The Weary Generations (4 page)

Moving on, Naim came to where Gokhle was sitting and was surprised to see how quickly they had got into the thick of the conversation.

‘This is exactly what I was saying,' Mrs Besant was telling Ayaz Beg, ‘that my quarrel with Mr Gokhle's Servants of India Society is only to the
extent of its title. But then names and titles matter so much. Why not, for instance, Servants of Humanity Society?'

‘Or Servants of Theosophy Society,' a man said with an impish smile.

Annie Besant, ignoring the interjection, continued. ‘You will agree that the word India does somewhat limit the movement.'

Gokhle rolled his cane round and round in his fingers. He took off his spectacles, cleaned the glasses and put them on again, fixing them firmly on the bridge of his nose.

‘Theosophy, Mrs Besant,' he said in a sedate voice, ‘is neither science nor politics. You could possibly call it, if you stretch it, a minor branch of philosophy, although I am not sure that serious philosophers will not challenge the notion. However, politics is the name for winning a few material benefits, such as better food, better clothing and better forms of abode, and the way to go about acquiring them for the populace. Material things have a certain mass and occupy a certain space. They are, by their very nature, finite. We cannot make politics infinite. The principles of Servants of India may not be purely materialistic, in the sense that those who serve them shall have to be prepared to give up many worldly comforts and conveniences. But they serve for the betterment of others, and these others are the people of India. That is how the word India gives a material form to the politics of the Servants.'

Annie Besant paused for a moment, then said, ‘Why are you so fearful of greater targets?'

‘Because your greater targets, by which I dare say you mean higher ideals, are appreciated only by people of your standard of education and sense – say, nawab sahib or Colonel Walcott – but not by the great multitude of common people in my country. They are not cultivated enough to come running for the betterment of the world; they will continue to work their little patches. But they will come for the sake of their brothers, wives and children. They may not understand high principles, but they are far from stupid. That is India.'

At that moment, the nawab, who was passing, stopped to listen. ‘Ah, talk of politics going on all round. Splendid. You are looking a little pale, Gokhle sahib. I hope your diabetes is under control.'

‘I am not bothered about my health, nawab sahib, nor even about dying, but only about love.'

‘Love?' the nawab asked.

‘The day I was born,' Gokhle replied, ‘I fell in love with sweet things. Now it has been years since I have tasted any …'

‘Ha, ha! Well said. In love with sweet things! Aren't we all? But you
looked very well at the Congress affair in Bankipur last Christmas.'

‘Did you go to Bankipur?' asked Annie Besant.

‘Yes, yes. Gokhle sahib was there, and Maharajkumar, and Mr Sinha,' the nawab replied, indicating with his head the man with a wooden leg.

‘Oh, I wasn't in India at the time. How did it go?'

‘Very well, very well. Big conference.'

‘Was there a resolution about the partition of Bengal?'

‘Er …' The nawab halted. Trying to think, he looked up straight at Naim standing behind the sofas.

Gokhle laughed. ‘Fear not, nawab sahib, Bengal united or divided, your tiger-hunts shall go on for ever.' There was only the slightest hint of irony in his voice.

‘My memory is beginning to falter now,' the nawab said apologetically and excused himself to go towards the house.

‘What did you think of Bankipur, Gokhle sahib?' Annie Besant asked.

‘What do I think!' answered Gokhle sarcastically. ‘It was a party, just like this one. Great people, beautiful, up-to-date people. Gossips all round.'

‘Ah, Mr Gokhle, aren't you being a bit negative?'

‘It wasn't that bad,' the man with pale skin and dark hair said. ‘I was there, reporting for my paper.'

Gokhle turned to him. ‘Was there anyone from your newspaper in South Africa?'

‘Indeed there was. But seriously, you can't compare South Africa with here.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘In India politics is in the hands of people with a knowledge of history, etc.'

‘And of English? Whole proceedings conducted in a language only a handful of people understand in this country?'

‘Come, come,' the newspaperman said, ‘does you no harm to do that. After all it's the leadership that has to lead and …'

Naim, who had been standing at the back crushing his red velvet cap in his hands, could contain himself no longer. He leaned forward and spoke calmly. ‘Is that why less educated people are put in gaols? What about Tilak? He is in confinement.'

Everyone turned to look. The newspaperman's face became flushed with anger, causing pink stripes to appear on his cheeks. He made an effort to control himself. ‘You call him a politician, young man? Well, about his politics the Chief Commissioner can tell you more. But as a reporter on
such matters I can tell you that he is not even a good newspaperman.'

Ayaz Beg had turned pale. Both his legs shook with nerves. A gust of warm wind passed through a lit-up tree and the shadow of leaves, magnified many times, moved across Ayaz Beg's quivering feet. Almost immediately everyone started getting up for dinner. They had to cross over to another part of the sprawling lawn. Gokhle was still talking to Annie Besant. As they passed, Naim overheard him saying, ‘… although I was impressed by some young men. Motilal's son was there. Just back from England …'

The newspaperman stood in his place for some time, as if trying to calm himself. The man with the wooden leg passed, talking and laughing, balancing himself expertly on his sturdy walking stick. Naim got his handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped the sweat off his brow and joined the crowd.

There were two very long tables laden with fine china crockery, and enough leather-bound dining chairs were lined up on both sides to accommodate all the guests. Roasted young chicken and partridge, mounted on long thin wooden legs, stood all along the tables. In between them, twelve kinds of cooked food were placed in correct order in covered pots of sterling silver. The last item that was to be brought out later was pulao, although its saliva-inducing smell had already permeated the air, announcing the unlidding of its huge cast-iron degs in yet another part of the lawn concealed from view, the spaces for it being left vacant on the tables. In these spaces also stood little candles in small china saucers. These candles, not the regular smooth wax sticks nor the fat miniature columns of the same shiny stuff, but finger-thick knobbly little bars of an opaque, dark brown lardy substance that looked to have been hastily rolled and squeezed in the fingers of a hand when still warm, stood upright on flattened bottoms, unlit and mute, rather like the cut-off trunks of dwarf trees, as if put there to ward off the effects of the evil eye with their ugliness in the midst of such extravagance of sight and smell. At the top of the table was seated Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin. He seemed to have availed of the briefest of intervals to change into a red silk attire comprising a long, tight gown-like coat buttoned up to the neck over a billowy shalwar of many folds made of the same material, a gold satin cummerbund from which hung a long curved sword in a gold scabbard, and gold-wire-spun soft Indian shoes. He sat in a high-backed chair upholstered in red velvet alongside an old man in ordinary sherwani and white cotton shalwar and flanked by Pervez and Azra on either side of the top two chairs. Immediately in front of the nawab was placed a saucer which held the biggest knobbly brown candle, also unlit. A
servant had brought and carefully laid down on one side of the candle a tray of black wood holding a tall, soft hat of blue velvet with an intricate design of narrow gold leaf worked in the cloth. Further down the table, on one side, sat the handsome woman, the Chief Commissioner, then other foreign guests, and on the other the Maharajkumar, the lame gentleman and the rest of the British men and women. Around the other table were seated all the Indian guests, including Mr Gokhle, the only foreign face among them being that of Annie Besant. Everyone properly seated, the old man at the top chair stood up. There was silence. The old man started to speak.

‘Today, the thirteenth day of the month of May in the year of 1913, is the last day of the three months that have passed since the passing away of Roshan Agha. The words of the deceased, setting down the tradition, call upon me, as the closest friend and ally of the late lamented, to fulfil my duty and announce the passing of the name bestowed upon him by the grace of God and the British sarkar to Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin of Roshan Pur, the rightful heir and henceforth to be the holder in trust for the coming generations of the exalted title “Roshan Agha”. Amen.'

Having come to the end of the speech, he picked up the blue velvet hat and placed it on the nawab's head. Two or three foreign guests began tentatively to clap but were cut short by the old man raising his hands in a brief prayer, in which all the Indians, Muslim as well as Hindu, and one or two of the foreigners, joined, raising their hands in the air in front of them in a gesture of supplication to their God. At the end of the prayer, they wiped their hands across their faces, signifying successful completion of the ritual. A part of the ceremony still remained to be performed; it was to do with the brown candles. The old man struck a match and handed it to the nawab, who lit the big candle with its help. As the flame rose from the wick and the nawab threw down the burnt-out match, Pervez and Azra cried ‘Roshan Agha' and hugged and kissed him. Then they took up the brown candles in front of them and lit them from the flame of the big candle, placing them carefully back in their saucers. The handsome woman and the Maharajkumar followed, lighting their candles from the same source and bringing them to their saucers. Then all the foreign men and women, who under the pretence of congratulatory gestures were in fact laughing heartily at the unusual garb of the nawab, took up their candles too and lit them, each one of them in turn, from the big candle in an orderly fashion. Some of them, after lighting their candles, stood there carrying them aloft in their hands, chatting to others, only coming back to their seats when they noticed the Indians from the second table holding back in respect. Once the first table was done, the Indian guests crowded
round the top, lighting up and laughing, nodding their heads. An aged Englishman with a booming voice still stood to one side, candle in hand, talking to the journalist.

‘It would have been much more convenient, don't you think, had the whole rigmarole been written down and copies of it distributed in advance.'

‘No, no,' whispered the newspaperman, ‘it's not as if it was an ancient tradition. They are putting down the roots of it now for the first time, strictly according to the instructions.'

‘What, by the dead chap?' asked the Englishman.

‘Exactly. You see, in order to ensure its status it has to be presented as sacred and confidential. Can't be printed.'

The Englishman nodded doubtfully, staring sadly into the flame of his candle. All the candles having been lit and put back in place, the dinner began in earnest. Great oval dishes of steaming rice were brought out from the degs. There were four different kinds of cooked rice: three brown pulao, with chicken, partridge and quail, and the fourth a multicoloured biryani of young lamb. The eating was done in silence. The sky of mid-May was half-lit by a misshapen late moon. The wind had stopped in the trees and half the population of the great city had taken to their beds. Tall eucalyptus trees stood like stilled ghosts. A fountain at the other end of the lawn was noiselessly pumping up thin streams of drops, joined together and yet separated along lines curving down with the force of gravity in the regular shape of a fan. Naim looked up from his plate and was struck by the fragrant, dimly lit atmosphere that seemed as if suspended in a magic spell, its silence punctuated only by the sound of masticating jaws, or, at intervals, by the quiet, sated voice of the man with a wooden leg.

‘Hunger,' he was saying, ‘being the wildest passion of man, makes the act of eating the noblest human activity.'

The man sitting on the left of Naim leaned over. ‘I heard what you said about Tilak,' he said. It was the same Englishman Naim had seen earlier pacing the ground before his friends. ‘Are you aware of Tilak's activities against the Muslims? The Society to Ban Cow Slaughter? Permission to play music in front of a mosque and all that?'

Receiving no reply from Naim, the man changed tack. ‘You see these candles? They say this particular wax has been in the family's possession for a hundred years. I wonder what they will burn when it is finished.'

Naim stopped eating. Putting his spoon down, he asked, ‘How did you know I was a Muslim?'

‘Oh, easy,' the man said, moving his head, ‘you wore a tarboosh earlier in the evening. Right?'

Naim gave no response to this. It discouraged the Englishman from continuing his conversation. Instead, he was spoken to by another foreign guest sitting on the other side of him.

‘I say, did you say something about this wax? Damn unusual stuff, wonder where it comes from, what?'

‘Came from the beehive from which the honey came,' answered the Englishman.

‘What honey?'

‘No idea. Apparently there is talk of some honey along the line.'

‘Damn unusual stuff.'

The feast was nearing its end. People were getting up and crossing over to the seating area, to sit in sofas and easy chairs, smoke and sip cardamom-flavoured kahwa brought to them by servants. Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin, now ‘become' Roshan Agha, was finally left alone in his chair at the dining table. He got up. Staring in a grave mood for a long minute at the candle in front of him, he looked, in those clothes, at once graceful and ridiculous. Then he bent low and blew out the flame. Immediately his special servant appeared and began blowing out all the other candles one after the other and collecting them in the black wooden tray. Carrying a cup of kahwa in his hand, Naim wandered into the shade of a low, fat-trunked tree the thick branches of which spread out horizontally into the air without bending downwards. He balanced his cup of kahwa carefully on a branch and looked around. Just then, once again, Azra appeared unseen by his side.