A Fine Family: A Novel Read online

  ‘Isn’t it terrible about Gandhi?’ she said.

  ‘I was there,’ he said, trying not to make a big thing out of it.

  ‘Tell me, what happened?’ she asked, full of excitement.

  ‘I was at the prayer meeting at Birla House. Gandhi was always punctual and the meetings began promptly at five p.m. But he was ten minutes late that day. As he walked towards the congregation, accompanied by his two grand-daughters, the crowd parted to let him pass towards the dias. A young man stepped forward from the crowd, folded his hands and bowed to him. Then he pulled out a revolver and fired three shots in quick succession. At the second shot Gandhiji fell, with the words ‘He Ram’ on his lips. Within minutes he was dead.

  Tara had tears in her eyes. As she wiped her eyes, she said, ‘I must confess to you Karan, that I found his constant preaching of Hindu-Muslim unity a bit irritating. I know he was “India’s greatest son since the Buddha”, but what about us, who have lost our homes and our relatives because of the Muslims? Chachi was shot by a Mussalman. Do you think I can forget that?’

  ‘Let’s not look backwards, Tara.’

  ‘I know, I know. Karan, isn’t it great to be free? I feel such a sense of hope in the future.’

  A quarter-of-an-hour later Karan left just as unexpectedly as he had arrived.

  The chance meeting with Karan had an unsettling effect on Tara. But it was not as profound as it might have been. Initially she was in a daze. He had again woken a dormant sensuality within her. As unrequited feelings surfaced, she again felt restless with desire. However, the excitement quickly subsided, and she was proud of not losing control of herself. This encounter she felt was different from the previous one in the Rohtak jail. She did not feel the same kind of pain. He had aroused pleasant feelings in her, certainly, but she was not tormented as she had been at Rohtak. She attributed this difference both to a change in Karan as well as in her transformed relationship with Seva Ram. Whereas at Rohtak Seva Ram had been a stranger, now he was a familiar figure, whom she was learning to love and respect. He still irritated her, and he was too distant to call a friend, but there was no longer any question of her loyalty.

  Tara felt pleased with herself as a consequence, for this meant she could see Karan without feeling guilty. She had found her moorings and they appeared to be sufficiently strong. Nevertheless, she was sensible and did not rush into another meeting. She allowed three weeks to pass in which she thought further. She resolved in the end that she would not see him alone. She wanted Seva Ram to get to know Karan and to like him. She wanted him to become a ‘family friend’. Having cleared her mind, and having gained confidence, she wrote him a letter inviting him for lunch the next Saturday.

  Karan arrived early on Saturday. He came before Seva Ram returned from his office and Arjun from school. Tara felt nervous and there was a certain uneasiness between them during the first few minutes. He behaved like a stranger, and this infuriated her. He was stiff and extremely proper. She even detected a hint of superiority in his attitude, and a derision for her humdrum middle class life. Gradually, however, he relaxed and she went back into the kitchen as he pulled up an easy chair into the gentle sunlight. While she prepared lunch inside, he sat savouring the intricate sounds of the Himalayan mid-morning. Soon Arjun arrived and Karan quickly made friends with him.

  ‘Sh. . . hear that?’ said Karan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That sound.’

  Arjun was puzzled.

  ‘Listen!’ whispered Karan.

  Arjun shook his head.

  ‘Listen again,’ said Karan urgently.

  Arjun’s face lit up this time, and he nodded. There was no mistaking the honeyed notes which went up and down the same scale.

  ‘That is the Himalayan cuckoo,’ said Karan triumphantly. There was a pause. Just then the bird flew to the next tree. Both of them watched it carefully.

  ‘Do you know that tree?’ whispered Karan.

  Arjun shook his head.

  ‘It is a deodar tree,’ said Karan and he smiled.

  They were silent again. Arjun went back to playing by himself on the grass. Karan’s eyes moved, glancing from Arjun playing at his feet to the sunlight playing on the deodar’s branches, and beyond to the motionless contour of the hills. Each of them was absorbed in his own world, yet quietly united by their nearness. Karan seemed to relate better to younger people. The ironic mask seemed to drop away and he became more spontaneous.

  Their silence was again interrupted, this time by a humming sound. Both of them looked up, and Arjun pointed to a swarm of bees in the wisteria flowers. Karan said, ‘If you learn to listen, you will hear the sound of the universe.’

  Soon Seva Ram arrived, and they sat down for a leisurely meal outside on the lawn. Although he said little, Karan seemed to be at ease. Tara too began to relax. He seemed to be interested in Seva Ram, although the conversation did not flow easily. She watched Karan’s exquisitely shaped aristocratic hands as he talked. She noticed that when the conversation turned to himself, he looked amused and laughed in an ironical, self-effacing way, and gently steered it in a different direction. She watched his black, expressive eyes. Although he had lost some of his threatening good looks, he was still very handsome. He gazed intently at Seva Ram. It was a searching gaze, as if he expected to find some answer. She sensed that he wanted to ask her husband about his spiritual life, but he was reluctant to do so.

  ‘What do you do all day long?’ she asked him.

  ‘I have my lectures.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I read,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I play the sitar.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that is all.’

  They laughed.

  ‘But who do you meet?’

  ‘Oh, I have a few friends, but mostly I spend the time by myself.’

  She could tell that he did not want to talk about his friends. ‘What do you read?’ she asked instead.

  ‘I have been reading the Upanishads.’

  Seva Ram was impressed.

  ‘Doesn’t it get boring?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said with an ironical smile.

  ‘But what is it going to lead to?’

  ‘Wisdom, I hope,’ and he laughed.

  ‘It doesn’t seem very practical,’ she said.

  ‘You sound just like your father. It reminds me of our conversations in Lyallpur,’ he said in a tone of carefully disguised scorn.

  The mention of Lyallpur suddenly transported Tara into the past. She pictured Karan sitting beside Bauji in the courtyard of their house, and she ached at the memory. She felt the tears rising. He sensed her discomfort and changed the subject.

  ‘You are right, though. It is not very practical, but it is very exciting.’ Suddenly his face became animated. ‘You cannot imagine the thrill, Tara, of reading the Upanishads in the original. It makes you feel as if you are walking on air.’

  He had got up and begun to pace up and down. Tara noticed that Karan’s ironical manner seemed to recede for the first time. This was the old Karan, she felt. She looked into his eyes and glimpsed a hint of the earlier sparkle as the mask was lifted momentarily.

  ‘But can you spend your whole life doing this?’ she asked.

  ‘A whole lifetime may not be enough to know what I want to know.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  He smiled, and continued in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone, ‘I want to know what happens to us when we die; I want to know whether there is a god or not; where we came from and where we are going; whether we decide our own actions or if they have been decided for us.’

  ‘But people have been asking these questions for thousands of years. How will you find an answer?’ she asked.

  ‘Seva Ram has found an answer,’ he said.

  ‘Then why don’t you ask him? He will tell you.’

  Seva Ram smiled and looked away uncomfortably. There was a pause.

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bsp; ‘When are you going to find a proper job?’ Tara asked. ‘It is all right to talk like this when you are in college. But now you are grown up. You should think of having a family and earning a proper living.’

  ‘But I have a job,’ he said.

  ‘I mean a proper job. We are a free country now and there are so many opportunities for a bright young man. So many things to do. This is the land of hope. The future is in our hands, Karan. It’s not right for you to withdraw into ancient philosophy.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ he asked coldly.

  ‘You could still sit for the IAS. You were in any case going to sit for it before partition when it was called the ICS. I don’t know why they need to change names. It still means joining the civil service and ruling the country. The only difference is that earlier you had an English boss, now you will have an Indian politician.’ As Tara began to sound more and more like Bauji, Karan gently withdrew. He became subdued. The mask of the cynical man of the world returned. Tara knew that he had inherited money from Chachi. There was thus no pressing need for earning more, but it didn’t seem right to her that Karan should be stuck as a provincial lecturer.

  ‘With the English gone, there are many shoes to fill. And many more jobs will come with Nehru’s socialism. You don’t want to remain a college lecturer for the rest of your life. A man must not do less than what he is capable of.’

  Karan laughed. However, it was not the natural, expressive laugh of his youth. It was the affected and formal response of a cultured socialite. Tara suddenly felt embarrassed. His manner made it clear that he thought it inappropriate to continue this conversation.

  Tara suggested they all go for a walk, and the men readily agreed. Saturday afternoon walks were now a part of the routine of their life in Simla, and Tara wanted to show Karan the picturesque spots around their house in Chota Simla.

  The town of Simla occupied a spur of the lower Himalaya, and ran in an east-west direction for six miles. Chota Simla was situated at the south east end of Simla, sloping directly south of the Monkey Peak of Jakko. It was sparsely inhabited and thickly wooded. Around Chota Simla they had two favourite walks, one of them with fine views of the mountains above, and the other leading off in the opposite direction overlooking the plains below. The former went towards the village of Mashobra. Tara was tempted to suggest the Mashobra walk, but for some reason she did not. Instead, they took the opposite walk along a rivulet, which was dry except during and after the monsoons from July to October. They wandered amongst the deodars with the afternoon sun penetrating through the trees. They stopped to look at a stray poppy here and an aristocratic rhododendron there. The winding path narrowed. They passed strangers on the way, people whom they did not know, but with whom they exchanged smiles. They met Tibetan women with high cheekbones and slit eyes who were adorned with gold and silver nose-rings and ornaments made of goatskins, which they plaited into their hair above their foreheads. Their men looked wild and unkempt, with long hair falling over their sheepskin jackets. They met hill traders whose mules brought honey, nuts and apricots from the drier lands beyond the Sutlej river. They were as happy and carefree as they could get as they walked on that lazy Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Tell me, Karan,’ said Tara. ‘You knew these people. Why did Nehru, Patel and others agree to Mountbatten’s plan for partition? Is it true that they felt they were getting old and wanted a taste of power before they died? God knows they deserved it after struggling for thirty years. But couldn’t they have held out for a united India?’

  ‘The only alternatives were to accept a divided but independent India or to hold out for a united India and follow Gandhi into the political wilderness. Tara, I think they also had a conviction that once Pakistan was conceded the reason for communal violence would vanish. Patel used to say that once the cancerous growth was surgically removed, health would be restored to the body politic.’

  ‘He should have realized that such an operation leaves the body weak and susceptible to the slightest infection.’

  They walked a little further and found themselves back on Cart Road. Before them stood the imposing half-timbered house of the Mehtas, in whose upper-floor windows they glimpsed a brilliant reflection of the western sky.

  ‘You have heard of the Mehtas, haven’t you, Karan?’ she asked. ‘They had woollen mills in Amritsar, but they lived in Lahore. Bauji was always talking about them.’

  Karan nodded.

  ‘It’s too bad, isn’t it,’ said Tara, ‘that both father and son died. It must be lonely for the grand-daughter, in this big house, alone with her mother. She is growing up to be a real beauty. I saw them both on the Mall last week. The mother was wearing a beautiful Madras temple sari. They are among the most fashionable people in Simla, I hear.’

  ‘As a matter of fact. . .’ Karan started to say when he was interrupted by Arjun, who had caught a butterfly and was shouting for attention. Seva Ram asked him to let it go. After some cajoling, Arjun reluctantly complied, and the butterfly flew away.

  ‘You were saying?’ Tara asked Karan.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ said Karan.

  While they were talking, Karan noticed that Seva Ram had been silent.

  ‘You are quiet,’ said Karan, turning to Seva Ram.

  ‘I prefer to listen,’ Seva Ram replied.

  With a serene face, Seva Ram seemed to listen from far away, and not with his ears but with his eyes. He seemed to participate in the conversation, but without being involved.

  On the way back, in the fading light, Karan carelessly stepped on a bicchu plant, and was stung in the leg. His leg swelled up and he was in pain. Arjun and Seva Ram promptly collected the spinachlike leaves of a plant that was always found growing next to the bicchu and served as its antidote. Tara gently rubbed the leaves on Karan’s swollen leg. Karan found the leaves cooling, and the swelling slowly subsided.

  It gave Tara a pleasurable sensation to touch Karan’s body. His proximity and his smell again took her back. It was his very own, unmistakable smell, which she remembered from Lyallpur. Touching him awakened her half-buried desire for him. He watched her as she rubbed his ankle and his calf, but she looked away in the direction of Seva Ram and Arjun who were picking the antidote. She steeled herself to regard this experience as only another trial to reconfirm that she could be friends with Karan, without the pain that was always associated with seeing him in the past. She could live with the pleasant feelings which he aroused in her, because she no longer felt the need to possess him.

  6

  Arjun’s earliest memory of Simla was of waking up suddenly on a frosty overcast morning. It was just after dawn and he was only half awake. It had been raining. Along with the wet there was a rawness in the air, and he could hear the wind blow. He got out of bed in his pajamas, and he ran to his mother’s bed. She stretched out her arm and he nestled by her side. With her warm hands she felt his body and pressed him closer to her.

  ‘Did you have a bad dream, my son?’ Tara asked.

  He did not answer; he was content to feel her warmth.

  ‘Go to sleep, child.’

  In his mother’s warm, large bed, with her soft arms around him, Arjun felt protected. He smiled, and he cuddled against her, and in a moment he was blissfully asleep.

  Soon after their arrival in Simla, Arjun was put into a Jesuit missionary school. He cried on the first day when his mother left him in the headmaster’s office. The headmaster took him to the first grade, where Arjun stood shyly behind the door. He was shorter than most of the boys, and his hair was cut square and parted in the middle like a peasant’s. He was ill at ease in a new shirt which pinched him under the arms. His khaki-coloured shorts braced up tight around his thighs, and on his feet he wore a new pair of sturdy Bata shoes, which Tara had bought the day before on the Mall.

  The children began going over the lesson. Arjun was all ears, as he sat at his desk at the back, not daring even to cross his legs. When the bell rang at three o’ clock, the master
had to remind him that he could go home.

  The daily two-mile walk to school along Cart Road framed his new life. In the mornings he was a rushed and nervous boy as he hurried along to school, his hair still wet, combed down and parted. In the afternoons in contrast, he would dawdle back home. He would linger among the pine trees, eat wild berries that grew along the road, drink water from the spring and arrive home kicking a pine cone. At home Tara, who had missed him all day, would make up by feeding him home-made biscuits and milk. She would cut out pictures from magazines for him, tell him stories from the Hindu epics and regale him with playful but melancholy chatter.

  There was nothing striking about Arjun’s school life. He played during recess, worked in study periods, paid attention in class, studied hard when he had to, enjoyed sports, and managed to stay comfortably in the middle of his class. He learned to speak English early. Like other young Indians who acquired English at a young age, his idiom was natural and virile, freed of the imitative taste of London fogs and Oxford chapels. In contrast to the mimicry of the pre-Independence generations, his was a confident speech which emerged under the bright sunshine of the subcontinent.

  Despite the politicians’ exhortations to the middle class to give up its unholy attraction for the colonial language, and learn Hindi instead, Tara shrewdly knew that English would remain the basis for entry into the professions for years to come. She had also heard that the very same politicians secretly sent their own children to English-speaking schools while they hypocritically vilified it in Parliament. On the rare occasions when Nehru chose to speak English on the radio, in his gentle and aristocratic Cambridge accent, she would get tears in her eyes. She felt that Nehru too must be secretly ambivalent about English; she forgave him his public posture, which she felt he had to adopt as a politician. In any case, for her part she was determined that Arjun should speak, read, and write English well. In her loneliness she gathered her ambitions and centered them upon his young head. She had visions of greatness for her son, seeing him a grown man, handsome and intelligent, representing his country as an ambassador or a man of power and status.