A Fine Family: A Novel (23 page)

Karan had been stopped by the grey-haired Governor. Arjun noticed that Karan did not glance around from one person to another as everyone else did. He looked intently at the man he was talking to and gave him his full attention. Neither did he shift from one leg to another, nor did he hurry with what he was saying, although he was aware that Priti was standing close by waiting to talk to him. He seemed to speak quietly and deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world. After he had finished talking, he turned to Priti, and gave his full attention to her. It seemed to Arjun that the two spoke forever.

Bauji found it distasteful that such a lot of fuss was being made over the Minister. People had crowded round him and were hanging on to his every word. It did not seem right that great privileges and power should be attached to politicians in a democracy.

He was amused with the thought that when it came to power it was remarkable how easily Indians had slipped into British shoes. Independence had come and gone and Indians had substituted one set of rulers for another. These new rulers enjoyed the privileges just as much as the old. They must be secretly happy, he thought, that Gandhi was not around to spoil things. With his yen for austerity he would certainly not have approved.

But why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves, he asked. After all they had made sacrifices enough, spent half their lives in British jails. Bauji did not grudge them a few moments of pleasure. As it is there is so little of it to go around. But he was uncomfortable with their hypocritical protestations. They not only covered their actions in a Gandhian cloak, but worse, they justified everything in socialist rhetoric. He wouldn’t have minded if it was only rhetoric, but many of them, including Nehru, believed in it. They were under the mesmerizing spell of socialism, and that worried him.

At this point the Minister bumped into him, and he made a show of a profuse apology, even thought it was probably Bauji’s fault since he was not looking where he was going. Rao Sahib raised his nose in the air and glaring at Bauji, he icily asked his neighbour, ‘I say, who is that crazy man?’ Meanwhile the Minister continued in his eloquent defense of Nehru’s policy towards China, a subject that was uppermost in everyone’s mind; no one wanted a war with China and they were hoping that the Minister could tell them how it was to be averted.

During a pause in the Minister’s monologue, Bauji quietly said, ‘I think you are all out of touch. First, you lead us up the garden path of Indo-Chinese friendship, forgetting our own self-interest, and now you talk about “throwing the Chinese out”. Isn’t it a bit naive? Dreamers are dangerous, especially if they rule nations. I was thinking of your boss, Mr Nehru, sir. No offence intended to you.’

‘Well, what do
you
suggest we do?’ asked the Minister.

‘What our young hostess suggested the other day in the rail car,’ and he smiled at Priti, who had also joined the crowd around the Minister. She beamed back, acknowledging the compliment. ‘I think the sooner we admit that the border is disputed territory the better off we will be. And just as quickly we should sit down with them and negotiate.’

Rao Sahib returned to the sofa near Tara accompanied by Chamba and Priti. ‘I say the cheek of the man. Who the devil is he?’

‘He happens to be right, Uncle Rao,’ said Priti.

‘You are a snob, Bunty,’ said Chamba.

‘No, I merely happen to know who has precedence,’ said Rao Sahib.

‘He is the father of this charming new friend I have made,’ said Chamba and she smiled at Tara.

‘Oh I say, I say,’ said Rao Sahib uncomfortably.

‘Look, there’s your friend, Dinky Chopra,’ Chamba said rescuing Rao Sahib from his discomfort. She pointed with her eyes to the figure who had just come into view.

‘Did you know, my dear, that I caught Dinky on the Mall last Friday?’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Wearing sandals! Poor man, he was mortified when he saw me. I went up to him and I said, “Could I buy you a pair of shoes, old man?”’ said Rao Sahib, roaring with laughter.

‘Stop it. You are vicious, Bunty. But you have a certain vicious attractiveness about you.’

At this point Chamba’s eyes met Tara’s; Chamba smiled, and as if by a common signal, they turned to look at Karan, who was again talking to Priti.

‘Ah, so you know him from childhood,’ said Chamba to Tara. ‘Karan is the most irresistible man in Simla.’

‘What nonsense! He merely plays the sitar well and that gives him a certain. . .’ said Rao Sahib.

‘You are jealous, Bunty,’ said Chamba with a charming smile. ‘How do you account for his close friendship with Nehru, and the greats of the world? He has actually stayed with Nehru in Delhi!’

‘That’s easily explained. He got to know Nehru in jail,’ said Rao Sahib. ‘I don’t understand the fuss over a half-employed sitar player who is lucky to have a few friends in the world. The Maharaja of Gwalior had a half-dozen musicians, and they were treated like servants.’

‘It is you who refuses to understand, Bunty,’ said Chamba, shaking her head. ‘It is none of these things. It is his personality, what he says, that makes him so attractive to everyone.’

Both Tara and Arjun were in a trance on the way back home. Tara had seen Karan in a new light that evening. She felt the irony in feeling sorry for him when he enjoyed such success in society. It was a shock. Until now she had viewed him merely as an unmarried and obscure academic. She tried to reconcile the contradiction in her mind, and then understand the reasons for his lofty position in society. Clearly, Karan was talked about, people were interested in him, and everyone was anxious to see him. She felt confused and hurt. She had believed that she was alone in the way she felt for him. Tonight she had discovered that there might be many others. She also could not understand how a sarcastic and ironical person could be so attractive, and socially so successful.

Before going to bed Bauji paused a moment before the window of his bedroom. The shadowed garden lay sunk in sleep beneath. In the strange light the trees were like images in a Chinese brush painting. From the overhanging roof came the elfin hoot of an owl. The sky was clear of clouds and the stars shone brightly, their rays sharply penetrating the icy air. Bauji’s soul yearned out towards them, their frozen reaches beyond human time; they gave joy to him, without asking for anything in return. He looked down and thought that the earth was also once a star and it too had shone.

It had not been a good evening; he realized it now, not only from the acidic pressure at the top of his stomach, but from his deep disappointment at the way his favourite, Karan, had turned out; by the threatening beauty of that girl, Priti; by the opulence of his old friend’s house, compared to his own humbler status today; by the way the politicians were treated in a democracy. ‘Enough,’ he said to himself. ‘To sleep now.’

Soon after Amrita’s reception began Arjun’s education in badminton and love—a phase at once more pleasurable and painful than any previous one in his life. Through the excuse of lending himself as a fourth in badminton, he became a familiar visitor to the Mehta household. He used to arrive punctually at a quarter-to-four at Priti’s gate. He would first peep in hesitantly, and if he saw Priti in the garden, he would open the gate, set his schoolbag on the verandah, and join in the badminton game in progress. An hour later Priti would leave for the Green Room. He seemed to fit neatly into that idle hour of her busy social day. While she went to the Club he trudged home to his gloomy schoolbooks. Dusk came to mean loneliness and defeat.

Every morning, as he woke up to go to school, he would think: would she be there today? If it was rainy or overcast, his hopes would be dashed, for he knew in advance that there would be no badminton. On these days, Priti would usually go off to visit a friend. The weather thus became an important ally, and he prayed for every day to be clear.

Sometimes, however, even on a perfectly sunny day she would go visiting. Or her mother might pick her up directly after school and callously take her away to a tea party or to go shopping. When this happened, Arjun would walk around her house once or twice to make sure that she was in fact not in, and then sadly return home.

The next day when he asked her where she had been, she would coldly answer, without a hint of regret, that she had gone to a birthday party at such and such a friend’s house. He would be curious to know about the party and she did not mind talking about it. She would tell him who was there, what they said, what they wore, where they ‘fitted’, and many other things—with the result that he felt he had been at the party. In this way he slowly got to ‘know’ her friends, but more importantly he began to share her confidences. Gradually he got to know whom she liked and whom she disliked. He was thrilled by this new world. But he also felt envious and sometimes despondent that he did not belong to it.

Arjun asked his mother one evening why they did not belong to the ADC.

‘Your father and I don’t play cards and we don’t drink. So what’s the use of going to the Club,’ Tara replied.

‘But don’t you want to
meet
people?’ he asked.

‘Every evening we go to the Mall. That’s where we meet our friends. After sitting at the office all day long, your father doesn’t want to go and sit at the Club again. He and I relax by taking long walks in the evening.’

He sensed her disapproval.

‘Besides, the Club is expensive and we can’t afford it,’ she added. With this she effectively closed the subject, because it was obvious to him that she ran the house on a tight budget.

Priti usually returned from the Club in time for dinner. But occasionally she came back early to dress, when she had to go out. These evening parties were brilliant affairs to which Arjun was of course never invited. Priti generally went to them with her mother. The brilliance of the party was determined by the clothes and jewellery that everyone wore, because the people who were present were usually the same. Since she had just started to wear a sari, after her eighteenth birthday, she was even more conscious of clothes. The standard by which the ‘brilliance’ of the parties was measured was the Governor’s Ball, which was the closest thing to the grand Viceroy’s Ball of the old British Simla.

Arjun sat at home during these evenings, thinking of Priti laughing and flirting at these glamorous parties, and he was filled with longing to be a part of her privileged world. But if the Club was inaccessible for economic reasons, these parties were out of bounds for social ones. Arjun’s family could have aspired to a higher social position because Seva Ram had a high enough job in the government. But they would have had to work for it; technocrats were still regarded a notch lower in the hierarchy than generalist career civil servants. Many of Seva Ram’s colleagues did rise socially, but they did it through social accomplishments such as tennis or bridge or frequent entertaining. Seva Ram of course had no social ambitions, much to (first) Tara’s regret, and now to Arjun’s despair. Arjun’s family merely lived the ordinary life of a modern, educated, decent family. They were the representatives of a growing, urban middle and upper middle class that had rapidly developed after Independence.

Priti’s family on the other hand, belonged to ‘society’ because they were rich and famous. Although with her father’s death they had lost the possibility of power, they were still well off, and of course they were considered an ‘old Simla family’. Bauji told Arjun and Tara that Priti’s great grandfather had founded the family fortune in the 1860s. He had made a ‘killing’ in cotton during the American Civil War. When the cotton from the American South got cut off during the War of the States, Priti’s ancestor had stepped in to supply Indian cotton to the mills of Manchester. He later invested the profits from the trade in one of the early Indian textile mills. His son, Sanat Mehta, who was even shrewder, set up woollen mills in Amritsar, and was knighted by the British for donating one lakh rupees to the World War I effort. During the depression of the ’30s, he had bought the house in Simla and the apple orchards in Kotgarh at throwaway prices. Bauji had admired Sanat Mehta for his business acumen, and represented him as legal counsel in several court cases.

A small decline in the family fortunes set in with Priti’s father, who was more interested in the Independence struggle against the British than in the family mills. While some of the textile mills had to be sold off, he added lustre to the family name because of his political work. He had known Karan in the ’40s when they were together in jail. Soon after Independence he had died in an accident, leaving behind his widow, Amrita, and his daughter, Priti. Since his death the financial affairs of the family were capably managed by a trusted and competent family accountant, and the family business had looked up.

Arjun was attracted to the entire Mehta household. He was drawn to Amrita, he liked the servants; in fact he was enticed by everything inside that house. Everyone surrounding Priti had acquired a special significance. He was particularly fond of two middle aged maid servants, who were warm and considerate towards him, who seemed to sense his feelings, and wanted to make small gestures to make him feel comfortable. In the Mehta house Arjun saw the working of an old, cultivated, wealthy and honourable family. All the members were covered with a mysterious veil, which permitted him to remove their defects and clothe them with perfection. Even the scandalous Anglo-Indian governess, who taught French and the piano to Priti, was invested with lofty sentiments in Arjun’s heart.

One evening Priti did not go to the club. She asked Arjun to stay on after badminton. He happily agreed, although she was preoccupied with getting ready for the Governor’s party in honour of the British High Commissioner. After she was all dressed in a white sari, she came out and asked him how she looked,

‘Come, you may ride with me to Raj Bhavan, if you like,’ Priti said, getting ready to leave.

Arjun looked puzzled. He was thrilled by the invitation, but did not understand how he could just go along. Priti noticed his confusion.

‘Silly boy, I am not inviting you for the party. Only the Governor can do that. But you may ride in the rickshaw with me. After it drops me, it will take you home and come back for me.’

‘But. . . but it’s a long way to take me home,’ said Arjun nervously.

‘It’s all the same, I say. The rickshaw has been hired for the evening. Come, come!’

To ride sitting close to Priti was an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. As he got in with his schoolbag, she warned him to be careful and not to crush her new sari. The Simla rickshaw was a stately but intimate carriage. He smelled the luxurious padded leather seats and arm-rests and the oilskin hood. Priti leaned back as if she was on a comfortable reclining armchair at home. He sat up, with his bag between his legs, trying to be careful not to touch her clothes. The carriage rested on bicycle wheels, with two men pulling it from the front and two pushing it from the back. As the coolies picked up speed and began to run, Arjun felt as though he were flying along the slopes of Simla, past mere mortals, accompanied by the soft pit-pat of eight human feet.

‘In the British days, we had our own rickshaw and grandfather had made a beautiful blue and white livery for the coolies,’ said Priti. ‘All the best English families had their private carriages, you know, and their coolies wore their family’s coat of arms on the breast of their uniforms. Only the Viceroy’s could wear scarlet rosettes. One mad Scotsman actually put his coolies in plaid kilts!’ She laughed. After a pause she continued, ‘Now, mother says, it is too expensive to maintain a rickshaw. So we hire one when we need it. But we use it so often that this one is with us all the time.’

Just before they started their ascent, Priti pointed to the sunset over the snow-covered mountains in the distance. It was a thrilling sight. He asked her to look in the opposite direction, towards the valley below, which was covered with masses of wild red rhododendron trees, surrounded by brilliant scarlet blossoms. ‘It is like a carpet of scarlet and green,’ he said.

She stopped the rickshaw. They got out, and walked down along a path with wild flowers and fern under their feet, alongside the moss and the ivy on the trunks of the oak and the pine. He looked at her as she walked with her hands holding up her sari. His eyes travelled from her sari to the purple shadowy valley below which was covered with dark and dense woods. He found it difficult to describe the delicious feeling inside him. Suddenly they came upon a mass of wild red rhododendron trees, at least forty feet high. The rays of the setting sun fell among their branches, making the trees seem even taller, highlighting their trunks with their slanting beams. The two of them stood there speechless for a long time, moved by the vast stillness of the scene.

Soon they were back in the rickshaw, and as they ascended, Arjun pointed out other trees—more rhododendrons, majestic deodars, oak, pine fir, and the magnificent Himalayan horse-chestnut.

‘I say, you certainly know your trees,’ she said, visibly impressed. ‘I never looked at them till this evening.’

He was happy because for the first time he could tell her something that she did not already know. He explained that in the lower Himalayas one found mainly deodar and white oak; in the middle, spruce, fir and green oak, and at the higher levels were the silver fir and the brown oak. ‘You sound like a regular forest officer,’ she said. He took that as a compliment, and he felt exhilarated as they climbed further, and the air became sharper and lighter. Soon a heavy mist came along and it became dark. They felt drops of rain. The carriage suddenly stopped with a jerk. Arjun was thrown back against Priti. Her long brown plaits softly brushed his cheek, and he felt an exquisite thrill. The rickshaw coolies pulled forward the wooden frame on which was mounted the oilskin hood. They were just in time for the rain suddenly became stronger. The carriage started to move. There was a glass pane fixed on the hood, and they could see the rain outside. Inside, they were perfectly dry and it felt cosy and romantic. There was a sudden intimacy between them. His arm accidently touched hers but she did not bother to remove it. He trembled. She looked at him unselfconsciously with her striking, dark eyes, and pointed to the raindrops on the glass pane. Her face looked fresh, and radiated a warming glow. He noticed that her cheeks were red, full of the healthy colour of the mountains. Arjun was enchanted, and he felt undeserving of such intense happiness.

Slowly, the rain subsided, and they noticed below the town’s lights being gradually turned on. It was a dark night and the lights created a festive feeling, but the stars were bright and low on the horizon as they often are in the hills. Arjun remarked that the stars and the lights seemed to touch each other, and you could not tell the difference between heaven-made and man-made stars.

Soon they arrived at the Governor’s House. Priti got up. As she was getting out she took his hand and pressed it gently. She alighted quickly and was soon lost in the confusion of the fashionable and glittering guests who were all arriving at the same time. The rickshaw turned around. He looked back and thought he spotted her in the crowd. She suddenly seemed to smile at a familiar-looking man, who was tall and lightly built with straight, black hair. It seemed that he put his arm around her. It was Karan, he realized with a shock. But the picture was lost as the carriage moved out of view.

On the way back home, he began to feel jealous. Gradually, he reasoned that it could not be Karan. He must have made a mistake. Or perhaps it was not Priti. It must be another girl wearing a white sari. He tried to believe this, and slowly he felt reassured. The rain had stopped and the hood came down. The raindrops sparkled in the light of the street lamps. There was a strong smell of the earth and the grass. He was happy again. He felt a thrill as the rickshaw flew along the slopes. He had grown up believing that one walked in Simla, and it seemed an extravagance to hire a rickshaw all the way to Chota Simla, almost five miles from the Governor’s House. He had inherited this practical and miserly reflex from Tara, who had got it in turn from Bauji. In Lyallpur, Bauji did not mind owning two tongas but he would think ten times before he hired a public carriage or a taxi.

Dark thoughts slowly returned. He looked ahead and he thought about the coolies who were pulling the rickshaw. It did not seem right that just because a coolie was born in a poor family that he should spend his life carrying someone who happened to be born in a rich house. But Arjun’s mind could not stay away from Priti for long and the coolie was quickly forgotten. His agony lay in knowing that Priti was somewhere else, enjoying herself where he could not ever hope to be. Although he tried to dismiss it more than once, the picture of Karan putting his arm around the figure in white kept intruding. It couldn’t have been Karan, he thought. Why would he put his arm around Priti? She was so much younger than he. What was he, in fact, doing at the Governor’s party? Karan found such affairs boring and tiresome. Perhaps it was only an innocent gesture—what an older man would naturally do to a younger lady—and there was nothing more to it. However, there was something in her eyes which worried him. On the other hand, had she not pressed his hand before leaving? At the thought of her touch he was transported into a happy world again.