Chankya's Chant (4 page)

Gangasagar’s father—Mishraji—was a poor Brahmin who eked out a living from teaching at the local government-subsidised school on the banks of the river. When his son was born, his third child after two daughters, he decided to name him Gangasagar—
as vast as the Ganges
. Gangasagar’s mother was a simple woman, perpetually struggling to meet the most basic daily needs of the family. Ganga, however, was her pet. In a society that treated sons as assets and daughters as liabilities, Ganga was the single item on her balance sheet that squared off the dowry that she would have to pay for her daughters’ weddings. She would smilingly forego her own meals just to ensure that Gangasagar was well fed.

As per Hindu custom, Brahmins were usually in demand during the fortnight of
shraadh
, when wealthy families would feed them and clothe them in memory of their ancestors. One of Mishraji’s wealthy patrons was a trader—Agrawalji. Little Ganga always looked forward to eating at his house during shraadh. There would always be unlimited quantities of sweet rice pudding along with the meal. One day, as they were eating at Agrawalji’s house, Gangasagar asked his father, ‘Father, shraadh is all about remembering one’s ancestors, right?’

‘Yes, son. By feeding Brahmins, one symbolically feeds the spirits of the departed.’

‘So you too shall die one day?’ asked Gangasagar sadly.

Mishraji smiled. All parents desperately wanted their children to love them and Mishraji was no exception. His heart swelled with pride to see his son’s concern for him.

‘Yes, Ganga. Everyone has to die someday, including me.’

Gangasagar looked crestfallen. Tears welled up in his eyes as he took another gulp of the wonderfully sweet rice pudding seasoned with almonds and raisins. Mishraji’s heart melted. He tried to alleviate the obvious grief that he seemed to have caused his son. ‘Why do you want to know about such things, Ganga?’

‘I was just wondering, when you die, will we still be able to come over to Agrawalji’s for rice pudding?’

Mishraji managed to scrape together enough money to send Gangasagar to a slightly better school than the government-funded one at which he taught. He asked Gangasagar to be always on his very best behaviour. He couldn’t afford any other school in Kanpur.

On his very first day at the new school, Gangasagar’s teacher asked him to stand up and answer some questions. The supremely confident Gangasagar was happy to oblige. The older students winked at each other, expecting a furious interrogation.

‘Who was the first president of America?’ asked the headmaster.

‘George Washington,’ replied Gangasagar.

‘Very good. History tells us that he did something naughty in his childhood. What was it?’

‘He chopped down his father’s cherry tree.’

‘Excellent, Gangasagar. History also tells us that his father did not punish him. Any idea why?’

‘Because George Washington still had the axe in his hand?’ asked Gangasagar as he sat down.

Within a few months he was grading papers for the headmaster and was his favourite pupil. School was about to break for Diwali vacations. Exams had just concluded and Gangasagar was helping his headmaster mark examination papers in history—his favourite subject. He laughed at the ridiculous answers proffered by some of his classmates.

‘Ancient India was full of myths which have been handed down from son to father. A collection of myths is called mythology.’

‘The greatest rulers were the Mowglis. The greatest Mowgli was Akbar.’

‘Then came the British. They brought with them many inventions such as cricket, tram tarts and steamed railways.’

‘Eventually, the British came to overrule India because there was too much diversity in our unity. They were great expotents and impotents. They started by expoting salt from India and then impoting cloth.’

One of the more difficult questions related to Chanakya, the wise guru of Chandragupta Maurya. The question was ‘Explain whether Chanakya’s treatise on political economy—the
Arthashastra
—was his own work or whether it was simply an aggregation of previously-held views.’ One of the bright but lazy students had written, ‘Only God could know the answer to this particular question given that Chanakya is dead. Happy Diwali.’

Gangasagar wrote in the margin, ‘God gets an A-plus, you get an F. Happy Diwali to you too!’

It was to be Mishraji’s last Diwali. Life had dealt him exceptionally harsh blows and the stress had eventually taken its toll. At the age of fifteen, Gangasagar was left fatherless with an ageing mother and two sisters, both of marriageable age. He knew that he would need to drop out of school, forget about college, and find work. His first port of call was Agrawalji, his father’s patron who had always treated Gangasagar kindly.

The mansion of Agrawalji was located in a wooded and secluded corner of Kanpur, along the bank of the river Ganges. The ten-bedroom house stood on a ten-acre plot with a private riverbank where ten Brahmins performed sacred rituals each day to make sure that the Agrawal family remained constantly blessed with good fortune for the next ten generations.

Agrawalji’s father had made the family fortune during the cotton boom of 1864 and had become one of the most famous figures in the Kanpur Cotton Exchange, the nerve centre of cotton trading. During the American Civil War, Britain had become disconnected from its usual cotton supplies and had turned to India to meet its cotton requirements. Cotton speculation became hectic and frenzied, and trading would continue till late hours of the night while merchants would await information on international cotton prices prior to closing their trading positions. Senior Agrawal loved the speculation. Unknown to most people of that time, however, he was no speculator. He owed his wealth to a simple technology known as the Morse Code. The wily market operator had employed two gentlemen, one in New York and the other in Tokyo. The employee in New York would relay cotton prices using Morse Code to the employee in Tokyo who, in turn, would relay the prices to senior Agrawal in Kanpur, also in code. The result was that the senior Agrawal knew the prices almost an hour before the others. Sixty minutes of pure arbitrage each day was the secret to the immense Agrawal fortune, not mindless speculation.

Senior Agrawal was succeeded by his son who inherited his father’s cunning and raw intelligence. While the father had used the American Civil War to further his business interests, Junior used the Second World War to do precisely the same. The British colony of India would provide over two-and-a-half million men and spend an astounding eighty per cent of its national income on the British war effort, and the man who would provide most of these supplies at hefty margins would be Agrawal junior. But Agrawalji was by no means on the British side. He was a shrewd man who had foreseen the future. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the British would have to quit India, and in anticipation of that event he made sure he doled out large donations to the freedom struggle too.

When Gangasagar was a little boy, Mahatma Gandhi had visited Kanpur and stayed with Agrawalji. Gandhiji had come from Allahabad to attend the fortieth annual session of the Indian National Congress. A crowd of twenty-five thousand people had gathered at Kanpur Railway Station to receive him. Agrawalji had escorted Gandhiji home. Mishraji had volunteered that little Gangasagar remain by Gandhiji’s side to take care of him during his visit. Agrawalji had readily agreed.

Gandhiji then delivered a speech at the famous Parade Ground of the city and appealed to the throngs of people gathered to support the non-cooperation movement and make it a huge success. During a private moment after the event, Agrawalji asked the great leader, ‘Bapu, what gives you the conviction that you’ll be able to fight the British?’

Mahatma Gandhi smiled. He said, ‘We shall win because we’re in the third stage of our four-stage struggle.’

‘The four-stage struggle?’ wondered aloud Agrawalji.

‘First, they ignore you, second, they laugh at you, third, they fight you, and fourth—you win. That’s the fourth stage, my friend, Agrawal,’ said the Mahatma simply. The little boy pressing Gandhiji’s feet listened to the wise leader very carefully. He hesitantly asked, ‘Bapu, the British have guns and policemen. I’m but a little boy. How can I fight them? They are so much stronger!’

Mahatma Gandhi fondly placed his hand on little Ganga’s head and said, ‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. I can see that you have it, son.’

From that day on, Gangasagar knew that one day he would also possess the power to make or break empires.

Gangasagar sat before Agrawalji uneasily. He was dressed in Western clothes but they sat uncomfortably on him. His sideburns were long and wide at the bottom, Elvis-style. His prominent nose provided ample parking space for a pair of very thick-framed spectacles. His hair was oiled back with a very visible parting towards his left. He wore a dull full-sleeved shirt that hung out of bell-bottomed trousers that had seen better days. He was clean-shaven and had fair skin but was rather short, just a little over five feet in height and was wearing shoes that were at least two sizes too big for him. ‘I didn’t know who else to turn to,’ said the young Gangasagar hesitantly. ‘Sir, I was hoping that you could give me a job. I’ll do whatever you ask of me, I promise I’ll work hard. Please help me,’ he pleaded.

Agrawalji took a puff of his saffron-and-cardamomflavoured tobacco hookah and smiled at the youth. ‘I don’t have sons of my own, Gangasagar. I’ll hire you but I’ll drive you like a slave. Your salary shall be twenty-five rupees per month. Agreed?’

‘You shall not regret this, sir. I am indeed blessed with good luck.’

‘Yes, I do believe in good luck, son. And I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it,’ Agrawalji joked.