Back To Basics And Other Stories

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Back To Basics And Other Stories - book excerpt

Back To Basics

The van had been parked there all night.

About midday, the rear doors opened, a ramp dropped down and a pair of elephants came out and headed slowly down the road towards the High Street.

Sometime later, the doors opened again, and two lions strolled out, a male and a female. The male, a magnificent beast with a full, dark mane, looked across the road towards the park where some dogs roamed, but the lioness swished her tail angrily at him and, reluctantly, the lion followed her down towards the shopping arcade.

It was only when the gorillas came out and went next door to the pub that I began to think that perhaps everything was not quite as normal as it ought to be in downtown Suburbia.

I put on my jacket and went downstairs to investigate.

The van was an old, white-painted Leyland removals van and these words were painted in bright royal purple letters down the side of the van:

Noah & Sons - Conservationists

By Celestial Appointment.

There was nobody that I could see in the front cab;in fact the van looked totally deserted and neglected, covered as it was with a thick layer of road-dirt and travel-grime. If it hadn’t been for the fact that elephants, lions and gorillas had all exited the van, you would assume the van had been abandoned. But unless I was hallucinating, somebody must have opened the doors to let the animals out.

Just then, the gorillas lurched out of the pub and headed to the rear of the van. I could have sworn that one of them was humming a Madonna tune. The doors opened and the gorillas, none too steadily, made their way up the ramp. I ran round to the back and up the ramp after them, but could see nothing; the gorillas seem to have completely vanished

I walked a bit further into the van and came across a black-coloured partition wall dividing the van in two. I ran my hands over the partition and pushed and heaved but the wall was solid, with none of the cracks you would expect around the edges of a door.

‘Hello?’ I called, hammering on the wall. ‘Hello. Mr Noah?’

An oblong-shaped light appeared in the wall and an elderly man came through although no door actually seemed to open. He was tall, with white hair and beard and bright, twinkling green eyes. He wore blue overalls such as you can buy in DIY shops.

‘Yes? May I help you?’ he asked.

‘Mr Noah?’

‘Indeed so.’

‘Well, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total fruit and nutcase, but I just saw two gorillas come out of the pub and walk in here.’

‘Oh dear, they haven’t been a nuisance, have they? Guy can get a bit out of hand if he gets onto the vodka. I do tell him to stick to red wine but what can you do with a headstrong young gorilla, eh?’

‘No, no, it’s not that but… I’ve seen elephants and lions as well. All coming out of here.’

‘Yes, it’s their day out; they get a bit antsy stuck in here otherwise.’

‘Is it safe? I mean, letting them out like that?’

‘Yes, of course.They all know the highway code – look left, look right, look left again before crossing the road and all that.’

‘I don’t mean for them. I mean for people. You just can’t have lions roaming about, they might attack somebody.’

‘I’ll have you know my lions are properly trained, taught to respect people and property, not like some of the humans you see roaming round the street these days.’

I shook my head in bemusement; this was getting way too surreal for words.

‘What is this?Are you part of a circus?’

‘Good heavens no, we are on a… collection mission.’

‘A collection mission?’

‘Yes, for the Ark 2019 Project. The Back to Basics Tour.’

‘Ark? As… in… Noah’s… Ark?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’

I didn’t know who was the most crackers, him or me. ‘What are you, er… collecting?’ I asked slowly.

‘Come through, I’ll show you.’

And most reluctantly I let him take me by the arm and lead me through the oblong light-door.Inside, the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shiny metal drawers, each about two feetwide and three inches high.

Of the gorillas there was no sign.

To one side, there was a table set up with what I took to be a computer; although it was like no computer I had ever seen before, being shaped like a giant pile of buffalo dung with a bright screen placed in the middle. The integral keyboard was banana-shaped but without noticeable keys.

Noah sat himself down and played his fingers over the ‘keyboard’. Lights flashed on the screen and a print-out emerged from the side of whatever it was.

‘Yes, we are looking for foxes, red squirrels, Highland cattle, badgers, stoats and, if we see them, a pair of weasels, okay, but not to make a special effort otherwise.’

‘Not too many Highland cattle round here,’ I said.

‘No, we miscalculated; the GPS system isn’t working too well.’

‘Global Positioning System?’

‘No, God’s Placement Service!’

Just then another non-door opened, and a middle-aged woman came through. Noah got to his feet, ‘My wife, Joan,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulder.

‘Ah, you must be Joan of Ark then,’ I answered brightly. She gave me a pitying smile, the sort of smile you give to idiots and dogs.

‘You’re not really collecting for an Ark, are you? I mean in case there’s a Great Flood?’ I asked, feeling foolish even as I said it.

‘Of course! Big G has just about had it with Earth. He wants to start all over again and commissioned me and my boys to build another Ark. Nearly finished, in fact.’

‘But where is it? The Ark?’

Noah gave me a funny, almost crafty look. ‘This is it; you’re standing in it. The Ark 2008!’

‘But the animals… where are the animals?’

‘We’ve gone high-tech this time. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the mess last time, hundreds and hundreds of animals cooped up in cages for forty days and nights.’

‘The smell,’ interjected Joan.’ The smell was simply overpowering.’

‘And not only that, I don’t know how many species the tigers made extinct when they escaped from their pens and starting eating things.’

‘And that huge Ark was so unmanageable.’

‘Yes, we were trying to get to Florida. We were going to set up what you’d call a theme park there, but we ended up on Mt Ararat.”

‘Florida?’

‘Yes.Of course we didn’t call it Florida back in those days, it was called Barzaccalajahar.’

Definitely loony tunes, I thought.

I looked round the ‘Ark’ again,searchingfor signs of any animals, but nothing – not even a mouse dropping.

‘But…where are the animals?’ I asked again.

‘As I told you, we’ve gone hi-tech,’ answered Noah. ‘Any animal which is in the programme passes through the processing screen,’ and he patted the partition wall. ‘It’s what we call an ACTIMORASTIFLAZ screen. I couldn’t possibly begin to tell you what the acronym ACTIMORASTIFLAZ stands for, but in essence it reduces the subject to basic DNA genes which are then stored on a sort of floppy disk,’ and Noah opened what looked like a microwave oven mounted at the side of his desk and pulled out two shiny metallic strips the size and thickness of a credit card. ‘This is Guy and this is Geraldine, the gorillas.’ He ran his fingers along the rows of drawers, opened one and slid the cards inside. A purplish glow emanated from the drawer.

‘But I passed through the screen,’ I said. ‘Why wasn’t I reduced to a Visa Platinum card?’

‘Ah now, there you have it. Humans aren’t in the programme.’

‘Not in the programme?’ I asked, with a sense of growing unease.

‘No, ‘fraid not. the Boss has got utterly fed up with humans, biggest mistake he ever made, he says. What with endless wars and global warming and the destruction of the rainforests, the pollution of the seas, Big G has had enough. Hence the Back to Basics Tour. Humans, I’m afraid, are going to become extinct.’

‘And not a moment too soon,’ added Joan.

‘Humans and flies!’

‘And fruit bats, nasty messy things.’

‘But…but what aboutyou two? Aren’t you humans? I enquired.

‘Good heavens, no!’

‘God forbid!’

‘We are solabnods.’

‘And proud of it.’

‘Solabnods?’

‘From the planet Solabno, in the Malaknid Galaxy, 179,000,000,000,000,000 and 2 light years away.

‘Took us over a week to get here, but the traffic was so heavy around Andromeda.’

Just then a light started flashing on the dung-computer.

‘Noah, you’ve got G mail,’ said Joan.

‘G mail?’ I asked,

‘Yes, like email,’ she responded, ‘but it’s Yehovah.com rather than yahoo.com. A much more powerful server. What is it, dear?’ Joan asked.

‘Big G wants us to wrap things up immediately.Seems as though that storm front is moving rather quicker than anticipated, something to do with solar winds, apparently.’

Noah came over to me and shook my hand. ‘Very nice to meet you, old chap, but I rather doubt we shall be meeting again.’

‘Yes, lovely to see you,’ echoed Joan, insincerity dripping off her like water off a drowned fruit-bat.

Noah ushered me outside.

It was raining.

Raining rather heavily!

THE LEMONADE STALL

Some of what follows did happen.

Meerut. Northern India, 10 May 1857

The late afternoon sun beats down mercilessly on the brightly coloured awnings of the Meerut bazaar, etching deep shadows into the doorways and twisting myriad alleys of the bazaar as spear-sharp shards of blinding light suddenly sear back from the whitewashed walls, a dazzling assault of darkest shadow and piercing brightness.

A distant murmuration, a thrumming like an oncoming train approaching the station, the noise undulates, and surges and angry, enraged screams begin to echo through the streets and lanes, a swelling of hatred, of anger and of a fearful bloodlust. In the far distance, an orange glow permeates the sky as a swirling pillar of smoke blackens it.

Terrified, his face blanched in terror, a young British soldier runs for his life, pursued by the hate-fuelled mob shouting their hatred as they chase the Dragoon through the narrow alleys and streets of the bazaar. The screams of hate cascade into his ears and fear seizes his pounding heart as they chase him down. ‘Mat karo, Mat karo, Siphai jai,’ they yell.Kill! Kill!

‘Help! Help me!’ he screams in turn, his cries drowned out by the mob closing down on his heels.

The narrow lanes are busy now with off-duty sepoys and sowars, stall vendors hawking their wares, sari-clad bibis with little naked chicos about their skirts who yell and scream at the young Dragoon Guard as he runs for his life… runs as if all the banshees of hell were at his heels. His bursting lungs gasp for air in the hot, humid, dust-laden air, the fetid, windless alleys redolent with the stench of urine, human shit and cattle dung, of rich spices and the smoke from countless small cooking braziers.

His shako flies from his head to be kicked aside by the chanting, rioting, angry mob, yelling and screaming incoherently, seeing only their terrified prey before them, unmindful of anything except the burning need to kill the hated gora-log, the instincts of the mob overriding all else. Hatya! Hatya. Hatya. Kill, kill, kill.

Imagine, if you can, his terror as he flees through the narrow, snaking lanes and alleys, his heart pounding, his lung burning, most likely with no idea why the pursuing mob are so determined to kill him; probably many of the chasing horde do not know why, either, being simply caught up in the maelstrom of mob hysteria.

A native woman clad in a rich green sari spits at him and curses as the soldier runs by.Another tries to trip him.He avoids the outstretched foot but in doing sohe stumbles, his arms wind-milling as he tries to keep his balance, but he is slowed and the mob, seeing the stumble, roar with exultation, knowing their prey is falling ever closer. Desperately, he pushes his aching legs on, knowing that another slip or stumble will cost him his life.

Just then, a small girl runs out from a shop doorway, her mother in pursuit.The child runs straight in front of the fleeing soldier.He tries to avoid her, but his iron-cleated boot catches her on the shin and, with a yelp of pain, she falls to the ground and her mother is unable to reach her before she is trampled beneath the feet of the pursuing mob. With a wail of distress, the chico’s mother can only watch in horror as the little girl is crushed into the hard-beaten earth of the bazaar. Once the rampaging mob is past, she cradles the broken body of her daughter to her breast and keens in anguish. This will not be the first death this day.

The soldier runs on but he is tiring.The indolent regime in the Meerut cantonment is not conducive to fitness and athleticism; a white private soldier did not draw his own water, did not cook his own meals, did not wash his own clothes, was shaved as he lay in his bed and spent the days in boredom and idleness in the shade of his barracks block, venturing out only when the baking Indian sun was sinking, when the heat of the day was dissipating, when all passions should have evaporated under the remorseless heat.

The young Dragoon is tiring fast and the pursuit behind is relentless, bearing down ever closer, a fluid, flowing horde of hate and bloodlust. He stumbles one last time and crashes into a lemonade stall, sending a score of bottles and glasses cascading to the ground. Holding his hip in pain, he limps on, but he is doomed. The front runners of the mob, a dozen or so regimental sepoys in jackets and cross belts, are spurred on by the Dragoon’s collision and seize him, bearing him up as he thrashes and flails. They yell incoherently in triumph and bloodlust and he is hurled down onto the table of the lemonade stall and held by his arms and legs as others seize up the broken bottles and stab and slash at the screaming soldier, slashing at his face and eyes, blood streaking in torrents to mingle with the lemonade foam.

‘Angrejicalakuttekomauta.’ Death to the English running dog. ‘Hatya, hatya, hatya.’ Kill. Kill !

Yet more bottles are smashed as the milling rioters seize the razor-sharp shards to stab at his genitals and stomach.He writhes and screams in agony as the bloodied bottle shards rise and stab, rise and stab, rise and stab, slashing and slicing, mutilating him beyond recognition.Yet still he screams and thrashes, his entire body a blood-drenched nightmare, his uniform hacked to shreds, his flesh rent to bloodied scraps. A rope is then looped about his neck and he is hoisted up to a beam, the blood draining and pouring from his multitude of wounds as he thrashes and twists on the rope’s end, his face a bloody, flesh-stripped mask, one pulped eye dangling by an ocular thread. Even as he hangs there, now thankfully on the point of death, the mob continues to hack and slash at his body as it twists this way and that.

It is only when there are no more bottles to smash thatthe bloodlust eases, evaporating as quickly as it has arisen for many of the rioters.As if suddenly ashamed of their actions, manyof the bloody-handed mob begin to slink away, suddenly fearful that retribution must surely follow; retribution that will be relentless and severe and many now fear they will be brought to summary justice on the gallows of the British.

Others, the ringleaders, mostly sepoys, yell and shout their exultation, urging the remaining mob to commit more murder, more killings.

‘See, brothers, it is done. Death to the British, death to the British, already the sahibs are fleeing, running like dogs to the sea. We will destroy them all, it is foretold, it is written, we will drive them from the beloved land. Come brothers, to the white town, free your shackles. Kill. Kill the running dogs, the white devils. Death. Death. Death. Death to the gora-log.’

As the last of the murderous rioters move on, the proprietor of the lemonade stall cautiously eases out from his hiding place at the rear of the stall, prudently keeping out of the way as the deadly riot rampaged through the streets. Standing amid the rivers of blood and lemonade, the gore-slicked glass knives, the smashed chairs, the broken bottles and glasses, BGP Joshi surveys the ruin of his business.At best, it wasa precarious enterprise, barely covering the cost of the lemons, (he only ever used the best and freshest, most expensive lemons) sugar and boiled water, the rent on the corner premises and the repayment to Gobinda, the sahukara, the usurious moneylender from whom he borrowed many lakh to start up the stall. BGP Joshi has no chance whatever of restocking his stall, replacing the broken bottles and glasses; no chance whatsoever of paying his rent, or of satisfying the rapacious moneylender, or of putting food on the table for his family. He is ruined – ruined beyond the devastation of his business, utterly ruined.His debts will follow him to his grave; follow him to his children’s children and beyond.

Sadly, he turns to the swaying body of the murdered soldier and briefly takeshold of his bloody hand, as if to comfort him. ‘Gariba, garibalarake.’ Poor, poor boy.He cansee that the dead soldier was little more than a youth. BGP Joshi likes the Angreji, Angrejisainikom,the English and the English soldiers.The English memsahibs are good customers, as arethe soldiers, but he knowsthat as well ashis ruination, the avenging soldiers willassume him to be complicit in the killing. After all, the soldier has been hacked to death on his doorstep, so no questions would be asked as to his guilt or not, for surely, by all the gods, the Angrejiwillhang him, hoist him high to choke out his last on the gallows’ crossbeam.

(I do not know the identity of the soldier so brutally killed that day.As much as I have read histories of the Indian Mutiny –or Indian Rebellion depending on your point of view – or visited websites, I can find no reference to give me his name. He deserves to be named; he was amongst the first of those who died in the bloody events of the mutiny; at the very least he should be remembered by name.)

As the realisation of the inevitable retribution to follow strikes him, BGP Joshi quickly runsback inside the tiny smoke-filled rooms in which he lives with his wife Amishi, his son Gopal and daughter Lakshaki.

‘Quickly, woman!’ he shouts to his wife, as she squats beside a small fire cooking chapattis and lentils. ‘Gather everything, everything we can carry. We must go now. Now! Before the soldiers come and hang me.’

‘Go? Go, husband? Why must we go?’

‘Not to argue, just do as told, collect everything that we can carry, we must go to Agra, to stay with second cousin. No time to lose. Quickly. Jildi, jildi.’

Amishidoes not argue further.Quickly and efficiently, she gathers together their mediocre possessions. Needing to take the cooking utensils, she plucks them from the fire, burning her hands as she does so, then squats and urinates to douse the fire. She wraps such clothes as they have into a large bundle that she willcarry on her head andtellsher daughter to put any food and cooking ghee into a large earthenware bowl which she willhave to carry, as BGP flusters and interferes, creating confusion and turmoil, wringing his hands in anguish and urging greater speed whilst picking up objects, putting them down again before holding them indecisively, nodding his head from side to side in agitation.

‘Gopal. Where is Gopal?’ he suddenly asks, only just realising that the boy isnot there, looking around to every corner as if expecting the boy to magically appear,

‘Gopal? He went to see his friend Sanjay.’

‘What for he sees Sanjay?His place is here, working, for what else does a man havesons but to follow him in his business?

‘We must wait for him to come back.’

’No, no waiting.Soldiers will come any minute, any moment now and hang me for the poor boy, even though I do nothing, was not there, was here, but angry soldiers will not listen, angry soldiers never listen, only hanging and killing, maybe hanging Gopal, too.’

‘Gopal?He is just a boy.’

‘Soldiers not caring, only caring for hanging and killing. We go. Now! Leave message for Gopal at Laxman’s shop across the way, he is to follow us on road to Agra. Now, we go.Lakshaki, come. Come. Now!’

And BGP Joshi hurries out, barely glancing at the body of the murdered soldier still hanging there as no one else dared approach or take him down for fear of retribution. Fearfully,Amishi and Lakshaki, with eyes downcast, skirt the body and follow on behind BGP Joshi as he scuttles through the alleys towards the outskirts of the town and the road to Agra. Burdened by their heavy loads, mother and daughter struggle to keep up with the fleeing Joshi, who carries only a gaudy plaster effigy of the Hindu god Vishnu, the Protector.

(Did Gopal ever catch up with his family? I do not know. I would like to think so, but most probably not, he was most likely caught up in the mayhem which follows.BGP Joshi, Amishi and Lakshaki must leave us now, not to return)

Behind them, the town of Meerut erupts into an orgy of massacre, looting, rape, killing, mutiny and rebellion.

The Indian Mutiny had begun.