than seven hundred and nineteen murders, with many others not too far behind this shocking tally. Over four hundred Thugs were eventually hanged and the rest transported, probably to the Andaman Islands.'