by Paul Scott
‘This’ was a sombre pen and ink drawing of Calcutta, captioned ‘Direct Action Day’, August 16, 1946 and celebrated the result of Jinnah’s decision to resort to violence in the belief that the Viceroy had betrayed him by allowing Congress to enter the central interim government without him. In this picture, though, it was difficult to distinguish Muslim dead from Hindu dead. Halki had just drawn a pile of bodies, such as might be seen on the streets of Calcutta on any night of the week, except that these were obviously dead, not sleeping; but ordered in rows, like sleepers, in diminishing perspective from a lit to an unlit area.
There were several variations on this theme, but it was always night-time and the street was always the same street, the foreground lamp-post the same lamp-post. The most striking (Perron thought) was the one that showed the street all but empty. There were no bodies on the pavement, bloodstains adumbrated the shapes of bodies cleared away. In the background you could just see Bapu, with his staff, accompanied by Jinnah (hands behind back) walking down the road towards the lit area. This carried no caption and was the last of the pictorially sombre cartoons. Sombreness, though, continued in the jokey ones that followed.
A cartoon dated 3 September 1946 marked the occasion of the swearing in of the interim central government headed by Nehru, ostracized by Jinnah and overshadowed by the assassination of one of the nominated non-League Muslims, Shafaat Ahmed Khan, which caused riots in Bombay and Ahmedabad. Another, in mid-October, celebrated Jinnah’s about-face, his decision to co-operate and enter the interim government to protect Muslim interests. To accommodate him three non-League Muslims had to resign. A third cartoon, dated in November, represented Halki’s satirical view of this armed collaborative truce, a drawing of Wavell presiding over a round-table conference of his brawling Indian ministers (whose briefcases, leaning against their chairs, were bulging with fused bombs). A window gave a view of a rioting mob. A doorway was marked as the way into the Constituent Assembly where the future constitution of free India would eventually have to be settled. The door was wide open but clearly no one was prepared to enter. In this cartoon Wavell was drawn in diminutive proportions, crouched in an overwhelming viceregal chair, and with two heads – or rather one head drawn twice, with connecting lines denoting its swift turning to and fro, as he listened first to one argument and then to another. The caption ran: ‘I see’ and only readers who knew that this brief sentence was said to be the Viceroy’s most frequent contribution to every conversation really appreciated the joke.
One of the unpublished Halki cartoons of the last phase of Wavell’s viceroyalty was drawn early in December when Wavell had persuaded the British Government to invite a delegation (headed by himself) of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders, to a consultation in London, which he hoped would break the deadlock. Once again there was the waiting aeroplane (‘Imperial Shuttle Service’). The pilot, looking out of his window, was Attlee and the co-pilot Cripps. Advancing across the tarmac were Nehru, Baldev Singh and Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan. At the head was Wavell, but whereas the four Indian leaders were depicted as free agents merely prodding each other forward with a peremptory finger digging into the back of the man in front, Wavell’s hands were manacled behind his back and the finger pressing into him was Nehru’s. It was captioned ‘The Invitation’. The editor had not published it because he thought it a shade too sympathetic to the Viceroy and potentially troublesome. Later he regretted his decision.
He had missed the point of the leer Halki had drawn on Attlee’s face and only fully appreciated Halki’s interpretation when in the following February (1947) after a further couple of months’ variations on the theme of incompatibility (with the constituent assembly assembling without the League, and then the Congress threatening to withdraw from the interim government if the League insisted on remaining in it), Attlee announced his government’s intention of transferring power peacefully and responsibly by June 1948 and hinted that if the constitutional issue hadn’t been solved by then an award would have to be made and power transferred to whatever authority Britain felt would govern in India’s best interests. This (as the editor pointed out to Perron, who agreed) was exactly the kind of clear statement that Wavell had always tried to get. But it was accompanied by another, to the effect that Wavell’s ‘wartime appointment as Viceroy’ (which was the first anyone had heard about such a limitation to a traditional five-year term of office) would end in March and that his successor would be Louis Mountbatten, the victorious Supremo of South-East Asia Command in the recent war, a relation of the King’s, but patently a man of the new world.
Halki celebrated this news with a cartoon which the editor published against considerable internal opposition but with popular acclaim. Again, it was a two-frame cartoon, each frame showing a different aspect of one of those old-fashioned cottage style barometers: a little rustic house from which a male figure emerged in poor conditions and a female one in summery.
Halki’s rustic house was a simplified version of the main entrance to Viceregal House. Frame one showed Wavell outside the first of the twin doors. The sky above was black. Bulging monsoon clouds were pierced by a fork of lightning coming from the mouth of a heraldic, rather ancient, winged lion, labelled ‘Imperialism, circa 1857’. In the second frame the sky was bland, lit by a sparkling little sun held aloft by a frisky airborne lamb (with Attlee’s face) labelled ‘Imperialism, circa 1947’. Below this bland sky the gaunt figure of Wavell had retired into the gloom of Viceregal House and out of the other door had come the fine-weather figure of a smart toy-soldier (Mountbatten), magnificently uniformed, taking the salute, smiling excessively and exuding sweetness and light.
Subsequently, Halki had found his cottage-barometer theme a useful one to hark bark to during the first month or so of Mountbatten’s appointment, weeks spent in seemingly inexhaustible rounds of conferences and counter-conferences. These later cartoons portrayed the various problems the new Viceroy had had to contend with and (perhaps) his growing exasperation at his inability to solve them to his own satisfaction. Political intransigence (from whichsoever party) was portrayed in the shape of the stormy figure (for example, Jinnah, but not invariably; there was once even Gandhi) emerging from the dark door while the toy-soldier retreated into his, and the bland sky was threatened by clouds that never quite covered the frisky lamb (although the smile on the lamb’s face tended to get more and more strained).
‘But that first barometer cartoon,’ the editor said, referring back to the Wavell/Mountbatten version, ‘is the prime example of Halki’s gift for foreseeing the inner nature of events before they have actually taken place.’
‘When will Mr Shankar Lal be back in Bombay?’ Perron asked. The editor shrugged. ‘He went almost without notice. He came to see me just two weeks ago and said he must go to the Punjab to try to persuade his parents to come down here, because otherwise they would find themselves living in bloody Pakistan. He said he had been working two or three days on a cartoon for publication on August 15, in case he isn’t back by then.’
‘But there’s still a fortnight to go.’
‘I know. But he said his parents are very stubborn people. Anyway, I have the cartoon. It is terrible. I may not dare publish it. It is in the safe at home so I cannot show it to you. But you saw his June 3 cartoon? People say it is his masterpiece.’
‘No, I haven’t seen that.’
‘Oh you must, Mr Perron. It is very funny. I have the original at home because even my wife laughed. Everybody laughed. They rang me from Delhi and told me Mountbatten had laughed.’ The editor banged his desk bell. ‘I will get a copy of the relevant issue.’
*
For the June 5 issue, commemorating Mountbatten’s announcement that Pakistan was now inevitable, and that the British would withdraw ‘probably by August 15’ Halki had worked throughout June 4 and drawn a picture of an immense Gothic building, or rather a structure which the architect had planned as one only to be frustrated (one had to imagine) over certain deta
ils of land acquisition. The attempt to create an illusion of a single façade, although admirably conceived and executed, hadn’t quite worked, although it took several moments of close study of Halki’s exemplary drawing to discern this. The cartoon occupied a whole page.
The main building, one such as citizens of Bombay were especially familiar with, was a huge emporium bearing some basic resemblance to the local army and navy shop. Across the façade the name ran: Imperial Stores. Between the word Imperial and the word Stores were the royal coat of arms and the announcement: By Self-Appointment. The building was several storeys high and drawn so as to show the main street frontage and one side-street elevation. The main entrance, curiously, was on the side street. Above this side street entrance there was another sign: Proprietor. Albert George Windsor; Manager: Clem Attlee.
At ground level, front and side, there were display windows crammed with goods but across each banners had been pasted proclaiming: Grand Closing Down Sale. Expiry of Lease. Starts June 3. Bargains in Every Department. All Stock must be Sold by August 15. Above this building the lamb held the sparkling sun aloft.
Outside the main entrance on the side street stood a tall, splendidly uniformed commissionaire who was looking at his watch, awaiting the moment to open the doors. Halki had caught Mountbatten’s expression of detachment and self-confidence perfectly. All round the building there were queues of eager bargain hunters, mostly civilians but also soldiers and police. Each queue was separated from the others by its own ‘Queue Here’ sign – and these were variously inscribed, Congress, League, Sikhs, Hindu Mahasabah, Liberals, Europeans, Anglo-Indians, Tribes, Scheduled Castes; and at the head of each queue was a clearly identifiable leader who was consulting his shopping list.
The queues were orderly and well drilled – you felt that the commissionaire had disciplined them to be so and that he knew, they knew, he would stand no nonsense. One of these queues stretched right round the side-street and along the main frontage. This was the one headed by Mr Nehru and Mr Gandhi and was by far the longest. But exactly mid-way along the main frontage this queue was interrupted to allow passageway from the road into the building, and it was this visual break that confirmed (or originated) the impression that the building was not really an architectural whole.
Sandwiched between what could now be seen as two interrupted halves was an older building, obviously still in the ownership of a small shopkeeper who had been surrounded, propped up, pressed up against and down upon, by the giant concern, but never wholly absorbed. A great deal of ingenuity had been shown in creating the illusion that the smaller shop was part of the bigger one, that the older structure was a mere decorative flourish that did nothing to diminish the architectural integrity of the whole edifice. The older building announced itself as ‘The Princes’ Emporium’ and was labelled, ‘Imperial Stores (Paramountcy, 1857) Ltd.’ The sticker across its one narrow window said, ‘Business as Usual’ and its narrow little Moghul door was guarded by a commissionaire whom the editor told Perron was recognizable as the head of the British Political Department.
Free access to this door from the road was secured by ropes that separated the orderly Congress queue, and Halki had depicted a very old-fashioned Rolls Royce drawn up at the pavement. Emerging from this limousine were a Maharajah and the first two or three of what looked like a car-full of wives arriving on a shopping expedition. Standing in the road just behind the car was a policeman – looking exactly like Patel, the chief enemy in the Congress camp of the Indian princely states. He was noting down the car’s registration number in a book labelled ‘Traffic Offences (Obstructions)’.
The fun did not end there. Facing the main frontage on the other side of the road there was work in progress on a giant multistoreyed building, only the ground-floor of which was completed and occupied. A placard announced: Anglo-American Atomic and Commercial Enterprises Inc and Ltd (Successors to Box-Wallah and Co). Through the ground-floor windows you could see men at work in the offices. An American executive sat with his feet on a desk, smoking a cigar and using three telephones. A British executive sat with his feet under the desk, smoking a pipe and talking into only one. Queueing to enter the building was a hybrid collection of Indian businessmen consulting attendant lawyers who were in turn consulting draft contracts. Already in the building too, were figures representing the great Indian industrialists (Tata and Birla). A separate side-street entrance gave access to a queue of Muslim (Pakistan) businessmen, most of whom seemed destined to end up at the desk of the American executive.
And still the fun did not end. In distant perspective, on a continuation of the main frontage of Imperial Stores, was a Labour Exchange, and here there were four queues of Englishmen and Englishwomen whose children were being comforted by faithful bearers and ayahs: a queue each for ICS, IMS, army and police. The queuers were going into and coming out of doors marked ‘Pension’ and Compensation’. Some of those who had collected their dues were walking across the road, holding moneybags, to join the queue waiting to enter the offices of Anglo-American Enterprises Inc and Ltd. Some, obviously elderly, were trekking in another direction, to the office of a travel agent whose windows were bannered: Cheap One Way Retirement Tickets. Bilaiti and All Best Hill Stations.
There was no caption. A caption would have been excessive.
‘Tomorrow I have a party,’ the editor said. ‘Come and see the original. At my house.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. I’m leaving Bombay tomorrow morning,’ Perron said.
‘Then take this copy. I have never yet had in my office an Englishman all the way from London who comes to see me entirely to discuss Halki. He will be very flattered. No, no, that is wrong. I have never yet succeeded myself even in flattering him.’
‘Thank you,’ Perron said. He felt rather moved. It was the special gift Indians had, to move you unexpectedly; unexpectedly because you felt that historically you did not deserve any consideration or any kindness.
*
Leaving the newspaper office he walked for a while along the crowded Bombay pavement, then saw and hailed a taxi. He told the man to go in the direction of the Gateway and the Taj. When the taxi reached the spot where he had drawn up his jeep just two years ago he told the driver to stop but wait for him. He walked the few yards to the wall of the esplanade, with its view on to the Arabian Sea; and its smell. Disgusting. Peaceful. I shall never go back home, one Perron cried. The other said: Take me back, for God’s sake. When he returned to the taxi he threw annas at the little crowd of children and told the driver to go to Queen’s Road.
*
He paid the wallah off, tipping excessively as though this munificence had become obligatory since Mountbatten had removed the last doubt that the British intended to go and so made them the only people left in India who were universally popular. He studied the blocks of flats. He couldn’t be certain which block he wanted, but then – believing he recognized the forecourt – he entered it, imagining Purvis ahead of him barging into the servant and the girl. He climbed the few steps to the dark entrance and went along an unfamiliar passage to the lift-shaft. This convincingly announced itself as out of order and on either side the name plates stirred other recollections. Desai? Tractorwallah? He climbed the steps to the first floor and stood, perplexed, facing the door whose name-plate should be Grace but wasn’t. He went to the door opposite. Major Rajendra Singh, IMS. That, surely, was right? He climbed the next flight and arrived at the flat above Rajendra Singh’s.
Hapgood. Mr Hapgood, the banker, Mrs Hapgood, the banker’s wife and Miss Hapgood, the banker’s daughter. One of the few remaining happy families in Bombay? He pressed the bell. Would the servant be the same servant? Would they recognize one another? The door opened. He did not recognize the servant. The boy was (God help us all, Perron thought) Japanese.
‘Is Mr Hapgood in?’ he asked. He handed in his card. The boy studied it carefully, ridging eyebrows as beautifully shaped as Aneila’s. Not quite Japanese; a mixed-blood or
iental from Sumatra? Singapore? Jakarta? A handsome, poisonous-looking young man who sported a gold wrist-watch. One could smell the starch on his arrogantly spotless white steward’s jacket and trousers. He wore black shoes with pointed toes. ‘I will see if Master is in.’
Perron thought: Master, now, is it? The British will always be safe.
The boy let him in, then shut the door and went in the direction of the living-room. Perron glanced down the corridor towards Purvis’s old room. The door was shut; so was the door of the adjoining room. And the flat looked as if it had not been redecorated since then.
‘Master says come.’
Perron followed the boy through the dining-room area and into the living-room which had once struck him as elegant, which now looked just a little disorganized. A quick glance at the wall behind the long settee confirmed the continuing existence of the Guler-Basohli paintings. A man stood on the balcony, as Purvis had done, holding a glass, looking out at the Oval. It was a clear evening, the sun not yet down. The man was tall and thin. For some reason Perron had always imagined Hapgood as short, rotund and red-faced; like the tea-planter at the Maharanee’s. Hearing footsteps, Hapgood turned round.
‘Mr Perron?’
‘Yes. Mr Hapgood?’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you. I called downstairs on the off-chance of seeing Colonel and Mrs Grace. I see they’ve gone, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to come up, because I feel I owe you an apology.’
‘Oh?’ Hapgood was a man with formidable eyebrows. His face was yellow and very creased. His jaw and chin suggested firmness of opinion. ‘Have we met?’ he asked.
‘No. You and your family were away, in Ootacamund I think. But there was an officer called Leonard Purvis billeted here – a couple of years ago. I was here the day things rather got on top of him. I wasn’t here when he smashed things up, but I saw the results, and I’ve always felt it was partly my fault that two of your Kangra paintings were damaged.’