‘And, as you said,’ put in another coolie, ‘he has no guts left, so what does he want a wife for?’
The company laughed.
‘What shall I do, then?’ the man continued.
‘Go back to your land, man,’ said Mohan. ‘That is my advice to you. Go and work on your land.’
‘My land is mortgaged already,’ said the coolie.
‘Then come with me, and we shall kill the landlord one day, and get you your land,’ said Mohan. ‘It is my object to make you people realize that if you work, you should have a share in the things that you produce with the sweat of your brow.’
‘Oh, you can keep your wild notions for those others,’ said the coolie. ‘I want to live here, work, smoke the hookah, play cards now and then, and never be too tired to pick up another fare if it comes my way.’
‘Han, fool,’ burst out Mohan. ‘You will let them kill you. You are all ignorant slaves. How can I drill any sense into your heads?’
‘Acha then, we will begin our lesson tomorrow,’ said the coolie jocularly, and, wrapping himself in his blanket from head to foot, he affected sleep.
‘I will come back in a moment,’ said Mohan to Munoo.
Munoo suddenly felt disconnected from the world of this hut. It was as if a light had suddenly been extinguished, such was the silent sympathy that flowed from Mohan to him. The coolie who had turned in to sleep cheekily lifted his head and said:
‘Tell me, ustad Mohan—’ But on looking round he saw that Mohan was not there.
‘Oh, he has gone then,’ he said. ‘He is a very stange fellow. I can’t make him out. If he has been to Vilayat and is a BA pass, why does he drive rickshaws and live among us?’
‘He comes from a high-class family,’ said an old coolie, coughing over his hookah. ‘He had an easy life in his childhood and youth. And now he is doing a sort of penance for his sins. He felt very alone, he told me, isolated, and could not mix with people. And he wants to learn to be a man among men.’
‘Really,’ said Munoo, ‘how extraordinary!’
‘Mysterious!’ said the coolie who was lying down.
‘He is,’ said the old coolie, ‘but he would be in prison if he were not. The Sarkar has spies about to catch anyone who goes about doing the work he does. Hasn’t he talked to you yet about it?—the union?’
‘No,’ whispered the other coolie, rather surprised and afraid.
‘Well, he will talk to you one day—’
At this Mohan came back with a little packet in his hand.
‘Here, ohe Munoo,’ he said, ‘here is some fruit for you to eat. We can’t entertain you on anything very much in this place. There is nothing worthwhile in the shops, either. Sweets are poisonous. You must eat plenty of fruit and drink half a seer of milk every day. You are looking very thin. And now you must go. The rain has just stopped. Go to bed early!’
Munoo said ‘Jayadeva’ to all the coolies and hurried away, afraid of Mohan, and yet grateful. He had been absorbed in the talk of the two coolies. His mind had gone back from the sinister atmosphere which the old coolie’s information had built up to the evening in the chawl at Bombay, after Ratan had been discharged and the three sahibs had come to talk to the coolies. Was Mohan one of those sahibs? he wondered. And he walked home wrapped in the glow of warmth that he had felt in Mohan’s company.
On Friday, the day of the dance, he caught the contagion of his mistress’s enthusiasm and virtually floated through the sunshine that had succeeded the rains, smelling the damp deodars in the thin air and listening to the sound of waterfalls on the slopes of the mountains.
And when at length his mistress walked out after a protracted toilet to take her seat in the rickshaw to meet Major Marchant for dinner at the Hotel Cecil, before going to the dance, he felt very happy and proud, especially as in her naïve enthusiasm she had asked him whether she looked beautiful and had pinched his cheeks and giggled when he said, ‘Han, Memsahib is shining.’
He exerted himself with renewed vigour to push the rickshaw and waited impatiently with the other coolies during the dinner, drying his clothes, which were wet with perspiration and stuck to his body.
The run from the Hotel Cecil to the Viceroy’s residence was not long enough, he felt, so eager was he to enjoy the glow of the Memsahib’s company, as he ran past the twinkling lights on the hillside.
And he worked himself up to an extraordinarily high pitch of excitement as he sat with the hundreds of other coolies, watching the fair and fortunate of Simla come in their rickshaws and walk into the long throne-rooms, whose portals stood open, reflecting the dazzle of huge chandeliers on to the lawns of the Viceregal Lodge.
The memsahibs all wore thin silken dresses which almost swept the earth at their heels, and furs and wraps which scarcely hid their necks and shoulders, either against the cold or the rude stares of the rickshaw coolies.
The sahibs seemed to Munoo, on the other hand, overdressed in their long black coats and wax collars and shirts and long rows of medals.
And some of them were dressed in curious clothes which he did not know how they had put on, so fast did the silken knee-breeches seem to stick to their legs, and so high and stiff were the collars of their short gold-embroidered jackets.
Occasionally Indian maharajahs were driven up in all the resplendence of their bejewelled ceremonial robes, and Munoo envied their small sons who were going into the dance hall with them, dressed up in the most perfect achkans and white, tight trousers.
The arrival of a few padres created some amusement among the coolies, as they had never imagined that these long-robed priests with huge beards would want to go to the dance. The band struck up ‘God Save the King’ while the guests were still entering.
‘Grand shows, these dances,’ said a coolie.
‘Han,’ said another, ‘it costs a lot of money. It cost my Sahib two thousand rupees to buy his scarlet cape and velvet shoes and satin breeches.’
‘My Memsahib has paid three hundred rupees for her frock,’ said Munoo, eagerly and with pride.
‘And all the trouble of procuring a ticket,’ added Mohan sardonically. ‘You don’t seem to like this show,’ said the first coolie.
‘I should think not, from what I have seen of them,’ replied Mohan. ‘It is strange how these people can think that it is amusing to spend all the money they do, to come and meet people they really do not want to meet. For they have a caste system more rigid than ours. Any Angrezi woman whose husband earns 1200 rupees a month will not leave cards at the house of a woman whose husband earns 500. And the woman whose husband earns 500 looks down upon the woman whose husband earns 300. The rich don’t really want to mix with each other. The women perspire in their furs and their underclothes get wet. And the men are uncomfortable in their tight trousers as they flirt with other men’s wives. And then they say how smart it all was as they drink tea at Davico’s while you starve.’
‘How can you say all this?’ asked the first coolie. ‘What do you know of the sahib-log’s life?’
‘How can I say all this?’ answered Mohan. ‘What do I know of the sahib-log’s life?’
‘It is strange, their dancing,’ said another coolie, now impressed by what Mohan said to question his admiration for the sahibs and the rajahs. ‘What is the meaning of pushing a woman about here and there so stiffly?’
‘It is all a kind of graceful love game,’ said Mohan, ‘but it has now become mere play and the love is not thought of, except that it warms up the cold natures of these people and they can go kissing and tittering in the corners and prepare to get married or to go to bed together. You don’t need to dance about to go to bed with women, you roughs. You are superior to all these colonels and generals and maharajahs. But still you go on driving their rickshaws.’
‘You do that too, don’t you?’ a coolie said.
‘Han, because I shouldn’t get an opportunity to talk to people like you.’
‘Look! they are walking about in couples in t
he garden,’ said Munoo.
‘Han,’ said Mohan. ‘Don’t explore the garden too eagerly or you will see something you won’t like.’
‘It is nothing to me, what she does,’ said Munoo naïvely. ‘I am only her servant.’ And he looked across the valley to the lights of Simla twinkling in the clear night. Then he sat listening to the strange zigzag music of the Viceroy’s orchestra. It jangled on his nerves. He was tired, and yawned. Mohan spread his cotton wrap round him, saying:
‘You look ill, you ought to be asleep.’
‘Nahin,’ Munoo protested. ‘I am all right.’ And then the saliva in his throat choked him and he coughed a harsh, continuous cough which seemed to distress him, till he spat out mouthfuls of blood.
‘Ohe fool! Fool!’ cursed Mohan. ‘I told you at Mashobra you were ill. Surely this is not the first time you have spat blood?’
Munoo waved his head to signify ‘No’.
‘Then why didn’t you tell your Mem that you could not draw the rickshaw? Have you told her that you were spitting blood?’
Munoo kept silent.
Mohan’s voice of concern had roused the coolies and they crowded round the boy.
The sepoy who stood on guard at the gates of the Viceregal Lodge thought he scented trouble. He walked up exactly as if he were on his beat, left, right, left, right, and, without relaxing his pose, asked in a stern voice:
‘Who goes there?’
‘A boy taken ill, Sarkar,’ one of the coolies informed him.
‘Take him away before the Aidi-cong Sahib comes on the scene,’ he ordered.
Mohan hurriedly put Munoo across his shoulders and, saying to his colleagues, ‘It is downhill coming back to the bungla, you won’t need us,’ he bore the boy home.
Mrs Mainwaring was quite concerned when she came out of the dance hall with Major Marchant and learnt that the boy had to be taken home because he spat blood. Her efforts at social climbing had not been very successful, because she had been herded aside with the Indian crowd and only one English cavalry officer had danced with her. She had thought of bringing the Major home and forgetting all about the ball over a bottle of wine and the supper which she had ordered. But now she felt wretched.
And when the Major examined Munoo, and pronounced very unfavourably on his condition, she cried.
According to the orders of the Health Officer, Munoo was removed the next day to a segregated three-roomed hut on the slopes of Chotta Simla, where there were two other coolies suffering from consumption. Mohan came to look after him.
He was enjoined absolute quiet, and after a brief spell of coughing and another haemorrhage he felt better. The only trouble was that he could not walk or stand up or exert himself in the least. So he lay all day on the veranda of the hut, on a low bedstead, covered by a thick quilt.
Mrs Mainwaring came down to see him with gifts of fruit and flowers during the first few days and even nursed him, buoying up the dejected spirit of the boy with sentiments like:
‘You will get well. You have no disease. You are just run down.’ She was really being kind, as to a point she did suffer qualms of conscience about having ill-used the ‘poor dear’. But she was not allowed to be kind and good.
The Major forbade her to go down to the hut on pain of having to segregate her too if she persisted in her intercourse with the servant. And she had to efface herself completely and suffer in silence.
Munoo had borne a resentment against her during the later stages of her friendship with Major Marchant. And when he had begun to bleed, and the knowledge of death confronted him, he had hated her for a while. But now that he was actually sick in bed, vaguely torn between the fear of dying and the hope of living, something happened to him. He felt docile and good and kind towards her and everyone else. It was as if the nerves of his body in their gradual weakening had begun to accept the humiliation which in the pride of their functioning they had never acknowledged.
He looked strangely tender now, his face sunken and pale, his eyes bulging out of their deep, dark sockets, weakly exploring the hollows of the hills, his body feeling the sand run through the hour-glass of time.
When the haemorrhage occurred he looked terribly frightened. But when the sun shone and his breathing was a little better he became intent and absorbed in himself. He wanted to get well. And he made plans in his head. Ratan had written to him to come to Bombay to a small job in the pay of the Trade Union organizing the fight against the Pathan moneylenders, the foreman and the factory-wallahs. Munoo felt he would go. And, since the spell of warm weather lasted and the flies and the mosquitoes were not too troublesome, he began to feel stronger every day and looked forward to testing his powers for the journey to Bombay by a walk.
Another attack of haemorrhage, however, and there seemed no prospect of his getting out of bed. He was tortured by doubts and fears again. Any slightest cough after this made him feel hopeless. And now he struggled not to get worse.
The trouble continued, though somewhat abated. An hour of sunshine seemed a blessing.
The doctor’s look on his weekly visit was not reassuring. He could feel it in the strange kindness in Major Marchant’s eyes behind the mask of authority that the doctor wore on his face.
Nothing seemed to exist, therefore, outside himself, apart from the memories of his wanderings. Mohan was a consolation because he came and sat on his bed and pressed his head in the evening. But it rained and the clouds hovered menacingly over the adjacent hills.
Then the depression lifted.
And he lay watching the tiers of blue sage and barley on the slopes of the valley before him. He felt the drift of the wind and watched the unfolding of snapshots of his memories, disconnected and strange, as in a dream.
The soft bletherings of the afternoon air would develop into a storm. The congestion in his chest seemed to become acute.
The trouble was again eased, however. A few whole days of good health. ‘After all, I am not going to die,’ he would say to himself.
A downpour, and he began to doubt if he would ever get well. He felt exhausted and lay weary and apathetic, looking at Mohan frank-eyed and helpless, clinging to him as if the mere touch of his friend’s body would give him life.
‘Acha, Munoo brother, you are a brave lad,’ Mohan assured him.
Munoo clutched at Mohan’s hand and felt the warm blood in his veins like a tide reach out to distances to which it had never gone before.
But in the early hours of one unreal, white night he passed away—the tide of his life having reached back to the deeps.
Written in
Regent Square, London, WC1.
Revised in
Sukhrali, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
March 1971
PRIVATE LIFE OF AN INDIAN PRINCE
Author’s Note
The neutral ‘I’ of the first person singular has tended, in this book, to become a character in his own right. Most writers know how a character in a novel sometimes takes control and runs away with the story. The author has been content to allow Dr Shankar to take possession of the narrative, as well as become Sancho Panza to the Prince’s Don Quixote. Therefore the ‘I’ in this novel is not to be mistaken for the author, who has reverted to the Indian tradition of anonymity and looks on, like Siva’s searing third eye, at the unfolding of this tragi-comedy.
Part 1
I WAS DEEP IN SIESTA IN MY ROOM IN THE ANNEXE OF SHAM PUR LODGE ON the afternoon of a rainy day, when Munshi Mithan Lal, ex-tutor but now Private Secretary to His Highness, came in and twisted the toes of my feet to wake me up. I came to, rather red-eyed and startled. I saw that Munshiji was in a state of great perturbation. He was pale and dishevelled and very tense. His usually immaculate, milk-white, well-starched turban was wrapped anyhow on his head. His thick spectacles were misted with the fumes of rain and perspiration that flowed down from his quivering, pock-marked face to his neck and the soggy clothes on his heavy torso. His breathing was disturbed as though he had been running
up hill and down dale for hours.
‘What’s the matter, Munshiji?’ I asked him as I waited for him to recapture his breath. I vaguely guessed that one of those things had happened to His Highness which always happened to His Highness. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was this time, because anything, any of a thousand different things, could have happened to our prince, especially in the incalculable state of mind in which he had been ever since he was asked to sign the Instrument of Accession to the ‘free India’ a few months ago.
‘Have you seen His Highness? . . . Has he been here?’ Munshi Mithan Lal asked me in short gasps. His small, round eyes, behind glasses, were lit up with an abject terror.
‘No,’ I said, ‘why?’
‘His Highness cannot be found,’ he said. ‘He is lost.’ And he waved his hand in a gesture of despair.
‘He is lost all right,’ I said cynically. Then I felt a ripple of tenderness for Munshi Mithan Lal go through me, as, indeed, I had often felt this tremor in my flesh in his presence, ever since I had first seen him in my youth. For there was something of Dostoevsky’s ‘Idiot’ about him that made him a pathetically lonely person in Sham Pur State and certainly completely out of place in His Highness’s personal entourage. ‘Do sit down,’ I said, relenting.
‘I am undone! I shall be ruined!’ began Munshi Mithan Lal, now with tears in his eyes. ‘His Highness disappeared immediately after breakfast this morning. I thought he must have gone out riding. But Bhagirath, the bearer, says he hasn’t seen him. Then I thought that he might have gone out for a walk on the Mall or the Ridge with Captain Partap Singh. But Partap Singh came back to lunch after shopping in Lower Bazaar without His Highness. As he did not turn up for the midday meal I began to worry. I wanted to come and tell you when you sent for your food to be brought here, but then I thought why should I spoil your bhojan. It has been raining heavily and he must have got drenched, because he went out without his mackintosh. Mrs Russell, in the flat below, is also frantic, because her daughter has not returned from school.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 51