THE VIEW FROM DEBI'S CELL
THE chink in the mortar between the two layers of brick must have been made by an earlier inmate of cell number twenty-three, barrack seven. By propping one end of the sleeping plank up against it and standing on the plank he could reach the bars of the window set high into the wall. Then, by pulling himself up, he could look down into the triangle between two spokes of the jail building. As long as his arms would support his weight, he could go on looking.
In the yard below, it was like market day. They were shelling and breaking coconuts and putting out the copra to dry. Looking down at them like that, from the third-story window of barrack seven, it was easy to think of those men as coolies in some well-run factory... a happy factory where the workers shared in the profits. They were a part of the noise and bustle, of the assembly-line efficiency: exhibit 'A' in the prison reforms initiated by an enlightened government and enforced by Mulligan- sahib with unswerving zest.
In the centre were the two great mounds of coconuts- thousands upon thousands of misshapen green footballs which were now the playthings of the convicts, or, if you let your mind wander, like the pyramids of human heads built by Nadir Shah in the streets of Delhi. The peelers stood in a line, thin and wiry, their copper bodies glistening with sweat, expertly breaking the fibre by smashing each nut with a twisting motion against the line of spikes mounted on wooden stumps-breaking the fibre and yet not damaging the nuts within, for that would have led to their being fined for carelessness, and then, without turning their heads to look, hurling the naked, sand-coloured nuts at the tin wall of the shed behind them with resounding thuds. Squatting behind them were the rows of splitters who broke the nuts with single deft strokes of their light axes and threw the halves, the brown cups containing the dazzling white meat, into the wooden trough, all in one continuous, machine-like motion, while the water from the broken nuts ran in a sluggish stream between them. Around the trough, there was another horse-shoe of human ants, the men who scooped out the kernels from the halves in triangular strips with the help of koytas, the heavy, curved, coconut knives.
They worked in silence, for speech was forbidden. The thunder of the nuts banging against the tin wall of the shed and the sharp cracks of the axes splitting open the nuts formed the background to the twangy whine of the warders and petty officers.
'Get a move on, there!-next time I catch you with your mouth full, you'll be up for flogging. Come on, come on; don't dawdle, sons of whores, sister-rapers; stop eating or I'll send the whole lot of you to the kanji-house!" Balbahadur, the Gurkha sentry was there too, strutting, shouting, raging, and all the while shovelling handfuls of coconut-meat into his mouth.
Debi-dayal's eyes strayed lovingly over the weapons the convicts were wielding: the short-handled splitting axes and the heavy, curved knives-all useful weapons in an emergency
How like cattle they were, he thought, cattle, or some lower form of life, tamed into abject subservience; working mechani- cally, their brains feverishly working out plans for secreting some of the kernel on their persons, watching the sentries with hawklike eyes, insensible to insults, the degrading prison epithets, docilely participating in the routine, helping instead of hindering.
There were at least a hundred and fifty convicts in the yard. The warders and the petty officers could not have numbered more than twenty. The convicts had the axes and the hatchets in their hands; the guards had only long, weighted sticks. What could not one do in a situation of that sort? If only he could find someone he could depend on, someone like one of the Freedom Fighters, the same herd of cattle could be so easily organized, taught to stampede at a given signal, make a con- certed rush against the warders and others and overpower them before the rifle-squad at the main gate could intervene.
Was Gian the man, Debi wondered, the non-violent disciple of Gandhi who had been convicted for murder? He cursed and shook his head in disgust. Gian was certainly not the man. He was typical of the youth of India, vacillating, always seeking new anchors, new directions, devoid of any basic convictions. He had been dedicated, so he had told them, to truth and non-violence.
He had already jettisoned non-violence; how far would he go with truth?
If only he could rely on Gian, between them they could easily turn the prisoners against the officials. He clung to the thought, organizing, in his mind, the details of a mass break-through.
It would be over in a moment. They would have to choose a time when Mulligan was going his rounds. It was important to finish off Mulligan in the first rush. After that, everything would be plain sailing-almost an anti-climax. Balbahadur, the Gurkha head sentry would also have to be disposed of, but that was something he would like to reserve for himself; it was a purely private affair, selfish, even; it had little to do with the plan forming in his mind.
His arms trembled. There was a stab of pain in his right shoulder, and the backs of his hands were covered with large drops of sweat. But he ignored these warnings of physical tiredness, almost defied them; he concentrated his mind on the scene below.
The convicts were naked; naked except for the little strips of cloth running between their legs and secured by rope waist-bands; naked except for the unremovable chains around their necks- chains which some of them now wore proudly like badges of rank.
Two men stood out in the crowd because they were not naked; they wore grey prison blouses and shorts, with conspicuous red 'D's sewn on the backs and fronts of their blouses. One was Gian, the other was Ghasita, the big Ramoshi. Both were working in the line of splitters, both wielding the short, murderous axes in their hands axes that could crack open a skull or a coconut with equal ease.
That must be the sort of weapon with which the big Ramoshi had killed the man who had betrayed him-killed him in the middle of the bazaar, as he proudly told everyone. In terms of his values, he had fulfilled himself, and he was stoically taking the consequences. That was the retribution Vetal had laid down for those who betrayed his devotees. The man who had betrayed him, Debi-dayal, was his own father. It had come out during the trial that it was Tekchand's complaint about the missing explosives, and even more so, his call to the Chief Commissioner saying that the local police were not taking his complaint seriously, that had led to the raid on the Hanuman Club.
And the man who could have warned him, warned all the members of the club in time, was Shafi Usman.
Shafi had been tipped off about the raid: that was the talk of the prison during Debi's trial. All eight of them had sworn to avenge themselves. It would have been different if he had run away without warning any of them. In their sort of work, casualties had to be accepted. But what he had done was a betrayal of everything that he stood for, had prepared the others for-with all that anti-religious talk. He wondered what the Ramoshi would have done in his situation. Would he have confined his vengeance to Shafi?-or did Vetal rule that not even one's own father was to be spared the retribution for betrayal?
Shafi and his father; how unlike each other they were. His father, haughty, superior, well-bred; Shafi emerging from the gutters, embittered, coarse. And yet it was almost as though they had combined to betray him, him and the others. If they had been spared, they would have been able to play havoc with the British war effort. What could not he and Basu and the others have done to cripple the British.
He longed to get back. The urge to resume his work was even stronger than the desire for vengeance. He rebelled against his confinement. He had to get away; they would never succeed in breaking him down to the size of the other convicts; criminals reformed by an enlightened government and converted into useful citizens. They could never reduce him to the acceptable pattern like one of those men below; grovelling for the crumbs thrown at them by Mulligan, like that man Gian Talwar. A swift wave of anger passed over him, drowning the pain in his shoulder. Gian too had been classified as a dangerous convict, How was he released from solitary confinement so soon, permitted to do work in the open, without fetters, with the other prisoners? And the big Ramoshi, who had committed two murders?
Exhibit B-he asked himself. Another instance of Mulligan's clemency now heightened by the war? What provision of the jail manual could Mulligan have invoked to justify his letting out a 'D-for-dangerous' convict within three months of his arrival?
'Sons of whores! Pigs from Hell! Sister rapers!' the swearwords came from below, hitting his eardrums with almost physical force. Almost perversely, he thought of his own sister, shocked at the connotation, inwardly guilty at associating someone like Sundar with the foulness of the warder's language. His thoughts flitted back to that day in the Thana jail, the last visiting day before he was to be sent off to Calcutta to be taken to the Andamans. He had turned down all requests from his father and mother to visit him in jail, but had agreed to see his sister. And he had cursed loudly when the Superintendent told him that she had come accompanied with her own exhibit 'A', that glossy- haired, rich boy they had found for her. He had taken a peek through the wire and felt his blood rising, for he looked almost like an off-duty British subaltern. He wore the regimental tie and blazer of some territorial battalion he had joined, and he could imagine his pride at being in the army with all the talk of war going on-typifying the despicable people who made the British empire a stark reality, captives who hugged the chains and imitated their masters-somehow far more contemptible than his own father who, in spite of his title, was still wholly Indian.
'But I want to see my sister alone,' he had told the Super- intendent. He had seen Gopal stride out, apologetic and well-mannered, accepting his dismissal with a smile, but he had not felt sorry for him.
Sundari had sat alone, her face like a mask, her lips trembling, her eyes filled with tears, and, knowing that he too was near to breaking down, he had been curt with her. She wore a simple white cotton sari, but looked so breathtakingly beautiful that he had found himself resenting her presence. It was not right for someone like Sundari, virginal, unblemished, refined, to expose herself to the sordidness and dehumanized atmosphere of the Indian jails, to the leers and lascivious thoughts of men who were no longer human beings, or smile at the Superintendent, a lecherous-eyed Bengali hovering unctuously in the office, almost too eager to please.
When he had told Sundari that all he wanted was a copy of the Jail Manual, the Superintendent had looked doubtful even though it was the right of every prisoner to be given a copy if he asked for it. But an anxious look from his sister had made him unbend. 'I shall let him have my copy,' he assured Sundari. "He can read it in his cell."
After the Superintendent had gone, they had been alone hardly for five minutes, and just as they were about to part, Sundari had whispered: 'I will try and send you some money. I shall get it to you, somehow. They say life is not too bad, there, if one has money.'
She was so pathetically earnest about it, that he had not the heart to decline her offer of help. But he could not accept any money from her, of that he was sure, knowing that it could only be his father's money or her husband's money that Sundari could send him.
'And Father wants to know if he can do anthing-you don't know how lost he looks; quite shattered!'
He had shaken his head. He wanted nothing from his father. His father had done all the damage of which he was capable. In some odd, twisted way, he was even glad that his father had taken his conviction so much to heart. He was aware that in his own way, his father had tried to help. His father's influence with the high officials had spared him the famed torture of the Indian police thanas; while the other members of the Hanuman Club were being beaten and starved to induce them to confess, one of the sentries smuggled a cake of soap and a slab of chocolate into his cell. Defiantly, he had thrown both soap and chocolate out of the window.
But the Andaman Manual was quite another thing. He wanted it because he had to find out exactly what they were in for. The Superintendent brought him a copy.
It was comforting to realize that after the prison reforms of 1920 and 1929, the Cellular Jail was a place no longer of punish- ment, but where convicts were held for a time before being resettled.
All literate prisoners, the manual said, were usually given some kind of clerical work in the prison itself within six months of arrival and after that, they were not required to wear prison uniform. No convict, if he behaved himself, was kept in the jail for more than a year. He was made a pass-holder, or a feri according to local jargon, and permitted to reside in one or the other settlements on the island. Such prisoners were also helped to find work in the coconut or tea plantations or with the timber extracting companies. They were even encouraged to cultivate their own land, to build houses, marry one of the girls from the settlements or even to bring out their wives from India. The 'D-ticket holders', however, formed a separate coterie.
For them the treatment was considerably stricter. They were kept in solitary confinement for at least three months, after which, when they were permitted to work, they were not to mix with the other prisoners for at least another six months. They had to wear their blouses at all times, with the distinctive red 'D's sewn on them. But even in their case, three years was the most they were required to spend in the jail itself. After that, they too were made feris, and permitted to settle down in the colonies on their own. But one thing he did not find in the Andaman Manual: there was no release from the island itself. No prisoner could leave the island until the full term of his sentence had run out. There were, to be sure, remissions of sentences: a month a year for good behaviour, and another month or so whenever there was an occasion for national celebration. That would take away about twenty months from his sentence-he would have to remain in the islands for more than twelve years. Actually, the date etched out on the metal disc round his neck was nineteen-fifty-three. Even accounting for an unblemished record, it could never be earlier than 1952. He would be thirty-two years old, he reflected. He had squirmed with rage at the thought. It was unthinkable to go on living here until he was thirty-two. And he had no wish to qualify for time off for good behaviour; had no intention of co-operating, marking time for twelve years, waiting patiently for 1952. He did not want to be given work in the prison office as a clerk or settle down in the convict colony as a plantation labourer, marry, raise a family. All he wanted was to go back and finish his interrupted work, until the sunrise of their freedom, as Shafi had described it that day; to join hands with the others in the ceaseless fight against the Raaj, all the more vulnerable now because of the war. If only the Gandhis and the Nehrus would discard their pacifism now and channel their energies towards driving out the British with violence, using the terrorists' methods, they could make short work of the Raaj.
But they would never do it. They were even more bent on emasculating the nation than the British were. It was only men like himself and Shafi-even if Shafi had gone wrong-who would succeed in striking the final blow.
Through a blur, as though behind some opaque curtain, he saw a sudden wave pass through the convicts and their guards below. The tempo of work suddenly quickened as though by the turning of some valve, the separate sounds of the coconuts banging against the tin wall, the sharp cracks of the splitters, now lost themselves in a loud, ceaseless rumble; the peelers and the splitters suddenly sat straighter; straighter, and, at the same time, more subservient. The warders began to yell louder and strut about with upraised lathis, with Balbahadur imitating Mulligan's swagger, more voluble, more alert, more aggressive, than the others.
Even without seeing him, Debi-dayal realized that Mulligan was on his rounds. As he watched, the rounded, squat figure under the thick topee came stamping through the archway ignoring the warders' salaams and stood in the shade, puffing a black cigar, swinging a black stick. He watched them at their work, without saying anything, and then he chucked the cigar-stub into the rivulet of the coconut water where it floated away with jerky movements. Then he stepped out of the shade and wandered amongst the convicts, pausing now and then to pat one of them on the back or to say a word. Debi-dayal winced. He was talking to the big, Ramoshi, and had his back turned to Gian, Gian who wielded the coconut axe. Just one stroke, he prayed in his mind, just one slanting stroke against the thick, red neck, thick like the neck of a soldier seen long ago in bright moonlight... and the rounded head with its pig-like eyes and pug nose would go bounding off into the pile of broken coconuts, complete with its ridiculous topee...
Far behind him, in another dimension of his mind, he was aware of a break in the pattern of the silence, followed, seconds later, by the faint crunch of footsteps at the end of the corridor. He loosened his grip on the bars and dropped to the floor. The blood rushed back into his hands and fingers with a surge of pain. He had just managed to replace the sleeping board in its usual position when the Pathan warder came stamping to his door.
'Mulligan-sahib is coming,' the warder gasped. He unlocked the padlock on the door and waited, the heavy hasp held in his hand, ready to throw open the door with a flourish. "For God's sake remember to stand up and salute the sahib,' he entreated. "If you are rude, he takes it out on us.'
He had been a friendly enough man, unlike the other warders in the jail, but of course he might quite easily have been ordered to be friendly, to get into the prisoners' confidence.
He flung open the door and Mulligan strode in, followed by a petty officer. Debi-dayal did not rise to his feet. Nor did he raise his hand in salute.
The Superintendent and the petty officer went round the cell. Mulligan stopped under the window. "Here,' he said, tapping with his cane between the two layers of brick where the plaster had been chipped. "That's where he must have been propping the plank. I told you I saw his head from below... I know all their tricks."
He certainly did, Debi-dayal thought resentfully, and he must have eyes like a hawk, the swine. Shall I have him put into another cell, sir?' the petty officer was saying "Yes, do that," Mulligan ordered. 'But check up first to see that the walls are smooth.
"Yes, sir."
And five days kanji for breaking prison rules," Mulligan pronounced as he stamped out onto the verandah, without a glance at the prisoner. Even the petty officer looked a little taken aback.
Five days kanjil' the Pathan warder said, as he was locking the door. That is just because you persist in not getting up or salaaming when the Sahib comes. We know that all the cells have notches in the walls-that every convict looks out of the window by propping up the plank. Mulligan-sahib knows it too. He does not give five days kanji just for that...he is a good man, Mulligan-sahib. But if you won't even salute him...and he shook his head.
Debi-dayal was getting used to the kanji. It was almost a routine punishment for minor breaches of prison regulations. Kanji was rice gruel, thin and grey, and being given kanji-house meant that you were given a tea-cup full of gruel twice a day and no other food. And of course, the punishment was noted down meticulously in your prison record and counted against you in calculating remissions of sentence. It also meant that while you were undergoing the punishment, you were denied other. privileges such as sending or receiving letters, being taken out for exercise in the yard, or having a bath.
But he was determined not to bow and salaam; not to show subservience to this Irishman who represented the British Empire in the Andamans a slave from another slave country working for his bread. He did not care about remissions of his sentence, for he was determined to escape from the prison. He was certainly not going to mark time for twelve years, bowing and scraping to the officials, qualifying for 'good behaviour. And he did not care about not being permitted to write letters, because he had no intention of writing to anyone; nor did he care if he did not receive a single letter all the time he was there.
D-FOR-DANGEROUS!
THERE were two baskets of letters, one labelled "Vernacular", and the other 'English'. The letters in the vernacular tray overflowed the sides and spilled on the table and on the floor. No one particularly minded, for they were the convicts' letters; if the sweeper noticed them on the floor, they would perhaps be put back in the tray, but it did not matter, either way. The English. letters were in a neat stack, hardly four inches high.
The fat Bengali head clerk, Ghosh-babu, his chest and stomach outlined by sweat under his thin muslin kurta, looked over his half-moon glasses in disapproval, and pulled the "Vernacular tray towards him with a jerk, spilling another half a dozen letters on the floor. 'So much mail!' he complained. "That is because they are all allowed to write home every month, and receive a letter every month too. In Barrie-sahib's days, it was only one letter a year; one a year and that too was stopped if they misbehaved during the year. Now Government going too soft.' He shook his body, a living brown jelly in a thin white shirt. 'Here,' he said to Gian. You'd better look through the English ones before they go to the Sahib." Yes, sir,' Gian said.
Remember not to let more than half go through,' Ghosh-babu warned. 'Mulligan-sahib not liking too many letters referred to him.'
"Yes, sir.'
"Hold back anything that says anything about war. Mulligan- sahib is most strict about that.
"Yes, sir, Gian promised.
He carried the tray of letters to the small room at the back, where he and the two other ex-convicts who worked in the
rationing section had an office. His rise had been fast: indeed, for a 'D-ticket' convict it had been almost unprecedented. He had been released from solitary confinement within two months of arrival and permitted to work and eat along with the other convicts. Now he had been taken up as a lower division clerk. He still lived in the barracks, as the jail buildings were called, and was not allowed out of the jail between sundown and sunrise. He still had to wear the prison uniform with its 'D-for-dangerous" sewn on it. But he was now on pay, seven rupees a month, and his work in the victualling office carried a lot of prestige amongst the warders and petty officers. The way things were going, he was certain that in a year or so he would be made a 'feri' and then he could go about in ordinary clothes. After that, if he could find a suitable woman from the women's prison, he could get married and settle down in one of the convict villages..
Suitable woman! Gian shuddered as he thought of the few women he had seen in the settlement; ugly and stunted, almost deformed, a hotchpotch, almost grotesque product of the island of criminals, like cows bred through artificial insemination... and even they were outnumbered by at least four to one by the male convicts. In the jungles of the interior, retreating from the civilizing influences of the prisoners' settlements along the coastal plains, were the Jaora women, who were said never to wear any clothes. The thought of women...of hordes of women ... going about in total nudity, gold and brown and shining, was tempting, almost erotic, evoking visions of unrestricted carnal delights, of a strong man seizing any woman he fancied and possessing her on the spot. And then someone had told him about the Jaoras, about their poisoned arrows, about their not having a language, and above all, their size and shape. They were a short, stunted people, almost malformed by ordinary standards, anthropologically so undeveloped that they were said to be more akin to gorillas than to human beings, and most of them still had short protruberences on their tailbones-tails that they were still in the process of shedding. No, finding a suitable woman with whom to settle down was not going to be easy. Here in the Andamans, no one could afford to be choosy about women; they were a precious commodity, and, because of their rarity, to be strictly rationed like drinking water, or kerosene, to be impartially apportioned amongst the applicants. Women belonged to that other world that they had left, and which was now at war. At the same time, he would have to keep his eyes open, to see if there was someone from among the political prisoners in the female ward who would agree to share his life here.
The one thing he was certain about was that his future lay here, in the Andamans; that there was no question of his ever going back to India. Once one was resigned to that thought, it followed that one's sentence had only another year or so to run, not twelve or thirteen; for as soon as one was made a feri, there was nothing to stop one from settling down anywhere in the island.
What was there to go back to? The village of Konshet in the hill district of the Punjab was already fading away; a village where a withered old woman sat in a dark room praying to a brass god for her grandson's release. The god of the Little House had been powerless to save it from destruction. In a sense, it was he, Gian Talwar who had brought about its ruin. But then, in destroying the Little House, he had brought about the destruction of all that surrounded it, even the Big House, for had he not with his own hands killed its last male heir while he was still sonless? He had dug up the roots of his own family. Somewhere in the distance, a gate clanged open and a sentry shouted an order. Mulligan-sahib must be doing his rounds. He would be in his office by eleven, when he would look through the letters that were put up to him. He had better get on with them, instead of allowing his thoughts to wander. The letter that caught his eye was almost at the bottom of the pile of drab post cards and mean little Government-issue envelopes. It was an opulent, pale-blue letter which looked as out of place on his bare dealwood table as a ripe mango on a stone slab. He picked it up and turned it in his hands almost tenderly. It was addressed in a neat, bold hand, to Debi-dayal Kerwad, care of the Cellular Jail, Port Blair, Andaman Islands.
Carefully, inserting the tapering stem of a pen into the slit, he worked the flap open. Inside was blue letter paper, the same shade as the envelope, written only on one side, and in the fold of the letter, a stiff packet wrapped in transparent tissue paper. Gian held open the letter and began to read:
'Dear Chote-bhai,
We have had no news of you since you went, Aba is most anxious even though he does not say so, and Mummy is pining for news of you. Please write, if only a line to say you are all right. Aba spends most of his time in the museum when at home, but all day he spends in the office. I am sending you some photographs. Gopal's regiment is mobilized and he is likely to be called up soon. Please write, if you don't write to Father and Mother, at least to me. We all send love to you and pray for you.
Your loving sister Sundar.'
Inured to the demands of prison censorship, Gian felt no qualms about reading someone else's letter. In any case, it was the sort of letter, studiedly innocuous, that people wrote when they knew it was going to be read by others. But as soon as he had opened it, his heart had begun to beat faster. It was from Sundari, that girl he had met when they went to the picnic. He had nearly kissed her then, in the museum she spoke about. It all seemed so long ago.
He wished the letter had not contained the reference to some- one joining a regiment and to the regiment being mobilized; for that would have to be cut out. He read the letter over again and decided to show it to Mulligan. Then he opened the packet of photographs.
There were three photographs. One was of a smiling bride and groom, the bride dressed in the traditional, draped-over-the- head sari of a bride, and the groom in military officer's uniform; the second was of Sundari's father and mother; and the third of Sundari playing with a dog.
Gian went on staring at the girl in the picture. She was like something out of a dream, something difficult to think of as having substance and reality, but it was a face he had seen, had so nearly kissed in that room with all those statues. It was unfair, so soon after he had been thinking about the ugliness of women and resigning himself to spend the rest of his life with one of the women from the political prison, to be reminded that somewhere, girls like Sundari did exist. The sudden longing within him was akin to physical pain, and there was too a nick of jealousy for the smiling groom in uniform. For a moment he toyed with the idea of keeping one of the photographs; the recipient would never know how many had been sent. But he pushed the thought away and replaced the photographs in their envelope.
While he was looking over the other letters in the tray, hist mind kept straying back to the girl. All the same, he was careful to find fault with at least half the letters so that Mulligan-sahib should see how diligent he had been. Mulligan smiled as he took the letters in. He always gave the clerks a smile unless he happened to be in a temper. "Mail?' Mulligan asked.
'Sir."
"Have you gone through them?"
"Yes, sir."
Any that you find objectionable?"
"This lot, sir."
'Oh, damn!-all those? What's wrong with them?"
"Bits about war, mostly."
About Dunkirk, I bet.'
' Not specifically; just references to major German victories."
'No, we can't overlook that sort of thing, the way rumours spread in this place. Everyone seems to want the damned Germans to win so they'll be set free. You don't know what the Germans do with their prisoners. How they heard about the bombing of England, I can't imagine ... Listening to them. talk, you'd think the whole Royal Navy had been sunk. And now they know all about Dunkirk."
Some of those who are permitted to work outside talk to the feris, sir, from the settlements. Then they spread the news in the barracks,' Gian suggested.
Mulligan pointed to the letters. "That lot all right?"
"Yes, sir, except...I thought I would ask you about this one."
He opened the blue envelope and placed the letter and the photographs on Mulligan's table.
*Photographs, Mulligan muttered to himself. He put on his glasses and studied them for a long time, his jaws making a steady, grinding motion. He reached for a cigar from the box on his table and lit a match. Then he threw away the match and replaced the cigar in the box. He picked up the letter and began to read, muttering to himself. "Oh, our friend Debi-dayal.. humm. How a character like him can have a sister so.. attractive... he shook his head. 'Says the man has joined the army,' he said to Gian. 'Nothing wrong with that. I wish more Indians would, instead of damning the Government. Yes, it is all right about the photographs. I don't mind, so long as they show a pretty girl and a soldier-officer too-oh, no. Take them away." "Shall I distribute them, sir ? Gian asked.
"Yes,' Mulligan said, reaching for his cigar box.
In the courtyard, the convicts sat on the ground in rows, hold- ing out their plates and mugs. The servers were throwing chapatties into their plates, six to each man, and doling out the mess of pumpkin and chilli powder that was to go with them. Gian went and sat next to Debi-dayal who had been released from solitary confinement just that week and was permitted to work and eat with the other prisoners.
"There is a letter for you,' he said, and handed it to Debi-dayal.
Debi gave him a cold glare as he took the letter, holding it by a corner as though to express contempt towards this man who was so obviously a spy of Mulligan. They sat close to each other, without saying a word, concentrating on their chapatties and curry. As Debi-dayal held out his mug for the ladle of curds that they received twice every week, Gian said in a whisper: 'I think you can read it now; the head jemadar has gone to the other court."
Debi-dayal stared at him. Was this some trick to get him to say something about the head jemadar? He was suspicious of Gian. He had heard him spouting truth and non-violence to Shafi when they had asked him to the picnic, hoping that they would be able to recruit him into the Freedom Fighters. But he was so clearly not the type; a man without principles, his non- violence a cover for cowardice, for a total absence of patriotic fervour. Now he had shown himself to be one of those who played along with the authorities to win petty favours. Why was this administrative spy singling him out? Gian left him to his mood and went and sat amidst the warders. His new position carried its special privileges. He could eat his food in the warders' row, take as many chapatties as he wanted and get an extra helping of the curds that had been saved up from the convicts' rations. From where he sat, he watched. Debi-dayal cat. He saw him get up and go to the sea-water tap where they washed their plates, two uneaten chapatties still on his plate. That too was against prison regulations-you had to eat everything that was served. Debi threw the two chapatties into the dustbin, and then, after a surreptitious glance behind, also threw away the blue envelope. Then he began to wash his plate.
After the prisoners had been marched off to their afternoon spell of work, Gian walked over to the dustbin near the sea-water tap. He could see a corner of the envelope showing through the coconut husk and pumpkin peel and uneaten prison food that lay piled in it. He picked up the envelope, cleaned it with a bit of coir, and put it in his pocket.
Two days later, when he happend to be alone in the victualling shed, Gian took out the envelope hidden under the empty flour- bags. He extracted the letter and tore it into little bits, throwing the scraps into the waste basket. Then he unwrapped the packet of photographs.
The girl's face stared at him, the beginning of a smile on her lips, her eyes bright and full of life. It made him catch his breath. Again he felt a slight stab of jealousy for the man in the picture, the bridegroom in the lieutenant's uniform that had impressed even Mulligan; the smug vaguely anticipatory bridegroom-smile on his face, proclaiming to the world his right to possess the girl beside him.
The government-issue pair of scissors on his desk was rusted and blunt with use. With these, he began to cut out the man's picture, taking care to keep the girl's intact. He had just cut through the white margin when he stopped, suddenly aware that there was something a little odd about the photograph. He looked at it carefully, bending it in his hand. Now he could see it. A piece of stiff white paper had been glued to the back of the photograph, forming an envelope. He picked up the scissors again. His fingers shook.
He cut through the margin on one side. By bending the picture, he could see the cavity. Inside was a hundred rupee note, folded in four. Each of the other photographs also contained a hundred rupee note.
His fingers shook more than ever, and the backs of his hands were wet with sweat. He inserted the notes in the blue envelope and tucked it into his waistband, under his blouse. It felt cold and stiff against his skin, as though made of metal. He sat for a long time, staring at the three photographs, collecting his thoughts. Now, he too had violated prison rules. If anyone were to search him and a convict could be subjected to a search at any time he would be caught with three hundred rupees secreted in his belt. It was enough to send him to the kanji house for a week-it might even earn him a flogging; and of course, all his privileges would be instantly withdrawn.
He tore up the photograph of Sundari's parents and threw the pieces into the waste-basket. Then he snipped off the picture of the bridegroom from the other picture. The girl looked much more beautiful now, all by herself, he thought, even happier, freed from the presence of her man, like the girl in the picture with the dog. He wrapped the two photographs in the tissue paper and put them away in his wallet, beside his prison card and other papers.
Later the same evening, he found an excuse to go down to the workshop. The wheel-pin from one of the ration carts had broken and he had volunteered to go to the smithy and get a replacement. On the way out he selected a massive jack-fruit tree in which to hide his money. The tree was just a few paces away from a culvert, and easy to mark down. On his return, after a quick look all round, he climbed the tree. About twenty feet up, there was the sort of hollow that he needed a hole which furrowed upwards. He wedged the blue envelope into a crack inside the hole and scrambled down the tree.
A great load was off his mind. Now he had no reason to fear. one of those surprise body-searches that were a normal feature of prison life. It was, of course, perfectly all right to keep a girl's picture in your pocket-book; indeed, most convicts carried a picture or two, usually cut out from magazines. Money was quite another thing; possessing money was a serious offence.
On the darkening road tunnelling through the trees, with the prison building outlined against the sky, Gian Talwar went striding. Soon he began to whistle for the first time in more than a year. He, Gian Talwar, sentenced for life and classified D-for- dangerous, was perhaps the richest prisoner in the Cellular Jail. He also had in his wallet two excellent photographs of the loveliest girl in the world.
