The
year is 1817. India is part of a flourishing British Empire, the
first ever military empire so vast over the world that at any minute
in a 24-hour period it is daytime somewhere in the Empire. This fact
is the basis of the proverbial declaration that the sun never sets on
the British Empire.
Moonsamy
is about thirteen years old in the territory of Kerala in India.
Severe undernourishment makes him look half his age. He timidly and
fearfully offers his services as a menial helper to Captain William
Goldstone, the White European Captain of the British garrison in the
City of Kottayam.
Moonsamy
expects to work for scraps of food. Captain Goldstone employs him on
the spot for one penny a day, and all the scraps he can eat. Moonsamy
accepts. His joy is boundless.
Moonsamy
is Veddoid. The Veddoid people are a race of native Indians, blackest
in complexion among all the black races on Earth.
In
Moonsamy's time, there are only three ethnicities native to India:
the Aryans, the Dravidians, and the Veddoids. The Veddoids are the
oldest, and the only race indigenous to India, from their beginning.
The Aryans and the Dravidians originated outside of India. Although
the Aryans and the Dravidians tolerate each other, neither freely
allows Veddoids into their company.
Nonetheless,
now that Moonsamy is in the paid employ of a White European person,
Moonsamy's fellow native Indians are obliged to share road-space with
him in public, and to permit him to fill his bucket with water from
the same communal well as they drink.
Veddoid
Moonsamy's racist native nationals have the last snigger against him,
though. To his face they snidely dub him "Moonsamy Goldstone."
Since he has never known what his true Veddoid family name is, and
more since William Goldstone is the first person in Moonsamy's memory
to have shown him kindness and respect, Moonsamy readily and happily
accepts "Moonsamy Goldstone," with pride.
For
the next 39 years Moonsamy will serve as menial servant, and
sometimes in emergencies as an armed fighting soldier in the British
army in India, Australia, Canada, China, and South Africa.
Throughout
these times, Moonsamy will show no aptitude to be more than barely
literate. Most, perhaps everyone in the army who know Moonsamy more
than casually, suspect his virtual illiteracy is feigned.
In
the year 1856, British army records in Durban, Natal, South Africa,
show Moonsamy Goldstone is 52 years old. He looks half his age
because he is under weight and skinny; because he yet has all his
straight Veddoid shiny black hair on his head; because his posture is
that of a fighting-trim soldier of the British Empire.
Moonsamy
is standing at attention in the office of Major Maynard Melnin, in
Durban, Natal, South Africa. Melnin is seated at his desk, casually
turning pages in Moonsamy's official records.
"At
ease, Goldstone. Be seated, please." Moonsamy sits in a chair at
the desk. "Good news, Moonsamy Goldstone. You are about twenty
years overdue for retirement and pension. Because you are not
officially employed as a soldier or other worker in a recognized
category, nobody has been keeping track of your service. The British
army owes you a lot of money. From my calculations, your annual
pension will be more than your present annual pay. You will be
discharged from the army eight weeks from today."
Moonsamy
is alarmed and sad. Neither his face nor any other part of him shows
it. "Will I have to return to India, sir." "You may
retire to any territory in the British Empire, Moonsamy Goldstone.
Anywhere outside, too, if you wish." "I would like to
retire to The Bad Lands in this part of the Empire, sir."
The
promptness of the request and the request itself takes the Major by
surprise. "The Bad Lands, Moonsamy?" "Yes, sir."
"Our Bad Lands? Here in Natal?" "Yes, sir."
"Moonsamy,
that is suicide. If the violent weather extremes don't kill you, the
poisonous snakes and vegetation will. Nobody lives there. Native Zulu
criminals fleeing from their King Shaka never tried. For centuries,
every tribe in these parts has avoided those Bad Lands as cursed. The
land-hungry European Afrikaners, too, who do everything to isolate
themselves from us, gave up on The Bad lands. After our first two
attempts, we can't get anyone to explore the place for official
records."
Moonsamy's
next words stun the Major. "Major, sir, I will forfeit all my
pension forever in payment for The Bad Lands."
One
day eight weeks later, Moonsamy is sitting on the ground. The sun has
set. He is tired. He is about to stretch out on the ground to sleep.
He looks at the wall of forest on the other side of the deep ravine.
Tomorrow he will climb down through the trees on the wall on this
side of the ravine, until the decline takes him close enough to swing
his grappling hook.
In
his army backpack he has the original title deed to The Bad Lands.
The army generously, perhaps facetiously, gratuitously had added "and
to his named inheritors in perpetuity." He knows they think he
has not read that far down. They are wrong.
He
is amused by the addition. There will be no inheritors because he
intends to live alone the rest of his life in The Bad Lands. And that
won't be for long, if the accounts of treacherous weather,
inhospitable earth, and vicious poisonous snakes are true.
Tomorrow
he begins a new life as owner of The Bad Lands, about two-hundred
miles in East-West extension into the foothills of the Drakensberg
mountains, and about thirty miles at its narrowest South-North
beginning. All of it within a high-rimmed three-side volcanic crater.
He
drifts into sleep under a moonless starry sky. He has done this
routinely many, many times on the march in most countries of the
British Empire for some thirty-nine years. The hard natural ground at
sleep time has ever been a reliable and welcomed companion all his
life.
He
welcomes a sensation of surrendering to a happy whelming feeling of
being on the eve of a new, a momentous beginning. Exactly the same
emotion that first time he held in his palms his first month's pay of
thirty pennies from Captain William Goldstone in Kottayam, Kerala,
India.
He
dreams he is lying on his back on warm sand at night. His mouth is
open to catch dew. British soldiers did this in the Thar desert in
northwest India. The night dew in the Thar floats down slowly in
specks as light as air.
He
is awake! His soldier's instinct, exquisitely honed, ignites. He has
been soldier-trained to awake from sleep but to keep his eyes closed.
He is perspiring; he cannot tell just yet if this is because of the
warm weather or because of his heightened awareness of imminent
danger. His eyes are closed but he knows it is not night anymore. His
dream he is drinking dew is not all-dream. He feels drops of moisture
on his face. It's heavier than Thar dew. It must be rain. Very light
rain because he cannot hear it falling on the ground or on the
foliage. He disciplines himself to be motionlessly relaxed on the
ground.
"I
know you are awake, sir." A child's friendly voice. Moonsamy
slowly turns his head in the direction of the voice. He opens his
eyes. It is a child. A girl.
She
is sitting on the ground a few steps away. She is smiling in full and
open wide-eyed innocent excitement of discovery. Her irises shine
brightly like polished silver. Her thick yellow hair is neatly
combed. It drapes loosely from her head to cover all of her, except
her arms. It is unaffected by the rain. Some drops of rain linger
delicately clinging to her hair, sparkling like jewels. Others
slowly, reluctantly, tumble-roll down.
She
is an ethereally beautiful vision. Moonsamy is alarmed because she is
White. He sees nothing else about her except her Whiteness that
frightens him.
Racism
against people of Moonsamy's ethnicity is a polite unwritten basic
principle of British imperial creed throughout the Empire. He has
been content to live by this founding British belief all his life.
This
White girl is too close to him. If an adult White sees this, he will
be thrown into prison. He eases himself slowly to a sitting position,
keeping his eyes warily on her as he proceeds to inch away.
"I'm
sorry, ma'am, for trespassing. I will leave immediately. Please
forgive me." "You're not trespassing, sir." He is
uncomfortably unfamiliar with being addressed as "sir" by a
White person. It's never happened to him throughout the Empire upon
which the sun never set. What is she up to? It cannot be good for
him.
He
stands in preparation to walk away. She, too, promptly stands.
Moonsamy's apprehension turns to terror! She is naked down to her
shoeless feet! He will be executed for this. Beaten to a breath away
from death, and then executed for seeing a White female naked!
He
turns and quickly walks away, stumbling as he goes. The rain and wind
increase. The White girl follows him.
"Sir,
please, let me take you to my family. They will be happy to meet you.
I have already told them about you."
Moonsamy
stops abruptly. Her family knows! They will search for him! They will
use tracking dogs! He will be tortured, flayed, and then lynched!
In
his terror, he speaks with difficulty. "Ma'am, I am deeply sorry
for being here. I was looking for a convenient place to cross the
ravine. But I fell asleep."
"But,
sir, you have crossed the ravine. I watched you swing those hooks on
a rope. You were very good at it. You hooked a sturdy tree on your
first swing."
Moonsamy
instantly conjures up the British Empire soldier in him. He runs away
from the White child, as fast as he can. In seconds he reaches a
speed higher than he ever did anywhere in the Empire, perhaps because
here he is not waited down by a heavy uniform; heavy boots; a heavy
metal weapon. He is running faster than even when he had to flee
those times from a hot-pursuing homicidal enemy on a battlefield.
The
child is White. White persons never lie. She says he has already
crossed the ravine; then it must be ahead of him. If he keeps running
in this direction, he is bound to reach the ravine. He is determined
to dive into it; to a soldierly heroic sacrificial death; to his
eternal freedom.
Contact
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