The Mystic Masseur (24 page)

Ganesh said, ‘You ain’t know how right you is.’

The boy said, ‘You have three witnesses here that he just overbalance and fall down.’

Ganesh didn’t respond.

The boy said, ‘Gimme the stick.
I
go settle Narayan.’

Swami smiled. ‘You too small.’

Ganesh’s supporters were distributing
The Dharma
right and left, to people passing in the road, to the eating delegates, to the delegates walking about the yard. At first they tried to get four cents a copy but now they were just giving the paper away.

Partap said calmly, ‘You want me go and abuse Narayan now, pundit? Is the sort of thing I mad enough to do, you know.’ He suddenly became frenzied. ‘Look, all you people better hold me back before I send that thin little man to hospital, you hear. Hold me back!’

They held him back.

Narayan stopped staring across the road and walked slowly towards the landing.

Swami said, ‘You want me kick him down the steps, sahib?’

They held him back too.

Narayan glanced at them. He looked sick.

‘Leave him alone,’ Ganesh said. ‘He finish, poor man.’

The boy said, ‘He look like a wet fowl.’

They heard him going down the steps, clop by clop.

The delegates who had been eating came out to the verandah in small groups, tumbler in hand. They were remaining as calm as possible and behaved as though Ganesh and his men were not there. They washed their hands over the wall and gargled. They talked and laughed, loudly.

Ganesh’s attention was caught by a short, stout gargler at the far end of the verandah. He thought he recognized the energy with which this man was gargling and spitting into the yard; and that over-all jauntiness was definitely familiar. From time to time the gargler gave a curious little hop, and that too Ganesh recognized.

The man stopped gargling and looked around. ‘Ganesh! Ganesh Ramsumair!’

‘Indarsingh!’

He was plumper and moustached, but the weaving and bobbing, the effervescence that made him a star pupil at the Queen’s Royal College, remained. ‘Hello there, old boy.’

‘Man, you talking with a Oxford accent now, man. What happening, man?’

‘Easy, old boy. Nasty trick you’re playing against us. But you’re looking well. Demn well.’ He fingered his St Catherine’s Society tie and gave another hop.

Ganesh would have been too embarrassed to talk correctly with Indarsingh. ‘Man, I never did expecting to see you here. A big scholarship-winner like you, man.’

‘Catching hell with law, old boy. Thinking of politics. Starting small. Talking.’

‘Yes, man. Indarsingh was the champion debater at college.’

Swami and the others stood by, gaping. Ganesh said, ‘I ask the pack of all of you to stand guard over me? Where Narayan?’

‘He sitting down quiet quiet downstairs wiping he face with a dirty handkerchief.’

‘Well, go and watch him. Don’t let him start up anything funny.’

The men and the boy left.

Indarsingh took no notice of the interruption. ‘Talking to peasants now. Different thing altogether, old boy. Not like talking to the Lit. Soc. or the Oxford Union.’

‘
Oxford
Union.’

‘For years, old boy. Term in. Term out. Indarsingh. Three times nominated for Library Committee. Didn’t get in. Prejudice. Disgusted.’ Indarsingh’s face saddened for a moment.

‘What make you give up law so easy, man?’

‘Talking to peasants,’ Indarsingh repeated. ‘An art, old boy.’

‘Oh, it ain’t so hard.’

Indarsingh paid no attention. ‘Past few months been talking to all sorts of people. Getting practice. Bicycle clubs, football clubs, cricket clubs. No ten-minute things, old boy. Give them something different. One day, at cricket elections, talked for so long gas-lamp went out.’ He looked earnestly at Ganesh. ‘Know what happened?’

‘You light back the lamp?’

‘Wrong, old boy. Went on talking.
In the dark
.’

The boy ran up the steps. ‘The meeting starting to start, sahib.’

Ganesh hadn’t noticed that the garglers had left the verandah.

‘Ganesh, going to fight you, old boy. Don’t like tricks. Going to break you by talk, old boy.’ He gave a little hop.

They started down the steps. ‘Story to tell, old boy. About talking practice. Man called Ganga supported some fool for County Council elections. I supported other man. My man won. A close thing. Ganga starts row. Big row. Clamouring for recount. Talked
fifteen
minutes against recount. Ah, meeting starting. Lots of delegates here today, what?’

‘What happen?’

‘Oh, recount. My man lost.’

The room was crowded. There were not enough benches and many delegates had to stand up against the lattice-work. The confusion was increased by the number of wooden pillars sprouting up in odd places.

‘No room, old boy. Didn’t bargain for so many of us, what? Not going to sit with you, though. Going to squeeze in somewhere in front. No tricks, remember.’

The delegates fanned themselves with
The Dharma
.

Perhaps, if
The Dharma
had not made him so ludicrous and the thirty-thousand-dollar grant so vulnerable, Narayan would have fought back. But he was taken so completely by surprise and knew the weakness of his own position so well, everything went smoothly for Ganesh.

But there were moments when Ganesh was worried.

When Narayan, for example, sitting as President at the table draped with the saffron, white, and green Indian tricolour, asked how Mr Partap, who, he knew, worked in Port of Spain and lived in San Fernando, could represent Cunaripo, which was miles away from either place.

Ganesh at once jumped to his feet and said that Mr Partap, it was true, was an esteemed member of the Parcel Post Service in Port of Spain and belonged to an honourable family in San Fernando; but he also, no doubt for merit in some past life, owned land in Cunaripo.

Narayan looked sick. He said drily, ‘Oh, well. I suppose I represent Port of Spain although I work in Sangre Grande, only fifty miles away.’

There was general laughter. Everyone knew that Narayan lived and worked in Port of Spain.

Then Indarsingh began to make trouble. In a speech lasting almost ten minutes he wondered, in impeccable English, whether all the branches present had paid their subscriptions.

The Chief Treasurer, sitting next to Narayan, opened a blue exercise-book with a picture of King George VI on the cover. He said that many branches, particularly the new ones, hadn’t paid; but he was sure they soon would.

Indarsingh shouted, ‘Unconstitutional!’

There was silence.

He seemed to have expected a howl of protest, and the silence caught him unprepared. He said, ‘Oh, I say, what?’ and sat down.

Narayan twisted his thin lips. ‘It is a little curious, however. Let me consult the constitution!’

Swami bellowed from the back, ‘Narayan, you ain’t going to consult no constitution!’

Narayan looked miserable and pushed the booklet aside.

‘A man like you, robbing money that people scratch and scrape and save. Wanting to consult constitution!’

Ganesh stood up. ‘Mr President, sir, I call on Dr Swami to withdraw those unkind remarks.’

The meeting took up the cry. ‘Withdraw! Withdraw!’

‘All right, I withdraw. Eh, who saying, “Shut up”? He want to taste my hand.’ Swami looked menacingly around. ‘Look, I want to make we position plain. We ain’t here to fight anybody. We just want to see Hindus unite and we want to get the grant for
every
body, not for one man.’

Narayan looked sicker than ever.

There was laughter, not only from Ganesh’s supporters.

Ganesh whispered to the boy, ‘How you didn’t remind me about the subscriptions, man?’

The boy said, ‘It ain’t for you, a big man, to talk to me so.’

Indarsingh was up again. ‘Mr President, this is a democratic body, and in no other body – and I have travelled – have I heard of members who haven’t paid subscriptions being allowed to vote. In fact, it is my considered opinion that, by and large –’

Narayan said, ‘Is this a motion?’

Indarsingh looked hurt. ‘It is, Mr President. A motion, certainly.’

Swami bellowed, ‘Mr President, enough of this damn nonsense motion and commotion, and listen to something sensible for a change. It is my motion that the constitution should be – be –’

‘Suspended,’ the boy prompted.

‘– be suspended, or anyway that part which say that members have to pay before they vote. Suspended for this meeting, and this meeting only.’

Indarsingh lost his temper, bared an arm, quoted Gandhi, talked about the Oxford Union, and said he was ashamed of the corruption in the Hindu Association.

Narayan looked wretched.

At a signal from Ganesh, four men rushed to Indarsingh and lifted him outside. ‘Undemocratic!’ Indarsingh shouted, ‘Unconstitutional!’ He became quiet all of a sudden.

Narayan said, ‘Who will second that motion?’

Every hand went up.

Narayan saw defeat. He took out a handkerchief and held it over his mouth.

Then the mood of the meeting changed.

The bearded Negro stood up and made a long speech. He said that he had been attracted to Hinduism because he liked Indians; but the corruption he had seen that day was entirely repugnant to him. It had, as a matter of fact, decided him to join the Muslims, and the Hindus had better look out when he was a Muslim.

The Chief Treasurer, the guardian of the blue exercise-book, a splendid figure in orange turban and silk
koortah
, said that Indians were bad people, and Hindus particularly bad. He had lost faith in his people and no longer thought it an honour to be Chief Treasurer of the Hindu Association. He was going to resign then and there and not offer himself for re-election.

Personal loyalties were forgotten. ‘Stay, punditji,’ the Hindu Association shouted, ‘stay.’

The Chief Treasurer wept and stayed.

Narayan looked crumpled and more miserable than ever when he rose to speak. He said – and his speech was fully reported in
The Hindu
– ‘Dissension and dissatisfaction prevail among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I have caused some of that dissension and dissatisfaction. I confess it.’ He was weeping. ‘My friends, will you forgive an old man?’

‘Yes, ji,’ the audience wept back. ‘We forgive you.’

‘My friends, we are not united. And now, with your permission, I am going to tell the story of an old man, his three sons, and a bundle of sticks.’ He didn’t tell it very well. ‘United we stand, then, and divided we fall. My friends, let us fall united rather than stand united. My friends, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru never wrangled with Shri Chakravarti Rajagopalacharya or with Shri Vallabhai Patel for the Presidency of the All-India National Congress. And so too, my friends, I have no desire to be the cause of dissatisfaction and dissension among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I only want back my self-respect and I want your respect. My friends, I withdraw from public life. I do not want to be re-elected President of the Hindu Association of Trinidad, of which I am a founder member and President.’

Narayan was cheered loud and long. Some people wept. Some shouted, ‘Long live Narayan!’

He wept too. ‘Thank you, thank you, my friends.’ And sat down to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

‘A diplomatic son of a bitch, pundit,’ the boy said.

But Ganesh was wiping away a tear.

Ganesh was the only candidate for the Presidency and was elected without any fuss at all.

Swami and Partap were among the new Assistant-Presidents. The boy was a simple Secretary. Indarsingh was offered the post of Fourth Assistant to the Chief Secretary, but declined.

Ganesh’s first act as President was to send a cable to the All-India Congress. Awkwardly, it wasn’t the occasion of any important anniversary. He cabled:

KEEP MAHATMAJI IDEALS ALIVE STOP HINDU ASSOCIATION
TRINIDAD WITH YOU INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE STOP
BEST WISHES

GANESH PRESIDENT HINDU ASSOCIATION

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

11. M.L.C.

V
OLUME
O
NE
Number Two of
The Dharma
never came out.

Swami and Partap could not hide their relief. But the boy told Ganesh, ‘I ain’t want to meddle in any more of this child-play, you hear.’ And he told Swami, ‘Next time you start up a paper leave me out.’

But
The Dharma
had served its purpose. Narayan kept his word and retired from public life. The election campaigns for Trinidad’s first General Elections raged around him while he remained at his house in Mucurapo in Port of Spain a useless invalid.
The Hindu
dropped the
Each One Teach One
and
Per Ardua ad Astra
slogans and consoled itself once more with quotations from the Hindu scriptures. The Little Bird disappeared and its place was taken by
Sparks from a Brahmin’s Log-fire.

Ganesh didn’t have time for the affairs of the Hindu Association. The island elections were two months off and he found himself embroiled. Indarsingh had decided to go up in Ganesh’s ward and it was this rather than the promptings of the Association or Beharry or Swami that made Ganesh stand for the elections.

‘Narayan did have a little point there, pundit,’ Beharry said. ‘About religious visionaries. And Suruj Mooma too, she say curing soul go do but it wouldn’t put food in people mouth.’

Ganesh asked Leela’s advice.

She said, ‘But you have to go up. You not going to sit down and let that boy fool the people?’

‘Indarsingh ain’t a boy, man.’

‘It are hard not to believe that. Suruj Mooma right, you know. Too much of this education is a bad bad thing. You remain here, educate yourself, and yet you is a bigger man than Indarsingh for all the Ox-ford he say he go to.’

The Great Belcher cried. ‘Oh, Ganeshwa, is the word I was waiting for from your mouth. Is your
duty
to go up and help the poor people.’

So Ganesh went up for the elections.

‘But,’ Leela warned, ‘it are not going to make me happy to see my husband getting into all sort of low argument with all sort of low people. I don’t want you to drag your name in the mud.’

He didn’t. He fought the cleanest election campaign in Trinidad history. He had no platform. And his posters were the simplest things:
GANESH
WILL
DO
WHAT
HE
CAN
,
A
VOTE
FOR
GANESH
IS
A
VOTE
FOR
GOD
; sometimes even plainer statements,
GANESH
WILL
WIN
and
GANESH
IS
A
MAN
OF
GOOD
AND
GOD
.

He held no election meetings, but Swami and Partap arranged many prayer-meetings for him. He worked hard to expand his
Road to Happiness
lectures; three or even four taxis had to take the books he required. Quite casually, in the middle of a lecture, he would say in Hindi, ‘It may interest one or two of you in this gathering tonight to hear that I am a candidate for the elections next month. I can promise nothing. In everything I shall consult God and my conscience, even at the risk of displeasing you. But that is by the way. We were talking, you remember, about the transmigration of souls. Now, this theory was also put forward by a philosopher of Ancient Greece, but I have brought along some books tonight to show you that it is more than likely that the Greek got the idea from India …’

Beharry said one day, ‘Suruj Mooma don’t think the sign in front the house look nice, pundit. She say it so mildew it spoil the whole house.’

So Ganesh took down the sign which threatened that requests for monetary assistance would not be entertained, and put up a new and simpler one which said:
Spiritual solace may be had here at any time.

At a prayer-meeting one evening Ganesh noticed the boy among the helpers taking away the books from the taxis to the platform. Swami said, ‘I bring the boy to apologize for what he say, sahib. He say he want to make up by helping with the poster and them. He crying all the time, sahib. And don’t mind he look little, he have a master hand for painting signs.’

The boy’s lettering was elaborate. He was never content with a plain letter; he shadowed everything and sometimes it was hard to read what he had written. But he was keen and everybody liked him. Beharry, who was also working on the posters, said, ‘I wish sometimes that God did give me a son like this. Suruj, he all right, but Suruj, pundit, he ain’t have brains, man. He always in some Remove class. It does beat me. I is a intelligent man and Suruj Mooma ain’t a fool.’

Beharry’s praise spurred the boy on and he designed the most famous poster of the elections:

G
ANESH
is

Able

Nice

Energetic

Sincere

H
OLY

Against all this it was clear from the start that Indarsingh didn’t have a chance. But he fought gamely. He got the support of the Party for Progress and Unity, the
PPU,
an organization hastily slung together two months before the elections. The
PPU
’s aims, like its organization, were vague; and Indarsingh had to fend for himself. His speeches were long, carefully thought-out things – later published by the author in book form with the title
Colonialism: Four Essays
– about The Economics of Colonialism, Colonialism in Perspective, The Anatomy of Oppression, The Approach to Freedom. Indarsingh travelled about with his own blackboard and a box of coloured chalks, illustrating his arguments with diagrams. Children liked him. They surrounded him at the beginning and end of a meeting and begged for ‘a little tiny little piece of chalk you did thinking of throwing away’. The older people called him the ‘Walking Dictionary’.

Once or twice Indarsingh attempted an attack on Ganesh but he soon learned better. Ganesh never mentioned Indarsingh at all.

Leela liked Indarsingh less and less as polling day came nearer. ‘All this fancy talk in all this fancy accent he are giving the people here, it are beat me why they don’t fling something big at his head.’

‘It ain’t nice to talk so, Leela,’ Ganesh said. ‘He is a good boy. He fighting a clean clean election and it ain’t so clean in the rest of Trinidad, I can tell you.’

Leela turned to Beharry. ‘You bear what he are saying? It are just this sort of goodness and big mind that is dangerous in Trinidad. He ain’t have enough, it look like, from people like Narayan.’

Beharry said, ‘Well, it have a lot in what the pundit say. Indarsingh is a good boy, but he still a boy. He does talk too big. Mark you, that all right for we here. I could understand and Ganesh pundit could understand, but is different for the ordinary people.’

One night Ganesh came back late to Fuente Grove from a prayer-meeting at Bamboo Walk, a village at the boundary of his ward. Upstairs in the drawing-room Leela, Beharry, and the boy were, as usual, working on the posters. They were at the dining-table. But Ganesh saw somebody else kneeling next to the refrigerator, filling in the outlines of a
GANESH
IS
A
MAN
OF
GOOD
AND
GOD
poster spread on the floor. He was a big fat man; but it wasn’t Swami.

‘Hello, sahib,’ the man said casually, and went on filling in the letters.

It was Ramlogan.

‘Hello, Ramlogan. It have a long time I ain’t see you.’

Ramlogan didn’t look up. ‘Busy, sahib. Very busy with the shop.’

Ganesh said, ‘Leela, I hope you have a lot of food for me tonight. Anything that leave over, I could eat all of it. I hungry like a horse. Eh, but Leela, you ain’t give your father anything?’

She moved with alacrity to the refrigerator.

Ramlogan kept on filling in letters.

‘What you think of it?’

‘Is very nice wordings, sahib.’ Still Ramlogan didn’t look up.

‘Leela think them up.’

‘She is like that, sahib.’

Leela handed round the Coca-Cola.

Ramlogan, who was resting forward on his hands, knelt upright and laughed. ‘It have years now I selling this Coca-Cola but you know, sahib, I never touch it before. Is so it does happen. You ever notice that carpenters always living in some sort of breakdown old shack?’

Leela said, ‘Man, your food waiting for you in the kitchen.’

Ganesh went through the drawing-room to the large room next to the back verandah.

Leela had tears in her eyes. ‘Man, is the second time in my life you make me feel proud of you.’ She leaned on him.

He didn’t push her away.

‘The first time was with the boy and the cloud. Now is with Pa.’

She wiped her eyes and seated Ganesh at the kitchen table.

In the week before polling day Ganesh decided to suspend mystic activity and hold a
Bhagwat
, a seven-day prayer-meeting.

He said, ‘Ever since I small I promising myself to hold my own
Bhagwat
, but I could never find the time.’

The boy said, ‘But now is the time to move around, pundit, talking to the people and them.’

‘I know,’ Ganesh said sadly. ‘But something telling me that if I don’t have a
Bhagwat
now, I would never have one again.’

Leela didn’t approve. ‘Is easy for you, just sitting down and reciting prayers and thing to the people. But they don’t come to
Bhagwat
just for prayers, I can tell you. They come for the free food.’

However, The Great Belcher and Suruj Mooma and Ramlogan rallied round and helped Leela with the great week-long task of cooking. The
Bhagwat
was held in the ground floor of the house; people were fed in the bamboo restaurant at the side; and there was a special kitchen at the back. Logs burned in huge holes in the ground and in great black iron pots over the holes simmered rice,
dal
, potatoes, pumpkins, spinach of many sorts,
karhee
, and many other Hindu vegetarian things. People came to the
Bhagwat
from many miles around and even Swami, who had organized so many
Bhagwats
, said, ‘Is the biggest and best thing I ever organize.’

Leela complained more than ever of being tired; The Great Belcher had unusual trouble with the wind; Suruj Mooma moaned all the time about her hands.

But Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Is like that with women and them, sahib. They complaining, but it have nothing they like better than a big fête like this. Was the same with Leela mother. Always going off to sing at somebody wedding, coming back hoarse hoarse next morning and complaining. But the next time a wedding come round and you turn to look for Leela mother – she ain’t there.’

As a supreme gesture Ganesh invited Indarsingh to the last night of the
Bhagwat,
on the eve of polling day.

Leela told Suruj Mooma and The Great Belcher, ‘Is just what I are expecting from that husband of mine. Sometimes these man and them does behave as if they lose their senses.’

Suruj Mooma stirred the cauldron of
dal
with a ladle a yard long. ‘Ah, my dear. But
what
we go do without them?’

Indarsingh came in an Oxford blazer and Swami, as organizer of the
Bhagwat,
introduced him to the audience. ‘I got to talk English to introduce this man to you, because I don’t think he could talk any Hindi. But I think all of all you go agree with me that he does talk English like a pukka Englishman. That is because he have a foreign education and he only
just
come back to try and help out the poor Trinidad people. Ladies and gentlemen – Mr Indarsingh, Bachelor of Arts of Oxford University, London, England.’