In his first years, he was posted in the districts, far from New Delhi and from what he considered civilization. At this time his wife – her name was Diana – was especially dear to him. She was as mild and pastel as the English landscape he had learned to love. She was also fair-minded in the English way, careful to make no judgements and entertain no prejudices. When he returned home to her, often angry and defeated from his day’s work, she tried to speak up for the corrupt police chief or the moneylender who so disgusted him. She told him he was applying foreign values to a society that had worked out its own arrangements, with which no one had the right to interfere. When he answered that it was his job to interfere, she had her arguments ready – after all, she had from her schooldays been taught to evaluate and debate all sides of a question. He didn’t want to debate anything; he only wanted to be with her and kiss her rosy lips and run his fingers through her silky light brown hair.
The advantage of being posted to an outlying district was the allotment of spacious living quarters. Their house dated from the 1920s, when it had been occupied by the British holder of TC’s present position. Although it was called a bungalow, it was very large with many rooms, each with a bathroom that had its own back door for the use of the sweeper. The kitchen was at a distance from the main house, but that didn’t matter since Diana rarely had to enter it. The cook came to her sitting-room for orders; and the bearer who served their meals knew how to keep the dishes hot while transporting them across the passage to the dining-room. In winter they had a fire lit by which they sat with their books – he read mostly history, she poetry and novels; in the hot weather they enjoyed evenings on the veranda, though when storms blew in from the desert, they retreated inside with all the doors and windows shut against the dust. This nevertheless entered through every crevice and seeped deep into their books and their carpets and their curtains, insinuating itself forever into the texture of their lives.
For the rest of her days, Diana yearned for the districts of their early years. To her, it had been a recognisable India. The English bungalow was like those her ancestors had occupied as members of the Indian civil service; it was they who had planted the grounds with seeds brought from Kent and Surrey, and they who lay in the neglected cemeteries of the small Christian churches surviving among temples, mosques and brand-new shrines. Diana never felt foreign here: although she lived in the bungalow with the English garden as in an oasis, the surrounding fields of sugar cane or yellow mustard were known and familiar to her, as were the women with loads on their heads and silver jewellery round their ankles, the wells and the bullocks circling them, and the holy man under a tree with offerings of sweets and marigolds at his feet.
TC had joined the service a few years after Independence, when all the higher ranks had been vacated by the British. Consequently, he and his colleagues were promoted much faster than earlier or later generations, and it was not too many years before he reached the higher ranks of the bureaucracy. TC was by no means a typical bureaucrat. He was ready to bend rules when necessary; he was also decisive and quick to act in accordance with his own independent thinking. There was nothing ponderous about him – even physically he remained flexible, supple, and always looked younger than his age. This was in part due to his heritage: before serving the British, his ancestors had served the Moghul court. There may have been some admixture of blood, for they mostly had the fine limbs and features of Muslim aristocrats instead of the heavy build of their own Hindu caste. He and Diana made a not dissimilar impression, both of them slender and fair, she like an Anglo-Saxon and he with what was known as the wheat complexion of an upper-class North Indian.
Their son Romesh was born in 1959, ten years into their marriage. He was completely different from either of them. Much darker and heavier than his father, he appeared to be a throwback to the original strains of Hindu ancestry. He was their only child, but he grew away from them very quickly. He was uncontrollable as a schoolboy, and for a while showed some criminal tendencies – he stole cars and freely took money from his mother’s purse when he needed it. But this turned out to be only an assertion of his independence, which later showed itself in other ways. He refused to go to England to study but enrolled in business school in the US. He stayed abroad for several years, and when he returned, he had already established himself as a businessman operating on an international scale, travelling widely in the Middle East as well as in Thailand and Singapore. When he was at home in New Delhi, he fitted in completely, an integral member of young society, enjoying the clubs, the parties and the girls.
At the peak of his career, TC became the Principal Secretary of his ministry and was transferred to the central government in New Delhi. Diana never felt comfortable in New Delhi. They had been allotted a large official Lutyens residence from the 1930s, but they didn’t do much entertaining in it. There was something puritanical in Diana, which made her uncomfortable at the lavish dinner parties given with such relish by the other wives of their circle. All of these were Indian and had kept their looks, and from beautiful girls had flourished into magnificent women. Their skin glowed, their eyes shone, their hair had become an even deeper black than in their youth. They loved shawls and jewellery and complimented one another on each new acquisition. But when they said something nice about whatever Diana was wearing, it was in the sweet voice in which people tell polite lies. Diana never wore saris; she didn’t have the hips or bosom to carry them. Her frocks were very simple, sewn by a tailor in the bazaar; she avoided bright colours, knowing they didn’t suit her complexion, which by now had the sallow tint of someone who for many years had had to shield herself from the Indian sun.
She also felt uncomfortable with her New Delhi servants. These were very different from the cooks and bearers and ayahs with whom she had had such friendly relations in the districts. Her new staff were far more sophisticated and she was rather afraid of them. Although they called her Memsahib, she felt that they didn’t regard her as a real memsahib, not like the other wives who knew how to give orders with authority. Reluctant to give any trouble, Diana sometimes surreptitiously dusted a sideboard or polished a piece of silver herself. If they caught her at it, her servants would take it away from her – ‘No, Memsahib, this is our work.’ She suspected that they commiserated with one another for being employed by such an inadequate person.
For TC, New Delhi came up entirely to his expectations. He loved being near the seat of power, to influence and even to formulate the decisions of his Minister. In the course of his tenure, the government changed several times, and while the Minister lost his position, TC kept his and was able to put his experience at the disposal of his new chief. Of course there were difficulties – the intrigues and manoeuvres he had already encountered in the districts, now on a magnified scale – but these were compensated for by the satisfaction he derived from his New Delhi social life. He had known many of his colleagues from their earliest days in the service, and now at the height of their careers, they had remained in a bond of friendship which included their wives and families.
One of the most energetic hostesses in their set was Pushpa, whom TC had known from their college days. He had even dated her for a while, and it amused her to refer to that early aborted romance. By now she was married to Bobby, who was TC’s colleague and the Principal Secretary in another ministry; husband and wife were both fat and jolly and could always be relied on to give what they called a rousing good party. Pushpa’s buffet table was loaded with succulent dishes, which were mostly too spicy for Diana. Pushpa scolded her for being so thin – Diana was almost gaunt now – and Pushpa accused TC, ‘You’re starving the poor girl.’ Then she added, ‘I know what it is – you don’t want her to become fat like me.’ She loved to call herself the girl he dumped: ‘You think I’m only good enough for someone like Bobby who is as fat and ugly as I am!’ Everyone, including Bobby, laughed heartily.
But there was also serious talk – relations with Pakistan, proposals fo
r a new dam – and here too the wives joined in. Diana mostly remained silent. She didn’t feel she had the right to enter into their discussions, and especially not into their perennial jokes about politics and corruption. Whereas they could say anything they wanted, she as a foreigner would have caused offence.
The one person Diana liked to visit in New Delhi was her friend Margaret, an Englishwoman in charge of a lay mission devoted to charitable work in India. It was far away from their official residence, and Diana drove herself there in TC’s car (neither of them would ever have taken his official driver or any other member of their staff for their personal use). When he was small, Diana would take Romesh with her on these visits, but he soon revolted. He disliked the sombre old mission house with its high ceilings and stone floors impregnated by the smell of disinfectant and stale curries. It was made worse for him by Margaret herself, a large-boned woman with a loud voice who ruled over a bevy of silent, humble helpers, most of them girls whom she had rescued from orphanages or bad homes. When he grew up, his antipathy became even stronger. It puzzled Diana; she asked him, ‘But why, darling? Give me one reason.’ He was never good at explaining his feelings, but at last he came up with, ‘If you must know, I can’t stand all that holiness and prayer, it gives me the creeps. Thank God you don’t go in for all that stuff.’ It was true, Diana had laid aside her Christian prayers, as well as the gold cross inset with rubies, a gift from her godmother on her twelfth birthday.
Margaret never spoke to Diana about religion. Instead they liked to remind each other of favourite poems or long-ago Latin lessons, gaily correcting each other’s syntax. Although both of them had spent most of their adult lives in India, their original accents had not only remained but had become even more precise and English. Margaret always wore Punjabi dress, including the modesty veil, though she only used it to wipe away the perspiration caused by her long hours of trudging the streets and slums of the inner city. She was mostly cheerful and undaunted, whether it was a day of triumph when she had procured an artificial leg for a client, or a setback with a convert relapsing into alcoholism and wife-beating. Diana never could understand why Romesh said, ‘Let her go and do good somewhere else.’ But quite often he wrote a cheque for her, always for a substantial amount, which Margaret received with the measured gratitude of one used to accepting whatever was given, fully aware that it would never be enough.
Neither of his parents understood much about Romesh’s business activities. ‘Something to do with export,’ Diana explained to herself and anyone who asked. ‘Import-export.’ She couldn’t really appreciate her son’s lavish lifestyle – the big car he drove around in, his constant trips abroad – but she felt proud of his enterprise. He had never for a moment considered following his father into the civil service. ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ he said. ‘You don’t catch me spending my life trapped in a job with a measly salary and ending up with a piddly provident fund.’
Although TC’s only answer was a wry ‘Good luck to you’, Diana knew he was hurt. ‘It’s just that he’s a different personality,’ she assured him about their son. ‘He really respects you enormously.’ She knew this to be true, for she had heard Romesh boast on the telephone: ‘Do you have any idea who my dad is?’
TC had a new Minister – his name was RK Googal, known to everyone as Googa. They had met before, many years earlier, when TC was a district commissioner and Googa sold eggs and butter in the bazaar while making a more serious living as a local politician with power to dispense municipal contracts. At that time TC had thwarted one of Googa’s business operations, and in revenge Googa had tried to get him transferred. He failed, but he never forgot this transaction between them. In the meantime TC had had dealings with many more men like Googa and had learned to steer his way around them. But Googa had the character of a potentate and, unable to get rid of his Principal Secretary, he did everything he could to obstruct him, so that TC felt more frustrated than in the many crises he had suffered in the course of his career.
Romesh admired his father’s new boss. He said he was a firecracker: ‘Googa they call him – or Gunda.’ He laughed. ‘I guess he is a gunda – a rascal – but he sure gets things done. The country needs chaps like that,’ he informed his father.
TC never brought his office worries home, and the only person with whom he shared them was his friend Bobby. Bobby was well aware of the troubles a Principal Secretary could have with his Minister. His wife Pushpa also knew about such situations, and listened with sympathy while her husband gave his friend the only advice he could – which was to be patient and subtle in his dealings with such dangerous animals. TC felt soothed in their company and by the domestic ambience of Pushpa’s household – the glasses of home-made sherbet that appeared on a silver tray, the smell of spices being fried in onions. After a while they passed from the unfortunate office affairs to more personal matters – gossip about their colleagues, plans for summer travel in the hills.
Once Pushpa said, ‘What about your Romesh-Baba?’ and to TC’s inquiring look: ‘Isn’t it about time he settled down? These young people have no sense. They think they can run around any way they please for the rest of their lives.’
Bobby humorously shut one eye. ‘And hasn’t your Romesh been running around with our Sheila-Baby?’
‘Why shouldn’t they!’ Pushpa cried. ‘We’re not that antediluvian. Even in our day – if you remember,’ she told TC in a favourite allusion to their past college romance. ‘But all the same, someone has to give them a bit of a push now and again.’
‘We leave all that to you girls,’ Bobby said.
TC was used to discussing everything except office affairs with Diana, and when he mentioned Pushpa’s proposal to her, her blue eyes stretched wide and she said, ‘That’s entirely between the boy and the girl. We have no right to interfere.’
TC was amused by her reaction, which he had expected – Diana questioned everything she considered a denial of the individual’s right to free choice. He teased her: ‘Sheila’s a very pretty girl.’
‘That has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. We shouldn’t even be talking about it.’ She looked righteous and pale, the way she always did in defence of her principles.
But the next time she was alone with Romesh, she asked him, trying to sound casual, ‘Do you meet Sheila quite often?’
He looked up at her from his breakfast. It was usually the only meal he ate at home, and she herself cooked the bacon for him since their Muslim cook wouldn’t touch it. ‘Has Pushpa-Auntie been gabbing to you?’ Romesh asked. She blushed, but he went on to assure her: ‘Don’t worry, I’m not there yet.’
‘No no, I’m not worrying, of course not. I’m not suggesting anything at all, darling, it’s entirely up to you.’ She watched him eat for a while, which he did as he did everything, with enormous appetite and appreciation. At last she shyly asked, ‘Do you like her a lot?’
He had to suppress his laughter at this innocent question. What could his mother know about someone like Sheila – a wild, wild girl, far surpassing any he had been with in America. And not only she but other Indian girls he knew; it was as though in throwing off all restraints, they were compensating for those suffered by past generations of their mothers and grandmothers.
It was Bobby who first alerted TC to the probe that was being initiated against certain government departments, including their own. So far it was being kept secret, but TC soon found that files began to go missing. His visits to Bobby became more frequent; they exchanged news and views about the situation and kept each other informed about its development. As usual, Pushpa passed in and out, though now only to bring them refreshments.
At the end of one meeting, she told TC: ‘I hear your Romesh-Baba is going off again on some of his murky business.’
‘Who tells you it’s murky?’ TC answered her in the light tone they had established between them.
‘All business is murky,’ she said in the same tone. Then she
said, ‘I wish he and Sheila-Baby would make up their minds. It’d be a big load off my mind, I tell you. I’m sure they like each other; whenever I ask her where she’s been, she says with Romesh of course, as if that makes it all right. And it would be all right, if they’d only . . . ’ She appealed to TC, her plump face full of a mother’s anxiety.
When Romesh came home that night, TC was as usual awake and working. He looked at his son: the thin muslin kurta Romesh wore for his social evenings was crumpled and somewhat soiled. His eyes were reddened, maybe from fatigue and certainly from an excess of alcohol. Pretending to notice none of this, TC said, ‘I hear you’re pushing off again.’
Romesh swiftly glanced at him. Next moment he relaxed. ‘I guess I have to. To fill this,’ and he patted his stomach, which looked very full already. ‘This sinful belly.’
‘We’ll miss you,’ his father said. ‘Will you be gone long? . . . Sorry to pry into what doesn’t concern me, but there’s something – well, I might as well mention it,’ TC decided, remembering Pushpa’s anxious face.
And again Romesh looked at him suspiciously, while he answered with caution: ‘I don’t know yet how long I’ll be gone. It depends. These things always take time. It’s something to do with shares, stocks and shares – I won’t bother you with details.’
‘No, don’t. There’s no chance I’d understand them. This is about Sheila.’
‘Yes. Sheila. A grand girl.’
‘Her mother is hoping that perhaps, before you go? But it’s entirely up to you; and to her of course. We’d all like it.’
‘I’d like it too, but it’s not the right time. I’m not ready to get married. Not with all this on my head.’ And then he got angry: ‘What do they all think! Everything is left to me, I have to run from here to Timbuktu – I told you there’s no point in going into detail!’ he shouted, though TC hadn’t asked anything.
At the End of the Century Page 33