The Setting Sun (17 page)

It feels as if I’ve only just dropped off when my mobile rings. It’s Rajeev, bright and enthusiastic.

‘Well, did you find him? Are you alright?’ he adds as I struggle to collect myself. To my surprise, I’m chilled to the bone.

‘It’s been a bit depressing, to be honest, Rajeev. He gave me his memoir. Very negative about my father.’ I relate the gist.

It’s his turn to hesitate. ‘But as I said, Modak’s a bitter man.’

‘Doesn’t make it any easier.’

‘My friend, how are the other British represented?’

The penny drops. Bill, Hobson, Mountain, Smith, Yates are variously lazy, incompetent, bullying, sticklers for pointless rules or a combination of these qualities.

‘There you are, then. He never forgave the Raj for dismissing his father.’

I recall Modak’s line in
Sentinel
just before the Satara episode ends: ‘I have no love lost to the British because they were unfair to me and unfair to my father.’

‘Why didn’t Modak resign, if he felt so strongly? They were very tough times, my friend, and required firm measures. I told you what the Patri Sarkar got up to. Some of those saboteurs were fifth columnists, they tried to make contact with the Japanese … Remember Gandhi himself condemned them.’

It’s little consolation, and I tell him so.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ Rajeev asks uncertainly.

‘I’m supposed to have dinner with the Modaks this evening. But I’m not sure I’ll go.’

‘Do so, my friend, I beg you, you may find out other things. Don’t be put off by his crankiness.’ Discomfited by my silence, Rajeev tries another tack. ‘You know why he wrote that memoir? Get hold of J.F. Rebeiro’s
Bullet for Bullet
. See what his colleagues thought about Modak. Rebeiro claimed he was a coward, and riot-prone.
Sentinel
’s his apologia.’

‘What?’

‘Everywhere Modak went, especially when he was in charge
of policing Kashmir, controversy and commissions of inquiry followed. Does he write about that?’

‘I’ve only read the stuff about Satara. But he can’t have been that bad if he finished up as top cop in Maharashtra.’

‘My friend, if you stick around long enough, you get there eventually. Isn’t it the same in your profession?’

I make a mental note to read on in
Sentinel
when I’ve got the energy.

‘Make sure you keep me informed about your movements. Anything I can do, just let me know. Oh, and when you see him, ask Modak to identify the other cadets in that photo I gave you. That would be a big help to me.’

‘Will do. If I go … By the way, any news of Poel?’

‘He isn’t back yet. I’ll keep trying.’

‘Thanks, Rajeev,’ I respond wearily.

‘No dark thoughts, now,’ he encourages gently. ‘Ask yourself why your father won the Indian Police Medal if everything Modak says is true.’

I need time to think. Unsure whether I’ll be able to face the Modaks later, I eventually phone, complaining of a stomach bug. Kiron answers, warm and sympathetic.

‘You must be careful about the water, even in the good hotels. There’s a good pharmacist near you. Do you want me to ring them and have something sent over? Try to rest and if you feel better, give me a ring this afternoon. I’d love to get your advice on something.’

Putting the phone down, I’m suddenly sick of my whole trip. If I could get back to England today, it wouldn’t be too soon. I’ve been away rather less than a fortnight, yet it feels as if my life’s been turned upside down. My room shrinks like a cell. I’ve got to get out. On the spur of the moment, I decide to bring forward my visit to nearby Yeravda, where Gandhi was imprisoned after his ‘Quit India’ speech – the event which precipitated the Satara uprising.

Before going down to breakfast, I wander over to the
window and look onto the street. An auto-rickshaw’s revving up, exhaust clouding the chilly morning air. Across the street a knot of onlookers has gathered on the pavement, breath steaming. It’s a violent shock to see them bending over the old man from the night before, his body now shrouded head to toe in a blanket. A policeman makes notes languidly. It’s no doubt my own sense of vulnerability which generates the raging sense of guilt which suddenly overtakes me. Did the poor fellow die of cold while I lay on the bed, sweating over my petty concerns?

It’s a surprise to discover that Gandhi’s ‘prison’ was actually a palace belonging to the legendarily wealthy Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili sect. It’s an enormous three-storeyed wedding cake, icing-sugar-white, with Moorish lancet arches, its extensive grounds an oasis after the turbulent inner city. Surrounding it are cooling stands of flame tree and jacaranda, leaves filamented like fish skeletons, clumps of graceful oleander and blushing hibiscus. On the ground floor, Gandhi’s rooms are closed off by glass screens. So it was from here that he denounced the Parallel Government. I wonder what Bill thought about his intervention? In his bedroom are a wafer-thin mattress, spinning wheel, writing materials, bookcase, red carpet, overlooked by a portrait of the Mahatma cradling his ill, white-haired wife, Kasturba. Next door, the austere white-tiled bathroom looks like it hasn’t been touched since his release. A simple pair of sandals lies in one dusty corner. Hard to tell whether husband’s or wife’s.

There’s an extremely peaceful, meditative atmosphere, enhanced by the absence of other visitors. In the hush, I try to internalise the meaning of Gandhi’s attachment to non-violence, an attachment so intense that he was prepared to condemn an insurgency as passionately committed as himself to India’s freedom. I know from his autobiography how hard Gandhi tried to comprehend and empathise with his
opponents, while pursuing his conceptions of truth and justice with inflexible determination. It’s deeply moving to connect such values to the sacrifices he made for them right here. In his portrait, the eyes remain warm, mischievous and lively despite his evident grief for Kasturba, who was soon to die, still a prisoner. The British attempt to isolate him suddenly strikes me as not only unjust, but ludicrous. Gandhi’s spirit was the source of his power and it must have percolated, an untameable will-o’-the-wisp, through the keyhole of the padlock on his door.

Behind the palace, two huge urns contain the couple’s ashes. As I contemplate them, the world suddenly clicks back in gear. I’m not to blame for my father’s alleged behaviour, nor am I responsible for the death of the old man on the pavement. Perhaps being here also prompts my reconsideration of Modak as the morning wears on, the attempt to see things from his point of view. I can only sympathise with his disgust at police brutality, however tardy his protests might have been. Most of all, I’m struck increasingly by the ambivalence beneath his memoir’s hyper-confident narratives of the brilliant policeman, the ardent and persuasive lover, the moral scourge of the British. His position was probably untenably awkward. As an Indian, Modak could never be fully part of the Raj, however much he might once have wanted to be. The nameplate on his gate, inscribed ‘IP’ rather than the post-Independence ‘IPS’ (Indian Police Service) suggests a lingering identification with the Raj, as does the interior of his home and Christian faith. But although he disclaims any direct experience of racism on the part of his British fellow-officers, and even though power had been nominally devolved to a Congress government in Bombay before war broke out, the system remained structurally racist. Otherwise Bill’s colleague Kamte would have had no need to be on guard against slights in the way described in
From Them to Us
.

According to
Sentinel
, an Englishman could join the IP with O-levels, while Indian candidates had to have degrees. The
viceroy could still declare war on Germany and Japan over the heads of the elected legislatures, and heap insult on injury with the totalitarian Defence of India Rules. Most of the 100,000 people detained alongside Gandhi were held without trial. And even if the British men Modak met ostensibly treated him as an equal, their female counterparts sometimes didn’t, as both his texts complain. How much was Kumar’s ‘inferiority complex’ an individual personality trait, how much a product of contact with the British? To this degree, he reminds me of his namesake, Hari Kumar in Paul Scott’s
Raj Quartet
, although Scott’s character is far more tragic – and far less autobiographical – than Modak’s.

At the same time, as Rajeev also intimated, Modak would inevitably have been regarded as something of an outsider to Indian society. It was doubtless bad enough to be from a family that had disavowed its Brahmin roots; as a policeman, he’d have been strongly identified with the ever more unpopular Raj. He must have felt increasingly vulnerable from 1942, as the Parallel Government stepped up its attacks on perceived collaborators. If, as seemed likely then, Britain was to lose the war and India fell to the Japanese, a sorry fate almost certainly awaited functionaries of the
ancien régime
. At the end of the war, his prospects couldn’t have seemed bright, what with Independence on the horizon. His real political beliefs in the 1940s remain unclear. In both books, the Parallel Government is occasionally represented almost as a liberation movement, social as well as political, directing its attacks as much against landowners and moneylenders as the Raj. As an Indian, he must surely have felt at least some identification with their aims? In the novel, Kumar’s sister is questioned by the police on suspicion of aiding the underground. It’s hard to know if this is fact, or a fiction which nonetheless expresses Modak’s own feelings at the time. Or does it express a convenient retrospective change of heart by someone who had to make his way in post-Raj India?

I wonder too why Modak’s father, the District Magistrate, was dismissed, and when. Perhaps that was decisive in recalibrating his son’s vision of the Raj. The sour way Modak sometimes represents Bill (and other British colleagues) might be consistent with that, even if professional rivalry wasn’t involved. Perhaps, justifiably, Modak also felt he’d been unfairly marginalised following his complaints about tactics, as indicated by his ignorance about the secret Memorandum Bill supposedly wrote. Maybe the memoir simply reflects the bitterness of old age, with Modak’s reputation under attack from former colleagues like Rebeiro. I sense it’ll be impossible to get to the bottom of it. My academic training reminds me that there’s no such thing as definitive truth in memories, only interpretations of events. As Salman Rushdie observes: ‘Memory … selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also, but in the end it creates its own reality.’

For all the pain they’ve caused me, then, I’m still intensely grateful for the insights Modak’s texts provide into the Bill of the 1940s. I couldn’t have hoped to get much of this information any other way. I feel more at peace by the time I get back to the hotel, but I’m physically exhausted. Where the old man’s body lay this morning, a makeshift stall has already been set up, selling single cigarettes and fluorescent sweets, overseen by a tinsel-golden god mounted on the frame. There’s no one to remember him now, nothing to record his having been. For some obscure reason, his abrupt erasure makes me feel I have to see the Modaks again after all. Perhaps Rajeev’s right, other things will come out, material excised from the memoir, which will help me better understand the young Bill and preserve his memory. After lunch I phone Kiron, who’s delighted to hear I’m better. The goodwill in her voice makes me feel ashamed of my earlier stratagem.

Lying down to rest in the afternoon, I examine the photo that Rajeev gave me. When it was taken, my father was rather
less than half the age I am now. What must it have felt like, at twenty-five years old, to be given such responsibility, taking on well-organised, armed insurgents, in a district the size of Wales, and equally mountainous in parts? I try to imagine one of my PhD students being entrusted with such a task. It seems inconceivable. And me? If the demands of the time had placed that burden on my shoulders, how would I have responded? To what and to whom would I have understood my loyalties to lie? I feel less and less in a position to judge Bill. I eventually fall asleep with the photo cradled on my breast.