So Raman’s mother had laid her arm next to Lakshmi’s and glanced down surreptitiously at their touching skins on the inside of their elbows, where the real color was, and found them to match. Actually, Lakshmi had been just a shade lighter, but it boded well for future children.
Mila and Ashok took after Raman, lighter hued than their father, but still dark enough to be called coffee colored. Kiran had delighted his grandmother and his mother.
Raman knew that a lot of his ideas about Lakshmi were long dead, that they would not have fit the living woman, that had she lived, she would probably have been very much like Pallavi in restrictions imposed on Mila. But he had been in love with the idea of Lakshmi—of a wife, rather—before he married her. On him had not been the onus of choice, the fear of disappointment or subsequent distress; that responsibility belonged to the elders of the family who had decided whom he would marry. Lakshmi had satisfied his ego, for all love—despite popular opinion—is not selfless at its very beginning. Raman fell into love with his wife because she took good care of him, tended to his wants before hers, and thought of him at every turn. He reciprocated with a gentleness and intensity. Over the years she loved him deeply too, in every sense of the word, for what had begun for her in an emotion tied to duty blossomed under his care.
He had known, when he married Lakshmi, that she was not particularly intelligent, in the way that men were taught to be; nor educated—she had failed her fourth standard exams and had never tired her brain after that; that she would not fit into his ICS world with its so-British drinking and clubs and parties. He had still loved her, knowing all of this about her. It was a simple love, based on joy and laughter, and few expectations. Lakshmi might not have known how to drink a gin and tonic at the club and still keep her head, but she knew what made Raman happy.
Yet he wanted Mila to be different. He wanted her to ride and read and drive and make her own choices. It was a radical way of thinking. Raman had not been brought up thus—he had been taught to respect his elders unquestioningly, to defer to their judgments, to believe as they did. But he had also seen too many men make the sudden leap from believer to elder when their time came, with no originality of thought, no allowed period of transition, no making of mistakes, and certainly no redeeming of them. Raman wanted Kiran, Mila, and Ashok to make their own mistakes.
“Papa.”
Raman looked up. “Come in, Kiran.”
He watched as his oldest child came into the room and sat down on the chair opposite him. Kiran swung his legs over one of the chair’s arms, leaned his back against the other, and smiled at his father. Raman had always wanted a daughter, always, even though his society told him that it was important to have sons as a crutch in old age—someone to set light to the funeral pyre to send his father’s bodily remains to heaven, someone to perform those sacred rituals that would help his father’s soul gain eventual absolution. Even so, Mila, his second child, had been the fulfillment of a desire. But Raman had not been ready for the ambush of love he had felt when Kiran was born. He had taken after Lakshmi in everything, his huge, heavily lashed eyes, the moonlight sheen to his skin, the gloss in his hair. He had looked so different that Raman had felt as though he was a caretaker to an adopted child, not one made from his body. But the force of love had come that first morning.
Now Kiran had grown into a tall (another facet of Lakshmi’s family) and handsome young man, and Raman felt that same sense of early surprise that he had made this child.
“Where were you last night?” Raman asked. “You came home late.”
Kiran straightened in the chair, and a bit of stubbornness firmed his mouth. “With the Rifles.”
“At their club?”
“Yes.”
Raman began to shake his head and stopped himself in time, but he could not seem to stop his words. “Kiran, you must think of doing something. How long can you be here? What do you want to do? Tell me, we can figure this out together.”
“I did not come here for a lecture, Papa,” Kiran muttered.
“Why then?” Raman asked. “For money? Have you run out?”
A flush began on Kiran’s neck and rushed upward to the roots of his hair. So he had come for money, Raman thought. Why could he not make some on his own? At his age, Raman had been married for a good eight years, had a child already, Mila was on the way, and he had been well settled in the ICS. Kiran had returned from England after failing his ICS examinations for the second time. The money, the expense, was nothing compared to the shame of failure, and Raman felt it keenly. More so than Kiran, he thought with a prick of irritation, who spent all of his time drinking beer and gimlets at the Rifles’ clubhouse or at the Victoria Club. It was not just Kiran’s reputation, it was not Kiran’s reputation—Raman amended in his head—that was at stake. It was Raman’s. Kiran was too young to possess something as lofty as a name; his only designation was as the political agent’s son; why could he not have passed his examinations? Kiran was not stupid.
“I hate to beg, Papa—,” Kiran began.
“Then don’t.”
Kiran reddened again and his body grew slack in the chair. He did not even know how to sit in front of his father, Raman thought. Perhaps he had been too easy with his children in giving them choices in their lives. Perhaps the old ways were right after all. For Raman there had been no option other than the ICS. But it was ridiculous to talk of the ICS as though it was the last option; it was the best option in India. The civil servants were the heaven born, nominated by God to rule the common. For Raman it had been the fulfillment of a dream. He was finally a sahib. A brown sahib, but a sahib nonetheless. How could Kiran not have wanted this?
“You are not unintelligent, Kiran,” Raman said slowly. “How did you manage to fail the examinations?”
“I didn’t fail the written examinations,” Kiran said, finally heated enough to swing his legs back on the floor and sit up in his chair. “It was the damn viva voce, to test my ‘alertness, intelligence, and general intellectual outlook.’ What a bloody crock that was. It was one chap who did me in. The others were kind.”
“Don’t swear,” Raman said. “Who was he?”
“I can’t remember his name now. Some history master from Balliol. I don’t think he had ever been to India, and only knew of it academically. But he had connections and that got him on the board.”
“What did he ask you?”
“How does it matter now?” Kiran’s voice was bitter. “There’s no going back, is there?” He went on. “He wanted to know if Jai was truly loyal to the empire’s interests, if Raja Bhimsen wasn’t a manipulative bastard in getting Jai instated as heir, if he wasn’t a bigger bastard in getting you to Rudrakot. He wanted to know if I had my finger on the pulse of Rudrakot’s politics. I told him where I thought my finger should go.”
They were silent for a long while and Raman felt a flood of anger inside him. In the end, it had come to this. Because Kiran was his son, because there was still a great deal of upset over Raman’s appointment to Rudrakot, Kiran had not passed his viva, his interview. In all fairness, Raman thought, even in the midst of his rage, Kiran did not know how to control either his tongue or his emotions. Vivas were meant to be chatty and polite. A little deference, a great deal of platitudes, some answers that sounded intelligent, whatever they might actually be, a shaking of hands. Do your job there, get out of the room, become an ICS officer. The viva was a formality at best, not meant to fail candidates for the ICS. He let Kiran’s last sentence pass away, mostly because he did not quite understand it, and because he thought it was something rude that he did not want explained. Where had Kiran learned such language?
“What are you going to do today?” he asked in a gentler voice than he had so far used with his son.
Kiran shook his head sullenly, a heavy cast of dark over his face. “I do not know.”
“Mila and Ashok have gone to the mela with our guest. You should go too.”
“It’s at the club?�
�
“Yes, the Victoria.”
Kiran glanced up at his father. “Who is this Sam Hawthorne?”
“He is here to recuperate from injuries sustained on his flight from Burma last month,” Raman said. “I know little else about him. He has been quiet so far.”
A little smile lit up Kiran’s mouth and eyes, and Raman felt a deluge of love. How lovely he looked when he smiled, more now than ever, since he smiled so much less. “You took him in, then, Papa? You have always had a propensity for sentimentality and nonsense. This Hawthorne chap could have stayed at the club.”
Raman shrugged. “I like him. He is different somehow, engaging.”
“When does Jai return?”
“In a month, I think. I heard from him yesterday.”
“I’ll go,” Kiran said, rising from his chair. He leaned over and offered his hand to his father and Raman clasped it with his own and then, briefly, held it against his chest and patted it with his left hand.
“Ask Sayyid to give you something from the money box,” he said.
“Thank you, Papa.”
When Kiran had left, Sayyid came in with the tea tray and a plate of scones with butter and orange marmalade. Raman ate and drank slowly, not minding that the chai cooled in its cup, for it was only his morning coffee that got his heated devotion.
At least, he thought, there were no further embarrassments to come from his children. Kiran would find his way; he would help him. Would Ashok eventually consider the ICS too? How splendid it would be to have two sons, both his sons, in the service. How his fellow officers would admire him. Then, perhaps, Kiran and Ashok would have sons too who would follow their grandfather’s example and join the service. They could be a family of ICS officers with a lengthy tradition.
Raman put his teacup down and bit into a scone. He had little idea of how his own years in the service were going to come to an end. Here they were, in 1942, but a few years at most from independence from the Raj. The ICS was comprised mostly of British officers, and they would all leave when India wrenched herself away from British rule. Who would be left then? A few old-timers like him, a new bunch of upstart recruits with nothing like the pukka sahib’s love for the country, or sense of the people, or immersion in their districts’ problems—it did not bode well even for Raman, let alone Kiran or Ashok.
This life, his life, was built by a British institution, nurtured and nourished by it; Raman had become a sahib in this best of traditions in India, which was, after all a British construct—how would it restructure itself in an independent India? The ICS upheld India, it was India, he had always thought. Who would take the places of those who would leave? And never once, in all of his years in the ICS, had he felt an intruder or a misfit on the basis of the color of his skin. He knew his presence was resented at Rudrakot as a political agent, but only because he sliced away a part of the resident’s duties, because it was unusual for a princely state to have both positions serving the same need. The British were fair masters though—else he would not be here in Rudrakot. Why did the freedom fighters not see all this change, why did they insist upon complete freedom?
The truth was, Raman thought sadly, that Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Nehru were hurtling them all toward an ideology, a dogma that sounded and seemed nice enough but would not translate quite so easily into practice for all of their rhetoric. Raman’s loyalties lay with his king, in England, and to India, which was after all a part of the crown, the jewel in Britain’s crown, according to Churchill. Why couldn’t they just remain as they were? Why insist upon independence? There was some semblance of equality. Raman had achieved this, after all.
Raman did not think India was ready for democracy, not yet anyway. He did not consider the masses to be educated enough to make their own decisions, in any democratic fashion, without being influenced by one source or another. The well builder who came to him today had had a very specific and seemingly trivial request—keep his well water clean—but to him it was a problem of gargantuan proportions. Why would he care in the future about the value of his vote? Or that it would elect a leader for his thronging country? His entire life had been lived in Nodi, and his allegiance would extend only to those who administered his village; for him, the geography of India was Nodi.
In the most honest moments of this wrenching discourse in his head, Raman also had to admit his greatest fear was that democracy would shatter his carefully cultivated bureaucracy.
Now there were mild rumblings of the nationalist movement in Rudrakot also, in the shape and form of earnest young men and women who went, ostensibly, to an “exercise camp” for their health, but in reality to gather and rouse each other in the name of Mr. Gandhi.
At Annadale College a few months ago, Raman had watched a demonstration from inside the grounds, along with the principal, Mr. Stokes, and the chief inspector of Rudrakot. The shouts rose and died out over a period of two hours. Send them home, I say, a young man had called out, and was answered by a huge yes. India is for Indians; we do not want their like here. And Tilak’s doctrine, taken and adopted firmly into the freedom movement: Swaraj is my birthright. Self-rule. Self-rule, they shouted, let us rule ourselves, by ourselves. Go Home. Quit India, would come later that year, but those latter two phrases were already in the consciousness of all Indians. Then they had begun to sing “Vandemataram” in praise of India.
I bow to thee, Mother
Richly watered, richly fruited, cool with the winds of the south
Dark with the crops of harvests, Mother!
Nights rejoicing in the glory of moonlight
Lands clothed beautifully with trees in flowering bloom
Sweet of laughter, sweet of speech
O Mother, giver of boons, giver of bliss!
Their voices had been hoarse and sweet together, mostly men’s voices, a few higher-pitched women’s voices interspersed in between. Raman, enclosed in Stokes’s office, the windows open toward the gates so they could hear what was being said, even if they could not see or be seen (for security reasons), was overwhelmed as his heart swelled to stifle within his chest. Tears caught in his throat when he heard the words, made him feel whole with the crowd outside. Then the song died down, the man on the gatepost began to yell invectives, the police constables toppled him off into the crowd, and then the students went home.
But they had all learned something that March morning in Rudrakot from the thousand-strong throng outside Annadale College—that the nationalist movement was here to stay in 1942, that it had been growing unfettered in the exercise camps without their knowledge, that it was a threat needing to be checked.
At least, Raman thought, his children were not involved. Kiran, with his self-imposed idleness, was in danger of having his head turned, but Kiran was too much like his father; he would never join the movement. Mila and Ashok were enigmas of sorts—idleness would not draw them into nationalism, conviction would. But they were safe for now…unless that boy Vimal, who was tutored with Ashok, approached him. But there could be little opportunity for a meeting, Raman hoped.
Putting away all this, he sat sipping his cold chai and munching on his scones. He would leave early tomorrow morning, while the night was old but not yet dead, at two o’clock or three o’clock, and he would ride in the dark to catch what little cool there was in the air. As the sun rose, they could stop for a breakfast. When Raman had been a young assistant collector on tour, Sayyid had thrown fabulous curry omelets on a smoking cast-iron tava: eggs whipped with a fork with milk and a pinch of sugar; slivers of red onions; whole leaves of coriander; one garlic clove, plump and pungent when crushed; a sprinkling of cumin powder; ground peppercorns. His mouth watered. Sayyid would toast the bread slices in the same ghee used to cook the omelet and bring the whole, hot and steaming, to Raman. This is what he remembered most about being in camp, the breakfasts under a canopy of fading stars accompanied by the song of birds. Surely, Pankhurst would not mind if Raman took over this little duty of his.
S
o Raman ruminated with pleasure on the next day. Many, many years later he would know for certain that he should not have gone from Rudrakot to Nodi, that he was needed at home, that Pallavi would not be strong enough to resist Mila’s pleas or Ashok’s tantrums. That his children, because of that one night and day, would hurl the paths of their lives away from him, break that umbilical cord that connected them to him as surely as if a midwife had gnawed through it with a knife. Raman would never regret knowing Sam Hawthorne, and so would never be remorseful that he had invited him to stay in his house when he could very well have bunked at the Victoria Club. Raman believed in karma, in a fate that etched the lives of men and women into stone well before they were born. Sam Hawthorne, he considered a karma for them all. They were meant to know him.
But he did wish in later years, when he was old and grizzled, confined to an easy chair in the verandah, two grandchildren on his lap, their fragrant heads resting on his chest as he told them stories, that the gap left by Mila’s child could be filled too. That the granddaughter he had known for only a short time after her birth would come to lay her face against his, wind her arms around his neck, kiss him and call him thatha—grandfather. If she had stayed on with them, they would have used one of her Indian names, but in America, she was called Olivia.
Unknowing of how fate was to unravel all of their lives, Raman put down his teacup and called Sayyid into his office to talk with him about packing his clothes.
Thirteen
They didn’t come from very good families at all. They married for the sake of marrying, I suppose, and companionship. And they became very haughty. They had dozens of servants, though they never had one servant in England; and they thought every one of us was servant class…I remember once at a gathering one Englishwoman turned to me and said: “Oh, what beautiful English you talk.” I said: “Really? I’m surprised you acknowledge it. After all, we educated Indians talk English all the time. Thank you for noticing, but it’s not a compliment.”
The Splendor of Silence Page 18