As the car pulled up in the portico, Victor’s mother stepped over the threshold carrying a silver salver with a small mound of vermilion powder and lit with tiny silver oil lamps. She waved the salver in front of her son’s face, put a mark of sindoor on his forehead, handed the salver to a servant and took her son in her embrace. ‘Beta, you have taken too long to come back and see your mother.’ Then she clung to him and broke down. ‘Ma, what is the matter? Why are you crying? Aren’t you happy to have me back?’ asked Victor. She merely pulled away and looked up at him wordlessly. Then she wiped the tears off her eyes and face and rushed back to her room. ‘Overcome with emotion,’ pronounced his father gravely. ‘She’s been counting the days to your return.’
The days went by faster than Victor had anticipated. First there was his overpowering and indulgent father. He was forever inviting English judges and senior officers and rich Indian friends to show off his son. A few times he took him to the courts to hear him argue his cases. Victor was impressed that though he Lordshipped the judges, the judges were deferential towards him. He saw junior lawyers flocking to his office to prepare his briefs. Valerie—who he could see had no real reason any longer to be at Shanti Bhavan as a governess—had taken over the administration of his father’s office. She made sure the clerks were on time and Mattoo’s legal papers properly arranged. She joined his sisters in the evenings and read them English poetry. His sisters fussed over him, introduced their girlfriends to him and later asked him which one he liked best. There was a lot of fun and laughter. He made it a point to spend as much time as he could with his mother. In all his years he had never known her to be truly happy, but now there was something final about her sadness. When she talked to him, her apprehensions were about his health: whether he had milk every day, what he ate, making quite sure that as a Brahmin he never touched beef or alcohol. Most of all she was concerned about his marriage. ‘Beta, don’t ever marry a white woman; she will never fit into our family. I have been approached by top Kashmiri families of India for their daughters, good-looking girls, highly educated. When you get back finally you must choose one you like.’
‘Ma, I have no intention of marrying anyone yet. You choose a girl for me when I’m back and I will accept your choice,’ he assured her every time she broached the subject. It was the least he could do for a once proud woman who had been put away like antique furniture in a corner of the sprawling house. His sisters had confirmed what he suspected—that Valerie was now effectively mistress of the house. But he could feel no ill-will or resentment towards his father or Valerie.
Before he knew it, it was time for him to take leave of his family. He had written to Gandhi asking if he could see him before returning to Oxford. Gandhi had written back on his trademark postcard telling him to come to Sabarmati any day except Tuesday which was his day of silence. So Victor took the train to Ahmedabad. This time it was only his family to see him off at the station. The next morning he reached Ahmedabad and hired a car to take him to Sabarmati ashram.
It was strange that he felt as close to Gandhi as he did to his mother, and indeed some of the things Gandhi had to say could well have come from her.
‘I hope you have not taken to drinking; everyone in Europe drinks.’
‘A little now and then, on festive occasions,’ replied Victor.
‘Don’t touch it; it’s poison.’
‘Yes, Bapu. I’ll do my best to avoid it.’
‘You eat meat? That’s also very bad. We must not kill innocent animals to fill our bellies. It is uncivilized.’
‘At school they served meat at every meal. What could I do?’
‘You can get good vegetarian food in London. I lived on it all the years I was there. You should abjure eating animal flesh.’
‘I’ll try, but I can’t promise.’
‘And women? The western world is full of temptations and it is easy to sin in those lands. I trust you will not succumb.’
Victor was quiet; he could not lie to Bapu. Mercifully, Bapu changed the subject.
‘You still believe in industrializing India? Steel mills, textile mills and all that kind of thing? What will happen to the millions of weavers who make a living spinning and weaving cloth?’
‘They could be employed in the textile mills and earn more money. We could export our cloth and earn foreign exchange.’
‘Uproot them from their villages and put them in city slums? Not right.’
And so it went on for almost an hour till Gandhi’s secretary told him he had other appointments to keep. He pulled out his pocket watch, checked the time and remarked, ‘Time is sacred. Always remember that.’
‘Yes, Bapu.’
He touched Gandhi’s feet and took his leave. He felt exhilarated. Though he did not share Gandhi’s views, in him he saw a kindred soul for whom personal destiny was no different from the destiny of his country. Even if his style turned out to be different, he knew that Gandhi’s idea of sewa—service of the people—would be the guiding principle of his own life too.
From Ahmedabad Victor took the train to Bombay and from there theMV Victoriato Genoa. Then by train across France, across the Channel ferry to England and to his flat in Albion Mews. Valerie had hired a charwoman to come once a week to sweep the floors and dust the furniture. It was neat and tidy as it could be. To Victor this was more home than Delhi’s Shanti Bhavan.
~
Victor had been to Oxford soon after he had taken his final exams in Eton. He had called on the Master of Balliol, been assured of admission and told to find his digs from the printed list the college bursar had given him. It was a short cycling distance from his college. He had filled his admission forms to study law, philosophy and economics. He had also gained admission to the Inner Temple as Gandhi has suggested. It assured him regular visits to Albion Mews after he had dined at the Temple a few evenings every session as prescribed.
At Oxford Victor came into contact with Indians of his own age. There were nearly a dozen in different colleges and they came from different parts of India. They met every fortnight at the Indian Majlis to discuss the state of affairs in their country and occasionally invited speakers from outside, conservatives, socialists and communists, to address them. Victor looked forward to these meetings and often made long interventions to air his views.
Victor tried, but could not make friends with any of the Indian boys. Three were sons of Indian princes and lived in style with cooks and servants they brought with them. They took more interest in sports and dating English girls than in studies. Victor found them too arrogant for his liking. The others were from well-to-do middle-class families or sons of senior civil servants. Their one ambition was to get into the Indian Civil Service or, failing that, to get jobs in British-owned companies in India which paid handsome salaries. They too seemed to have screwing English girls on top of their agendas;Mem ki phuddiwas the one thing they wanted most from England, everything else was of little importance. Victor had little time for them and much preferred keeping company with the few boys he had known in Eton.
He spent his first summer vacations in Albion Mews, studying most of the day, taking long walks in Hyde Park in the afternoons. What he found a little disturbing was the sight of couples lying in tight embrace in broad daylight. Didn’t they have places where they could do their love-making in privacy? He was not a prude, but the scenes lingered in his mind and disturbed his night’s sleep. He tossed and turned longing for a warm body to hold.
During his vacations he paid visits to Manchester to see its latest textile mills and find out for himself why its products riled Gandhi so much. He was confirmed in his analysis that the way to drive Manchester products out of the market was to produce quality fabrics at cheaper prices in India and not return to medieval spinning and weaving. With labour cheaper than one-tenth of what it was in the western world, all India needed was the latest machines and skilled technicians. He wrote to his father and Gandhi about it. It was the same in Sheffield where he
spent his days looking at steel plants. India had plenty of iron ore and coal. All it needed was modern machinery and the expertise to produce all it needed, from pen-knives and shaving blades to railway engines and bridges, and have lots to spare for export. He wrote to his father and Gandhi about this as well. Back in Oxford he propounded his views at a meeting of the Indian Majlis. They listened to him in bored silence. Victor gave up on them.
It was over a year later that Victor found an Indian he could talk to on serious subjects. He was a new entrant to Balliol and on some kind of Indian scholarship which only covered his fees and admission to an Inns of Court. He was a thin, almost gaunt, dark man with bright eyes and curly jet-black hair and a hooked nose which never stopped twitching. He reminded Victor of Shakespeare’s Cassius, a man of lean and hungry look. Like Cassius in the play, this man also always seemed to be thinking too much. His name was Madhavan Nair and he was from Kerala. He was to become a person of considerable influence in Victor’s life.
Nair survived on nothing else besides endless cups of tea, salted biscuits and tomato soup. Despite a tattered overcoat he wore all the time, he shivered in winter and summer. He had no small talk and was rumoured to be a communist. Victor first met him at a meeting of the Majlis at which they were discussing the role of Indian princes in the future of India. The princely types mentioned that with the experience of administering large states, some larger than provinces directly administered by the British, they had a major role to play. Nair jumped from his seat and shouted in his thick Malayali accent, ‘You princes will be in garbage cans! Leeches fattened on the blood of poor peasants, you are the scum of the earth! The sooner you are wiped off the face of the of the earth, the better it will be for India.’
There was an uproar. ‘Apologize!’ demanded a few; others smirked. Nair stood among them, defiant and frighteningly intense. Victor was impressed by his daring. After the meeting he went up to Nair and shook his claw-like hand. ‘I am Jai Bhagwan from Delhi. I agree with everything you said.’ They became friends.
Nair was not a card-carrying member of the Communist Party but of the Indian National Congress (Gandhi) and joined the Labour Party’s left-wing Socialist group in London. He had come from India with introductions from his sponsors and with some English radicals formed The Free India Society. It had no more than two dozen members to start with, mostly men and women who came from the upper echelons of English society. They welcomed Nair in their homes; he was exotic enough and gave them the chance to be seen as radical and fashionably leftist. A couple of English girls were very taken up by his austere appearance and wanted to mother him. He had no trouble in taking them to bed. He was short and peremptory with them afterwards, but they usually came right back.
Nair was utterly unlike Victor but they hit it off from the very start. Victor liked his sharp wit and ability to give more tit for tat he got from adversaries in debates. He also had a phenomenal memory and could reel out statistics to prove how the British had milked India over the centuries. Nair, on the other hand, was pleased with Victor’s high opinion of him and saw himself as a sort of intellectual mentor of the rich young Indian. Though Victor was not much into politics, he joined Nair’s Free India Society.
They spent most of their after-college hours together. Victor often invited him out for dinner. He was a poor eater; it was invariably tomato soup and toast accompanied by relays of cups of tea. He would not eat meat nor take beer or wine. ‘You are a bit of an ascetic, you know,’ said Victor to him one evening. ‘How you manage to survive in this damp, cold climate is beyond me.’
Nair grinned. ‘The body does not need all the junk you people dump into it morning, noon and night. It all comes out as smelly shit.’ They talked endlessly; Nair about the need to throw the British out of India; Victor about how India could be made rich and prosperous.
‘Look, why don’t you put your ideas on paper? I’ll help you. Let other people know about your dreams for India,’ said Nair another evening.
‘Me, write? Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Victor. ‘I couldn’t write even if my life depended on it. I only write letters to my parents. I haven’t even written a love letter.’
‘You can always start. Write a long love letter of many chapters to India as if it were your sweetheart.’
‘Who will read my junk? It will be a waste of time. Besides, I have to prepare for my exams; Oxford and Bar finals. Where is the time?’
‘Find it. Instead of yakking away evening after evening, write a page a day and get it out of your system.’
‘Who’ll publish it?’
‘Leave that to me. You write the book, I’ll get it published. We have Free India publications.’
The idea germinated in Victor’s mind. How wonderful it would be to have a book with his name printed on the cover. See it displayed in windows of bookstores across the globe. Have people coming to ask him to autograph copies for them. It was like a fever. It was the inception ofIndia of My Dreamsby Victor Jai Bhagwan.
Victor studied hard for his exams and at the same time kept making notes for his book. He discussed every chapter with Nair before preparing a draft; then showed him his final version. As soon as his exams were over, he got down to his book. One month in Albion Mews and the book was done. He handed over the manuscript to Nair when he was in London to dine at his Inns of Court. A month later he received a contract from Left Book Publishers. Victor was in seventh heaven and sent a long telegram to his father. He got a congratulatory telegram in return and his first buyer: he was to ship 500 copies to his father for free distribution to his friends and mail one autographed copy to Gandhi at Sabarmati.
Victor hoped to get a first division; he got only a second. He was not unduly upset. His degree from Oxford saved him from taking Bar exams. He got his Barrister’s certificate. He had visiting cards printed: V. Jai Bhagwan BA (Oxon) Barristerat-Law. A couple of hundred cards had his Albion Mews address; another 200 his father’s.
Despite his father’s suggestion that he see more of Europe before returning home, Victor decided to stay on in London. The city had grown on him. He loved loitering around Central London, watching people feed pigeons in Trafalgar Square, listening to the twittering of thousands of starlings at dusk, gazing at shop windows and crowds hurrying by. And of course there was Hyde Park with its Speakers’ Corner, street walkers along Bayswater Road and above all the snug peacefulness of his tiny apartment. He did, however, spend another few days in Manchester. He called on the general manager of the largest textile mill in England and asked him if he would be interested in a partnership to set up a modern textile mill in India. ‘I’ll have to consult my board of directors,’ the manager replied cagily. ‘We have our hands full; I am not sure how they will respond to the idea. I will let you know in three days.’ As Victor had anticipated, the response was negative. Why should they break their legs with their own hands by encouraging and abetting Indian products? Victor was undaunted. He approached manufacturers of textile machinery; they were more than happy to sell the latest machines at reasonable prices. He approached architects who had designed the mills and technicians who had installed the machines. A three-month assignment in India with handsome wages was more than they could resist. Victor took down their names and addresses and promised to send them formal contracts as soon as he was ready to send for them. In an almost matter-of-fact manner, he had set in motion the momentous project that would shape his own future and India’s.
6
* * *
Victor left some of his clothes and other belongings in his London flat, so that Valerie understood it was his for whenever he wanted it, and headed back home to Delhi. He reached Shanti Bhavan loaded with gifts for everyone: a gold fountain pen for his father, a mohair shawl for his mother, scarves and bottles of perfumes for his sisters, an illustrated Bible for Valerie. As he had hoped, many of his father’s friends came to have his book autographed by him. He did not ask them if they had read it.
After the retu
rning home celebrations and excitement was over, his father asked him at the breakfast table, ‘So Jai, what now?’
Without a pause he replied, ‘I want to set up the biggest and the most modern textile factory in India, either here or in Bombay or Ahmedabad. I will have to raise the money to buy land and import machinery from England. I have brought the details of what I will need with me.’
Mattoo thought this over the problem before he replied. ‘I don’t have that kind of money saved up. We will have to float a public company and invite people to buy shares. I am sure some of my rich clients will pitch in. But we must keep the control in our own hands. You look for the proper site; it will be easier to get one near Delhi than any other city. I’ll get land agents to take you around to see what is available.’
There were days of hectic activity. Victor was out most of the day. He needed a minimum of fifteen acres with immediate possession of undisputed land. It was the mid 1930s and prime land was already becoming scarce. At last he found one stretch adjacent to a village some ten miles upstream of the Yamuna. It was barren because of saltpetre. He called a panchayat of the village and asked them if they objected to having a mill go up next to their village. He knew that if he wanted the project to be a success, he had to take them with him. ‘I will give you whatever you think a reasonable price for the barren piece of land. I will also give your boys and girls employment.’
They were overjoyed. ‘Give us what you think is reasonable. Your coming will bring light to our village. Our generations to come will bless you.’
‘Grow cotton, good quality cotton,’ he told them, ‘I will buy whatever you grow.’
He joined them smoking the hookah of goodwill that went from mouth to mouth. Old women came up and put their hands on his head to bless him; young women peered through their half-drawn veils; boys and girls just stood around gaping and giggling. Victor was a happy man that day: the first hurdle had been crossed.
Burial at Sea Page 5
