by Amitav Ghosh
Despite the undreamt-of advantages offered by this match, Bahram’s mother did not press it on him: the hardships of her life had given her many insights into the world, and in discussing the conditions that accompanied the proposal, she said: For a man to live with his in-laws, as a ‘house-husband’ – a gher-jamai – is never an easy thing. You know what people say about sons-in-law: kutra pos, bilarã pos per jemeinã jeniyãne varmã khos – rear a dog, rear a cat, but shove the son-in-law and his offspring into the gutter …
Bahram laughed this off as a piece of rustic wisdom that had no application to people as wealthy and sophisticated as the Mistries. He himself was impatient to quit his rustic surroundings, and he knew that an opportunity like this one was unlikely ever to be presented to him again: his mind was made up almost from the first, but for form’s sake, he let a week go by before asking his mother to accept the proposal on his behalf.
And so, with appropriately muted celebrations, the marriage came about, and Bahram and Shireenbai moved into an apartment in the Mistrie mansion on Bombay’s Apollo Street.
Shireenbai was a shy, retiring girl whose spirits had been permanently dimmed by the tragedy that preceded her marriage; her demeanour was more of a widow than a bride, and she seemed always to be shrouded in melancholy, as though she were mourning the husband she should have had. Towards Bahram she was dutiful, if unenthusiastic, and since he had not expected much more, they dealt with each other well enough and had two daughters in quick succession.
If there was little passion in Bahram’s relationship with Shireenbai, there was also little rancour – but such could not be said for his dealings with the rest of her family. The Mistries’ sprawling compound housed a great many people, including Shireenbai’s parents, her three brothers, their wives and their children – and with the notable exception of the patriarch, they seemed mostly to be united in their wariness of the penniless provincial who had come into their midst: it was as though a bumptious and somewhat uncouth poor relative had insinuated himself into their home with an eye to dispossessing them of it.
That Bahram was sometimes clumsy in his ways, he himself would not have gainsaid, any more than he would have denied that his rustic Gujarati and inadequate English were something of an embarrassment within the urbane confines of the Mistrie mansion. But these were no more than minor issues; the truth was that he would not have been quite so much of a misfit had he not been so utterly bereft of the aptitudes that the Mistries expected of their menfolk. They were a lineage of builders and master-craftsmen, who prided themselves on their technical skills. Shireenbai’s father, Seth Rustamjee, had made it his mission to prove that Indian-made vessels – which Europeans commonly spoke of as ‘country-boats’ or ‘black-ships’ – could perform as well as, if not better than, any in the world. Not only had the Seth been personally responsible for several significant innovations in shipbuilding techniques, he had also trained his apprentices to stay abreast of technological advances in this rapidly changing field. Bombay was regularly visited by some of the sleekest and most sophisticated foreign-made vessels: by befriending the artisans and repairmen who serviced these ships, the Mistries kept themselves informed of all the latest technical improvements and nautical gadgetry, which they quickly adapted and refined for their own use. Indeed, their ships were so advanced in design, and built at such little cost, that many European fleets and shipowners – even Her Majesty’s Navy – had begun to send commissions to Mistrie & Sons in preference to the shipyards of Southampton, Baltimore and Lübeck.
If the Mistries had succeeded in making their firm into a formidable force within a fiercely competitive industry, it was because they had kept their attention closely fixed upon their chosen fields of expertise. To fit into such a specialized organization required, of a newcomer, certain skills and abilities that Bahram did not possess: tools did not sit well in his fidgety hands, details bored him, and he was too individualistic to stay in step with a team of fellow workers. His tenure as an apprentice shipwright was a short one and he was quickly shunted off to a dingy daftar at the back, where the firm’s accounts were tabulated. But this suited him no better for neither numbers nor the men who worked with them were of the least interest to him: shroffs and ledger-keepers seemed to him to be painfully constrained in their vision of the world, devoid of imagination and entrepreneurship. His own gifts, as he saw them, were of a completely different kind; he was good at dealing with people, staying abreast of the news, and was blessed moreover with a sharp eye for sizing up risks and opportunities: not for him the tedium of coin-sifting and column-filling – even while serving time in the daftar, he was careful to keep himself informed of other openings, never doubting that he would one day chance upon a field of enterprise that was better suited to his talents.
It wasn’t long before Bahram knew exactly what he wanted to do: the export trade between western India and China was growing very fast, and offered all kinds of opportunities – not just of profit but also of travel, escape and excitement. But he knew that to persuade the Mistries to enter this arena would not be easy; in matters of business they were deeply conservative and disapproved of anything that smacked of speculation.
Sure enough when Bahram first brought up the matter of entering the export trade, his father-in-law had reacted with distaste: What? Selling opium overseas? That’s just gambling – it isn’t something that a firm like the Mistries’ can get involved in.
But Bahram had come prepared. Listen sassraji, he had said. I know you and your family are committed to manufacturing and engineering. But look at the world around us; look at how it is changing. Today the biggest profits don’t come from selling useful things: quite the opposite. The profits come from selling things that are not of any real use. Look at this new kind of white sugar that people are bringing from China – this thing they call ‘cheeni’. Is it any sweeter than honey or palm-jaggery? No, but people pay twice as much for it or even more. Look at all the money that people are making from selling rum and gin. Are these any better than our own toddy and wine and sharaab? No, but people want them. Opium is just like that. It is completely useless unless you’re sick, but still people want it. And it is such a thing that once people start using it they can’t stop; the market just gets larger and larger. That is why the British are trying to take over the trade and keep it to themselves. Fortunately in the Bombay Presidency they have not succeeded in turning it into a monopoly, so what is the harm in making some money from it? Every other shipyard maintains a small fleet, to engage in overseas trade; isn’t it time for the Mistries to set up an export division of their own? Look at the returns that some other firms are getting of late, by exporting cotton and opium: they have been doubling and even tripling their investments with every consignment they send to China. If you give me permission I will be glad to make an exploratory voyage to Canton.
Seth Rustamji was still unpersuaded. No, he said, this is too big a departure from the firm’s practices. I can’t allow it.
So Bahram went back to his old accounting job but his performance was so poor that Seth Rustamji called him back into his daftar and told him, bluntly, that he was becoming a complete nikammo – a worthless man. In the shipyard he had proved worse than useless; at home he seemed unable to get along with most of the family – if he carried on like this he would soon become a burden on the family.
Bahram lowered his head and said: Sassraji, everyone makes mistakes. I am just twenty-one; give me a chance to go to China and I will prove myself. Believe me, I will always try to be worthy of you and your family.
Seth Rustomji had looked at him long and hard and then given him an almost imperceptible nod: All right, go then, let’s see what comes of it.
And so Mistrie and Sons had financed Bahram’s first voyage to Canton – and the results had astonished everyone, not least Bahram himself. For him, of all the surprises of that journey, none was greater than that of the foreign enclave of Canton, where the traders resided. ‘Fanqui
-town’, as old hands called it, was a place at once strangely straitened yet wildly luxurious; a place where you were always watched and yet were free from the frowning scrutiny of your family; a place where the female presence was strictly forbidden, but where women would enter your life in ways that were utterly unexpected: it was thus that Bahram, while still in his twenties, found himself gloriously and accidentally entangled with Chi-mei, a boat-woman who gave him a son – a child who was all the more dear to him because his existence could never be acknowledged in Bombay.
In Canton, stripped of the multiple wrappings of home, family, community, obligation and decorum, Bahram had experienced the emergence of a new persona, one that had been previously dormant within him: he had become Barry Moddie, a man who was confident, forceful, gregarious, hospitable, boisterous and enormously successful. But when he made the journey back to Bombay, this other self would go back into its wrappings; Barry would become Bahram again, a quietly devoted husband, living uncomplainingly within the constraints of a large joint family. Yet, it was not as if any one aspect of himself were more true or authentic than the other. Both these parts of his life were equally important and necessary to Bahram, and there was little about either that he would have wanted to change. Even Shireenbai’s unemotional dutifulness, her scarcely hidden disappointments, seemed indispensable within the contours of his existence, posing as they did, a necessary corrective to his natural ebullience.
Such was Bahram’s success that he could very well have hived off from the Mistrie firm and set up a trading firm of his own – but this he was never seriously tempted to do. His compensation, for one thing, was so generous as to leave no room for complaint. But even more than his earnings, Bahram enjoyed the perquisites that went with serving as a representative of one of Bombay’s most highly regarded companies: the fact of being able to command some of the finest lodgings in Canton, for example, and of having a near-unlimited allowance for his personal expenses. And then there was the comfort and prestige of having at his disposal a ship like the Anahita, which his father-in-law had built with his own hands, specifically for his use, so that it served almost as his personal flagship: few traders, in Canton or elsewhere, could boast of travelling in such unmatched luxury.
Besides, breaking off from the Mistrie firm would inevitably have entailed a change of residence as well – and Bahram knew that Shireenbai would never agree to leave the family mansion. Every time he had ever suggested it, she had burst into tears. How can you speak of leaving? Ay apru gher nathi? Isn’t this our house too? You know my mother wouldn’t survive it if I left. And what would I do during those months and years when you’re away in China – alone on my own, with no man by my side? It would be different of course if gher ma deekra hote – if there was a son in the house, but …
So Bahram had been content to remain within the Mistrie fold, quietly building up his part of the business, grooming it into a worthy sibling for the family’s shipyard. But strangely, Bahram’s success did nothing to soften Shireenbai’s brothers’ view of him: on the contrary, it added an element of fear to their long-held suspicions, for they now began to resent their father’s growing reliance on him.
If the younger Mistries’ attitude was puzzling to Bahram, it was not so to his mother, who accounted for it by reaching into her ditty-bag of proverbs. Don’t you understand why they’re afraid? she said. What they’re saying to each other is: palelo kutro peg kedde – it’s the pet dog that bites you in the leg …
As so often before, Bahram had laughed at her homespun wisdom – but in the end it was she who was proved right.
Through all his years of working for Mistrie & Sons Bahram had assumed, with his father-in-law’s encouragement, that he would one day be given full control of the division he had founded and nurtured. But then, unexpectedly, the Seth had a stroke that left him paralysed and unable to speak. For many months he hovered between life and death, throwing the family, and the firm, into turmoil. The will that he was rumoured to have made was never found, and after his death his sons and grandsons quickly came to be embroiled in a struggle over the future of the firm. Neither Bahram nor Shireenbai played any part in this tussle, for her inheritance was held in trusteeship by her brothers, and Bahram himself did not possess enough of an equity stake to be considered a principal.
Bahram’s first inkling of what was afoot came when he was summoned to a meeting with his brothers-in-law. Sitting around him in a semicircle, they told him that they had come to a decision about the future of their company; the shipbuilding business had been in decline for a long time and they had now resolved to liquidate the whole firm in order to provide the brothers and their children with seed capital to start other businesses. Since the export division, and the fleet, were now the most valuable parts of the company, they would be the first to be sold. It was unfortunate of course that he, Bahram, would have to go into retirement; but in recognition of his contribution, the firm would certainly award him an extremely generous financial settlement – and it was true after all, that he was in his fifties now, with both his daughters married and well provided for. Had he not reached a point in his life when a luxurious retirement would seem like a fitting end to a brilliant career?
In other words, he, Bahram, who had contributed so much to the firm was to be shut out of the succession and pensioned off.
That the Mistries might be willing to sell off their hugely profitable export unit was a possibility that Bahram had never contemplated. Nor could he abide the thought of retirement; never to go to sea again, never to return to Canton would be to diminish his life by half or more; it would be as good as a living death. Three years had already passed since his last visit to China, and in the meanwhile his son, who was now in his early twenties, had disappeared and Chi-mei had died. For that reason alone it was impossible for him to think of renouncing Canton for ever; he would never be able to live with the torment of not knowing what had become of his boy.
But why now? said Bahram to his brothers-in-law. Why do you want to sell the export division at a time when it’s poised to do better than ever before? Why not wait a few years?
The Mistrie brothers explained that they had of late heard many troubling rumours about the situation in China; there was even talk that the Emperor would soon impose a total ban on opium imports. A period of prolonged uncertainty seemed to be looming ahead, which was why many Bombay businessmen were washing their hands of the China trade. As for themselves, they had always felt that this enterprise was overly risky and speculative; they had now concluded that it would be best to get rid of the export division before it became a drag upon the rest of the firm.
Bahram’s response was to stare at his brothers-in-law in frank astonishment: being much better informed about the situation than they, he had given the rumours and gossip much more attention than they had. The conclusion he had reached was exactly the opposite of theirs; it seemed to him that the present conditions offered an unmatched commercial opportunity, the like of which came only once or twice in a lifetime. Similar rumours had circulated in 1820 and Seth Rustamjee had tried to dissuade Bahram from shipping any opium that year. Not only had Bahram insisted on going, he had shipped his biggest consignment to date; things had turned out exactly as he had expected and he had made an immense profit. It was this coup that had pushed him into the select group of foreign merchants who were known in Canton as daaih-baan – or taipans, as they liked to style themselves.
Bahram had good reason to think that the same thing would happen again this year: he had recently learnt that a group of senior mandarins had submitted a memorial to the Emperor of China, recommending the legalization of the opium trade. It seemed likely that this would soon be acted upon: the state stood to earn huge revenues if it taxed the trade, and the mandarins too would make enormous profits. The demand for opium was sure to increase vastly afterwards.
Bahram could have told the Mistrie brothers about this if he had wished; he could also have told them that h
e had planned to ship an unusually large consignment of opium this year, in the expectation of making a great deal of money for the firm. But he did neither; instead he came to a decision that he should have made many years ago: for much too long had he used his wits, his nerves and his experience to make money for his brothers-in-law; it was time now to do it for himself. If he pooled all his resources, cashed in his savings, mortgaged his properties, sold Shireenbai’s jewellery and borrowed from his friends, he would surely be able to double or treble his capital, allowing him to set up his own company. The risk had to be taken.
He gave his brothers-in-law a polite smile. No, he said. No you will not sell off the export division.
What do you mean?
You will not sell it off because I will buy it from you myself.
You? they cried out in unison. But think of the cost … there are the ships … the Anahita … the crews and their salaries. … the insurance … the daftars … the warehouses … the working capital … the fixed expenses.
They fell silent and goggled at him, until one of them found the breath to ask: And do you have the funds?
Bahram shook his head. No, he said. I don’t have the funds right now. But once we settle on a price, I give you my word that you’ll have the money within a year. Until that time, I ask that you leave the export division intact, and in my charge, to run as I see fit.
The brothers had glanced at each other uneasily, unsure of how to respond. To settle the matter, Bahram had pointed out, gently: You have no choice, you know. Everybody in Bombay knows that I have built this division from nothing. No one would buy it against my advice. You would not realize a fraction of its true price.
Right then there was a sound overhead. It was caused merely by the fall of some weighty object on the floor above – but Bahram was familiar with the superstitions of his audience and he seized his opportunity. Laying his hand on his heart, he said: Hak naam te Saahebnu, Truth is the name of the Almighty.
