That day, after the sunset, we returned to our original quarters. A Karhad-origin Brahmin called Karkare, around 60-65 years old, and his 25 years old son had been shot down by the soldiers in the morning because the two took too long to get out of their house. Their respective wives -- mother-in-law and daughter-in-law -- sat by the dead bodies all day; but as the evening advanced, they were scared. They came to our place and recounted what had happened. We seven-eight men from the neighbourhood gathered and went to the house. Pyre was set in the backyard -- where (the sacred) basil plant grows. There wasn't enough wood, so the furniture pieces in the house were broken up and added to the pyre. Thus we cremated the Brahmin and his son, and brought the women to our place. What pollution the death was to be for outsiders in that time in Jhansi. Nobody was untouchable.
Too many men died the next day. On being spotted by the English soldiers, they hid in a haystack. The English set it on fire, the men burned down. Several others jumped into wells, but the English watched from above, and fired down whenever a head bobbed up out of the water. The massacre and looting went on for three days.
Streets had turned into graveyards. But the killings ceased after the third day.
There was hardly anything to eat. On the seventh day, it being the summer, it was too hot. So I had a bath with cold water and did my puja. We had famished, and I despaired, thinking, o God, with what intention we had set out from our homes, and what peril-to-life was visited upon us. Men's endeavour counts for nothing, fate always prevails. An old Sanskrit couplet kept coming back to me:
Where a woman be in command, the king but a kid, and minister an illiterate/ There hope of survival is scarce, no chance of holding onto money at any rate.
The couplet had come true in Jhansi.
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