We set out for Kalpi; five-six kos off the town, at a place called Kheda, we decided to stay the night. There is a tamarind grove to the east of the village, just outside the boundaries. We ate our supper there, and slept. In the first hour of dawn, suddenly horses galloped down the road, and the noise wakened us. We too started and followed them. I asked a fellow: whose army is this? where is it heading? He said: We are in the service of his highness Peshwe. The lady of Jhansi is with us, there was a big battle at Charkhari. But the God did not grant us victory, we were beaten, and are now on the way back to Kalpi.
We followed after them in the moonlight. The army proceeded ahead of us. Two kos outside Kalpi, we came upon a well. I and uncle stopped there, to draw and drink some water, and to catch breath. At that point four-five horsemen rode up there. The lady of Jhansi, dressed in a pathan's robe, was among them. She was very thirsty, so she asked without getting down from the horse: Who are you?
We recognised her and stood up quickly to say: we are brahmins. What may be your command? She too recognised us then, and got down from the horse, and came up and sat on the well's parapet. She spoke about what happened briefly, then said; I am thirsty.
So I got hold of the rope and the pitcher to draw the water. The lady said: you are a pundit, I would not drink water drawn by you, let me do it myself. Saying so, she took the rope from my hand, and drew the water, and drank from the pitcher.
Then she spoke: I am a lesser woman, a widow. But I was a proud Hindu, hence I was prompted to do the duty. But the God did not grant me success. We fought a big battle at Charkhari, but to no avail. Very soon Kalpi would be fought over. You are poor brahmins, you can not even ride a horse. Why do you go there?
We replied: Kalpi has a lot of southerners. We hope to earn some money there. Then we plan to cross the Jumna and head to Brahmavart for a bath in Ganges.
So be it, said the lady, and asked us to see her after reaching Kalpi. Then she rode off.
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Here I am ending this serial excepting. Godse's book doesn't end at this point, he tells us about the battles that took place at Kalpi and Gwalior, and how the Queen died a heroic death. His and his uncle's journey continued. They went to Brahmavart, Ayodhya, Kashi, Lucknow, and then looped back to Jhansi. Then they started on the return journey, and reached Nashik after crossing Narmada. Then back to Varsai.
Godse is no `skilled' writer, in the sense he is not good at being lucid. At many places, the narrative confuses you. (And the language he uses is ancient; it's pre-Raj Marathi. That''s a handicap for me. In the later generations, when writing flourished in Marathi, there must have been a great influence of English. But Godse had no English, and his wrote the language of the medieval Maharashtra.)
Still, he wrote a great book, thanks to one attribute: honesty. This is not to say that his account is always accurate. He was no historian, and when he writes about the war of 1857 and events in Jhansi, he essentially reproduces hearsay. But when he is writing about the self, his own persona shows through completely. In recounting personal experiences, there is no attempt to garnish, or to exaggerate. He may not be revealing everything; but whatever he reveals, he reveals with most effective candour. One example should suffice: somewhere along the Ganges, he came to a place where, he tells us, women bathed in the holy river without a stitch of cloth on, without minding if men were around. Therefore, says the writer: "(We) could have an extraordinary pleasure of the eye". And this is written artlessly, with no style.
Godse was someone who had had no idea of the western enlightenment, of how the world had changed. He was a man of the 18th century. 1857 marked the end of old India, it can be said. In Godse, we have a narrator/witness of that end-period, a narrator who himself belonged to the era that was ending. The most interesting character in Godse's book is Godse himself.
One day I plan to translate the complete book; provided a publisher is found. For now, good-bye.
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