WHEN RAJ SHERMA RETURNED to Serangoon Road and Manikam’s Cloth Shop where he worked, his employer was waiting impatiently for him. It would be useless to try and explain to Mr Manikam the extraordinary events of the afternoon and how he had seen not one riot but two.
‘Good for nothing; only knowing how to waste time,’ Manikam shouted as Raj entered. He pushed a bale of white cotton shirting angrily back on to a shelf.
‘Big riot in Chinatown,’ Raj explained, placing the money he had received from a maker of mosquito nets in Pagoda Street on the counter top. Manikam’s specialised in muslim for curtains and netting, and was known to have the best dhotis on Serangoon Road. It was also a place to buy shirting material. There were no peacock-coloured silks or bright woven cottons in Manikam’s. The monochrome tone of the stock, although unexciting, gave the cramped premises an air of spacious calm. It was a place in which to sit and think without distraction, and Raj was happy to do this for hours at a time.
‘Riot, riot, what is this riot? How many hours are you taking for riot?’ Manikam raged, his heavy black spectacles sliding down his bulbous nose as he spoke. He wiped his sweating face on a small towel that hung over one shoulder.
‘Trolley and rickshaw not moving,’ Raj explained.
‘Legs are there,’ Manikam insisted, picking up the money Raj had placed upon the counter.
‘Rioters were communists,’ Raj informed Manikam.
‘What is that?’ Manikam asked, rubbing his hands on his vest.
‘Communists are killers,’ Raj elaborated, remembering the old Chinese man he had escorted home and the bloody events that had punctuated his afternoon.
‘We are all killers in our way,’ Manikam replied.
‘People were getting killed,’ Raj insisted, and Manikam turned in sudden concern.
‘You all right? Not getting hurt?’ he asked, the edge sliding out of his roar. Reaching under the counter, he fished out a dented metal cash box to stow away the money.
‘Old Chinese man on trolleybus ill with asthma, I had to help him home. This also was taking time, and then at his house another riot happened. Everywhere today there is rioting,’ Raj explained. Manikam nodded, his anger abating as he counted the cash into the box. Raj would have elaborated further on the afternoon, but Manikam had lost interest now that the cash was in the box.
‘It is good to help those in need. Good things come back to us, as do the bad,’ Manikam counselled. Since the death of his wife the year before, his thoughts had turned religious.
‘Pagoda Street man wanting more muslin to make mosquito nets. Two hundred metres or more maybe,’ Raj said, knowing this was the news that was wanted. Manikam looked up with a smile.
‘He has liked our muslin, now he will give regular order; he is making nets for Europeans. So many nets those people are needing. Because their skin is white and sweet all mosquito are wanting to eat them,’ Manikam chuckled.
After the death of Mrs Manikam things had not gone well for Manikam. His marriage had been fruitless and he now mourned not so much a wife as the lack of a son. Ill health, the state of widower and a fall in business had brought him low. When he could no longer pay their salaries, Manikam’s other two employees left. Only Raj had remained to work for three meals a day. This show of loyalty decided Manikam to treat Raj as a surrogate son. From the beginning Mrs Manikam had taken a liking to him, and had always fussed about him while she lived in a manner that annoyed her husband.
‘Tomorrow I will do our accounts for this week,’ Raj promised as Manikam turned the key of the cash box. Under Manikam’s instruction Raj had learned how to add and subtract and balance neat columns in a large ledger. He soon found irregularities in Manikam’s account books, careless mistakes that created unnecessary and sometimes shocking deficiencies. Soon, Raj’s disciplined management of the business had produced small profits in a pleasing way, and almost imperceptibly control of the shop had passed from employer to employee. Manikam was happy most of the day to read a newspaper and drink tea. In the beginning Raj had slept in the shop on the counter top but recently, after Manikam had raised his salary by a small amount, he had rented one of the dark tenement cubicles upstairs. Manikam himself rented the entire ground floor of the shophouse for his business premises and living space.
Soon Manikam disappeared into a back room. Raj sat down on the chair behind the counter and, turning the tap in the earthenware water jar, filled a metal glass and drank thirstily. Now the violence of the afternoon was over and he was safely home he felt suddenly weak, as if he had been pummelled all over. In the quiet of the shop with the familiar sights and sounds of the street beyond, the alarming events of the last few hours filled his mind, and his thoughts returned to Mr Ho.
He had helped the Chinese alight from the trolley, increasingly alarmed by the man’s huffing and puffing. ‘Uncle, if your house far then we take a rickshaw,’ Raj had suggested as the tram drew away.
The man’s colour was not good and his breath continued to rattle in his chest like a bag of marbles. Demonstrators still straggled along the road murmuring angrily; outside the Kreta Ayer police station the dead bodies were being dragged to one side and covered with straw mats.
Raj hailed a rickshaw and they climbed in, squashed together on the seat. The Chinese had pushed his boater hat to the back of his head at a rakish angle, and the long hairs sprouting from the raised mole on his chin lifted as they bowled along. Both his wheezing and his courtly manner gave him the appearance of age, yet Raj judged him to be no more than forty-five.
‘I have a biscuit factory near here,’ Mr Ho told him, extracting a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. The sun flashed on the long chain across his chest as he noted the time. Raj stared at the watch, at its smooth pebble-like shape, the intricacy of its fine workmanship, and vowed that one day he too would own a similar timepiece. Beneath them the runner flexed stringy muscles and suddenly picked up his pace, throwing them back in the seat.
Soon they reached Pearl’s Hill and the demonstrators were left behind. Mr Ho directed the runner towards a dusty compound with a broken gate standing open upon one hinge. Above the gate was a sign that read HO PROSPERITY BISCUIT COMPANY. The rickshaw stopped before a dilapidated house behind which corrugated factory sheds were visible. Tiles were missing from the roof of Mr Ho’s bungalow, and the shutters like the gate hung crookedly. A sweet smell of baking pressed about them as the rickshaw drew to a halt. Raj jumped out and helped Mr Ho down.
‘You have been very kind. Have some refreshment before you go. Taste my biscuits,’ Mr Ho smiled.
Raj hesitated but the vanilla-edged scent was overwhelming and after the happenings of the afternoon he was both hungry and thirsty. He followed Mr Ho up some steps and on to a veranda stacked with old chairs and wooden crates. Mrs Ho, plump and grey haired, hurried out of the house followed by her pregnant daughter-in-law, Yoshiko. As both women fussed about the breathless Mr Ho, the noise of shouting came to them from the direction of the biscuit factory behind the house. Mr Ho turned in alarm with a wheeze of distress and, ignoring Mrs Ho’s pleas, hurried back down the steps and disappeared around the side of the bungalow. Mrs Ho gave a small moan and followed, her daughter-in-law and Raj trailing behind.
‘What is happening?’ Raj asked the young woman, from whom he caught the scent of crushed flowers. The loose shift she wore already pulled tightly across her thickening body and he realised her baby must soon be due.
‘Again the workers are troubling us. The communists encourage them to strike,’ the daughter-in-law explained as they hurried towards the factory, her eyes fixed on Mr and Mrs Ho a distance ahead.
Raj observed the luxuriance of her hair pulled back into a soft bun and the creamy quality of her skin, like the petals of a magnolia. Another roar from the factory made Yoshiko Ho exclaim in alarm. She broke into an awkward run, her hands supporting her heavy belly, Raj keeping pace beside her. Ragged palms fringed the two factory sheds before which a group of workers were gathered. They shouted, punching the air with a loud chant that was now all too familiar. More men were spilling out of the building to join the agitated assembly.
‘They are turning today’s Sun Yat-sen anniversary into a communist demonstration wherever they see an opportunity,’ Mr Ho gasped as Raj and Yoshiko reached him.
‘What are they saying?’ Raj asked.
‘Workers of the World Unite. Stand up to the Imperialist traitor Ho. Down with Ho Biscuits. Down with Imperialism,’ Mr Ho replied, passing a hand wearily over his brow. With Mrs Ho hanging on to his arm, trying unsuccessfully to hold him back, he began to walk towards the unruly crowd. Yoshiko gave a groan and crossed her hands protectively over her swollen belly. Raj hurried forward beside Mr Ho who was wheezing alarmingly again.
‘Send Yoshiko back inside – who knows where this may lead!’ Mr Ho shouted to his wife before turning an anxious face to Raj.
‘Feelings are high and our daughter-in-law is Japanese. There are always mixed feelings about the Japanese. We have had many boycotts of Japanese goods in the last few years,’ Mr Ho explained, squeezing out words between asthmatic rasps.
Work in the factory sheds with their boiling vats of syrup and baking ovens was hot and sweaty labour. The men now facing Mr Ho were stripped to the waist, but the powerful sight of so many gleaming muscular bodies massed together, alert and waiting, did not deter him. He walked forward, hatted and spatted and wheezing, the watch chain across his linen waistcoat gleaming in the sun. From the factory sheds the mouth-watering smell of Ho Biscuits continued to float above the angry men with their loud cries of Imperialist Ho.
‘Listen to me,’ Mr Ho shouted, but his voice quickly sank beneath the din. The workers moved restively, the blood high in their faces, determined to be free of the dark hot shacks where they toiled all day long. A banner of crudely daubed characters was suddenly waved in Mr Ho’s face, forcing him to retreat a short distance. Raj watched in alarm as Mr Ho gasped and clutched at his chest, and in sudden concern stepped forward to face the angry men.
‘Listen to him,’ Raj roared, and his unfamiliar presence had an instant effect. The workers stopped to stare at his short, burly frame, and the shouting died down. Mr Ho took advantage of the lull to put his case to the men.
‘I am no different from you. We are all Chinese brothers. I am not an Imperialist. This is not the way to improve our lot,’ Mr Ho wheezed with as much force as he could muster, but even as he spoke a loud heckling began, drummed up by the two most prominent agitators.
‘Freedom is found in working hard and taking opportunities,’ Mr Ho implored, but the shouting continued.
‘Down with Imperialist exploitation! Demand better wages from the dog Ho. He eats pork and duck while we have no money for rice,’ a young man shouted. Mr Ho gasped in shock at this new accusation and the cheers that it released.
‘I am not a rich man. You have seen the mansions of rich men. You know I do not live like that. If you have complaints come and talk to me. Let us stop this nonsense and get back to work. The biscuits will burn.’ Mr Ho panted, anxious now to get inside the factory for he knew only too well the smell of an over-baked biscuit. At this appeal the men hesitated, allowing Mr Ho to enter the shed. Raj hurried after him.
A fiery, vanilla-scented world enfolded them as they entered the darkness of the sweltering factory. Bare light bulbs dangling on long wires from the corrugated metal roof could not alleviate the gloom. After the brightness outside Raj was momentarily blinded, even as his head reeled with the intoxicating aromas. As sight returned he saw large cauldrons of boiling pineapple jam perched precariously over flaming burners. The syrup bubbled with soft sucking sounds; the scent of scalding sugar ran hotly through him. Long tables of rolled dough cut to the shape of hearts or rabbits were visible, as were battalions of chocolate fingers waiting their turn in the oven. Ancient conveyor belts that appeared to be fashioned from bicycle chains chugged and clanked incessantly around the shed. The angry men now encircled their employer shaking their fists and kicking up dust from the earthen floor that then fell upon the biscuits.
‘Biscuits are burning,’ Mr Ho cried in a trembling voice, stepping towards the ovens from which a charred smell was emerging. In desperation he pushed his way into the crowd before him, hitting out to right and left. His watch was knocked from his pocket and flailed about on its long chain, the straw hat was tipped forward and he reached to hold it in place. As he neared the ovens the agitators crowded closer chanting slogans again. A man brandishing a bamboo pole moved forward and, with a loud cry, brought the cane down on Mr Ho’s head. The boater fell apart as neatly as a cut sponge cake and blood spurted up from Mr Ho’s skull. At the sight of this blood the crowd abruptly fell silent and drew back. Mr Ho staggered and lurched, finally collapsing in the hot space before the oven.
Mrs Ho, who was hovering nervously about the factory door, gave a shriek and ran forward and dropped to her knees, cushioning her husband’s head in her lap. Mr Ho’s crushed and battered boater lay a short distance away and Raj stared at the hat in shock, remembering the Chief Inspector’s sun helmet in the road at Kreta Ayer. For the second time that day he had watched a man swatted like a fly by an angry mob.
The communist agitators began shouting again but Mr Ho’s workers, observing their injured employer, appeared confused. There was a sudden move towards the ovens and the doors were pulled open. Immediately, a cloud of black smoke billowed out like fire from a belching dragon. Mr Ho’s nose twitched, he opened his eyes and groaned. Seeing that all momentum was gone, the two main agitators, professional men sent to work up the crowd, disappeared as innocuously as they had come. At their departure Mr Ho’s employees carried him out of the shed and back into the house.
He was placed upon a rattan couch and cushions were stacked behind him. A servant brought water and first aid, and Mrs Ho bandaged her husband’s head with enough wadding to make a turban. Yoshiko poured jasmine tea into a tall mug and Mr Ho was persuaded to take a sip. Slowly, he revived and turned to Raj who sat nervously on the edge of a chair.
‘My son Luke went to Ipoh yesterday. If he had been here he would have stood up to those ruffians. It is a sign of the times we now live in that such a thing could happen. I came to this place on the deck of a ship, just like my workers. In my village in China I tilled the land with my father, just as they did. At ten I left school to help my illiterate parents. I became a hawker selling vegetables my father grew and the oysters and crabs I collected each day.’ Mr Ho’s eyes grew moist and Mrs Ho begged him to put a stop to remembering.
Yoshiko refilled the cups and offered Raj a plate of Ho biscuits. As she stood before him he caught her light flowery scent again and glanced up into her face. She nodded her head and gave a slight smile; he looked away quickly, disturbed by the fullness of her lips. Staring down at the assortment of crisply baked shapes, he chose one with a bright red centre. As he picked it up he remembered a packet of similar biscuits his father had bought from a salesman who came to his stall on the road into Naganagar, near Raj’s village in India. The stall sold rice and wheat, betel nut and gram, chillies, sherbet powder, nails and soap, tin buckets, brooms and sugar; everyday things needed in the village. His father had done some favour for the salesman and in return was given the biscuits. The packet was wrapped in pink waxy paper and the biscuits inside were encrusted with ants. Raj and his sister Leila had brushed the insects from the pastry, savouring the sweet taste, chewing slowly. He saw again the crumbs about his sister’s lips and the red stain of the jam on her tongue.
‘Everyone has come to this place with hope in his heart.’ Mr Ho sighed and sipped his tea.
‘I too came here to Singapore on the deck of a ship, sun on my head all day. I was twelve years old,’ Raj remembered.
‘We dreamed of a better place and followed that dream, and many have found it,’ Mr Ho nodded agreement.
‘But you are such an educated man, a rich man.’ Raj was surprised when Mr Ho shook his head.
‘When I arrived here I found a job in a biscuit factory. That is how I came to know about biscuits. One day I got into a fight and was left for dead. An English missionary, Reverend Luke Bartholomew, found me and nursed me back to health. He was a great man and took a liking to me and paid for me to go to a mission school here in Singapore. I studied hard and passed all the exams, and I converted also to Christianity for it was this faith that changed my life. Reverend Bartholomew gave me the name of Joseph when I was baptised. He persuaded his mission to send me to England for further study. I stayed there three years and learned many things.’ Mr Ho leaned back against the cushions, exhausted.
‘He needs to sleep now,’ Mrs Ho said; she bustled forward, impatient for Raj to be gone.
‘Come back and see me again. You are a good boy,’ Mr Ho mumbled sleepily as Raj stood up.
His thirst quenched, Raj placed the tall metal glass on the counter in Manikam’s shop and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. In his mind the smell of burning biscuits lingered as he puzzled over Mr Ho and the many events of the afternoon. That a man who came from such frugal beginnings could now own a biscuit factory and be called an Imperialist seemed a strange achievement. Raj thought with trepidation about his own life and what the future might hold. Although so much was already behind him, the way ahead lay uncharted. The events of the afternoon reminded him that life was precarious. He knew then that he must always keep small goals before him, like stepping stones stretching into the distance to whatever destination awaited him.
Raj began tidying the newspapers and old bags kept on the counter for wrapping purchases, and stared out of the open front of Manikam’s shop on to Serangoon Road. The light was fading fast and the clunk of milk churns being washed was heard from a nearby dairy; dogs barked, cows mooed, goats bleated and babies cried. Stewed all day beneath the sun, the stench of animal excrement, rotting vegetables and fish bones enveloped the road as always. As evening approached the aroma of frying onions and spices thickened the air. When Raj first arrived on this road the proximity of these familiar smells had comforted him, as did the dark skins of people like himself.
Across the road from Manikam’s, Subramanium the parrot astrologer still sat at his stall beneath the shady colonnade called the five-foot way, chopping chillies for his birds. As Raj watched he opened a rusted tobacco tin to retrieve a few swatted flies for his parrots, adding them to the chillies he fed the birds to improve their intelligence. He was a tall man with a thin neck and a stained white dhoti, strands of grey hair pushed through the holes in his vest. In the cages his parrots scratched for seeds and grumbled.
‘These are good parrots. Not all parrots are good for fortune telling,’ Subramanium always said. When a customer stopped, Subrimanium at once picked up a pack of dog-eared cards depicting Indian deities and opened the cage for a parrot to emerge. Strutting about in an ungainly dance the creature cocked its head flirtatiously whenever a fortune had to be told. Subramanium fanned out the cards on the tabletop and the bird dipped its head to choose one, picking it up in its beak.
Subramanium had been the first person Raj met on Serangoon Road and he still retained the aura of a mentor. When the long sea journey from India was over and Raj set foot again on firm land, the enormity of what lay ahead had come down upon him for the first time. Not only his village but also the whole great land of India was lost to him over the momentous swell of the sea. He had lived his life in a village, a group of mud-walled huts about a well; a few hundred yards this way or that and the place ended. There was nothing then but the land, stretching dry and brown and endless to the horizon. Everything had been all right until the fever came and killed his mother and his brother. Within a year the fever returned to take his father, leaving Raj, his seven-year-old sister Leila, and their grandmother. A neighbour bought his father’s dry goods stall. Raj accepted the money he was given, knowing no way to bargain for more.
He was old enough to work but there was nothing for him in the village. The scouts who sometimes came to recruit labour for the faraway places said he was too young for their kind of work. They came on a decorated cart beating a drum as if on their way to a festival. They gave a fistful of silver to the families of men who went with them. One of the scouts, sympathetic to Raj’s plight, explained how he could go to the faraway places by himself, and return to his village a rich man. He described the large towns of Penang and Ipoh and Singapore, and how men had only to arrive there for wealth to fall into their hands; they returned to their villages with enough money to build a temple and acquire a bride.
The man helped Raj buy a ticket to Calcutta with the money from the sale of his father’s stall and also a passage on a boat. Raj had never seen a train before. So great was his excitement on the long journey to Calcutta that he hardly noticed the discomfort of the crowded carriage, or the engine soot that blew in through the window to blacken his face. He struggled to comprehend the great vistas of land continuously sucked away behind him, and then to understand the conglomeration of humanity and buildings that was Calcutta, the first large town he had ever seen.
As with the train ride, the ocean journey was lightened for Raj by the wonders that surrounded him. The way was strewn with miracles; the size of the ocean and its moods, one moment reflective as glass, the next seething with rage. He stared for hours into the foamy wake of the ship; sometimes, a fish leapt from the depths or dolphins appeared and kept pace with the vessel. And always the sunset came down in a magnificent way, dissolving him, just as the world was dissolved on that strange cusp of the day. It was only the night he dreaded, for in the dark the ship heaved and shuddered. He was twelve years old and fear of the future lay like a stone in his belly.
He remembered a man called Dinesh, recruited to work on rubber or pineapple plantations in Malaya, who had taken him under his wing when he boarded the ship. He told Raj to spread his mat alongside his own and when the urine of a nearby baby trickled over the deck, Dinesh shouted at the mother to cover its bottom or hold it out over a rag. He and his friends shared their food with him, and Raj carried drinking and shaving water to the men. Raj learned to play cards and learned about women as he sat listening to them on the burning deck each day. But at last they arrived, and the island that had existed for so long in his mind was beneath his feet.
On the quay he had sat upon his bundle of belongings and tried to stifle his panic, not knowing where to go. At last, a kindly Tamil had given him a ride on a bullock cart filled with bales of cotton. When their ways diverged Raj tried not to show his apprehension as he clambered off the cart.
‘Go to Serangoon Road, all Indians live there. Find Subramanium, the parrot astrologer,’ the driver advised.
Raj had picked up his bundle and taken his first steps in the direction the man pointed out. Ramshackle buildings lined narrow roads overflowing with people, carts and rickshaws. At last he had come into wider streets where imposing buildings of graceful architecture dwarfed a man. For the first time Raj had seen large wheeled motor cars and trams. These sights had taken his breath away.
On that first day Subramanium received him brusquely. ‘I have no work for you. I am not a charity. Ask around for work like everyone else. Nowadays young people are lazy,’ he barked. His stall was pushed up against the wall of a shophouse under the shade of the five-foot way.
Already dusk was descending. It had been a long walk from where the bullock cart dropped him. Raj had stopped only once to rest beneath a banyan tree, eating the remains of some rice rolled in a piece of paper. He looked up at the darkening sky; his legs ached, his head ached and his stomach was empty. Thoughts of his grandmother and his sister Leila, so far away from him now, overwhelmed him. On Serangoon Road oil lamps were lit as the dusk tumbled into night. Raj lay down, exhausted, stretching out on the pavement. He awoke the next morning to Subramanium’s bare toe in a filthy sandal prodding his ribs. The man had bought him some breakfast wrapped in a banana leaf and when, after days of trying, no proper work materialised, had persuaded Manikam of Manikam’s Cloth Shop to employ Raj as an assistant.
Later that evening, Raj made his way along Serangoon Road towards Sri Perumal temple to make a delivery of several muslin dhoti to the chief priest there. There were no communists on Serangoon Road and the place, like Manikam himself, had little interest in the riots at Kreta Ayer and indeed had not heard of Sun Yat-sen. Raj knew the name only because his friend Krishna, the letter writer, was interested in revolutionaries and had once briefly and dangerously lived such a life himself.
Once he had made the delivery, Raj did not immediately return to Manikam’s but walked towards the premises of a garland maker beside the temple. Most evenings Krishna was to be found here beneath the temple’s colourful pagoda of gods, taking dictation from the illiterate, writing letters to their families in India. Sitting as he did outside the garland maker’s shop with flowers heaped around him, the sweet perfume of jasmine filling the air and the gods looking down upon him, Krishna had acquired the reputation of unworldly status. His work as a schoolmaster at the Ramakrishna Mission further added to his aura as did his tall, lean frame and deep faraway eyes. People came to him not only for the writing of letters but to consult about marriages, horoscopes and ailments, or for mediation in family quarrels.
When Manikam had finally realised his dependence upon Raj, he had agreed to him taking English and Mathematics lessons from Krishna for a nominal fee. Manikam himself was a literate man, and he viewed the education of Raj as a business investment from which he expected to reap a good profit. Raj had proved an avid pupil, quickly building on the rudimentary education he had received in his village schoolroom. He carried his books with him throughout the day, poring over them at every opportunity behind the counter of Manikam’s Cloth Shop and by an oil lamp late into the night. Krishna could not resist such a willing pupil and soon would take nothing for these lessons, much to Manikam’s satisfaction.
‘My reward will be to see him thrive,’ Krishna told Raj and Manikam. A friendship developed between them, Krishna treating Raj like a younger brother, and even when Raj no longer had need of Krishna’s lessons, they continued to meet.
Now, as Krishna was still busy Raj waited, sitting on a low wall beside a trinket stall piled with gaudy glass bangles. Watching Krishna scratch away with his pen, head bent to his board, listening to the dictation of the men crouched at his feet, Raj remembered the days when he too had waited for Krishna to write a letter for him to his sister Leila. In the darkness the booths and small shops of Serangoon Road were lit by a blaze of oil lamps. The fake diamonds and gaudy gold chains of the trinket stall gleamed seductively. Once, this had been largely a road of men who left their families in India, but times were changing and people had prospered. Those who could afford it were now bringing their wives from India to live on the road, and jewellery appeared to be the first thing they needed. Beside the rows of new shophouses that had sprung up, attap-roofed dwellings, dairies or wheat-grinding sheds still stood next to enclosures for animals servicing the dairies and the slaughterhouse near the mosque. Behind Serangoon Road lay the racecourse, and horses were kept in the road’s many stables; bleating goats and wandering cows continually obstructed the thoroughfare. Eventually Krishna was free of his clients and Raj hurried towards him to blurt out his news.
‘Communist demonstration at Kreta Ayer. Police shooting guns and some Chinese killed.’ Raj beamed, proud to be the bearer of news he knew would be of importance to Krishna.
‘Communists? A demonstration?’ Krishna stopped, a bottle of ink in his hand, and stared excitedly at Raj over wire-rimmed spectacles. Only those who knew him closely were aware that Krishna, in spite of his scholarly reputation, was a secret revolutionary. He was well schooled in the writings of Marx and Lenin, and while still in India had been deeply influenced by the fiery rhetoric of the young revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose had spoken at a student conference and his words had so inspired Krishna that he had turned to anti-British activities with a local revolutionary cell.
‘Demonstration was big, many hundreds of men, all shouting and ready to kill. These communists are dangerous people,’ Raj replied. Krishna shook his head dismissively as he thrust a cork into the bottle of ink and placed it in a basket along with his pens.
‘Just like us Indians, the communists also struggle for freedom from colonial rule,’ Krishna answered; his hair stood up in a curly halo about his head and he had an intense, owlish appearance. Picking up his stool and writing board, he strode forward in the direction of the garland maker’s shop where he rented storage space amongst dripping buckets of flowers. He had been forced to leave India when a plot he was involved in, to blow up a British government official, was foiled. Krishna’s family were educated people and had found the means to smuggle him out of India as the police came after him.
‘Communists are killers,’ Raj decided. He tried to understand Krishna’s view of the communists but found he could not agree. Watching the garland maker’s goat nibble some crumpled paper at Krishna’s feet, he recalled the unbridled violence of the day, the bloodied hats that had punctuated his afternoon and their wounded owners, the Chief Inspector and Mr Ho, and knew he was not wrong.