A Dalliance with Destiny

By Aman Singh Maharaj

Spanning a century, and set in South Africa and India, the novel captures the odyssey of a seemingly brash man in his thirties, who fights to remain lucid in what appears to be an irrational world. Whilst everyone around him is still celebrating the euphoric entry of his country into the rest of the democratic world, he is at odds with it. After a series of distressing experiences, he attempts to extinguish the raison d’etre of his angst by embarking on an increasingly mystical journey to India with an unconventional best friend.
“A literary masterpiece, transcending the local and the global, with extraordinary attention to detail. A protagonist who scales the boundaries of sanity and material depravity in his higher spiritual quest.”
“The human condition is dissected in all its complexities with a sharp scalpel, where we sometimes feel a sense of discomfort because nothing is quite safe. And, then, just as rapidly, it suddenly points us towards our own soulful compasses. The intertwinement of humour and pathos cuts close to the bone, but leaves us with a blush in its wake.”

“The narrative reminds one of Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ – the bawdy unravelling of the archetype’s sex life juxtaposed against his quest for spiritual enlightenment as a pilgrim.”
“A commentary on the life of a young man in search of his epic life story, one roots for the main character, yet hates him in equal parts. This intrepid piece of writing brings to the surface a litany of oscillating emotions, for there is nothing ordinary about the lead character’s journey. There is no moment of blandness here.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398448667

Aman Singh Maharaj

Born in 1973, Dr. Aman Singh Maharaj lives in Durban, South Africa. Considering himself to be a traveller with an avid interest in anthropology, he never ceases to be enthralled by the sheer kaleidoscope of cultures, diversity and architectural marvels that the world has to offer. After graduating with an honours level degree in civil engineering, he continued with an MBA and then a PhD in the field of development studies, whilst working in a multitude of diverse professions, including as an engineer and an economist, before finally choosing to become an entrepreneur. Quite enamoured by the concept of ‘magical realism’, he later decided to enter the literary realm. He also writes articles on various subjects for national newspapers, focusing mainly on the Indian Diaspora, but he has now also forayed into more culturally generic topics.

Book preview

A Dalliance

with Destiny

Aman Singh Maharaj

Austin Macauley Publishers

A Dalliance

with Destiny

Copyright Information ©

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Part I: The Promised Land

Prologue Escape

Chapter 1: An Ancestor’s Mistake

Chapter 2: The Relationship Shared by Black and Brown Crumbles

Chapter 3: A Little Boy Writes a Note

Chapter 4: Restlessness

Chapter 5: India Entices with Her Shapely Limbs

Chapter 6: The Dating Game

Chapter 7: Designing a Journey

Chapter 8: A City of Two Tales

Part II: Milan’s Tale

Chapter 9: A Wedding

Chapter 10: Hedonism

Chapter 11: An Intelligent Woman

Chapter 12: Adult Conversations

Chapter 13: Fall of a Coward

Chapter 14: The Call of My Ancestors

Chapter 15: Rise of a Hero

Chapter 16: My Preferred Place of Death

Chapter 17: Serendipity

Chapter 18: Euphoria

Part III: Kismet

Chapter 19: The Magnificence of God’s Smile

Chapter 20: Synchronicity

Epilogue: Revelations of the Ganga

Copyright Information ©

Aman Singh Maharaj 2022

The right of Aman Singh Maharaj to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him, as per Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, nor transmitted in any form, nor by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, nor otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This book is a work of fiction. Similarity to persons, entities, or events; living or dead, current or completed, respectively, is purely coincidental, except in certain instances where actual historical events and / or characters may have been used and / or embellished to add animation to the storyline, which may include dates and places of events. Any derogatory terms and / or contents found in this novel do not express the personal views and opinions of the author in any way whatsoever, and are used only in the context of the plot or history. Any offence taken by a singular person and / or grouping is unintended and sincerely regretted.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398448650 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398448667 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

About the Author

Born in 1973, Dr. Aman Singh Maharaj lives in Durban, South Africa. Considering himself to be a traveller with an avid interest in anthropology, he never ceases to be enthralled by the sheer kaleidoscope of cultures, diversity and architectural marvels that the world has to offer.

After graduating with an honours level degree in civil engineering, he continued with an MBA and then a PhD in the field of development studies, whilst working in a multitude of diverse professions, including as an engineer and an economist, before finally choosing to become an entrepreneur. Quite enamoured by the concept of ‘magical realism’, he later decided to enter the literary realm.

He also writes articles on various subjects for national newspapers, focusing mainly on the Indian Diaspora, but he has now also forayed into more culturally generic topics.

Dedication

For the Absolute Love of My Eternity, My Dear Mother …

Acknowledgement

My sincere gratitude goes out to an almost never-ending list of family, friends, colleagues, employees, teachers, professors, fellow authors and professional wordsmiths for their insightful comments and assistance, in whichever form, on the manuscript, or otherwise.

Author’s Note

It was no ordinary thing to wake up one fine day in the midst of 2006 and tell myself, Today, I shall begin writing a book! It seemed quite grandiose. After all, a whole decade had gone by without my even glancing through a novel. But a decision was taken and that was that.

It took a while for me to fathom why I felt any compulsion to write, except that when the time came, I simply did! It was not as if I had experienced an unexpected event that had prompted me into a storytelling frame of mind. It was, unpretentiously, an ordinary day.

In being a writer from Africa, there is this rather challenging issue of positioning a virtually unknown city within the global context. A novelist in New York, for instance, would not think twice about incorporating a street name like ‘Park Avenue’ into his prose. Even a hermit living in a cave in some secluded place would picture the upmarket skyscrapers. Alas, the very ethos of unfamiliar cities needs to be framed through a series of historical events in order to give one a genuine feel for their characters. This is the bane of us wordsmiths from the relatively abstruse world.

The surrounding within which I had to scribe my words was not poetic, nor did it indulge me in an imagined landscape of creative bursts. Rather, truly, my chosen place of crafting a tale was quite ordinary. Yann Martel gave a vivid description of his failed first attempt to pen a novel in scintillating India. Ernest Hemingway banged away at a typewriter in amorous Paris. Nadine Gordimer stood on dusty African plains with a notebook and pen in hand. I, on the other hand, had no swirling mists in my midst, no quixotic backdrops of fertile valleys below me, and had not taken any lovely, early morning walks to breathe in the brisk mountain air.

Alas, I belted out my manuscript like a kaamchor at work, in a small cubicle, when my superiors were not looking too closely, or late at night, devouring copious bags of cholesterol laden crisps, and gushing down litres of Diet Coke. It was all done on a laptop computer that allowed me to delete humdrum words and to do spellchecks along with all sorts of other wonderful things that ‘real artistes’ like Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens never had access to back in their respective eras.

Writing, to me, is about what I desire as the ideal ‘authentic’ setting to scribe within. I want the intense romance of it all; to be sitting in a rickety bungalow atop some quaint Indian hill station, pounding out a sybaritic novel on an old Olivetti typewriter, whilst being served lavish amounts of chai and pakoras by some coquettish maidservant, who would look a bit like some yesteryear, Indian lollypop starlet, wearing a tightly draped sari over a buxom backside, which I got to voyeuristically peek at as she retreated. Perhaps I had watched too many Raj Kapoor movies as a kid, where the heroine was always scantily clad, swinging her voluptuous bum from side to side near some burbling brook with a clay pot astride her hip.

Thus, ping-ponging between an insipid corporate milieu of dreary government and Art Deco buildings, and a lacklustre apartment block nearby where I stayed, I had completed the manuscript in some three months, about sixty thousand words. I read through it and realised that I had written a creative work of disjointed ramblings. I was forced to ask myself, perhaps egotistically, "Whatever was I doing, with my credentials, penning a novel?" However, the literary seed was already sown within me, and I spent the next decade and a half ‘murdering’ thousands of erroneous words in my manuscript before I finally came up with a long, drawn-out answer.

I recall quite vividly the day that my darling mother took me to a prefabricated, make-do library next to the local civic buildings. It was the smell that captivated me. So mouldy yet so satisfying, making my rather sensitive nose twitch. The very first book I ever read from there was all about some poor bugger who wore mittens, if my memory serves me correctly. Of course, in Africa, we never quite knew what these woollen thingamajigs really were. It’s generally an arid continent, after all. So, quite likely, it was at this moment that my becoming a litterateur was preordained. The path of self-entitled precociousness may have been thrust upon me at an early age.

A few years later, not having done our homework, one day, and fearing punishment, a friend and I managed to bring the school to a standstill for the afternoon because we insisted that we had seen a ghost in a nearby bush. Why an entire teaching fraternity would give credence to the feral imaginations of two young boys is beyond me, but it alludes to the quaintness of the times back then. So that was how the creative side was born within me, the ability to spin a yarn that people would simply want to believe.

Perhaps, the only way to truly evolve is through developing a spirit of enquiry founded within the swathe of a moral compass. There are distinct moments in time when one can attribute the qualities that one now possesses to a particular milestone. Within all this, some ardent sermonising probably seeps into my writing.

It is within this rubric that I probably shape the themes that I create tales around, embellishing events to add to a more appealing narrative, using characters that one comes across in daily life, but giving them artistic exaggeration.

A part of me doesn’t quite see that this is a ‘for everyone’ kind of book. Perhaps, it is a sort of literary equivalent of art nouveau cinema with limited commercial appeal. However, I would like to employ the shroud of self-aggrandisement in thinking that it is a decadent piece of literature, crafted far from the madding words of pulp fiction.

When I first submitted my manuscript to potential publishers, some had quite resolutely said, Nobody quite reads such lengthy novels anymore, so take this out, take that out, as readers want to see pace.; You need to set the story more on this continent, as it’s all about ‘home brewed’ stuff right now.; and Nobody likes an anti-hero.

Eventually, I had responded, "I read lengthy novels. If I wanted to pen a short story, I would’ve written a novella.; The Ganges does not flow in Africa, so how could I set it here?; also, If the general public wished to read about some antiseptic, sanitised protagonist, they should rather imbibe a religious parable instead, as there are no ‘holy cows’ when I write."

Truth be told, I am also unsure if public recognition, in any sort of way, is what I actually want. After all, there’s great solace to be taken in anonymity, as vainglorious eminence does tend to compel the masses to shoot their brickbats at provocative penmanship. Thus, it was to be many years of vacillation before I decided to release my debut novel.

Aman Singh Maharaj,

Durban, 2022

Maps of India and the Eastern Gangetic Plain

Part I

The Promised Land

A narrator starts this tale;

An odyssey begins to unveil.

Prologue

Escape

Flight to Bombay: December 2009

Love him, hate him, he was what he was, making no apologies for it. This simply was an ugly, horrid planet, lying in a paltry third position from the sun, rather nondescript as numbers went. And it had been a wretched life for him so far. So, he chose to be boorish, his shield against the world. Thirty-two-year-old Milan Gansham sat immersed in his usual glum introspection aboard a South African Airways flight to India, his cheeks somewhat puffed up in tandem with his reticent emotions. The undulating cloud in his chest played such a chameleon-like role in relation to his emotions, always palpably felt. It was his very soul that needed gentrifying.

Sandwiched between a fat woman and a waspish man whose mouth stank of spicy poppadums, two stereotypical caricatures of the Indian society of yesteryear, he was in an economy class seat, hurtling through the air at nine hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, eleven thousand metres above sea level, halfway across the Indian Ocean. He was escaping the world, and what better way than a sojourn to India to ‘find’, or perhaps even lose, himself? After all, wasn’t the subcontinent the hackneyed escape for all seekers, lost or found, or even somewhere in the middle?

Despite his melancholic indulgence, he still peeped at the overweight woman sitting next to him, despising the sensation of her bloated right thigh pressed against his left. Catching sight of his seemingly poorly concealed stare, she introduced herself, Hello. I’m Mrs. Chulbul Khurana, originally from Haryana.

Chulbul? he responded, quizzically, not aware of his subtle rudeness, quite enjoying its rhyming sound.

Oh, it’s only a term of endearment used by my parents, she replied.

They had proceeded into a lacklustre conversation for a while. She was the wife of an Indian diplomat stationed in some Central African country, now on one of her bi-annual visits back home to be somewhere more civilised. After their conversation had dwindled, Milan mumbled her sobriquet softly to himself: Chulbul … just like her physique, even her name sounded fat despite that it translated as ‘mischievous’.

To him, women were allotted into two major categories: ‘attractive’ and ‘not attractive’. All other descriptions of the fairer sex being ancillary issues. After all, his best friend, Birju, often said that to find an angel, one had to saunter in the stratosphere, always keeping one’s ego aloft, so to speak, in order to meet that mystical someone. Although it was difficult to be quite so confident, what with Milan’s nut-brown skin, average face and rather common to stocky build. He was not one to easily stand out in a crowd.

He sighed wistfully, feeling even sorrier for himself now. There were four hundred people on board the plane and it had to be he who ended up sitting up next to ‘Mrs. Humpty Dumpty’. Once again, life had stacked its veritable set of odds against Milan, a secretly aspirant superstar, unsung hero, and phantom saviour of his race.

But, in reality, he was a confused product of nineteenth and early twentieth century Indian émigrés from differing statuses. They included a bygone litany of somewhat Dalit and low caste monikers, comprising of Bhangis, Noniyas and Chamaars; a gutter level mix, in his own self-deprecating head, of scavenging shit cleaners, farm labourers and leather workers.

Hating the original surname that he had been born with, feeling it highlighted his generally lowly, ancestral roots, upon reaching the requisite legal age, he had immediately changed it to something that sounded more palatable, which he had ‘borrowed’ from some Hindi movie. Now, there was no direct link to the social standing of some of his ancestors. Besides, he felt that it was suggestive of a certain regal flamboyance whenever he introduced himself.

However, that all being said and done, there was one highly diluted, warrior lineage of Kshatriyas that he steadfastly held onto in his mind, as it elevated his otherwise plebeian status. But, added to all this, being a lonely, unemployed divorcee was the latest crown of thorns in his list of epithets.

A flight attendant pushing a trolley caught Milan’s attention as she walked past. He summed up her physical attributes with a single glance. Skin: too pale. Arse: too gelatinous. Eyes: too bulgy. Nose: too stubby. Lips: too thin. He grimaced. How had she ever passed the screening requirements in terms of aesthetic appeal to actually get this job? Airhostesses were meant to be sexy. Erection hitting one’s forehead kind of hot, he thought, smiling to himself before feeling a sudden guilty tingle at the centre of his brow. He now wondered whether it was sinful to picture his manhood, upon arousal, stretching to the point where his spiritual ‘third eye’ was supposed to be. It was totally and utterly ‘un-Hindu’ to have even thought it. Quite diabolical, in fact!

He eventually reverted his gaze to the airhostess. She really seemed so unlike the other stewardesses he normally picked up, recalling his sexual rendezvous with a scattering of White girls having fetishes for spicy men. Although, he did often wonder what it was exactly that they, or any hue of girl for that matter, quite saw in him. Surely, any such someone’s attraction to him still couldn’t belie his genuine lack of good looks?

Back home, middle-aged White mothers would often warn their wanton daughters about coffee-coloured men desiring to plunge into the pink succulence of their delicate rosebuds with wrathful vengeance, thinking that a carnal notch of the superior race on the Brown man’s belt would stroke his beleaguered ego. Little did such mothers know that sleeping with Goris simply didn’t create a feeling equivalent to conquering Mount Everest in Milan’s head. After all, flesh was flesh ‘when it came down to brass tacks’.

Truth be told, Milan liked the females he purveyed to be a little firmer, just a wee bit tighter. Years of glimpsing at the cover pages of glitzy magazines had conditioned him into thinking that beauty of the female form lay captured in the attractiveness of a pointy nose and a tight, infinity symbol shaped pair of buttocks that tapered ever so beautifully. So, he symbolically planted his flag as a colonialist would have, annexing pale skin instead of territory, establishing his own brand of fiefdom. But he couldn’t quite recall an occasion when he had ever woken up and whooped for joy after having indulged in the lascivious charms of a White girl.

Eventually suppressing his ruminations on interracial relationship dynamics, he turned, trying to find a more comfortable position. He cursed softly when he bumped a knobbly knee against the seat in front of him. Notwithstanding his own slightly thickset, but only five-and-a-half-foot frame, he briefly debated whether aeroplane interiors were designed by defiant midgets; that this crowded arrangement of seats was their way of getting back at society.

Finally, growing weary of his deeply embedded self-pity, he took refuge in applying his knowledge of scholastic level science as an unusual calming technique. He determined the time it would take for the plane to fall from that height if all its engines failed. Assuming that it dropped like a stone, he estimated that it would take about two and half minutes for him to become a splat on the ground, quite forgetting that he was flying over an ocean at that moment. Nonetheless, it was not much time to repent for his sins. But what could a man really do in this interval? His first, ‘all the way’ sexual experience with an old girlfriend, so very long ago, had taken less than that. Much, much less.

A sluggish movement from Chulbul Khurana broke him out of his reverie. He glanced at her once more. She was pretty, but fat nonetheless, perhaps a good prototype for a new British Leyland truck, he wondered sardonically, reminding him so much of the stout women who had pinched his cheeks when he was a child. She needed to urinate every half an hour. Milan’s legs were forced to recoil, giving her access to the aisle. Her torso would rise. Blubbery lard would undulate against his thighs. She would pass him by and repeat the action with the poppadum smelling mouthed man, who, on the contrary, seemed to enjoy the brush of Chulbul Khurana’s body. Flab truly nauseated Milan, reminding him of his own burgeoning girth that had come with the end of his twenties.

Turning to his other side again, sitting at the far end of the cabin, he caught sight of a pretty girl with henna dyed hair, the rust-red colour of some tawny lion’s magnificent mane, absorbed in a book. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. Dainty. Petite. A dandelion in a gentle breeze. His eyes automatically fell to her bobbing feet. Up down, up down, up down. They were naked, her white sandals pushed to the side. He absorbed the delicateness of the arches. The slenderness of her tantalising toes. He was mesmerised. Aroused. The sight of her somewhat innocent feet reminded him of a coming-of-age movie he had once seen, which made him feel pure, clean and wholesome – how love should ideally be. Clichéd perhaps, but satisfying, nonetheless.

The poppadum smelling mouthed man, a Madrasi Brahmin with three faint sandalwood paste marks on his forehead, who was returning home from a business trip, caught Milan’s line of focus. He had earlier unravelled with increasing levels of frankness, adding a ‘y’ to any word beginning with a vowel. (Richard J. Subramanyam, Junior. – "What ya clean country you yare having here … just like the west! – I deal yin ceramic tiles. – Long, long yago, yI nearly yalmost completed my yeMBA yat ya tiptop yAmerican yuniversity. – My wife yand yI don’t make naughty-naughty yanymore.) The ‘Junior’ was obviously an addition from time spent in the USA. A discussion on his westernised first name revealed that he had officially changed it because all the Richards of the world were always successful men, like Richard the Lion Heart, Richard Branson, Richard Burton, yand what not. He smiled at Milan now, wiggling his head. Sooo very piping hot, brother. How yI’d like to sink my bazooka yinto her!" drooled Richard J. Subramanyam, Junior, smacking his lips lecherously while pointing at the girl. The man unconsciously moved his hands towards his private regions, realigning the bulge that had rapidly emerged.

Milan winced. He felt dirty all of a sudden, his voyeurism disturbed. Was he a pig like this man, Mr. Richard J. Subramanyam, Junior? A younger version, perhaps? A piglet? Milan eventually decided to ignore the man and his intense head wiggling, as the shame still enveloped him. But it wasn’t enough to divert his gaze from the girl. She suddenly lifted her head from the book and caught his gawk. Yes, he was a pig(let), her sneer seemed to say in agreement before she turned away in seeming disgust. Milan groaned inwardly, looking down. The entire process that had enacted itself was indicative of his fluctuating nature, often vacillating between moments of extreme piety and mind-numbing shallowness.

The ache in his banged knee began to throb more painfully as he cursed the fact that with India’s new generation of MTV enthusiasts and large, worldly-wise middle-class, he had still ended up with these two archaic characters sitting next to him. Rubbing his leg with extra vigour now to soothe the sting that had set in, he pondered as to why he was escaping to India. After his annual pilgrimage there, he would always return to Africa without having changed the direction of his life. Perhaps this time though, it would be different. After all, the need was more compelling. He had grown weary of feeling like a still figure stuck in some Rembrandt painting lost in a woebegone attic.

But, like all sad tales of a hero on some novelistic, bildungsroman journey, which heralded his own brand of searching for the answer to life, Milan’s didn’t quite begin with him.

Chapter 1

An Ancestor’s Mistake

Kusmara Village, Jalaun District, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, India: February 1910

Jagat Thakur briefly closed his weary eyes and sighed deeply before opening them again. As he gazed at his wife, he released the mournful air that was the only witness to the despair that prowled within his chest. Anjani was his succour in a life of toil. His rapture with her had begun in their youth with the song that escaped her sweet lips as she hung the damp dhotis and saris that flapped gently against her in the mild breeze. At that moment, however, her expression was pained as she softly tapped Dharam, their six-year-old boy. Overwhelming shame made Jagat turn the other way, the charpoy, a woven jute rope bed, creaking as he changed position. But sleep was an elusive shadow for broken men to embrace.

The room was nearly bare. A few pots and pans made of clay and iron were strewn about. Brittle wood in a bundle. A picture of Lord Ganesha against the prayer shrine wall, which their son had learnt to fervently pray to – even at his young age, a few stone deities, and a clay lamp still burning below them, a lighthouse in the desolate sea of their abode. These sat astride the almirah, an old wooden bureau that stood three legged on the cow dung floor.

As he absorbed his surroundings, Jagat felt the shame of a weakened man. A defeated progeny of the once-proud Khangars of Jalaun, a sub-caste of Kshatriya warriors, who had valiantly fought against foreign invaders from the stone citadels of the Garh Kundar Fort built by their clan in Tikamgarh so many centuries ago. His own grandfather had once been a part of warrior history in the Sepoy Rebellion, fighting alongside the Rani of Jhansi. Now, Jagat did odd jobs for the feudal Zamindar family when they needed him, many of the tasks well below the dignity of his caste; regal landowners themselves many generations back, before becoming impoverished under foreign rule.

Eventually, he reached out to Anjani, his hand gently stroking her tired breasts, wanting to engage in the one pleasure that life still allowed them. She shook her head. "Bachcha, bachcha!" she whispered, pointing at their child. He drew back, feeling the indignity of his ill-timed attempt at the indulgence. When sleep eventually came for Jagat, that too was troubled. Dreams abounded of men cremating wives and sons before husbands and fathers – the wrong way around. The nightmare played itself out, its effects revealed on a handsome face, sinewy and taut, character and facial features that were enhanced by hardship and time.

Awaking early the next morning, he heard the clanging of pots being washed and the peals of Dharam’s laughter. Shaking his head to dissipate grating thoughts, he went outside to perform his morning toilette. His bare feet raised the settled dust on the ground, a flurry of fine earth that had taken its reprieve in the stillness of night. The agitation of the soil seemed to be the foreboding of a wrong decision that would soon be made.

He brushed his teeth with the bitter twig from a margosa tree, using the rancid water from the canopied sheets that had been hung to capture the condensing dew of night. The monsoons had failed to arrive for a second season and the nearby Pahuj River was now a bed of parched earth. The cracks were wide chasms, big enough to trap a young child’s delicate foot, large enough to swallow hope like a devouring demon.

Afterwards, he joined the village council, the Panchayat, which met under the ancient banyan tree next to the temple, a stoic witness of their travails, withstanding the onslaught of changing seasons and alternating masters. The Panchayat listened to an outsider, a touting agent for the British. He was an Arkhati, an Indian man paid for recruiting labour to faraway lands. The combination of the Arkhati’s high-pitched voice and the empty sounding promises that rolled off his tongue made the words seem fragile to Jagat. The speaker was potbellied, grown fat on the sale of his brethren. The sinister tone in the Arkhati’s voice made Jagat recoil.

Despite the hollowness of the Arkhati’s words to Jagat, he was a master orator to some of the others. My brothers, he said, I have seen this land. It is beautiful. There is wealth everywhere. You can pick up gold nuggets from the bare earth, I tell you. The rivers are mighty and swelling against their banks. The masters are kind. Had it not been for my love for you, to tell you of this country, I too, would be living there. Now, we will take you by train to the sea. There is no need to walk to Calcutta anymore, as the British Raj have built wonderful, modern railways for us.

Noticing the murmuring of agreement from the crowd, Jagat was not one to be easily swayed. But, he was desperate. He discussed the plight of the village with his cousin, Hookum Thakur, both warrior descendants with proud moustaches and elegantly wrapped turbans. They agreed that their prayers remained unanswered but would rather endure hardships they understood.

That evening, Jagat’s family had a broth made from a root that had been dug from the banks of the dry river. Dharam drank a lota of milk for his supper, swallowing the entire meal in three gulps, leaving a white line above his lip. A smile flashed, underlining innocent eyes. His words were shouted with glee, seeking approval. "Ma, khatham hua!" Finished!

His father looked away, pretending not to hear. To acknowledge the words would increase the shame of being unable to provide for his family. Anjani wiped her tears and rubbed the child’s brow, trying to induce sleep in him. Another merciless night passed for Jagat, pleading with an unrelenting God.

The morning came with no sweet chirping of birds. A lamp was lit. Jagat finished his prayers and turned away, no answers having been given. He had changed his earlier resolve. Anjani begged her strong-willed husband not to leave, failing to convince him. Saddened that Hookum had not joined him, a journey to ‘Cawnpore’ began, along with his brethren, whilst he beheld the town as its original ‘Kanpur’.

As Jagat had left the village in a bullock cart, future history following him, attached to his movements, a crow caw-cawed its omen of forewarning, the rasp of premonition. A framed picture of Lord Ganesha shed a tear in a one-roomed home. Dharam tried to fly a threadbare kite when no wind abounded.

Whilst awaiting the Arkhati as he enlisted labourers at the next village, Jagat was confronted by his determined wife and their child carried in her hands. Strength lay in their unity, not separated by an ocean. Reaching Kanpur, they were placed on a train and sent to Allahabad and then on another to Calcutta, picking up other recruits along the way. Never-ending snakes, these trains were, a father told his son, spewing smoke that spiralled into the atmosphere to make mist, for they were also cloud making machines.

These were rides that the family enjoyed fleetingly as the locomotives chug-chugged and choo-chooed them closer to their destiny, which hovered after the twists and turns like a lurking shadow, the ghattak-ghattak clamour sounding melodious to the child.

In Calcutta, Jagat saw a prospering city. A better life could be made here, where a bigger river flowed and existence did not depend on streams, even though this was a distributary of the most revered river, Ganga. An unrelenting British government officer requested a double payment for an Arkhati’s fees that had already been given in order to sever the contract. This was a sum that a poor warrior could not repay.

Before leaving the port on the river, their distinguishing details were taken at the barracks, their home for two weeks. Villages of origin were listed. Bodily inspections were made. Skins were stroked. Caste was noted. ‘Warrior of Jalaun’ mantles made no difference to British medics with ruddy faces and bulbous blue veins on their noses induced by copious amounts of rum.

They took longer in inspecting Anjani’s physical blemishes for identification purposes. Lust was wrapped in the veneer of officialdom, pageantry without gallantry. She clenched her lips, allowing the probe. A map was drawn on skin by foreign fingers, a scar on a woman’s dignity, a rupture in a wandering officer’s soul. A husband was not watching, engaged in trivialities with his son.

After the conscription, Jagat submerged himself in the calm waters of the Hooghly River to pray for the souls of his ancestors. His body sank below the surface, immersing completely in the water before his glistening torso reappeared. Hair streaked across his face. A proud warrior’s moustache drooped as his tears mixed with the liquid.

They boarded a westward bound steam ship, exiting India at Diamond Harbour, not quite knowing what lay before them. They slept in cramped cabins where Jagat suppressed the combative nature of his ancient bloodline when he heard the muffled cries of the single women, kept in separate quarters, who were maligned by blue-eyed visitors in the dead of night.

Those who died due to the emergence of cholera whilst living in the squalid conditions were simply thrown overboard with no last rites given; only records to be kept of such events in the ship’s logs. The separations of caste were ignored as new kinships were formed on board ship. Jahajibhais, they were called, brothers not from the same womb, but through the joint experiences of suffering at sea, sharing their rations of salted fish, dal and rice with ghee and some spices.

Jagat forged a sincere friendship with Jahajibhai Jayraj Tiwari, who had escaped an impending jail sentence back home for not paying taxes to the British Raj. He was born a Brahmin but had lied that he was an Ahir, from a cowherder caste, upon deceptive advice given by a wayward Arkhati. The British knew the Brahmin’s were not used to the backbreaking work required of indentured labourers. Jagat spent much of his time on board learning the Hindu scriptures from Jayraj, thus passing the time on the voyage.

Just over a month passed before the ship’s whistle released its high-pitched lament. Brown men went on deck for a first glimpse of their new home. From that distance, they could barely see the open mouth of the harbour and the growing town with a large hill in the background.

As his leg was about to touch the soil, Jagat stopped, his foot hovering above the ground. In a transient moment, a request had travelled backwards by nearly a century, coming to him as a warning. A prayer from a tormented descendant named Milan Gansham had traversed backwards through the continuum of time and reached a forefather accorded his due homage. Jagat briefly wondered what future he had created for his lineage, so far away from their ancestral land, as he finally took the first ceremonial step like a new bride entering her marital home.

The human cargo was sent to the camps to quarantine and for medical inspections. A few days later, sugarcane barons started their bidding. The furious auction began. Men in long-tailed coats, descendants from the once-lower thresholds of the gene pool in nineteenth century England, now strode the quarters as master colonists. When Jagat’s family was paraded, a young lady turned to her husband and spoke in the tone of one who had lived an indulged existence. Let’s take that lot, Jeremy. That little boy would be a nice playmate for Norman, she said, pointing at Dharam.

Jeremy Jenkins gazed at his Katherine, an ex-society debutante. He always strived to please her whims. But today, he needed no prompting. Having seen Anjani, he had salivated. By the grace of the gods, Jayraj was assigned to the same farm, having stood with Jagat’s family during the allocations.

Later, they took their purchases home via the North Coast Line, to a sugarcane farm some distance past the edge of the city, on the outskirts of a small market town, a pleasant diversion for Jeremy from his drudgery as the owner and manager of a growing money lending company that he had started a few years back.

He had only just put up the new signage for the bank: ‘J. Jenkins and Co: Financiers and Mortgage Specialists’. After a week of usury, he enjoyed going back to the farm to indulge his secret passion for brown flesh. But Anjani was never touched, as she had a warrior guarding her chastity. Jeremy sadly realised where not to go. He then took solace by adding to his acts of indulgent degradation. Every labourer’s daughter was deflowered by Jeremy on the night before her wedding. This was done with her father’s grudging consent, as the ramifications of opposing the system would have been dire. If any groom later ever wondered why his child had blond hair at birth, he kept the agony silent.

Life for the labourers was arduous, with both, men and women tilling the fields for extended periods of time, sometimes on a Sunday as well, upon instructions from Jeremy to the Sardar, a malicious, whip carrying foreman who took pleasure in ensuring that his own brethren suffered. Food allotments were barely enough, comprising mainly of spices, pulses and grains. Much of their diet was complemented by the vegetables that they cultivated on bare patches of ground around their huts.

Jagat took pleasure in watching Dharam grow, teaching his son the history that he had inherited. Jayraj, in turn, had taken a wife, a young lass on the farm, a single Brahmin lady, Shobha, who had come alone across the seas, having escaped a brutal first marriage.

Culture and religion amongst the workers were kept alive by Jayraj’s knowledge of the scriptures, who had now reverted to his original caste. Festivals were celebrated with what little the community could afford. Within a year, they had come together and built a large enough brick and mortar hall on the farm for social gatherings, marriages and celebrations, which also served as a school for their children to learn some elementary education.

About two years into their contracts, Jagat found Jayraj hanging from a baobab tree. His delicate Brahmin body could not take the dawn till dusk, brutal, manual labour, having been falsely promised a job as a bookkeeper by the Arkhati who had recruited him. The suicide occurred after eleven days of sick leave taken by Jayraj, due to having suffered from dysentery. Jeremy made him forfeit twice his daily income for each day that he hadn’t worked. For that month, Jayraj had ended up paying the farmer more than he earned, despite having worked for twenty full days.

Jagat performed the funerary rites with Jayraj’s pregnant wife watching the corpse of her husband burn. The widow became an adopted sister to Jagat, who provided for her needs, also helping to raise the son who was born unto her. The only way the community of labourers could survive was through a spirit of altruism. After a year of mourning passed, the widow remarried, this time a workhand from an adjoining farm, taking her child along with her. Her new husband didn’t accept Jagat’s committed role in Shobha’s life, even as a brother. In time, Jagat lost the kinship with the once-wife and child of his dear Jahajibhai.

The British Raj had been economical with the truth. Slavery and indenture were proven to be ‘flip sides of the same coin’.

Chapter 2

The Relationship Shared by Black and

Brown Crumbles

Port of Durban, South Africa: 13 January 1949

At exactly five in the morning, four people on the eastern seaboard of Africa awakened with very different purposes in mind. They would all play a starring role in a riot that had been planned for later that day. It would have reverberating effects for generations to come.

***

Forty-year-old Harilal Basanth exited his slumber, unconsciously digging the lint from his left eye while yawning. He then reached out to the dresser on his right, grasping his morning cup of tea, a daily ritual that had been facilitated dutifully by his wife in their married years.

Slowly pouring the steaming chai into a saucer, he created a brown sea in a round vessel. He took a long slurp, pursing his lips like a fish. An aah sound of satisfaction came automatically with his first sip in tandem with his passing wind, lifting his buttocks slightly off the bed. Harilal sniffed deeply, smiling as the heavily furnished room permeated with an odour of the previous evening’s supper of dal, rice and vegetable curry. He then wondered why, when his wife unknowingly did the same while asleep, hers didn’t smell as aromatic as his did.

The hot tea worked wonders to catalyse his bowel movements. Gulping down the last bits, he hurried to the outdoor bathroom to perform his toilette. An hour later, after eating a hearty breakfast of roti with chutney and drinking some more tea, Harilal walked with a lunchtime tiffin in hand to his little shop in the market located in the Indian Casbah area. For twenty years, it had simply been called ‘Harilal Basanth’. Later, with the creative and enterprising nature of his young employee, Dhanragh, they had added to the signage in brackets and italicised: ‘(Fruit Merchants)’.

***

Inside a tiny hut in an African village nearby, one George Madondo, a fourteen-year-old Zulu boy, gleefully arose. Clasped in his hand, he had a shiny coin that a large sized, White policeman had given him. The thrashing that he was yet to receive for it would be fleeting in comparison to the wonderful things that this shilling would buy.

Standing, he flicked the coin up into the air and failed to catch it, the money having fallen to the ground. It landed with a soft thud. George picked it up again before the coin could suddenly develop legs and escape his claws. Money was known to do that. It had a mind of its own.

***

In a place called Railway Barracks, near the city’s main intersection, Balakrishnan Chettiar awoke energetically. The room contained only a bed and a few pieces of furniture, which sufficed for the old bachelor. Cursing whilst undressing, he glared at his manhood, a few shades darker than the rest of his body. Having never been inside a woman, nearly fifty years of self-pleasuring had taken its toll on his psyche. He bathed and said his prayers to Karuppusami, the village deity from his ancestral home in the Madras Presidency, the colour of the idol quite matching his own hue. It was still shadowy outside, and because of his blue-black skin, it was difficult to see him. His fellow workers at the railways called him ‘Beaming Bala’, as one could only see him at night when he smiled, and his white teeth were revealed.

Nearly sixty now, he had left India as a young man some forty years earlier, escaping an impending arranged marriage. He had never returned to his family, though he often thought of them. Even at his advanced age, he was still very strong because of his size, always given the most difficult jobs to do at the railways, despite conventionally coming from a South Indian money lending caste. That day, however, he was on the nightshift, and had decided to visit the town to buy some much needed supplies and pay off the last instalment on the loan he had taken with J. Jenkins and Co. Over the period of repayments, he had given away half his wages as interest, keeping him in a pauper’s state.

***

Captain Jakobus Hendrik Pieter Schlebusch, a burly policeman, also woke at five that morning. He was from the Afrikaner community, mixed descendants of Dutch, French and German émigrés. Some argued that there was also a bit of generally undetectable Khoisan blood from ancestral liaisons with the indigenous inhabitants in the seventeenth century, as European women were a scarce commodity back then in Africa.

Despite this stroke of the tar brush, they were now classified as Whites under the government’s system of racial classification. At that moment, Captain Schlebusch’s bladder was full of the previous night’s seven pints of beer. He needed to urinate desperately. The toilet was too far, so he grabbed the jug from his bedside table, releasing the frothy, yellow liquid into it, creating the sound of rain hitting a rooftop and a softer patter whenever a bit splashed onto the cheap carpet.

The noise woke his wife, Hettie. "Jislaaik, Kobie! Why can’t you pee in the bathroom like a civilised Afrikaner?" she shouted.

"Shut up, Hettie! Hold your mouth shut. When a man has to piss, he has to fokkin’ piss!"

It was going to be an important day in history and Captain Schlebusch would play a meaningful role in it. His mind recollected an important meeting from the previous week at the City Hall with Police Commissioner Smith and the still powerful ex-Mayor Osborn.

"Now, remember, Captain Schlebusch, it’s very important that you ensure all your men paint their faces black when they begin the looting and arson. Let the Coolies think the Natives started it. I want the whole city to sparkle with the burning of their houses by tomorrow evening. We’ll teach those bloody curry-munchers a thing or two about stealing business from our people," Commissioner Smith had said, his face turning a deep purple. He was of pure English ancestry, also categorised as a White, using derogatory terms to refer to the other races as he spoke.

Now, now, Smithie, ex-Mayor Osborn, another Englishman, had admonished. "It’s more than that. These Coolies have been joining forces with the Natives lately. It creates a potentially dangerous political situation, that wily Coolie brain and Native muscle getting together. We have to nip this in the bud to retain our way of life. I have direct orders from national government to take drastic action to suppress any alliance between them. These local Coolies have already created a storm in Delhi, sending word to Nehru, accusing us of abusing them. It appears that he’s already brought this matter up with the United Nations. We just can’t afford to have the world thinking such things of us."

"All the same, we need to burn some of these Coolies, Percy, Commissioner Smith had continued, a vein in his temple pulsating alarmingly. What do you say, Boer? Turn these Coolies a darker shade of brown with the fire, eh what, yes?"

Captain Schlebusch hated it when Commissioner Smith called him a Boer. It made him feel unrefined. He preferred being called an Afrikaner. Yes, Sir. All plans have been set in motion, he had answered, suppressing his anger and resentment.

You’ve paid the Native boy? Smith had asked him, referring to George Madondo.

I have. He knows what to do, Captain Schlebusch had responded, wondering why they couldn’t just do the whole thing openly. Why go to all this trouble to hide the fact that they wanted to kill a few Coolies and Natives? These Englishmen were always engaged in such acts of unnecessary diplomacy when keeping the others in check.

"Good, Boer. If this is successful, there might be a promotion for you. Are you sure the shopkeeper will react the way we want him to?"

Captain Schlebusch reassured his superior, knowing that the news would spread, and somebody would tackle George for what he had been paid to do. The community had been simmering of late. If this failed, there was always the backup plan of paying a few African looters to create some mayhem anyway.

The meeting had ended with all three men happy. Captain Schlebusch, at the anticipation of a preferment; Commissioner Smith, because his wife’s shop would be patronised again rather than the Indian ones that undercut her prices; and ex-Mayor Osborn, because the White traders who had once financed his rise to public office would vote him back into power.

***

At midday, young Dhanragh, on his usual errands for his master, Harilal Basant, at the local market, was suddenly accosted by George Madondo and given two slaps to his face for not giving him any cigarettes when asked. Dhanragh had been too stunned to retaliate as George ran away, the employee choosing to later complain to Harilal instead.

By midday, as coached by the policeman, George walked past the shop, taunting Dhanragh. Harilal, incensed at his employee being slapped earlier, retaliated by catching George and smashing his head against shop window. Dhanragh, feeling empowered now, jumped into the fracas, pummelling George’s face a few times, thereby heralding the lifelong moniker of ‘Fisticuffs’ being added to his name. In the process, a shiny shilling, recently cleaned with spit, fell from George’s pocket onto the macadamised road and rolled away.

The Casbah came to a standstill. Indian shop owners and their assistants watched the theatrics solemnly for all of its two minutes. A large settler from the Madras Presidency, known to all as Beaming Bala, came ambling along. He separated Dhanragh from the bruised Zulu boy.

That night, a mob of twenty White men led by Captain Schlebusch, their faces painted a darker hue with boot polish, carried paraffin supplied by ex-Mayor Osborn’s retail shop and went on a rampage. They went from suburb to suburb, burning Indian homes sporadically. Thereafter, the men went to African homes and committed the same arson. An orchestrated riot had begun between