The Setting Sun (37 page)

He shakes his head. ‘My records man says he recently burned the ones from just ten years ago.’

I’m almost blasé now. It’s the ones from Satara I really wanted. At least I’ll hear Bill’s voice in the station summaries.

But it’s not to be. I spend an hour on them, while civilian supplicants come and go. After Keitan’s comments, I half expect them to retire backwards out of the room, bowing like petitioners to the Rajahs. But Indore conducts himself in genial fashion and there’s a fair amount of laughter. It’s bizarre. Nothing signed by Bill. In fact, there are no entries for 1947 under any of the headings. They stop the year before and resume in 1948. Perhaps, if Bill was appointed in February and stayed only six months, he wouldn’t have been there to do the reports at the appropriate time, end of year? Or could he not be bothered, knowing he’d soon be leaving? He was never much of a desk-wallah.

‘I almost forgot,’ the DSP says, with a glitter of gold tooth, when I return the ledgers. ‘We’ve found an old constable for you. From traffic.’

Traffic? How disappointing. Nonetheless, since Indore’s gone to the trouble, I smile enthusiastically.

‘Can you come back at six this evening?’ he asks wearily. ‘We need to send someone to get him and I have so much to do today.’

When Keitan turns up on his scooter after lunch, I’m feeling buoyant. I’ve accomplished pretty much everything possible in Ratnagiri, and can now relax with a good conscience. We breeze through seaside villages like in a
masala
road movie, past shoals of tiny fishes spread out to dry under nets on the verges, like silver quilts in the bright sunlight. Herons prance up and down, shaking their heads indignantly at being denied access to this harvest. The houses are mainly thatch, shaded by mangoes, jackfruit and clumps of banana. Vividly painted outriggers bob on the sea beyond. Occasionally the road skips
inland through rice paddies, an occasional water buffalo wallowing in a canal.

It’s even more delightful when we arrive at Ganpatipule. As Rajeev said, this must be what Goa was like in the old days, miles of pristine beach with icing-sugar sand, huge blue skies and almost no Western tourists. I can’t wait to get in the water. But, stupidly, I left my swimsuit to dry in the hotel. Keitan rebuffs my inquiry:

‘No underclothes, there are ladies.’

Stripping down to my cut-offs, I run to the ocean and flop in with a huge splash. When I surface, I see Keitan sitting on the beach, baseball cap now pulled down backwards. Behind him, a line of pilgrims snakes towards the temple. The
mandir
’s similar in style to the one at Chafal, but deep cinnamon-pink in colour. Can’t tell if it’s paint or marble. Worshippers who’ve completed their devotions gather in festive family groups on the beach, umbrellas up against the sun, arranging picnics. Some perform ablutions in the shallow surf.

‘Only Muslims know how to swim,’ Keitan comments wistfully when I rejoin him. ‘All the fishermen are Muslim. We Hindus have no swimming pools to learn in.’

I lie back on my shirt, hair caked with salt, at peace. Is this how Bill felt as his time in India closed? It’s barely three weeks since I arrived at Mumbai airport, but it feels like months. How did he get his head round going ‘home’ after so many years in this extraordinary place? How will I feel in a few days’ time, plunged back into the greyness of a northern winter? As if reading my thoughts, Keitan props himself on one elbow.

‘Did aliens build Heathrow?’

I’m thrown. Does he mean migrant labour?

‘From spaceships?’ he clarifies earnestly. ‘I read it in a book.’

‘What book?’

‘Danikow. Eric von Danikow.’

Isn’t it Daniken? I remember the name vaguely from my random adolescent reading. My older brother was an avid
sci-fi fan, the walls of his London squat lined with everyone from Asimov to Zamyatin.

‘I don’t think so, Keitan. Probably built by Irishmen.’

Keitan examines me with a pained expression, as if I’m being satirical.

After lingering over what I expect will be my last swim in India, we look round the temple and village. I’m more interested in the latter today, particularly the stalls selling two of my favourite African childhood treats – fresh coconut juice and jaggery, dark crumbly blocks of the first unrefined pressings of sugarcane. Keitan tells me that according to traditional medicine, the latter’s something to avoid. I ignore his warning. But what I hope will be a Proustian moment is spoiled when it slips from my fingers onto the sand. So I content myself with sipping from the freshly lopped coconut gourd. Keitan declines that, too, opting instead for what looks like a persimmon from the bag of fruit he’s brought along.

‘Shall we go back a different way?’ he asks when I complain I’m starting to burn. Despite the awning we’re under, the sun’s rays cook like a microwave.

‘Why not?’ Go with the flow.

‘There’s another route. Less buses.’

The lush coastal strip yields for a while to scrubby, eroded hills. But once we enter the river-fed valleys further inland, everything’s green again, orchards of sweet lime and fields of
jowar
and sugar. Unlike round Satara, the cane here is deep reddish-yellow.

‘Would you like to see how it’s cut?’ Keitan asks, as we slow by a culvert. The harvest’s in progress, the remaining crop pushed back some distance from the road in shallow curves. At intervals, cutters work away with machetes. Some look barely adolescent and still younger children strip the stalks of leaves, before carrying them in bundles towards carts, where white oxen lie prostrate beside them. Birds criss-cross overhead, swooping for insects put to flight by the tumbling canes. As we
dismount, a plump man in a suit comes out of a hut towards us. He’s the landowner, he explains, pointing to his 4×4 further down the road. We chat for a while about yields. But I’m more interested in the workers. He explains they’re itinerant labourers, mostly from Aurangabad, hundreds of kilometres to the north-east. I ask if we can go watch how it’s done.

We tramp across a crackling mulch of cane-leaf and approach a very dark old man, head wrapped in a sweaty turban to protect against the sun. Either side of him are a woman and a very pretty girl of about twelve, squatting to swing their machetes, while a small boy flits between them, gathering felled canes. The man straightens up with a broad smile.

‘He asks if you want to try,’ Keitan interprets.

I take the machete and attempt a couple of swings. It’s heavy, very difficult to make a clean cut. I’m quickly reduced to hacking randomly. The man adjusts my stance and explains how to balance the cleaver so it lands at the right angle. Still, it’s exhausting, doubled down at the base of the canes, and I’m quickly pouring with sweat.

‘How long’s your day?’ I ask through Keitan, relieved to hand back the machete.

‘Ten hours,’ the cutter answers deferentially, before pointing to the woman. ‘Nine for my wife.’

Wife? I assumed he was her father. Now I see his eyes are youthful. It’s hard labour and poverty which have scored those lines around them.

‘What do you get paid?’

‘One hundred rupees for me. Seventy for women. Fifty for the children.’

‘Per day?’

He nods. I’m shocked: £1.20 for the man, 60p for the kids. I spent more than that on the coconut water and wasted jaggery.

‘He says they work as labourers for eight months of the year, all over Maharashtra, then go back to Aurangabad.’

‘Don’t the children attend school?’

‘He says they can’t afford it. They have just enough if the four of them work as a team.’

‘And if one gets sick?’

The man shrugs. It’s heartbreaking. The girl has such intelligent eyes, so much grace.

Keitan follows my gaze. ‘She’ll be married off in a couple of years, to another labourer. Like her mother was. And her mother before her,’ he sighs.

My conscience stabs. ‘I’d like to do something for the children. There must be a school. It can’t cost much.’

The man’s looking at us inquiringly. Keitan takes me to one side.

‘It’s impossible. They need their labour. Do you know how much such a girl’s dowry costs?’

I shrug, spirits dissipating rapidly.

‘Between twenty and forty thousand rupees.’

‘But that’ll take them their whole lives to find.’

‘That’s where the moneylenders come in.’

No wonder the Parallel Government targeted such people. Or that Nayakwadi asserted that the movement’s needed again.

I thank the family for giving us their time. It feels a feebly inadequate gesture, but I ask Keitan to give them some money, which they accept with graceful, dignified smiles. They then
namaste
and return to their cutting. As we head to the scooter, I notice a mess of tattered cloches on the other side of the verge, like an abandoned allotment. A woman squats, fanning a brazier.

‘This is their camp,’ Keitan explains.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so wretched. Flimsy bits of plastic, laid over bent branches held in place with rusty wire, each barely big enough for one person. Faded saris dry on an improvised clothesline, while sugarcane pith blows between the ragged rows of see-through shelters, impersonal as coffins.

I’m feeling thoroughly chastened when we resume our journey. Keitan, too, seems thoughtful.

‘The worst thing,’ he says, ‘is how hard it is to escape such a life.’

Though Brahmin-born and so pernickety about his diet, he’s as impatient as Nayakwadi with traditional distinctions.

‘Not touching other castes, not eating with them, that’s disappearing,’ he shouts over his shoulder. Then he taps the side of his helmet. ‘But it’s in here that’s important. Ninety-nine per cent of people still marry within their own caste. Not even that. Their own sub-caste.’

‘How can anyone tell your caste?’

‘Names. Colour of your skin. Sometimes your features. Now do you understand why I want to go abroad?’

I nod.

‘It was a bad thing when you British left.’

I don’t have the energy to argue. But it makes me reconsider Briha’s good fortune in escaping his Dalit background. Perhaps he’s an exception, after all.

We arrive back in Ratnagiri’s bustling port area, where a night-fleet’s in the process of leaving. With time to spare before my appointment with Indore, Keitan suggests we visit the market and Tilak’s home. It’s hectic in the narrow alleys and despite some unease after the stoning incident, I’m glad to get off the scooter and walk. With every inch of pavement taken up by produce for sale, we have to dodge through the vehicles which somehow growl their way through the maze. I wonder if Thibaw’s great-grandchildren live somewhere nearby, and look out for the Burmese royal peacock emblem above the doors of the mean-looking houses. Keitan calls me down a passage where the stink of fish is gut-churning. Tilak’s house is grand, with terracotta tiles and shallow-pitched, low-spreading eaves. To one side of the front yard stands a tarnished metal relief, perhaps ten feet long and six high, with scenes of Tilak’s life and dealings with other nationalist leaders, all
presided over by Shivaji. Did Bill ever come here, to one of the spiritual birthplaces of the Parallel Government? Perhaps he took the opportunity to reflect on his experiences in Satara and consider why Indian independence had become an inexorable necessity.

We stop for refreshments at a tea shop, one side of which is given up to internet booths. I’m not in the mood to check my emails, but Keitan says he wants to send me a message to ensure we’re connected before I leave Ratnagiri. After finishing my drink, I wander up to pay. Beneath the glass counter, a pile of photocopies catches my eye. They’re an excerpt from T.B. Macaulay’s address to the British parliament on 2 February 1835, with an indistinct photo of the speaker in later life. Before becoming a famous Victorian poet, Macaulay had been in charge of the East India Company’s educational policy:

I have travelled the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage. I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.

I imagine an enraged Tilak comparing Macaulay’s description with wretched lives of the kind led by the migrant labourers we met this afternoon. I buy a copy. When Keitan’s finished in his booth, I press it on him.