The Glass Palace (45 page)

‘Do all of you face this then?' Dinu asked Arjun. ‘Is it hard for you to be accepted as officers by your own men?'

‘Yes and no,' Arjun replied. ‘You always have the feeling that they're looking at you more closely than they would if you were a Britisher—especially me, I suppose, since I'm just about the only Bengali in sight. But you also have a sense that they're identifying with you—that some of them are urging you on, while others are just waiting to see you fall. When I'm facing them I can tell that they're putting themselves in my place, crossing a barrier that has become a great divide in their
minds. The moment they imagine themselves past that line, something changes. It can't be as it was before.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm not sure I can explain, Dinu. I'll tell you a story. Once, an old English colonel visited our mess. He was full of tales about the Good Old Days. After dinner I happened to hear him talking to Bucky—our CO. He was huffing and puffing and blowing through his whiskers. His view was that this business of making officers out of Indians would destroy the army; everyone would be at each other's throats and the whole thing would fall apart. Now Bucky's just about as fair and decent as a man can be and he wasn't going to put up with this. He defended us stoutly and said his Indian officers were doing a very good job and all the rest of it. But you know, the thing of it was that in my heart I knew that Bucky was wrong and the old codger was right.'

‘Why?'

‘It's simple. Every institution has its own logic, and the British Indian army has always functioned on the understanding that there was to be a separation between Indians and Britishers. It was a straightforward system: they stayed apart, and obviously both sides felt that this was to their benefit. It's no easy thing you know, to make men fight. The Britishers found a way of doing it, and they made it work. But now, with us being inside the officers' mess, I don't know that it can go on.'

‘Why not?'

Arjun got up to pour himself another brandy. ‘Because it's true what the old codger said: we're at each other's throats.' ‘Who?'

‘Indians and Britishers.'

‘Really? Why? What about?'

‘Most of it is just little things. In the mess for instance, if a Britisher turns the radio to a broadcast in English, you can be sure that minutes later an Indian will tune it to Hindi film songs. And then someone will turn it back, and so on until all you can do is hope that it gets switched off altogether. Things like that.'

‘You sound like . . . squabbling schoolchildren.'

‘Yes. But there's something important behind it, I think.'

‘What?'

‘You see we all do the same work, eat the same food and so on. But the chaps who're trained in England get paid a lot more than we do. For myself I don't mind so much, but chaps like Hardy care very much about these things. To them this is not just a job as it is for me. You see, they really believe in what they're doing; they believe that the British stand for freedom and equality. Most of us when we hear big words like that tend to take them with a pinch of salt. They don't. They're deadly serious about these things, and that's why it's so hard for them when they discover that this equality they've been told about is a carrot on a stick—something that's dangled in front of their noses to keep them going, but always kept just out of reach.'

‘Why don't they complain?'

‘They do sometimes. But usually there's nothing in particular to complain about. Take the case of Hardy's appointment: who was to blame? Hardy himself? The men? It certainly wasn't the CO. But that's how it always is. Whenever one of us doesn't get an appointment or a promotion, there's always a mist of regulations that makes things unclear. On the surface everything in the army appears to be ruled by manuals, regulations, procedures: it seems very cut and dried. But actually, underneath there are all these murky shadows that you can never quite see: prejudice, distrust, suspicion.'

Arjun tossed his brandy back and paused to pour himself another. ‘I'll tell you something,' he said, ‘something that happened to me while I was at the academy. One day a group of us went into town—Hardy, me, a few others. It started to rain and we stepped into a shop. The shopkeeper offered to lend us umbrellas. Without thinking about it I said, yes, of course, that'll be a help. The others looked at me as though I'd gone mad. “What are you thinking of?” Hardy said to me. “You can't be seen with an umbrella.” I was puzzled. I said: “But why not? Why can't I be seen with an umbrella?” Hardy's
answer was: “Have you ever seen an Indian soldier using an umbrella?” I thought about it and realised I hadn't. I said: “No.”

‘“Do you know why not?”

‘“No.”

‘“Because in the old days in the East, umbrellas were a sign of sovereignty. The British didn't want their sepoys to get over-ambitious. That's why you'll never see umbrellas at a cantonment.”

‘I was amazed. Could this possibly be true? I felt sure there were no regulations on the subject. Cans you imagine a rule that said: “Indians are not to keep umbrellas in their barracks”? It's inconceivable. But at the same time, it was also true that you never saw anyone with an umbrella at a cantonment. One day I asked the adjutant, Captain Pearson. I said: “Sir, why do we never use umbrellas, even when it rains?” Captain Pearson is a short, tough, bull-necked fellow. He looked at me as though I were a worm. Nothing could have shut me up quicker than the answer he gave me. He said: “We don't use umbrellas, Lieutenant, because we're not
women
.”'

Arjun began to laugh. ‘And now,' he said, ‘I would rather do anything than be seen with an umbrella—I'd rather drown in the rain.'

twenty-four

T
hat year it seemed as though the monsoons had broken over Lankasuka well before the first clouds had appeared in the skies. Manju's wedding was in late June, just before the coming of the rains. The days were very hot, and in the park in front of the house, the lake fell to a level where boats could no longer be taken out on the water. It was the time of year when even the rotation of the earth seem to slacken in speed, in anticipation of the coming deluge.

But within Lankasuka the wedding created the semblance of a strange climatic anomaly: it was as though the compound was awash in a flood, its inhabitants swirling hectically downriver, carried along by great tides of disparate things— people, gifts, anxiety, laughter, food. In the courtyard at the back, cooking fires burnt all day long and on the roof, under the bright tented awnings that had been erected for the wedding, there seemed never to be a moment when several dozen people were not sitting down to a meal.

The days went by in a storm of feasting and observances: the solemn familial commitments of the
paka-dekha
led inexorably to the yellowed turmeric-anointing of the
gaye-holud.
Slowly, much as the rising water of the monsoons overwhelms the chequerboard partitions of a paddy field, so did the steady progression of the wedding sweep away the embankments that divided the lives of the people in the house.
Uma's white-saried political associates pitched in to help, as did a great many khaki-clad Congress workers; Arjun's friends at Fort William sent auxiliary detachments of cooks, mess-boys, waiters and even, on occasion, entire marching bands, complete with wrap-around brass and uniformed bandmasters; much of Manju's college came pouring in, and so did a colourful throng of Neel's acquaintances from the film studios of Tollygunge—directors, actors, students, playback singers, even the two terrifying make-up women who had dressed Manju on the day of her fateful audition.

Dolly too had a hand in stirring the mix. Through her years of visiting Uma in Calcutta, she had developed a close connection with the city's Burmese temple. Small though this temple was, its past was not without lustre. Many great Burmese luminaries had spent time there, including the famous activist monk, U Wisara. By way of Dolly's links, Manju's wedding came to be attended by a substantial part of the city's Burmese community—students, monks, lawyers and even a few hulking sergeants of Calcutta's police force (many of whom were Anglo-Burmese in origin).

Considering how oddly assorted these groups were, disagreements were relatively few. But in the end it proved impossible to shut out the powerful winds that were sweeping the world. On one occasion a friend of Uma's, an eminent Congressman, arrived dressed in the manner of Jawaharlal Nehru, in a khaki cap and a long black
sherwani
, with a rose in his buttonhole. The elegant politician found himself standing next to a friend of Arjun's, a lieutenant dressed in the uniform of the 14th Punjab Regiment. ‘And how does it feel,' the politician said, turning to the soldier with a sneer, ‘for an
Indian
to be wearing that uniform?'

‘If you must know, sir,' Arjun's friend snapped back, matching sneer for sneer, ‘this uniform feels rather warm—but I imagine the same could be said of yours?'

Another day, Arjun found himself facing off against a strangely assorted crowd of Buddhist monks, Burmese student-activists and Congress Party workers. The Congressmen had
bitter memories of their confrontations with Indian soldiers and policemen. They began to berate Arjun for serving in an army of occupation.

Arjun recalled that it was his sister's wedding and he managed to keep his temper. ‘We aren't occupying the country,' Arjun said, as lightly as he could. ‘We are here to defend you.'

‘From whom are you defending us? From ourselves? From other Indians? It's your masters from whom the country needs to
be
defended.'

‘Look,' said Arjun, ‘it's a job and I'm trying to do it as best I can . . .'

One of the Burmese students gave him a grim smile: ‘Do you know what we say in Burma when we see Indian soldiers? We say: there goes the army of slaves—marching off to catch some more slaves for their masters.'

It was with a great effort that Arjun succeeded in keeping control of himself: instead of getting into a fight, he turned round and marched away. Later, he went to complain to Uma and found her wholly unsympathetic. ‘They were just telling you what most people in the country think, Arjun,' Uma said bluntly. ‘If you're strong enough to face enemy bullets, you should be strong enough to hear them out.'

For the duration of his stay in Lankasuka, Kishan Singh had been allotted a small room that was tucked away at the rear of the house. At other times this room was generally used for storage, mainly food. Along the walls stood great, stone martabans, packed with pickles; in the corners were piles of ripening mangoes and guavas; hanging from the rafters, beyond the reach of ants and cats, were the rope-slung earthen pots in which the household's butter and ghee were stored.

One afternoon, Bela was sent to the storeroom on an errand, to fetch some butter. The wooden door was slightly warped and could not be properly closed. Looking through the crack, Bela saw that Kishan Singh was inside, lying on a mat. He'd
changed into a longyi for his siesta, and his khakis were hanging on a peg. He was sweating in the June heat, bare-bodied but for the ghostly shadow of the army singlet that was singed on to his chest.

From the pumping motion of his ribs Bela could tell that he was fast asleep. She slipped into the room and tiptoed around his mat. She was on her knees, undoing the strings of the earthen butter pot, when Kishan Singh suddenly woke up.

He jumped to his feet and pulled on his khaki tunic, his face turning red with embarrassment.

‘My mother sent me . . .' she said quickly, ‘to fetch this . . .' She pointed at the earthen pot.

With his tunic on, he seated himself cross-legged on the mat. He gave her a smile. Bela smiled shyly back. She felt no inclination to leave; she hadn't spoken to him till then and it occurred to her now that there were many things she wanted to ask him.