Though Zora Singh was known to be religious, he also had the reputation of being a womanizer. Some people found this hard to believe. Whenever Zora and his wife Eeshran went to parties, he had his arm around her shoulder. He always introduced her as ‘my better half’ or ‘my Home Minister’ in a tone as though he had invented these terms. He paid her all the attention a loving husband would to his wife. Eeshran never had any complaints, nor indeed did she believe that he could ever be unfaithful to her. He was an ideal husband, and a good father to their two sons. She did not resent his going to all-male mujra parties where the only women present were professional dancing and singing girls. At the end of the evening the host offered the pick of the girls to Zora, as he was usually the most important guest. Zora was too much of a gentleman to refuse the honour; he spent an hour with the girl in the room assigned to them. Eeshran never complained. After all, mujras were a hallowed Indian tradition and never regarded by Indian women as a violation of their matrimonial rights.
Deepo, however, was a different matter.
Deepo was the wife of Zora’s office peon, Tota Singh, who had been run over and killed by a speeding truck while on his way home one evening. Zora had heard of his having left behind a young widow and two children. Apart from the compensation given to her by the court, Zora had her employed as a cleaning woman-cum-chaprasi in his office and allowed her to carry on living in the staff quarters allotted to her late husband. Deepo had passed her tenth standard exam and could sign her name on mail that required acknowledgement of receipt. She was twenty-five, and dark and strongly built, like any Punjabi peasant girl. She had taken her husband’s death very badly and was often seen wiping her tears with her dupatta while sitting on the stool outside the Sahib’s office. Zora felt very sorry for her and was very concerned. Two months after the tragedy he called on her in the staff quarters with toys for her sons. He meant to offer Deepo some paternal advice on what to do with her life. ‘Deepo, you are still very young. Why don’t you get married again?’ he asked tenderly.
‘Sahibji, who will marry a widow with two children? I can’t even bear children any more—both Tota and I had our nasbandi after our second child. Who will want to marry a barren woman?’
Deepo sat down on her haunches, put her head on Zora’s feet and sobbed, ‘Sahibji, I have no one left in the world besides you. And I have nothing to give in return for your kindness. I feel ashamed. You are my God and provider, I am your servant. I can only render seva to you.’
Deepo’s boys were out playing with their new toys. Zora was overcome with emotion. He bolted the door from the inside and took a very willing Deepo on her creaking charpai.
This became a weekly routine. Deepo awaited the Sahib’s two words: ‘Aj shaam, this evening.’ She would go home early, take a bath, send the boys out to play and await her lord and master. On Zora’s part it was kindness towards a helpless widow, who might otherwise have become easy prey to other men’s lust or turned into a harlot. For Deepo, it was giving thanks to a man who provided for her and her family.
It would have been unfair to malign Zora as a womanizer on this count.
There was also much gossip about Zora having promoted men in his department after they had made their wives accessible to him. But he never put any pressure on his subordinates to bring their wives to him. They came of their own accord—often to pay their respects to his wife Eeshran, as was customary—and if he happened to be at home at the time, plead with him to keep a kindly eye on their husbands’ future. From the coquettish way some of these women behaved it was clear to Zora that neither they nor their husbands would be averse to his obliging them. So he would call on the women in the afternoons when their husbands were in the office and their children at school. One visit or two was all he paid them, then promoted their husbands or transferred them to posts they desired. It caused no heartache or ill will except to those who were superseded, and it was they who went around spreading the ugly rumour that Zora helped only those whose wives he had slept with. This was only partially true, and did not justify his being labelled a womanizer—certainly not in his own eyes, nor in the eyes of his wife Eeshran, who looked upon her husband as a godsend: manly, handsome, capable, kind, god-loving, noble, and one who did his ‘homework’, as he called it, whenever she wanted it done.
Zora had done no harm to anyone and was often puzzled when he heard that people spread nasty stories about him. One evening at the Golf Club, one of the four he played with remarked in a jocular manner, ‘Zora, you are the biggest chaar sau bees I’ve ever met in my life.’ The fellow had just lost a lot of money to Zora and his partner (Zora almost always won because he was a good golfer with a low handicap and had a ball-spotter—aageyvaala—who discreetly moved the ball with his foot from an awkward lie to the top of a tuft of grass). The remark stung him. He pondered on it on his way home and was somewhat depressed. He told Eeshran about it. She tried to cheer him up. ‘Take no notice of what that foul-mouthed fellow says; it’s just envy. See where he is today, close to retirement and only an executive engineer. And you still have six or seven years left in service and are chief engineer—the first Indian to become one! He burns with jealousy. I spit on his face—thhoo!’
There was much to envy about Zora Singh. His father had raised money to send him to the Imperial Engineering College in London to get a degree where he had been an instant hit with his fellow students and professors. He’d played field hockey, cricket and tennis for his college, and had been good at his studies. He was elected president of his college union. To his Indian friends he gave good advice: ‘If you want to get on with the English, follow the rule of three Fs: fuck, feed and flatter.’ He did his share of the first; he was generous when it came to buying beer for his friends; and he had a honeyed tongue and was subtle in his compliments—he sensed that the English were put off by blatant flattery. He got his engineering degree and sat for the competitive exam for the Imperial Engineering Service the first year it was thrown open to Indians. Some examiners were from his college, two of them on the panel of interviewers. He was the only candidate, English or Indian, to be awarded full marks in the viva voce. He sailed into the Imperial Service; the two other Indians who made the grade were way behind him.
So Zora began his career as an engineer in India receiving the same salary and fringe benefits as his English colleagues. Like all bachelors in the ICS he was greatly sought after by those who had marriageable daughters. His parents arranged his marriage with the only daughter of the leading Sikh lawyer of Lahore. The one condition they put to the girl’s parents, very subtly, was that they expected to be compensated for the money they had spent on their son’s education in England. This was readily agreed to. After a lavish wedding, Eeshran moved into a small government bungalow allotted to her husband and furnished by her parents, in a sparsely inhabited upcoming town which was to become the capital of India, New Delhi.
Zora and Eeshran were well-matched and shared much in common. Most important was attachment to their faith, Sikhism. Eeshran brought a copy of the holy scripture, the Granth Sahib, as part of her dowry. Zora set up a prayer room in which it was installed on a lectern-shaped desk and draped with expensive silk. They called it Babaji da Kamra, the room of the Holy Father. Though Zora proclaimed loudly that Sikhism disapproved of idol worship, he and his wife revered their holy book much the same way as Hindus did their idols. During the summer they had the ceiling fan whirring round the clock; during winter they wrapped the Granth in cashmere shawls. They did not regard it as idol worship but as respect due to a book of profound spiritual wisdom. They took turns opening the book in the early hours of the morning and reading a few pages from it. They put it to rest before they had their evening meal. On his way to the office, Zora dropped Eeshran off at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. An hour later his car came to take her home. In the evenings they went to Lodhi Gardens for a brisk walk. Wherever they were invited they went together, and to all the world they seemed to be living examples of th
e perfect married couple—ek jyot duey moortee, one light in two bodies.
Zora got on very well with his English colleagues and bosses. He was good at his work and a hard taskmaster when it came to dealing with building contractors. There were hundreds of things to be built before New Delhi was fit to be the capital of India—new roads, clerks’ and officers’ flats, bridges across the river Yamuna, an airport, railway stations, secretariats, a Parliament House and Viceregal lodge, among other things. Building contracts were up for grabs. Zora scrutinized all the tenders made by contractors, lowered the figures and paid regular visits to the construction sites. Contractors were eager to be on his right side. Gora Sahibs did not accept bribes—and what Zora took were not bribes but his commission, as did all his Indian subordinates, without compromising on the quality of the work. This was not regarded as corruption; it was, as Zora put it, Ooperwaley di deyn, a gift from above. It added up to more than ten times his salary every month. And it was tax free.
The sahibs knew that Indians took commissions and that Zora was no exception. But while they looked down on the others with contempt they treated Zora with respect. He was a go-getter and got things done on time. He did not grovel before them as other Indians did but behaved with dignity and kept a respectable distance from them. On Christmas Day, when others came loaded with baskets of goodies and crates of Scotch, their gifts were grudgingly accepted but the chaprasis were ordered to send them away. Zora, on the other hand, who only brought one bottle, was invited to share a drink.
Zora got promotions out of turn. Before he was thirty he was made superintending engineer and conferred the title of Sardar Sahib. Five years later he was made executive engineer and conferred the title of Sardar Bahadur. By then he had bought three plots of land which were available at very low prices. On one he built a large house for his years after retirement, then two others to earn rental income to supplement his pension. The houses cost him almost nothing. Building contractors who were obliged to him provided labour and material free of cost. He designed the houses and supervised their building in his spare time. He did not rob anyone of their honestly earned money, only allowed people who owed their prosperity to him to pay their debts of gratitude.
As time drew near for the British to leave India, people began to say that the days of Zora’s prosperity were numbered. They were mistaken. Zora was elected president of the Imperial Golf Club and the Gymkhana Club—not by the English but by a majority of Indian members. He had hoped that before they departed the British would confer a knighthood on him as they had on a succession of Englishmen who had become Chief Engineers. He was disappointed when, in the final honours list issued by them, he found he had been fobbed off with a mere OBE. Indians no longer cared for Sardar Sahibs and Sardar Bahadurs, and most didn’t even know what OBE or CIE stood for, but a Sir was a Sir and they all respected that—whether they were lackeys of the British or followers of Gandhi.
Those who were certain that a man like Zora would be cut to size as soon as India had its own government, were in for a surprise. Zora knew his countrymen better than they. The day the name of the Minister of Works was announced, Zora was amongst the dozens who called on him to pay his respects. When he was shown in he touched the Minister’s feet and said, ‘Your humble servant’s name is Zora Singh. I am your Chief Engineer of public works. Sir, it will be my privilege to work under your guidance. Your wish will be my command.’
The Minister sized him up, looking from turban to toe, before he responded. ‘Zora Singhji, I have gone through your personal file. It is very favourable. You are said to be a good worker who does the task assigned to him before schedule. We have a lot of new buildings to make. Colonies for millions of refugees who have been driven out of Pakistan, new commercial centres and what not. You must see me every day to report on the progress you are making. I don’t want the Prime Minister to have any complaints against any department in my Ministry.’
Zora also sized up his Minister. He was an ugly, dark man with thick lips and podgy fingers, on four of which he wore gold rings studded with precious stones prescribed by his astrologer. He was from Orissa, and the only one of his tribe to have gone to college. Being from an underprivileged community he freely enjoyed the special privileges generously bestowed on him by the Gandhi-inspired government.
The Minister was known to have quite an appetite for women. It was said that when he had been Health Minister in Orissa, he wanted a nurse or a lady doctor every evening while he toured the districts. And when he became Education Minister it was a lady teacher. Now he was in the Centre heading a ministry that had no women officers. Perhaps, Zora thought, he could arrange for one of the girls from the typing pool to go to the Minister’s house for dictation whenever he so desired. After all, what the Minister wanted every woman had—whether she was a gazetted officer, a typist or a sweeperess. Zora had this at the back of his mind when he replied, ‘Sir, I give you my word there will be no complaints against my department.’
Zora went about his work with greater zeal than ever before. Hundreds of contractors had to be engaged. They knew the rules of the game. For every building they paid a commission to Zora and his subordinates. Once a week Zora carried an envelope containing currency notes of a lakh or more and quietly put it on the Minister’s table. Nothing was said about the contents of the envelope. Zora knew that the Minister wanted cash to fight his elections and keep his family in comfort. Since the Minister could not clear his desk of files before he left for home in the evening, Zora ordered the head of the typing pool to send one of the girls to the Minister’s house after dinner, to take dictation. He did not let his Minister down. The Minister also stood by him. When the government of independent India introduced honours, Zora was among the first to be awarded a Padma Vibhushan.
More honours followed. Zora was unanimously elected president of the Delhi Gurdwara Committee and headed the many schools, colleges and hospitals run by it. He organized an international Sikh conference to which he invited Sikhs who had been highly successful in various fields: one owned a whiskey distillery in the Highlands, another a historic castle in Ireland which came with a peerage, a few had become Members of the British and the Canadian Parliaments, one had made it to the American Congress, a few were judges of high courts of different countries and there were a dozen or more who had risen from nothing to become millionaires. Zora got his Minister to persuade the Prime Minister to inaugurate the three-day conference. Foreign participants were honoured with shawls, yellow turbans and kirpans. For three days the World Sikh Conference made the front pages of Indian newspapers.
Zora had not done all this for nothing. He discreetly managed to get the richest and most famous American Sikh to say something about his service to the community at the concluding session. After Zora had made his final oration lauding the great contribution of the Sikhs to the prosperity and defence of India, the American NRI spoke on behalf of the foreign delegates. He presented Zora a silver kirpan with a handle made of gold studded with precious stones. Zora drew it out of its sheath and shouted the Sikh war cry, ‘Boley so Nihaal!’ The crowd responded, ‘Sat Sri Akaal.’ The American NRI concluded his speech with words addressed to Zora Singh: ‘I know I am expressing the sentiments of the entire Sikh community living in India and abroad when I say, Zora Singh, we honour you with the title of Panth Rattan—Jewel of the Khalsa nation.’
There was a thunderous applause with resounding cries of ‘Boley so Nihal; Sat Sri Akaal!’ Zora Singh was overcome with emotion. He joined the palms of his hands and bowed deeply. There were tears streaming down his face.
*
Zora had one year left for retirement. His sons were, as they say, gainfully employed, one as manager of a large tea estate in Assam with a huge bungalow and a big salary, the other as an executive with a British-Marwari firm producing and marketing paints. They had said they would choose their own wives. Though neither Zora nor his wife believed in the caste system, they hoped the girls they married
would be from good Jat Sikh families like theirs. Eeshran also looked forward to moving into the home Zora had built and spending their remaining days in prayer, going on pilgrimages to historic Sikh shrines and listening to keertan.
Zora had other plans.
Next to the Prime Minister, his Minister was the most powerful man in the cabinet and informally acknowledged as the PM’s deputy. He presided over cabinet meetings when the Prime Minister was visiting foreign countries, which was often. The Minister owed a lot to Zora for keeping him afloat in politics. In return he had done his best to promote Zora professionally. They were no longer Minister and civil servant but what people called jigree dost, the closest of friends.
Zora gave his Minister an expensive birthday gift every year. This year he decided to outdo himself. He went to the leading jewellers in the city and asked them to make a special ring for him—platinum with a blue star-sapphire, the largest and best they had. It cost almost five lakhs. He paid for it in cash. Before he quit office, Zora had one last favour to ask of his friend.
There was always a large crowd to wish the Minister on his birthday. Zora told the secretary he would like to see the Minister alone. He was told to come at 6.30 p.m., when all the others would have left and it was time for the Minister to go home. Zora arrived a few minutes before the appointed time and was ushered into the Minister’s retiring room. He heard the Minister thank his many well-wishers and bid them farewell. When he came into his private room to pick up some files Zora was there waiting for him. They embraced each other warmly. ‘Mubarak! Mubarak! May you live another hundred years,’ thundered Zora with great feeling, ‘the country needs a man like you at the helm to march towards prosperity.’
Paradise and Other Stories Page 8