The Grammarian (2 page)

When the train finally came to a stop, he was surprised to see his friend’s face out the window grates and felt flattered that Tata had come to receive him personally. Tata would not tell Adivi as much, but it was not for the sake of friendship or hospitality alone that he came to receive him; Tata enjoyed any excuse to take a trip to the station with its statue of the queen on its dome, its red roof and turrets. When it was being built, he would frequent the construction site, enjoying it at each stage, watching his city grow. Adivi descended the train and Tata greeted him with open arms and directed his servants to unload his friend’s luggage.

The room at the Esplanade House Adivi was given was Spanish themed, and as he retired for the evening, the oil lanterns illuminated two dark, Mediterranean beauties. A framed print of Goya’s
Naked Maja
adorned one wall: a virginal woman with soft eyes, her face framed with obsidian ringlets, her body the color of the inside of a shell, a pane of light over her heart. On the opposite wall was Velázquez’s
The Toilet of Venus
, Venus’s body supple and lovely, turned away from the painter’s gaze, an unapproachable glamour about her with her red hair, a winged, cherubic Cupid holding up a mirror into which she gazed contentedly.

In the mornings, he took his coffee with Tata in his sitting room. Tata subscribed to the British and European papers and the Hindi ones as well as the local, Marathi-language ones.

Reading an update of the Indian National Congress in one of the Hindi papers, Adivi snorted. “More than ten bloody years since they formed and they’ve still done nothing.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Adivi, these things take time.”

“My friend, I agree that some of the current practices and regulations need to be reformed, but these people want to rule the country? They can’t even get themselves in order. Tilak is on about Hindu nationalism even if it means that all these . . . these uneducated peasants can marry their eight—nine-year-old daughters off! Half of Congress I’m sure aren’t positive they want the English out, they’ve elected an Irish president, and all the while Gokhale is sitting in the back with his ledger board counting the number of radishes planted per square foot of soil in some bloody backwater or counting the number of spots on spinach leaves . . . will that man never grasp the big picture? Is he simply trying to bore the English out of India? . . . sometimes it
seems these so-called freedom fighters are just riding the back of Irish nationalism . . . ”

“It isn’t child marriage that Tilak is opposed to; he opposes the idea of the legitimacy of British rule, Adivi. You must admit it is a terribly principled stance! He has a point.” Tata sipped the last of his coffee. “Even reasonable laws perhaps should not be put forth if the government advocating them is unreasonable . . . ” He rose, stretching. “At any rate, we can’t worry about INC politics today, Adivi.” He set down his coffee cup and smiled. “Tonight is the Lumière exhibition—it is at the Watson in the Kala Ghoda—I’ve hired a coach for tonight,” Tata beamed, “it is a nice excuse to wear something extra smart.”

T
HE COACH WOVE
through the streets of Bombay, and Adivi noticed that the signage on the sky-blue Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue was in English, Marathi and Hebrew. It had been built a few years prior by Jacob Elias David Sassoon, the son of Baghdadi Jewish immigrants, who named the synagogue after his father. Like the train station, it had a Gothic influence.

“The inside is incredible,” Tata offered, noticing his friend admiring the building. “Gold gilt work, an arched mezzanine, beautiful Middle Eastern tile floors, colored stain-glass windows . . . truly spectacular.”

“Ah . . . how beautiful,” Adivi answered, not looking away.

The synagogue was in the Kala Ghoda—Black Horse—district, so named because of the obsidian stone used in the imposing statue of Edward VII, prince of Wales, mounted on a dark stallion in the district’s main intersection, his shoulders thrown back in triumph.

“Amazing that Victoria is still alive, isn’t it?” Tata said, nodding in the direction of the statue. “Wonder if you’ll ever get your chance, old
boy.” The prince was fifty-nine years old but still under the rule of his mother. “Well, I suppose his time is busied with hunting.” The prince had recently had all the clocks at Sandringham House set a half hour faster than Greenwich Mean Time to allow himself more time in the day to hunt with his dogs, including his beloved Sandringham black Labradors.

“She is one tough old lady . . . ” Adivi replied, distracted. He only thought of the evening ahead. Tonight he was going to see the Lumière brothers’ films. Adivi was looking forward to
The Train
the most: the vision of the filmed train was so intense that the audiences of Paris and London jumped for fear of being run over by it. They passed too the newly built library, the Bibliotheque Dinshaw Petit, built by another prominent Parsi, whose slight and long-deceased forefather had kept the affectionate nickname French traders had given him. Tata pointed to it, “A new French-language library.”

Tata and Adivi arrived at the hotel an hour before the screening was to begin to start the evening with tea and refreshments—the hotel was known for its English–style tea service with scones and cucumber sandwiches. The Watson was a new hotel, a grand cast-iron building designed by Rowland Mason Ordish, who had just finished the Albert Bridge on the Thames. Every room in the place had its own balcony, and there was a ballroom in the atrium. The Watson’s dark-skinned doorman approached the Tata coach, and as per his instructions opened the door, but when he saw Tata and Adivi, he knitted his eyebrows.

“Well, move aside, boy,” Tata muttered, putting one leg out.

“Sir, I am sorry, the Watson caters to European clientele only.”

Tata rose to his height outside the coach, and Adivi followed suit. “Have you any idea who I am?” Tata was a modest man and rarely
resorted to such shows of arrogance, but his pride was injured and he resented being embarrassed in front of his friend.

“Mr. Tata Sir, I do realize who you are, and I apologize, but I cannot let you in Sir. I am on strict orders from Mr. Watson himself.”

“Tata,” Adivi said, standing next to his friend, “do not waste your time with this coolie.” He pushed forward, only to have the doorman lay a hand firmly on his arm.

“Sir, you cannot enter.” The doorman looked up, seeing other coaches with white clientele arriving. “Sir, please. I do not want to embarrass you. Please be on your way. I have to cater to these arriving guests.”

Adivi felt the blood rise into his face; he grabbed the doorman’s wrist. “Get your bloody nigger hand off me!”

Tata stepped between them. “I demand to speak with Watson now. We have tickets to see the Lumière exhibition, and we will bloody well see it.”

The doorman spoke to a coolie in rushed, irritable Marathi and then bowed slightly to an English couple arriving. “Madam, Sir,” he acknowledged, holding the door for them. The coolie had scrambled inside, and the doorman asked Tata and Adivi to wait.

Some white guests arrived, the ladies in evening dresses, the gentlemen in suits. Outside, posters boasted the Lumière screening: “Only engagement in India! Living Photographic Pictures in Life-Size Reproductions by Mssrs. Lumière Brothers on the night of July the 7th! See the moving picture show that has caused a sensation in Europe! Audiences jumping in their seats! Only at the Watson Hotel, Kala Ghoda, Bombay. Screenings at 6
PM
, 7
PM
, 9
PM
, and 10
PM
.”

Some long minutes afterward, a tall British man with dark hair opened the hotel doors and spoke with the doorman, who pointed at
Tata and Adivi. Raising an eyebrow and inhaling, he turned to Tata. “Mr. Tata. My name is David Brown; I manage the staff here at the Watson. I have been informed of your situation and I regret to inform you gentlemen that under no conditions are Indians allowed as guests of the hotel.”

“We have tickets,” Adivi snarled. “I have come all the way from Waltair to see this exhibition.”

“Sir,” Brown touched the tip of his mustache. “I am quite busy this evening as you can imagine. The Watson will be happy to refund you the price of your ticket. If that is all . . . .” Brown turned back to the hotel.

“That is not all, Sir!” Tata had never felt so angry. “Now, I demand to speak to your superior!”

Brown clicked his heels, turning back. “Sir, I am not going to ask you again. You must leave the premises immediately, or I shall be forced to summon the police. If either of you have any intentions of getting inside the Watson, I would be happy to take your name down for the next time we have an opening for a dishwasher.”

B
OTH MEN REMAINED
silent on the trip back to the Esplanade House. Tata’s regal profile looked forward in defiance; Adivi gazed out the window, allowing them both the privacy of their shame. Tata reached into the breast pocket of his suit, pulled out the tickets and slowly began to tear them, the pieces falling like snow to the floor.

The only Indians that night who would behold the Lumière films would be the servants working the night shift, who slept in the hallways of the hotel and saw bits of the 10
PM
show when the English waitresses called them to go to the storeroom to bring up more ice or gin.

“T
HEY ARE REAL
bastards,” Tata muttered finally, his head shaking in disgust. “Real bastards.”

“Do not take it to heart, Tata. One idiot who owns one hotel. He can go to hell.”

Tata shook his head; his hands trembled with anger. “No. No, my friend. Their time is up.”

Adivi spoke softly. “He is just one idiot, Jamsetji.”

T
ATA AND
A
DIVI
returned to Esplanade House and ate their dinner quietly, talking about the stormy monsoon rains outside, which had caused the coach to sway on the return trip. Lighting and thunder illuminated the walls of the dining room and punctuated their conversation with loud claps.

“Shivani!” Tata called the cook to bring in coffee after the meal, and this too they took quietly until Tata said softly, “I shall build a hotel near Watson’s. Grander, more beautiful, open to all except him.” The line of his mouth was straight but the corners inched slightly upward. He finished his coffee and sighed. Tata stood up. “My friend, you will excuse me. I am quite tired tonight. You will ask Shivani should you need anything else. Good night.”

“Good night,” Adivi offered, his sad eyes gazing out the windows of the Esplanade House, nature offering a show that was grand but not the one he had hoped for that evening. He walked to his room and lay down, still dressed, listening to the thunder. He turned his head toward the window, looking at silvery lines of lightning before closing his eyes. He conjured the image of a steely and intrepid locomotive emerging from the cloud of its own smoky exhaust.

Adivi put his hand on his chest. His heart was still broken.

1

I
T ALL SUITED
his sensibilities so, the silver tea sets that made a merry tinkling with the to and fro of the train, the quiet efficiency of the stewards, the reading car with its collection of newspapers. He had been, upon arrival in Bombay, determined to keep faithful to European dress; he thought it a burden worth bearing—as a European and especially as a Parisian—to be, at all times, a picture of style and elegance, whatever the inconveniences posed by travel or heat. After some days in the cars of this country’s great black steam trains, however, and finding his finest suits falling victim to perspiration marks and oil stains from the station foods, he succumbed. The train stopped in Pune for several hours, and he left the station and purchased an ill-fitting but comfortable, lightweight kurta: a long, summer-weight white jacket, with a pair of slacks cut from the same fabric.