‘My son’s,’ Dhun explains, ‘just retired from the army. Lieutenant-General.’
Husband and son stare down from portrait photos on the wall. Mr Nanavatty’s resembles the official one of Modak in Rajeev’s book. His black-and-white face is strong and bony, the expression frank, a touch of irony in the half-smile. The son’s picture is full colour, and shows him receiving further medal to add to the impressive collection adorning his resplendent dress uniform.
‘It was taken when R.K. relinquished Northern Command. He was in charge of Kashmir and Jammu.’
Clearly being non-Hindu has done her son no harm.
Once Erna returns with the drinks, Dhun asks about me and my trip. She expresses concern about the Modaks. In poor health, with their sons overseas, to her they seem very vulnerable now.
‘So how did you know my father?’ I ask when the preliminaries are over.
‘I first met him right here in Poona, one Police Week. It must have been soon after the war started.’
‘Police Week?’
She nods. ‘A lovely event. Part formal inspection, part bandobast – that’s dress parades – part public relations, to show off what we were about. But very social, too. There were balls and drinks and sports events. Everyone came up from the districts and the training school. It was the highlight of the year. I met your father at the governor’s ball. He was a striking man, very charming. Keki and Bill got on from the start, despite Keki being a fair bit senior. They shared an interest in shikari.’
‘Hunting?’
‘Yes. There was a rule in those days at the PTS that every probationer had to go into the hills alone and bag a kill before they graduated. It didn’t have to be big game, though there were plenty of tigers and leopard round Nasik in those days. Keki gave your father advice on where to look. They hunted together later, once or twice.’
‘That’s funny, because he became a game ranger in Africa.’ Looking at all the trophies, I wonder if I’ve made a faux pas.
But Dhun smiles. ‘Yes, he and my husband used to write to each other long after your father moved to Tanganyika. Bill said that if Keki wanted to come out and hunt, he just had to find his fare and everything else would be taken care of. Keki so wanted to go, but he hummed and ha’d and put it off and put if off and then the dreadful news came about the aircrash.’ She looks at me with melting eyes.
‘Your father was so young. Keki was terribly upset. He always said Bill was one of the finest men he’d known, and kept kicking himself for not having taken the opportunity to visit before. We were all devastated. I used to correspond with your mother after that. We never met, of course, but after Bill was killed I wrote to say how sorry I was and she wrote back and after that it was mainly at Christmas. Once she went to New Zealand, however, we lost touch. What happened to her?’
As I explain how she died a few years ago in Australia, I have a sudden vision of my mother in Gorleston-on-Sea, poring over the pale-blue aerogramme smothered with exotic stamps, explaining it came from a former colleague of Bill’s who’d been posted to western India.
‘That would have been us. We were in Assam in the late 60s and early 70s. During the Naxalite trouble. Keki was transferred to try and squash it.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘There’s always some terrorist trouble in India.’
‘Where did Bill and he work together?’
‘In Ahmedabad. They were helping to set up the Home Guards.’
‘Wasn’t the war over by then?’
‘Yes, but the new provincial government wanted more police auxiliaries. Everyone could see law and order was going to collapse. There was already trouble between Jinnah and Gandhi and Nehru. It was clear the Muslims would break away. There was lots of communalism, it had only been suppressed by the war.’
‘It was a training post?’
Dhun nods. ‘But there were so many riots, your father and Keki were often called out. It got very vicious: home-made bombs and acid and some of the rioters had arms.’
‘Do you recall my father being wounded?’
She reflects a moment, before shaking her head. ‘You know, everyone was getting injured. The police were completely outnumbered, caught in the middle of mobs who wanted to get at each other. Sometimes they had to call the army in. But the police took the brunt. Without them, it would have been much worse than it was.’
‘Imagine what it’s like to be attacked by an angry mob,’ Erna interjects.
I recall Modak’s comments earlier. ‘Terrifying.’
‘Keki always said your father was one of the bravest officers he knew,’ Dhun continues, as if she hasn’t heard.
This is more like it. I feel my spirits lifting. ‘Was Bill still in Ahmedabad during Partition?’
Dhun ponders. ‘Do you know, I’m not sure, I’ve a feeling he might have been transferred before Independence. But the last time I saw him, I remember him saying it was a terrible mistake, Partition, that it’d just give the green light to the extremists. And he was right, look what happened. All those death trains and the rapes and killing of children. And we’re still at each other’s throats sixty years later. With nuclear weapons now.’
‘Kiron thought he might have been posted somewhere on the coast.’
‘I can’t be sure, my dear. Have you checked his Service Record?’
I explain the dead end in that respect.
We talk for another hour or so, but Dhun can add little to what she’s already said. A lot of the time that Bill and Keki were in Ahmedabad, she remained in Pune for the children’s schooling. She glances fondly at her daughter. I can hardly believe Erna’s in her seventies. With her dark hair and unlined cheeks, she doesn’t look any older than Anders. It’s conceivable Bill could have played with her as a child, hoisting her onto his shoulders as he later did me. Before I can ask, Erna explains how, after school, she worked long years in a clothes export company in Mumbai before retiring to Pune to look after Dhun. I infer that she never married, and wonder why not. When I tell them I’m planning to go to Satara, Erna jumps up.
‘Then you absolutely must look up an old friend of ours, Farrokh Cooper. He runs a big engineering works down there. His father was the first Indian prime minister of Bombay, before the war. He’d be delighted to help you. I’ll ring him right now and let him know you’re coming.’
Any remaining doubts about the next stage of my trip dissolve. It’s as if it’s all been planned. Above all, I’m immensely reassured by Dhun’s account of Keki’s relations with Bill. This is what I’d hoped to hear from Modak. It’s the first unambiguously positive account of Bill this whole trip. Maybe the pendulum’s beginning to shift, after all the allegations in Shinde and Sentinel. Still, nagging doubts remain. Keki worked with Bill well after Satara, and in completely different circumstances. Pursuing the Parallel Government and preventing communal massacres are chalk and cheese.
Erna returns from the adjoining room a few minutes later. ‘I phoned Farrokh and he’s going to book you into the Regency. He says it’s the only decent place in Satara. How are you getting there?’
‘Bus, I guess.’
Erna looks concerned. ‘Have you travelled on Indian buses?’
I smile complacently. ‘It’ll be an adventure.’
She seems dubious. ‘Have you reserved?’
‘Thought I’d wander over in the morning.’
‘No time like the present. They can fill up. I’ll take you down to Swargate and drop you afterwards. I insist.’
Before I leave, I show them my collection of photocopies. Dhun looks fondly at Bill, but she doesn’t recognise Beryl or Maria.
‘Do you know if he had an Indian girlfriend?’
Dhun ponders. ‘I seem to remember something about the sister of the Gaekwad of Baroda. But I don’t know if it was romantic.’
Nothing’s too much trouble for Erna. She ferries me in her tiny car to the bus station and supervises my purchase of a ticket on the next day’s ‘Volvo’, as inter-city buses are apparently known
here – she point-blank refuses to let me catch anything else. Then she drives to an ATM before leaving me at the Samrat.
‘You really must stop for longer on your way back,’ she says. ‘Give my mother time to try and remember more. It’s all so long ago now. We’d love to have you for dinner and really talk.’
I watch Erna’s tail lights disappear with a feeling of regret. How generous people are here. Even Modak, whom I can’t really make out, has gone to trouble to smooth my way. Why, if he was so hostile to Bill?
I’ve barely shut the door to my room when there’s a knock. It’s Anders, in a damp t-shirt, the lower half of his body wrapped in a towel.
‘Can you help me out, man? Soon as I got in from the bar, I washed all my clothes in the sink. This American chick I met just rang. Wants me to come over to her hotel. But my only trousers are wet and I can’t go out to buy some more.’
We’re roughly the same build. Laughing, I show him what I have. ‘Make sure you don’t stay out the night,’ I add mock-solemnly. ‘I’m leaving at six-thirty tomorrow morning.’
CHAPTER 8
The Ghosts of Satara
From Swargate, the ‘Volvo’ grinds its way through ugly, gridlocked suburbs until eventually we reach the new dual carriageway running south to Bangaluru. There’s no hard shoulder, however, and the inner lane’s choked with pedestrians, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, motorbikes and herds of animals. Rural India, vast as it is, seems to be disappearing apace, Pune’s tentacles spreading far along the motorway, small hotels in bare plots, half-finished filling stations, stalls with shining produce which women risk their lives to lean out into the hurtling traffic and wave imploringly. The bus barrels along in the overtaking lane, darting inside when it’s hogged by labouring trucks, some piled high as double-deckers with precarious arrangements of sacks and crates. The countryside becomes increasingly parched and dun as we approach a series of ridges. We climb steepling passes, one after another, where the road shrinks to a single lane of lurching hairpin bends and ill-tempered klaxons.
Four hours later, as we descend the last incline towards Satara, the landscape changes markedly again. The plain in which the city’s situated is a lush patchwork of emerald sugar cane and jade orchards, extending as far as the eye can see. The temperature’s warmer and the air seems softer, too, more like the tropics than Pune. I’m dropped at a busy intersection and hop into an auto-rickshaw, where I’m suddenly overcome by nerves. At last I’ve reached the main theatre of action, the seeming pinnacle – or nadir – of Bill’s Indian career.
First impressions of Satara are positive. Seen from the broad, tree-lined approach road it’s much less ugly and polluted than Pune, and has more the character of a country town. There are even bullocks grazing in the middle of the final roundabout out of which, of all things, a fifteen-foot replica Eiffel Tower soars. Looming over everything, a mile or so beyond, is a fort on a cliff-encircled height. It’s the one on the cover of Modak’s memoir, but now with spindly telecommunications masts jutting out of it. What did Bill feel when he first entered Satara, charged with his onerous brief? Perhaps the same mixture of excitement and apprehension as grips me now.
At last I’m somewhere Bill spent significant time. My sense of connection with him intensifies when I get to my room, at the top of the eight-storey hotel. It’s not as nice as the one in Pune, but has the great advantage of a balcony. I step outside with the bellhop and he points out the police headquarters, way down to the left, half hidden by a dense canopy of trees. Beyond is a collection of miniature yellow buildings, like children’s blocks from this distance, which he tells me is the Rajah’s ‘new’ palace, built in the eighteenth century. North and west, the eroded flanks and flat-topped bluffs of the Sahyadris rise through the dancing haze like buttes in a western. I wonder which of those hills Bill scoured, which ribbon roads below he raced along in his ‘Woodie’.
After lunch I take another auto-rickshaw to the police station, about a mile away. We pull up at an imposing, double-storeyed building made of dark laterite blocks. The veranda which Hobson took Modak out onto in Sentinel, immediately before Bill’s arrival, runs the length of the first floor to massive turrets at each end. ‘Satara Police 1913’ is painted in blue and white, next to a long run of Marathi letters in golden plastic above the main entrance. A khaki-clad constable shows me into a ground-floor room where his superior examines Modak’s card, before sending him off with it again. Phones ring and intercoms crackle. I wait, inhaling the aroma of bodies and masala tea, under the curious eyes of half a dozen policemen and some anxious-looking civilians. Was this the duty room in Bill’s day, too? There’s a large map of Satara District on one wall, subdivided in different colours. Everything’s in Marathi, so I can’t read it; but I try to guess which are the villages which Shinde and Modak mention.
A pretty woman constable enters, and motions me to accompany her. How many times did Bill stride up these very stairs? On the first floor, she knocks at a door and opens it to reveal a sleek-skinned, smiley man of about forty, with film-star teeth. He’s holding Modak’s card.
‘Deputy Superintendent Kulkarni,’ my escort announces, saluting him crisply.
He stands up to shake hands, before motioning me to a chrome chair at his imposing desk. I look at the name boards. They’re in English, and list every DSP since the station opened. Some of the names are familiar: de Vere Moss, principal of the PTS when Bill was there, had charge earlier in the 1930s, following Freddie O’Gorman, Modak’s favourite inspector-general. Later come C.M. Yates, about whom Sentinel’s so rude, and Modak’s bête noire, James Hobson. After 1945, all the names are Indian; they include Dhun’s husband, K.J. Nanavatty. But here’s a surprise: there was an Indian in charge as early as 1929. Perhaps the IP was more progressive than Modak’s given it credit for.
‘DSP Mutilal’s out of station just now. But he’s given instructions about your visit. So your father worked here?’
I point to the board. ‘Special additional superintendent under Hobson.’
Kulkarni reaches across the desk and shakes my hand again. ‘Privileged to meet you.’ He nods emphatically. ‘Tea?’ My host shouts for an attendant and settles back in his seat, asking about Bill’s career. When I mention the Parallel Government, he laughs, as if it’s a great joke. There’s a knock at the door and another officer enters, swagger stick under one arm. Kulkarni rises and salutes.
‘Mr Sanjay Shinde. He’s the ASP these days.’
Shinde’s a slimmer and smarter version of Kulkarni, with an equally luxuriant moustache. He beckons me to a sofa beneath the name boards, where he examines my visiting card while I wonder anxiously whether he’s related to Bill’s chief accuser.
‘So you are professor of English at the London University?’
I nod.
‘I studied literature, too. You like Crime and Punishment? My favourite work of all time.’
We discuss books. Shinde’s very well read, and his English is excellent; this he attributes to a lengthy spell in Kosovo as part of the UN peacekeeping force.
‘First time I understood the position of Muslims in Europe,’ he comments. ‘Made me see their situation here in a new light.’
Before I can ask him to explain further, he inquires about my trip.
‘This would have been your father’s office,’ Shinde declares, when I’ve repeated my story. ‘Unless he was given Mr Modak’s when he arrived?’
If so, I’m sure Bill’s colleague would have mentioned this additional irritant. I look round hungrily, trying to work out what’s survived from the 1940s. The noisy ceiling fan, perhaps, spinning lopsidedly? And was this teak desk where Bill mapped his operations? I ask what problems today’s police face.
‘Quieter than your father’s time,’ Kulkarni laughs, flashing his teeth.
‘When you have democracy, it’s never quiet,’ Shinde adds. ‘When you don’t have democracy, it’s never quiet. Same as your father’s time, there are always agitators waiting in th
e wings. We’re worried about reprisals for the attacks in Mumbai.’
‘Are there many Muslims here?’
‘Not as many as before,’ Shinde says. ‘Too many politicians make political capital out of them. And out of incitement against Hindus from other parts of India. They make a mockery of the Constitution.’
‘Money’s short, as well,’ Kulkarni complains. ‘We don’t have the resources to do our job properly.’
Shinde nods. ‘Especially vehicles. Spares always a problem. Would you like to look around?’ he suddenly asks, as if this is why he’s come by.
I’m taken back downstairs and through an arch to the rear of the building. We pass a cabinet of tarnished sports cups and another filled with ancient weapons, muskets and crude-looking pistols.
‘Home-made, seized from goondas over the years,’ Shinde explains.
Did the Parallel Government rely on such crude equipment? Out back are perhaps two acres of crushed murram. A squadron of women recruits in white tops and khaki trousers wheels about to an instructor’s bark. Beyond, rows of tiny cottages slope away, like the game scouts’ lines I remember from Tanganyika.
‘Other ranks’ housing,’ Kulkarni confirms.
I take the cue. ‘Are there any old constables around still from my father’s time?’
Shinde ponders a moment. ‘We don’t have lists. The pension people in Mumbai will know.’ Catching my look of disappointment, he smiles. ‘I’ll ask. How long are you staying?’
‘It depends. I’m waiting to hear from a friend.’
He nods.
‘Two names I have from that time are Gaikwad and Pisal. I’d be particularly interested to track them down.’
The Setting Sun Page 15