The Way Things Were (27 page)

‘A storm would have been one thing. But this . . .’

‘Just enough to spoil everyone’s fun.’

‘To put out all the diyas and make the patakas go phus.’

‘A real little English drizzle. Pissy rain.’

‘I know what I.P. would say,’ Deep said, with the faintest catch in her voice. And, in just mentioning his name, she, like a conductor resurrecting a major strain, or a s
ū
tra-dh
ā
ra in a Sanskrit play pulling hard at the narrative thread, returned the drifting conversation that evening to its central theme. ‘“You’re welcome hither,”’ she said into the silence, and gave a wild and wayward giggle.

It so alarmed the Brigadier, the pitch of her laughter, the nerves and hysteria tugging at the cords in the throat, that he said, ‘I think I had better take her up. She’s been awake for over thirty-six hours.’ But, like a child, exhausted and elated, she didn’t want to go up.

‘No,’ she cooed, ‘I haven’t finished. “You’re welcome hither,”’ she chimed, a half-mad cuckoo in a clock. The Brigadier rose.

‘No,’ she said now in a thick voice, ‘Here it comes: “Nor no man else. All’s”’ – and now she raised her voice into a windy howl, so that she sounded liked a witch in an amateur production of
Macbeth
– ‘“All’s cheerless, dark and deadly.”’

Then, having said her bit, she gave a little bow, somewhat in the direction of Mrs Arjun Singh. There was still a harassed spring of silver hair – it had been there all day – hanging off her head. She said, smiling beatifically, ‘My son loved Shakespeare.’

‘
Loves
, Mama!’ Isha and Uma said in one voice.

She smiled gaily at them as if to say,
Let be
.

Then, turning back to Mrs Arjun Singh, she added, ‘And Lear, especially. Lear was his favourite.’

The Brigadier had her now by the elbows; and firmly, he led her upstairs.

Mrs Arjun Singh, having got much more than she bargained for, and having brought nothing resembling beneficence, also rose to leave. Kitten Singh accompanied her.

‘I shall do my best,’ she said, to those who remained. ‘Please don’t lose heart. Everything will be fine. I must go now.’

And then, as if as an afterthought, wishing to remind them of who she was, she added, ‘Arjun must be home by now.’

‘Look at these swines,’ Viski said, as the car with Kitten and Mrs Arjun Singh drove away, leaving red light streaming over the wet drive, which, in places, was daubed black with petrol stains.

Toby, his face faintly flushed in the light of the departing car, said, ‘I know what you mean, naturally. But why now, in particular?’

‘Just listen to them.
Those
Sikhs. Bastards! The witch’s son, the dead one, was in school with me, you know. And he came to see me one day now aeons ago, wanted my help in persuading my father –
prominent member of the Sikh community
and all that – to support a certain village priest, called Bhindran-
whale
, if you please!’

Toby laughed.

‘In return, he would offer me some land trans-Jamuna, at a very affordable price.
Hello, fellow
, I thought,
OK!
I’ll ask my father, but can’t guarantee he’ll consent. He’s been an Akali all his life, you know. And he may not agree with everything the Party says and does, but he’ll have them over these swines in Congress any day.’

‘And so what did he say?’

‘He told me to bugger off. He said this little Congress scheme to out-Akali the Akalis in Punjab by propping up this village priest will backfire on the Congress and I should steer wide clear of it. And look: seven years later, Bhindran-
whale
dead and gone; the Akal Takht destroyed; Punjab in flames. And this is just the beginning, if you ask me. Just the beginning. I tell you, I don’t know why we stay, Toby saab. I don’t know about elsewhere, but Time, here, certainly feels circular. We just go round and round, with not so much as a hint of progress. You still have it easy,’ he said, cupping his hands and lighting a cigarette. ‘You can leave. And you should; you must. Take your children, your wife, and bas, get out. Nothing’s going to happen here. Not for decades. You can take it from me in writing. What does Ismail always say? “Everyone must get their chance to fuck this country once.” And now, this Congress lot, they’re having theirs.’

‘But you can leave too, Viski. You’re rich enough, God knows.’

‘Money’s not the issue. I’m a provincial. Isha too. We wouldn’t be able to hack it. The loneliness would kill us. But you and Uma, you are both, in your heart of hearts, cosmopolitans. Sophisticates. You would bloom in the West. This place – don’t think I can’t see it – is strangling you; it is strangling your marriage.’

They were standing like that, in the light of a small encaged bulb, staring out at the now empty drive, when, at the far end, there was a sudden disturbance. A figure, barely distinguishable in the light rain, had appeared at the gates and was pulling furiously at them, nearly wrenching them clean off their hinges. His small pale fists, bloodless with his exertion, were planted firmly on the gate’s iron bars. An awful slurring cry, desperate and persistent, rose from his throat. The gate, as if sucked in and out by a great wind, shuddered and whined.

Toby and Viski had not come halfway down the drive, when the watchman posted at the gate, wrapped up to his eyeballs in woollens, came hurriedly out and opened the chain, which slithered to the ground with an affrighted clanking. The gate’s panels parted and, coming fast onto the drive, knock-kneed and wild-eyed, seeming almost to have been spat out, there appeared the crazed and wheeling figure of Narindar.

His shirt was torn; his face badly bruised; he could barely speak. His eyes, so dull and adolescent normally, flashed in his head. Gleaming drops of rain clung to the sparse stubble of his thin, unshaven face. The white of his vest was exposed and wet and thinly concealed a line of dark hair, plunging deep into the ravine of his chest.

‘Narindar?’

He looked at Toby, his wide eyes a reddish white, and, ignoring all the customary greetings, threw himself into his arms. He was reeking of alcohol and a stale stench came thick off his body.

‘Maharaj, maharaj. Forgive me . . . forgive me . . . please, I beg you, forgive me. Oh baba saab, oh baba saab. I couldn’t do anything for him. Forgive me.’

‘Baba saab?’ Viski intervened. ‘What about baba saab?’

‘Baba saab, baba saab, you don’t know. Oh! I can’t tell you what they did to him.’

He screeched and tore at his shirt. Viski could see that his hysteria was, in part, designed to deflect from his own guilt.

‘Baba saab?’ Viski said sternly, but Narindar could give no reply. Tears choked his words. With every outburst, he fell back into Toby’s arms and stroked them with his little hands as if trying to comfort an animal. His facial muscles, no longer in his control were so tremulous, his fear so great, that he seemed almost to smile.

Viski took him calmly from Toby’s arms, held him with one hand by the neck, as if inspecting him, and slapped him hard.

The effect was magical; the hysteria vanished; he was suddenly calm. In a measured and sober voice, he told them everything. That I.P. had been picked up the night before; that he had been rude to the police and they had taken him to Tughlak Road Police Station. That he was being held there and beaten brutally; they were trying to make him confess to being part of a conspiracy to blow up the Bhakra-Nangal dam.

Then he said something which anticipated all the ways in which I.P. was safe, unscathed, in a sense; and all the other more powerful ways in which he would never be safe again. He judged the effect of the words perfectly, as no doubt the perpetrators would have judged the effect of the deed. He said they, the policemen – and he knew this because he had seen them fill the clear glass bottles with his own eyes – had made I.P. drink their urine.

*

The reason the Brigadier found the story of the princes painful was because he saw in it a shade of the martyrdom story of Zorawar and Fateh, the two younger sons of the tenth guru, who, aged nine and seven, were brought as prisoners to the court of Nawab Wazir Khan. There, they were offered death or conversion. They chose death, but it did not come swiftly. They were bricked up alive. A wall, silent and deadly as a flood, rose around them. And, with every added line of bricks, they were asked to recant their faith, and every time, as SikhiWiki will tell you, they said no. The wall pressed close against their bodies, its musty breath stifling, till eventually the masons entombed the little boys, who, throughout, recited their prayers and hymns. That was how they met death, calm, clear-eyed, Sikhs to the last.

It was the mood of this story, which every Sikh knows by heart, that, in the Brigadier’s mind, had merged with the story of the princes on that afternoon in September 1857. There were obvious differences. The princes were older; they had actually been part of the uprising, part of its planning; and they were not bricked up alive. They were stripped and shot. But the Brigadier, with his weakness for historical parallels, and for seeing in the pain of his enemies his own pain, could not get away from recognizing an identical element in both stories. The same pathos, and pity, the same wretchedness, the same frightening inevitability of the boys who must die for who and what they are.

And perhaps it was this – the special futility of historical justice in a land where history has no meaning – that made him finish the story of the princes once the news of what had happened to I.P. spread through Fatehkot House.

‘I find it very moving,’ he said to Toby, ‘that they should have sought refuge in the tomb of their ancestors. And when they were denied the terms granted their father the day before, their little rath emerged from within its enclosure. The full glory of their past, the Mughal past, was there behind them and they, in a little rath . . . a cart, you know?’

‘Yes, I know what a rath is, sir.’

‘So, there you have it: a cart crammed full of the last descendants of conquerors and emperors. Of men like Babur and Akbar. The tomb, with its white dome, in the background. This is what history comes down to in India, Raja saab. Squalor and degradation! Their ancestors broke the nerve of a great civilization, and now, in turn, their nerve was being broken. And make no mistake: that is what was happening. The Angrez sent in no more than two officers! Two Englishmen, Hodson and his lieutenant, plus 100 or so native men. The princes had, by all accounts, 3,000 inside the tomb, and another 3,000 in the environs. All armed, mind you. But they could do nothing. They just stood and watched as their princes were carried away. You know why? Their nerve was broken. And once that happens – I’ve seen it myself on countless occasions – no amount of arms or munitions will help you. Have they gone?’

‘To the station? Yes.’

‘Will he be all right, you think?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘He’s very proud, you know. Much prouder than me. I saw ’47. I know how one’s people can turn against you. He doesn’t. He’s been told he’s a Sikh, he’s been told to hold his head high, that Sikhs are not afraid, if they’ve done something to humiliate him . . .’

‘He’ll be fine, sir. I’m sure of it.’

‘Will they have him out tonight?’

‘Tomorrow, latest. They’re speaking to everyone. From the DIG to the PMO. Arjun Singh himself is helping.’

‘Damn fool man.’

‘Yes, but powerful.’

The Brigadier’s lip curled into a smile. ‘All bloody crude power. Tarzan power. Will you have another one?’

‘I . . .’

‘Have one, Raja saab. We, also, need some little sustenance. We, who are not powerful.’

‘Let me do it.’

The Brigadier handed him his empty glass. Then, as Toby was walking over to the bar, he said, ‘I want him to leave, you know.
If
he comes out . . .’

‘Of course he’ll come out.’

‘If he comes out, I want him to leave. To go away. I’ll miss him; he has an inheritance here, ill-begotten as it may be; but I want him to go. He has a fine nature, you know; I want him to go somewhere where he can realize its impulses. Let him line up with the peasants outside the embassies and go to some place, where even a peasant might make something of himself.’

‘But, sir, your wife, Uma . . . ?’

‘They’ll survive. But I.P., if they’ve dishonoured him, he won’t.’

It made Toby uneasy to hear him speak like this. Neither the Brigadier nor anybody else had been given the details that he and Viski had heard; and yet, the Brigadier, as if intuitively, kept bringing the conversation back to the subject of humiliation, of dishonouring, of the breaking of nerve . . .

‘Why are you so sure, sir . . . .?’

‘It’s what they do, Raja saab. They’re little people who’ve suffered humiliations, they wait all their lives to get their own back. And now, it’s open season against the Sikhs. They know very well – they would have been told – that no one will be punished for doing harm to a Sikh. You think they won’t make use of this opportunity. Of course, they will! Thank you!’ he said, taking the glass. ‘And you?’

‘Is there any soda?’

‘In the purple fridge by the bar.’

Seeing Toby looking around for an opener, the Brigadier said, ‘Here, give it to me.’ Then, putting the bottle between his legs, he pried the cap open with the edge of his kara. It made a loud and satisfying noise.

‘Sir!’

‘I.P.’s little trick. He taught it to me. “What else is religion for?” he used to say. Silly fool.’ The Brigadier chuckled. Then serious again, he said, ‘I despise it, you know, religion.’ He touched his hand lightly to his turban, then trailed his fingers along his beard. ‘I grew up with these things. I never questioned them. They became, without my knowing it, a part of who I am. But I put no store by them. If I.P. said tomorrow that he wanted to cut his hair, shave off his beard, I would be only too happy. His mother, that’s a different matter; women need these things. But not me, Raja saab. How come you didn’t go with them?’

‘I thought I should stay with you.’

‘That’s very kind. I’m very grateful for your company tonight. I’m not an intellectual, you know. Not like you and I.P. But I like to think of myself as a thinking man, as someone with sensibility.’