The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [36]
Nirmal had played only a small part in the conference, serving merely as a guide and general dogsbody for the Burmese delegation. But now, with a Communist insurgency raging in Burma, the authorities were keen to know whether he had picked up anything of interest from his Burmese contacts.
Although he was detained for only a day or two, the experience had a profoundly unsettling effect on Nirmal, following as it did his rejection by Nilima’s family and his separation from his own. He could not bring himself to go to the college, and there were days when he would not even get out of bed. Recognizing that something had snapped, Nilima threw herself on her family’s mercies and went to see her mother. Although her marriage was never quite forgiven, Nilima’s family rallied to her side and promised to help in whatever way they could. At her father’s bidding, a couple of doctors went to see Nirmal and their advice was that he would do well to spend some time outside the city. This view was endorsed by Nirmal’s comrades, who had come to recognize that he was of too frail a temperament to be of much use to their cause. For her part, Nilima welcomed the idea of putting distance between herself and the city — as much for her own asthma as for Nirmal’s sake. The problem was, where were they to go? It so happened that Nilima’s father handled some of the affairs of the Hamilton Estate and he learned that the estate’s managers were looking for a teacher to run the Lusibari school.
Sir Daniel Hamilton had died in 1939 and the estate had since passed into the possession of his nephew, James Hamilton. The new owner lived on the isle of Arran in Scotland and had never been to India before coming into his inheritance. After Sir Daniel’s death he had paid a brief visit to Gosaba, but for all practical purposes the estate was now entirely in the hands of its management: if Nilima’s father put in a word, Nirmal was sure to get the job.
Nirmal was at first horrified at the thought of being associated with an enterprise founded by a leading capitalist, but after much pleading from Nilima he eventually agreed to go to Gosaba for an exploratory visit. They traveled down to the estate together and their stay happened to coincide with the annual celebration of the founder’s birthday. They discovered, to their astonishment, that this occasion was observed with many of the ceremonial trappings of a puja. Statues of Sir Daniel, of which there were many scattered around the estate, were garlanded, smeared with vermilion and accorded many other marks of reverence. It was clear that in the eyes of the local people the visionary Scotsman was, if not quite a deity, then certainly a venerated ancestral spirit. In listening to the settlers’ remembrances of the estate’s idealistic founder, Nirmal and Nilima were forced to revise their initial skepticism. It shamed them to think that this man — a foreigner, a burra sahib, a rich capitalist — had taken it upon himself to address the issue of rural poverty when they themselves, despite all their radical talk, had scarcely any knowledge of life outside the city.
It took them just a couple of days to make up their minds: without so much as setting foot in Lusibari they decided that they would spend a couple of years on the island. They went back to Calcutta, packed their few belongings and left immediately after the monsoons.
For their first few months on the island they were in a state akin to shock. Nothing was familiar;