When I wrote this chapter, it took me back to when I visited the Veerakaliamman temple in Singapore. I somehow always feel that I don’t know enough to propitiate the ‘roudra’ forms of our Gods and Goddesses, and I carry that same feeling through writing this. I don’t feel like I lead a disciplined enough life to write about or channel our deities in my writing, and I feel guilty about dealing with that with avoidance instead of stepping up and doing better. That unease persists in this chapter.
May 1898, Nasik, Bombay Presidency.
Yashodabai unrolled a mat on her veranda and sat down. This meant she was done with her chores and would be around reading her newspapers and magazines, and talking to whoever passed by until it was dinner time. Babarao would be home soon, and he would join her too. Tatya and Bal were probably playing on the streets and getting up to no good after school. This brief interval was her own.
Tatya was now fifteen, and Bal was eight. They didn’t need so much of her attention these days.
They had finally settled down. Relatives and friends had helped them get back on their feet after Annarao’s tragic death. They had to sell their home in Bhagur and move entirely to Nasik. That house was too full of memories, and besides, Nasik had schools and jobs.
Tatya had hated Nasik at first. They had moved to a different neighborhood and changed schools, and he had found new friends, who, like him, liked books and newspapers. She found herself frying snacks for a dozen hungry boys several evenings, and revelled in the company. They were all taller, bigger, and stronger than Tatya, who looked like a twelve-year-old in their midst. And yet, when she would ask them what they were doing that weekend, they would all say “Let’s ask Tatya what he wants to do”. She didn’t understand it.
She sat down to read the newspaper from cover to cover. The Kesari had breathless coverage of the Chapekar brothers’ case, and she, like everyone in her community, could not get enough of it.
The past few weeks had seen detailed stories of how the Chapekars had assassinated Commissioner Rand, and how the police had found them. No one had known where to begin the investigation; the assassins had come from nowhere and had disappeared after the act. But one police officer had seen unmistakable similarities between the vandalism of Queen Victoria’s statue, and this assassination. He had pulled informants to crack the vandalism, and before anyone knew, he had connected the vandals to the assassination.
The paper today detailed Vasudev Chapekar’s last few moments before he went to the gallows, where he recited the Gita, assumed a meditative stance, and accepted death as just the next adventure ahead of him. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Vahini,” a voice said, “I thought I was to read the Kesari first!”
Tatyarao stood over her, pouting in mock anger before sitting down next to her.
“Oh, why don’t you play on the streets for longer, kick up some more dust, and dirty your white school shirt, right after I just washed it yesterday with indigo? I’ll wait right here, not reading Tilak’s account of the Chapekars’ childhood.”
Tatyarao picked up the newspaper with a gasp, to read this much-awaited piece. Yashodabai snatched it back.
“You already know everything in this.”
“But it’s interesting to read it all in one piece!” Tatya protested.
“First, read me the English newspapers. I want to hear what they say on this topic.” Yashodabai said. She was very proud Tatya could read in English now.
“Vahini…” Tatya protested.
Yashodabai held the Times Of India open for Tatya to read out to her.
“Chapekars Hanged!” Tatyarao read out the headline.
“At 8:14 AM today, Damodar Hari Chapekar, the Brahmin lawyer, who is the main accused in the assassination of Commissioner WC Rand, was hanged. His brothers Balkrishna and Vasudev were hanged on Monday and Wednesday respectively. The brash young brothers hailed from Chinchwad and were hiding in nearby hamlets when brave constable Rama Pandu found them one by one and apprehended them. For this, the associates of the Chapekars attempted to murder constable Pandu, but were also apprehended, and will face the gallows. Their misguided and cowardly acts have been widely condemned in all circles. Pherozeshah Mehta, former founder-President of the Congress said “The youth of India ought not to be led astray by callow men like the Chapekars—“
Tatya stopped reading aloud and his eyes darted around the paper.
“What’s the matter, Tatya?” Yashodabai asked.
“How is any of this cowardly?”
“They say it so that no one else thinks it’s brave to kill a British official,” Yashodabai said.
“But it is! They knew the consequences. They still did it. They faced the gallows with a song on their lips. What they did might not have been desirable, but it is not cowardly.” Tatya thundered, his newly-broken voice still strange to his sister-in-law.
“Will an English newspaper say things that would antagonize the Englishmen?” Yashodabai chuckled.
“You would think an English newspaper would know the meaning of English words,” Tatya was incredulous.
“We don’t read English newspapers for the news or to feel good,” Yashodabai said, “We read it so we learn the language and know what the Englishman thinks.”
Seeing Tatya’s face fall, she realized she might have been a little unempathetic.
“Here’s the Kesari,” she said, thrusting it in his hands, “Tilak writes with such emotion—”
“Already read it,” Tatya said and went indoors.
Tatya couldn’t fall asleep that night. He tossed and turned as he thought of all those awful words in the English papers about the Chapekars. How was assassinating the Chief Plague Commissioner misguided? A plague officer had tried to strip Yashodabai publicly as they had tried to find Bal a hospital. It had been just two years ago. The complaints and petitions his family had put in had gone unheeded, and every legitimate form of making their displeasure felt had been exhausted. Would there not be thousands more like him, often with even fewer means?
In any case, the British government wasn’t even a legitimate government. They didn’t care about people like him. All they wanted to do was transport cotton from Bombay and Madras to Manchester and Lancashire to be mass-produced into cloth. What else was a common citizen to do to register their displeasure with the British?
People around him lived in fear of the British. And why wouldn’t they; his father’s generation had been spooked by what had happened to Queen Lakshmibai, Nanasaheb Peshwa, and his own namesake, Tatya Tope, when they had warred valiantly against the British. The fighting spirit of India had been violently suppressed, not just by the war of 1857, but also by the violence that they had wreaked after. His father and every older man in his life had told him tales of the British seeking out villages that had purportedly helped the Peshwai and massacred them to a man.
Now, when someone like Damodar Chapekar was giving it back in kind, the Times of India had the gall to call him a coward.
This he could not stand. Most youth only casually read newspapers, often because their elders made them, so they could get a grip on this foreign language that got them jobs. They would grow up associating the word ‘coward’ with the Chapekars, even though they were anything but.
Seething in anger and hurt, he got up as quietly as he could. Bal stirred next to him. Tatya shushed him back to sleep. He tiptoed to the shrine on the other corner of the house, taking care to not stumble or knock anything over in the dark. The oil lamp that Yashodabai had lit in the evening was still burning bright, lighting up the murti of Ashtabhuja Bhavani.
This murti had been in the family for generations. His grandmother’s grandfather had led a posse of horseback warriors, and they had once raided a gang of dacoits, and had recovered from them this murti. His grandmother had brought the murti with her when she had married, and the Goddess had been installed at the family temple. Being an extremely potent deity, She had to be propitiated daily with ritual slaughter of small animals.
But his father, a generation later, had defied the elders and installed the deity in their house, and them being a vegetarian household, the daily offerings of pashu-bali had stopped. Several people had pointed out the folly of this, especially in the wake of his mother’s death. His father had decided for them that as long as they showed Her their bhakti, Bhavani would watch over them. And they had.
In the dead of the night, young Tatyarao locked eyes with the brass idol of Ashtabhuja Bhavani. Her eight arms were resplendent in the flickering lamplight, offering blessings, as well as a sword, a shield, a mace, a chakra, a Trishul, and a shankha, The lion by her side, represented power, will, and determination. He put his hand over the flame, his heart resolute.
“Ambe Bhavani, You protected the great Shivaji while he raised hell for Aurangzeb. Ma Katyayani, grace me the same way with bravery, strength, and Bhakti. Because I promise to you, I will wage war against the enemy, and slay them till my last breath.”
The flame burned his hand as he shut his eyes, determined to fulfill his promise as long as he humanly could.
May 1898, Junagarh Princely State
Shyamji Krishna Varma read the Kesari cover to cover, every word filling him with distress and panic. Writing such a blatantly pro-Chapekar edition was most certainly going to send his friend Tilak to prison.
Tilak had been on top of his mind as the news about Damodar’s arrest and hanging had come in. The authorities would surely go through Tilak’s correspondence if he was arrested. He did not know how much of his correspondence Tilak kept versus used as kindling for the kitchen hearth, but it had not been that long ago that they had communicated. Even a torn-off portion of a letter would suffice for the British. It didn’t even have to be seditious. Juries in India almost always ruled guilty in matters of sedition.
And just because he hadn’t been arrested yet didn’t mean he was safe. The British bureaucracy was a tortoise usually but could become a hare with remarkable alacrity when they considered you an existential threat. And he had tried to be a threat.
It was impossible to fight the British without an organized army and a lot of money. And the only ones who could raise such a force were the Princely States. They already had well-funded armies and were the vanguards of Indian culture in the face of British oppression. The only thing remaining was to get over their fear of the British resident, and be okay with giving in to anti-British sentiment in the troops.
He had tried. He had mentioned his thoughts to Tilak, in person and letters. Tilak, in turn, had found him a man. A man adept at war, at going deep undercover, and at convincing other men to do his bidding.
Damodar Chapekar had gone to Shyamji on Tilak’s request and tried to foment rebellion in the Junagarh troops. But this had not escaped the alert eyes of the British Resident, Sir William-Hutt Curzon-Wyllie. He had swiftly organized a coup and had Shyamji removed from service. Damodar had disappeared, but his brush with organized military tactics had served him well and made him even more loathsome of the British.
Then he had been imprisoned and hanged after two years underground.
Shyamji did not have the stomach for imprisonment or a life underground. He needed, urgently, to move somewhere where he couldn’t be arrested for anything he had said.
His time in London had not been the most exciting, but that was when he had been young and full of verve, that establishing the Sanskrit Department at Oxford, being a barrister, and winning big on stocks hadn’t been sufficient. Now, after a decade of fighting the British residents in the Princely states, he had to admit he was tired, exhausted, and if he had to be honest with himself, jaded. He wasn’t helpful to the likes of Damodar over here. Or even to Tilak. He didn’t believe anything could help. And Damodar’s failed experiment in the Junagarh Army had only blunted his hopes even more.
Sure, the harsh climes of Europe would not be easy on his knees, but the soft, cushy living there was the only life for him.
“Bhanumati!” He called to his wife, “The day we feared has come.”
Chapter 4 - The Promise
The shade thrown on TOI was just perfect :)