Greatest Short Stories (16 page)

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From
The Power of Darkness and Other Stories
.

Part IV

THE COMIC
VEIN

16

A Pair of Mustachios
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There are various kinds of mustachios worn in my country to make the boundaries between the various classes of people. Outsiders may think it stupid to lay down, or rather to raise, lines of demarcation of this kind, but we are notorious in the whole world for sticking to our queer old conventions, prides and prejudices, even as the Chinese or the Americans, or, for that matter, the English… And, at any rate, some people may think it easier and more convenient to wear permanent boundary-lines like mustachios, which only need a smear of grease to keep them bright and shiny, rather than to wear frock coats, striped trousers and top hats, which constantly need to be laundered and dry-cleaned, and the maintenance of which is already leading to the bankruptcy of the European ruling classes. With them clothes make the man, but to us mustachios make the man. So we prefer the various styles of mustachios to make the differences between the classes…

And very unique and poetical symbols they are too. For instance, there is the famous lion mustache, the fearsome upstanding symbol of that great order of resplendent Rajas, Maharajas, Nabobs and English army generals who are so well known for their devotion to the King Emperor. Then there is the tiger mustache, the uncanny, several pointed mustache worn by the unbending, unchanging survivals from the ranks of the feudal gentry who have nothing left but the pride in their greatness and a few mementos of past glory, scrolls of honour, granted by the former Emperors, a few gold trinkets, heirlooms, and bits of land. Next there is the goat mustache — a rather unsure brand, worn by the nouveau riche, the new commercial bourgeoisie and the shopkeeper class somehow don’t belong — an indifferent, thin little line of a mustache, worn so that its tips can be turned up or down as the occasion demands a show of power to some coolie or humility to a prosperous client. There is the Charlie Chaplin mustache worn by the lower middle class, by clerks and professional men, a kind of half-and-half affair, deliberately designed as a compromise between the traditional full mustache and’ the cleanshaven Curzon cut of the Sahibs and the Barristers, because the Babus are not sure whether the Sahibs like them to keep mustachios at all. There is the sheep mustache of the coolies and the lower orders, the mouse mustache of the peasants, and so on.

In fact, there are endless styles of mustachios, all appropriate to the wearers and indicative of the various orders, as rigorously adhered to as if they had all been patented by the Government of India or sanctioned by special appointment with His Majesty the King or Her Majesty the Queen. And any poaching on the style of one class by members of another is interpreted by certain authorities as being indicative of the increasing jealousy with which each class is guarding its rights and privileges in regard to the mark of the mustachio.

Of course, the analysis of the expert is rather too abstract, and not all the murders can be traced to this cause, but certainly it is true that the preferences of the people in regard to their mustachios are causing a lot of trouble in our parts.

For instance, there was a rumpus in my own village the other day about a pair of mustachios.

It so happened that Seth Ramanand, the grocer and money-lender, who had been doing well out of the recent fall in the price of wheat by buying up whole crops cheap from the hard-pressed peasants and then selling grain at higher prices, took it into his head to twist the goat mustache, integral to his order and position in society, at the tips, so that it looked nearly like a tiger mustache.

Nobody seemed to mind very much, because most of the mouse-mustached peasants in our village are beholden of the banya, either because they owe him interest on a loan, or an instalment on a mortgage of jewellery or land. Besides, the Seth had been careful enough to twist his mustache so that it seemed nearly though not quite like a tiger mustache.

But there lives in the vicinity of our village, in an old, dilapidated Moghul style house, a Mussulman named Khan Azam Khan, who claims descent from an ancient Afghan family whose heads were noblemen and councillors in the Court of the Great Moghuls. Khan Azam Khan, a tall, middle-aged man is a handsome and dignified person, and he wears a tiger mustache and remains adorned with the faded remanants of a gold-brocaded waistcoat, though he hasn’t even a patch of land left.

Some people, notably the landlord of our village and the moneylender, maliciously say that he is an impostor, and that all his talk about his blue blood is merely the bluff of a rascal. Others, like the priest of the temple, concede that his ancestors were certainly attached to the Court of the Great Moghuls, but as sweepers. The landlord, the money-lender and the priest are manifestly jealous of anyone’s long ancestry, however, because they have all risen form nothing, and it is obvious from the stately ruins around Khan Azam Khan what grace was once his and his fore-fathers. Only Khan Azam Khan’s pride is greatly in excess of his present possessions, and he is inordinately jealous of his old privileges and rather foolish and headstrong in safeguarding every sacred brick of his tottering house against vandalism.

Khan Azam Khan happened to go to the moneylender’s shop to pawn his wife’s gold nose-ring one morning and he noticed the upturning tendency of the hair on Ramanand’s upper lip which made the banya’s goat mustache look almost like his own tiger mustache.

‘Since when have the lentil-eating shopkeepers become noblemen?’ he asked surlily, even before he had shown the nose-ring to the banya.

‘I don’t know what you mean, Khan,’ Ramanand answered.

‘You know what I mean, seed of a donkey!’ said the Khan.

‘Look at the way you have turned the tips of your mustache upwards. It almost looks like my tiger mustache. Turn the tips down to the style proper to the goat that you are! Fancy the airs of the banyas nowadays!’

‘Oh, Khan, don’t get so excited,’ said the money lender, who was nothing if he was not amenable, having built up his business on the maxim that the customer is always right.

‘I tell you, turn the tip of your mustache down if you value your life!’ raged Khan Azam Khan.

‘If that is all the trouble, here you are,’ said Ramanand, brushing one end of his mustache with his oily hand so that it dropped like a dead fly. ‘Come, show me the trinkets. How much do you want for them?’

Now that Khan Azam Khan’s pride was appeased, he was like soft wax in the merchant’s sure hand. His need, and the need of his family for food, was great, and he humbly accepted the value which the banya put on his wife’s nose-ring.

But as he was departing, after negotiating his business, he noticed that though one end of the banya’s mustache had come down at his behest, the other end was still up.

‘A, strange trick you have played on me, you swine,’ the Khan said.

‘I have paid you the best value for your trinket, Khan, that any money-lender will pay in these parts,’ the banya said, especially, in these days when the Sarkars of the whole world are threatening to go off the gold standard.’

‘It has nothing to do with the trinket,’ said Azam Khan,

‘But one end of your mustache is still up like my tiger mustache though you have brought down the other ‘O your proper goat’s style. Bring that other end down also, so that there is no apeing by your mustache of mine.’

‘Now, Khan,’ said the banya, ‘I humbled myself because you are doing business with me. You can’t expect me to become a mere worm just because you have pawned a trinket with me. If you were pledging some more expensive jewellery. I might consider obliging you a little more. Anyhow, my humble milk-skimmer doesn’t look a bit like your valiant tiger mustache.’

‘Bring that tip down!’ Khan Azam Khan roared, for the more he had looked at the banya’s mustache the more the still upturned tip seemed to him like an effort at an initiation of his own.

‘Now, be sensible, Khan,’ the money-lender said waving his hand with an imperturbable calm.

‘I tell you, turn that tip down or I shall wring your neck,’ said the Khan.

‘All right, the next time you come to do business with me I shall bring that tip down,’ answered the money-lender cunningly.

‘ That is far, said Chaudri Chottu Ram, the landlord of the village, who was sitting under the tree opposite.

‘ To be sure! To be sure!’ some peasants chimed in sheepishly.

Khan Azam Khan managed to control his murderous impulses and walked away. But he could not quell his pride, the pride of the generations of his ancestors who had worn the tiger mustache as a mark of their position. To see the symbol of his honur imitated by a banya — this was too much for him. He went home and fetched a necklace which had come down to his family through seven generations and, placing it before the banya, said:

‘Now will you bring that tip of your-mustache down?’ ‘By all means, Khan’ said the banya. ‘But let us see about this necklace. How much do you want for it?’

‘Any price will do, so long as you bring the tip of your mustache down,’ answered Azam Khan.

After they had settled the business the moneylender said:

‘Now Khan, I shall carry out your will.’ And he ceremoniously brushed the upturned tip of his mustache down.

As Azam Khan was walking away, however, he noticed that the other tip of the banya’s mustache had now gone up and stood dubiously like the upturned end of his own exalted tiger mustache. He turned on his feet and shouted:

‘I shall kill you if you don’t brush that mustache into the shape appropriate to your position as a lentil-eating banya!’

‘Now, now, Khan, come to your senses. You know it is only the illusion of a tiger’s mustache and nowhere like your brave and wonderful adornment,’ said the greasy money-lender.

‘I tell you I won’t have you insulting the insignia of my order!’ shouted Azam Khan. ‘You bring that tip down!’

‘I wouldn’t do it, Khan, even if you pawned all the jewellery you possess to me,’ said the money lender.

‘I would rather I lost all my remaining worldly possessions, my pots and pans, my clothes, even my houses, then see the tip of your mustache turned up like that!’ spluttered Azam Khan.

‘Acha, if you care so little for all your goods and chattels you sell them to me and then I shall turn that tip of my mustache down,’ said the moneylender. ‘And, what is more, I shall keep it flat. Now, is that a bargain?’

‘ That seems fair enough,’ said the landlord from under the trees where he was preparing for a siesta.

‘But, what proof have I that you will keep your word?’ said Azam Khan. ‘You oily lentil-eaters, never keep your promises.’

‘We shall draw up a deed, here and now,’ said the money-lender. ‘And we shall have it signed by the five elders of the village who are seated under that tree. What more do you want?’

‘Now, there is no catch in that,’ put in the land lord. ‘I and four other elders will come to court as witnesses on your behalf if the banya doesn’t keep his mustache to the goat style ever afterwards.’

‘I shall excommunicate him from religion if he doesn’t keep his word,’ added the priest, who had arrived on the scene on hearing the hubbub.

‘Acha,’ agreed Azam Khan.

And he forthwith had a deed prepared by the petition writer of the village, who sat smoking his hubble-bubble under the tree. And this document, transferring all his household goods and chattels, was signed in the presence of the five elders of the village and sealed. And the money-lender forthwith brought both tips of his mustache down and kept them glued in the goat style appropriate to his order.

Only, as soon as Khan Azam Khan’s back was turned he muttered, to the peasants seated near by: ‘My father was a sultan.’

And they laughed to see the Khan give a special twist to his mustache, as he walked away maintaining the valiant uprightness of the symbol of his ancient and noble family, though he had become a pauper.

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From
The Barber's Trade Union and Other Stories
.

17

The Signature
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There is something sacred about a signature; it makes everything valid, puts the seal upon all undertakings, makes bonds real, guarantees securities, cements pacts of friendship and alliance between states, provides the ultimate proofs of integrity in the highest court of law. The signature is all in all. Even poets, when they publish new poems often call them ‘New signatures’. And the radio uses a signature tune as its patent or hallmark. But especially do banks honour the signature; certainly they will not honour anything which does not bear a signature; to them the signature is almost omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, supreme!

Now, though everyone who draws a cheque knows the importance of the signature to the bank, through bitter experience of cheques coming back which the usual slip if they do not bear the signature, or if the signature is slightly wanky or blurred, there are still two kinds of peoples who have not yet realised the value of the signature. These are respectively some of the feudal gentry who live in ‘Indian India’ or the mofussil or on large estates in the country, and the very poor, who have no bank account to their credit at all.

Of course, it may be said in extenuation of the last class of people, that the reason why they dishonour the signature is because they have been left illiterate. For they do make every attempt to come to scratch when a document is presented to them by putting their thumb forward for the blacking and imprint the very image of their soul, the mark of that stumpy, reliable finger on the page, thus honouring the unwritten convention that a mark of some kind is necessary in order to prove a person’s integrity. But the conspicuous disregard of this convention by the former class of people, the feudal gentry, is rather surprising, to say least, and betokens an attitude which, though rather charming, causes serious difficulties, particularly to the business of banking — so the bankers say.

The banks, nowadays, are trying very hard to interest the feudal gentry to convert their gold into cash and let it flow, so that money should not remain buried in the earth in the classic tradition of our country and make a Midas of every grandee. But, as the nobility is incorrigibly lazy in appreciating the values of modernity there is a polite war going on between the nobility of the old world and the nobility of the new order.

Perhaps, one cannot call the tension that prevails between these brothers a polite war so much as a war of politeness, for there is no ill-will in this struggle or hatred or even contempt; there is only a certain impatience or irritation which is so often followed by laughter that it is more amusement than disdain.

One of the most amusing illustrations of this little war was provided the other day by the goings on between Nawab Luqman Ali Khan Bahadur, nobleman and dignitary of Aliabad State, a Director of the India and Commonwealth Bank Ltd. and Mr. C. Subramaniam, Assistant Manager of this Bank.

The India and Commonwealth Bank Ltd. is a small but steady bank founded about ten years ago, which has, with the coming of freedom, been seeking to increase its business to contribute something to the making of the new India. In pursuance of this very laudable desire, they had recently promised a big loan on good interest to a new optical industry which was being set up by an enterprising young entrepreneur, against the most unquestionably sound guarantees. The papers were ready and had been duly signed by all the directors, save Nawab Luqman Ali Khan Bahadur. That was the situation and there was nothing very complicated or controversial about it. But Nawab Luqman Ali Khan, who had been sent the papers several weeks ago, had not just taken the trouble to sign them and return them. Meanwhile, the enterprising entrepreneur felt that the people of India were fast going blind for want of good eye-glasses, and the bank’s normal business was held up.

The manager of the bank, Mr. Hormusji Pestonji Captain wrote many letters, reminding the Nawab Sahib Bahadur about his signature on the documents, but there was no reply.

As on all those occasions, when there is no answer to a letter, people begin to worry and postulate the most extraordinary fears and establish the strangest hypothesis, Mr. Captain began to think all kinds of things and got into a panic. The documents may have been looted on the way to Aliabad, he felt, for quite a few trains had been held up by armed gangs recently and ransacked; or the Nawab may have fallen a prey to a stray bullet in a riot; or he may have gone away to Pakistan. Anything was possible. And, as he waited day after day, the whole business became very nerve-wrecking. For the other directors might soon get to know that this loan was still pending and may feel he was inefficient.

So, after much worrying, he thought of a desperate stratagem: he would send the Assistant Manager, Mr. Subramaniam, to see Nawab Luqman Ali Khan at Aliabad and get his signature on all the documents. Subramaniam had won his way to assistant managership of the bank by dint of his command of figures, as well as his fingers, and certain sullen efficiency which, though not exactly American, was typical of the new Indian pioneers. Therefore Mr. Captain sent Mr. Subramaniam to Aliabad, not by rail, as that was not quick enough now after the Nawab’s delays, but by air.

To the hard-working Subramaniam, who had, during twenty year ’s grind, got into a certain exact and unvaried relationship with the office-table and chair, this air trip was an extraordinary adventure and not altogether pleasant. For one thing, he was told by friends that it would be very cold in the air, and he went to the air-line office loaded with a hold — all full of blankets which made his luggage so heavy that he had to pay excess from his own pocket. Then, his digestion, trained on ‘sambar’ and ‘rasam’ revolted at the very first bite on the biscuits served by the air-hostess, and he felt, and looked, like a shrivelled up porcupine all the way. A further affliction was that at the midway station, where breakfast was served, he had to eat with implements other then those with which he had been used to eat in his orthodox life before. And, he made a fool of himself in the eyes of a couple of Indian dandies who were meticulous with their knives and forks and snobbishly contemptuous of those who were not so adroit. And, when at last he alighted from the bus at the airline office in the main street of Aliabad, he found himself in an incredibly native atmosphere where everyone was dressed in flowing India robes and he felt like a monkey in his badly tailored suit.

He tried to look for a taxi, but though some lovely Buicks glided by, there was no motor vehicle available for hire. Perforce, he had to jump on to a strange horse carriage called ikka, from which his legs dangled like the legs of a scare-crow which was being transported to the fields. And, all he could see being sold in the shops were colorful bangles and velvet shoes and ‘Pan’ ‘Biri’. Subramaniam who had gone half-way to modernity thought that he had come to the backwoods and felt very depressed about it all, added to which was the usual panic at going to a strange place.

When he got to Zeenat Mahal, the palace of the Nawab Sahib Bahadur, he was further confused. For all the servants, sitting around the hubble bubble in the hall, gave him the once-over, cocked their eyes at each other and remained immobile. Apparently, they had been trained only to bow and scrape to the other noblemen of Aliabad, and a mere Madrasi, with pince-nez, arriving in an ikka, was not persona grata.

Mr. Subramaniam produced his card and asked to see the Nawab Luqman Ali Khan Sahib.

This time it was the servants and retainers who were confused, for no one had, within living memory, produced a white ticket of that kind with the request that it be transported to the Nawab Sahib.

The jemadar took it with gingerly fingers; and as Mr.Subramaniam added a staccato phrase in Angrezi speech this dignitary ran towards the inner sanctums like a lame duck. Meanwhile, the other servants dispersed like wizened cocks fluttering away from the rubbish heap at the approach of a human being.

Mr. Subramaniam began to settle the ikka driver who unlike the Bombay ghariwallahs, immediately accepted what he was given, salaamed, and went off.

The jemadar emerged after protracted confabulations inside the sanctums of the palace and led Mr. Subramaniam towards a little guest house beyond the garden in the courtyard of the palace.

Mr. Subramaniam waited for a word of explanation which would provide the clue to what was happening to him, but the jemadar was silent, only being most polite and accommodating, bowing and salaaming now in a manner that seemed more than obsequious. And then he left Mr. Subramaniam with the words.

‘Please rest and wait.’

Mr. Subramaniam took off his jacket and his shoes and lay back in the arm chair in the verandah. In a little while, a servant came and apprised him of the fact that the bath was ready. This made Mr. Subramaniam feel that things were moving after all. But, when he had finished his bath, changed into a new suit and come to rest in the arm the chair with a tea tray in front of him, and nothing happened again, except the passage of time on his wrist watch, he began to feel anxious. The laws of politeness in a Muhammadan household did not permit him to probe into any corner, even of the garden, lest there should be someone in purdah whose chastity might be outraged by the glance of a stranger ’s eye. The servants seemed to have disappeared. And Mr. Subramaniam’s’ hold on Hindustani speech was too precarious to permit him to shout and call the jemadar.

As the afternoon advanced towards the evening, Mr. Subramaniam’s anxiety became a little more akin to irritation. And he began to pace up and down the verandah almost as though he was a prisoner of time. But this parade was not of much avail, and after he had walked to and fro for a quarter of an hour he sat down again and began to write a letter to the Nawab Sahib.

When he was half way through the letter, Nawab Luqman Ali Khan Sahib appeared, a jolly, rotund figure, dressed in a spotless white silk uchkin, tight trousers and a strange Aliabad-style round turban with no parting in front. And he was the very soul of affability, charm, grace and good humour. For he greeted Mr. Subramaniam almost as though the Assistant Manager was a long lost friend.

‘I hope you had a nice journey. And, have my servants been looking after you?… Of course, you can’t expect the comfort of such a modern city as Bombay in my humble abode… But we have a few modern places, you know. For instance, there is the Aliabad Club. I am just going there and you must come and meet my friends…’

‘Sir, I would like to discuss those papers with you’ Mr. Subramaniam interrupted. ‘You see, Sir, I have specially come to get your signature…’

‘Oh come, come, my dear fellow, you take work too seriously. After all you have just arrived and you must see a bit of life. To be sure, we are not as advanced as you in Bombay, but… And we shall see about business matters tomorrow morning. After all it doesn’t take long to put my signature on a paper… Come, don’t worry. I want you particularly to meet Nawab Haider Ali, the Home Minister, and Nawab Wajid Mahumud, the Education Minister, and Prof. Ram Ratan Gupta — Mr. Gupta is our Finance Minister here. He is a wizard. He can count anything at a moment’s notice. Come along now…’ And he slapped Subramaniam’s back with such cordiality that the poor South Indian nearly broke into two.

Soon, however, Mr. Subramaniam found himself seated in a beautiful Dodge and being dodged away across intricate bazars towards the cantonment and then through the magnificent portals of the Aliabad club into the monumental palace which housed this august institution.

But, while the drive was fairly diverting, because the Nawab Sahib kept up a running commentary on the wonders of Aliabad, Mr. Subramaniam’s small soul, brought up on an occasional shivering visit to the CCI, shuddered with the fear of the unknown on his entry into the hall and shrank into nothingness in the face of the grandees who were assembled here in silk robes and golden turbans and velvet shoes. And, when he was introduced to the various dignitaries and they rose to shake hands with him, the forefingers of his right hand, with which he usually touched other people’s hands, simply wilted like the falling petals of a dirty flower. One dignitary, Nawab Wajid Mahmud took it upon himself to instruct Mr. Subramaniam in the art of shaking hands:

‘You know, my friend’, this nobleman began, ‘ The handshake is the symbol of affection and good-will. Let this love show itself with some warmth. When a person’s hand clasps yours, give your full hand, with its real grip and not the four miserable fingers…’

This overwhelmed Mr. Subramaniam, until he blushed, flushed and began to perspire profusely. And, all he wanted was to be able to come to scratch, for there was no denying that this was life, brimming over, as it were, with warmth and hospitability. But his eyeglasses were blurred with the smoke of confusion and he was intensely relieved when he could sink back into a chair and contract into the littlest and most insignificant being on earth.

Nawab Luqman Ali Khan Sahib was much in demand. And for a while he went about meeting his friends. Meanwhile, the waiter who looked like a Nawab himself, brought a bottle of whiskey and some tumblers and began to pour out the liquor.

Soon Nawab Luqman Ali brought the Home Minister and the Finance Minister around.

Mr. Subramaniam had tasted whiskey twice or thrice and liked it, but his wife had smelt his breath and had given him a long lecture about how he was going to the dogs. Since then, he had found it easier to resist the temptation, but the persuasive tongue of the Nawab Sahib, his host, moved him, especially as the other noblemen added their ‘Please’ to his, in a most gracious Hindustani speech. And then the ‘samosas’ and ‘Pakoras’ arrived, with lashings of ‘Podina’ pickle, and the Southerner in Mr. Subramaniam felt the call of chillies and forgot all about his wife and Morarji Desai.

Soon he was happy, happier than he had been for years and those delicate negotiations for which he had been sent here, were obliterated by the fumes of alcohol and the seven-course dinner to which Nawab Wajib Mahumud, the Education Minister, insisted on taking the company in the club Dining Room after the appetisers.