“A famine?” Lear peers at the note from Edgar that Giorgi hands him at breakfast. He has just finished slicing a large piece of boiled mutton.
Must proceed directly to Agra. Avoid Bihar.
“Famine?” Lear looks at Giorgi, who is happily brushing his shoes.
“Edgar mentions a famine in Bihar. A famine,” he repeats. “You must not have read the note.”
Placing the lid back on the blacking bottle, Giorgi nods. “I know, Master. I read it. I was born a few months after the year without a summer ravaged my village in Albania. No harvest meant little food. People abandoned their homes and fields and fled, never to return. I know famines.”
The year without a summer! How remarkable! Just last year, Lear had heard Lady Derby complaining about the morning frost in the middle of May, which ravaged her garden. He had shivered in his boots during his trip to Scotland in early September of 1841, when, a week before in England, he had sipped cool lemonade with his friends! But after hearing Giorgi’s description of starving babies and the old and sick being carried in the arms of men who still had the strength to make their way through the mountains, he pauses.
A garden in full bloom at the Red House in Ardee, Ireland. Among the roses, four men are discussing the Great Famine. Dressed in a white suit and vest, Fortescu is standing near the broken fountain and looking at a squirrel sitting on top of a dry spout. A gentleman in a large hat is talking very animatedly about English indignities in Ireland. Fortescu’s impassioned indictment of the English for their unconcern for the Irish makes the darkhaired young woman in a white frock whisper under her breath, “There you have a liberal in flesh and blood.” She turns her eyes away from Lear, realizing that he had heard what she has muttered.
That was in 1857, nearly sixteen years ago, when he had sensed that the topic of famines had not gone down well with Fortescu’s guests at the garden party. But to think about these grim events now seems quite uninviting just as one is preparing for a new journey. So he looks at the words he has just scribbled in his notebook: Drawing my last inspiration from soon never-to-be-seen-any-more woods of the eastern Himalayas. In the midst of all this greenery, he reflects as he looks outside the open window, are dying crops, parched lands and emaciated bodies. Human and animal carcasses strewn on the dry earth. Rivers that have gone completely dry.
Pulling out a badly folded map from his pocket, he places it on his knees, and running his finger on it, exclaims, “Bihar is not very far from here. In the plains, but not very far at all.” Giorgi is sitting out in the sun staring at the sky.
Nearly a month before, on a cold, crisp morning in Calcutta, while walking in Evelyn’s sprawling garden, Lear had noticed a tall native man watering the rose bushes. His lean face glistened in the sun as he moved around, digging and deadheading the wilted blooms. Evelyn joined him. “This man is the youngest in my team of five. An exceptionally talented chap. Knows virtually everything there is to know about the local flora. Not bad at roses either.” They both looked at the man, who was walking up to the well at the far end of the garden to fill his watering can. Bending down to retie his laces, Evelyn continued, “I was told that when he came to work here about seven years back, he weighed little more than three stone. Lost his entire family to the Orissa famine.”
The sunburnt arms reached down as he gently worked the soil, the firm hands breaking down the lumps. That was the first time Lear had heard about famines in India. Then he heard Evelyn, who was about five paces behind him, say, “What happened in Orissa was regrettable, but it was destiny that no government could prevent or alleviate.” Walking down the beautifully manicured lawn, Evelyn pointed to another young man. “Do you see the lad with the limp over there? His entire village, just outside Calcutta, was wiped out in the hurricane of 1867. Nothing remained of the town of Canning or the villages nearby when the storm was over.”
The man with the limp was raking leaves. Evelyn’s long arms stuck out of the sleeves of his dark grey coat.
“The tropics! Nature in this country is so utterly unpredictable! But the government has been compassionate, providing work to the many affected so adversely by nature’s fury.” Walking up to the veranda, he picked up a glass of lemonade and smiled. “The lemon tree in the garden gives lemons by the dozen every day without fail this time of the year. The Viceroy loves his lemonade, so he has ordered more trees to be planted.”
I have known Evelyn to be a faithful man of the Empire, but never before have I heard him express these sentiments – and without a tad bit of hesitation, Lear thought. The great benevolence of the English government in India! Evelyn Baring had certainly turned himself into a valiant defender of the Empire, which was not surprising in the least. After all, he was the Viceroy’s cousin, appointed to oversee the everyday running of a country that stretched from one ocean to the other. Perhaps, the young man knew more about these matters than the Viceroy or even I did. Far be it for me to speculate about the difficulties of running an empire!
Looking at the gardener’s face, he had paused for a moment, seeing the soft shadows cast by the winter sun. However, he could not help himself from holding back the questions that raced through his mind. How many of the disasters Evelyn had named were instances of nature gone awry? Did the misery of Indians signify that the English had been unable to serve the world they claimed to rule so ably? Perhaps the benevolence of English rule was a mere façade that concealed something that no one could speak about. Lord Northbrook was different, he knew from his friends in England. Hand-picked by Gladstone to run India, he was a good, well-meaning man. But Evelyn’s tone suggested that he preferred to ride the old horse and use his whip to move it along, as many before him had done. After all, the Empire was a business, and someone had to take hard decisions!
Although new questions had bubbled up in his mind, he had chosen to remain silent that morning. Perhaps it was not appropriate to bring up such matters. After all, he was the Viceroy’s guest, and his dear friend, Evelyn, was the Viceroy’s favoured cousin. As he sat sipping lemonade, the gardener came up and announced in a low voice that the carriage had arrived to take them to Tollygunge.
Excerpted with permission from The Viceroy’s Artist, Anindyo Roy, Hachette India.
