Robert Paul Roth - Freedom at Last: A Novel about the Birth of a New India through Her Struggle for Independence

T he trip up the narrow Orissa valley was exhausting. It was morning now, and the train was winding through the wooded hills which skirted the southern rim of the deep gorge. On the other side of the roaring river the little town of Chinnapur slept in sequestered silence. For centuries there had been silence here, but since the narrow gauge railroad had been put in from the seacoast, new sounds were beginning to be heard, strange sounds that came not from the crunching of wooden wheels on loose gravel, but from the fulminating roar of a devil-monster that had been sent from the other side of the world. It was a stubby little 2-4-0 engine with an unconventional form of motive powera multi-cylinder steam locomotive with direct drive. The large inclined cylinders were much like the Climax locomotives used in the logging operations of the high Sierras. This one came from the British Southern Railway Leader class of 1938. There was an ominous contrast between the noisily excited train with its belching black smoke and screaming sirens and the lethargic bullock bandies which ambled across the plateau in sight of the charging dragon from the West. As if to mollify its rage the Indians draped garlands of bougainvillea over its boiler and steam chest and around its nose.

The train was a series of rickety boxes, each almost as high as it was long and completely shut off from the next one. The window casings had no less than three windows, one glass, one screen, and a third with wooden Venetians. They provided protection from the bands of monkeys that would clamber on the sides of the coaches and ride the train free from Nidvol to Chinnapur. None of the windows, however, kept out any of the grimy soot from the engine, and the fan on the ceiling only stirred up the dust. There were six bunks in the compartment with no curtains for privacy and no mattresses or sheets. Twelve people had crowded into this second-class compartment with all their suitcases and bedding. Maren Lagerstrom, the only woman among three Americans and nine Indians, paced mentally back and forth like Daniel in the lions den. She was brought safely through the night, however, and with fatigued restlessness, she and her husband, Dr. Ivar Lagerstrom, stretched their necks awkwardly through the window to get a glimpse of the little town where they had been called to live and work.

Padre Bengl had come to Madras to meet their ship and escort them up to Chinnapur. He was a dumpy little fellow with a paunch like a laughing Buddha, and he was never seen in public, or in private either for that matter, if we can believe the testimony of his wife, without a large brass Crusaders cross over his tattered cassock vest. For a Lutheran he was extremely high Church in his habits both inside and outside the chancel; but in spite of his ecclesiastical fussiness, he was an amiable fellow whose intolerance was based on principle rather than prejudice.

The Lagerstroms were glad to have him accompany them on this last leg of their arduous journey. They had come to Madras from San Francisco on the Marine Adder , a converted United States Marine troop transport which took civilian passengers to the Orient after the war. Ivar had gotten terribly seasick on the way to Hawaii and Maren had had her turn on the Bay of Bengal. Most of the passengers were Chinese, returning to the land of their birth either to spend the fortune they had made in America during the war or to die in their homeland. There were a few Indians on board and a young Jewish woman with a German passport who was going to India to marry an Indian in Calcutta. The Indians were eager to engage Ivar in conversation, invariably to badger him about American imperialism and the alliance of the United States with Britain. Dr. Subramanian taunted him: What right did Roosevelt have to make the Atlantic Charter and never put it into effect? Where are the four freedoms in India? Why did he let Churchill exempt the British Empire? Ivar enjoyed the banter but he suspected many of the young Indian men talked to him only to get closer to his exquisitely lovely wife.

Now travel in India for poor missionaries was a last ditch struggle for life ever since the British had announced their intention to grant India complete independence. The date had not yet been fixed, but everyone knew it would come sooner than anyone had formerly anticipated. Already the clerks and peons in government service were beginning to show an unusual hauteur never before dared. Customs inspection had been a most trying ordeal, and without Bengls artful diplomacy with the austere little official in the godown, the Lagerstroms would have had to pay several thousand rupees duty on household effects which by law should have been exempt. The godown was stinking. Hundreds of people were crammed with their luggage into a building forty feet wide and fifty feet long. Although it was January the temperature was above ninety degrees; and the smell of human sweat, mixed with the sweet butter fat with which the natives greased their hair, created such a miasmic stench that if Bengl had not rescued the newcomers as promptly as he did, both Ivar and Maren would have collapsed. A little bakhshish , slipped from his hand to the inspectors, produced smiles on all sides.

As the pokey little train came into full view of Chinnapur, before it crossed a narrow bullock bandy trail, it blew its whistletwo long, one short, and another long blast. It was more of a scream than a whistle, a portentous shriek to warn the sleepy people of Chinnapur that something is a-borning.

Bengl began to explain to the Lagerstroms the lay of the land. Do you see that narrow spit of land jutting out into the river? He was pointing beyond the high bridge which they were beginning to cross. It spanned the gorge 150 feet above the raging Orissa with an escarpment that rose 1300 feet on the south side and a much lower plateau that stretched narrowly to the north where the ancient city of Chinnapur lay. Here 50,000 people dwelled in a quaint and classic ambiance unspoiled by Western architecture. Even the buildings of the two Missions were designed in the style of the ancient Indian Rajahs. There are two bluffs just this side of that point, continued Bengl. On one you can see a large solitary tamal tree and on the other are two white bungalows. The more distant one is where you will live. It is called the Zenana bungalow because it was long occupied by single women.

Do you see it, Maren? exclaimed Ivar. Thats going to be our home for a long while. He was excited but Maren was so exhausted from the trip she hardly had the strength to answer. She simply sighed a low, uhuh, and continued gazing blankly at the spread of mud buildings with thatched roofs.