The ascent from poverty is through five cliffs: food, roof, marriage, wealth, esteem. On the first cliff, Prayaag kept his head up and eyes down.

His high cheekbones framed glowing, deep eyes; he knew his stare could be disconcerting, and therefore disrespectful to elders.

Wali Mohammad’s kindness was sustained by business instinct. Prayaag was the solution to a dilemma. Famine in Bihar had brought job-seekers to Telinipara, and with it the prospect of more customers. He did not have much to offer: tea, home-made biscuits and, for those with a taste for luxury, boiled eggs. But food was a sensitive matter to many Hindus. Some upper castes treated Muslims as yavana, or outsiders, the term originally used for Alexander’s Greeks when they invaded a centre of Hindu civilization, Taxila, and later applied to Muslims. All outsiders were mleccha, unclean. Hindus might happily converse with a Muslim, work with him, conspire with him, but not eat with him. But they might eat if served by a Hindu Kshatriya boy.

Prayaag was uninterested in reasons for his good fortune. He had found shelter, and a life. He did not expect money. Wali Mohammad was childless, and his wife, Diljan Bibi, grew fond of this quiet, intense boy. She had nursed him when he was dying, and began to believe that Prayaag was Allah’s answer to her prayers for a son. She would occasionally slip him a few cowrie shells to buy carrots or a mango in an abundant season; on some weekends she gave him as much as an anna, a sixteenth of a rupee. Life became comfortably routine. 

Victoria Jute Mill sat heavily on the western bank of the Hooghly, some thirty miles north of Calcutta, the political and industrial heart of the British Empire. On both sides of the river Scottish entrepreneurs were constructing massive factories to spin rich jute from Bengal’s fields into products like gunny bags. Victoria, the youngest child of Thomas Duff and Company (headquarters, Dundee), was protected by walls one foot thick and eight feet high on three sides, with the river marking the fourth boundary. The western gate opened towards a huge field, called the maidan, that separated Victoria from its sister, the Champdani Jute Mill.

Telinipara’s mud and thatch huts were spread randomly between the southern and eastern gates. Facilities were rudimentary. Water came from wells, and light from the sun. The jute mill continued production beyond sunset with the help of four-foot high gas-lit lamps that shed a heavy, white glow through the fluff of jute that floated like smog. Outside the factory, the darkness was occasionally disturbed by the flicker of a pallid wick placed in a dibiya, a small tin box filled with kerosene. The workers went to the further edge of the maidan, called the bhagar math, for their ablutions; and then to the river for a bath if they wanted to. Women needed the darkness. 

In winter the sun set by five; in summer by six; by eight or nine the day was over. It resumed at four in the morning, with a blast from the factory’s siren, attached to a towering brick chimney, so that sound and smoke gushed out in atonal harmony. Prayaag generally woke up half an hour earlier to get the shop ready for the first customers. Workers sipped tea from small earthen cups, and sometimes slipped a thick biscuit into the top knot of their lungi, to eat later. Those privileged enough to get credit from Wali Mohammad chalked a white mark on a slate to confirm their purchase. Accounts were settled every Saturday, on payday. Occasionally disputes arose, but Wali Mohammad’s reputation for honesty was rock-solid. He would not serve a defaulter until accounts had been settled, and he could sit for hours outside a difficult debtor’s home moaning for his money. 

Prayaag got his one break for laughter on Saturday evenings, when the weekly fair, or haat, gathered on the sprawling Victoria maidan. The open expanse and cool river breeze made this haat an epicentre for workers from half a dozen jute mill colonies on either side of the river: Shamnugur, Gondalpara, Angus, Titaghur, Champdani, Kankinara. Women gossiped around stalls full of ribbons and bangles. Men enjoyed the preening of wrestlers as they challenged known and unknown foes.