Krishno VII

**Still in progress, this one

Asma's last night at the hostel was also the last time she would check in with the real world. She'd been a crafter of stories ever since she was a little girl, studying cinema in her father's studio, writing abstruse prose, disconnecting herself from the pretentions of reality. Genius, it's said, needs infusions of madness to nourish itself. Those that retain a fleeting connection with the world they inhabit make a name for themselves through their fantastical unpatterned thoughts and designs. Those that let go of this connection are remanded to institutions. Asma was happy to be on the brink, happy to simply give shape to the eruption Krishno had scripted for later that night.

She could feel the romance in the air as she got dressed. Where it wisped in from, she couldn't tell. But then her notions of romance had gotten addled over the years, so perhaps what she felt today was just a heightened sensitivity to her immediacies, engendered by solitude and sharpened by the anxiety of what could go wrong that night...or possibly a wistfulness wrought on by the storm clouds that had gathered over London.

She forced a smile as she looked herself in the mirror - bedecked, jewelry resplendent, she looked every inch a cinema goddess. The earrings were a gift from Shahadat, and she'd stolen the necklace from her mother. They were essences, frozen in time, of her uncle's passion and her mother's sobriety - clasps to her old life. She undid these clasps every night when she made her way to yet another dimly lit street corner, but she decided to keep them on for this, her last night in London.

This tussle between passion and sobriety helped center Asma in the world she created around herself. It held her delicate life taut against the wind, steeling her. And she needed every last bit of these slender strengths to keep from flinching as she played out her part in Krishno's game.

She never analysed why she went along with Krishno, nor what power he held over her. She didn't care to know. He was a magician, she knew that. He created elaborate illusions that caused jaws to fall. She let herself be carried by him, by his performances. Sometimes they'd be mere ripples that floated her along from one night to the next. Other times, like she knew it'd be tonight, she gave in to the vicious riptide, to the aftershock that'd follow. She learnt to slide along with it, beginning the day Krishno told her about how he'd gotten that bomb smuggled onto The Queen Mary.

Asma's mind was pliable clay when she left Dhaka. Krishno played potter to shape it as he willed, after taking her home the night The Queen Mary sank. He lied to her shamelessly, until she became inured to his lying. She would know that his nature was to lie, but his every falsehood was designed to help Asma create an alternate reality for herself. Her uncle was a casualty, he explained. But these things happen. Asma's intelligence begged her to see through the smoke and mirrors, but it was a losing battle. When the illusions began to feel more real, more comfortable than the truth, she let herself get swept by them.

Krishno VI

The machinations had started when he was very young. At an age when the children at school were learning to live with each other, include others in their games of fancy and upstumbledown, Krishno was crafting a walking stick for himself. There were journeys to be made and they’d be easier with a stick in hand. Such an old soul, he chuckled to himself. He was probably just as old as the wood his stick was made of. Just that the others won’t know it to look at me.

His lack of years and his tiny body surprised him. Happenstance, that his age was coupled to such a slow-moving bead on his life’s abacus, one that moved only as fast as time. It was natural then that his precocity would distance itself further and further from his actual years.

As a child, Krishno had a curious empathy for everyone around him. He would watch people and feel their burdens and wonder at their helplessness. He’d force his way into people’s lives to dissolve their worries and joys into his stomach and carry them away. You didn’t need to voice it for Krishno to know how you felt. His was a keen perspicacity, and the village loved the little big boy. He’s going to be special when he grows up. Maybe he’ll move to the city, and find that the city loves him as much as we do.

The panic began to set in when he was twelve. He had been a middling student at school, but surely that was because the rigours of discipline, of demonstrated reverence to teachers and knowledge, all were pointless exercises in the grand exercise to unleash Krishno’s potential. After all, who in my class knows of the world more than I? And people... I read them like they were yesterday's news. They'll never teach this at school.

It was around then that the adulation began to settle. Younger children were born every year. Some so prodigiously untalented that it rankled with Krishno. What had they done to deserve this equal measure of attention from the villagers? All they were good for was playing in the mud. But Krishno was growing up, and his precocity was gently removed from the pedestal the villagers had placed it on, replaced by a tepid affection and a casual regard for his progress through life.

Something needed to give.

A mela visited the village when Krishno was 13. He snuck into the room of mirrors, reflections of the oddest shapes and sizes. Funny ones and scary ones, depressing ones and some that were revelatory. He walked along the narrow corridor till he came to a small bulb of a room. It was lined with flat mirrors all around, no more those bloated, dwarfed, stretched caricatures. Now it was just him. There’s an impersonality that detaches us from a reflection when we stare at it intently. The form we see is one we’ve accepted. We know the familiar pits and embarrassments, writ large in these reflections. And we forgive ourselves easily, because we’ve learnt how to look when we stare at the glass, how to use the light and distance so that the crooked nose appears straightened, or the thin lips fuller. The ego stops us from stripping ourselves.

That’s how it had worked for Krishno all these years. But then, he'd never had occasion to stand between mirrors, to see himself many times over, each image lighter than the one before. It looked so regal, this multitude of Krishnos, extending to the end of the cosmos in the mirrors. He stepped back to admire himself when, suddenly, he saw another person in the room. The flashing perception in that instant was threatening. His reflex was a sudden recoil. As the image shot up through his eyes and into his brain, he began to break down the threat. He’s my height. I can take him. He looks like he hasn’t seen me here yet..No, he’s seen me now. Fight? Absolutely. Wait…What was that again? Play it back..Where’ve I seen him before…Oh..

Krishno was surprised by this new reflection of himself. It was on a third mirror, the way someone standing off to the side would see him. He looked closely at himself, careful not to lose this new perspective. How did they see him when he wasn’t conscious of them watching, when he wasn’t performing? He saw glimpses of ugliness in this reflection. That stance. Arrogant without reason. His hair, unkempt, and so uncivilized from the side. Who’d take him seriously? …Even the illusions of being special crumbled when he looked at himself this way, when he couldn’t control the impression he was making. This couldn’t go on.. Where was that gem in the coal-dust? What was all this mediocrity doing in the reflection? No, no.. His life would be seen only as he wanted it shown.

....Hunched over Shahadat’s body, pumping his chest, Krishno couldn’t help himself. Brilliant, he whispered in his head. He couldn't bring himself to say it but it bounced around the walls of his skull, vibrating against his inner ear, forming a residue on his tongue that he just had to spit out. He would, all in due course.

Krishno - V

1983
Krishno felt it on the tips of his fingers, and in the chill of his bones. The exhilaration of watching a plot play out just the way it was written was miraculous. It coursed through every sinew, and caused your being to shudder. It turned your age on its head. And Krishno'd been addicted to this thrill for as long as he could remember.

Krishno'd had an exciting life by all counts. Every measure of it was fantastical. Each happening was a confluence of so many fates, so many destinies, that Krishno himself didn't believe a life, any life, could play out like this. He used to love to pick a frame from the movie of his life and live it anew, again and again..but even this, like him, had begun to grow old.

As he stared across the canyon, hair and beard white from his journey across geographies and time, he felt a weariness. For all the thrills of the ride, his puppeteering had taken its toll over the years. Such contrivance, all those expedients...all that plotting. He'd begun to feel a detachment from himself. This, he realised, was where he'd wanted to go all along. This prime spectator's view. No longer just the player, now he was becoming the ghost that straddled the end of the stage, loosening the rivets from his actor's body and coalescing into the seats, front and center. It was soon going to be time to bring down the curtains.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

1942
Her Girl's Hostel was a loose place. "Hostel" was an especially kind euphemism. Some had plied their trade there uninterrupted for decades, so "Girl's" was stretching it too. It hurt Asma's scalp to pull her hair back that tight, but she liked the look. The streets demanded it, she'd smile to herself. She had learnt the art of makeup quickly, and spent much of her money on the best products. Krishno later chronicled how one of her young clients was a hindustani who went back to India and became a famous film producer. Apparently, it was this young man who years later insisted Asha Parekh kajol her eyes the way he remembered it on an unnamed girl in an unnamed city.

Krishno, now a second officer, would be commissioned to sea for three months at a stretch. When he docked, he'd head straight to that seedy underbelly of the city, that heaven on earth. He'd take a woman before he met with Asma. No, her he'd love slowly through the night, but these others, they were just grinding stones to blunt the edge off him after three dry months on the water.

Asma hurried home early that night. She had simply gone through the motions during the day, waiting for it to end but her clients tipped her lavishly. Each felt he was the reason she was glowing.

Once home, she found Krishno on the bed, face buried in her pillow and lost to the world. She didn't care if he was tired from the sea or from the women, she was comforted just seeing him. She wouldn't wake him till the morning.

Krishno brought Asma home the night the ship capsized. She didn't speak a word for a week, and he couldn't tell if it was the shock or if she was mute. He fed her and left her indoors by day, while he went to train at the docks. In the evening, when he returned, she'd still be by the window he left her at in the morning. One morning, as he was about to leave the house, he heard her cry out sharply. He ran back up and found her hopping on one foot at the top of the stairs. She had stubbed her toe , rushing to the stairwell to watch Krishno leave. They looked at each other, she hopping, he not so much, and they broke into a laugh.

Four years later, Asma had her back to Krishno as he slept. She asked herself everyday if she was happy, if this independence she had was worth the price of separation from family, from the charted life she'd left behind in Dhaka. Not today though. She decided she didn't want to hear the answer tonight. She'd take solace in Krishno's sleeping form. Let him sleep. Let him not wake. She could dream about how her life would take flight from that point on. If the bastard woke, he'd just drag her back to reality.

Krishno - IV

The Queen Mary at the British Nautical Museum today is a replica. The wood is shinier, they have panels of oak, carpets where there weren't any earlier and a captain's deck that wasn't on the original ship. Some say this model won't even float. Only the helm on this replica, blackened from the fire, reminds visitors of that inky '37 night.

It was just past midnight and The Queen Mary was supposed to dock within the hour when suddenly the radio at the Port Authority burst into life. Cries of "Mayday!" cut quickly through the inebriation. Her Majesty's Coastguard rallied two rescue boats to set out immediately to sea. A group of docksmen scrambled to assemble Manby's mortar, to reach the wrecked vessel with a line from the shore. Someone else was on the phone with the Royal Navy to see if they had a ship near the QM.

Krishno and three young officers were at the docks at the time, celebrating their new appointment to the vessel, when they saw the commotion. The rescue-boats needed able bodies - strong swimmers, ship-climbers, firefighters, life-boat rowers - so they jumped in without a thought.

The Queen Mary was a mere 20 miles from the docks. She was sighted easily enough against the black sea. The balls of orange erupting into the night sky lit up the ship like a festival.

The headlines the next day reported a fuel leak. One of the lesser known dailies reported survivors hearing cries of "Bomb!!" before the first blast happened, but the rumours died soon. Back then, talk of foreign hands, of conspiracies by non-state actors wasn't given much credence. Back then, the ship's body makers simply apologised and shut shop.

Out on the sea though, the situation was dire. The Coastguard boats circled the Queen Mary as the fire raged on board. Those not trapped on the lower decks jumped into the water and were lifted onto the rescue boats. There were others that were panic-stricken, rooted to where they stood as fires blazed around them. Krishno cried out to a young lady to jump, but he was left watching helplessly as she was swallowed by the flames. The ship wouldn't last much longer, and by now, the fates of the passengers had been decided. Those that had managed to jump ship would live if the coastguard spotted them, and those that remained on board were likely dead.

Shahadat was lost to the fire long before Krishno drew his body up on shore. Asma and he were in their cabin when the screaming began. The flames swept through the narrow passageway connecting each cabin. The doorknob on the inside of the cabin had become too hot to touch and viscous smoke had started to billow through the slip between door and frame. Shahadat and Asma held towels to their faces as he elbowed the glass in the porthole. The glass wouldn't give, it was that thick. The wooden door was aglow by then. It would be only moments before the monster outside swallowed it. Shahadat picked up a chair and Asma helped him smash the window till a crack appeared around the rim.

The wooden door caved just then. Shahadat stood tall behind Asma as the flames licked at his back. He delivered a final mighty blow to the window and the glass fell out into the sea. The splash caught the attention of a rescue dinghy. Asma climbed through where the glass had been and saw the dinghy below her. The porthole was a couple of stories above the sea, but she couldn't be scared. Not now, not while her uncle was still inside. The fire tore at his back as Asma jumped out. Shahadat lurched to the window behind her, hoping that the ship would have rehem, that the ship would spit him out. The adrenalin had numbed the sear till now, but as his body dangled out the window, his last memory was the smell of his burning flesh.

From the dinghy below, Krishno could tell that the man in the window, body ablaze, was unconscious at the very least. The girl had swum onto the dinghy, but to save the man, they needed the Queen Mary to roll toward them, to have him drop from the porthole. Even as they watched, the infernal vessel obliged. Shahadat dropped into the water, and Krishno dove in after him.

Newspapers were delivered late the next morning. The major publications had stopped presses to report the tragedy. 410 passengers in all, 110 women, 44 children. Survivors 30. All thanks to the brazen disregard for life shown by Her Majesty's Coastguard. The enduring image was of an officer thumping the chest of an elderly gentleman as he lay breathless on the shore. A young girl looked on disbelievingly.

Krishno - III

In October 1937, less than a year after Krishno first set foot in England, news arrived from India that Lt. Col. Trebblewood had met with an accident while hunting tiger. The machan he was on had been built with wood rotten from the inside. It gave way just as he was taking aim. The porters reported a flash of gold and black dragging the young man into the trees. The screaming and thrashing stopped faster than it began, swallowed into the deathly blackness of the forest. An armed search party found half a body the next day. The Lt. Col. was identified only by his boots.

Krishno poured all of himself into taking care of Lady Trebblewood. She was a vigorous woman, but a crucial strength wisped out of her when she realised she had outlived her only son. Suddenly, the cancer she'd staved off so well all these months grew new heads and ate at her ravenously.

Death was new to Krishno. He couldn't understand how she dealt so stoically with her imminent end. An accident was one thing. You couldn't see it coming, it swept you away before you had the chance to judge your life, what you touched and what you didn't, what you were leaving behind and where you were heading. But this moderately paced exit, it gave you time to reflect..and how could anyone be content with their lives? How would they suppress that..that greed to live? How did they make their peace with their lot?

Lady Trebblewood saw Krishno as her own son by then. She spoke to her lawyers to make sure he was taken care of after she was gone. Krishno spent countless hours by her bed, nursing her. She talked to him about how she wanted him to live on in England, do business here and across Europe. She had monies which were going to be his, his family in India would never be wanting. Krishno protested..and stopped when he saw how this deference slashed at her.

The funeral was a solemn affair. Krishno made all the arrangements himself. Black coattails stood listless under a stark grey sky, veils and hats remained soberly in place. A knot surged into Krishno's throat and exploded. His knees gave, and he sank to the ground, muddying his trousers. This new emptiness struck him like a cosh on the back of his head, and behind his eyes, and it sucked away emotion. No tears came, just sounds of hollowness and people moving slowly, reaching for his arm, guiding him back to London.

Krishno spent the next week wrapping up Lady Trebblewood's affairs. He sold the furniture on her insistence, and sent the money to his brother in Calcutta. He saved the bed she spent her last months on. He couldn't decide what to do with it, so he spent nights asleep under it. During the day, he looked for work. The landlord let him stay there while he looked.

It ought to have been easy, this business of finding work. The Lady's farthest-flung acquaintances had let Krishno know to look them up if he ever needed a job. It was an insidious irony - Krishno's notions of dignity and propriety, all antiquated, wholly rustic, stopped him from ever taking up these offers.

Other employment was hard to come by. It was fine to speak english, but how many would want this aftermath of colonial rule selling them soap, or doing their accounts?

Krishno's search ended when he returned to a pub that Lady Trebblewood and he frequented. He'd been embarassed at first, visiting there with her, but he soon grew thick with the blokes. They joked with the Lady, and any friend of hers.. One of the pubbers gave him a Captain's name. They needed a fourth officer on the Queen Mary when it docked in from Chittagong.

Krishno - II

*See Krishno - I

Asma was born to a wealthy family in Dhaka. Those were days of plenty. Her mother came with land, and her father with a temper. The in-laws mistook his temper for ambition and fussed little, marrying their daughter off.

Asma was besotted with cinema for as long as she could recall. She had an uncle on the seas, Shahadat, who went shore to shore collecting films for his niece. She'd write him about how her interest in the craft had shifted from curiosity to obsession, and he'd gladly ship back new movies and lamps for her projector. She had dog-eared American cinema, and had dissected all that Europe had to offer, from Hitchcock's works to Rene Clair's movies with music. She loved mainstream with a passion and had written several screenplays of her own, ones she hoped to someday direct.

It wasn't an understood thing, this passion for cinema, among girls, less among the aristocracy Asma belonged to. And who'd believe her if she said she was simply interested in the process, in the storytelling, not in fluttering her lids in front of the camera.. "She's just got stars in her eyes.."

When she turned eighteen, the wheel had come full circle for her mother who began preparations for a wedding. Any of the suitors, young lawyers who'd studied across the oceans, would be blessed to have her. Asma was a delicate thing, she'd say. A porcelain constitution, an unhurried disposition, just so used to the good life, you know..Your son looks like he'd take good care of
her.

Asma was distraught. She had known the day would come, but there was something crushing about its momentum, the product of its consequences and the suddenness of its happening, that trapped her. She was scared for the first time in her life. All her conceptions of the world, of cinema and people, were suddenly reduced to a marriage she'd seen innumerable times, where young aunts and cousins were shipped off to foreign lands, only to be heard from in letters when they delivered babies.

The uncle returned to Dhaka for the wedding, wondering how Asma was coping with all of it. Shahadat had always been a romantic, hoped that Asma would do a dream turn someday and join India's burgeoning film industry. He entered her room and saw her in front of the mirror. She had never looked more beautiful. He recognised his sister's jewelry on Asma, still as golden as all those years ago when he had prayed for her happiness at the nikaah. Asma's reflection though was prayerless. It stared back at him, blankly, with a soullessness that frightened him.

Shahadat had seen this beauty before. It was fragile, fleeting, but it had fossilized in his brain. Thirty years ago, his mother's sister had visited them at home. Shahadat was a young lad, but not much younger than this aunt. She had dazzled him then, her skin whiter than he remembered, her eyes deep wells. She hugged her sister, Shahadat's mother, and gently shut a door behind them. The sisters talked for hours. The voices never rose enough to slip under the door. Later that evening, the doors opened, and the young lady stepped out. Her shoulders were stiff and jaw firm, her eyes newly cold, but her stride strong. She carried the weight of her beauty purposefully out the house without so much as a glance back. After the last handfuls of earth had been poured on her grave, the family issued an obituary, mourning the accident.

Shahadat saw this beauty and all its spite in Asma, as she looked at him unblinkingly. He knew then what needed to happen. He smuggled her out to the railway station that night and onward to the Chittagong port. The families searched her friends' houses through the night, while Asma and Shahadat set course for England at dawn.

Krishno - I

In 1936, Krishno was 16, and if only you could've seen him. He was athletic and looked dapper in a shirt and the trousers he'd had tailored that year. He spoke English like it was his to speak (thank you Radio BBC) - was often interpreter for when the English had bulletins for the village. He was a good son, and he helped run his family, making money off of the Britishers at the local cantonment. He'd run errands for them, some shadier than others, the rest sunnily English. At times, they'd send him to hunt down the district talukdar, or to tend to the Cantonment library. Other times, he'd take the white children over to the waterfall at the jungle's edge and play a game of footie with them. The younger officers - they took to him because he was also the Cantonment's supplier of all things smokeable.

Within a few months, Krishno learnt nuances about the British as a people that even the city-bred babus hadn't caught onto. He learnt their intonations, but stayed clear of the accent. He used colloquialisms sparingly so that they didn't think him just another johnny-come-lately (*the author has noted the irony here*).

Krishno absorbed subtleties of the tilts of head and the stiffened lip, of plain food and small talk, of the Country and the City, of lawns and schools, tennis and plimsolls, of the unmarried ladies back home and their mothers. The more he imbibed, the more curious he grew. The phirangs at the cantonment wouldn't mingle with just anybody, so over time, Krishno learnt how to hold up the right mirrors to his British acquaintances. This way, for the most part, they'd just be talking to themselves; they could revel in the impression they must've made on those around them. Krishno would be careful though not to show them so much of the mirror that they'd be embarrassed. Sometimes, they'd like the mirrors turned just so, to light up the spots where they stood. These were their moments of glory in the colonies, when even the most discerning native would doff his hat, had he one.

Lt. Col. Trebblewood had risen fast through the ranks. The senior Trebblewood had distinguished himself to the Queen by his services in Malta, setting up military schools that recruited several locals into the British National Army. At 22, Lt. Col. Trebblewood was still reaping the goodwill. He'd been posted that year to the 24 Parganas Cantonment on special assignment. Chief among his perquisites was the travel allowance provided to bring his mother, the widow Trebblewood, along. She was given her own lodgings at the Cantonment.


The Lt. Col.'s mother made her first sortie into the village the very day she arrived at the Cantonment. Parasol tucked under one arm, cheeks flushed from the effort under the unforgiving sun, she climbed the hillocks to the village. She had sneaked out of the cantonment, and so managed to be unaccompanied. Krishno was on his way back to the village himself, from Calcutta, where he'd been to visit his brother at school. He saw her ahead of him, still a distance from the village and caught up with her soon enough. He hadn't ever spoken to a British lady before and wasn't about to let the opportunity pass. Drawing up beside her, Krishno offered a drink of water and thought it quite a bargain in exchange for the conversation.

As they continued, village-bound, they got talking about public transport in the city, and how it left one soft in the middle. She was surprised to hear he'd lived his whole life in the village ("Well, how is it I can understand what you're saying?"). He showed her around the village, and eventually brought her home to dinner. She was taken by the food, simple fare, but wholesome in a most settling way. Later that evening, the lady Trebblewood asked to be walked back to the Cantonment. Krishno obliged. She insisted he visit often.

It was when she fell sick a few months later that Lt. Col. Trebblewood decided to have Krishno escort her back to England. By the time their liner docked, it was December, and Krishno saw both England and snow for the first time.

His first few months there were spent helping her settle back in. It came naturally to him, this care-giving. He looked after Lady Trebblewood delicately most days, but she was a hardy woman, and on the days she looked pink, they'd land up at watering holes where the older pubbers knew her. Krishno wasn't sure what to make of this at first. Surely Ladies didn't just walk into pubs, much less those ladies with titles, much much less those accompanied by brownies.

For Lady Trebblewood's friends, Krishno was an exotic treat. His skin, his hands, the calluses, the branched veins on his palms, his barefoot life - all of these were captivating. Ironic that in India, Krishno gained ground with the British when he took on the airs of the pawns at the cantonment, while here in London, each striking dissimilarity, each novel un-British experience from his old life lifted him from pedestal to higher pedestal in Lady Trebblewood's circles.

From among the friends that visited, two had daughters only slightly older than Krishno. When the girls heard from their mothers about this dapper brownie, they were beyond intrigued. London, in all its greyness, could soon become boring. The eligible men were serving abroad, and those that remained were strangely affected. These men were english, certainly, and bore every appurtenance, but perhaps that itself was the problem. Krishno on the other hand was a delectable misfit. Where he went, people stared. How held he his head that high, back that straight? Why was he lithe, why not underfed? How spoke he english? And the girls wondered how naughty it would be if they linked arms and walked down Knightsbridge? Their mothers were sure to hear of it. Oh, this'd show them!

Soon, quite blasphemously, Krishno began to receive invites to dinners and cottages by lakes. London's snow melted early that year.

**To be continued