Revenge of Kali Reprint Edition

By Aziz Hassim

STE Publishers

Copyright © 2009 Aziz Hassim
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-920222-37-6

Contents

Prologue,
Part One: The Canefields,
Part Two: The Duchene,
Part Three: The Casbah,
Epilogue,
Glossary,

CHAPTER 1

“I have to go, Malliga. Please try to understand. This is not an act of mindless emotion. My ancestors are buried there. That land is soaked with the blood of our people. The soil was irrigated by their tears. Can I live, without paying homage to their memory?”

I was aware that she wasn’t listening to a word of what I was saying. She was reading the expression on my face, searching for an answer beyond what my explanation revealed. She was like that, always looking for a hidden motivation lurking below my overt utterances.

“I have to go,” I pleaded, spreading my arms wide. “You have to understand what drives me, the spur that goads me … my ancestors slaved on those farms, their bones fertilise the earth that they toiled on.”

“It’s two in the morning, Thiru. No sane person jumps out of bed at this hour and decides to head for the hills.”

“Sanity is a matter of opinion. Shaquir once told me that one man’s sanity is another man’s madness. You know, sort of like that bit about one man’s meat being another man’s poison …”

She quietly stared at me, head tilted to one side, looking confused.

“Within the same person,” I continued, “it is referred to as schizophrenia.”

I could see, from her expression, that I was rapidly losing her. When she didn’t say anything I quickly added, “It’s not as if you’re a one-night stand and I’m running back to my wife.”

“I am your wife,” she said then, staring at me quizzically.

“I don’t think you heard a word of -“

“I heard you,” she cut in, a little angry now. “But when you begin to obfuscate …”

“What did I say?” I interrupted, “I gave you a simple answer. I explained why I have to go.”

“At this crazy hour? You consider that reasonable behaviour?”

“You’re going on and on like a shrew.”

“And you’re resorting to unfair tactics.”

“A shrew is also a mouse. It has this large snout and eats insects.”

“I give up,” she cried, throwing her hands in the air. “Go, if you must. I’ll still be here when you find yourself.”

I began to feel guilty then. “I wasn’t insulting you. It was simply an exercise in semantics.”

“You don’t want me to go with you?”

“No. I have to do this alone. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

She hugged me then, pressing hard into me. When she pushed me away, all she said was “Take something warm. I hear it gets pretty chilly on those fields.”

Malliga had been right, as always. Long before I reached the Canelands I could feel the bitter cold creeping into my bones. I switched on the heater, adjusted the air vents, and checked the fuel gauge. The needle showed more than three-quarters of a tank, enough to get me there and back. Malliga again. She was paranoid about such things. But then, I seldom used the car. It was more than that, though. She controlled every detail of our life together: she paid the bills, made sure I ate regular meals, ensured that I dressed appropriately and got to the office on time. I was happy to go along with her. It suited me fine.

Thinking about her made me regret my pig-headed response to her concern for my welfare. Before remorse could settle in I channelled my thoughts into serene waters – the purpose of my visit to the canefields. For once, I said to myself, she had been wrong. There was nothing impulsive about my behaviour.

For some time now, I had been preoccupied by thoughts of the arrival of my ancestors from their distant village in Madras. My efforts at researching what drove them to leave their homes and cross the ocean ended dismally. All I could find were fragments of documents that left me asking more questions and able to provide very few answers. Until the day I found myself sitting next to an ancient descendant of those early settlers. What that grizzled old man told me shook me to the core, inflamed my passion, and left me seething with anger. And it was more than what he said, it was the way he said it: the tremor in his voice, the emotions doing a hideous dance on his face, the terrifying account of the appallingly harsh abuse, the torment and anguish of a lifetime of persecution and tyranny of guileless people abandoned by both God and Government.

And, brute that I am, what finally broke me was not so much his narrative but the solitary tear that rolled down his cheek. The sight of a man of his years crying in dignified silence pierced my heart and left me bereft, devastated and depressed.

“Veerasammy,” he said, unexpectedly. I automatically assumed he was referring to the hated sirdar, the overseer on the plantation he had been talking about. Then he coughed, apologetically. “My name, thumbee. But they call me Sammy. You know, the way you call a dog.”

Yes, tata, I said to myself, as I crested a hill and rolled the car towards a flat spot, under an ancient tree. You taught me something that day. You made me realise that a man who doesn’t know his past has no future. You also reminded me of an old African saying, long forgotten, that until the lion tells his story, tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.

When I switched off the engine the chill crept in with a vengeance. I slipped on my thick cardigan, opened the window an inch, and took a deep breath. What, I asked myself, did I expect to find here? Did I really believe that, over a hundred years later, these hills would somehow provide the answers? Or that, miraculously, echoes of the past would reverberate off the distant barrows and project their tales of woe? Was Malliga right after all, that I was indulging in an act of insanity?

I closed the window and sank back into the seat. The windscreen was cloudy, misted over. It was gloomy inside and out. The darkness enveloped me. I was truly in a cocoon, surrounded by the spirits of the dead. But would they speak to me, communicate with me, or were the tales of the ancients simply no more than just tales, lacking substance? Were the stories that my granny had inculcated into me as I had sat at her knee, of how the spirits never let you go, no more than simply stories?

As I pondered the questions that obsessed me I closed my eyes, slipped into a cerebral freefall, drifted into the Stygian abyss of my own creation. It may have been my frozen brain playing tricks with me, causing me to hallucinate within my own fantasies. Whatever the stimulus, I knew then that I was there at last – perhaps not in body but certainly in essence.

If you listen carefully, and the wind is in the right direction, you will hear them, as I now did – the spectral voices, the soft whisper from the ancients. Listen now, not with your ears but with your heart and your soul. Sink into yourself, below the sound of your breathing, deep into the underbelly of your consciousness.

It will come to you then, the gentle murmur over the ether. Ignore the static; it will soon fade into the background. Suppress the overt senses, the intrusion of your eyes, nose, and your ears. And, if you remain very still, it will creep up on you: the sobbing, the howling, the whimpering and the moans. When the pain begins to consume you, when you groan in harmony with their agony, you’ll know, as surely as you breathe, that you are there with them, a participant in the anguish and misery of their purgatory.

You’ll hear the panting too, from the spirits of those who are still running, more than a century later, barely a step ahead of their pursuers – the hated sirdars and their vicious dogs.

You are no longer an observer. The ancestors have you in thrall.

Be careful, now. Allow the aura to overcome you lest it slip away, leaving you desolate. Remain within the cocoon that envelopes you, become one with the milieu that embraces you, a shared sanctum where only the ghosts from the past abide. And, as the vibes seep into you, as you assimilate into your environment, you will know that the river that chills your bones flows with the tears of those that came before you; that the verdant land, stretching as far as the eye can see, was irrigated by those very tears. It will be a homecoming, a return to your roots.

And then you’ll hear it, the magnetic call: “Come, kanna. What took you so long!”

CHAPTER 2

“You want to escape from here,” Ellapen taunted, “when you can’t visit the next farm without a pass?”

“It’s just a piece of paper,” Runga scoffed. “Not a bar of gold.”

“And who will write the pass? You? In Tamil?”

“Look, Ella, not knowing the master’s language doesn’t mean I’m stupid. In my village there is a wise saying: ‘You can’t kill a snake with a bamboo quill but you can blind it.'”

“I don’t see the relevance.”

“Who are the master’s police, on all the plantations? The sirdars! They can’t read English either.”

“And you can’t write it.”

“But I am a very good artist. All I have to do is copy a few lines from an old newspaper. The house ayah can smuggle it to me from the Big House.”

“That may get you off the fields,” Ellapen conceded. “But what about the towns, where any White can ask you to produce the pass?”

“I can bypass them.”

“And when you get to Durban?”

Stumped, Runga retreated into himself.

The area in front of the semi-circle of huts was unusually quiet. The low flames of several fires barely dispelled the gloom, the shadows looming large over the men who had stretched out on the bare ground, in an advanced stage of exhaustion. For a few, a small smooth rock served as a pillow. A smaller number of women, equally weary, squatted close by, arms around their knees as they conversed in low voices.

Ellapen, his back against a large rock, was chewing on a mouthful of mealie meal, the bland taste flavoured with a braised tomato given to him by Chinnamah, who lived in a hut not far from him. He took one more handful, then reluctantly pushed the pot away, hunger still gnawing at his stomach. Breakfast would have to be consumed on the run; he would need the remainder to fuel his body for the rigours of the next day.

He was still savouring the last bite, his fingers near his lips, when he suddenly froze, mesmerised by the soft, plaintive crooning that floated over the tiny encampment. He turned toward the voice, eyes straining over the embers of a dying fire. Doulat, the handsome, sensitive boy who had been adopted by everyone, was singing in a gentle lilt, his soothing voice barely audible beyond the furthest hut.

The men silently sat up, the women stopped talking, their passions aroused by the mournful rendition of a ballad they barely recalled. It was also the first time they had heard Doulat utter more than a word; a simple namaste or salaam were all that had ever emanated from his full, red lips.

A flame from a fire, fed by a sudden burst of oxygen, illuminated the youthful face with an unearthly glow. Eyelids closed and face tilted to the sky, a solitary teardrop making a slow journey along a downy cheek, he sang with the intensity of a lark locked in a cage.

Mohideen, who had been sprawled on the ground, raised himself to his knees and, leaning towards Ellapen, whispered, “I didn’t know the boy could sing. He has the voice of an old master.”

Ellapen, entranced, simply nodded in agreement.

And, as Doulat sang, his long fingers beat a gentle tattoo on his upturned bowl, providing the musical accompaniment. It was a dirge, born out of bondage, an improvisation conceived in pain and longing, the rendition of a tortured soul. He was wailing a song of woe, a mournful lament that pierced the hearts of his pathetic audience and transported them to their distant villages and the loved ones at home. In that moment of rare serenity the anger seeped out of them, replaced by a melancholic inertia that hypnotised them and reduced them to a gathering of lost souls, forsaken by both God and his angels.

The love that grew in our bosom
From the day I was born
Do not distance from your heart

He drummed a gentle beat on his pot, his fingers flying with amazing speed.

When thoughts of me surface
Pray that we will be together again
Oh! Pray my loved ones
Pray for a forsaken soul
That breathes only to see you once more

It was a bewitching voice and they were spellbound.

Did you think that I would forget you?
Each beat of my heart is a lullaby
Crying out to the heavens above
Take me home! Take me home!
Dear God! Take me home.

The last line was wrenched from deep within him, the anguish pouring out of his lungs. In the second of silence, as Doulat took a deep breath, the crack of a whip followed by the smack of leather on Doulat’s back broke the spell.

“Shut up, bastard! Shut your mouth up!”

It was the hated sirdar, his face a mask of pure venom. He had appeared from nowhere. He raised the whip above his shoulder once again, had bent his elbow to deliver the next blow, when Ellapen sprang from the ground, moving with incredible speed. His fingers curled around the sirdar’s wrist, immobilizing the man.

“Swine! Touch him again and you’re a dead man!”

“Maar sale ku!” – hit the bastard – a voice in the background hissed in Hindi.

“Yathda!” – smash him – another called out in Tamil.

Ellapen’s eyes, blazing with fury, froze the overseer and sent a chill down his spine.

“You scum,” Ellapen spat through clenched teeth, “You product of the master’s shit! I’ll feed your broken body to the pigs -“

Mohideen jumped up, wrapped his arms around Ellapen, and softly pacified him. “Enough, brother. Let the turd go.” Then he turned towards the foreman and cried, “Go, maader chod! Get out of here!”

Ellapen brought his anger under control and released the sirdar, who quickly scuttled off, muttering ominous threats under his breath as he disappeared into the darkness.

“You’re a dead man, thumbee,” Lutchmee, the kindly matriarch from the furthest hut, called out. “Men like him never forget. He’ll come looking for you tomorrow. And he won’t come alone.”

“Tomorrow is another day, umma,” Ellapen sighed, breathing heavily. “I am also a man who never forgets.”

The next morning, before the sun appeared over the horizon, the harsh clamour of the bell shocked Ellapen out of a deep sleep. Before he could rouse himself, he heard the whine of the sirdars’ whips singing outside the huts.

“Ten minutes! If you’re still here in ten minutes you’ll taste the lash!”

Ellapen rubbed his forehead, clearing the fog from his mind. He could hear Mohideen in the corner of their hut, the sound of a spoon against a steel bowl. Mohideen was hurriedly dishing out the mushy mealie meal carefully saved the night before. “Eat, brother. You can’t work on an empty stomach. Be quick.”

Runga rushed in, gasping as he joined them on the floor. “Went to fetch water,” he rasped. “The damned river is full of shit. Didn’t have time to go upstream.”

Ellapen wolfed down the soggy mess, nodded to his companions as he slipped a vest over his lean, muscular shoulders, then followed them out. The huts were emptying fast, some of the men still in the process of pulling their clothes on as they scurried toward the field. The women were not far behind them.

It was another day of brutal, back-breaking torture. Ellapen’s team, consisting of ten men and five women, worked at a furious pace. The men slammed their picks into the hard ground, loosening the tightly packed soil a little at a time. Often, the pick struck a rock and the heavy wooden handle vibrated violently, jarring their arms and shoulders. The sweat poured down their bodies, the loose sand clinging to their eyes and nostrils. Their tongues were parched; the occasional sip of scarce water barely moistened their lips and provided meagre relief for their burning throats. And the overseers, with their ever ready whips, ensured there was no let up in the scorching pace.

The women followed on the heels of the men, digging holes in neat rows, removing small rocks and stones with their bare hands. As soon as the ground was prepared they poured an even measure of manure from the heavy bags slung over their shoulders. They then planted the shoots, holding them upright, and quickly refilled the stinking cavities with soil piled in little mounds at the side. As the morning wore on the smell from the manure and their perspiration mingled, making them wrinkle their noses in distaste.

A hundred yards to the right of Ellapen’s gang, another team was moving at a similar pace. A smaller group, to the left, toiled in synchronicity with the team adjacent to theirs.

By mid-morning the pace slackened a little, though it was gruelling nevertheless. The sun, beating mercilessly over their bodies and uncovered heads, added a new dimension to their misery.

The sirdars, with their sharp eyes and singing whips, were striding up and down the line, screaming “Faster! Faster!” alternately in Hindi and Tamil. The men muttered obscenities under their breaths, the women cursing silently. They had been working continuously since daybreak and were beginning to stumble from fatigue.

An older woman, in her forties, suddenly collapsed; her face falling into the hole she had been working on. A sirdar, infuriated, grabbed the back of her sari and roughly dragged her away. “Stupid cow!” he screamed at the top of his voice. “You’ll slow the whole line down!”

One of the sirdars, an elderly man with gentle eyes, hurried over and carried her to the shade of a crude canvas tent that was reserved exclusively for the overseers and to which they retired regularly to take a swig from their bottles and escape the heat of the sun. He cradled her head in his arm and poured a few drops of water between her dry lips, watching over her anxiously. When her eyelids fluttered, then opened wide, he held the bottle to her mouth and made her drink a little more. When she coughed, the overseer who had dragged her off the line snapped, “Get the old cow back here, Beharie. She’s just shamming!”

Beharie ignored the summons. He patted the woman on the shoulder, placed his water bottle within close reach, and left her side. He walked over to his colleague and said, indignantly, “It’s past the lunch break. Won’t do us any good if the master rides over and finds them all flat on their faces.”

“I’ll have you flat on your face the next time you run to help these dogs!” When he looked into Beharie’s cold eyes he quickly turned around and, with a show of bravado, shouted, “Lunch break! Half an hour!”

Most of the workers simply collapsed, sighing with relief. Ellapen straightened up, rolling his neck from side to side, easing the tension. In spite of the meagre diet, his tall body was sinewy, the ropey muscles glistening with sweat. His coppery skin, leonine face and high cheekbones exuded confidence. Even the brutal sirdars were intimidated by him, though they tried not to show their fear. They gave him a wide berth, seldom looked him in the eye, and lowered their voices when they were forced to address him.

The workers shared the food they had brought over – the usual mush of mealie meal and, for a lucky few, a scrap of dried roti. They washed it down with a sip of water, which the women had carried over on their shoulders in crude earthenware containers.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Revenge of Kali Reprint Edition by Aziz Hassim. Copyright © 2009 Aziz Hassim. Excerpted by permission of STE Publishers.
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