On the ground floor were a number of store-rooms and the servants' quarters. On the floor above lived Ram Vilas's ancient grandfather, the Rai Bahadur; his father and stepmother; and his sister. The common kitchen was also located on this floor as was the puja room (which the unpious, even impious Priya rarely visited). On the top floor were the rooms, respectively, of the families of the three brothers; Ram Vilas was the middle brother and he occupied the two rooms of the top floor of the middle 'house'. Above this was the roof with its washing lines and water tanks.
When she paced up and down the roof, Priya Goyal would picture herself as a panther in a cage. She would look longingly towards the small house just a few minutes' walk away - and just visible through the jungle of intervening roofs - in which her childhood friend Veena Tandon lived. Veena, she knew, was not well off any longer, but she was free to do as she pleased : to go to the market, to walk around by herself, to go for music lessons. In Priya's own household there was no question of that. For a daughter-in-law from the house of the Rai Bahadur to be
322.seen in the market would have been disgraceful. That she was thirty-two years old with a girl of ten and a boy of eight was irrelevant. Ram Vilas, ever placid, would have none of it. It was simply not his way ; more importantly, it would cause pain to his father and stepmother and grandfather and elder brother - and Ram Vilas sincerely believed in maintaining the decencies of a joint family.
Priya hated living in a joint family. She had never done so until she came to live with the Goyals of Shahi Darvaza. This was because her father, Lakshmi Narayan Agarwal, had been the only son to survive to adulthood, and he in his turn had only had the one daughter. When his wife died, he had been stricken, and had taken the Gandhian vow of sexual abstinence. He was a man of spartan habits. Although Home Minister, he lived in two rooms in a hostel for Members of the Legislative Assembly.
'The first years of married life are the hardest - they require the most adjustment,' Priya had been told ; but she felt that in some ways it was getting more and more intolerable as time went on. Unlike Veena, she had no proper paternal - and more importantly, maternal - home to run away to with her children for at least a month a year - the prerogative of all married women. Even her grandparents (with whom she had spent the time when her father was in jail) were now dead. Her father loved her dearly as his only child ; it was his love that had in a sense spoiled her for the constrained life of the Goyal joint family, for it had imbued her with a spirit of independence; and now, living in austerity as he did, he could not himself provide her with any refuge.
If her husband had not been so kind, she felt she would have gone mad. He did not understand her but he was understanding. He tried to make things easier for her in small ways, and he never once raised his voice. Also, she liked the ancient Rai Bahadur, her grandfather-in-law. There was a spark to him. The rest of the family and particularly the women - her mother-in-law, her husband's sister, and her husband's elder brother's wife - had done their best to make her miserable as a young bride, and she
32.3could not stand them. But she had to pretend she did, every day, all the time - except when she paced up and down on the roof - where she was not even permitted to* have a garden, on the grounds that it would attract mon-* keys. Ram Vilas's stepmother had even tried to dissuade her from her daily to-ing and fro-ing ('Just think, Priya, how will it look to the neighbours?'), but for once Priya had refused to go along. The sisters-in-law above whose heads she paced at dawn reported her to their mother-inlaw. But perhaps the old witch sensed that she had driven Priya to the limit, and did not phrase her complaint in a direct manner again. Anything indirect on the matter Priya chose not to understand.
L.N. Agarwal came dressed as always in an immaculately starched (but not fancy) kurta, dhoti and Congress cap. Below the white cap could be seen his curve of curly grey hair but not the baldness it enclosed. Whenever he ventured out to Shahi Darvaza he kept his cane handy to scare away the monkeys that frequented, some would say dominated, the neighbourhood. He dismissed his rickshaw near the local market, and turned off the main road into a tiny side-lane which opened out into a small square. In the middle of the square was a large pipal tree. One entire side of the square was the Rai Bahadur's house.
The door below the stairs was kept closed because of the monkeys, and he rapped on it with his cane. A couple of faces appeared at the enclosed wrought-iron balconies of the floors above. His daughter's face lit up when she saw him ; she quickly coiled her loose black hair into a bun and came downstairs to open the door. Her father embraced her and they went upstairs again.
'And where has Vakil Sahib disappeared?' he asked in Hindi.
He liked to refer to his son-in-law as the lawyer, although the appellation was equally appropriate to Ram Vilas's father and grandfather.
'He was here a minute ago,' replied Priya, and got up to search for him.
32.4
ft*
'Don't bother yet,' said her father in a warm, relaxed voice. 'First give me some tea.'
For a few minutes the Home Minister enjoyed home comforts : well-made tea (not the useless stuff he got at the MLA hostel) ; sweets and kachauris made by the women of his daughter's house - maybe by his daughter herself; some minutes with his grandson and granddaughter, who preferred, however, to play with their friends in the heat on the roof or below in the square (his granddaughter was good at street cricket) ; and a few words with his daughter, whom he saw rarely enough and missed a great deal.
He had no compunction, as some fathers-in-law had, about accepting food, drink and hospitality at his son-inlaw's house. He talked with Priya about his health and his grandchildren and their schooling and character; about how Vakil Sahib was working far too hard, a little about Priya's mother in passing, at the mention of whom a sadness came into both their eyes, and about the antics of the old servants of the Goyal household.
As they talked, other people passed the open door of the room, saw them, and came in. They included Ram Vilas's father, rather a helpless character who was terrorized by his second wife. Soon the whole Goyal clan had dropped by - except for the Rai Bahadur, who did not like climbing stairs.
'But where is Vakil Sahib?' repeated L.N. Agarwal.
'Oh,' said someone, 'he's downstairs talking with the Rai Bahadur. He knows you are in the house and he will come up as soon as he is released.'
'Why don't I go down and pay my respects to the Rai Bahadur now?' said L.N. Agarwal, and got up.
Downstairs, grandfather and grandson were talking in the large room that the Rai Bahadur had reserved as his own - mainly because he was attached to the beautiful peacock tiles that decorated the fireplace. L.N. Agarwal, being of the middle generation, paid his respects and had respects paid to him.
'Of course you'll have tea?' said the Rai Bahadur.
'I've had some upstairs.''Since when have Leaders of the People placed a limit on their tea-consumption?' asked the Rai Bahadur in a creaky and lucid voice. The word he used was 'Neta-log', whicrj had about the same level of mock deference as 'Vakil Sahib'.
'Now, tell me,' he continued, 'what is all this killing you've been doing in Chowk?'
It was not meant the way it sounded, it was merely the old Rai Bahadur's style of speech, but L.N. Agarwal could have done without direct examination. He would probably get enough of that on the floor of the House on Monday. What he would have preferred was a quiet chat with his placid son-in-law, an unloading of his troubled mind.
'Nothing, nothing, it will all blow over,' he said.
'I heard that twenty Muslims were killed,' said the old Rai Bahadur philosophically.
'No, not that many,' said L.N. Agarwal. 'A few. Matters are well in hand.' He paused, ruminating on the fact that he had misjudged the situation. 'This is a hard town to manage,' he continued. 'If it isn't one thing it's another. We are an ill-disciplined people. The lathi and the gun are the only things that will teach us discipline.'
'In British days law and order was not such a problem,' said the creaky voice.
The Home Minister did not rise to the Rai Bahadur's bait. In fact, he was not sure that the remark was not delivered innocently.
'Still, there it is,' he responded.
'Mahesh Kapoor's daughter was here the other day,' ventured the Rai Bahadur.
Surely this could not be an innocent comment. Or was it? Perhaps the Rai Bahadur was merely following a train of thought.
'Yes, she is a good girl,' said L.N. Agarwal. He rubbed his perimeter of hair in a thoughtful way. Then, after a pause, he added calmly: 'I can handle the town; it is not the tension that disturbs me. Ten Misri Mandis and twenty Chowks are nothing. It is the politics, the politicians - '
The Rai Bahadur allowed himself a smile. This too was
3z6somewhat creaky, as if the separate plates of his aged face were gradually reconfiguring themselves with difficulty.
L.N. Agarwal shook his head, then went on. 'Until two this morning the MLAs were gathering around me like chicks around their mother. They were in a state of panic. The Chief Minister goes out of town for a few days and see what happens in his absence! What will Sharmaji say when he comes back? What capital will Mahesh Kapoor's faction make out of all this? In Misri Mandi they will emphasize the lot of the jatavs, in Chowk that of the Muslims. What will the effect of all this be on the jatav vote and the Muslim vote? The General Elections are just a few months away. Will these votebanks swing away from the Congress? If so, in what numbers? One or two gentlemen have even asked if there is the danger of further conflagration - though usually this is the least of their concerns.'
'And what do you tell them when they come running to you?' asked the Rai Bahadur. His daughter-in-law - the arch-witch in Priya's demonology - had just brought in the tea. The top of her head was covered with her sari. She poured the tea, gave them a sharp look, exchanged a couple of words, and went out.
The thread of the conversation had been lost, but the Rai Bahadur, perhaps remembering the cross-examinations for which he had been famous in his prime, drew it gently back again.
'Oh, nothing,' said L.N. Agarwal quite calmly. 'I just tell them whatever is necessary to stop them from keeping me awake.'
'Nothing?'
'No, nothing much. Just that things will blow over ; that what's done is done; that a little discipline never did a neighbourhood any harm; that the General Elections are still far enough away. That sort of thing.' L.N. Agarwal sipped his tea before continuing : 'The fact of the matter is that the country has far more important things to think about. Food is the main one. Bihar is virtually starving. And if we have a bad monsoon, we will be too. Mere
317Muslims threatening us from inside the country or across the border we can deal with. If Nehru were not so softhearted we would have dealt with them properly a few| years ago. And now these jatavs, these' - his expression' conveyed distaste at the words - 'these scheduled caste people are becoming a problem once again. But let's see, let's see. …'
Ram Vilas Goyal had sat silent through the whole exchange. Once he frowned slightly, once he nodded.
'That is what I like about my son-in-law,' reflected L.N. Agarwal. 'He's not dumb, but he doesn't speak.' He decided yet again that he had made the right match for his daughter. Priya could provoke, and he would simply not allow himself to be provoked.
5.5
MEANWHILE, upstairs, Priya was talking to Veena, who had come to pay her a visit. But it was more than a social visit, it was an emergency. Veena was very distressed. She had come home and found Kedarnath not merely with his eyes closed but with his head in his hands. This was far worse than his general state of optimistic anxiety. He had ïïot wanted to ta\k about it, “out s'ne had eventually discovered that he was in very grave financial trouble. With the pickets and the stationing of the police in Chowk, the wholesale shoe market had finally ground from a slowdown to a complete halt. Every day now his chits were corning due, and he just did not have the cash to pay them. Those who owed him money, particularly two large stores in Bombay, had deferred paying him for past supplies because they thought he could not ensure future supplies. The supplies he got from people like Jagat Ram, who made shoes to order, were not enough. To fulfil the orders that buyers around the country had placed with him, he needed the shoes of the basket-wallahs, and they did not dare come to Misri Mandi these days.
But the immediate problem was how to pay for the chits
3*8
that were coming due. He had no one to go to; all his associates were themselves short of cash. Going to his father-in-law was for him out of the question. He was at his wits' end. He would try once more to talk to his creditors - the moneylenders who held his chits and their commission agents who came to him for payment when they were due. He would try to persuade them that it would do no one any good to drive him and others like him to the wall in a credit squeeze. This situation would surely not last long. He was not insolvent, just illiquid. But even as he spoke he knew what their answer would be. He knew that money, unlike labour, owed no allegiance to a particular trade, and could flow out of shoes and into, say, cold storage facilities without retraining or compunction or doubt. It only asked two questions : 'What interest?' and 'What risk?'
