Coming home

At the end of his epic journey, Shankar returns home on board a ship from Beira to Bombay. It's early in the morning. Shankar stands on the rails of the ship looking at the Bombay skyline inching closer, dominated by the Rajabai Clock Tower.

One of the most famous and best-loved landmarks of the city, the Tower was built in the 1870s - the story of the Tower is quite interesting. This is a picture taken while under construction - look at how close the sea is! All of Backbay Reclamation, Nariman Point, etc, came later.

The next few pictures were taken when the Tower and the University building had been completed.

Here's a recent photo of the Tower at night, with its beautiful lighting display.

Shankar's journey - the full map

The journey that Shankar completes in Chander Pahar is an epic one. Starting from Mombasa, in what is now Kenya, he travels through countries in Central Africa, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and leaves for India from Beira, in what is now Mozambique.

There may have been longer and more difficult fictional journeys, but I can't recall them. In comparison, the Odyssey is but a short, albeit fraught trip, among the little islands in Greece.

Here's the full map (drawn by me, hence inaccurate and purely indicative) of this journey.

Beira was established in 1890 by the Portuguese and soon became the main port in the Portuguese-administered territory. The Portuguese built the port and a railway to Rhodesia, Portuguese families settled in the newly-founded locality and started to develop commercial activities. Before Mozambique's independence from Portugal, as a city of Portuguese Mozambique, Beira was noted for its well-equipped seaport, one of the major facilities of its kind in all East Africa, tourism, fishing and trade. The city prospered as a cosmopolitan port with different ethnic communities (Portuguese, Indian, Chinese, indigenous Africans) employed in administration, commerce, and industry. During the colonial era, a large English-speaking population was the result of being a favourite holiday destination for white Rhodesians.

I found this picture in Wikipedia - "View of Rua Conseleheira Ennes, Beira, Mozambique. Photograph of original postcard c1905, published by The Rhodesia Trading Co. Ltd., Beira", dated1905.

Perhaps Shankar travelled from Salisbury to Beira in this very train.

                  














(Both these pictures are taken from Wikipedia and rights belong to their various owners).
You could buy my book in Flipkart.com, and other online book stores.

Bankim Chandra's Rajsingha

During his travels in Africa, Shankar had only one book as a companion, the historical novel "Rajsingha" (also spelt "Rajsimha") by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is best known today as the composer of India’s national song Vande Mataram. Bankim Chandra wrote 13 novels and several ‘serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treaties’ in Bengali. His works were widely translated into other regional languages of India as well as in English.

Bankim Chandra is widely regarded as a key figure in literary renaissance of Bengal as well as India. Some of his writings, including novels, essays and commentaries, were a breakaway from traditional verse-oriented Indian writings, and provided an inspiration for authors across India.

He wrote a number of historical novels, which were scarcely true historically, but were intended to arouse and promote Hindu patriotism and Hindu nationalism. The victories won by the Hindus in the different novels are won against Muslim forces, consisting either of Muslims alone, as in Rajsingha (1882) and Sitaram (1887), or of Muslims with British officers, as in Devi Chaudhurani and Anandamath. See here.

"Rajsingha" is set in Rajasthan, about a Mughal-Hindu conflict when Emperor Aurangzeb imposed the jiziya tax on Hindus. Rajsimha is an Indian prince who defends a princess and eventually marries her.

In an article titled "Jatiyo Itihaas vis-à-vis Manab Itihaas: Tagore theHistoriographer", Sajalkumar Bhattacharya, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, India, has written:

"Tagore enjoys reading Rajsingha and for that matter, all historical novels, only because he discerns here, to his utter satisfaction, the successful discharge of the poet of the duty of a historian. The hitherto missing ‘their stories’ that supplement in this novel the official, recorded history, gives him considerable satisfaction, because he notes that here, at least, history has not hegemonised the common man and attempted to silence its polyphonic voice. Tagore who has always followed keenly the struggle between the ‘grand national history’ (brihat jatiyo itihaas) and the ‘intense human history’ (tibro manab itihaas) gives full marks to Rajsingha, only because, in this novel, this flow of human history has all along been kept vibrantly alive and protected from the hegemonic tendency of the official history of the nation. The character sketch of Jebunnisa is the example that strikes him. Tagore feels he cannot praise Bankim enough for he has been able to save Jebunnisa from being lost in the maze of ‘important’ historical events. Rather, Bankim has always been meticulously careful to record this ordinary, helpless woman’s pain and tears in conjunction with his narration of the great events of the Mughal history. Tagore locates the success of a poet precisely here – in his ability to see beyond an ordinary historian, and incorporate what the historian fails to do. So, it is Bankim, the novelist (who successfully records the rich manab itihaas), and not Bankim, the historian (who aspires to record the jatiyo itihaas), to whom Tagore likes to go back again and again."

Readers who are interested could do worse than read two other books about historical tales from Rajasthan - Abanindranath Tagore's "Rajkahini" (a wonderful collection of stories about the Ranas of Mewar starting with Bappaditya) and James Tod's wonderful two-volume collection "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan." The latter may well have inspired the former.

Crossing the Kalahari

Shankar's solo crossing of the Kalahari would have gone down in song and legend, if he had indeed done so in real life. Indeed, there are quite a few people who have actually done so and lived to tell the tale. William Leonard Hunt is supposedly the first white man to cross the Kalahari on foot and survive, at least according to Wikipedia here. Also known as the Great Farini, here's a fetching picture of the man with two pieces of arm candy; whether before or after his Kalahari crossing is not known.

At some point in time, perhaps not too long ago, crossing the Kalahari must have been one of those feats which must have been ranked along with climbing the Everest as one of five most foolhardy things to do. No longer, I guess. Nowadays, a few hundred people are climbing the Everest every suitable day, and judging from the books that get written after these expeditions, the route up the mountain on a bright Sunday morning must be sporting a traffic jam up and down the South Col.

Crossing the Kalahari is now a slightly more difficult journey than a walk in the park. Consider this; the author of Lone Journeys writes as follows:

"In February 1997, after travelling through South Africa and arriving in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, by bus from Capetown, I enquired about the possibilities of a desert trek in Windhoek's central tourist office. I did not seem to have any luck because distances are fast and transport is rare for that part of the world. Additionally, whilst the lonely landscape appeals to some, overall the Kalahari is not known to have many points of interest and therefore is not the destination of mainstream Africa excursions. Furthermore, the usual Africa traveller wants to see wildlife and in that regard the Kalahari does not offer as much as other areas.

"However, just as I was leaving the tourist office, a staff member who had overheard my request called me back. Apparently he knew of a small adventure travel company that had just taken possession of some new vehicles and wanted to test them in a Kalahari crossing. Needless to say, he arranged the contact and several days later, on 19 February, I joined two drivers on an adventure trip through the desert. Our route was to take us into Botswana and then across the Kalahari via the northern track towards Maun and the Okavango Delta.

After a gigantic scenic drive with a very remote feeling, some game viewing (mostly antelopes, gemsboks, springboks and even one lion) and a spectacular sunset we overnighted in Ghanzi. Ghanzi which sits on a lime stone ridge was once famous for cattle ranching. Now it is a popular rest stop when crossing the Kalahari. Indeed, lodging and dinner were excellent at the Kalahari Arms Hotel. 

The next day we headed to the Danish run Ghanzicraft Cooperative, an outlet for local crafts people, and I met with bushmen, their wives and their children at the local school. As we approached Maun, I felt sorry to leave this unspoilt African wilderness, especially since I noticed that the new Trans Kalahari Highway, built largely with German money, was almost completed. It seemed I had crossed this incredible desert just in time."

And now with the Trans Kalahari Highway, it must be really a longish drive in someone's SUV, perhaps no more fraught than the drive from Mumbai to Pune. 

Oh how are the mighty humbled!

A detour to the Zambezi

Shankar and Diego don't actually track the Zambezi for long. But the Zambezi is such a wonderful place that I have decided to share some information about the river anyway. So here goes. (Incidentally, you can go here and here for more details about the river. The first one is a beautiful site on tourism in Zambia, and has some great pictures of the Zambezi.)

The Zambezi (also spelled Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is 1,390,000 square kilometres (540,000 sq mi),[1][2] slightly less than half that of the Nile. The 3,540-kilometre-long river (2,200 mi) has its source in Zambia and flows through Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, Zambia again, and Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, where it empties into the Indian Ocean.

The Zambezi's most spectacular feature is the beautiful Victoria Falls. Other notable falls include the Chavuma Falls at the border between Zambia and Angola, and Ngonye Falls, near Sioma in Western Zambia.

The size of the river basin is pretty huge:

Easily the most spectacular sight in the river, and indeed the world, is the Victoria Falls. Some day, some time, you must see it for yourself. These photos can at best be an appetizer.

Diamonds and Death

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.] 

The epic journey undertaken by Shankar and Diego Alvarez had just one goal - find the diamonds hidden in the Mountain of the Moon. This dream, or maybe it's just greed, has driven men for millenia. The search for riches has not only created huge people migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries, they have also created great works of art and entertainment - Chaplin's "The Gold Rush", the Indiana Jones films, the books by Rider Haggard, and of course "Chander Pahar." 

The search for riches often results in failure and death, and not very pleasant deaths either. In "Chander Pahar", both Jim and Diego are torn apart by the three-toed monster which Shankar never gets to see. In finding the diamonds in the Richtersveldt Mountains, Shankar loses his way in the tunnels and almost dies of thirst. 

This relationship between diamonds and death is still not dead (no pun intended!) Many of us will have seen the film "Blood Diamond", the 2006 political thriller film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world. Wikipedia has this to say about 'blood diamonds', aka 'conflict diamonds' - "In relation to diamond trading, conflict diamond (also called a converted diamond, blood diamond, hot diamond, or war diamond) refers to a diamond mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, invading army's war efforts, or a warlord's activity, usually in Africa where around two-thirds of the world's diamonds are extracted. The phenomenon of conflict minerals has the same nature." 

The countries in Africa that are affected by these stones include Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe. The UN has a fascinating article on Conflict Diamonds here. 

Probably the most famous diamond mines in the world are the Kimberley mines, in Northern Cape in South Africa. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War. Notable personalities such as Cecil Rhodes (the founder of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) made their fortune here and the roots of the De Beers corporation can also be traced to the early days of the mining town. There's a fascinating history of the mines here, here, and here. 

The original Kimberley mine closed in 1914, a few years before Shankar's visit to Africa.