A Life Apart (11 page)

For the last three years, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, without fail, come rain, floods or the unbearable sticky heat of summer, Miss Gilby appeared in her private brougham, from
Elliott Road to Collutolla Street, for her Bengali lessons. The lessons had to be terminated, regrettably for both parties, when Miss Gilby was invited to tutor Saira-
begum
: it was an offer
she couldn’t refuse because the Nawab of Motibagh was one of her brother’s influential acquaintances and when Miss Gilby had first moved to Calcutta four years ago the Nawab had
extended every possible help to her because she was James’s sister. Besides, this was an opportunity Miss Gilby had been looking for all along, this chance to spread the knowledge not only of
English but also of a different way of living, the knowledge of a whole new world, to Indian women, to forge a contact with these unheard and dumb creatures, to hear them speak, to hear their
lives.

In the balance of things, her lessons with Ali
-miyan
, enjoyable and challenging though they were, and her unfolding relationship with her old teacher proved wonderfully that James, and
along with him every single servant of the Empire in India and all the Anglo-Indian community, was wrong wrong wrong about the impossibility of a true, trustful friendship between the natives and
the Anglos; the lessons had had to be sacrificed but she had made certain that her continuing friendship with Ali
-miyan
didn’t suffer. To this effect, she had visited him for tea
– an institution to which she had slowly converted the all-too-willing teacher by speaking gloriously of the ways in which her people in England practised it daily – every first Sunday
of the month during her time with the Motibaghs.

For her now, there is a valedictory air to everything in this messy city of lanes and by-lanes and road repairs and road building. It tinges her beloved tramcar journeys, which she has taken
at least once every week during her time here. She goes down her favourite routes again and again: first, from Sealdah Station through Circular Road, Bowbazaar Street, Dalhousie Square, through
Customs House and Strand Road – which, Ali
-miyan
tells her, was under water until 1823 or so – to Armenian Ghat on the banks of the Ganges. Seated in her first class carriage,
she wills herself not to think of James’s words beating themselves out to the titup-titup-titup of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles as houses, temples, churches, people, buildings
gently pass by, leaving her desiring the wide open space of the Maidan or the muddy brown water of the river, the sky low over it, and on its broad surface, boats and dinghies, ramshackle things
barely held together with bamboos and tattered cloth. She likes the stillness of these boats; they seem to ply the waters in so leisurely a manner that it is difficult to believe they’re
going anywhere or transporting people on them. It is the very rhythm of the country, this apparent lack of movement, of any forward motion altogether. Time means an altogether different thing to
them.

In the autumns, during the Durga Puja celebrations, there are steam engines drawing the tramcar carriages on Chowringhee Road, carrying pilgrims from and to the temple in Kalighat. These
ghats are something which Miss Gilby had never seen before coming to Calcutta. They had grown on her so much that in the autumns and winters she and Ali
-miyan
, sometimes with Mrs. Cameron,
used to take the air in the early afternoons on the banks of the Hooghly, with Ali
-miyan
keeping up a running commentary about the history and names of the scores of ghats which dot the
stretch of the river.

Ali
-miyan
guided the coachman as the brougham made its way from Kashipur in the north to Hastings on the Ganges estuary in the south, pointed out the ghats – steps leading down
to the water, sometimes half submerged, made of marble or bricks, at other times docks really, for landing, anchoring and hauling of goods – and reeled off their names and explanations that
awed Miss Gilby: ‘Look, Miss Gilby, that’s Ahiritolla Ghat, named so because this was the area where cowherds and milkmen lived’; ‘That’s Nimtolla Ghat, where Hindus
cremate their dead’. Miss Gilby had been disturbed much more by this social ritual of people burning their dead on the banks of a river than by the odd practice of people bathing outdoors.
She found the funeral practices primitive and didn’t encourage Ali
-miyan
to elaborate on this, quickly diverting him to give her a prolix history of another ghat, Huzurimal Ghat, or
the ones with English names – Jackson
sahib
’s Ghat, Colvin Ghat, Foreman
sahib
’s Ghat. Miss Gilby has always found it amazing that the ghats are used for bathing,
cremating, as docking and landing points of goods to be transported either inland or on the river. Even though each ghat is given over to only one of these functions, Miss Gilby is still struck by
this unusual commingling of cleansing, commerce and ritual as if life, living and death were interchangeable, or all one.

She keeps repeating to herself that she will return to this city, that the appointment in Nawabgunj is only for a few years, but something deeper and unnameable, both inside and outside her,
impels her to traverse the lengths and breadths of Calcutta in her brougham or in tramcars as if she were breathing in her last of the place, etching it solidly in her mind in a way only people who
know they are never going to return do.

There are letters to write – polite‘thank you’ notes, more intimate ones to one or two of her friends here, slightly more formal ones letting acquaintances know of her new
address and residence, a more general one to the members of the Anglo-Indian community she knows through Clubs, that sort of thing. These she usually keeps for the mornings. Afternoons are taken up
with visiting or, in those rare spare hours, travelling through the city, mostly on her own. It is a little adventure, partly thrilling, partly fearsome, she rations to herself as a treat.

The evenings are mostly taken up, although reluctantly and with much misgiving, by the Club. This is on the insistence of Mrs Cameron, her only true friend in Calcutta. A widow who had been
married to the Lieutenant-Governor of Allahabad, she had moved down east shortly after her husband’s death. Her ten-year-old daughter, Jane, was in London and her younger son, Christopher, at
Summerfield. Sending her children, both born in India, to be educated back Home was the only sign of conformity to Raj society she had shown. Fiercely independent and unconventional, she had cocked
a snook at Calcutta’s ossified Anglo-Indian society: ignoring the listings in the Warrant of Precedence; setting up schools for the education of Indian women in her own backyard and, in the
winter months, in her garden; campaigning for the end of the
moorgi khana
in Clubs – her sins were so numerous that she was practically on the verge of ostracism by the unforgiving
Anglo-Indian community. But she was one of life’s great irrepressibles, a true free spirit, and Miss Gilby knew that she enjoyed every bit of the controversy attaching to her, down to her
outcast status, her lack of invitations to the Governor’s balls or the Viceroy’s Winter Dances: these were things that didn’t matter to her. She laughed at them, laughed at the
choreographed dance of folly, which her countrymen indulged in, and held their snobbery in deep contempt. It was she who had recognized a kindred spirit in Miss Gilby and, on her arrival in
Calcutta, had tested the newcomer by throwing to the winds the whole mad business of calling cards and appearing on her doorstep to invite Miss Gilby to afternoon tea; Miss Gilby had been utterly
delighted. Mrs Cameron had warned her, ‘If you are intelligent, try and hide it if you can: a clever woman is not a very popular item in this jolly place.’

Miss Gilby and Mrs Cameron had taken on the might of the Club with glee. While most considered that they had lost, the two women knew they had nothing to lose. Besides, they were financially
independent and sufficiently high up the ladder for any of the mutterings and whisperings to really bite. Despite a lot of coldshoulders andfrosty behaviourat the Club, theyhadpersisted in
socializing there in the evenings when there was nothing to be done – ‘Maud, we cannot stop going to the Club, it will be a victory for them, don’t you see? If they think they can
make things difficult for us there, don’t you think we can do exactly the same for them? They are far more uncomfortable with our presence than we are with theirs. We don’t care, they
do, that’s our trump card’ – and had even ended up earning a sort of grudging respect.

Gimlets or pegs of whisky and soda on the lawns, a spot of tennis very early in the morning, even swimming sometimes, the endless rounds of gossip and talking about the intransigence of
servants: it was amusing how she who had suffered all these obligatory things should now feel herself poised on the brink of missing them, trying to fit them in in her final days so that they were
fixed in some future memory.

One advantage Mrs Cameron certainly had over the outraged little Anglo-Indians was the quality of her dinner parties. Here, she was nonpareil, an unqualified social success. And here, too,
she broke all the rules. She tore up the Warrant of Precedence and seated guests wherever her fancy or mood took her. At one such party in the early days of her stay in Calcutta, she had seated an
army officer in the wrong place, at which the incensed guest had informed her that he was a full colonel; she had chirpily replied, ‘Are you really? Well, I do so hope that when dinner is
over you will be fuller still.’

Miss Gilby had found in the older woman a soulmate, a mentor who exposed in her the nervous steel to do things about which she would either have thought twice before or, having done it, would
have felt lonely in the isolation that committing such a deed would have almost certainly brought her.

Suddenly Miss Gilby feels a pang of sorrow for her impending separation from Violet Cameron. Mrs Cameron is a little surprised at Miss Gilby’s insistence on strolling in the Eden
Gardens or walking down the Strand as the bands played, two or sometimes three times a week, even during the wet, squally afternoons. Could it possibly be because Miss Gilby is trying to hold on to
her company in these last few days left to her?
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris
, but could not the same be said of happy people in the joy they took of each other? They will write to
each other regularly and, yes, this communication is going to take a lot longer than the scores of chits circulated around the community and carried by the servants to and fro, and it will not have
the immediacy and urgency of a chit written half an hour before its delivery to the addressee by a hot-footed servant, but it will have to do.

During one of their dinners – informal, just the two of them, but neither of them forgets to dress up – Mrs Cameron asks, ‘So do you have any idea what this woman Bimala is
like?’

Miss Gilby says, ‘No, what I know of her is what I have gleaned from her husband’s letters. He is very well educated: a recent MA from Calcutta University.’

‘But Maud, she’s not one of those girl brides, is she?’

‘No, no, I don’t think so. She can’t be any older than twenty or so but she is no girl. Or at least that’s not the impression I get from his letters.’

There is a pause for a few minutes as the servants remove the empty plates of consommé and bring in the curried prawns.

‘Are you not somewhat anxious about living with an Indian family?’ Mrs Cameron asks.

‘To tell you the truth,’ Miss Gilby replies, ‘yes, I am, a little.’

‘Will they have an untouchable European put in a separate wing of the house, give you servants who will not be allowed to touch or do any work for the other members of the household,
that sort of thing?’

‘Oh, Violet, I’ve thought and thought about these practical arrangements and even mentioned one or two of them to Mr Roy Chowdhury. It appears they are a very progressive family.
He has two widowed sisters-in-law who live with them and I’m assuming they observe strict religious rules or whatever the norms and mores are in these cases, but I’ve been asking around
about rules and etiquette in Hindu families. One thing I’m sure of is that he doesn’t have much truck with the caste system.’

There is another clearing of plates before the leg of mutton is brought to the table. Miss Gilby asks, ‘Are you going to carry on with the school?’

‘Yes, of course, Maud, of course. It will be difficult without you. God knows, you’ve been such a great help and I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. Miss
Hailey – you know her, don’t you, Grant Hailey’s sister – is showing an interest but she is the timid sort and one harsh word from her brother, or, indeed, anyone, would be
enough to make her cower into subservience.’

‘You know, Violet, don’t you, I really wish I could stay on but . . .’ she says, an askance glance picking up the burden of the unsaid.

‘No, Maud, you must go where your heart takes you. And if you don’t manage to get into all these families and familiarize yourself with their running, get to know their women,
your book is going to be a little thin. Have you started it yet?’

‘No, I haven’t, not yet, but I’m hoping to begin once I’ve settled in in Nawabgunj. I’m so glad you understand, Violet. Mr Roy Chowdhury says he’s very
interested in your school. If you need any help from him – talking to people, funds, anything – you just have to ask. He seems to be a very enlightened young man.’

‘You are lucky. You could have got yourself into a family that locked the women away in dark rooms and allowed them to do nothing but play with dolls and gossip and bear
children.’

‘In that case, I don’t think I would have been asked for in the first place.’

Mrs Cameron gives orders for the table to be cleared. They have both had somewhat more than their usual amount of claret. Lightheaded, they move to the drawing room. It has started raining
again and there are all sorts of flying insects making a beeline for the candles in the room; something drifts down, too slow to be an insect. Miss Gilby realizes it’s a feather from
somewhere, maybe a wet bird outside, or a pillow. She blows on it and instead of falling down it changes its course and gets wafted in the direction of Mrs Cameron.