Free Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh Page A

to strike’ he would report the matter to his trainers and change his diet according to their prescriptions.
    With such a will did Kesri apply himself that by the time he was ten he was recognized to be one of the akhara’s best wrestlers, by age and size. Soon his regimen of training was expanded toinclude the use of weapons – mainly the lath , a heavy cudgel-like staff, but also the talwar , or curved sword. Musketry he was introduced to at home, by his father, who would occasionally instruct all his sons in the handling of his matchlock.
    In the use of weaponry, as in the wrestling ring, Kesri proved to be so adept that even before he turned fifteen – the age at which boys began to be recruited as jawans – he was one of the most feared fighters in the village. But in his father’s eyes this was just another reason why he needed to remain at home: their land would be safer with him than with any of his brothers.
    Kesri’s younger brother was called Bhim. He did not lack for brawn, but he was a slow-witted youth, incapable of knowing his own mind. He did his father’s bidding without question.
    Their father, Ram Singh, had been a soldier himself and was a stubborn and quick-fisted man. To talk back to him was to invite a hiding with a lath. This did not deter Kesri from speaking his mind, and he received many a beating for his defiance. Eventually he came to realize that arguing with his father was a waste of time: Ram Singh was the kind of old soldier who digs in deeper in the face of opposition. Kesri understood that if he was ever to join an army he would have to go against his father and do it on his own. But how? No respectable recruiter would take him without his family’s consent – without that they would have no surety for his conduct. Nor, without his family’s help, would he be able to afford the equipment that a recruit was expected to bring, far less a horse. As for the other options – joining a band of fighting mendicants, for example, or some kind of gang – even tilling the land seemed preferable to those.
    So Kesri had no choice but to hold his tongue when military men stopped by to ask Ram Singh about his boys. He would chew on his gall in silence while his father explained that he’d be glad to talk about the prospects of his second son, Bhim – but where it concerned his oldest boy there was nothing to talk about: his future had already been decided. Kesri would be staying at home to till the land.
    To add to Kesri’s misery, it was at about this time that offers of marriage began to pour in for the sister who was closest to him in age. It seemed that she too would soon be leaving home. It wasas if new horizons of possibility were opening up for everyone but himself.
    Since Deeti spent a good deal of time in the fields with Kesri she was the only person in the family who understood his state of mind. The other girls were kept indoors as much as possible, to protect their complexions, but Deeti’s chances of a good marriage were slight in any case because of her ill-aligned stars, so it was decided that she needed to know how to work the land. She was no taller than Kesri’s knee when he began to teach her how to handle a nukha – the eight-bladed instrument that was used to nick ripe poppy bulbs. They would walk along the rows of denuded flowers, each with a nukha in their hands, scoring the tumescent sacs to bleed them of their sap. When the heady odour of the oozing opium-gum made them drowsy they would sit together in the shade of a tree.
    Even though Deeti was much younger than Kesri they were able to talk to each other as to no one else. Deeti’s capacities of empathy and understanding were so far in advance of her age that there were times when Kesri would wonder whether she had indeed been gifted with powers beyond the ordinary. Sometimes, when he despaired of leaving Nayanpur, it was she – a tiny putli of a