East Into Upper East (10 page)

During the following years, Sumitra lived mostly abroad. Although she was already middle-aged during her great years as India's ambassador to the UN, she had retained her smooth olive skin and her pitch-black hair and sparkling eyes; and she wrapped herself so skillfully in her sari that she appeared merely plump, as she had been, and not fat, as she had become. She had always loved jewelry and now was so laden with it that she resembled a barbaric queen—an impression enhanced by the bolder colors and patterns of her saris, which were of traditional designs adapted to modern tastes. The expression on her face was that of a person used to giving orders to people—in contrast to her manner, her exquisite gestures of courtesy and submission to the point of immolation which were a mark of royal breeding as well as of the courtesan and temple dancer. Her parties were, like herself, an enchanting mixture of east and west. There was always plenty of liquor, but also pomegranate and mango juices and spiced yoghurt drinks; the servants glided around with silver trays of delicacies that were to be found only in the finest Indian homes where they were made from recipes handed down by a grandmother. A visiting Indian musician—always a maestro of the first rank—would entertain after dinner; but for those who had business with each other there were brandy and cigars in the study and doors that could be closed. Sumitra herself closed them, smiling for a moment as she did so with perfect understanding and a promise of privacy for whatever matters of high state had to be discussed.

Now in charge of foreign affairs, the Minister frequently traveled abroad, stopping off in New York whenever he could. She looked forward to his visits. He consulted her about policy and discussed the personalities of the world and national leaders they both had to deal with. She continued to monitor his personal habits, and here too he followed her advice—for instance, he left off using a certain pungent body oil prescribed as beneficial to the flow of blood to the brain and other important organs.

Monica quarreled with her about the Minister, as she quarreled with her on all subjects. Monica traveled between her mother in New York and her father in New Delhi, and it would be difficult to say in which place she was more unhappy. She was undergoing
treatment with a New York analyst and was learning far more about herself and her relationship with her mother than was good for either of them. She also learned not to suppress her natural feelings, and whenever the Minister visited, she made no secret of her contempt for him. But even though she tossed her head and flung out of the room without returning his courteous greeting, he smiled tolerantly and reassured Sumitra that the girl was young, a child only. Nevertheless, it was he who suggested matrimony in place of psychiatry (he had just married off his own sixteen-year-old daughter, with two thousand guests consuming five hundred pounds of clarified butter). And it was he who found Monica's bridegroom: on his return to New Delhi, he made discreet inquiries in his own Ministry, and after personally interviewing several likely candidates, he finally selected Under-Secretary Malhotra. However, Monica always denied that her marriage had been arranged. She claimed she had met Malhotra at a diplomatic party, and had been fool enough to be taken in by him. “It was because I was so unhappy,” she explained to her daughter Kuku. “Because of Mummy and what she had done to me.”

During her years at the UN, Sumitra's husband Harry also sometimes came to stay with her. Unlike the Minister, he fitted well into her diplomatic salon. Harry had elegant manners and conversed easily in English and with charm. Unfortunately he also got drunk very quickly—and now it only took a drink or two to get him into that state. He was never rowdy or ill-behaved but continued to stand holding his glass with a smile frozen on his face. If anyone spoke to him, he tried sincerely to respond, but so unsuccessfully that people tended to back away and he was left standing by himself, still smiling and still on his feet, though by now supporting one shoulder against a wall. He was very apologetic about his condition, and readily agreed to enter a clinic in Virginia that Sumitra had arranged for him. But he returned after less than a week—“Leave it,” was all he said in answer to Sumitra's reproaches. That same night he was for the first time noisily drunk and she had to make signs to the servants, while her guests pretended not to notice him being hustled away, loudly declaiming poetry as he went.

Nevertheless, she liked having him there, at least during the few hours of the day when he was sober. He was the one person with whom she could be as she had been. They spoke of old friends—about
these also as they had been and not as they were now: some of them were bureaucrats or judges, some were alcoholics like Harry, some dead like Too. They both spoke of Too with loving nostalgia, and it didn't matter that she was nostalgic for the moonlit nights in the ruined pleasure palace and Harry for the poetry and vodka and chit-chat in his New Delhi garden. It all appeared as remote now as those scenes of royal indulgence depicted in the miniature paintings that hung on Sumitra's walls. These pictures were just beginning to be recognized at their true value, and she had been among the first to acquire, for a few rupees, a collection that was later auctioned at Christie's. Harry himself seemed to belong in those paintings, to be one of the long dead princes, from Kulu or Kashmir, shown reclining among little golden drinking vessels and flowers that scintillated like the jewels in their turbans.

Harry's last visit to New York—he died shortly after his return to India—coincided with one of the Minister's foreign tours. Both of them were present at a cocktail party given by Sumitra in honor of the Minister, preceding a dinner at the Iraqi embassy, also in his honor. Sumitra had been nervous all day, for Harry was very irritated by the presence of the Milkman (as he still called him), who was living in the house with them. “Well, what should I do?” Sumitra defended herself. “It's not my house, it's an official residence belonging to the government of India.”

“Oh yes,” sneered Harry, “he
is
the government of India. He's certainly got his dirty hands in the treasury up to the elbows.” He was referring to a major financial scandal that again involved the Minister: this was nothing unusual—rumor as pungent as his body oil clung to him throughout his career.

Sumitra did not try to argue with Harry. Like Too before him, he would never understand. He had no conception of the shifts and makeshifts necessary to hold on to a position of power, and that what appeared to him as bribery and corruption was nothing but a judicious balancing of funds to keep the machinery of government oiled and functioning.

That evening, though performing with her usual accomplishment
the role of diplomatic hostess, she glanced more often than ever toward Harry in his corner. It was also second nature for her to keep an eye on the Minister; but this was really no longer necessary, for by now his very defects had turned into assets. His English had remained rudimentary, but that only made people listen to him more attentively, as if fearful of missing something important he was saying. And there was a sort of power in his earthiness—the smell of cow dung still seemed to cling to him, if no longer physically—a suggestion of roots and soil that was exciting to Sumitra's cosmopolitan guests. Elegant women clustered around him and he made no secret of his liking for them, though of course in a very respectful way. He knew perfectly where to draw the line, and also where it was permissible to go beyond it—there were rumors about him in this area as well, and whenever he arrived in some backwater of his electoral district, the local bosses knew what sort of girls to bring for him from the bazaar.

Now, at Sumitra's cocktail party, he was playful with a kind of crude gallantry that charmed his listeners. Although at home he was a strong advocate of the national program of total prohibition, here he indulged his liking for strong liquor, at the same time retaining the full use of his perfectly honed faculties. His eyes darted around as swiftly as his mind to pinpoint those guests who were the most important to him on his present visit. At that particular party it was the head of an international monetary fund, and he had already taken care to establish a friendly rapport with him prior to their official meeting scheduled for the following day. Now he felt at liberty to relax and to amuse his sophisticated audience with his own brand of rustic humor. Stretching out his hand to a servant for another glass, he burst into a snatch of song—a simple folk melody that suited his remarkably pleasant singing voice. There was applause and delighted laughter, so that Sumitra—now herself occupied in exerting her charm on the head of the monetary fund—glanced over to the little circle of which he was the admired centre. She smiled to see this strong and wily politician, who held power over millions of souls and vast stretches of land, turn back into the lusty village youth he had once been. He sang of the dust swirled up at dusk by the homecoming cows, and the jingle of the ornaments adorning the village bride. He also shared his taste for Bombay talkies and switched from folk
song to popular film song—the rose and the nightingale at their last gasp but now shrill and sweet enough to delight his sturdy peasant soul. “When you dip in the lake, O bathing Beauty, beware of driving us mad!” he sang and even broke into a little shuffle of a dance. Although squat as a toad in his politician's homespun garb, he transformed himself into a screen heroine with a wet garment clinging to her body, combing the long tresses that cascaded down to her hips.

Along with everyone else, Sumitra was so intent on this performance that for a moment she relaxed her vigilance over Harry in his corner. It was only when she saw the Minister—seemingly engrossed in his little song and dance act—glance in that direction that she too looked at her husband. Harry had climbed on to a chair and was declaiming something—but already, at a sign from the Minister, the servants had closed around him and were half coaxing, half lifting him down. The Minister was giving another sample of a film song—“I'm a vagabond, wandering in the woods of the heart”—so that everyone's attention continued to be fixed on him. Only Sumitra was with Harry, along with several servants—some of them brought from his childhood home in Delhi—who had got him down from his chair and were edging him toward the door. He was trying to tell them something with all the earnestness of someone completely drunk, and when they didn't understand, he appealed in frustration to Sumitra: “Dragging our poets in the mire—Ghalib and Faiz!” Then he shouted, “Degradation!” and tried to point at the Minister, who was still giving his audience a taste of Bombay film lyrics; but the servants quickly lowered Harry's arm and kept it pinned to his side. Sumitra followed them through the door and stood at the foot of the stairs, watching them lead Harry up to his room. He was looking back at her and quoting something but slurring his words, so that she wasn't sure whether it was about the rose and the nightingale, or Jamshed's throne gone on a puff of wind.

When she returned to her party, it was still going splendidly. The Minister had finished his act and, pleased to have given pleasure, was laughing together with his audience. He had taken off his little boat-like cotton cap and was wiping the perspiration from his head. As he did so, for a brief second his eyes slid toward Sumitra, and she gave him the briefest nod to reassure him that Harry was
being taken care of. From here on—according to the official report to New Delhi—the evening's program proceeded as per schedule.

DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS

I

We were all young then and in our beginnings: Sanjay and I, Gita and Ratna—the country itself, for it was only a few years after Independence. I was in New Delhi on my first diplomatic posting, and along with everyone else at the British High Commission, I had come in a spirit of atonement. We felt it to be our mission to make up for two hundred years of colonial rule and, in contrast to our predecessors, to show our full appreciation of India and Indian culture. I had no difficulty with that; like some before and many, many after, I fell in love with the country. There is no need for me to go into detail. Others have done so, describing the overwhelming sensual and emotional effect India has had on them; and, in some cases, how this was enhanced by their feeling for a particular person, or persons.

I lived in a flat in what was then becoming known as new New Delhi, extending beyond old New Delhi, which had been built as the imperial capital. Now it was the national capital and everyone who could, including all the foreign missions, was buying up land and building on it. While waiting for the British High Commission complex to be completed, we staff members rented accommodation in private houses, most of them newly built by newly rich Indians. My flat was in an area known as Golf Links because one of the sites had been earmarked for a golf club. Only a few years ago it had all been desert land, nothing but dust and jackals, but now,
besides the potential golf club, there were rows of expensive villas, all of them ultra-modern, pastel-colored, air-conditioned. Spindly trees had been planted along what were not yet streets; a market was coming up, not bazaar stalls but proper shops, with doors and plate-glass windows, selling things required by Westerners and Westernized Indians, such as pastries and ham.

Although Sanjay was entitled to government quarters—he was among the very bright young men at the very new Ministry of External Affairs—he chose to remain with his sisters, Gita and Ratna, in their house in the Civil Lines of Old Delhi. The house had been built by their grandfather in a vaguely Gothic style with a turret on the roof and pointed arches enclosing the surrounding verandah. It was in an enclave of houses belonging to members of their family, for several brothers had bought up the land together. When Sanjay was sixteen, Gita twelve, and Ratna nine, their parents were killed in a car accident. Instead of moving in with their neighboring relatives, the three young orphans elected to remain on their own; so by the time I got to know them ten years later, they were used to being entirely free and independent. This somehow enhanced their glamor—already considerable, for all three were extremely good-looking. They had two cars which they loved to drive, one hand lightly on the steering wheel, the other, holding a cigarette, on the open window. Sanjay took the Chevrolet every morning to the External Affairs Ministry, while Gita and Ratna disputed—they never quarreled—the use of the other car, a dashing MG. Gita usually took it, for she often had to drive to New Delhi, to help one of her artist friends set up an exhibition. Ratna only had to go to her nearby college, where she studied English literature; she also wrote poetry and stories, which she was too shy to let anyone see.

All of us at the High Commission were very conscientious about mixing with Indians: mostly higher-ranking civil servants and people in culture and the arts. But these social efforts tended to break down, and our parties often ended up with the Indian guests on one side talking shop with one another and foreigners doing the same on the other. I attended enough High Commission parties to learn that there was always an unheard—and later, when everyone was more outspoken—a positively audible sigh of relief when the Indians left and the rest of us could draw together into our own
cosy circle. Still, we continued these “bridge parties”—we had even ironically adopted the old Anglo-Indian term—for they were so much part of our job that we were paid per head for each local guest we entertained. But for most people, on either side, it became more and more just part of one's official duties, and finally there were only a few of us left who genuinely enjoyed the company of Indians. And then sometimes it happened—as it did to me—that we preferred it to that of our compatriots whose social occasions we got through as quickly as possible, to rush off to our Indian friends.

I spent every moment I could with Sanjay and his sisters in their Gothic house in the Civil Lines. Friends were always welcome there, for any meal, at any hour. There were plenty of servants, some of them descended from several generations of retainers, who considered themselves part of the family and even as guardians of the three young orphans. The house had not been changed since the time of the parents and grandparents. The long drawing room, which formed the center of the house, was still basically Indo-Victorian, with carved sofas and armchairs and many occasional tables, and weighty silver pieces like a rose-water sprinkler and an ornate tea-set on a tray with scalloped edges. There were no windows but skylights set high up under the ceiling so that it was always dark in there—dark and cool in the summer but freezing in the winter months, since no ray of sunlight could penetrate the thick masonry of the outer and inner walls. So during the cold season there was always a fire lit and the friends gathered around it and drank mulled red wine. They talked incessantly on the many topics that burned inside them like the hot wine they were drinking. This whole country was theirs now at last, in all its breadth and multitudes, with all its history and relics left behind by its defeated conquerors (including us, the last of them). Many of these young people already held positions of great authority, like Sanjay in the Ministry of External Affairs; others, like Gita's painter friends, were developing a whole new line of indigenous culture, exploring the depths of their Indian souls. Of course everyone had a different agenda—everything was so wide open—and they argued loudly in their rather high-pitched voices that were such a pleasure to listen to that sometimes I simply enjoyed the sound of them without following their arguments. They spoke in an English that was perfect
but more softly accentuated, more mellifluous, more feminine even than is characteristic of our language.

Naturally, there were romances—but mostly with no cost attached because serious arrangements were left to their elders. There were however a few love matches, and I'm sorry to say that these did not always work out. It is a pity to turn from those days of hope and romance to the grimmer future that awaited some among us. Let me get it over with: both Gita and Ratna married for love, both marriages ended badly. Gita married one of her artist protégés—she went so far as to elope with him, for a civil service in Meerut where his family lived in poor circumstances. He did not turn out to be the genius she had expected and she soon left him and had other affairs, some with foreigners, none of them happy. Ratna made a more suitable choice: she married a young diplomat, a colleague of her brother's, who started off with the same chances of high promotion as Sanjay but ended them through his heavy drinking and his ugly, dishonest character. He was finally suspended from the service but that was after Ratna had committed suicide during a posting in Kampala. It was a great scandal at the time, but what is the point of talking about the dismal future that followed those early radiant days.

Whenever I was with them, our Indo-British relationship was a frequent and favorite topic. They warned me that it would all go out of the window, everything we had tried to foist on them: our mode of dress, our method of government and of education. The English language itself, they said, would end up on the dust-heap, for it had no potential to express the Indian soul—all this delivered in their very pure English sprinkled with some rather old-fashioned slang like “what the heck” and “putting on side.” They teased me for being so English—but how could I help it? I was tall, thin and pale and had inherited my mother's blue eyes and rather long chin; before joining the foreign service, I had studied PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Oxford. In my Oxford accent I would pretend to contradict them—“Yes, but we gave you the railways, the telegraph and the telephone and all the rest of it: where would you be if we hadn't dragged you with us into the twentieth century?”

“Where would we be? Listen to her—you gave us Macaulay and denigrated our Indian culture—”

“Hey wait a minute! Who was it translated Kalidasa and the Upanishads?”

“A German! It was Germans, not you people, all you gave us was your steamed pudding and custard!”

So we went on, mostly in good fun; I remember only one person who was seriously angry with me for our two hundred years of colonial oppression, and that was Pushpa. But she, I suppose, was angry for other reasons as well.

I have spoken of our winter evenings, but there were also the summer ones. After the scorching day, we gathered on the lawn that had been deeply watered by the gardener and his assistant. The flowerbeds were empty—the roses and chrysanthemums bloomed in winter—but there were jasmine bushes and Queen of the Night emitting scents that were so pungent that the first wave deadened the olfactory nerves and it was some time before they revived enough to receive the next onslaught; and the hotter the day the more lusciously sweet the perfumes drenching the night air. We sat in white wicker armchairs and drank iced sherbet, while fans, plugged in from the verandah, whirled around to keep us cool. The only sound came from the excited voices of the very new and very young administrators of India, raised in debate. Sometimes we went up on the terrace where the turret held more armchairs and fans. We leaned on the parapet and gazed over the tops of the trees to the open land surrounding Delhi where jackals and peacocks lived, emitting untamed cries.

It was here one night that Sanjay joined me. We leaned side by side, breathing in the air of jasmine and desert dust, spanned by the sky with its crowd of diamond stars scintillating like wedding guests.

“Ah Kitty,” he said, “here you are—getting away from us all, I suppose. Escaping our endless talk, talk, talk.”

I said, “I could listen to you for ever.”

“No, don't encourage us. We talk too much. Far too much.”

We gazed down at the group on the lawn. The girls in their pastel saris were only a soft glimmer but the young men shone in their starched white Indian clothes. We couldn't hear what they were saying, just their voices drifting up to the terrace, melodious and indistinct.

Sanjay said, “But it's not
just
talk. We really mean it.”

“I know you do.” I wanted to keep it vague and not have him explain what it was they really meant. All winter I had heard about their concern for the future of India, and I believed in it and was on their side; now I wanted him to say other things to me.

“You must understand our dilemma,” he said. “Nehru's steel plants versus Gandhi's spinning wheel. Of course, the spinning wheel has to go, there's no question.”

“But how to preserve its spirit.”

“Exactly. You understand us exactly, Kitty.” He had a caressing way of saying my name. He said it again: “Kitty . . . It's a nice name, I like it, but it doesn't really suit you. It's not serious enough. And I think you're basically a very serious person. Of course you are: I mean, my goodness, not everyone can get a First in PPE and pass the foreign service exam.”

“You've passed yours so you must be a basically serious person too.” I was teasing him: a lot of teasing went on among us, I suppose it was a form of flirtation.

But he remained grave: “I try to be, but sometimes I feel I'm too playful.”

Playful! I loved the word, it expressed the light-hearted spirit that bubbled like a spring under all their high ideals and ambitions and kept these fresh.

“We have terrible problems, Kitty. Poverty—backwardness—diseases, medieval diseases that have long been wiped out in the developed world—”

“My real name isn't Kitty, if that's any help. I mean to your conception of me. It's really Katharine.”