Hana Andronikova: Another World

The Sound of the Sundial, Chapter II. Another World

He couldn’t waste time. He went about finding how other companies’ builders coped with the Indian climate, solved the ventilation problem and braved monsoons and earthquakes. On the hoof, he fitted out workshops for mechanics and carpenters. Stocking the company shops had to proceed at lightening speed. In Bengal and neighbouring Assam alone there were a hundred shops to set up. In the mornings, he would wake to the heavy fog of Calcutta. That’s probably why the English set up here, he mused; it must have reminded them of London. Daytime temperatures gradually rose to 40°C in the shade. He would knock out reports to Zlín until well into the night. Worn to a shadow and bathing in his own sweat, he tried to gather his fragments of thought, interrupted by memories of home. He chafed at the mountain of details he had to write out at inordinate length. Wooden shelves cost five rupees each, the deposit for an electricity metre comes to about twenty-five rupees…

He felt trapped. This was a different world. Life in the streets of Calcutta pulsed every inch of the way. He met people of every colour. From white Englishmen to the blackest of black men, members of every religion and caste, from Tibetan lamas in their orange robes to untouchables. He reached the River Hoogli. The city had once settled down like some gigantic beast on its left bank and ever since had lapped up its turbid waters, feeding countless houses, streets, hovels and rubbish dumps.

The stifling air was riven by strange raucous calls. Kalighat! Kalighat! The voices promised something, something mysterious, fascinating, something not to be missed. Kalighat! The voices of bus-drivers. They were cursing the goddess Kali. Kalighat! He dithered about, hands in pockets, then absent-mindedly boarded one of the buses. They drove down the avenue of shop-fronts on Chauringi, the main thoroughfare, where he had taken up residence a fortnight earlier. Then the right side of the street disappeared and in its place the Maidan opened out before him. A vast plain in the middle of a city. The brown-skinned driver in a white shirt keeps chanting his magic formula: Kalighat! Kalighat! Like a granite mountain, the white statue of Queen Victoria looms and the man at the wheel wheezes Kalighat! Kalighat! The road drowning in detached houses, large and small, and engine noise. The brakes of the bus screeched. Kalighat! A voice announcing the destination.

He staggered out of the bus. Nothing of note. Just ordinary houses of European appearance, boring and severe. Run-of-the-mill vegetable gardens and a battered bus plastered with adverts. The other passengers looked neither confused nor cheated. He bent his steps towards the little street running up between two houses. He let his feet go where they would. The European houses disappeared, and much as when a magician produces a bunch of flowers out of a hat, he found himself walking through a mysterious garden. The sensual smell of flowers in a cloud of steam and buzzing insects. The Garden of Eden. Some slimy stuff began to cling to his soles. A strange slime. This squelching, reeking slime was blood. Hot, fresh, running. The air was filled with blood. Stunned, he tripped over some stray dogs; starved and greedy they were licking at the cooling blood. Above the scene a pulsation, a rumbling and the wailing of flutes. The Brahmin is ready. The sound of drums fills the yard, reaches a climax, the eyes of the pilgrims have a bloodthirsty glare. The priest approaches the sacrifice with a wide sword. A forked wooden chopping block clamps the beast’s neck and the instrument of death cleaves the air with a swish. The mesmerised crowd in waves of excitement. Streams of blood jet from the severed arteries, the lamb’s head lies in the pool of red, and the executioner’s henchmen carry off the lifeless corpse. All for her. For Kali. The earth soaked with the lifeblood of sacrificial lambs. The crushing hordes of pilgrims buy wreathes of marigolds and sacrifice them to the powerful goddess. Reflections of the midday sun in pools of blood. An arboreal cactus in the yard, hung about with the amulets of women who have come to plead for a son.

He did not know how he ended up inside the temple with its pale blue mosaic on its low tower. The temple of Kali. The goddess herself was safe within the inner sanctum, but even there the stench must have reached her. It was everywhere. Intoxicating and unnerving, taste of blood. He found it provoking.

Roaming among the crowds there were sacred bulls, well-fed zebus and sadhus – holy men whose raiment is dust and whose only property is a begging bowl. The contours of dead bodies on a funeral pyre and the monotonous murmur of the Brahmins. A burning ghat. Steps descend to the river, where the living bathe.

He would never forget the image that opened up before him.

A stack of wood about two feet high and three feet long and on it flowers and a girl dressed in white. Her legs deliberately broken and forced back towards her head. Such rough handling saves money of the bereaved. Even the wood has to be paid for. The pyre blazes up, a weary calm around it, no one weeps. The clothes disappear and the flesh slowly chars, the face and ribcage take on strange dimensions, the body twists in a dramatic dance. All the moisture is driven off and the body begins to carbonise. The pyre and bodily remains disintegrate, to the ashes the dead girl’s father consigns a sacrificial coin encased in the dung of a sacred cow. The fire has died down and the pile of residue has slipped into the water. The river hissed with pain and the living pilgrims carried on washing, passing their sins into the muddy waters.

Unsteadily, he made his way back past the congealing lamb´s blood and the dogs with their flicking, saucer-shaped tongues. And suddenly, as if a curtain, or the flap of a circus tent, had dropped behind him, he was standing in the busy street. The show was over. Show? No, what he had witnessed was no show. The blood was real; the sacrifices, the burning corpses, everything was real. Even the goddess Kali. She had been there, even if she hadn’t put in an appearance. He could sense her, he knew she was there. He knew that the Hindus’ belief in Kali was genuine. Despite the fact that in combination with modern houses the Kalighat and its riot of blood was like the gestures of a madman. Absurd, almost farcical.

He took the bus back into town, but he didn’t feel like bed. He wandered about the Maidan, that vast area of dry, rustling grass in the middle of the city. He let his faltering legs carry him towards the noise of the harbour, towards the light coming from lamps and fires. Kidderpore. In among the fires were alleys of scruffy shacks, canals and bridges. A native market place in the middle of the night, the turmoil, the crashing and banging, and the utter confusion. Betel-sellers screamed endlessly ‘Paan, paan’, and women were selling cheroots. The omnipresent smell of roast meat. His head spun.