STORY OF HARRY SINGH & SOPHIE KAUR

De Gaul stood on a lashing container to gain height, faced the mustered ship’s crew and barked, ‘Ahoy, mateys! Scoundrel Lefavre has cleared the till and jumped ship. Hear ye men, when I catch up with the thieving bastard, I’m going to flagellate ‘im till the skin of his back falls off.’ To make his point, he snaked the whip above head level in front of him and yanked it back making a heart rending high octave cracking sound of the whip which sent shivers down the spines of the assembled crew. He must have appeared a figure as intimidating to the assembled French crew of MV Helena, as his British counterpart, Captain Bligh standing on the deck of H M S Bounty, must have been, 76 years earlier on that 28th day of April 1790, berating his crew and thus triggering the infamous Mutiny on the Bounty. ‘I want the blackguard dead or alive but I want him,’ he fumed. So saying he ordered that all six swords in the armoury of the ship be issued to the fencing experts in the crew, to be taken ashore and put to use in case the venal rat Lefevre offered resistance. ‘I know where thieving vermin go to squander ill-gotten money. They go whoring ‘n they go drinking. They go gambling ‘n they go opium doping,” he pontificated. And then wheedled, ‘so go and search all the whore-houses, all the seedy hotels, all the gambling joints, all the boozing taverns and all the opium dens on the water front and bring back the villain to me.’ ‘Aye, Aye, Cap’n,’ replied the assembled sailors in unison in a full throated retort. A second boat was lowered and 16 sailors from MV Helena armed with half a dozen foils mounted an assault in two boats on the Madras Marina led by their skipper who felt as if he was engulfed by a menacing dark cloud, even as, the search party, on beaching, split into two groups and commenced the combing operation. He himself made a bee-line to the twin sisters’ bordello, on the pretext of searching it, whereas, he was actually looking forward to the delights awaiting him in that house of pleasure where he had attained complete bliss the previous night. Soon, he was sprawled on the large sized bed inside their bordello and as the two little harlots began to caress, kiss and stroke him, he started to truly believe that the menacing dark cloud engulfing him, indeed had a silver lining. At the commencement of the hunt the skipper had been hopeful of nabbing the deserter and was heart-broken when the search did not bring him in, even after 48 hours. Two days and that many nights had been wasted; in more ways than one. Firstly, he had fallen behind the sailing schedule, second, neither the runaway cook had been apprehended nor the filched silver recovered and thirdly, his endeavours in the duo’s parlour had been unfulfilling. De Gaul mused over his earlier visit, during which he had attained endless pleasure when the two under age tarts had taken him to cloud nine. While that stopover had been an enjoyable dream, the present sojourn was a nightmare because he had been haunted by the apparition of that bastard Lefevre the whole time. A number of times the harlot duo had taken him towards Eden, and when he thought he was on the door-step of seventh heaven, that arse-hole, Lefevre would suddenly pop up in his mind’s eye and take the wind out of his sails or rather erection out of his penis. They had tried again and again but nirvana eluded him; Lefevre’s ghost would make his appearance just when he was on the threshold of paradise. He felt physically jaded and psychologically defeated. So the young pair adopted the next best course, they made De Gaul smoke opium in a chillum, the Indian cone shaped smoking clay pipe, and that seemed to help; next the teen age twosome had given him an oil bath therapy as per the Indian Medical System, the Ayurveda and that too appeared to rejuvenate him. As a result, by the end of the failed hunt, the two young prostituee had relieved, the done-in, captain, of his physical weariness, his mental tension and three of his silver pieces; a treasure, which was adequate to take-care of all the needs of the whore-house; madam, harlots, pimps and all, for a whole year, if not more. The captain was aware that he had perishable cargo and bags of express mail in the hold of MV Helena. Any further delay in setting out, especially after cook Lefevre episode, would draw wrath of the owners. He perforce, had to take the painful decision to abort the search. While the crew commenced doing their pre-sailing chores the dejected skipper entered his cabin, wishing Lefevre, death by scurvy. Once inside his cabin, he nicked a pinch of opium from the confiscated package he had stashed. He put a little tobacco in the palm of his left hand and added the opium pinch to it. He then pulverized this mixture with his right thumb, exactly as the two nymphs had taught him. One learns every day or rather every night, he ruminated. After that he packed his pipe with this prepared heady mix and set it alight. As he pulled a long drag on the pipe the opium laced acrid smoke filled his lungs giving him a high and for the moment he forgot his blues and bitterness and made peace with the world. Now completely relaxed, thanks to the opium, the captain picked up the ink pot and quill to write the ship’s log and fudge the account books; whilst his clipper MV Helena cruised South South-West into the Bay of Bengal, towards Ceylon, at full sail, sans its cook and minus one pot of its silver; its acres of canvas billowing in the Indian Easterly, Poorvia, wind.