The Way Things Were (18 page)

‘English, please.’

‘It begins with an ode: “This we offer with an expression of homage to the poets of old. Let us also pay reverence to language, a deathless thing, a part of the soul.”’

‘The soul,’ she says softly into the darkness. ‘
Ā
tman.’

Then, taking his hand, she leads him out of the dining room. And they go deeper into the house.

The hour of juncture – sa
ṃ
dhy
ā
– juncture between day and night, enveloped the flat. And it brought all variety of distractions to be found at such a junction. Uma, in blouse and petticoat, made-up but unperfumed, hair twisted into a knot, was in between dressing and giving Rudrani a bath. Narindar, flitting along the flat’s freshly painted walls like a moth, turned on lights as he went by. They had been outside together a moment ago, Narindar and Skanda, outside where there was now the screech of birds, voices calling children in, bicycle bells, the slow rumbling tread of a dark blue truck pumping Malathion into the October air. His uncle I.P. was due soon, and the excitement of this made Skanda restless, as did the guttering of the lights: a fluctuation! A new and adored word. In the tentative air of this juncturing hour, in the general storm of a day winding down, his father alone was still and calm, unperturbed by the transfers taking place around them, as if there were no dinners or card parties to be gone to, no baths to be had, no drinks to be laid out, no night to fling its cloth over the sky.

‘
Ā
tmana
ḥ
,’ Toby said. ‘What case is that in, Skandu?’

A
ḥ
? The aspiration had thrown him off. A single index finger shot out of his closed fist, and wiggled tentatively before his father, who looked at it with mock horror, eyes wide, as if it were an insulting gesture – an expression sure to provoke uncontrollable laughter – before bringing a large hand, open and smothering, paper trumping rock, closed over the little fist.

‘First? First?! First?!!!’ Peals of laughter by the time the third First is said. ‘Look again, Skandu. Is it an “a” final?’

‘No!’ He could tell it wasn’t from his father’s tone.

‘Is it an “as” final, like manas?’

No. Because it would retain its ‘s’ if it was in the singular, unless . . . vocative? O Soul? No, that can’t be: the soul is not being addressed. So . . .

‘I’ll give you a clue,’ his father said, and leaned back in his chair. ‘It is in the same group as r
ā
jan. Now, come on, concentrate – r
ā
j
ā
, r
ā
j
ā
nam, r
ā
jñ
ā
, r
ā
jñe . . .’

‘R
ā
jña
ḥ
!’

‘Exactly!

‘And so?’

‘It’s the sixth case, baba:
ā
tmana
ḥ
is
ā
tman in the sixth case!’

‘Correct.
Of
the soul:
ā
tm
ā
,
ā
tm
ā
nam,
ā
tman
ā
,
ā
tmane . . .’

And together in one voice they say, ‘
Ā
tmana
ḥ
!’

‘Now, get your poor father a drink before he faints . . .’

‘Baba, are you and Mama going out for dinner?’

‘You know we are. To Isha Massi’s. For a card party . . .’

‘And is I.P. Mamu going to come to be with us?’

‘Why are you asking questions you know the answer to? Of course he is. And your father, in the meantime, will be emptying your mother’s family’s pockets.’

‘Winning, or what?’

‘Big time! Rich banne wale hain hum.’

‘Richer than Viski Masardji?’

‘Richer than him even.’

‘
Toby
, come on! Let him have his bath. And get dressed yourself.’

He winked at his son, and, getting up, mouthed, ‘Rich,’ which made Skanda laugh hysterically. Then pouring himself a Campari soda – for some reason available when hardly anything else was – he swung around, and still standing at the bar, did a little jig: ‘Money, money, money . . .’

He was in the middle of telling Skanda that rich, r
ā
j
ā
and
rex
, like Rex Harrison – Skanda’s favourite actor – all had the same root, when the doorbell rang.

Narindar opened it. It was I.P. with his luggage.

‘Ohohoho, sardar saab . . . !’

‘Mamu!’

‘
Toby!
He’s here, and you’re not even dressed.’

‘I will, darling. Not to worry. Sardar saab, what are you drinking?’

‘Greetings, Highness . . .’ I.P. said, half in irony. Then, in between setting down his bags, he removed his kara from his wrist so that Skanda, ever fascinated by its size and the fact that he could open bottles with it, might play with it.

‘Highness! You mustn’t call me that, I.P. I am but a mere princeling, and more ling than prince, if you ask me. Skandu, you better go for your bath. Or your mother will . . .’ he smacks his fist into his palm ‘ . . . us all. Go on.’

‘But afterwards can I sit with I.P. Mamu?’

‘Of course you can. He is here to sit with you
only
.’

With a question in his face, Toby made a flicking action with his wrist. ‘Scotch, if you have it,’ I.P. said, in reply to the gesture.

‘I certainly do. Come, sit down, tell me of your travails. Is your mother still trying to get you to give up teaching for a life of boredom and dissipation on a hundred barren acres in Haryana?’

‘Oh, Toby saab,’ I.P. said, laughing with the relief, and pre-first-drink excitement, at the raising of a subject so near to his heart.

‘Don’t ask. She may well succeed.’

‘Don’t do it, brother-in-law. Don’t do it. Believe me. Soda?’

‘Pani. Flat’s looking lovely.’

‘All thanks to your sister. She’s chosen all of it, the upholstery, this shade of cream, which I like so much more than white.’

‘Don’t believe a word he says, I.P. I’ve married a bloody cushion scatterer. Toby, are you getting dressed? Or are you going in your jeans?’

‘Coming!’ he said, and winked at I.P.

Toby loved I.P. He always had, ever since their first meeting in 1975, when I.P. was an eighteen-year-old student on his way to Stephens. He was one of the joys of Toby and Uma’s marriage. In those early years of marriage, when children are still very young, and the world feels so near, too near to give a sense of the shape of one’s life together, I.P. gave them a foretaste of later life, of what it would be like to have grown-up children. He allowed them a glimpse into the satisfactions and quiet contentment of having made it, of having got through.

I.P. had an effortlessly close relationship with his sister; and, as an extension of that closeness, he adored Toby.

It helped too that he had an intellectual frame of mind, a love of history and literature. And there were not many people to share this with in his own circle. The conversation among people of his class, school and tribe – Feudals, Doscos and Jat Sikhs – was limited invariably to talk of fishing, shooting, School, with a capital S – which is to say the Doon School – and the purchase of land and machines, the latter two an extension, no doubt, of an ancient and tribal instinct, at once martial and agrarian. Only when they got drunk did they touch upon two additional subjects: their lost homeland beyond the Hindu Kush and the sacrifices and valour of the gurus who gave them their religion. But even this slightly wider interest was spoiled by the chauvinism and pieties it inspired.

For I.P., newly discovering intellectual life in India, Toby was a rare thing: a man without an agenda, without a tribe. A man willing to let history be what it was, without wanting to ram it into a frame which answered the needs of a particular group or caste or faith. I.P. was at that age when our sense of who we are, or of who we have been told we are, chafes against what we discover in our reading. And immediately a choice seems to appear: to let the reading show us the way forward, like water picking its course over unfamiliar ground; or to direct the reading, to channel the stream, so that it confirms what we already think we know. I.P. was among those few people who could do the former. He had a mind that welcomed doubt and uncertainty; he revelled in it, in fact; he was not one to ever make the perilous decision of deciding to know. His mind was happy to grope its way to its own conclusions, happy to breathe easy in a state of unknowing.

It gave Toby immense pleasure to see him encounter the great mysteries of Indian history, to see him absorbed in questions that had obsessed Toby as a young man. Questions of whether the Aryans had come from elsewhere or sprung from the soil. Did they invade or migrate? What did that awkward gap of a few centuries between our last date with the Indus Valley and our first date with the Aryans signify? And was their culture – the Vedic culture – absorbed by the Indus Valley civilization or did the one supersede the other? How was it that there was such a dearth of material from that early Vedic period? A highly complex language, a whole system of thought and belief, but hardly a copper bowl, a seal, a stone, a dwelling, so little to say they really existed. And, this, when their texts spoke of jewels and gold ornaments and great palaces. Was that all but a paean to the glory of their gods and not a realistic description of their environs? What of Sanskrit? Who spoke it? When? Where? For how long? How did it break its liturgical function to become a language of literature? What was the nature of its transmission east into south-east Asia? And was it the coming of Islam that caused it to retreat? Or had the decay already begun? These questions did not need answers. They could be left as questions; the raising of them was all. They were part of the natural complexity of living on soil that was old and alluvial to its depths. But too often, I.P. found, people either fled from these questions or rushed to fashion a version of events that would suit the requirements of some particular group.

And one of the things I.P. and Toby had in common was their mutual frustration with intellectual life in India. On many occasions, I.P., much to the annoyance of Deep Fatehkotia, would take the bus down from Dehradun and stay a few days with Toby and Uma, complaining to them about his job at the school. Then, grudgingly, once he had got out some of his angst, he would move to Fatehkot House, where his mother would, with renewed energy, apply pressure on him to leave teaching and farm the Fatehkot land in Harayana.

I.P. was among the most natural teachers Toby had ever met. He was gifted, generous, patient as a lama, and it made Toby sad to see him full of self-doubt that October evening.

‘I had an interesting run-in with Sarkar,’ I.P. said, following Narindar with his eyes who, placing a wooden coaster on the peg table next to him, laid his drink down.

‘Is he new?’

‘Narindar? No, of course not. He’s Labu and Sharada’s son. From Kalasuryaketu. Saab pooch rahe the ke aap naye aaye ho, kya?’

Narindar blushed. ‘Kahaan naya hun? Main toh kab se aap ke saath kam kar raha hun.’

‘Perhaps he’s just grown up.’

‘Perhaps. But what were you saying about Sarkar?’

‘Oh, nothing. I was teaching the boys something from the end of the Birth, something that, in fact, you had put me on to. I was giving it to them as an example of eroticism in our literature, of how the classical world thought of sex and love . . .’

‘Do you remember what it was?’

‘Not entirely. It’s from the Consummation, I know that much. There is, following an extended period of love-making, this great moment of realism. Uma is fastening her garment, which has come loose, and Shiva . . .’

‘Is – yes! – h
ṛ
ta | vilocana. One whose eyes are seized.’

‘You remember by what?’

‘Of course. By the scratches at the top of Uma’s inner thighs.’

‘Exactly! So you can imagine that the boys had quite a giggle at this. And invariably old Sarkar came to find out.’

‘His Bengali sensibilities must have been terribly affronted.’

‘Oh, they were! He called me in to give me a little lecture about the canon, if you please. “I.P., my boy, we want our young students, embarking upon the noble discovery of literature, to be acquainted with the canon. There will be time later for other things. But first, they must know the canon. The canon, I.P.”

‘I said, “Sir, what is uncanonical about Kalidasa?” And, Toby, he gets this tortured expression on his face. Literally I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. Nothing coherent comes out of his mouth. He just grips the table and says, as if the words were being wrung from him, “Sentimental poetry . . . English . . . The greats: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantics. The boys are giggling, I.P. The boys are giggling. I will have complaints from the parents soon.”’

‘What did you say to that?’

‘I said, “Sir, if giggling is what you’re concerned about, there’s plenty to giggle about in Shakespeare.”’

‘“But I.P.,” he says, “they won’t mind if it is Shakespeare; they will if it is Kalidasa. They don’t spend good money to send their boys to Doon School only to learn Kalidasa.”’

‘Conversation over?’

‘Pretty much. Can you imagine, Toby, in a country like ours, talking of canons? Where history has played such tricks with us: to talk of canons! The thousand years of Persian writing in India. Is that canon? The Sanskrit dramas and poems, the epics . . . Not canon? The Brontës canon? I wanted to say to him, Sarkar, the Yanks are on their way up now. So, what? In fifty years, is our canon going to consist of Twain and Emerson and Melville . . . Out with the Angrez, in with the Yanks?’

‘Yes. Apparently, every time there is an ascendant power in the world, India will remake herself in its image! It’s ludicrous.’

‘That’s it, that’s it. I tell you, Toby, there is slavery in this country’s blood. You can’t get it out, no matter how hard you try.’

‘You mustn’t say that, I.P. Men like you will change it. The spread of new ideas will change it.’