Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Fortunately, just at that time Biju came back from abroad, and he began to spend a lot of time with me so I did not feel too lonely. It was said in the family that Biju had been abroad all these years to study, but of course it was well known that he had not done much studying. Even at that age he was very lazy and did not like to do anything except enjoy himself and have a good time. In the beginning, when he first came back, he used to go to Bombay quite often, to meet with friends and dance and go to the races, but later he did not care so much for these amusements and came to stay on his land, which was near to ours, or—during the summer when we went up to Simla—he also took a house there. Everyone was keen for him to get married, and his aunts were always finding suitable girls for him. But he didn’t like any of them. He says it is because of me that he didn’t marry, but that’s only his excuse. It is just that he was too lazy to take up any burdens.

  It is not easy to be a minister’s wife. People ask me to do all sorts of things that I don’t like to do. They ask me to sit on welfare committees and give away prizes at cultural shows. I want to say no, but the Minister says it’s my duty, so I go. But I do it very badly. All the other ladies are used to sitting on committees and they make speeches and know exactly what is wanted. Sometimes they get very heated, especially when they have to elect one another onto subcommittees. They all want to be on as many committees and subcommittees as possible. Not for any selfish reasons but because they feel it is necessary for the good of India. Each proves to the other point by point how necessary it is and they hotly debate with one another. Sometimes they turn to me to ask my opinion, but I don’t have any opinion, I don’t know what it is they are discussing. Then they turn away from me again and go on talking to each other, and although they are polite to me, I know they don’t have a high opinion of me and think I’m not worthy to be a minister’s wife. I wish Mina could be there instead of me. She would be able to talk like they do, and they would respect her.

  When I have to give a speech anywhere, it is always Mina who writes it for me. She writes a beautiful speech and then she makes me rehearse it. She is very thorough and strict with me. “No!” she cries, “Not ‘today each of us carries a burden of responsibility,’ but ‘each of us carries a burden of responsibility’!” I start again and say it the way she wants me to say it, and as many times as she wants me to till at last she is satisfied. She is never entirely satisfied: at the end of each rehearsal, she sighs and looks at me with doubtful eyes. And she is right to be doubtful because, when the time comes to make the speech, I forget all about our rehearsal and just read it off as quickly as possible. When I come home, she asks me how did it go, and I tell her that everyone praised the speech and said it was full of beautiful words and thoughts.

  But once she was with me. It was a school’s sports day, and it was really quite nice, not like some of the other functions I have had to attend. We all sat on chairs in the school grounds and enjoyed the winter sunshine. Mina and I sat in the front row with the headmistress and the school governors and some other people who had been introduced to us, but I could not remember who they were. The girls did mass PT, and rhythmic exercises, and they ran various races. They were accompanied by the school band, and one of the teachers announced each item over the microphone which, however, was not in good order so that the announcement could not be heard very well. From time to time the headmistress explained something to me, and I nodded and smiled, although—because of the noise from the loudspeaker and the band—I could not hear what she said. The sun was warm on my face, and I half shut my eyes, and the girls were a pretty colored blur. Mina nudged me and whispered “Mummy, are you falling asleep?” so I opened my eyes again quickly and clapped loudly at the conclusion of an item and turned to smile at the headmistress who smiled back to me.

  When it was time for my speech, I got up quite happily and read it from the paper Mina had got ready for me. The microphone crackled very loudly so I don’t think my speech could be heard distinctly, but no one seemed to mind. I didn’t mind either. Then I gave away the prizes, and it was all over and we could go home. I was cheerful and relieved, as I always am when one of these functions is finished, but as soon as we were alone in the car together, Mina began to reproach me for the way I had delivered the speech. She was upset not because I had spoiled her speech—that didn’t matter, she said—but because I hadn’t cared about it: I hadn’t cared about the whole function; I was not serious. “You even fell asleep,” she accused me.

  “No no, the sun was in my eyes, so I shut them.”

  “Why are you like that? You and Uncle Biju. Nothing is serious for you. Life is just a game.”

  I was silent. I was sorry that she was so disappointed in me. We rode along in silence. My head was turned away from her. I looked out of the window but saw nothing. From time to time a sigh escaped my lips. Then, after a while, she laid her hand on mine. I pressed it, and she came closer and put her head on my shoulder. How sweetly she forgave me, how affectionately she clung to me. I laid my lips against her hair and kissed it again and again.

  Is life only a game for Biju and me? I don’t know. It’s true, we laugh a lot together and have jokes that Mina says are childish. The Minister also gets impatient with us, although we are always careful not to laugh too much when he is there. He himself is of course very serious. The important face with which I see him get up in the morning remains with him till he goes to bed at night. But, in spite of all the great affairs with which his day is filled, once he is in bed he falls asleep at once and his face next to me on the pillow is peaceful like a child’s. I toss and turn for many hours, and although I try not to, I usually have to take one of my pills. Biju also has to sleep with pills. And he has terrible nightmares. Often his servant has to rush into his bedroom because he hears him screaming with fear and he shakes him by the shoulder and shouts “Sahib, Sahib!” till Biju wakes up. Terrible things happen in Biju’s dreams: he falls down mountainsides, tigers jump through his window, he is publicly hanged on a gallows. When his servant shakes him awake, he is trembling all over and wet with perspiration. But he is glad to be awake and alive.

  Nothing like that ever happens in the Minister’s dreams. He has no dreams. When he goes to sleep at night, there is a complete blank till he wakes up again in the morning and starts to do important things. He always says that he has a great number of worries—his whole life he tells me is one big worry, and sometimes he feels as if he has to carry all the problems of the government and the country on his own shoulders—but all the same he sleeps so soundly. He never seems to be troubled by the sort of thoughts that come to me. Probably he doesn’t have time for them. I see him look into the mirror but he appears to do so with pleasure, pulling down his coat and smoothing his hair and turning this way and that to see himself sideways. He smiles at what he sees, he likes it. I wonder—doesn’t he remember what he was? How can he like that fat old man that now looks back at him?

  It is strange that when you’re young you don’t think that it can ever happen to you that you’ll get old. Or perhaps you do think about it but you don’t really believe it, not in your heart of hearts. I remember once we were talking about it, many years ago, Biju and I. We were staying in a house we have by a lake. We never used this house much because it was built as a shooting lodge and none of us cared for hunting and shooting. In fact, the Minister had definitely renounced them on what he called humanitarian grounds, and he was always telling people about these grounds and had even printed a pamphlet about them; only it had been done very badly by the local printers and had so many spelling mistakes in it that the Minister felt ashamed and didn’t want it distributed. That time we were staying in the shooting lodge because he had come on an inspection tour. These inspection tours were another favorite idea of his. He always came on them without any advance notice so as to keep the people who looked after the properties alert all the year round. Sometimes he took a whole party of guests with him, but that time it was only he and I
and Biju, who had come with us because he thought he would be bored alone at home.

  The Minister—of course he wasn’t a minister at that time—was busy going over the house, running his finger along ledges for dust and inspecting dinner services that hadn’t been in use for twenty years, while Biju and I rested after our journey in the small red sitting room. This room had many ornaments in it that my father-in-law, who frequently traveled to Europe, had brought back with him. There were views of Venice in golden frames on the walls, and an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, and next to it a lacquered musical box that intrigued Biju very much. He kept playing it over and over again. The house was built on a lake and the light from the water filled the room and was reflected from the glass of the pictures of Venice so that the walls appeared to be swaying and rippling as if waves were passing over them. The music box played a very sweet sad tinkling little tune, and Biju didn’t seem to get tired of it and I didn’t either; indeed, the fact that it was being played over and over again somehow made it even sweeter and sadder so that all sorts of thoughts and feelings rose in the heart. We were drinking orange squash.

  Biju said “How do you think it’ll be when we’re old?”

  This question was perhaps sudden but I understood how it had come into his head at that particular moment. I said “Same as now.”

  “We’ll always be sitting like this?”

  “Why not.”

  At that time it wasn’t possible for me to think of Biju as old. He was very slim and had a mop of hair and wore a trim little moustache. He was a wonderful dancer and knew all the latest steps. When he heard a snatch of dance music on the radio, at once his feet tapped up and down.

  He wound the music box again, and the sad little tune played. The thought of being together like this forever—always in some beautiful room with a view from its long windows of water or a lawn; or hot summer nights in a garden full of scents and overlaid with moonlight so white that it looked like snow—the thought of it was sad and yet also quite nice. I couldn’t really think of us as old: only the same as we were now with, at the most, white hair.

  “What about the Revolution?” I asked.

  Biju laughed: “No, then we won’t be here at all.” He put his head sideways and showed a rope going around his neck: “Up on a lamppost.”

  The Revolution was one of our jokes. I don’t know whether we really thought it would come. I think often we felt it ought to come, but when we talked about it, it was only to laugh and joke. The Minister did sometimes talk about it seriously, but he didn’t believe in it. He said India would always remain a parliamentary democracy because that was the best mode of government. Once all three of us were driving in a car when we were held up by some policemen. They were very polite and apologized and asked us please to take another road because some slum houses were being demolished on this one. Our chauffeur tried to reverse but the gear was stuck and for a while we couldn’t move. Out of our car window we could see a squad of demolition workers knocking down the hovels made of old tins and sticks and rags, and the people who lived in the hovels picking up what they could from among the debris. They didn’t look angry, just sad, except for one old woman who was shaking her fist and shouting something that we couldn’t hear. She ran around and got in the way of the workers till someone gave her a push and she fell over. When she got up, she was holding her knee and limping but she had stopped shouting and she too began to dig among the debris. The Minister was getting very impatient with the car not starting, and he was busy giving instructions to the chauffeur. When at last we managed to get away, he talked all the time about the car and that it was a faulty model—all the models of that year were—cars were like vintages he said, some years were good, some not so good. I don’t think Biju was paying any more attention than I was. He didn’t say anything that time, but later in the day he was making a lot of jokes about the Revolution and how we would all be strung up on lampposts or perhaps, if we were lucky, sent to work in the salt mines. The Minister said “What salt mines? At least get your facts straight.”

  But to go back to that time in the shooting lodge. After finishing his inspection tour, the Minister came striding into the room and asked “What are you doing?” and when we told him we were talking about our old age, he said “Ah,” as if he thought it might be a good subject for discussion. He liked people to have discussions and got impatient with Biju and me because we never had any.

  “When I think of my old age,” he said, “I think mainly: what will I have achieved? That means, what sort of person will I be? Because a person can only be judged by his achievements.” He walked up and down the room, playing an imaginary game of tennis: he served imaginary balls hard across an imaginary net, stretching up so that his chest swelled out. “I hope I’ll have done something,” he said as he served. “I intend to. I intend to be a very busy person. Not only when I’m young but when I’m old too.” He kept on serving and with such energy that he got a bit out of breath. “Right-till-the-end,” he said, slamming a particularly hard ball.

  “Out,” Biju said.

  The Minister turned on him with indignation. “Absolutely in,” he said. “And turn off that damn noise, it’s getting on my nerves.” Biju shut the music box.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” said the Minister. “The point about old age is not to be afraid of it. To meet it head-on. As a challenge that, like everything else, has to be faced and won. The king of Sweden played tennis at the age of ninety. I intend to be like that.”

  How pleased he would have been at that time if he had known that he was going to be a cabinet minister. Things have not really turned out very different from the way we thought they would. The Minister is busy, and Biju and I are not. We sit in the room and look out into the garden, or sit in the garden and enjoy the trees and flowers. But being old does not mean only white hair. As a matter of fact, we neither of us have all that much white hair (Miss Yvonne takes care of mine, and Biju has lost most of his anyway). We still talk the way we used to, and laugh and joke, but—no, it is not true that life is a game for us. When we were young, we even enjoyed being sad—like when we listened to the music box—and now even when we’re laughing, I don’t know that we really are laughing. Only it is not possible for us to be serious the way the Minister is, and Mina.

  Everyone nowadays is serious—all the people who come to the house, and the ladies on committees—they are forever having discussions and talking about important problems. The Minister of course likes it very much, and he hardly ever stops talking. He gives long interviews to the press and addresses meetings and talks on the radio, and he is always what he calls “threshing out his ideas” with the people who come to see him and those who come to our parties and with Mina and with Mina’s friends. He especially enjoys talking to Mina’s friends, and no wonder because they hang on every word he says, and although they argue quite a lot with him, they do so in a very respectful way. He gets carried away talking to them and forgets the time so that his secretary has to come and remind him; then he jumps up with a shout of surprise and humorously scolds them for keeping him from his duties; and they all laugh and say “Thank you, sir,” and Mina kisses his cheek and is terribly proud of him.

  The Minister says it is good to be with young people and listen to their ideas. He says it keeps the mind flexible and conditions it to deal with the problems of tomorrow as well as those of today. Biju too would like to talk to Mina’s friends. I see him go into the room in which they are all sitting. Before he goes in, he pats his tie, and smoothes his hair to look extra smart. But as a matter of fact he looks rather too smart. He is wearing an English suit and has a handkerchief scented with eau de cologne arranged artistically in his top pocket. He seems taller than everyone else in the room. He begins to make conversation. He says “Any of you seen the new film at the Odeon?” in his clipped, very English accent that always impresses the people at the Minister’s parties. But these young people are not impressed. They even look
puzzled as if they have not understood what he said, and he repeats his question. They are polite young people and they answer him politely. But no one is at ease. Biju also is embarrassed; he clears his throat and flicks his handkerchief out of his pocket and holds it against his nose for a moment as if to sniff the eau de cologne. But he doesn’t want to go away, he wants to go on talking. He begins to tell them some long story. Perhaps it is about the film, perhaps it is about a similar film he has once seen, perhaps it is some incident from his past life. It goes on for a long time. Sometimes Biju laughs in the middle and he is disappointed when no one laughs with him. He flicks out his handkerchief again and sniffs it. His story doesn’t come to an end; it has no end; he simply trails off and says “Yes.” The young people patiently wait to see if he wants to say anything more. He looks as if he does want to say more, but before he can do so, Mina says “Oh Uncle, I think I hear Mummy calling you.” Biju seems as relieved as everyone else to have an excuse to go away.

  Once Mina and her friends rolled up the carpet in the drawing room and danced to records. The doors of the drawing room were wide open and the light and music came out into the garden where Biju and I were. We sat on a stone bench by the fountain and looked at them. They were stamping and shaking from side to side in what I suppose were the latest dances. We stayed and watched them for a long time. Biju was very interested, he craned forward and sometimes he said “Did you see that?” and sometimes he gave a short laugh as if he didn’t believe what he saw. I was only interested in looking at Mina. She was stamping and shaking like all the rest, and she had taken off her shoes and flung her veil over her shoulders so that it danced behind her. She laughed and turned and sometimes flung up her arms into the air.