‘I believe you, Sere.’ That never-seen-a-man look again.
The English Department’s stockroom was dark and crowded with tall, narrowly placed bookshelves. Soon it became more crowded – I couldn’t move from one row of shelves to another without brushing past my guide. It was a hot afternoon. First Rachel showed me the books. Then she said, ‘Gosh, I’m boiling, Sere,’ and casually undid a couple of buttons on her white shirt under her green blazer. The hot afternoon became hotter and dangerous. Gosh. If Rachel was boiling, Sere was a house on fire. If he didn’t run he would be doing a spell in Dante’s Hell.
‘Let’s go, Rachel. I have seen enough.’
‘Oh no you haven’t, Sere.’ I hadn’t. But I did and saw the shores of fair England from end to end and marvelled - very dangerously - at how very fair they really were. Out in the long corridor with a polished lino floor, I saw Christ studying me with interest from a grey wooden frame. I crossed myself like a good Christian, which I was not, and begged His forgiveness.
‘Wasn’t me, Sere. I did nothing. You are my witness.’ 5C had a large classroom. Thirty Rachels filled it, thirty beautiful white faces, all staring at me like Rachel. Two voices in me competed with each other for immediate attention. One said: ‘Say, “excuse me, ladies, I have left something in the staff room”, and race Derby Horse time to the school gate, or scale its eight foot wall. The other said, ‘Swim, boy, swim.’
‘Keats was only a few years older than you young ladies when he wrote this poem,’ I said instead, turning to the business at hand. ‘The house he wrote it in is only a couple of miles from here. Actually, he wrote it in the garden there.’
‘He must have loved gardening, Sere.’ Rachel sat opposite me in the front row. She was a careless girl with her blazer and all. I saw that the girl on her right didn’t know what shirt buttons were made for either. Nor the girl on her left. Standing erect as I was, suddenly I felt a pronounced reluctance in my knees to support me in that position. But somehow I carried on with the famous Ode, a personal favourite. One of Rachel’s companions raised a hand.
‘Is it true you have four wives, Sere?’
‘Only half true.’ 5C found my answer funny. It laughed un-conventlike. As it did so, in walked the Sister.
‘How are we getting on then, 5C. Didn’t know Keats was such a humorous poet. Excuse me, Mr Mera. I just dropped by to see how you were settling down.’
It was only when the Sister had left that I noticed in that sea of lovely white faces facing me, a face as brown as my own. It belonged to a young person in a nun’s habit, her dark brown eyes focused on me like Rachel’s. She was more a contemporary of mine than Rachel’s and I wondered what a senior citizen like her was doing amidst sixteen year olds.
Mrs Grange was also 5C’s form tutor. She didn’t come to school for two whole weeks. This meant I saw 5C daily for the register and three times a week for English. It allowed me to get to know my pupils quite well and this person of my pigmentation somewhat better. She was called Sister Teresa and hailed from Kerala in south India. She was new to the school and had been sent here on a Catholic scholarship of some sort. Sister Teresa was well respected by the girls here, but the trouble was she did not speak English. The other girls took it for granted that our common nationality would bring us together and that I would become their interpreter.
Our Indianness did bring us together, but alas, we could not talk to each other. Being from the very south, she knew no North Indian language - just a few words of Hindi. And I, being from Simla two thousand miles away, knew not a syllable of hers. Whenever she could, she described her life here in one single word - a word I knew so well: ‘Lonely.’
Inside the convent, she couldn’t talk to anyone. Outside it, she knew no one. The poor girl was paying some price for her spiritual advancement. Everybody ‘England-returned’ back home was guaranteed a grand future. Did ‘England-returned nuns’ too have better futures in India? I wondered. I found that whenever the two of us were present at the same place - the classroom, the assembly hall or the library - her eyes were always on me. Then I noticed that whenever she came within a few feet of me, she blushed. Was my presence in that school becoming an impediment to her spiritual growth? Was I coming between her and Christ?
One afternoon, as she handed me her exercise book in which she had devoutly copied out something at my request, her fingers touched mine in a manner which did not strike me as very nunlike. Worried, I decided to make myself scarce for the rest of my time there. Then Mrs Grange came back. Now I had to move on to another school. But the Sister said that they would keep me on for the rest of the week so that I didn’t lose a day’s pay. ‘Besides, we like you here,’ she said. ‘We’ll find you something to do, Mr Mehra.’
I saw Sister Teresa in the morning. It seemed she wanted to say something, but didn’t. I was carrying a few books at the time. Then I came across her in the library, looking at books she could not read.
‘Sir,’ she said as I passed her. I stopped.
‘You go?’ she said, and I saw a tear roll down her cheek.
‘Sister Teresa!’
‘You take me with?’ She handed me a chit of paper. ‘You my brother,’ the chit said. Feeling ashamed of myself, I sought out the Sister.
‘Ah, Mr Mera. You want to see me. May I know what about?’
‘Sister Teresa. I think she should be sent back home.’
‘But she’s only just come.’
‘She is very lonely.’
‘Oh, come, Mr Mera. This is a convent, not a Butlin’s holiday camp. We don’t encourage sentimentality here.’ Her tone was brisk.
‘Maths or science?’ they asked me at St George’s School. ‘Maths or science?’ they asked me at Sir William Collins. It was a day here, two there and sometimes a whole week elsewhere. I preferred girls’ schools to boys’ - not because of the bright lights I had seen in the English Department’s dark stockroom at the convent in Archway, but because I got a good feeling being surrounded by girls. Mixed schools were okay, still I preferred all-girls’. But wherever I went, they asked, ‘Maths or science?’ I eventually found out why.
It came as a surprise how many Indians taught in London schools – there were one or two wherever I went. These fellows taught only maths or science. When not teaching, they became invisible, spending most of their free periods in their rooms. I wondered why. When they did come to the staff room, it was only to make themselves a cup of tea, pick up their stuff from their pigeon-holes, or to make a phone call. In every school I went to, I saw no one notice them come or go. I began to wonder if anybody ever noticed me sitting there, reading the paper and waiting to be called up to do a cover. I was a nomad. There were other nomads around, other supply teachers - Australians, New Zealanders. But surprisingly, even they didn’t seem to see me.
‘Mr Ramprakash, what are you doing at lunch today?’ I asked this chemistry chap one day, trying to strike up a friendship.
‘I am having lunch.’
‘Can I buy you lunch today?’
‘But the lunch is free here if you do a duty. So?’
‘I mean outside. In a pub or somewhere.’
‘I don’t drink, Mr Mehra.’
‘But you eat.’
‘Every day.’
‘So do I. Let’s eat somewhere else. Be my guest.’
‘But why? Do fifteen minutes lunchtime duty and you get free lunch. Including Supply wallahs.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is to sit down somewhere and talk.’
‘Oh, that. Come to my lab after lunch. Room 4T at one-fifteen.’ I did a duty, had a free salad with two slices of tinned ox tongue, and turned up at 4T. ‘How come I never see you in the staff room?’ I asked, curious.
‘I only go there when I have to.’
‘Don’t you like to spend your free time there like every body else? It’s full of pretty women.’
‘No. My arse gets boils on it when I do.’
‘It wouldn’t in Ind
ia.’
‘In India I wouldn’t be teaching at a school. I have a fucking PhD in physics from Punjab University, do you know?’
‘Do they know here?’
‘Of course they fucking do. Yet they give me First, Second and Third Years to teach chemistry, would you believe? Born football hooligans who call me Percy or Coon or Curry Box. First, Second and Third Years. And by the way, Yours Sincerely has been around for three years and is still on Scale One, would you believe? Blackburn, the Aussie bossy bitch, came after me on Scale One, is Head of Department now. And the physics prick Dick Lewis – I went to his lab early last Friday early morning to return something, and lo and behold, what they are doing? Kama sutra on the lab table, would you believe - and what she has in her mouth is not a lollipop. All she says is, “Don’t you knock, Mr Ramprakash?” Prick Dick also came here after me and is on Scale Three now and you say “why don’t you sit in the staff room, Mr Ramprakash?” You have a lot to learn, Mr Mehra.’
‘You mean they were…?’
‘Yes, they were. But they shut me up by saying they knew how discreet I was and then pretending I don’t exist.’
‘Why doesn’t Mr Ali use the staff room?’
‘In the same boat. Has MA in Maths and is teaching Firsts, Seconds and Thirds. Also here three years - came from Karachi same time as me - and still Scale One. They say his English is no good. You don’t need PhD in English literature From Oxford or Cambridge to teach Maths to these football hooligans. They would have England banned from the European Cup if taken to the continent to watch a game.’
Mr Ramprakash also told me why the Indian children were by and large withdrawn. ‘They have the best exam results. But they are betwixt and between, living in no man’s land. They have the friendship neither of the white kids nor of the black. But they have the contempt of both. So they get bullied by both. Badly bullied and no one taking any notice.’ All schools had identical staff rooms. It was bloody amazing. Not only was the furniture the same - standard LCC stuff – but so were the sounds and smells. The conversation too - about increments and who said what about whom, spoken by identical replicas of inhabitants of other staff rooms. Each staff room had its own Mr or Miss Brown, Doris and B.R. Mr Brown was the well-spoken Deputy Head in his mid-thirties. He wore Marks & Sparks suits, usually grey with pinstripes, but sometimes navy blue. He was loaded with charm. He was efficient and possessed a loud firm voice which the boys obeyed. He looked and was effective. He was also ambitious – in a couple of years he would get a headship somewhere. And he was helpful. But he had about him a patronising air which he was at pains to camouflage with charm. He gave the impression he ran the school, not the Headmaster who was often away, attending meetings in County Hall, or unavailable because he was seeing parents. Doris was the fading beauty of fortysomething with highlighted goldilocks. She went to the pub every lunch-hour. She knew everything that went on in the school and she shared this information with panache. She was often divorced. B.R. was the silver-haired gentleman ten to fifteen years Doris’ senior.
He had fought in the war. He had a roving eye and was very friendly, especially to new young women teachers. He always had an open tiff with the Headmaster, but he never seemed unduly concerned about it. He knew a couple of the previous Heads and was always going on about how things were so much better under them. Then there was the coy music teacher the boys called ‘Bender’. He went out of his way to be nice to me.
I saw those surf-white teeth and gleaming black eyes, and joy gushed into the Subcontinental like waves sweeping up a beach.
‘Dog!’ I yelled.
‘Chutia sala cunt. Forgot us the moment he left. Call that friendship? I call it balls.’ Ranji greeted me as close friends in do in India - with rude words, denoting affection. I hugged him and he hugged me back and handed me a carrier bag full of Magic goodies. ‘Boss-ji sends.’
‘Why?’ The bag contained pounds’ worth of wonder-eats one sent to a son at university. I didn’t understand.
‘They want you back. That’s why.’
‘But I have promised to be back.’
‘This is to make sure. Now where’s your hospitality? A tea-cup or something? I am dying.’
I was happy to see Ranji - being with him always gave me this feeling. He never asked you for anything. He was never critical of you. He just went along with you. But something was the matter with him today. He looked very down. I asked what was up.
‘Nothing, yaar. This life. I feel extinguished when I wake up in the centre of the night. In the morning too.’ I knew what the matter was - this Indian-in-England situation.
‘Ranji, what you need is a girlfriend. One continental. NW11 is infested with them. Move here. Tomorrow.’
‘Yeah? Chutia sala cunt.’
‘How’s Auntie Dixit?’
‘Don’t know. Should have phoned her. Must be angry.’
‘Phone her now.’
Ranji didn’t want to. But I insisted and he gave in. Halfway through their conversation, I asked him to let me say hello to Auntie Dixit. Ranji’s aunt remembered me in spite of the wedding-no-wedding cinema of that night. She said her nephew was lucky to have me as a friend.
‘You’ve to do something for him, Auntie. Find him a bride.’
‘Southall has any number of suitable girls.’
‘Just one will do nicely, Auntie. Find him her.’
‘I find her tomorrow if he come to say hello to me today.’ I managed to persuade Ranji to go and see his aunt. It was a day of eye-opening brilliance and loveliness - a blazing sun and blue skies and cool and warm like back home in Simla at this time of the year, which must have been why the English built their summer capital there. I lay down on the incredibly green grass in the jungle of our back garden, and shut my eyes and was instantly hypnotised by the warm glow that filtered through my eyelids. I felt like doing something, going somewhere. The Castle, our local for a Sunday jar? Also there was a little second hand bookshop by its side which was open on Sundays.
As I came to the Castle, I changed my mind and went to the bookshop first. What I saw there had an instant impact on all of me. First my heart missed a couple of necessary beats. Then my feet developed a sudden misunderstanding with the kerb.
‘Oops!’ cried someone as I fell flat on my face.
‘Miss Muir?’ I didn’t think she would stop. I had had a shock.
‘That could have been nasty. Are you all right?’
‘I’m still learning to walk in your streets, you see?’
‘What?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.
‘Good. Take care,’ she said, then waved and walked on.
‘Miss Muir,’ I called. She stopped and turned. ‘Buy you a drink?’ I looked in her eyes. I remembered them as being soft. Today they were softer. And on her Botticelli’s Venus lips there played a smile which was half-sad and half-not sad. I felt my life hang in balance as I waited for my part-time neighbour to reply.
‘Come on, be a sport, as young Robert would say.’ My part-time neighbour bit her lip.
‘I will not say a word to influence your decision.’
‘All right then. Just a quick one.’
The Castle garden was a concentrated clutter of bare arms and bare shoulders. From inside its wide open doors blared the Beatles through a juke box - it was Beatles, Beatles everywhere those days and I was mad about them like the rest of the world. She had a dry sherry, I a half pint of Red Barrel.
‘You know, I have never been in this pub before.’
‘And I have never had a drink with an English girl before.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Honest Injun.’
‘Honest what?’
‘Honest Injun. GBS. You Never Can Tell.’ We had read it at a school the other day.
‘What?’ She laughed and for no reason it broke my heart.
‘Have you forgiven me for that day?’ I asked her. ‘I was so tactless.’
‘Yes, I ha
ve.’
‘Thank you. And when you phoned I had to bite my hand.’
‘Why?’ Her eyes opened wide.
‘It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.’
‘Really? How?’
‘That you thought of me. That you knew how I must have been feeling.’
‘I did. But let’s not talk about it.’
‘But I was dead right from the very beginning.’
‘About what?’
‘About a very special neighbour.’
‘If you are going to talk like this, I am going to run.’ She stood up.
‘Please don’t go.’
A bartender in half a T-shirt passed. He supported a crewcut hairstyle and had dragons and serpents tattooed on his obscenely swollen arms and biceps. He carried fifteen empty glasses and mugs in his massive hands and inflated fingers. After glancing at our unfinished drinks, he fixed me with his eyes and I sensed more than mere disapproval in his look. I dismissed it, saying to myself that maybe I was being over-sensitive. At the same time I knew I was not.
‘Look, I promise not to open my mouth again,’ I told her. ‘Please sit down.’ Miss Muir sat down. We talked of this and that, of her college. Then, our drinks finished, I picked up our glasses to go and have them refilled.
‘We said just one drink.’
‘But it finished too soon.’ I went inside and got refills.
‘I mustn’t really.’ Her cheeks had begun to glow.
‘I mustn’t either. Or I’ll get drunk.’
‘What, on two half-pints?’
‘I had never touched the stuff before I came here.’
‘And you had never had a drink with an English girl. Surely you’ve met girls here. Maybe you are surrounded by them. No?’
‘Is that a rhetorical answer to a non-question?’
‘Sometimes I really don’t understand you.’
‘Some friends have said they can read me like an open book.’
‘Come to think of it, you are quite a funny boy, you know. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that? So you are teaching now. A bit young, but still. What do you teach and where?’
Indian Magic Page 13
