… as if I was walking through an ancient and unknown city. The past of this petrified city had left me stunned, time and time again. It made me cry, again and again. I was writhing in anger and in an inexplicable pain that had no remedy. I could now understand the cause of that terrible flame of anger in Lailin’s eyes. I could understand her now, as well as her society.

It took me some time, for this was not a history enshrined in written words for one to read at one’s will. Different pieces of it were strewn across the globe. I had to pick out each and every word of that history from the darkness of the hearts, from the tears, from the silence of people who did not want to speak. It had taken me time to piece together that history once again.

Arunabh’s book transported Lailin to a distant past – the early nineteenth century. It transported her to a poverty-stricken village in southern China, where her ancestor was born. His name was Ho Han.

Three

It was a grey and dusty village. A village struck by famine.

In a corner of this village lived Ho Han.

The entire village was quiet, devoid of any sign of habitation.

Death had become a familiar fact of life and most of the villagers had died of starvation. Those who could afford to had left the village earlier. Even now a thin trickle of skeletal evacuees could be seen leaving for Kwangchow.

Those left behind were Ho Han’s family and others like them, families living in such an utter state of brutishness that it seemed as though they were still in the pre-civilized ages. Cruel, selfish and without an iota of shame.

In Ho Han’s home a scene of cruelty was being enacted at that very minute.

In the courtyard of the dilapidated straw and bamboo hut sat Ho Han and his three brothers. Ho Han’s elder brother was eight years old while he was six and his two younger brothers were four-and-a-half and three. Uncared for, they were all dressed in dirty clothes made from hemp. They were barefoot and their ragged, skinny bodies were covered in dust and grime. Their eyes sunk deep in their sockets, flesh and muscles shrivelled and dry, it was only their bloated stomachs that were prominent. Sitting in a corner, they were watching their father who was deep in conversation with two men.

Ho Han’s father looked as famine-stricken, ragged and filthy as his children. The two men with pigtails, however, looked well-fed and there was no sign of impoverishment on their attire. One of them was dressed in fine silk. His chubby face, bright countenance and well-made clothes smacked of wealth. The other man, although dressed like an ordinary villager, wore clean cotton clothes and looked healthy. He was a broker, a middleman; he looked after the buying and selling of human beings.

The two had arrived in a horse carriage. Two gunmen and the coachman kept watch over the carriage. They feared that at any moment the starving villagers might attack them because of the two bags of rice kept in the carriage, a commodity more precious than gold and silver!