‘Well, if Elphinstone will take an attestation from us,’ she eventually says conciliatingly, ‘I’ll see what we can do. You’ll have to leave your passport.’
The fee she demands is exorbitant. Still, much more convenient than going all the way to the capital. With Christmas and New Year approaching, I’m acutely aware of the need to be efficient with my time. But will Dhavatkar accept the letter? I need to find out at once. If not, I have to book for Delhi before the holiday rush begins. But first I need to see if Bhosle’s responded to the email I sent just before leaving London, asking if we can at least speak on the phone once I get to India.
Heading back to the archives, my tuk-tuk passes a scorched park where numerous cricket matches are underway. A huge banner hangs on the railings: ‘I cannot teach you violence. But I can teach you not to bow your head.’ Behind is a statue of the author, Gandhi dressed in a dhoti, his expression determined but benign. I wonder if it’s been put up as a riposte to the terrorists. The driver drops me at an internet café he recommends, the other side of Elphinstone. Accessing the internet involves checks, and the proprietor is suspicious that I don’t have my passport. Fortunately he knows my hotel and after letting him use my mobile to make a confirmatory call, he nods.
‘Why all the questions?’
He shrugs amiably, his smile popping in and out beneath his moustache like a nervous mouse. ‘This terrorism.’
Over his shoulder a notice announces: ‘Phonography and Other Adult Material Not Allowed’. Phonography? I can’t help smiling. But to my intense disappointment, there’s no answer from my mysterious historian colleague. For the time being, I’m on my own.
I walk back to the Archives. So soon on from the atrocities, early morning Mumbai seems amazingly recovered. At each intersection up what used to be Hornby Road, the main thoroughfare of British Bombay, I have to perform a St Vitus’s dance to negotiate the torrents of people and hurtling traffic. Hornby’s a canyon of imposing buildings, storey piled on storey of monsoon-patterned brick, the pavement arcades now clogged with hawkers’ stalls. High on one edifice, a bush grows precariously from the crumbly facade. Nonetheless, I quickly realise I’m in one of the great Victorian cities, grand as the centre of Glasgow or Manchester, but subtly orientalised with ironwork jalousies, miniature domes and lancet windows. Wondering how his first impressions of the city compared, I excitedly try to identify the buildings Bill would have known: the Army and Navy Stores, which doubtless supplied his uniform, the Sassoon Memorial Library, and Watson’s, the infamous Raj hotel. It looks like a slum tenement now, part of one wing collapsed, the revolutionary ironwork frame an exposed and rusty skeleton.
As I reach Elphinstone, my mobile goes. It’s the consulate. There appears to be a problem with my passport. Have I ever lost one? I struggle to remember. Yes, once in Carcassonne. But it was found and returned. Not before I’d had a new one issued, I suddenly recall. The man’s voice is distinctly suspicious.
‘The system’s registering a problem, only. We’ll have to look into it.’
To my intense frustration, he can give me no time frame. I feel marooned, the hours already ticking away uselessly, eating into what little time I have. I jog up the stairs to the archives to be told Dhavatkar’s not returned from lunch. His subordinate’s charming, but has an accent so thick it takes me a while to understand that he’s inviting me to park myself at a desk in the archives while I wait. He leads me to a dusty room the size of a squash court, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and perhaps a dozen carrels. The tall windows at the far end are nailed shut above piles of what look like ancient mail sacks, dusty and forlorn. A couple of ceiling fans tick listlessly, tugging the stale air up and down. Some desks are occupied, others stacked with pyramids of reserved material. I can’t resist opening the ledgers on the table I’m shown to. They’re written in beautiful faded copperplate, regular as print, and concern shipping in the 1790s. Perhaps some clerk in the original Maker’s Chambers produced them? Ink has bled through the pages and the paper’s brittle. Worried I’ll cause further damage, I push them to one side and take out my pad to scribble some bullet points. What I’m after all seems hopelessly broad: Indian Police, Hoors, Satara, Parallel Government. How am I even going to get started?
Soon the supervisor approaches to say the director may not be returning at all today. He’s unwell. I’m thoroughly demoralised now. I’ve invested so much in this trip, financially and emotionally, and seem to have come to a complete dead end before I’ve even begun. The feeling’s made worse by awareness that right here, under my nose, are the documents which will unlock Bill’s past. Dhavatkar might be off for days. What if he refuses the attestation when he returns? But without my passport, I can’t book for Delhi. It takes me a moment to understand that the man’s saying I’m welcome to wait, just in case, though I can’t order any material. Hungry, heat-sapped and with jet lag weighing again, I ponder going back to the hotel to eat and rest. But I can’t face the steamy, teeming streets just yet. I decide to read for an hour to take my mind off things, until it cools down.
How different my entire trip might have been if I’d left then. Almost as soon as I’ve taken Nirad Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian out of my bag, a tall, angular man flops into the adjoining carrel. Opening a daunting-looking set of leather-bound reports, he begins writing furiously. He’s around sixty, with lank salt-and-pepper hair and a walrus moustache. He glances up with droopy eyes and smiles briefly, before returning to his task. Eventually, I lay my book down and prepare to leave. My neighbour glances at the cover.
‘Ah, Nirad Chaudhuri, so good on the problems facing historians in India,’ he mutters approvingly. ‘What brings you here? For Chaudhuri you need Calcutta.’
‘Actually, I’m researching the Indian Police in Bombay in the 1930s and 40s.’
His tawny eyes light up. I give a brief account.
‘Your father’s name?’
I offer my visiting card. His gaze lingers a moment, then he stands up briskly, a gangling man in a white Nehru shirt, faded blue slacks and outsize trainers. A faint fragrance of flowery cologne. ‘Do you have time for chai?’ I warm to him.
In the Elphinstone canteen, he extends his hand a little circumspectly, as if it’s an unfamiliar manouevre. ‘Rajeev Divekar.’
He orders glasses of tea. When they come, a fly bobs just below the milky surface of mine. I pretend to sip while he fiddles with my card.
‘Does the name mean something?’
When he nods, I almost swallow the fly.
‘Can’t remember where exactly. A couple of years ago I was working on the history of the Maharashtra police force, the successor to the old Bombay IP your father worked in. So many names and dates.’ He tells me a bit about his project.
‘Were you in the police yourself?’
Rajeev looks up with hooded eyes. ‘Let’s say I’m an independent scholar with an interest in policing and security issues.’ He writes my contact details in a tatty notebook.
‘So your father was pukka IP?’ He’s clearly impressed. I explain about Bhosle’s email, why I know so little about Bill’s career and my problems starting my researches.
‘Never mind,’ Rajeev nods sympathetically. ‘I have something to get you going. Lucky you caught me. This is my last day here before the holidays.’
Back in the reading-room, he pulls a slim blue volume from a stack of gazetteers on his desk. It’s the History of Services, Bombay Province.
‘This records every posting of everyone ever employed by the British government.’
I’m shivering with excitement. He checks the index, before flicking back to the relevant page.
‘Look, your father was in the second-last cohort appointed from England. There were only four probationers in 1938, and two more in 1939. Once war started, recruitment from the UK was suspended.’
Bill’s entry shows that after joining up in Bombay, he attended the Central Police Training School in Nasik for two yea
rs, followed by six weeks’ military instruction in Colaba Barracks.
‘Just down the road from here,’ Rajeev explains.
Then Bill returned to Nasik as probationary Assistant District Superintendent.
‘Nasik’s about five hours inland by train.’
But here’s a puzzle. There’s a long hiatus, between March 1941 and January 1943. Was this when Bill was in what’s now Pakistan, suppressing the Hoors? After another period in Nasik, I see he was transferred to Satara in January 1944, where – according to Professor Bhosle – he worked against the Parallel Government. Now his rank is Special Additional Superintendent. What does ‘Special’ signify? In 1946, he’s posted to Ahmedabad, today in the neighbouring state of Gujarat. Then the record stops. Why?
Bill aged eighteen at school in 1938, the year he left for India
‘Is there a later edition? He was here until Independence, for sure.’
Rajeev grimaces regretfully. ‘Not until 1950. And it doesn’t have records for those who’d retired by then. Perhaps he stayed in Ahmedabad until he returned to the UK?’
That would corroborate Aunt Pat’s instinct that Bill witnessed first-hand the horrors of Partition. Ahmedabad is the closest Indian city to what’s now southern Pakistan, and many a refugee train would have left or arrived there. Was that where he received his wounds?
‘What about this gap between his first and second spells in Nasik?’ I repeat what Bhosle told me about the Hoor rebellion.
Rajeev shakes his head after a moment. ‘No, look here.’ He shows me another page, where the entry of a contemporary of Bill’s reads: ‘Services placed at the disposal of the Government of Sindh.’ He shakes his head. ‘So if your father went there, it should be recorded, too.’
It’s perplexing. ‘But there’s no mention of his Indian Police Medal, either. It’s listed for other people.’
‘Maybe he got it in late ’46 or ’47?’ The mournful look returns. ‘I found discrepancies during my own research.’ He’s almost apologetic. ‘I think the British became less meticulous about record-keeping towards the end, perhaps because of the war or because they knew they’d soon be leaving.’
Despite the frustrating incompleteness of the record, for the first time I have an outline of Bill’s Indian career. What a stroke of luck to have run into Rajeev.
I ask my engaging new acquaintance how he became interested in Indian police history. He looks startled for a moment, before explaining that he lives in a building near Churchgate station, formerly inhabited by several IP officers, mostly Parsis. Their stories inspired him to research the Bombay branch of the service in his spare time.
‘My upstairs neighbour was Nagarwala, the man who arrested Gandhi’s assassin. Six foot four and fair as an Englishman. Nags joined the service in 1935. Your father would certainly have known him. He died a couple of years ago only.’
I feel horribly cheated. Why didn’t I come to India earlier? ‘Are any of his contemporaries still alive?’
Rajeev shakes his head regretfully and looks heavenwards. ‘Not here in Maharashtra. They have all gone up.’ He smiles encouragingly. ‘Listen, I’ll look through the notes I have at home. Perhaps there are some references to Moore-Gilbert. Unless you know what you’re looking for here, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Everything’s so chaotic and disorganised now.’
I suddenly remember. ‘There’s a book by someone called Abasaheb Shinde, about the Parallel Government. Professor Bhosle told me it was the most authoritative account. Do you think they might have it here?’
Rajeev cocks his head doubtfully. ‘Abasaheb Shinde? Just a minute.’ He gets up and approaches the supervisor’s desk. I’m struck by the deference my new friend is shown. The supervisor bows and nods throughout their animated conversation, following which they pore over an ancient computer terminal. Rajeev returns with a sorrowful expression.
‘No sign of this Shinde. Let me make inquiries.’ He glances at his watch. ‘I have to go and pick up my wife. Can you come tomorrow?’
‘Isn’t this your last day?’
‘My dear man, you’ve got me curious now, too. Will you be here?’
‘If they let me in.’
‘Any problem, send someone to get me,’ he pronounces authoritatively, extending his hand. ‘I’m very pleased you’ve come to do this research. It’s important the past isn’t forgotten.’ He taps the ledgers on his desk. ‘Before it all disintegrates.’
Morale partly restored, I take a quick shower back at the hotel before heading out to familiarise myself further with Mumbai. Through the half-open window of the bathroom I see an alley directly opposite. Plastic bottles, old clothes, twisted metal lie heaped between fetid-looking pools. So still does he squat that it takes me a while to notice the man crapping behind a pile of cardboard boxes. Unnervingly, he seems to be looking straight at me. By the time I’m dressed he’s gone, thank God. I check the guidebook and step out of the hotel onto streets heaving with office workers heading home. I merge into the flow streaming towards a magnificent edifice, with mosquelike domes and pointy windows.
‘Victoria Terminus, now Chhatrapati Shivaji station,’ a stall-holder explains.
He tells me with unmistakable relish that Shivaji is the local hero who drove the Muslims out of Maharashtra in the seventeenth century. I’m reminded of St Pancras in London, but the scale is even more colossal. Outside, snub-nosed yellow-and-black taxis butt through the throng like giant bumblebees. I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like on 26 November, the panic, the terror here as the terrorist attack unfolded.
Ducking down a side street, I join a crowd outside the white-painted eighteenth-century cathedral of St Thomas to watch an organ-grinder with his monkey. I suddenly understand what Kipling wrote about Indian crowds in Kim – how they contrast with the indifference of English ones. Here I’m not just an anonymous atom; somehow I feel enhanced by the multitude, which seems not just to surround, but to support me. The feeling intensifies when I run into a wedding procession, led by a marching band in gold tunics, black jodhpurs and turbans with trailing tails. The brass sections blare back to wailing reeds and ear-splitting drums. Behind comes the wedding vehicle, a kind of barouche, but raised and rounded at the rear like the back end of a galleon and hauled by several pairs of horses. Every square inch of the coach is covered with what looks like beaten tin, scored with intricate patterns, madly reflecting the light of tapers, camera-flashes and street lamps. The bridal couple’s gorgeous in yellow and orange and purple, garlands of jasmine and marigold draped round their shoulders, the exhilaration of their well-wishers contagious. It seems the most natural thing in the world to join in.
As I work my way closer through a swirl of incense and rose-water spray, a man bumps into me. He pauses apologetically before spitting what looks like a mouthful of blood into the dirt. As he moves on, he’s already feeling among the biros clipped inside his shirt pocket for the next green twist of paan. I’m almost near enough now to touch the couple on the palanquin. In the blinding electric light mounted above them, they look hardly more than teenagers. The bride smiles diffidently through her tinkling nose-pendants, but the boy looks as if he’s on his way to be sacrificed. He grips the handrail with both fists, staring straight ahead, oblivious to the shouts and laughter of the guests who eddy round.
After months of difficult negotiations over bride price, a posse of Kimwaga’s future in-laws has arrived for the wedding in Tabora. It includes a pair of lumpy matriarchs who smoke evil-smelling clay pipes of crinkly local tumbaco, their demeanour plainly suggesting Kimwaga isn’t good enough for their girl. The young man’s thoroughly intimidated, his habitually sunny eyes screwed with anxiety. He was unable to smile even when, the day before the ceremony, one of the turkeys escaped its pen and put his startled tormentors to flight.
A goat is killed and fires lit outside Kimwaga’s quarters when the big day dawns. The boy’s father sends over a few cases of beer to supplement the reve
llers’ pombe, the curdy, musky banana or millet brew which starts to be consumed in impressive quantities as soon as breakfast is over. The boy darts in and out of the festivities, gawping at the bride, an impossibly young, shy creature, who’s equally cowed by her mother and aunt.
Early evening, as the drumming and dancing is reaching a crescendo, the boy finds himself back in the living room, where his father’s reading the Tanganyika Standard. Just as ‘Lillibullero’ sounds on the BBC, Kimwaga stumbles in.
‘Ninaogopa, bwana, ninaogopa.’
The boy’s father stands up, concerned. ‘What are you afraid of, young fellow?’
A flush darkens Kimwaga’s face. ‘Tonight, the two bibis, they will be with us.’
The boy’s father nods uncertainly.
‘No, I mean, her mother and aunt, they’ll be in the room tonight.’
His employer takes a moment to understand before his face melts. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, struggling to contain his laughter, ‘you mean …’
Kimwaga can’t see what’s funny. He nods disconsolately as the boy’s father puts an arm round his shoulder.
‘Grab a couple of eggs from the fridge,’ he tells his son. ‘And a spoon.’
When the boy returns, his father’s at the drinks cabinet, Kimwaga holding the chunky dimpled glass normally reserved for lime-and-sodas. His employer pulls out a bottle of evil-looking yellow syrup.
‘From Prince Bernhard,’ he assures Kimwaga, ‘dawa nguvu, strong medicine. This will do the trick.’
The Prince of the Netherlands has recently come out on safari with the boy’s father, leaving behind several cases of Heineken and a variety of liqueurs. Kimwaga was thoroughly awed by his contact with royalty, as well as amazed to see the boy’s father defer to another man. He watches intently now as his employer pours generously from the bottle, cracks the eggs on the edge of the glass and whisks them briskly into the custardy Advocaat, before splashing in a dash of Lea and Perrins.
‘Drink up,’ he orders.
The Setting Sun Page 4