It was Beharry’s idea that the people of Fuente Grove should refer to Ganesh as the Hon’ble Ganesh Ramsumair, M.L.C.
‘Who you want?’ he asked visitors. ‘The Onble Ganesh Ramsumair, Member of the Legislative Council?’
Here it might be well to pause awhile and consider the circumstances of Ganesh’s rise, from teacher to masseur, from masseur to mystic, from mystic to M.L.C. In his autobiography, The Years of Guilt, which he began writing at this time, Ganesh attributes his success (he asks to be pardoned for using the word) to God. The autobiography shows that he believed strongly in predestination; and the circumstances which conspired to elevate him seem indeed to be providential. If he had been born ten years earlier it is unlikely, if you take into account the Trinidad Indian’s attitude to education at that time, that his father would have sent him to the Queen’s Royal College. He might have become a pundit, and a mediocre pundit. If he had been born ten years later his father would have sent him to America or Canada or England to get a profession – the Indian attitude to education had changed so completely – and Ganesh might have become an unsuccessful lawyer or a dangerous doctor. If, when the Americans descended on Trinidad in 1941, Ganesh had taken Leela’s advice and got a job with the Americans or become a taxi-driver, like so many masseurs, the mystic path would have been closed to him for ever and he would have been ruined. Today these masseurs, despite their glorious American interlude, are finding it hard to make a living. Nobody wants the quack dentist or the unqualified masseur in Trinidad now; and Ganesh’s former colleagues of the world of massage have had to keep on driving taxis, but at three cents a mile now, so great is the competition.
‘It is clear,’ Ganesh wrote, ‘that my Maker meant me to be a mystic.’
He was served even by his enemies. Without Narayan’s attacks Ganesh would never have taken up politics and he might have remained a mystic. With unfortunate results. Ganesh found himself a mystic when Trinidad was crying out for one. That time is now past. But some people haven’t realized it and today in odd corners of Trinidad there is still a backwash of penurious mystics. Providence indeed seemed to have guided Ganesh. Just as it told him when to take up mysticism, so it told him when to give it up.
His first experience as an M.L.C. was a mortifying one. The members of the new Legislative Council and their wives were invited to dinner at Government House and although a newly-founded scurrilous weekly saw the invitation as an imperialist trick all the members turned up. But not all the wives.
Leela was shy but she made out that she couldn’t bear the thought of eating off other people’s plates. ‘It are like going to a restaurant. You don’t know what the food are and you don’t know who cook it.’
Ganesh was secretly relieved. ‘I have to go. But none of this nonsense about knife and fork for me, you hear. Going to eat with my fingers, as always, and I don’t care what the Governor or anybody else say.’
But the morning before the dinner he consulted Swami.
‘The first idea to knock out of your head, sahib, is that you going to like what you eat. This eating with a knife and fork and spoon is like a drill, man.’ And he outlined the technique.
Ganesh said, ‘Nah, nah. Fish knife, soup spoon, fruit spoon, tea spoon – who sit down and make up all that?’
Swami laughed. ‘Do what I use to do, sahib. Just watch everybody else. And eat a lot of good rice and dal before you go.’
The dinner was a treat for the photographers. Ganesh came in dhoti and koortah and turban; the member for one of the Port of Spain wards wore a khaki suit and a sun helmet; a third came in jodhpurs; a fourth, adhering for the moment to his pre-election principles, came in short trousers and an open shirt; the blackest M.L.C. wore a three-piece blue suit, yellow woollen gloves, and a monocle. Everybody else, among the men, looked like penguins, sometimes even down to the black faces.
An elderly Christian Indian member didn’t bring a wife because he said he never had one; instead he brought along a daughter, a bright little thing of about four.
The Governor’s lady moved with assurance and determination among the members and their wives. The more disconcerting the man or woman, the more she was interested, the more she was charming.
‘Why, Mrs Primrose,’ she said brightly to the wife of the blackest M.L.C. ‘You look so different today.’
Mrs Primrose, all of her squeezed into floriferous print frock, adjusted her hat with the floral design. ‘Ah, ma’am. It ain’t the same me. The other one, the one you did see at the Mothers’ Union in Granadina, she at home. Making baby.’
Sherry, opportunely, passed.
Mrs Primrose gave a little giggle and asked the waiter, ‘Is a strong drink?’
The waiter nodded and looked down his nose.
‘Well, thanks. But I doesn’t uses it.’
‘Something else, perhaps?’ the Governor’s lady urged.
‘A little coffee tea, if you has it.’
‘Coffee. I am afraid coffee wouldn’t be ready for some time yet.’
‘Well, thanks. I doesn’t really want it. I was only being social.’ Mrs Primrose giggled again.
Presently they sat down to dinner. The Governor’s lady sat on the left of Mr Primrose. Ganesh found himself between the man in jodhpurs and the Christian Indian and his daughter; and he saw with alarm that the people from whom he had hoped to learn the eating drill were too far away.
The members looked at the waiters who looked away quickly. Then the members looked at each other.
The man in jodhpurs muttered, ‘Is why black people can’t get on. You see how these waiters behaving? And they black like hell too, you know.’
Nobody took up the remark.
Soup came.
‘Meat?’ Ganesh asked.
The waiter nodded.
‘Take it away,’ Ganesh said with quick disgust.
The man in jodhpurs said, ‘You was wrong there. You shoulda toy with the soup.’
‘Toy with it?’
‘Is what the book say.’
No one near Ganesh seemed willing to taste the soup.
The man in jodhpurs looked about him. ‘Is a nice room here.’
‘Nice pictures,’ said the man with the open shirt who sat opposite.
The man in jodhpurs sighed wearily. ‘Is a funny thing, but I ain’t so hungry today.’
‘Is the heat,’ the man with the open shirt said.
The Christian Indian placed his daughter on his left knee, and, ignoring the others, dipped a spoon in his soup. He tested it with his tongue for warmth and said, ‘Aah.’ The girl opened her mouth to receive the soup. ‘One for you,’ the Christian said. He took a spoonful himself. ‘And one for me.’
The other members saw. They became reckless and ate.
Unoriginal disaster befell Mr Primrose. His monocle fell into his soup.
The Governor’s lady quickly looked away.
But Mr Primrose drew her attention to the monocle. ‘Eh, eh,’ he chuckled, ‘but see how it fall down!’
The M.L.C.s looked on with sympathy.
Mr Primrose turned on them. ‘What all you staring at? All you ain’t see nigger before?’
The man in jodhpurs whispered to Ganesh, ‘But we wasn’t saying anything.’
‘Eh!’ Mr Primrose snapped. ‘Black people don’t wear monocle?’
He fished out the monocle, wiped it, and put it in his coat pocket.
The man with the open shirt tried to change the subject. ‘I wonder how much car expenses they go pay we for coming here. I ain’t ask to dine with the Governor, you know.’ He jerked his head in the Governor’s direction and quickly jerked it back.
The man with jodhpurs said, ‘But they got to pay we, man.’
The meal was torture to Ganesh. He felt alien and uncomfortable. He grew sulkier and sulkier and refused all the courses. He felt as if he were a boy again, going to the Queen’s Royal College for the first time.
He was in a temper when he returned late that night to
Fuente Grove. ‘Just wanted to make a fool of me,’ he muttered, ‘fool of me.’
‘Leela!’ he shouted. ‘Come, girl, and give me something to eat.’
She came out, smiling sardonically. ‘But, man, I thought you was dining with the Governor.’
‘Don’t make joke, girl. Done dine. Want to eat now. Going to show them,’ he mumbled, as his fingers ploughed through the rice and dal and curry, ‘going to show them.’
12. M.L.C. to M.B.E.
SOON GANESH decided to move to Port of Spain. He found it fatiguing to travel nearly every day between Port of Spain and Fuente Grove. The Government paid expenses that made it worth while but he knew that even if he lived in Port of Spain he could still claim travelling expenses, like the other country members.
Swami and the boy came to say good-bye. Ganesh had grown to like the boy: he saw so much of himself in him.
‘But don’t worry, sahib,’ Swami said. ‘The Hindu Association fixing up a little something for him. A little cultural scholarship to travel about, learning.’
Beharry, Suruj Mooma, and their second son Dipraj helped with the packing. Later, Ramlogan and The Great Belcher came.
Suruj Mooma and Leela embraced and cried; and Leela gave Suruj Mooma the ferns from the top verandah.
‘I go always always keep them, my dear.’
The Great Belcher said, ‘The two of you girls behaving as though somebody getting married.’
Beharry put his hand under his vest and nibbled. ‘Is go Ganesh have to go. He do his duty here and God call him somewhere else.’
‘I wish the whole thing did never happen,’ Ganesh said with sudden bitterness. ‘I wish I did never become a mystic!’
Beharry put his hand on Ganesh’s shoulder. ‘Is only talk you talking, Ganesh. Is hard, I know, to leave a place after eleven years, but look at Fuente Grove now. New road. My new shop. Stand-pipe. We getting electricity next year. All through you.’
They took bags and cases into the yard.
Ganesh went to the mango tree. ‘Is something we did forget.’ He wrenched out the GANESH, Mystic sign.
‘Don’t throw it away,’ Beharry said. ‘We go keep it in the shop.’
Ganesh and Leela got into the taxi.
Ramlogan said. ‘I always did say, sahib, you was the radical in the family.’
‘Ah, Leela, my dear, look after yourself,’ Suruj Mooma sobbed. ‘You looking so tired.’
The taxi started and the waving began.
The Great Belcher belched.
‘Dipraj, carry this signboard home and come back and help your mother with the ferns.’
Leela waved and looked back. The verandah was naked; the doors and windows open; on the balustrade the two stone elephants stared in opposite directions.
It would be hard to say just when Ganesh stopped being a mystic. Even before he moved to Port of Spain he had become more and more absorbed in politics. He still dispelled one or two spirits; but he had already given up his practice when he sold the house in Fuente Grove to a jeweller from Bombay and bought a new one in the fashionable Port of Spain district of St Clair. By that time he had stopped wearing dhoti and turban altogether.
Leela didn’t take to Port of Spain. She travelled about a good deal with The Great Belcher. She visited Soomintra often and regularly went to Ramlogan’s.
But Ganesh found that for an M.L.C. Port of Spain was a pleasant place. He got used to it and even liked it. There were two good libraries, and so many bookshops! He dropped Indology, religion, and psychology and bought large books on political theory. He had long discussions with Indarsingh.
At first Indarsingh was bitter. ‘Funny people in Trinidad, old boy. No respect for ideas, only personalities.’
But he softened as time went on and he and Ganesh worked on a new political theory.
‘Came to me in a flash, old boy. Reading Louis Fischer’s book about Gandhi. Socialinduism. Socialism-cum-Hinduism. Hot stuff, old boy. Outlines settled. Details demn tricky, though.’
So far the autobiography, and the private man.
But by this time Ganesh was a public figure of great importance. He was always in the papers. His speeeches inside and outside the Legislative Council were reported in detail; he was constantly photographed leading delegations of aggrieved taxi-drivers or scavengers or fish-vendors to the Red House; and he was always ready with a press conference or a letter to the editor. Everything he did or said was News.
He was a terror in the Legislative Council.
It was he who introduced the walk-out to Trinidad and made it popular as a method of protest. The walk-out was no sudden inspiration. It had crude beginnings. At first he simply lay flat on his back on the Council table and refused to move. Policemen had to lift him up. Acts like this caught the public imagination and in no time at all Ganesh became popular throughout the South Caribbean. His photograph appeared constantly in the newspapers. Then he discovered the walk-out. In the beginning he just walked out; later, he walked out and gave interviews to reporters on the steps of the Red House; finally, he walked out, gave interviews, and addressed the crowd of beggars and idlers from the bandstand in Woodford Square. Often the Governor passed a weary hand over his forehead and said, ‘Mr Ramsumair, what have we done to offend you this time? Please don’t stage another walk-out.’ And the invariable concomitant of a headline announcing the passing of a bill was GANESH STAGES A WALK-OUT. Later this was shortened and a typical newspaper headline was:
LAND RESETTLEMENT BILL PASSED
Ganesh Walks Out
They made a calypso about him which was the second road-march at the Carnival in 1947:
There is a gentleman of the opposition
Suffering a sort of legislative constipation.
Everybody moving – bills for so,
But with this gentleman nothing can go.
The reference to Profitable Evacuation was clear. But even before the calypso, Ganesh had begun to find his mystic career an embarrassment. Certain paragraphs of What God Told Me had often been read out in the Council Chamber; and in November 1946, just four months after he had published it, he suppressed The Years of Guilt, as well as his other books, and wound up Ganesh Publishing Company Limited.
There was no doubt that at this time Ganesh was the most popular man in Trinidad. He never went to a cocktail party at Government House. He never went to dinner there. He was always ready to present a petition to the Governor. He exposed scandal after scandal. And he was always ready to do a favour for any member of the public, rich or poor. For such favours his fees were never high. He always said, ‘You must give only what you can afford.’ People like Primrose and the Christian had high fixed rates, went to every cocktail party at Government House, and wore dinner-jackets. You couldn’t say that either of them really represented his constituency. The Christian, as a matter of fact, now owned most of his; and Primrose became so wealthy he had to be knighted.
In Colonial Office reports Ganesh was dismissed as an irresponsible agitator with no following.
He had no idea that he was on the road to the M.B.E.
This is how it happened.
In September, 1949, a wild strike ripped through some sugar estates in South Trinidad. It was the most exciting thing since the oilfield riots of 1937. Strikers burnt cane-fields and policemen beat up strikers and spat in the mouths of those they arrested. The press thundered with threats and counter-threats. Sympathy for the strikers was high and people who had never thought of striking themselves cycled past the pickets and whispered, ‘Keep it up, boys!’
Ganesh was in Tobago at the time, investigating the scandal of the Help the Children Fund. He made a vague speech about it but the Niggergram at once spread a story that he was going to mediate. The sugar estates said they knew nothing about it. Ganesh told a Sentinel reporter that he was going to do all he could to bring about an amicable settlement. The estates denied that they had ever consented to having a mediator at all. Ganesh wrote to the Sentinel that wh
ether the estates liked it or not he was going to mediate.
In the few days that followed, Ganesh was at the peak of his popularity.
He knew nothing about the strike except for what he had read in the newspapers; and it was the first time since he had been elected that he had to deal with a crisis in South Trinidad. Hitherto he had been mainly involved in exposing ministerial scandals in Port of Spain. His whole approach to the strike was so thoughtless that we can perhaps – as he himself said later – see the hand of Providence once more in his career.
In the first place he went South in a lounge suit. He took books, but they were not religious books, only the writings of Tom Paine and John Stuart Mill and a large volume on Greek Political Theory.
The moment he got to Lorimer’s Park, a few miles out of San Fernando, where the strikers waited for him, he sensed that something was wrong. So he said later. Perhaps it was the rain the night before. The banners were still damp and their denunciations looked half-hearted. The grass had disappeared beneath the mud churned up by the strikers’ bare feet.
The strike-leader, a short fat man in a striped brown suit, led Ganesh to the platform. This was nothing more than two Morris car crates; smaller boxes served as steps. The top of the platform was wet and muddy. Ganesh was introduced to the half dozen or so members of the strike committee and the man in the brown suit immediately set to work.
He shouted, ‘Brothers and sisters, you know why the Red Flag red?’
The police reporters scribbled conscientiously in longhand in their noteboooks.
‘Let them write it down,’ the leader said. ‘Let them write down in their dirty little black books that we ain’t fraid them. Tell me, we fraid them?’
A short stout man came out from the crowd and walked to the platform. ‘Shut your tail up,’ he said.
The leader insisted, ‘Tell me, we fraid them?’
There was no response.
The man below the platform said, ‘Cut out the talk and say something quick.’ He was rolling up his shirt-sleeves almost up to his armpits. He had powerful arms.
The Mystic Masseur Page 19