Last names, though, are held more lightly. My relatives, when confronted with the need for passports and business licenses, resort to various solutions. Some, like the Kapitans in South Africa, invent their own; some use their caste identity, Khatri; others whose names have two parts split them, so Manilal goes by Mr. Lal. Some put down their father's name, as Motiram did; and in this way a last name can become a marker of the moment of encounter, the moment of migration. Narsai the prophet became Narsey the business, and then Narsey the surname, for generations to come. Indeed, Ranchhod's passport listed him as Ranchhod Ratanji; but since the object was to avoid confusion with his father, he decided against Ratanji as a last name.
A surname might also carry a story. While the Fiji relatives used the business name, Narsai's descendants in India were known by his ability to see the future: to hazrat bhartaa, in the local idiom. Hazrat is an Islamic word for a holy man or prophet; one who glimpsed the future was said to fulfill or flesh out a prophecy, or the spirit of a prophet. It was this name, weighted with destiny and history, that Ranchhod chose for his own.
But Ranchhod Hazrat enjoyed no greater autonomy than had Ranchhod Narsey. The family in those days was a true patriarchy; the fathers ruled, and everyone else obeyed.
Those who lived under Ratanji's reign remember, above all, his strictness. No one went to the movies, to the swimming hole, to the ice cream shop without permission—and permission was usually denied. Well into their twenties, Ranchhod and his brothers and cousins had to sneak alcohol if they wanted to drink.
Some, like Jayanti, now in Fiji as well, took this authoritarianism in stride. Some rebelled outright: one of Ranchhod's uncles left the company with all of his sons, amid a storm of ill will. Ranchhod, watching the drama, must have seen that there was no easy way for him to strike out on his own. Though he chafed under the restrictions, he contented himself with minor acts of subversion: bribing the cook to buy oranges at the Saturday market, then hiding the rare treats till after 10 P.M., when the older men were safely asleep and would not catch a whiff.
Their eldest brother, Chiman, seemed to step easily into his natural slot as their father's protégé. In 1954 the company issued new shares, and all three brothers were given one hundred each.
—Does this mean I can come to the meetings? Ranchhod asked his father.
—Come, but don't say anything, Ratanji told him.
It was Chiman who was learning the inner workings of the company's management at their father's right hand: Chiman whom their father had sent to bookkeeping classes, Chiman who had been allowed to start his own division dealing in electronic goods, and Chiman who had just been made secretary of the company, his father's obvious heir.
In truth Ranchhod did not mind the wholesale work, and had even come to enjoy the travel. But he was restless. Would he forever be a junior member of the company, bound to bow to the will of others? Fiji was a damn jungle, he thought, and he didn't like being in a British colony, whites strutting around as if they owned the place, which they did. Work was constant. If he put in just as much labor in his beloved India, he reasoned, he would get ahead on his own and be out from under the thumb of the family. He resolved that if he ever found himself home, he would not come back.
When he turned twenty-one, his chance came. His father had decided it was time to take Ranchhod home to get married. Ratanji went ahead on a bride-scouting mission.
Before undertaking the journey himself, Ranchhod wrote his father a letter spelling out his conditions: First, the girl should be more than twenty years old. Second, she would live wherever he lived, not be left to stay with his mother for months or years on end, as was the common practice. Third, he wrote, Selection is yours, choice mine. He had seen his elder brothers and sisters marry young without any say in the matter, and the troubles that had resulted. His mother was constantly fighting with her two daughters-in-law, both teenagers, one of whom was "running away from home" every other week—which meant going down the street to her relative's house crying and tearing at her hair, embarrassing both families. One of his sisters, scandalously, had fled her marriage and was living at home; eventually, hers would be one of the few divorces approved by the community's five-member council of elders in India. Though Ranchhod knew his marriage would be arranged, he wanted at least to have veto power.
Ratanji agreed. He had a few girls from good families in mind and had already ordered their horoscopes; all that remained was for the groom to arrive.
Ranchhod traveled by boat to Australia and then Sri Lanka, caught a plane to Bombay, and took the Flying Rani train with his father back to their home village, Navsari. On the train Ratanji struck up a conversation with a Khatri man from a neighboring town, who learned of their purpose and asked them to promise to visit him once before making a decision. He would, he said, show them some girls from good families.
They arrived in Navsari, and within a few days Ratanji went to meet the man. He returned with the horoscopes of two sisters, both of whose charts turned out to be compatible with Ranchhod's. Kaashi went to visit the girls and their family; then Ranchhod's eldest sister, Kamu, went. Ranchhod inquired,—All of you have seen the girls; perhaps I should go see them and choose?
—Absolutely not, came Ratanji's reply.
—Well then, at least tell me what are the names?
— Manjula and Lalita.
— I like Manjula, Ranchhod decided, and his father looked at him suspiciously. Had he somehow met the girl, or heard some gossip? Manjula was also the choice of Kaashi and Kamu, and Ratanji thought they had told. But Ranchhod was simply remembering a childhood playmate, a sweet girl who lived near his grandmother's house, who had the same name. On the strength of that association he chose a wife.
Ranchhod was told that he could see Manjula once, to fulfill the terms of his letter and give his consent, before the engagement was made final. So he found himself one morning sitting on a bench in a stranger's house, feeling awkward in his best set of clothes and dusty from the long bus ride into town, his hair oiled neatly back from his face. On one side sat his father, on the other the matchmaker from the train; across the way were an uncle and an aunt. Nervously Ranchhod took tea, barely noticing who offered it, and waited. The men talked casually as they drank the milky chaa, aromatic with cardamom, black pepper, cloves. They finished, and stood.
—OK, said the matchmaker,—let's go, what do you think?
—What? Ranchhod was confused.
—Well, did you see her or not?
—No, I didn't see anyone.
—That girl who brought tea, didn't you see?
He had thought they would be introduced, sit, perhaps talk a little. Instead, he was meant to glimpse her out of the corner of one eye, and get to know her by the gesture of her hand as she lifted each cup from the tray. Even this minimal meeting was a liberalization, a nod toward changing times, and Ranchhod knew he was pressing his luck; but truly, he said, he did not see the girl.
Exasperated, the matchmaker agreed to set it up again, that very afternoon. This time he sat next to Ranchhod and nudged him when the girl appeared in the doorway.
She came in with the tea.
She kept her eyes to the floor.
She wore a sari, modestly wrapped, in a modest color.
She walked around the room. She set a cup down near each man.
She did not speak, and no one spoke to her.
She left.
There was nothing wrong with her that he could see in such a short encounter. It was a formality, in any case, his elders having already approved the match; for him to back out now would be a matter of shame.
When they reached home, Ranchhod's father wrote a postcard to the matchmaker:—Everything is all right. Let's plan the wedding.
Even in a culture rich with stories, not everything can be said. Underlying the network of gupshup and legend is another skin, a myofascia of silence—and it is this, as much as the spoken word, that holds the society together. A share
d notion of what can be spoken and what cannot, and in what context, gives each story and each storyteller a framework, a set of rules under which to function. A generation ago, on that day and place, and in that family, this layer of silence encompassed not only sexuality but everything near to it: women's health and illness, pregnancy, marriage itself.
So it was that Manjula did not know to whom she served tea twice that day. Guests were frequent, and if they came with an agenda, it was not for her to know or ask. Modesty demanded that she not look up, for curiosity or any other reason, and certainly not at a strange young man—whether or not she sensed his intensity, whether or not she felt the hands of destiny rubbing together. One day she was a girl in her parents' house, serving tea. And the next she was to be married; would travel to another village, then abroad. Serving tea, staying out of things, was a skill that would serve her well in her in-laws' home.
A few months after the wedding, Manjula was pregnant, and Ranchhod was scheming about how to avoid going back to Fiji. The whole family went on holiday to Pune, a pleasant hill town about a day's journey from Navsari. Far enough that a man could live independently, but close enough to stay in touch, it seemed to Ranchhod a perfect place to look for work.
Discreetly he began making inquiries. A distant relative told him about a large wholesaler of household goods that was hiring. Ranchhod met with the owner, who explained the job. A train compartment would be his home for two years. The train would travel throughout India delivering and picking up goods, everything from spoons to tablecloths. In each town it would rest a few days. A cook would travel with him, and he could either take his wife along or visit her with a free train ticket every few months. The pay was five hundred rupees a month, a large sum, especially when he would have no rent or food expenses.
Ranchhod decided to take the job. He expected resistance: his father always wanted all hands in the family firm.
But instead of a tongue-lashing from Ratanji, Ranchhod was surprised to receive a letter from Uncle Magan, accompanied by a bank draft of £150: Come back to Fiji, we are opening a business in your name.
Hazrat Trading Company. His own firm. It had a nice ring to it. Once again, Uncle Magan had figured out how to persuade him, gently, that what the family wanted was also in Ranchhod's own interests.
Ranchhod turned down the train job, and prepared to sail back to Fiji with his wife.
His parents, still in India, wanted Ranchhod to leave his wife in Navsari to bring her child to term. Ranchhod refused; he didn't want to subject her to his mother's erratic temper, to the drama of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law that he had observed taking place with his brothers' wives. He and his father began another war of wills.
When Ranchhod went to the local travel agency, he found that Ratanji had forbidden the agent to sell him a ticket. No one in Navsari would help him procure passports and passage, for fear of his father's wrath. At length he and Manjula traveled to Bombay, applied directly to the passport and visa offices, and took the £150 bank draft to the P&O Shipping Co. As a result of the ad-hoc nature of the arrangements, they were given separate spaces on the same boat, one in first class and one in second class.
As they prepared to sail, Ratanji realized that his son had won a round. He came to see the young couple off, and even gave Ranchhod five pounds for the journey.
On board they managed to trade roommates so that husband and wife could share a cabin. In Sydney, Australia, the five pounds paid for a couple of nights in a room, with shared bathroom, at a place known as the People Palace, where passengers from India stayed in transit while waiting for a connection to New Zealand or Fiji. The outfit was run by a father-and-son team who treated the Indians well, lent money to those who needed it until they reached their destination, and even spoke a little Hindi. Ranchhod and Manjula caught the flight to Fiji and began their new life. It was 1957, and Ranchhod launched Hazrat Trading Co. with the great salmon caper.
Once Magan recovered from the shock of his nephew's salmon profit, he set about calling the bank and the collection agency, verifying the amount. It checked out. Ranchhod smiled.
— My debt is paid, right?
—Yes, Hazrat Trading Co.'s £500 is paid.
— And the £150?
—No, said Magan,—that is your personal debt to Narseys.
—No problem, Ranchhod said,—take it out of my company's account and pay it to Narseys.
Magan shook his head.—This company is not yours, it belongs to Narseys Limited. And you also work for Narseys.
That was how Ranchhod realized he was still a servant of the company, one who owed five months' salary.
Despite that disappointment, Ranchhod threw himself into business with a passion. While the salmon deal did not erase his debts, it did give him more clout within the family. He became a signatory on Narseys bank accounts and was given freer rein to run Hazrat Trading Co. as he saw fit.
And it gave him a chance to compete for his elders' respect, love, and attention. To be taken seriously, he vowed to make money—serious money, not for himself but for the company. He went about this in the systematic manner of a driven man.
First he went to the bank manager who had been so kind, and asked to learn everything about the business of money. For several months, two hours each afternoon, Ranchhod sat with the man as he closed out the day's accounts and imparted whatever practical knowledge he could to a student who knew very little English but had a head for numbers and a hunger for knowledge.
Second, Ranchhod set about making Hazrat Trading Co. a cash cow. Its opening represented another step of expansion for Narseys, into a business known as "indenting."
From the same root as "indenture," the word referred to an ancient method of writing contracts in duplicate, then laying the two papers or parchments together and cutting a notched line (in-dentis, Latin, "to make jagged like a row of teeth") so that they would match if reunited. To indent became the formal business term for "to request or order goods from, to make an order for (goods)." In other words, Ranchhod was a manufacturers' agent.
No longer did he live behind the store; now that he had a wife, he needed proper accommodations. They lived with Chiman and his wife, in a new complex just built by the family: sixteen apartments around a central courtyard. Ratanji's dream was that all of his relations would live there as one big happy family, a mini-Khatriville in the heart of Suva. Colorful laundry hung from the railings, women called to one another with the day's news, children ran up and down the central staircase shouting and playing—and squabbles broke out regularly, with great displays of shouting and door slamming.
Settling into this new milieu, Manjula experienced the physical changes of pregnancy and motherhood, as well as the emotional changes of being in a new place and in a new family. And she faced them largely alone, for Ranchhod's mind and time were fully occupied by business.
Late one night in 1961, Ranchhod sat in his office with the day's correspondence spread before him. He was twenty-six years old, married, a father of two—their first child was a girl, the second a boy—and a man of business. His office light often burned late, like the Fiji night sounds bright around him, dogs barking, jungle insects rubbing their wings. With him was a distant cousin, Kanti, whom he counted as a close friend. Ranchhod was an established presence within Fiji's Gujarati business community, though he remained small fry within the family: not the company director that his father and uncle were, nor the secretary that his eldest brother was. Now he had a problem, and he and Kanti were going to figure it out.
On his desk were the day's letters, typed in English and ready to be mailed out: orders, payments, instructions for merchandise delivery. Kanti picked up the first one and read the company name aloud, and Ranchhod told him what the letter inside should say.
—But it doesn't say that at all, Kanti said. Letter after letter, the whole stack was wrong.
In the morning Ranchhod summoned his secretary, fired him, and determined—after a lifetime of
resistance—to learn English. What the British Raj, his father and uncles and teachers, and his own ambition could not accomplish, his temper did. He wrote to Uncle Magan, temporarily in India, who gladly sent a book two inches thick: The Universal Eng.-Guj. Practical Dictionary (containing many useful hints for study and for business). The dictionary makers knew their market. Ranchhod began to read it, one page at a time. "A: The first letter of the English alphabet. One of the tunes in the European music. An indefinite article which means one or any one..."
In this choice of pedagogical method, he followed in the footsteps of his father. Ratanji had studied only a couple of grades in India; when he went to Fiji at age fourteen, he could barely read Gujarati. But business required dealings in English, so his uncle Jiwan gave him an English-Gujarati dictionary, the only book they had that could bridge the two languages.—Study this, Ratanji was told. The men lived behind the store in those days; there was no desk, no table lamp. Young Ratanji went out under the streetlight after the day's work was done and memorized the dictionary, one word at a time.
Now Ranchhod was doing the same, although he had the luxury of studying indoors. As he progressed, he started reading daily headlines in the Fiji Times, dictionary by his side.
To encourage him, Uncle Magan wrote to two British companies with whom Narseys had dealings, explaining that his nephew was learning English and would be writing the correspondence to them from now on, as practice, and that he would appreciate their help in his nephew's education. For the letters, Ranchhod painstakingly arranged English sentences using the dictionary, a process that guaranteed errors of grammar and syntax. His typist was under instructions to type the letters exactly as written, in duplicate: one for the British traders to keep, the other double-spaced for them to correct and send back.
Leaving India Page 15
