For Mrs Mainwaring had found that India was a veritable paradise for the white woman. She had not spent her time trying to bleach her colour in England in vain.
She found that she had plenty of time to waste. For India was the one place in the world where servants still were servants, and one could laze through the morning and sleep through the afternoon, happy in the assurance that the cook and the ‘boy’ will look after breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner.
India was the one place in the world where one could come in to dress and leave the discarded garments in a heap on the floor, to be collected and folded away by the servants, whose mending-needle stitched up every rent unbidden, and, who picked up the ladders in one’s stockings with uncanny skill.
One could engage a pony for a morning trot at Annandale for less than a shilling a day.
One could hire a rickshaw for fourpence an hour.
Eggs here were sixpence a dozen.
The laundry washed beautifully at a farthing a piece.
One could get the latest Paris models in millinery and frocks at the big shops.
There were magnificent hotels, dance halls, night-clubs, and cinemas which received the latest Hollywood releases even before London.
And one could belong to two or three clubs and drink endless cocktails at other people’s expense, and smoke cigarettes by the dozen, for there was no tobacco tax and a tin of Players cost only one rupee.
Why, here were all the luxuries and amenities of the West at the knockdown prices of the East, so that even Golders Green and Ealing lived like Mayfair and Piccadilly.
No wonder that all those retired Empire-builders in Bayswater and Knightsbridge looked disgruntled ‘at home’ and shook their heads at the shortcomings of poor old England, and sighed for the fleshpots of India!
True, Mrs Mainwaring could not enjoy all these amenities of pleasurable existence. For she was being made conscious of her ‘Celtic twilight’ again, having been refused admission to the Union Jack Club. The tongue of gossip, too, seemed busy about her. But though she became conscious of a vague perturbation in her soul and trod warily in consequence, she went out, nevertheless, anxious to snatch at any pleasures that might come her way before Anglo-Indian society made up its mind either to shut her out completely or to accept her. And, really, all was gay and adorable.
Meanwhile, Munoo had also become inured to this life, and even enjoyed it.
It was nice, for instance, to be pushing the rickshaw along the Mall with his mistress sitting dressed up in beautiful clothes telling little Circe the names of the various celebrities in the motley crowd of gorgeously clad Englishmen and Indians who were being borne in their own rickshaws. ‘Major-General Sir Claude Harrington,’ she would say in answer to Circe’s impetuous question. ‘Sir Jiji Bhoy Ismail, President of the Chamber of Commerce’, ‘Sir Charles Reed, Home Member’, ‘Lady Raffi, wife of Sir M. Raffi, of the Viceroy’s Council’, ‘Pandit Dwaraka Prashad, Congress Leader’, ‘The Maharani of Landi’. But Circe was too young to understand. Only Munoo remembered.
And he was quite happy when the Memsahib ordered the rickshaw to slow down by the shops, for, as she feasted her eyes on the rich silks hanging in the Benares silk shop, the wonderful necklaces in the curio shop, the silver cutlery in Messrs Perkins, he too contemplated the wonderful array of things displayed in the windows.
The other coolies seemed apathetic, and he was rather irritated by their lack of interest in this exalting atmosphere of European grandeur. He even criticized them as uncouth rustics in his mind and, recalling that he could read and write and could have become a babu or a sahib if he had not been an orphan, felt superior. And when his mistress ordered the head coolie to stop outside Sahib Singh and Co., greeted the handsome black-bearded Sikh, who wore a wonderful English suit and a neatly tied pink turban, with a smile, and talked git-mit, git-mit in Angrezi to him, he felt envious. He would have liked to be like him, almost an Englishman. Indeed, he would have been more of an Englishman, because, being clean-shaven as a Hindu, he need not have worn a turban and a beard to mar the beauty of the English dress. His mistress would certainly have liked him much more if there was any meaning in the kindness she had shown him at Kalka, when she pinched him, and again when he had been laid up with the fever. But it was no use thinking such nice thoughts when he was only a servant boy, a coolie, he told himself. The Sardar was probably a rich man, a high-class man, perhaps a BA pass or fail, and the Memsahib was a memsahib, though she was not quite of the same colour as the other memsahibs.
‘Boy, come and take these things,’ came his mistress’s call. And he rushed forward eagerly to receive the goods from the chemist, glad to be in contact with the beautiful bottles, gladder still that his Memsahib trusted him, and not the other coolies, to handle all the fragile things.
And then he proudly and willingly pushed the rickshaw along, in his reckless enthusiasm even encouraging the other coolies to start the sport of racing past rival rickshaws on the Jakhu round. And out of sheer lightheartedness he would goad his companions to sing a hill song; for, somehow, that seemed to infuse a lightness into his limbs and lift him to an ecstasy of pleasure.
But when he came back from the drive through the gay scene in the evening he felt sad and alone. His back seemed stiff, so that he could neither sit nor stand. And, what was very strange to him, sometimes when he spat now, his spittle was red. He did not bother about this, and got busy helping Ala Dad to serve dinner. For, of late, Mrs Mainwaring had begun to entertain Major Marchant to dinner almost every day.
And then he had a hectic week when Mainwaring Sahib himself came on short leave from the North-West Frontier.
Munoo liked the Sahib because he looked so young, also because he was a beautiful, fair-haired, blue-eyed man, with a modest, easy manner and an ever-ready smile on his face. Munoo’s experiences of Englishmen had so far been rather unfortunate, and he thought of them as frightening ghosts who always had a scowl on their faces. He had, of course, seen some of them smile, and even laugh, in the Upper Bazaar, but their smiles seemed imperceptible and were in any case only for their own kind; he had never yet received one, because as a servant and coolie he was supposed to be below notice. That, he thought in the light of his ingrained inferiority, was perhaps as it should be. But Mainwaring Sahib was nice. Why were not all sahibs like him? Surely they would not lose anything if they gave their servants smiles, because Mainwaring Sahib did not lose anything by giving him a smile. Would not he do anything for his Sahib? And it was not only because Mainwaring Sahib had ordered Ala Dad to give him half of one of the three pitcher-sized melons he had brought from Peshawar; it was because of the kindliness he reflected. Munoo would have liked to race the rickshaw round Jakhu if he would ride in it, but he never rode, only walking by the side of the carriage as the Memsahib sat in it. Still, he had tried to show his gratitude to the Sahib by putting his heart and soul into the work at the bungalow. But he could not do enough, for the Sahib stayed only a week. Munoo wondered if he had been able to show his appreciation of the Sahib’s kindness, or whether the Sahib had recognized how he had been straining to serve him, because the Sahib’s face had become small and pathetically immobile during the last three days of his visit. When, however, the Sahib gave him a five-rupee note as bakhshish at the railway station before he went, Munoo knew that the Sahib had liked him.
Major Marchant seemed mean and despicable to the boy after his experience of the Mainwaring Sahib, because he came to dinner with the Memsahib every day and did not even bring her a dali of fruit, far from giving anything to Ala Dad or to him. This sahib was all for himself. Munoo began to resent him, especially as he ordered him away from the gol kamra if ever the boy was playing with the Miss Sahib. Then he had encouraged the Memsahib to send the Miss Sahib away to a boarding-school. What was more, the Major Sahib was always encouraging the Memsahib to make the servants do difficult things, like asking Munoo to come running behind the ponies on the Jakhu round, so that Munoo could
hold the reins of the animals while he and the Memsahib went down to see the waterfalls in the ravines. And now he had made her order the rickshaw to go to Mashobra on Sunday. There was consolation in the fact that the boy wanted to see Mashobra himself. But it was ten miles away.
When the Sunday came, however, Munoo was excited by the preparations for the outing in the fresh early morning. And as the Memsahib hired four men for the rickshaw, and put him on as a reserve, he felt light and easy as if he were going away for a holiday.
Indeed, the variety of scenes that were unfolded as the rickshaw wheeled along pleased him. They went past Christ Church, through the Lakkar Bazaar, where the craftsmen specialize in Himalayan sticks and wooden toys, past Snowdon, the Commander-in-Chief’s residence, past the Orphanage school, through Sanjauli Bazaar, where the silversmiths make nose-rings which kiss the lips of the hill-women and the babus of the Army headquarters run secret societies to destroy the Angrezi Sarkar, through the long dark tunnel where the bells threaded in blue-bead necklaces and carved headstalls of the mules set up echoes of a strange, haunting music, past the residence of the Nawab of Malerkotla, past the waterworks and through the abundant leafage of thick pine forests which shadow the curvy road to Naldera, the Viceroy’s golf course, and to the hot-water springs of the Bhujji State on the banks of the Sutlej, and beyond to Tibet.
The crisp mountain air seemed like delicious cold water to Munoo’s warm body, as he jogged lightly along with the other coolies, and the moist young sap in the trees smelt good.
As the Major Sahib wanted to trot his high horse and the rickshaw had to run fast beyond the toll bar, Munoo found himself panting more than the other coolies when they got to Mashobra. But the Memsahib was too busy talking to the Major Sahib to alight from the carriage even when they got to their destination. And Munoo had to be in attendance on the Sahib and Memsahib at tiffin.
As the other coolies were given leave to go and rest at the rickshaw stand till they were wanted, Munoo’s heart sank. But he went through it all with a grim effort not to look morose and unwilling, for he felt that after all he was the Memsahib’s personal servant, and in a way superior to the other coolies.
This feeling was confirmed when he was given a whole leg of chicken and double-roti, and other remains of the tiffin.
He partook of the food by the side of the water-pump and then proceeded to the rickshaw stand to wait for the Sahib and Memsahib.
His arrival was greeted with a sneer of mockery.
‘Your Memsahib is no memsahib,’ said one of the coolies. ‘No other mem or sahib in Simla would leave a card on her.’
‘I have nothing to do with that,’ said Munoo. ‘But you are only saying that about her because she did not alight from the rickshaw all the way up to Mashobra!’
‘No, we are saying it for your good,’ said the head coolie. ‘You should leave her service. You have to attend on her and also drive the rickshaw.’
Munoo kept silent.
‘Why can’t he become a rickshaw coolie?’ one of the men asked. ‘Then he won’t have to attend on her.’
‘Because he is dying of consumption,’ said Mohan. ‘Look at his pale cheeks and sunken eyes!’
‘Show me your pulse, ohe Munoo,’ said another coolie, laughing.
‘I’ll have none of your jokes,’ said Munoo. ‘Give me a cigarette.’
He coughed all that night and kept Ala Dad awake.
‘It is one of those biris I smoked at Mashobra,’ he apologized when the old man complained.
The next day, however, while he was cleaning his teeth and gargling to clear his throat, he saw himself spitting out streaks of blood. He hurriedly threw a handful of ashes on the puddle to conceal it both from Ala Dad and himself. But, much as he tried to forget himself in his work, he felt rather frightened and depressed by the cloud that the shock of his first haemorrhage had raised in his imagination. ‘Am I really dying?’ he asked himself. He did not know what consumption was, but this congestion of his chest that he had been feeling for days and the blood that had oozed from his throat might be the disease. ‘It certainly is,’ his mind seemed to confirm in one breath. ‘It is not, it is merely my throat which is sore,’ his will seemed to say in contradiction. For, though during the last three years he had sometimes wished he were dead, now that the question mark of death arose before his mind’s eye, with its message of the complete cessation of his breath, he did not want to die.
To resolve his doubts and to ease his soul he thought of writing to Ratan for advice. He was feeling lonely and he wanted to do something desperate. Writing to his old friend whom he had given up for dead seemed to him at this moment the most reckless thing to do. For if Ratan was dead he himself would not mind dying, and if he were alive the wrestler would certainly try to help him.
Luckily the Memsahib, who was very excited that morning—the khansamah said because she was making preparations to go to the Lat Sahib’s natch—sent Munoo to deliver messages to her tailors, to Ho Wang, the Chinese shoemaker, and to Major Marchant. On his way up to the Mall he stopped at the little Post Office opposite the Railway Board Office and wrote a card to Ratan, briefly describing how he had come to Simla in the service of a Memsahib, how he was unhappy because he was alone, and how he would like Ratan to come up to the hills, or, if that were not possible, how he would like to go back to Bombay.
Major Marchant sent Munoo chasing after Mr Das, an Indian official in the Foreign and Political Department, with a letter.
When the boy got to the Foreign and Political Department, three miles away from the Health Office, he was told that Mr Das had gone home to Tara Devi for tiffin.
Munoo tramped another five miles and succeeded in catching the sahib just as he was in the middle of his lunch.
‘What is it?’ his wife asked. ‘This Sarkar doesn’t even let us eat our food in peace.’
‘Oh, it is not the Sarkar,’ the babu said, ‘it is all these sycophants. I have had twelve private requests from people this morning to help them to get tickets for the Viceroy’s ball. This is the thirteenth, from Major Marchant, the Health Officer, asking for tickets for himself and that Eurasian woman he is carrying on with. He attended our child when he was ill, so I suppose I will have to oblige him whoever else I may or may not oblige. All right, boy. Give my salaams to the Sahib.’
Munoo came back through the monsoon clouds that were gathering on the higher ridges of the Simla hills. As he was about a hundred yards away from the bungalow, looking down on the heavenly pastures of Annandale, there were mutterings of thunder and the sky overhead was black and lurid. As soon as he stepped into the veranda of the bungalow the trailing clouds poured down their contents.
For hours the rain continued, with intermittent peals of thunder which were echoed by the tall mountains and flashes of lightning that lit the mist on the dense vegetation with an unearthly splendour.
Then a light breeze swept the clouds away towards the plains where the water of the flooded rivers shone like a silver sea.
This weather continued, with intervals of a few hours, for three days. And during the dark days Munoo brooded on the physical fatigue he was beginning to feel, except when the Memsahib sent him with another urgent message to the tailor or the shoemaker.
One evening he went to the bastis of the rickshaw men to seek consolation from Mohan.
These were a collection of wood huts, below the Lower Bazaar on the way to the cart-road. A dirty scum-covered ditch ran by them, apparently carrying the filth of the markets to the ravines.
Munoo could not discover in which particular hut Mohan lived, because several coolies crowded round hubble-bubbles in each of them, in a darkness only illuminated by the fuming cotton wicks of earthen saucer lamps. He felt strangely awkward among the men, because, though mostly hillmen from the Simla hill states and Kangra, they were all so diverse.
In one hut a crowd of coolies were singing hill songs to the tunes of a dholki, and he felt drawn towards it. But on reaching
it, he found that it was choking with smoke from a hearth fire over which a coolie was frying pancakes. Thick clouds of fumes hung over the heads of the coolies, like long snakes and pythons suspended from the ceiling, because there was no ventilator. The gas got into Munoo’s lungs as, lured by the music, he stayed for a while, and it was only when it stung his windpipe sharply that he walked out coughing and clutching his throat.
At last he found Mohan, seated to a meal in a little porch on the veranda of a hut, away from twelve other men who ate, sat, or lay asleep on the floor.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ cried two of the men, who knew him.
Mohan silently brought Munoo a jute rag to sit on.
The old-timers looked at him. Munoo felt that they were criticizing him for being very raw.
‘Why is everyone having sweet pancakes today?’ he asked Mohan.
‘Have you forgotten all your festivals, just because you are a mem’s servant?’ said a coolie, before Mohan could answer. ‘We are celebrating the rains.’
‘Don’t you take any notice of them,’ said Mohan. ‘They have come here season after season, and they don’t know any of their festivals either, and yet they preen themselves on their experience. But they are fools. They rush up here long before the season starts, just because they want to be in time to get the rickshaws which are good to look at. They are illiterate and uncouth, and they have become sterile, driving rickshaws up hill down dale, till now there is nothing left for them but to mock at others.’
‘All right, learned one, you need not lose your temper at a joke,’ said the coolie who had spoken. ‘And will you knock me up before sunrise tomorrow, as I have to go to Sanjauli?’
‘Good,’ said Mohan, and proceeded to light a biri.
‘And don’t forget about that loan for me from the Chaudhri for my marriage,’ the coolie said cockily.
‘That I will forget,’ said Mohan. ‘You will become a slave to the pock-marked, fat usurer. And what is the use of your marrying if, after marriage, you want to come here year after year? Your heart is weak now, and you might fall dead any moment.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 50