By Major P. G. DEVASHER

The fire was hotting up. Starting with a single rifle shot it had spread quickly, left and right, leap frogging parts of the line, returning to take them in, like dry reeds burning in a parched up marsh. The impatient stutter of machine guns joined in with the rattle of musketry. Whether it was the real thing or just one of those things that happen at night one could not yet tell. It was pitch black. And cold.

In a large pit in the ground, over which stood a tent, a youngish looking man sat reading. A hurricane lamp rested on the top of a wireless set, its pale yellow light augmented by the greenish glow of the dial underneath. A camp stool supported the main weight of the reader’s body, back pressed squarely against the wall behind, feet on some dimly descried object in front. A thin trickle of music issued from the wireless set, beside which reposed a field telephone in its leather case. A revolver belt lay on the fair sized folding table which formed the main feature of the place, together with the remains of a meal. It was the Mess dug-out. And the officer, for such he was, was the Reserve Company Commander. It was his job to stand by in the Mess till something turned up for him and his men to do.

The officer read on quite unperturbed. So far from distracting him that ring of fire around the perimeter seemed to be giving him a comfortable feeling of assurance. No harm in a spot of firing last thing at night. The racket had started during dinner. The others had cleared off one by one; he had just carried on with the meal and settled down to read when that was satisfactorily finished. Rather well organised, the whole thing. It was not often that one had any peace in a Brigade Camp.

Meanwhile, that sounded like a girl come on at the radio. And, wait a minute, wasn’t she reciting Hindi Verse? Yes, she was. Kavyadhara; the Stream of Poetry. So tranquil and so mysterious. The rich mellow voice filled the dug-out. Outside, the firing continued. A couple of guns opened up lazily from the middle of the camp. Some No. I of an L. M. G. loosed off a whole magazine for good measure.

In the dug-out the officer lights a cigarette; but thoughtfully. This girl seemed to be singing with a strange, remote abandon. The theme of the composition was not romantic, nor was it a plain devotional piece. Indeed the whole thing appeared to be highly philosophical. Then why all that feeling, and whence the abandon?

A distant mortar chimed in to echo the query. The officer listened intently. It was about a dream; a glorious, wondrous dream, which dwelt always and for ever in the imagination of the poet. No ordinary dream, this; because, by witness of poetic faith, it signposted the landscape of Birth and Rebirth, like a glow-worm wandering in the dusk, like a trail blazed in the wilderness; dear, precious dream.

Right out of depth. Most likely he had got it all wrong. But the meaning of the lines did not really matter; they were great poetry whatever they meant. Whether it actually bewitched his slumbers or not, some vision of beauty, vain longing for it if you like, had inspired the poet. It existed in his imagination. For him it was something true. He believed in it. What mattered was that the girl at the mike seemed to believe in her song, too, and so in the dream. So utterly perfect was her singing, so effortless, so full of repose the clear deep stream of her voice. Like a note held captive on the long drawn out quiver of a violin, so did the ‘Swapan’^l ride on the tremulous voyaging of her lines. For the moment at least the invisible songstress had made the ‘Swapan’ her own and taken it to the very bosom of her ‘Kalpana’.²

The telephone buzzed out a throaty protest. Shutting off the radio Ashok Kumar gathered up his belt, hat, and stick and climbed out of the dug-out.

The ramifications of Karma formed the theme of discussion in the pilgrim train.

“Then how do you account for so much unhappiness in the world; so much estrangement in decent homes and families?”, a tense looking young fellow asked.

“Friends and journey-mates of the centuries are not always thrown together,” replied the grey-haired lady patiently. After a pause she added: “Sometimes there is no recognition.”

A stout, overdressed and apparently overfed gentleman sitting on his tin box on the floor of the carriage was trying hard to forget the discomfort of his seat.

“Who knows how many of our ancestors the ‘Triveni’³ has drawn before us!” he remarked with no particular relevance, changing position on his tin box for the hundredth time and jamming his back against the pile of bedrolls behind.

The old lady was quite ready for that one.

“Who knows, brother,” she said, leaning forward from her minute share of the bunk, “who knows how many times each one of us has been to the ‘Sangam’⁴ before.”

“Yes, who knows !”, echoed a dozen voices, faces aglow with the joy of the pilgrims’ state, hearts generous and friendly.

Just then, as if to confirm how little they knew, the train, which had been ambling quite pleasantly along, stopped with a jerk, precipitating the stout gentleman into the arms of the occupants of another and larger tin box, dislodging a couple of bed-rolls, and generally shaking up everybody in the carriage. Vocal propounding of high-grade philosophy ceased for the moment.

But Ashok wondered. Karma and Rebirth are facts for the Hindu mind, not theories to be debated. Had he been to the ‘Sangam’ before? Would assurance of any former visit be vouchsafed to him on the morrow? There was nothing inherently impossible about this; now and again one heard or read of people who confessed to visiting a place for the first time and instantly feeling that they had been there before, in some cases even seeing in a flash the previous scene. Would the ‘Sangam’ have a message for him?

This was more than a pleasant thought to while away the weary, dragging hours with. It gave content to his journey. It was not the urge of piety that was leading Ashok to the Kumbh; nor did he have any strong faith in the meritorious nature of the simple act of bathing that people performed there. He was going because Prayag had for the moment become the rallying point of his race and he had been infected by the prevailing fervour. It would be a great thing to keep the rendezvous–whatever its aim, purpose, or outcome–and so link oneself up with the long sweep of history that the Kumbhs marked out at twelve-year intervals. All the same, being of a sensitive turn of mind, he could not rid himself of the feeling that he was a bit of a fraud in going. Lacking essential faith, what else could it be? He was going to a ‘Mela’.⁵ And he, on the threshold of middle age, an ‘Officer and a gentleman’.

But the old lady’s words reassured him. “His journey did have an aim.

Prayag, the 3rd of February, 1954. Kumbh City was all that expectation had built it up to be and ten times as much.

So rich in fulfillment was the hour at the ‘Sangam’ that Ashok had not a thought to spare for any former pilgrimage, by himself or his ancestors, accomplished or left unachieved. Instead he looked down the long Saga of the Kumbhs ; the Kumbhs of Harsha Vardhan which used to be Imperial affairs, Kumbhs during periods of disorder and political change, when neither the hazards of travel nor deterrents such as the tax on infidel pilgrimage prevented the strong in faith from setting forth for Prayag. There, across the water, commanding the confluence of the sacred rivers of the Hindus, rose the strong black lines of Akbar’s Fort. Though in his reign (and doubtless in many others) there was no ‘Jazia’,⁶ and however true the tactical sitting of it, the fort symbolised an aspect of Muslim Rule that there could be no denying. There-after, for two centuries the British flag had flown over those same battlements, and over the congregations that foregathered at their foot. And now, after the long vicissitudes of History, once again the multitudes had flocked to the Kumbh without let or hindrance, without injury to national or personal pride. By train, aeroplane, motor car, bullock cart and on foot the people had come. From the highest to the lowest. History had come full circle.

So ruminating, Ashok returned to the boat in which he had come out. It was a large country craft and as yet far from full. In the area of the confluence there were at anyone moment perhaps a hundred boats. People were constantly jumping in and out of the water, helping girls and women over the side, giving children their dips, putting them back on boats, and so on. Ashok dressed and sat looking around in drowsy, blissful contentment. He was in no hurry to get away.

Suddenly, through all that pandemonium, a woman’s voice called out, soft but clear as a silver bell: “This is like dreams come true!” Instantly Ashok sat up, clutching at the vanishing, flying, string of words. He had heard that voice before. Where was she? Perhaps in that knot of people in the water. Perhaps in that boat over there. But there were so many knots of people in the water and so many boat-loads of them. Quite close she was, though; if only he could hear another word.

The boat filled up and they started pulling away. Desperately Ashok looked around, straining every nerve. Just another word, an inflexion of tone would do...They were leaving the ‘Sangam’ now. Going, going, gone. The boat Swung round and headed for the great black mass of Akbar’s Fort.

It was now about 9 o’ clock. The space between the water’s edge and the high embankment of the river was one avalanche of humanity. The thin trickle of returning pilgrims somehow reached the foot of the bund and there got jammed. Ashok was not quite awake enough to care why. The mental screen had gone blank in the boat, washed clean by the waters of the ‘Sangam’, as it were. With body imprisoned and thought benumbed he was conscious of one thing only: mounted men swaying over that ocean of heads. Red-turbaned horsemen on spirited chargers.

Recalled afterwards, the soldier’s eye was to discern in the picture the superb training and discipline of the Mounted Police. But at the time he just looked on with a strange, terrible fascination. He seemed to know who they were; those tough, proud-looking men on great sinewy horses, frothing at the mouth. There they were, brandishing sticks, rearing their horses, wheeling, moving, halting, making signals to each other. Who were they? The minutes passed. Man and beast held him in thrall.

The pressure eased off a little-jam-packed bodies fell loose from each other’s grip. The horsemen advanced through the crowd. One of them bore down on Ashok, the great hoofs of his horse pounding the earth like a piston. Ashok watched the flushed, perspiring face approach, glint of authority in the eyes. Pulling up sharply he called out aloud! “No, not this way. Go round by the Fort.” The powerful mount reared. For an instant the stick hung poised over Ashok’s head; the eyes beneath the red turban boring into his own. Then it came, like a great steel door screeching back on its rusty hinges and crashing shut again. He saw who he was, who they all were. They were the King’s Men.

Yes; the Fort, the men in shining armour, their blooded steeds, and that glint in the eye. The men of the Mogul Guard. And out of the crash and screech of steel, flowed the notes of music that had filled the dim-lit dug-out, voyaging through the noise of battle, years ago. “The dream, the dream, dear, precious dream. Like a glow-worm wandering in the dusk...like a trail blazed in the wilderness...through Birth and Re-birth. The dream.” Like a silver thread the dream, and its Song, wove through the ancient tumult, that hour in the dug-out, and the ringing, radiant voice that had broken through a thousand noises at the ‘Sangam’ that morning. “Friends and the journey-mates of the centuries...”

An officer rode up from behind. Perhaps recognising some kinship in the Service tie that Ashok wore, he said in a friendly sort of way: “Yes, that is right; go round by the Fort. There has been an incident here.”

Ashok jerked out of the centuries. An incident? That incident? Then perhaps...?

Yes, perhaps. Sometimes there is no recognition.

^l dream.

² Imagination.

³The rivers which meet at Prayag.

⁴Confluence.

⁵Fair.

⁶Pilgrim tax on non-Muslims.

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