The Year of Rice and Salt

Up they rose. 'It is like Arjuna's chariot,' the Kerala said to them, and they all nodded, eyes shining with excitement. The singer was beautiful, the memory of her singing like a song in the air around them; and the Kerala more beautiful still; and Bhakta the most beautiful of all. The pilot pumped the bellows once or twice. The wind whistled in the rigging.

From the air the world proved to be flat looking. It extended a tremendous distance to the horizon – green hills to the northeast and south, and to the west the flat blue plate of the sea, the sunlight on it gleaming like gold on blue ceramic. Things down there were small but distinct. The trees were like green tufts of wool. It looked like the landscapes painted in Persian miniatures, spread out and laid in space below them, gorgeously articulated. Fields of rice were banked and bordered by sinuous lines of palm trees, and beyond them were orchards of small trees, planted in rows and lines, looking like a tight weave of cloth, all the way out to the dark green hills in the east. 'What kind of trees are those?' Ismail asked.

The Kerala answered, for as became clear, he had directed the establishment of most of the orchards they could see. 'They are part of the city lands, and used to grow the sources of essential oils that we trade for the goods that come in. You smelled some of them on our walk to the basket. Root trees like vetiver, costus, valerian and angelica, shrubs like keruda, lotes, kadam, parijat and night queen. Grasses like cintronella, lemon grass and ginger grass and palmarosa. Flowers, as you see, including tuberose, champaca, roses, jasmine, frangipani. Herbs including peppermint, spearmint, patchouli, artemesia. Then there, back in the woods there, those are orchards of sandalwood and agarwood. All these are bred, planted, grown, harvested, processed and bottled or bagged for trade with Africa and Firanja and China and the new world, where formerly they had no scents and no healing substances anything like as powerful, and so are much amazed, and desire them very much. And now I have people out scouring the world to find more stock of various kind, to see what will grow here. Those that prosper are cultivated, and their oils sold round the world. Demand for them is so high it is hard to match it, and gold comes flowing into Travancore as its wondrous scents perfume the whole Earth.'

The basket turned as it came to the top of its anchor rope, and below them the heart of the kingdom was revealed, the city of Travancore as seen by the birds, or God. The land beside the bay was covered with roofs, trees, roads, docks, all as small as the toys of a princess, extending not as far as Konstantiniyye would have, but big enough, and sprinkled by a veritable arboretum of green trees, hardly displaced by the buildings and roads. Only the docks area was more roof than tree.

Just above them floated a tapestry of crosshatched cloud, moving inland on the wind. Off to sea a great line of tall white marbled clouds sailed towards them. 'We'll have to get down before too long,' the Kerala said to the pilot, who nodded and checked his stove.

A flock of vultures pinioned about them curiously, and the pilot shouted once at them, pulling a fowling gun out of a bag on the inside of the basket. He had never seen it happen, he said, but he had heard of a flock of birds pecking a bag right out of the sky. Hawks, jealous of their territory, apparently; probably vultures would not be so bold; but it would be a bad thing by which to be surprised.

The Kerala laughed, looked at Ismail and gestured at the colourful and fragrant fields. 'This is the world we want you to help us make,' he said. 'We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans or zamin dars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more qadis or mullas or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more clans, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are.'

Chapter Three. Gold Mountain