June 19, 2003

Salman Rashid traces the great saga of the Indus Queen, of her days of glory which are now a thing of the past

The first time I saw her was back in October 1995. But even those were not her glory days. Only a few years earlier, she had been resurrected after a fire which had completely ravaged her timber superstructure and cabins. That was how she had been commissioned back in the 1930s as a pleasure craft for Sadiq Mohammed Khan V, Nawab of Bahawalpur.

I was told that it was then equipped with a number of royal cabins for the Nawab, a ballroom and a bar and along the roof ran a wrought iron grotesqueries. Since the Nawab used it on the Sutlej that flowed past Bahawalpur, it was, quite naturally, called the Sutlej Queen. But after the signing of the Indus Basin Treaty, the Sutlej began to die a slow death.

Consequently, around 1958, the nawab gifted his prized pleasure boat to the government of Pakistan, which used it as a ferry at Ghazi Ghat between Dera Ghazi Khan and Muzaffargarh. About a year later, it was shifted to the ford of Mithankot south of Dera Ghazi Khan. She was appropriately renamed the Indus Queen.

There, she hauled commuters between Chachran on the east bank and Mithankot. And there it was one night in 1962 or the year after that, when its timber caught fire and had it not been steel-hulled, the entire boat would surely have burnt to a cinder.

For some years thereafter, the smoke-darkened hulk lay in dock at Mithankot until it was eventually refurbished and pressed back into service. But now it was merely a shadow of its past glory. In place of the deluxe cabins with French windows and wooden louvres, it had an open deck to carry passengers and all sorts of vehicles. Above, it had a corrugated tin sheeting roof.

But even in that damaged condition, there was something royal about her, something majestic. The proud prow with the lettering Indus Queen and the elegant lines of the gunwale gave her a graceful charm.

Her captain that October was a man called Qadir ‘Bushk’ (as he pronounced his name). He wore a green and red lungi and a soiled kurta, his hair was all mussed up and he sported a week-old stubble with a healthy walrus moustache.

I crossed from Mithankot to Chachran and the hour-long crossing was one of the greatest journeys of my life. That was late in the season and shortly after, as the Indus dwindled even more, the Queen was docked for the winter at Mithankot.

Recently, just as the rivers swelled up in the summer and I thought the Queen would be riding the waves again, I returned to Mithankot. But the Queen wasn’t sailing that summer, nor perhaps even the next.

Indeed, long overdue repairs haven’t permitted her to sail for the past couple of years. In her stead, Chachran and Mithankot are now connected by a number of outboard-fitted fibre-glass boats operated by local contractors. During winter, when the river is low, there is, of course, the usual bridge of boats.

All the river boats that went out of service were simply left to rot in the mud. Ignored, forgotten, relegated to oblivion. And I have seen five of them shackled in silt and rotting from Hyderabad to Dera Ismail Khan.

The Queen is fortunately still afloat. This meant there was some chance of her sailing the Indus again. Din Mohammed thought so, too. Back in 1995, he was her oilman and thought working on the boat was a darn sight better than minding the boat bridge as he was currently doing. He took me over the gangplank and onto the boat.

The helm on the platform above the prow was still there. But the arrangement of metres and gauges was gone. The brass bell that the captain and his pilot used to warn the engine room for speed and forward or astern direction was also missing.

The deck, in my memory crowded with folks in their best finery, was deserted but for a youngster playing his solo childish game. We walked to the aft section, down a steel ladder and into the grimy engine room. Din Mohammed said the pair of C.A.T diesel engines was in running condition. But the cobwebs showed they hadn’t been fired for some time.

These huge six-cylinder machines were turned by no ordinary electric starter motors. Each engine was equipped with a one-cylinder petrol engine to turn them. The carburetors on both the starting engines were missing. Din Mohammed had no idea where they were and did not seem to understand that the mechanism to start the two diesels was gone. This was perhaps a sign that the Queen will, after all, never sail again.

Water sloshed about the bottom. The steel hull was rotting and the Indus was slowly working its way in through the holes. But with no funds to carry out proper repairs, the Department of Highways (which owns the boat) was plugging the holes with cement. Din Mohammed pointed out a few places with large wads of cement, a few of them were fresh.

Ahead of the engine room was the compartment where the original pair of slow speed Gleniffer marine diesel engines was fitted. It has been empty since the C.A.Ts replaced them. The only reminder of that time was a machine that looked like a generator. The lettering on its crankcase said it, too, was a Gleniffer. More cement wads.

Din Mohammed said Qadir ‘Bushk’ had retired some years ago. He lived in a village less than 500 metres away, so I asked if he ever came around to stand behind the helm, and look out dreamily across the prow to the languid Indus. He did come around sometimes to talk to his old colleagues, said the man, but I was disappointed to hear he never came aboard the Queen. I had fallen in love with her in just one day. For Qadir ‘Bushk’, she was evidently just a job.

Long ago on an October afternoon, we had just left the mooring and the Queen was nosing into the main channel when a shout went up that sahibzada sahib (a descendent of the Sufi Khwaja Ghulam Farid) had arrived for the ride.

Captain Qadir ‘Bushk’ said he wasn’t going back as they were already behind schedule. A protracted argument followed which our captain lost and the Queen reversed to pick him.

Qadir ‘Bushk’, visibly discomfited by the show that I had witnessed in full, came up to me and asked if I was going to write about it. He suggested it would be very useful if I did not include the unpleasant episode in my story. He fretted he would ‘lose face’ if people learnt of it. I must admit I lied through my teeth and came home to give a blow-by-blow account of the battle between Qadir ‘Bushk’ and his pilot. There would have been no story without that.

Din Mohammed said a copy of the Herald with the story of the Indus Queen worked its way to Mithankot. Qadir ‘Bushk’ was pleased to see his picture in it. The delight, I suspect, would have lasted only until some spoilsport read the story to him. I wonder if he had borne an abiding loathing for the mendacious journalist who had ridden his boat that October and had cheated on his promise not to disgrace him.

I know very little of boats, even less of steel-hulled ones. But I suppose if she has to be kept in good trim there is something to be done other than filling up the Queen’s under decks with cement. If not, one day there will be enough cement in the Queen’s belly that she will no longer be able to remain afloat. That will be the end.

Having commenced on the Sutlej some 70 years ago, hers has been a great saga. I was lucky to have been a part of it; albeit briefly, but the next writer following up will be fortunate even if he finds her afloat. Her days, full of event and thrills, seem to have come to an end.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)