Mother and I hurried to the club the next day and the day after and the day after that. The town was parched waiting for the monsoon, and little puffs of dust rose wherever you walked, but the club was an oasis of green and blossom. A chota mali hurried about with a sprinkling can to water the red poinsettias and pink roses while another scraped the dew off the grass so the hot sun would not burn it. Two men were halfheartedly swatting balls in the bright sun of the tennis court.
Mother played endless rubbers of bridge while I did what was expected of me. I swam in the pool and spent long hours sipping lemonade while Sarah and Amy gossiped or talked about clothes and how skirts were becoming shorter and shorter and how with the war over, we’d get the latest fashions from England. The lemonade was warm, I didn’t know half the people Sarah and Amy gossiped about, the pool was crowded, and I didn’t care about the length of skirts or the newest fashions. I missed Isha and the excitement of the bazaar.
Always I looked for Max, but he never came. Mrs. Nelson was seldom there, but whenever I saw her I would hover near her until I could manage to ask quietly how Nadi was. “He’s doing beautifully,” Mrs. Nelson always said. She would add, “You must come and pay him a visit.”
“Mother,” I pleaded, “let’s go and see Nadi, please.” At first Mother refused. “Impossible,” she said. I knew she was afraid of what Father would think. He had forbidden any mention of Nadi.
“Water under the bridge,” he insisted. “The sooner the whole miserable episode is forgotten, the better.” Father was kind to me, but I felt I had stepped over some uncrossable line. He was on one side, and I was on the other. He no longer called me Rosy. I was Rosalind now, and it broke my heart.
Still, I kept pleading with Mother, giving her no peace until finally she said yes. I think it was because she remembered how it was to be separated from a child. Although my missing Nadi was nothing like her missing Edward, still, she understood my longing.
We chose a day when we were sure Father would be confined to his office with meetings and we could slip through the streets without his seeing us. The orphanage was on the outskirts of the town, so we had to take a bicycle tonga through the busy streets. The tonga wallah was an old man, and thin. His bones stuck out of his dhoti, and twice he had to stop to catch his breath. I tried to conjure up a thinner me, as if by some fantasy I could shed some of the weight he had to bear. Still, in my impatience I urged, “Chalo, chalo,” faster, faster.
We made our way through the crowds of the bazaar, and I looked with longing at the stalls where Isha and I did our wishful shopping. We had a near accident as a roaming cow swerved out of the way of an oxcart and into our path, and there were wrong turns, but at last, on the outskirts of the town, we drew up to a large godown, a kind of warehouse. There was a row of simal trees, whose blossoms made the trees’ branches, bare of leaves, look like they had been doused with buckets of scarlet paint. A green parakeet hopped from branch to branch. Beyond the warehouse were stretches of gold mustard fields and huddles of small villages.
Mrs. Nelson welcomed us. She explained, “This building was used by my husband to store jute at one time, but now we ship it from closer to the source.” Large rooms were sectioned off to accommodate the children’s different ages. The older children were gathered into a classroom. There must have been a dozen sitting at desks. In one gesture all their heads turned to stare at us, and then, at a word from their teacher, turned back to their lessons.
“When they come here, most of these children have never been to school,” Mrs. Nelson said, “so they are in class year-round to catch up, but this time of year, when it’s so hot, there are classes only in the morning.”
In another room, three-and four-year-olds were playing a circle game accompanied by a lot of giggling as the teacher tried to get them all to go in the same direction. Mrs. Nelson paused to tell us the stories of a few of the children, but she could see how impatient I was and finally led us to the nursery, where there were several cribs. Two of the babies were only weeks old, but the rest were closer to Nadi’s age, three or four months. It was lunchtime for them, and young Indian women dressed in white saris held the children on their laps and spooned rice into mouths that eagerly opened like the beaks of baby birds.
For a moment I was unsure, but then I recognized the soft swirls of hair and long lashes. I asked if I could feed Nadi and slipped onto the chair in place of the little Indian ayah. Nadi snuggled down into my lap. I grinned like a fool and spooned the rice porridge into his mouth while Mrs. Nelson and Mother looked on. Mrs. Nelson appeared amused, but Mother, thinking of another child, had tears in her eyes. When Nadi had had his fill and began spitting out what I put in, I reluctantly handed him back to his ayah and followed Mother and Mrs. Nelson out of the room.
Mrs. Nelson was guiding us to the kitchen, which was to be the last stop on our tour, when Max appeared. He greeted my mother and said to Mrs. Nelson, “If you’ll excuse Rosalind from viewing the finer points of the children’s diets, I’d like a word with her.”
Mother looked puzzled, but Mrs. Nelson merely waved her hand in the air in a kind of dismissal of Max and me. As Mrs. Nelson shepherded mother into the kitchen she was explaining, “Since we have Muslim children as well as Hindu youngsters, different foods must be prepared—and prepared by different servants, for as you know, Hindus and Muslims cannot touch one another’s food.”
Max led me to a small office with nothing more than a desk on which papers were heaped as if someone were playing a game to see at what point everything would tumble over. “Mother’s too busy to be organized,” Max said. “She told me you were coming today.” He hesitated, running his fingers through his brown hair so that it stood up like a hedgehog’s quills. “You said if ever Gandhi came here to speak, you would like to hear him. Did you mean that?”
“Yes, of course, but my parents would never let me.”
“He’s going to be talking tomorrow afternoon on the maidan.”
The maidan was a large parade ground in the middle of the town where military parades, riding competitions, and cricket matches were held. In the rainy season it was a sea of green grass where you might see a goat grazing; this time of year the grass was scorched brown. “How would I get there?”
“Just go to the club as you usually do. Then slip away. The maidan is only a short walk, and I’ll be at the club to go with you.” He gave me a challenging look.
I knew I should say no, but I didn’t want Max to think me a coward. At that moment his opinion of me was more important than Father’s. Besides, Max was there and Father was somewhere else, and Father need never know. I’d slip out of the club and back again. I was sure none of my parents’ friends would be there to hear Gandhi. Of course I wanted to see the famous leader, but I was more excited about being with Max and by the danger of the adventure. All those days of boredom at the club made me hunger to do something rash and daring. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell the other girls I’m going into the clubhouse with Mother for a while to watch the bridge game. Mother will think I’m with the girls.”
I was wild with anticipation and hardly slept. At breakfast Mother said, “Rosalind, you look feverish. Perhaps you’re getting too much sun. Let’s stay home today. I don’t think I can stand one more day of bridge. It’s impossible to concentrate on cards in the heat. Even the club is getting uncomfortable.”
“Oh, no. I have to go today. I promised Amy and Sarah.”
“I thought those girls bored you.”
“Well, yes, they do, but Amy promised to bring a magazine her mother just got from England with all the new fashions.”
Mother didn’t sound convinced. “I’ve never known you to take a great interest in the latest fashions.”
“Well, you’re always telling me I ought to give more thought to my appearance.”
Mother sighed. “Very well, we’ll go, but after this I want a few days at home to see to the garden and catch up with my letters. Your aunts will think I’ve disappeared from the face of the earth.”
We got to the club in time for tiffin. It was the same boring macaroni and cheese and fruit salad. After lunch, the women got out their cards and I went out to the pool with Amy and Sarah, who headed for the changing room.
When I stayed behind, Amy said, “Aren’t you getting into your bathing suit?”
“I don’t feel like swimming today,” I said. Amy shrugged.
I was to meet Max at three o’clock, so I had an hour to get through. I don’t remember anything that was said. It seemed to have nothing to do with me. It was as if Amy and Sarah were birds chirping or horses neighing. I sat there rehearsing my excuse in my head, and all the while I longed to shock Sarah and Amy by telling them what I planned to do. I’m going into the village, I’d say, to a big rally of Indian people to support the Congress Party, and I’m going to hear Mr. Gandhi talk about driving out the British. Instead I had to keep my secret to myself.
“You’re really boring today,” Amy said to me. “More than usual.”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else.” I glanced at my watch. It was nearly three. “I think I’ll go in and watch the bridge game for a while. I might take bridge up.”
Sarah groaned. “Then you would really be boring.”
I headed for the clubhouse, then just inside the door I turned and hurried down a long hallway to the entrance, my heels making a staccato on the tile that I thought everyone would hear and wonder about.
At first I didn’t see Max, but then there he was signaling to me. We left the club and joined the surge of people, nearly all Indian, pushing their way through the street toward the maidan. As we wedged our way into the stream the crowd all but swept us off our feet. Max hung on to me. When I looked up, I saw an expression of glee on his face, as if he were a child who had gotten away with mischief. My own excitement died when I saw uniformed Indian police and British soldiers take positions around the maidan. Max noticed as well. He drew me deeper into the crush of the crowd so we wouldn’t be as visible, for there were only a handful of non-Indians.
“Don’t worry about the police,” he said. “They’re just here to intimidate people. Gandhi has a perfect right to speak.”
There were cries of “Gandhiji, Gandhiji,” which meant the honorable Gandhi. Max hung on to me. The crowd was like a wild river, and its current washed us to the front, directly under a box that had been set up for the speakers. A man was introducing Gandhi, praising him and calling him the man who would free India from Britain and referring to him as Mahatma.
“That means ‘great soul,’” Max whispered. “Britain has had its hands on India for three hundred years. Queen Victoria called India the star in her crown. While Canada and Australia have already wrestled free from Britain’s control, the Indian people are not allowed to rule their own land. I honestly believe and hope that before I have finished studying history at Cambridge, English history will have changed and Gandhi will have changed it.”
Finally, Gandhi himself stood upon the box. I was disappointed, for he was only a small man in a white dhoti. He peered out at us through round eyeglasses as if we were a book he was considering reading. After quite a long moment of silence during which the crowed stilled as if he had cast a spell over them, Gandhi began to speak.
He said the Indian people must never go to war with the British over their desire for independence, but instead use only nonviolence. “We must conserve our anger and turn it into energy to accomplish our goal. I don’t want India to practice nonviolence because she is weak. I want her to practice nonviolence being conscious of her strength and power.”
At first the audience was quiet, as if they were disappointed at being told to give up the idea of fighting, but then Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is a weapon of the brave. It is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.” At that there was a great cheer.
At that moment the police and the soldiers began to close in on the crowd, ordering us to disperse. The man who had introduced Gandhi now tried to spirit him off. Gandhi refused to leave, standing upon the box and continuing to talk, but there was so much confusion that you could no longer hear what he said. People rushed here and there, trying to get away. We remembered the massacre at Amritsar, and we were all afraid that we, too, would be fired upon.
There was no firing upon the crowd, but the police were pushing people away from the maidan, and a few of the police were wielding lathis. I hung on to Max, who was trying to get us through the fleeing crowd when a senior British police officer noticed us. “Just a minute, there.” He looked at us like someone who has discovered valuable coins lying in the street. “What are you two doing here? Do you know you are involving yourselves in treason? You had better come with me.”
The word treason terrified me. I knew what they did with traitors. They shot them at sunrise.
Max tried to explain. “We were just curious, sir. We saw the crowd and thought we’d find out what was going on.”
“And when you found out, you stayed on to hear what that troublemaker had to say. You should have known better, and you certainly ought not to have allowed this young lady to be here.”
As he marched us off I looked back at Gandhi, who was being led away by a policeman, a look of peace on his face, as if he were going on a pleasant visit. While several of the crowd were placed in a wagon and driven off, we were placed in a police car, Max in front and me in back, so there was no chance to talk together. At the police station we were again separated. Max was led away, having only a second to give me an apologetic look, and I was ushered into a small room containing a table and two chairs. The officer who had arrested us followed me in and, after telling me to sit down, took the chair across the table.
“Now, young lady,” he said, “just who are you?” He said it kindly, and I began to feel there would be no shooting at sunrise.
“Rosalind James.”
“James? You wouldn’t be any relation to Major Harlan James?”
“Yes, sir. I’m his daughter.”
The policeman stared at me. “I daresay your father will be a little surprised to learn of your adventure. Since I know him, I’ll just have an officer drop you off at your home, but I don’t want to see you at one of these revolutionary get-togethers again. Is that understood?”