I
Junagadh is tense and immobile. The arzi hukumat drums are beating loud—but all outside the state. The arzi hukumat is the name given to the so-called ‘independent government’ of Junagadh headed by Samaldas Gandhi, nephew of Mahatma Gandhi. The Gujarati papers, all coming from Rajkot, are being seized by the police. Salimuddin Khan is a busy man. The dewan is tense and brusque in the meetings. He calls me over to his house once—for what good reason, I wouldn’t know, except to get things off his chest. Bhutto confides in me one day—‘It’s a gamble, Sam, all or zero, takht ya takhta, as we say, throne or coffin.’ His eyelashes glower, or rather something behind his eyelashes glowers. He has offered me a drink this evening and we are both into our third whiskey. ‘The whole trouble is His Highness doesn’t know what awaits him here. Neither do I. What shape will things take? It’s a large question. We have never trusted the Hindus, but then, we in Sind and in Junagadh have only Hindu tradesmen to deal with. The HH has taken the plunge.’
‘But the Union government has asked him to treat the accession as void, and withdraw. You spoke of throne or coffin. Where’s the throne? What crown is Karachi going to give him? His throne is here, in Junagadh,’ I said. Shakir Muhammad, the ADC to the heir apparent, comes to the house—his first visit. Dashing fellow, good at cricket and tennis, though on the green baize, he makes your eyeballs roll with his hard-hitting game. He seems to mistake it for the polo ground, as you hear the balls crashing against each other. Cannon to the right of him, cannon to the left of him. But these days, everyone is talking of Samaldas Gandhi. Kathiawar is in ferment at the audacity of Junagadh joining Pakistan. Gujarat has been under Muslim rule for a long time. Somnath and its sack are not forgotten. I ask him his views.
‘This arzi hakumat they have set up is a joke. They think they can conquer Junagadh! Entire Sind will be here, the Pathans will be here and the Baluchis. Only the British have defeated us—that also by dividing us!’
‘Us’, of course, meant the whole lot—from the Ghaznavids, Tughlaqs and the Khiljis to the Moguls, in case ‘us’ did not include Ahmad Shah Abdali and Nadir Shah. ‘There is talk of some big military triumph in the Indian papers. You know what happened? A police party of five was caught sleeping in a village by the Indian forces, their guns beneath their pillows. That’s all. We have a cannon brought by Mahmud Ghazni, which can blow away Rajkot! I have a gun, which, if I fire at Samaldas Gandhi, he will turn round and say, “There go my intestines!”’
Eighteenth of September was an important day. Sir Bhutto summoned me in the evening. He didn’t get up from his sofa, nor answered my customary greeting. He just held out a pink-coloured telegram. ‘It’s from Menon’. One didn’t have to ask which Menon. It was V.P. Menon, the right-hand man of Vallabhbhai Patel. The telegram read: ‘I have arrived today in Rajkot from Delhi with a most important message to deliver to Your Highness personally from Government of India and I, as their plenipotentiary, desire to see Your Highness tomorrow morning. I shall leave Rajkot at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning and would be in Junagadh at about 11 o’clock. Regards.’
‘You know what he’s going to say, Sir Bhutto?’
‘What you’ve been saying all along, Bharucha.’
Yes, the Hindu majority was obviously for India, there were bits of Junagadh scattered in other states, bits of other states in Junagadh territory—a bugger’s muddle. The Gujarati press was rabid and had made out that Hurs and Baluchis were being imported into Junagadh and that Bahauddin College was seeking affiliation to Sindh University. Things changed with the coup by Shah Nawaz Bhutto. Now hirelings from Makran were manning the Junagadh forces, Bhutto tells me. ‘When Menon comes, you will be present at the meeting.’
They came sharp at eleven, Menon, Buch, the regional commissioner, and some bureaucratic flunkies in tow. The SP had piloted them from the Junagadh border to the guesthouse. Sir Shah Nawaz drove down—this time, I was the flunky. Menon didn’t much believe in pleasantries. ‘I have been sent by the Indian Dominion cabinet to deliver an important message to the HH personally.’ That’s how he began.
Shah Nawaz started lying. ‘His Highness has been in bed for the last ten days, gravely ill. Last four days, even I have been unable to meet him. HH is extremely sorry that he would be unable to see you. He deeply regrets it, deeply.’
‘What does he regret?’
‘His inability to see you.’
‘I had been told in Rajkot that he would not see me. But I have a very important message to give to him personally. So even if he is indisposed, I’d like to see him for a few minutes.’
‘Mr Menon, the condition of HH is such that that it is impossible to see him.’
‘Dewan sahib, in that case, I would like to see the heir apparent, Mr Dilawar Khanji.’
‘Quite out of the question, Mr Menon. The heir apparent is extremely busy.’
‘You don’t seem to understand, Sir Shah Nawaz. This is a message I bring from the cabinet of the Indian Dominion, and it concerns the future of Junagadh and its seven lakh people. What is the heir apparent so busy with, if I may ask?’
‘He is playing a cricket match.’
‘If he isn’t batting, Sir Shah Nawaz, could I have a word with him on the boundary line?’
I noticed a smirk on Menon’s face. The others weren’t smiling. Buch broke in. ‘Of course, it would inconvenience the twelfth man, but I am sure, he could live with such discomfort.’ The sarcasm was lost on Bhutto.
‘I am afraid, Achu Bapu, I mean the heir apparent, is at the crease at the moment. He is batting Mr Menon.’
‘And he could bat for long, at least till we leave for Rajkot, am I right?’
Bhutto stared at his nails without answering Menon.
‘In that case, I could do no worse than give the message to you Sir Shah Nawaz.’
He proceeded to stress the obvious—Hindu majority, Junagadh’s economic dependence on Kathiawar, the fact that it had never bothered to negotiate with the Indian Dominion, and that if it joined Pakistan, it would be surrounded by Indian territories on all sides.
‘The sea, Mr Menon, you forget the sea, and our port, Veraval.’
‘If I am allowed a slight liberty with metaphor, Sir Shah Nawaz, you forget the sea of Indian territories that surround Junagadh.’
‘We are aware of that. And as for demography, the lakhs of Muslims in Kathiawar are looking up to Junagadh. The constitutional adviser, Khan Bahadur Nabi Baksh, after being present at the Chamber of Princes meeting in July, advised us that the interests of Junagadh lay in acceding to Pakistan.’
‘Allow me to remind you, Sir Bhutto, that Nabi Baksh is not even allowed to enter Junagadh now. After all, he was the brother of the previous dewan.’
‘You seem to be well-informed, Mr Menon, but even his replacement in a way, the present Law Member, Mr Saam Bharucha, has consistently rendered us similar advice.’
‘Similar!’ I blurted out, unable to control myself. He nodded, ‘Similar to the advice given by Nabi Baksh.’
‘With respect, if I may be permitted …’
Menon intervened by saying rather sententiously, ‘The Indian Dominion is not interested in the bickerings between members of the Junagadh State Council. I may add that I had myself talked to Nabi Baksh and he had said that he would advise HH to accede to India.’
The dewan reminded Menon that Nabi Baksh was no longer a state employee. He then made the amazing remark that the Congress government in India would be unable to control the communists, who would in time take over Delhi. Obviously, this was rebutted forcefully by Menon. I missed some bits of conversation because I was seething at the dewan’s blatant lie about my views. But somewhere along the line, Menon extracted from Bhutto the admission that he had not communicated sufficiently with the Indian Dominion. As Menon rose, he mentioned the word referendum. I thought Bhutto would go ballistic. Sir Shah Nawaz said that personally he would favour a referendum.
There were bitter exchanges, too, with Bhutto referring to the economic blockade and Menon saying that it would not be possible for India to tolerate foreign territories to be created within ‘Indian territories’. What he left unsaid was that Partition was bad enough. But you can’t have Pakistani islands within India. I wondered how much of this conversation would be relayed faithfully to the nawab.
The delegation left. I thought the landlord from Larkana would storm at me. He didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘Do you know seven companies of the Pakistan Reserve Police have been offered to me?’
‘You rejected the offer, I hope.’
‘Yes. It would have been seven red rags to the Indian bull.’
That night, as I was dozing off, two words circled around my mind—‘hurtle’ and ‘hobble’. They went around the way you are shown those molecules and atoms circling each other. Was my life hurtling ahead? This sudden severance from Zarine, the equally sudden erotic flare in which Claire and I were caught up, struggling with the dewan and the disaster Junagadh was rushing into—what was it? Why had pace picked up all across the shredding chessboard of my life?
How did the word hobble come in? Where was the place for it? If you are hurtling, you can’t hobble, damn it. Yet, it had corkscrewed itself into my soporific brain at that moment. I wrestled with the question and mercifully sleep came to the rescue. But I dreamt of a shaggy-looking ham-shackled horse being led away into the stables.
I got a call in the morning. It was Claire. ‘Neil is here, you know, came in the day before. You know Neil?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You mean, I’ve never talked about him?’
‘You haven’t.’
‘That can’t be. He’s Syd’s cousin, looked after the affairs of his Dad and Mum while they were alive. Knew my parents as well.’
‘All this is news to me.’
‘Can’t be, Sam, he’s always been in my mind.’
‘Well, he seems to have stayed there.’
‘Where?’
‘In your mind, where else, but isn’t that nice, his coming all the way to be with you, from England, right?’
‘Right.’ I thought the line had got cut. It hadn’t. She was taking her time. Is there anything you want to say, I asked.
‘He wants to handle all the business.’
‘What?’
‘Yes Sam, he says it’s darned complex for me, too involved and intricate—his words.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘That’s what I want to know. What the hell should I be doing? Why else would I phone?’
‘Because of love, I thought.’ She laughed, a bit scornfully.
‘Are you Englishwomen also so undecided? Aren’t you supposed to be firm and bossy and iron-willed, carrying pistols in your handbags, or at least, knuckle dusters?’
‘Your brain is crammed with some corny detective novels. We are not pistol-carrying bitches. And don’t bloody joke, Sam, I am serious.’ She was laughing, despite her exasperation. ‘Isn’t he staying with you? Then how come you are phoning up like this?’ I asked.
‘He’s gone for a walk on the beach.’
Her voice went up a pitch, I believe these musicwallahs call it an octave—never knew what the bloody word meant. ‘Don’t joke, Sam! What do I do?’
‘How big is the business?’
‘You’ve never even bothered to ask. Just shows how much you are interested in me! But you know what it is, around a million, maybe a little less.’
‘Rupees?’
‘Pounds, Sam, sterling! It’s shipping for god’s sake and you’ve gone through the papers.’
‘Stall him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Stall him. Don’t do anything in a hurry. Just tell him you’d like to manage things for some months and then decide. Meanwhile, his advice would be very welcome. Flatter him, though he’ll see through the words.’
‘Sounds sensible, very sensible, he wants me to sell—when can you come across, love, it’s been two weeks already!’
That was historic; it was the first time she had used an endearment. How small one can be, to be struck by a thing like that! I can’t come. Junagadh is moving into the sea.
‘Who’s moving into the sea?’
‘Never mind, you won’t understand. Just don’t sell, nothing in a hurry, anyway. Take your time.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
This time, the line really got cut. I cranked the phone again, booked through the trunk line and got her. ‘What did you say the name was?’
‘Neil. Neil Blackthorn.’
‘Syd wasn’t a Blackthorn. He was Barnes.’
‘He was. But Neil is Blackthorn.’
‘Just a moment, Claire. Isn’t he mentioned in the will?’
‘Of course, he is. He is in the line of succession, after me.’
‘Did he give you prior notice that he was coming?’
‘Got a cable three days back, just before he landed in Bombay. Why, does that worry you?’
‘Doesn’t.’
‘When can you come? I am in a bit of a tizzy, you know.’
II
I felt uneasy after these phone calls. They gnawed at me—like an unhealed stitch in my hide. Events here were moving fast. Manavadar and Mangrol were states within the state of Junagadh. A part of Mangrol was governed by Junagadh. The two guys had different titles or honorifics—the Sheikh of Mangrol and the Khan of Manavadar. The Khan acceded to Pakistan, Mangrol to India, though the car of the Sheikh of Mangrol was not allowed to move to Rajkot and a Jamnagar car with a number plate from the state was sent to fetch him to Rajkot, where he signed the instrument of accession. Mangrol joined India mainly to shake off its vassalage to Junagadh. What confusion!
Salimuddin Khan was keeping me well-informed. We are moving our forces into Babariwad, sir. Really, SP Sahib? I pretended to be startled, though I knew this disastrous step was being taken. Babariwad was a conglomeration of fifty-odd villages held by landlords known as mulgirasias—‘original landlords’. They had ‘acceded’ to India. Those days, if you had six square inches of land, you could bloody well ‘accede’ to any of the two countries! It would give a handle to the Indian government, if Junagadh sent in troops there. Then Salim asked me with an innocent smile, which I took as feigned, ‘Sir, what is meant by the word “sod”?’
‘Now, why should that trouble you Salimuddin Khan?’ I asked.
‘Sir, I overheard conversation—just a tukda of guftagoo, sir.’
‘Between who exactly?’
‘Sir, between dewan sahib and Captain Harvey Jones.’
Harvey Jones was the most important member of the state council. I wasn’t about to ask Salim what the conversation was about. Tale-carriers have to be kept at bay.
‘I wasn’t within sight but I overheard.’ He was testing me, the bastard. When would curiosity get the better of this Parsee? I kept quiet.
‘They were talking of your good self.’ I still took no notice. I let the silence between us trickle on. ‘One of them said, sir, that your good self is a “scruple-ridden sod.” That is why I ask.’
‘It is a good word, a very good word, Salimuddin. I take it as a big compliment.’ I got up to indicate the meeting was over, without ever asking which of the two had said this. Or was it a message the dewan was conveying to me?
Would fit me well, this description, I thought, except that Zarine wouldn’t exactly agree with the ‘scruple-ridden’ bit.
I have an odd dream. I brood over dreams, trying to analyse them, and invariably fail. I dream Claire comes and wants me in her bedroom. That she wants me in her room, that feeling gets to me unmistakably. The house is old with a rickety staircase that creaks. The house has a room that is more like a veranda, which has been walled in as an afterthought. The windows are shut. Even though immersed in the fog of the dream, I start wondering what the shuttered windows denote. At the very end of the room are shelves and over the shelf is written in small letters ‘aphrodisiacs’.
But father is in the next room and wants to meet me. Father is smiling. Claire beckons. I want to desperately lunge into that long room, close the doors and swallow the aphrodisiacs. I can’t manage it and am irritated that she should want me just when father arrived. I am irritated with my father that he should arrive just when Claire wants me. At the same time, I want to get to that long room with the shuttered windows and get my hands on the aphrodisiacs. I wake up restless, in a sweat.
I gave her a call and told her I was worried for her and wanted a long chat before I drove to Veraval. Can’t you phone me from a friend’s house? She could. I’ll be glued to the telephone, I said. She rang me up. Who’s the friend, I asked? The Bankers. Oh god, I thought, now it would be all over the Parsee community. Old ladies would tut tut and say ‘mudum sathay lagi gayo’, he is involved with a madam. Couldn’t be helped, we needed to get to the bottom of this.
‘He studied Economics, but I don’t think he ever got a degree. Plays stocks.’
‘Neil Blackthorn?’ I ask.
‘Yes, Sam, Neil Blackthorn, who else! You are exasperating. He tries to be helpful, was helpful to even my parents for a while. Then they moved away from him. But we are concerned with Syd’s people. They came under his control. His parents let him do what he liked, basically. There’s a slightly violent streak about him. Syd’s Mum came out with this, after much prodding. He had taken charge of their shares, securities, the lot. Nothing hanky-panky, you know. There was no embezzlement or anything of the sort. But, physically, he kept the papers with him and they were never comfortable. They left him something in the will though, I never knew whether he considered that enough. For some people, nothing’s enough, you’re right. But here his line is that I am incompetent and I’ll squander the “family wealth”.’
‘What does that mean, Claire?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Now I can admit I am incompetent, but the firm is still making money. Who else is making it, if not me? Yes, you are right, he is nosing around. Initially, he even worked for Lloyds—insurance or bank I wouldn’t know. He couldn’t keep his job. He later said Lloyds didn’t suit him. Turned to stocks and things, but never made it big. In fact, lost money—mercifully his own.’
‘Claire, I am more worried about the violent streak in him. You referred to it earlier, remember?’
‘No, no, Sam, I am not worried about that. I’ve known him since I got married.’
‘He doesn’t want a slice of you, does he?’ I asked on impulse, little realizing that she could take that remark as emanating from jealousy.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, but there’s a Parsee here who does.’
‘Does what?’
‘He wants not just a slice or a sliver of me, but the whole of Claire.’
One can be very ashamed sometimes about a really demeaning thought. Thank god, they haven’t invented a machine that can record what you think. At the time, I thought for a shameful moment that she had said ‘the hole of Claire’. She was never crude in her talk, or about anything. I hated myself for letting such a thought creep in. I was thinking of driving up, but decided against it. She might think I had turned up because of jealousy!
Instead, Maganbhai turned up, and at the house, not the club. He didn’t beat about the bush. ‘What are you doing here, sir? Aren’t you wasting your time?’ I asked him to explain. ‘You are the only one in the State Council opposing what’s going on. The opposition in the state and beyond is virulent. If people had their way, they’d tear the nawab and his advisers limb from limb.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ I asked a bit sarcastically, ‘Join the mob?’
‘You could resign.’
‘Resign! And do what?’
‘Come away, leave Junagadh. You’ll be a hero. Your photograph will be splashed on the front page of every newspaper. It would be a turning point in your life.’
I told him that I have had a turning point in my life rather recently and one was enough.
After two days, I pushed off to Veraval and my reception was not too good. There was no point in a rendezvous at Banker’s. I went straight to Claire. The road to Veraval was rutted. The front wheel had got stuck in one rut and I had to get out and help the driver pull it out—all in unceasing rain. Neil was tall and his eyes were icy blue. My clothes were wet and my shoes soggy and squealing away, so I took them off as I entered the house. Not the best way to confront a hostile cousin-in-law of your love, if I could call her that. Claire was a little reserved, which was natural, seeing this other guy was there. Neil indulged in some small talk—my being a solicitor, and how I found things in Junagadh, and then came straight to the point.
‘We are actually keen that Claire moves from Veraval and her house in Junagadh to England.’
‘Who might “we” be?’ I asked with as much innocence as I could paint on my bland face. I saw Claire snuff an emerging smile.
‘I basically meant I. We don’t have much of a family now. We’re not like Indians with a host of aunts and uncles and cousins.’
‘And nephews and nieces. I understand perfectly.’
‘Claire has three aunts, one of them keeping fairly indifferent health.’
I made the right noises and appeared concerned.
‘But there are certain impediments, Mr Baroocha.’ He made my name sound like a bazooka.
‘You mean her business here, Mr Blackthorn.’
‘I don’t, Mr Baroocha. I hope you perfectly understand.’
‘Frankly speaking, I don’t.’ I was prepared for a showdown. Claire interrupted with a ‘Can I have some coffee served?’ Yes please. We both concurred, unless, said Blue Eyes, you’d prefer a glass of beer? I wouldn’t. In about half a minute, the coffee was there. The rain was drumming away hard on the tiled roof. Once we had taken our first sips—for me, drenched as I was, it was very welcome—Neil Blackthorn resumed. ‘You will agree with me that there is a gulf between us, I mean Englishmen and Indians. I am not talking in terms of high and low—far from it. I am merely indicating space, distance. Social distances, if I could call them such, appear with time, Mr Barooka, with history, if I may be bold enough to put it that way. They are just there, a part of the lie of the land, like a hedge here or a channel there. You see what I mean?’
I saw what he meant. ‘You are carrying racial divides into other realms—geography, cartography—I notice, Mr Blackthorn.’
I could see he was startled—didn’t exactly expect that kind of a riposte. He talked about bonds not being lasting, waffled a bit. Claire broke in, eyes blazing.
‘You are overstepping, you know, Neil, overstepping by a mile. You don’t know a thing about him or us, and you don’t know a thing about Junagadh for Chrissake. And I won’t have Sam insulted in my house. You’ve no idea what all he has done for me.’
‘If he’s done so much, there are other ways of rewarding him.’ That was it. I felt like blowing my top off but restrained myself. All I said was (and that was enough), ‘I am amazed at the crassness of certain people.’
Claire snapped, ‘I am not. I know Neil well enough.’
I made as if I was speaking to Claire. ‘People have all sorts of ideas, there’s nothing one can do about it.’ He heard me alright but preferred not to answer. I then half-whispered to her ‘When is the bugger going to sod off?’ It was the first time she had heard me use this kind of lingo and she was delighted. Her cheekbones turned pink.
Both us men sat silently brooding, while she kept doing some khatar-patar in the pantry. She was standing on the threshold when Neil followed her there and said quite loudly I thought, ‘Aren’t you going to give lover boy some lunch?’ For a moment Claire didn’t answer. But I caught a glimpse of her expression and her eyes were blazing. ‘I am,’ she said, after failing to stare him into confusion.
‘But I can’t smell curry? Tell your cook to get cracking with rice and spice and mulligatawny soup and kebabs on the spit—anything that reeks to high heavens,’ and he laughed at his own joke. Claire came over and gave me one of Syd’s shirts and asked me to go have a hot bath. I felt much better. The rain drummed away till the evening. As it stopped, I took leave, just nodding to Neil. I stretched out my hand to shake Claire’s, but she gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek.
The thought of Neil being a part of the will troubled me on my drive back.
III
I got a call from Seervai. The pleasantries were very short. He hadn’t forgotten that it was he who got me here. ‘You are in a tricky situation and you better think it out. Rumour here is that Jinnah didn’t want this headache with Junagadh. Then the old fox changed stance. It’s a trap, as you know. Delhi is in a fix. If it rejects a Muslim ruler’s claim to tow a Muslim-minority state into Pakistan, how will it justify a minority Hindu state like Kashmir acceding to India? If Nehru asks for a referendum or plebiscite in Junagadh, how can you prevent one in Kashmir? If Delhi uses force here, Karachi could use force in Kashmir. If Junagadh is allowed to accede to Pakistan, the nizam would get ideas. You’ve to remember all that and don’t forget the larger picture. How is Zarine, incidentally—oh I forgot, you’re the wrong person to ask now, I believe.’ And he put the phone down.
October was cruel. Junagadh was being squeezed out. Trade stopped, food became scarce. Trains didn’t run, ships forgot to dock at Veraval. The revenues from customs dried up. I had to remind Shah Nawaz Bhutto that during the monsoons the Veraval port remained closed. On first November, the Indian forces moved into Mangrol and Babariwad, since both these territories had acceded to India.
It was before noon—I don’t remember the date, but it was late October—that I heard the roar of an aircraft. That was unusual, to say the least. Who could it be? Some other emissary from Delhi—no, the wretched plane was taking off. His Highness Mahabat Ali Khanji Babi, the last of the dynasty of Babi which had ruled the area for two centuries, authorized recipient of sixteen gun salutes, had fled Junagadh—bag, baggage and begums, not forgetting the hounds and the numerous Alsatians. One of them had been left behind—begum, not hound. It was the Junagadh Begum, the divorced one and her sons. Within an hour, the news was everywhere in town like fire through a gasoline dump. To say the least, it was sad. The wali ahd (normally pronounced in Junagadh as ‘walihad’), the heir apparent Dilawar Khanji, had been left behind. He came to know when Yasin Khan pointed to the aircraft above and said, ‘There goes His Highness.’
I hadn’t felt sorrier in a year. Here was a man manipulated doomwards by his advisers, and he wasn’t aware of it, hadn’t seen the pit yawning in front of him. The dewan, who had ringed the palace with Sindhi troops, had seen to it, and the ‘companions’ who often sat on the floor in front of the nawab. Had I done my job? (I wasn’t about to start on a guilt trip though.) What Mahabat Khanji needed was someone to go up to him and tell him what an ass he was being made of. But access to the nawab on your own volition was out of the question. He was surrounded by men of his own community and no Muslim would have advised him otherwise. Pakistan was the grail, Bhutto was Galahad.
On the side, it was an amazing experience for me to find what royalty meant, or what the absence of one man could do to the morale of a state. There was such emptiness in the streets that I thought of voids—the ones at the core of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.
Even the Hindus had not thought of celebrating, no bursting of crackers, no sweets stuffed into grinning mouths. Bhutto called me up, which, of course, means his secretary did. Which Sindhi feudal would deign to pick up the phone and tell the operator to connect him to someone? (Dialing instruments had not come in as yet.) When I went there, he showed me the letter he had written to Jinnah. Why on earth should he trust me with that? I wondered, as I took the letter from him, a document as full of despair as one could imagine. Cassandra couldn’t have done a gloomier job. It talked of the Muslims of Kathiawar (‘our brethren’) being humiliated in trains and now developing cold feet in regard to the accession. ‘Responsible Muslims and others have come to press me to seek a solution to the impasse. I do not wish to say much more.’ That last sentence seemed to portend surrender. I said nothing. What made me smile inwardly was the sentence, ‘His Highness and the royal family have had to leave because our secret service gave us information in advance of serious consequences to their presence and safety.’ Secret service! The same CID men who barged into cinema theatres, proclaiming themselves as the nawab’s CID, don’t you know, so that they didn’t have to pay their eight annas for a ticket?
This letter to Jinnah looked like the semi-finals. Surrender was round the corner.
IV
While all this was going on, the nawab and the family fleeing, and Harvey Jones despatched to Rajkot with the surrender letter, the confusion that surrounded the Indian troops moving in, I was getting calls from Claire to come to Veraval. To move even for a day now was unthinkable. If one went there, chaps would think I had fled! People had left for Diu, the Portuguese settlement nearby. One day before the forces came in, Bhutto had left for Karachi. I will not go into that now. And before a week had passed, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the deputy prime minister himself, came to Junagadh. He spoke at a public meeting at the Bahauddin College. (When would they change the name, I caught myself wondering. And the Bahadur Khanji High School and the Dilawar Khanji Girls’ School, they too would go for a toss, wouldn’t they, the names I mean.) Junagadh had never in living memory (two hundred years, let’s say, since the Babi dynasty took control of the area) seen such a concourse. The Sardar was, as we Parsees say, a thanda pani nu matloo (as cool as a clay-pitcher of cold water—most Parsee saws had emanated long before the refrigerator). I now forget what he said with regard to Junagadh, except that the referendum was in the offing. But what he said about Hyderabad remains in my memory. The metaphor was a bit scrambled, but he said that Hyderabad was in our (India’s) stomach, we can swallow it whenever we like. The message was very clear. He wasn’t bothered about the nizam or Kasim Rizvi and his militant Razakars.
Maganbhai had spread the news about me, or probably it had circulated earlier. I was the one in the council who plugged for accession to India. I shunned the limelight, didn’t want to be lauded, felt bloody uncomfortable. What would my erstwhile colleagues in the State Council (we were all ‘erstwhile’ now, the council didn’t exist) think? I would almost sound like a traitor to them. Shiveswarkar, an ICS officer, was the Administrator now. Buch remained the regional commissioner at Rajkot. I gave Shiveswarkar a month’s notice, endorsing a copy to Buch. They wanted to hang on to me. If they think I am going to help them discover skeletons out of royal cupboards, they are mistaken. I know of no skeletons. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t aid them. I made that very clear and put it across bluntly. Delicacy in such matters is mistaken for weakness, for wavering, for not meaning what you say. I wanted a break, was going off to Veraval for a few days, I told the Administrator. I was wondering when my car would be taken away from me. I took the wheel and really gunned it, though the road was potholed. Trucks, laden with goods from the port, barrelled past. No one overtook me, though I kept looking in the rear view mirror.
The past is also a rear view mirror.
Neil was ill; wonderful, I thought. There was something wrong with his belly. ‘It’s the food. Your people shit everywhere, even in the fields. A cabbage bed, and someone does his business there, how would you know? You blokes are cosmic shitters, mate, you don’t even leave the beach. They don’t do that even in Africa, the darkies I mean.’ He was at his disagreeable worst. I didn’t argue, would have been a waste of time. ‘I think it’s the curries which have done it,’ said Claire. ‘Eat carefully here.’
But Neil was seething with his own theories. ‘Everything ferments here, seethes and ferments; the crowds in the streets, worshippers and gods in the wet-floored temples. Muslims seethe around those Jama Masjid ghettoes and their homes with their wives. Your cinema seethes with songs. I saw one the other day…’
‘You actually saw a song!’ I interrupted. I was not listening carefully to his rubbish and I must have switched off for a while.
‘You are a bigger ass than I thought you to be.’ he said politely. A Noor Mohammad Charlie film was on in Veraval and a rickety tonga with an amplifier fixed on it was playing, ‘Mere liye makaan mein/ Joru ki mara mar hai/Mujhe toh ek chahiye/ Auron ki char char hain.’ (The comedian was crying out for just one wife, while others had four.)
In the evening he said, ‘Don’t let me inhibit you lovebirds. You can go for your walk. The sea is the only decent thing here, if you ask me.’ We weren’t asking him.
We saw some gulls, even herons by twilight, the night heron, though to the peasant, the khedut, they are all ‘baglas’. Then we walked by starlight, sunsets were early now. A sea of phosphor, high tide, the surf moving across our ankles, that summed up the evening for me. I even heard a foghorn, life was back to normal. I told her the navy had put three sloops here during the blockade—she didn’t know. It was only on our return from the beach that we started discussing Neil. I told her I was worried about her.
‘Worried about what?’
‘About what he could do to you.’
‘What could he do to me?’
‘Well, I just hope you don’t come to any harm.’
‘Don’t worry, he isn’t that sort.’ I let matters rest. We drove home. Zahid, the bearer, with a piece of cloth dipped in petrol, was trying to clear a stain on the lapel of Neil’s tweed jacket.
‘Hope it wasn’t curry,’ I said pointing to the stain. ‘For if that’s the case, it won’t disappear easily. Turmeric leaves its mark.’
Zahid seemed more confident. ‘It is just a drop of tomato sauce on burra sahib’s coat.’ He had slotted us. The white man had become the big sahib all of a sudden. ‘Sahib leaning back and sauce, just drop, fell from mouth to coat.’ Oh, drooling was he? When Zahid stood aside, the lapel looked clean. Neil offered him five rupees but Zahid declined the baksheesh. We all had a drink, even Neil, despite his tum tum being awry. Claire gave him some brandy and hot water. Neil dined on an omelette and slivers of marrow, specially fried for him, which Neil described as courgette. Claire and I dined on a nice dish of liver and onion rings which was the khansama’s speciality, and topped it with rice and curry.
My tongue tastes bitter, I want something sweet, I wander into the night. A cane field bulges suddenly, the stalks rustle, even though there is no wind. A boar stalks out, black and scrofulous, only his razors white. His tushes gleam in the night as if coated with a substance that glows in the dark. He seems hesitant, initially, looking right and left, but as he moves towards me, his pace increases, and his razors start smoking. From both sides of the snout, the smoke jets out. I jump out of bed. It is still dark and I am sweating. These are not night sweats, but caused by the heat around. Smoke stings my eyes. I hear a distant knock at what I think is the far end of the street. It isn’t, it’s nearer, but it is very faint. Simultaneously, I hear the hiss and crackle of fire. The knocking I heard earlier is incessant and I find Zahid moaning through the kitchen. Claire always bolted the kitchen door at night. I tear open Claire’s mosquito net, shake her out of bed and hustle her down the stairs. But the stairs are on fire as well—they are wooden. I bring her up again, douse a bucket of water on her, and drag her down putting a towel on her face. We are out of the house. I come back and shout for Neil, but he’s already on the ground floor. I open the kitchen door and Zahid comes out coughing. He’s in trouble. Still, he is willing and we splash water on the stairs. The smoke is billowing up. Neighbours—they live at least a hundred yards away—come rushing with sheets with which they try and smother the flames. There is a faint smell of gasoline. ‘Call the fire engines, call the fire engines,’ shouts Neil. Claire joins in. Zahid finds the garden hose pipe. The fire is controlled—but just. Suddenly I cough and sneeze and pant. So does Claire. I was sleeping like a log, she says. Didn’t smell smoke, didn’t hear the flames going over the wood and the stairs. I would have been dead.The fire was doused all right, but it had spread to Claire’s room and made a mess of it. We had done whatever we could and the fire tender, the only one in Veraval, had arrived. I was surprised to see the steel in Claire. She was not shaken.
‘I am worried,’ said Claire. You would be, I answered. The fire officer stayed on looking around, after the whole thing was over.
‘What is troubling you is also troubling me,’ said Claire quietly to him.
‘Madam, how do you know something is troubling me?’
‘Your looks,’ she said.
‘I am worried over the fire, madam. And why it started on the stairs and not the ground floor.’ He had examined wire and plug all over the building and found no fault. His underling reported that the SP had been informed.
‘The SP,’ I asked, ‘why him?’
‘We come under him, Sahib.’
Good god, I thought, Salimuddin Khan? Surprisingly, he hadn’t been shifted as yet. Must have had a line to the politicians—Samaldas Gandhi or even Dhebar. Good this has happened in Veraval and not in Claire’s house in Junagadh. I would be spared his obstreperous presence here. He wouldn’t bother to travel sixty miles across.
I couldn’t be more wrong. Salim was here before noon.
‘Salaam, sir. I heard of the fire at Madam Claire’s place and thought to myself that your good self might be here. So I came post haste as they say in vilayat.’
‘I don’t think a little smoke should have troubled you so much, Salim Sahib. But I am glad to see you and glad you are still in office.’
‘But for your good self, sir, I would have got my marching orders.’
Only half-true, I thought. I had recommended him to Shiveswarkar, the Administrator, the man who now had all the powers which the dewan held in Mahabat Khanji’s time. I had told him Salim is unscrupulous, but his heart is not with Pakistan. His lands are near Ahmedabad and he knows his business. You could use him—he will come in handy during the transition. Shiveswarkar had kept him on. What was surprising was the populace had not risen against him. There were no cries of revenge. I realized he hadn’t been oppressive to the people. Before talking to us, he had a good chat with his firemen. He asked Claire what she had lost.
‘My wardrobe.’
‘Which robe?’
‘Wardrobe.’
Neil broke in softly, but not softly enough. ‘He’s a cretin. Tell him all your clothes have gone up in smoke.’
I see, said Salim, with the nearest thing to a grimace. It didn’t take him more than ten minutes after this to start interrogating Neil.
‘You suffering in India heat, Mr Blackthorn?’
‘Well, it’s your damned winter isn’t it, officer? Still, I keep away from the sun—never know when you could get a stroke. You set foot in India and you’re invaded by anxieties—mosquito bite, snake bite, malaria, typhoid and, of course, sunstroke.’
‘But fire occurred night, Mr Blackthorn. No chance of sunstroke then.’
‘I could get it now, officer, if I stirred out in the sun.’
Claire butted in.‘I don’t think you’re getting it, I mean his line of questioning, Neil.’
‘What questioning? Sunstroke not possible at night and that kind of crap?’
Salimuddin Khan cleared his throat. ‘Fire officer tell me you already down when fire occurred.’
‘I was down, officer, because that’s where I have been put up since the day I arrived. There’s a bedroom on the ground floor. So I couldn’t have been on the first floor or the roof or the attic, if there’s one, if you know what I mean.’
‘There was smell of petrol, I am told. Where did the smell of petrol come from?’
‘From petrol, obviously.’
‘Where did petrol come from?’
‘Ask Madam Claire, the one who owns the house.’
‘I have asked Zahid, the cook and Madam Claire’s driver.’
‘You’re not suspecting arson, are you?’
‘Mr Blackthorn, there was no short circuit, no fuse, no burnt wire or plug, no sparking. They tell me you had asked for a bottle of petrol.’
‘Good heavens! I wanted that for rubbing out a curry stain from my coat.’
‘They tell me you did not eat curry yesterday. Your stomach was out of order.’
‘The curry stain was two days old. It’s the damned curry that made me run to the loo every half hour!’ He started looking haggard, all of a sudden, and turned to us for support. I avoided his eye. Claire was just happy to stare back. ‘You aren’t accusing me of arson, are you officer, Mr Salim or Mr Salami or whatever the hell your name is?’
‘Far be it from me to accuse you of anything, sir. Accusation comes at last stage in police procedure.’
‘Arson! Are you in your right mind?’
‘Yes.’
‘What yes? What the hell do you mean?’
‘Someone lit the fire.’
‘Sam, tell him it couldn’t be me. Never! Arson! It would be so bloody uncivilized.’
IV
Two days later, we all returned to Junagadh. There was no point in hanging around in Veraval. We told Neil it would be best for him to push back to England. One never knew what Salim had in store for him. He had taken care to record his statement. Neil was worried. Claire asked me in confidence, could it have been him. She didn’t sound incredulous when she asked. Then she had sat down and tried to take apart the incident methodically.
‘We have to ask three things, Sam. Was it an accident? Was it arson, and lastly, if it was, then who did it?’
‘One more question,’ I added. ‘If he did it, why on earth? It couldn’t have been an accident—a match or a cigarette butt. No short circuit, as Salim said. To set that house alight, you’d need some jerry cans of petrol rather than a bottle.’
Claire was not convinced. ‘The stairs are pinewood, the flooring is parquetry. It’s the ground flooring which is stone. Motive there could be Sam. He may want me away from you. This was one way, a fire just the two days you were here. God knows what goes around in a man’s head.’ Neither of us had the guts to say that he could want her out.
Salim was not happy when Neil was smuggled out of Junagadh and boarded ship for London. Both Claire and I went with him to Bombay. Neil never admitted anything and pretended to be surprised at our eagerness to see him out. But Salimuddin Khan had a tough session with him, from which our friend came out sweating. Salim took care to file a report at the police station. Zahid told us clearly that he had asked for a full bottle of petrol to clean that curry stain from his coat lapel. He had initially just put a few spoonfuls in the bottle, but he wanted the whole damn thing to be filled. Claire’s driver had supported Zahid.
Claire stayed at the Taj. I went to the house, of course. Since Zarine was away, I decided to stay there. Rohinton told me she had gone off to that ashram near Shirdi for a week. I can’t say I was not relieved not to have met her. Confrontations are best avoided when you have nothing to say for yourself. I was a bit intrigued though that she had gone to Shirdi. Her swami was not the Shirdi swami. I took Rohinton to the Metro Cinema for a movie—The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I have seldom enjoyed a movie more, though I wished for a moment that Zarine was with us. Old habits start biting at times.
The doors were creaking away, impatient to close, and to mix metaphors, the Junagadh chapter seemed to be coming to an anti-climactic end. I was not sure now how the Claire Barnes-Saam Bharucha part of the story was going to shape up. A sense of drift seemed to have got hold of me. Once the Junagadh accession affair was over and the dewan and the nawab had fled, a sort of lassitude had enveloped me. There was very little to do and nothing to look forward to the next day. I was wary of Bombay and how tongues would wag! I packed my bags. But tongues were wagging. I could imagine what they would be saying. How I was going to tackle all this in Bombay weighed heavily on me. Where was I going to live—I couldn’t just walk into my flat now and start staying there as if nothing had happened. Things had happened. I would have to start my practice back in Bombay. There was no getting away from that. There was no scope for me to go back to my firm where my juniors had taken over as partners. I better ask Claire for a serious talk.
She beat me to it. ‘Sam, where are we going?’
‘We’re going nowhere. We’ve just returned from Bombay.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant. We are stuck and things have changed. I couldn’t stay in today’s Junagadh, nor could you. Are we going to make our own decisions or just drift and let circumstances decide for us?’
‘For me, it’s getting unbearable here. I just can’t wait too long. They’ve been pretty decent with me, but I don’t want to outlive my welcome. A month is all I gave myself and, of it, just two weeks are left.’
‘You’ve never thought of coming to England, Sam? You could practice there, you know. You have a solicitor’s degree or whatever you call it. You could join some good firm there. But I am not sure if I am that much of an attraction—sorry about that. I know I am being unfair.’
I didn’t answer, just brooded, hanging my head down. We were sitting in the lawn at my place, over coffee. It was a slightly cold afternoon, though Claire thought it was pleasant and wasn’t wearing a thing over her top. ‘At the moment, I just want to melt into the woodwork. Keep a low profile and not get into the papers, for if I do, it would be for all the wrong reasons. You’ve no idea how the Parsee papers would go for me—the Mumbai Samachar and the Jam-e-Jamshed. So there is a thick fog in my mind and I am desperately trying to see my way through. You, of course, are uppermost in my mind.’ I paused—in any case, I was speaking very slowly. ‘You, the fallout with Zarine and the family, and how to handle it, and my legal practice—these are the things which get priority. The rest would be routine—where I settle down, the flat I need to hire, things of that sort. I intend going in for constitutional law. They are already trying to hammer out a Constitution. If you ask me, it will be just a take-off from the Government of India Act of 1935. Criminal law is not my bowl of soup, not my glass of sherbet.’
‘I don’t see myself anywhere in your scheme of things, Sam. I look into your eyes, and it’s like looking into a mirror and suddenly finding your reflection isn’t there; the face is bloody absent, my face. Am I anywhere in that bowl of soup or that decanter of beer you talked about?’
‘Glass of sherbet.’ I corrected her, and found her startled. I added, ‘Don’t you think you are being unfair, thinking you are not in my thoughts, or not a part of my future?’
‘Sam, I know I am in your thoughts. But I don’t think you have mapped me into your future. I wish to concede one other thing as well, and that’s dashed important. You’ve given up a marriage. That’s not a small deal.’
‘You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get.’ I added, ‘Now please don’t twist that. Just came out with an aphorism—my own.’
She changed the subject suddenly. ‘I need a man to look after my shipping business Sam.’
‘Can’t be me, you know that.’
‘Of course, I know it. But can you get me a decent fellow?’
‘Decent people are not exactly dime a dozen. I don’t think I could help you. But where’s the urgency?’
She didn’t get me. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ she asked.
‘All I am saying is why leave? You’re not an evacuee. The nawab was not exactly your cousin that you should sail away because he has left.’
‘It’s very different now, can’t you see? Formerly, you dealt with the dewan or one of his underlings. You dealt with men in suits—Highness this and Khan Bahadur that. Now who will I go to, people displaying their dirty feet and hairy shins?’
‘Don’t put on an act, Claire. You are running away from a free India. You’re feeling insecure—no Resident in Rajkot; no polite princes, their smiles wide as an open gate. You don’t wish to push your luck in Nehruvian India.’
Claire’s vehement denials didn’t cut much ice with me. You don’t leave a lucrative business and go back to a cold country in the cold season.
Our fires were still intact though. I found her more beautiful by the day. Fire and love have much to do with each other. Did I move away from Zarine because our fires had gone out? Odd thoughts would assail me at times. Zarine called. So you are back from Shirdi, I said.
‘Yes. And good you didn’t inform me you were coming to Bombay,’ she said matter of fact. ‘We’d have had to meet. Rohinton is bored and chaffing. He wants to go to Junagadh.’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘It’s not the same Junagadh—no princes, no long car rides, no bird shoot. (I remembered he had gone out with the prince for shikar.) But let him come, by all means.’
I didn’t know what to say. Rohinton came on 28 January 1948, by which time, my packing was complete. To be fair, no one was nudging me out. In fact, even Dhebar deigned to meet me.
Initially, the new administration (middle-level underlings) asked me things about the palace—intrigues, sexual peccadilloes, gossip. I made it clear that I didn’t know a thing, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell. The Administrator, Shiveswarkar, even offered I should conduct the referendum. A Parsee would lend the process greater credibility. I declined politely. The entire state was for accession to India. They didn’t need any spurious credibility to ram their point home internationally. But I did warn him that Pakistan would trot out this precedent when it came to Kashmir. (We weren’t calling it ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ those days.)
A day after Gandhi was shot, Claire booked her ticket for Blighty. ‘There’s going to be utter chaos. The country may crack up or not, but I certainly don’t want to get caught in the maelstrom. I am leaving. You’ll come, won’t you?’
She was breathless. I was having none of it. I was not going as anyone’s baggage. ‘Silly. I know you won’t come now. You’ve so many things to sort out. But later—six months, a year?’
‘It’s not the end, Claire. You certainly haven’t seen the last of me. That’s an assurance I can certainly give you. You know you mean a lot to me.’
‘How much I wouldn’t know.’ She smiled. We hugged and that’s how it ended, the first long chapter of love, aside from Zarine, I mean.