A Fine Family: A Novel (26 page)

Arjun’s first and most enduring impression of Bombay was of water. He arrived on the island on a monsoon day. The damp streets shone from the rain and the city’s air was dense with wetness. The yellow and black taxi from Bombay Central station drove him through soggy quarters, carelessly bouncing over puddles, splattering water over the roadside. It was an early evening in August and the streetlights glistened on the moist asphalt. That night he saw fifteen-foot-tall waves of the Arabian Sea shatter thunderously against the rocks below his window. The southwest wind whistled through the tiny cracks between the shutters. The rain advanced from the deep sea like the disciplined forward line of an army.

The monsoon went away in September but the smell and feel of the Arabian Sea stayed. Arjun settled down in a ‘paying guest’ flat in Colaba at the southern tip of the narrow island city, near an ancient fishing village of the Kolis. From his window Arjun could see the nets of the Kolis spread out in the sun, their brightly coloured sails fluttering on their beached boats, their huts of thatch and woven matting surrounded by the smell of ageing Bombay Duck. Sometimes in the evenings he would watch the boats, many of them equipped with motors, go out floating with the tide as the full-breasted Koli women waved from the shore. His cleaning woman was a Koli. She had an attractive, dark body which she adorned with gold jewellery, and she wore her colourful sari tightly hitched up to the knees, twisted around her thighs, and pulled tautly between the cheeks of her buttocks.

Arjun had come to Bombay to make his fortune. After completing school in Simla, he spent four years in college in Delhi, where he read a great deal, mainly history and economics. But his academic results were not distinguished. He was not unintelligent, it was just that he could not get excited by the rote method of exam preparation. After college both Tara and Seva Ram wanted him to sit for the civil service exam. If he got in, they argued, he would be set for life with a secure career ahead of him. In the 1960s, a government career was still a part of the Punjabi middle class dream.

But Arjun had different ideas. He wanted to go far away, he wanted to see the world, and he did not want to work for the government. There were endless arguments. Tara was worried. Arjun sulked, and Seva Ram remained quiet. The truth was that Arjun did not know precisely what he wanted to do. Since he was idle for months, Tara had visions of an unemployed, unsettled son. She felt let down by Seva Ram, who did not seem to show particular interest in talking to the boy. Seva Ram answered her nagging with ‘Let the boy decide! He is grown up now.’

Then one day Arjun surprised everyone. With a flourish he pulled out a letter from his pocket. It was a job offer from a firm in Bombay. Neither Tara nor Seva Ram knew quite what to think. But the pay was good. It transpired Arjun had quietly answered several advertisements, got himself interviewed in Delhi, and landed the job. He was excited, but Tara and Seva Ram were sad to see him go so far away.

The company which Arjun joined made consumer products in a factory in a northern suburb of Bombay. It was part of a large diversified commercial house, which owned trading and manufacturing companies all over India, dealing in everything from tea, textiles, and jute to engineering and consumer goods. Arjun started out in the sales department as an ‘Officer-Trainee’ under the charge of a sales training officer. The particular company he was assigned to manufactured toilet articles, such as hair oil, talcum powder, a skin-whitening cream, and over-the-counter drugs—a pain balm, an antiseptic for cuts and wounds, etc.

From the very first day on his job, Arjun had problems. His training officer, B. V. Rajan, a South Indian of the old school who had trained dozens of recruits, was an honest man, without any regional bias against Arjun. Yet he felt uncomfortable with him. As he explained to a colleague, ‘I think he asks too many questions.’

Although Arjun knew practically nothing about the business world, he had an inquisitive mind. Other trainees might be willing to accept the way things were done, but Arjun wanted to know ‘why’. No one had ever questioned the basic rules and procedures in this manner and after three months the training officer was at his wit’s end. He reported to the company that as regards Arjun a mistake had been made. Reluctantly, the company agreed with his recommendation ‘not to confirm’ him.

However, the Advertising Manager had watched Arjun and talked to him several times. He sensed that Arjun had something in him. When he learned about the company’s decision, he called in Arjun. He gave him a newspaper advertisement and asked him for his opinion. The headline of the advertisement said, ‘For headaches, cuts, insect bites and colds, use Bombay Balm.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘I hate all advertising,’ replied Arjun.

The Advertising Manager was taken aback. He began to understand why this boy was in trouble. Not wanting to be drawn into a discussion on the social value of advertising, he persisted with his original question.

‘But if you want to sell more Bombay Balm, how would you improve this?’

Arjun thought for a while. ‘I would sell the balm for only one ailment, not for everything.’

‘But we would lose the customers who buy it for other problems.’

‘You would more than make up, I think, by having people believe that it really works for that one thing.’

‘Which problem would you sell it for?’

‘What do most people buy it for?’ asked Arjun.

‘I don’t know, but I think for aches and pains.’

‘What kind of aches?’

‘Headaches, I suppose.’

‘We could find that out by talking to a hundred customers.’

‘Yes, I suppose we could.’

‘I think if I stood for a week at a chemist’s shop like Kemps, I could meet a hundred customers.’ After a pause Arjun asked, ‘For which sickness does it really work best?’

‘I suppose it works best for aches and pains, but it also relieves colds, and cuts and. . . ’

‘If it is best for aches and pains, let us sell it only for that.’ After another pause Arjun added, ‘Before we do so, shouldn’t we check with some doctor or medical person if it really works on pains?’

‘Young man, doctors don’t like us because we cut into their business. They’ll never give us proper advice.’

‘Then let’s try to find one doctor who is not biased. Let me try. I know of one. I’ll go and ask him.’

That evening Arjun went to meet Dr Khanna. Tara had given him an introduction to the general practitioner on Malabar Hill. ‘You will be a stranger in the big city, son. Go and pay your respects to Dr Khanna; he will introduce you to people.’ Dr Khanna was a distant relative from Lyallpur, who had settled in Bombay after the partition and made good.

Arjun told Dr Khanna about Bombay Balm and asked him if it was effective for headaches. The doctor laughed. ‘All your patent remedies are useless.’ But Arjun was not disheartened. He showed the good doctor the balm’s label and asked him to explain to him what each ingredient did. The doctor looked at the formula. He became serious suddenly and he said, ‘Yes, yes, I think it has some good ingredients. Yes, yes, it could help a headache. Yes, yes, it also has camphor and menthol, both useful counter-irritants. But you could improve this formula, you know, by adding another analgesic, yes, yes.’

Dr Khanna and his wife insisted that Arjun stay on for dinner.

‘Yes, yes, Bombay is the only real city in India!’ Dr Khanna told Arjun over dinner. ‘Delhi has too many bureaucrats, politicians and Punjabis. Calcutta, despite its boxwallas, is essentially a Bengali town. Madras belongs to the orthodox Hindu South, yes, yes. But Bombay belongs to no one. Muslims, Parsees, Hindus and the British—all of them made it into what it is today. And now people from all over India come to make their fortunes here. We all have a ‘native place’, as we Bombaywallas say, and we all dream of returning to our homes in the heartland. But the city mesmerizes us and we never return. Yes, yes, ancestral attachments fade away and we begin to call Bombay our home.’

The Khanna noticed that the boy’s mind seemed to run along a single track. He kept coming back to Bombay Balm. But the doctor admired Arjun’s inquisitive nature. It did not escape them either that he was an eligible bachelor, from a good family in their community, who was earning twelve hundred rupees a month in an established company. The visit set off a stream of letters to the Punjab to relatives with marriageable daughters.

Arjun sat down in bed that night and wrote out a dozen different advertisements for Bombay Balm. He also wrote out a short proposal on what was needed to be done to improve the product, its image, its advertising, and its sales. In it he suggested that the product be called ‘Bombay Pain Balm for Headaches’ rather than merely Bombay Balm.

The next morning Arjun arrived early at the office and left his proposal on the desk of the Advertising Manager. At eleven o’clock he was called in by the Sales Training Officer. As he walked into Rajan’s cubicle, he noticed that his boss looked uncomfortable. Rajan stared at the fluorescent light overhead and then at his olive-coloured steel desk. Finally he asked Arjun to sit down. He cleared his throat and began to speak mournfully. It took him a long time to get to the point that Arjun was being fired.

‘But why?’ asked Arjun.

‘Well, eh. . . you don’t seem to fit here.’

‘What have I done wrong?’

‘Ah, nothing wrong, you just don’t seem to fit.’

‘But why?’

‘There you go. You are always asking questions,’ he said with annoyance. ‘It’s ah, your attitude. You can collect, ah, one month’s salary this afternoon with your other dues. And you, ah. . .need not come in tomorrow.’

When Arjun went back into the hall, he thought all the clerks were staring at him. It seemed everyone knew that he was fired. He could not stand it, and instead of going back to his desk he went out into the street.

He felt incalculably sad and defeated as he walked towards the harbour. He looked at the gritty, impossible city. He passed by a row of warehouses and soon reached the great natural harbour, with its miles upon miles of deep, sheltered water. Scores of merchant ships were moored there, waiting to unload. It was a clear day and the mainland of India was visible in the distance. The vast scene was coloured by his unhappiness. He shivered as a flush of wind blew past, and he looked up at the hot midday sky. His thoughts returned link by link along the chain of memory to the two brief months in which he had inhabited the callous city. How could he have mistaken it for a careless, happy place? He felt wounded in his body, and in his mouth he detected the taste of camphor.

In the afternoon he returned to the office and immediately went to the cashier on the third floor to collect his wages. As he waited at the cash window, the Managing Director brushed past him with his nose buried in a file. Since the corridor was narrow, the Managing Director almost tripped over Arjun.

‘Excuse me,’ said Arjun stepping back.

The Managing Director looked at him and said, ‘Not your fault, I should be looking where I am going. My name is Billimoria.’

‘I know,’ said Arjun, ‘You are the Managing Director. I was introduced to you along with the other trainees two months ago. My name is Arjun.’

The MD’s eyes widened.

‘Will you please come into my office?’

Arjun followed him. Billimoria’s office was cool, dark and spacious. The walls were panelled in wood, and there was a thick carpet on the floor. At the back was a window overlooking the harbour. On the desk Arjun noticed a copy of the proposal which he had penned the previous night.

‘So you are the young man who wants us to sell Bombay Balm for. . . let me see. . . for headaches.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. We’ll do it. But
you
will have to do it.’

‘But sir, I have just been fired from the company this morning.’

‘What!’

‘Mr Rajan called me this morning and said that I need not return from tomorrow. I was collecting my notice pay when you bumped into me.’

‘Get me Rajan on the line,’ Billmoria told his secretary on the intercom. ‘Hello! Yes Rajan, what is this about the young trainee, Arjun? . . . What? Yes. . .Why? Yes. . .By why? Asks too many questions? No, let’s keep him. Transfer him to Advertising, and um. . . confirm him. Tell Nimker we won’t need to fill that vacancy of Assistant Advertising Manager now. Yes. I’ll talk to Personnel. And Rajan, the next time you find a person who asks too many questions, send him to me before you fire him. By the way, I’ll send you a copy of a proposal that this young man has written. Do read it and put it in his training file. You’ll also understand why we can’t afford to let him go.’

Billimoria turned to Arjun. He looked at him sternly. ‘You’ll have a new job tomorrow. In thirty days I want a progress report on the relaunch of Bombay Balm for. . .um. . .headaches.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

After Arjun left his room, Billimoria called in the Advertising and Personnel Managers in order to regularize his decision. The Personnel man thought that Billimoria was making a mistake. Billimoria asked him to read Arjun’s proposal and then comment on his decision. The Advertising Manager, whose name was Choudhary, was delighted to have him.

‘He’s the most refreshing thing to walk through these doors in years,’ he said.

‘After he relaunches the balm,’ said Billimoria, ‘he should naturally return to complete his sales training. We can shorten his training to half the period but he must travel. We may need support in reformulating the product. I’ll inform PD. And Choudhary, give him plenty of rope. . . he’s a bit odd, but creative. And watch him. . .um. . .two years from now he might have your job.’

Like every Northerner, Arjun did not like Bombay at first. It seemed crowded, noisy, and chaotic after the wide open spaces of North India. He had to learn to negotiate the tangled traffic, the beggars and the pavement sleepers. He found it all squalid and dismal. He complained about the smoke from the mills in Parel, especially in the rain when it seemed to become like exhaust vapour. Amid the harsh nakedness of industrial India, he sorely missed the Himalayan birds, the trees and the grass with which he had grown up in Simla. When he looked at the mill workers, he saw empty faces, eyes without expression of life. There was no beauty in the lives of the industrial masses, he thought.