Ancestral Affairs

Father, 1947

I

I have come here alone, to start with. Zarine was too nervous about the place—the usual Parsee nonsense about dubbing every moffusil town a gamda, a village. The only city in the Parsee imagination was that hyphenated conglomeration of seven islands that lay between Mahim creek, with its feral stink, and Colaba, with its smell of dry fish. Actually, parts of Colaba smelt of dry Bombay duck or sukka boomla, as our Parsee women in their embroidered garas and fisherwomen in their hitched-up saris alike called the dehydrated, stinking, skeletal remains of the juicy eel. Parsees fried the desiccated boomlas and you could hear the crackle as they bit into the crunchy slivers. Girls rinsed their mouths with Listerine thereafter, lest their boyfriends refused to kiss them. Parsee women even pickled the beastly things (not their boyfriends, but Bombay duck). But this is not a dissertation on sundried fish. I am speaking of my days in Junagadh, and the year is 1947.

I was brought from Rajkot in a special saloon of the JSR, which stood for the Junagadh State Railway. It wasn’t much of a saloon, with the berths covered with rexene, and a big concave mirror which successfully distorted my face. However, it had a carpet and a lovely ceramic wash basin in the saloon itself. Half a dozen flunkies greeted me at the railway station at Junagadh. It felt good. A green Ford V8 took me to a large house which would be mine now. It had a semi-circular veranda in front. The drain pipes had ceramic gargoyles affixed to them. Once, the cousin of the nawab sahib lived here, I was told. That must have been a while back for the house hadn’t been in use, I guessed. The interior had a clammy air about it, so I had all the windows thrown open. The bed was solid mahogany and a blood-red counterpane, with yellow tassels burgeoning at the ends, was thrown over it. In the stairwell was a huge mirror—concave again—that shortened me, turning my stomach into a cavity. I seemed to be doubling up with an intestinal spasm. Was it a sign? Don’t look for succour within yourself. All you’ll get is warped images bouncing back. Take your spyglass and look outwards. Don’t get bogged down in your petty dreams. The times are such that individuals and their angst would get dwarfed, overrun by events. In the second week of January 1947, I could already sense the advance of the bulldozer of history.

The lawns were weed-bitten and undulated towards the paddocks. I was told the very first day that I would have nothing to do with the paddocks. There was no hedge to mark the compound and so I never came to know where it ended and the paddocks began. A bridle path passed through what was now my land, running almost parallel to a storm-water drain, which skirted the paddocks. Even the driveway disintegrated after a while, and further up was an old, rusted truck, its tires sagging and the dust of all of 1946, if not the war years, coating its bonnet. A camouflage net was thrown over it carelessly, for what good I wouldn’t know. I thought of it as a deflated football. Remove it, I commanded, but nothing happened. The same could be said for the mirror in the stairwell. It stayed where it was, draped in shadow, mercifully. They wouldn’t remove it. Not just yet. Near the truck was a pond, which, by evening, was under siege from a frightful cordon of bullfrogs. One could see the membrane around their throats ticking away and vibrating. If they disturb you, we could sprinkle kerosene and light a fire around the pond, one of the servants with a sash across one shoulder suggested. No, burning toads alive was not one of my pastimes, I told him.

I had a wicker armchair, old and nut-brown in colour, pulled out and sat in the mild, amber wintry sunlight of a late afternoon. The light seemed to have a sound to it, the tinkle of stained glass. I soon grew to love the weather, the day sun-drenched, the evening cool, with just a little bite to it—a time for rumination. The meeting at Rajkot with the British Resident had gone off rather well. I was driven into his palace—every big house in the moffusil looks palatial if you are coming out of a poky flat in Bombay—and straightaway ushered into his study. He was bald and tall and had a military air about him, this Sir Alfred Jackson, KC something or the other. KC stood for Knight Commander, Mr Seervai had told me before I left, or rather, before I was temporarily eased out of his chambers. They were my chambers too, till this assignment came up and I was forced to accept it. ‘I am not sure if he is the Knight Commander of the Empire or of that rathole called Kathiawar. Really, it’s not a rathole, it is sylvan, bucolic, Arcadian, if you remember your literature. It’s the only thing that keeps me going, literature, I mean. Take your brief from Sir Alfred, but act exactly according to your conscience. Some of us attorneys keep that in a locker, don’t we?’ Don’t we what? Did he see doubt move across my face like the shadow of a passing cloud? If he did, he didn’t show it. Seervai never wasted time repeating himself.

Sir Alfred’s handshake was firm and he got down to business without the usual pleasantries. ‘These are tricky times, Mr Bharucha. Anything could happen, given the circumstances—the emotional fever pitch of Hindus and Muslims, Congress and League at loggerheads, Gandhi ignored by his own people. It’s a proper mess, if you ask me. And as for us, we aren’t certain when we leave.’

‘If you leave.’

‘We intend to, though many won’t believe it. We have made a commitment in the House of Commons, for heaven’s sake! We can’t renege. Then there are the poor forlorn princes—oh, the princes!’

He paused and let his bearded bearer pour coffee for us and serve the scones. ‘The princes are just hopeless, you know, by which I mean they are without hope. It is not always that a word conveys what it’s meant to.’ (He looked to me for approval and I dutifully nodded.) ‘They’re in an unreal world—just can’t understand what’s going on. They haven’t got it into their heads that when we quit, they’ll be on their own. They won’t be able to run to us like frightened chicks to mother hen.’

‘And what will my responsibilities involve, if I may ask?’

‘You’ve to get your prince, the Nawab Mahabat Khanji, out of dreamland and into the maw of reality, if you know what I mean. And you have to keep a sort of a hermetic lid on any excesses the nawab’s confidants may be dreaming up, the Abu Bhais and the Isu Muhammads. We need someone to talk of sectarian harmony. The previous Law Member, the mustachioed chap, was no good. Was good at twirling his moustaches, but that was about all.’

‘Law Member! Is that what I am going to be called?’ I was horrified.

‘I presume so. Any objections? You are the Law Member of the State Council. It’s your job to keep abreast of all that’s happening, not just in Delhi and Karachi and Lahore, but also in the House of Commons. I would keep my ear glued to the radio, if I were you. To get back to my narrative, His Highness had sent word to Jinnah’s secretary for replacing old moustaches. Jinnah was about to send a Muslim attorney from Sindh. That’s the time I stepped in and persuaded HH to get an expert from Bombay, someone neutral and unbiased and frank. You’ll have to be frank, regardless of how the nawab or his begums or that fat dewan of his think. I prevailed on His Highness—Residents have a way of prevailing upon their Highnesses.’ (There was a gleam in his eye and, for the first time, a half-smile alighted on his lips.)

‘How did Mr Seervai come into the scene?’

‘I had to talk to the greatest lawyer there is in the country. So, once the nawab showed the green flag, I got in touch with Seervai. Frankly, it was Abdul Kadir, the dewan, who vetoed the Sindhi attorney. I think there’s an intrigue on from Karachi and from Jinnah’s secretarial nest. You know the rest. Send me your man, I told Mr Seervai, someone you trust and who’s knowledgeable, someone who won’t panic or give wrong counsel.’

‘I am truly flattered.’

‘Junagadh is the only Muslim state in a sea of Hindu principalities. HH needs to tread warily—that is, if his advisers, the hangers-on, not the dewan, would let him. Kadir has a good head on his shoulders, incidentally. Fortunately, the begums don’t have a head. Nor have they the guts to talk politics with the nawab, or we’d really be in shit.’

‘Is the place seething with intrigue?’

‘No, surprisingly. They are in dreamland, the begums, floating on a magic rug, unaware when the carpet will be pulled from under their delicately hennaed feet. You’re going off to Junagadh today itself, aren’t you? Capital!’ He stood up and extended his hand. That was it. I was on my own now. I came away with the feeling that what one would need here was imagination. I should be able to sense the future, its contours, even as I embark on it.

My only acquaintance with Kathiawar was through Ranji, his Jubilee Book of Cricket and the legends I had heard about the man, his wizardry at the batting crease, his leg glances and late cuts. I had idolized the man, the way he behaved when some British friend shot him in the eye during a hunt … and all that.

The next day, I sent my request for an interview with the prime minister, or rather the dewan, Abdul Kadir. I also requested to see His Highness Mahabat Khanji, the rotund nawab of Junagadh. A fellow Parsee drew up in his car, the tutor and guardian to the prince; a short man with a hearty laugh and the trademark Parsee nose. He had a refined air about him, but nothing put-on or artificial. He asked what was holding me here. I didn’t understand. Come home for lunch, he said. I have asked for appointments with the dewan and His Highness, I answered. They could be summoning me any moment. He laughed. You won’t get to meet them in a week. Why? Because, Mr Saam Bharucha, that’s how they are! Their first job is to put you in your place. That Yasin Khan, who handles all the nawab’s papers, may not forward your request for a week. He happens to be the nawab’s son-in-law too. You are in a native state, my man. Their ways are hoary and desultory. (He made that rhyme.)

His house was excellent, the terrazzo in the verandas blinding, chipped marble, polished to a shimmer, stuck on the mosaic like an afterthought. They had a swimming pool. The prince, Ghulam Muhammad Khanji, was skating in the verandas. His shirt and pajamas were made of silk, thick as gabardine, and flapped like parchment in the wind as he skated. My Parsee friend took me into his study.

‘I think I’ll give you the lie of the land,’ he said. ‘The nawab seldom stirs out of the palace. He keeps to himself and his servants and a few officers—if that’s what you can call them—guys by the names of Yasin Khan and Isu Muhammad. You won’t find a Hindu anywhere in the palace or in the state hierarchy. They are, shall we say, conspicuous by their absence, as the cliché goes. But no one persecutes them either.’

‘Deprivation, especially of jobs, can’t be termed persecution, is it?’

‘Damn right. The hangers-on here have their snouts in the trough. Otherwise, there’s not much sleaze around; only apathy, palpable apathy.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘If you meet the nawab, you’ll find his face expressionless. That’s what makes for apathy, doesn’t it? Perhaps he may be thinking that expressionlessness adds to dignity. You never know. Apart from eating and driving cars and an isolated shikar—what is it that they do volitionally? The nawab has never been to a meeting of the Chamber of Princes, as it is called, never been to Rajkot to meet the Resident. Take my word for it, they won’t last, these princes, and I am not talking only of Junagadh. I mean the whole jingbang lot with their flamboyant turbans, their gun salutes and their absurd titles—Farzand-i-Khas and Daulat-i-Inglishia—makes you laugh. Have you ever heard their sonorous titles, with liveried mace-carrying heralds, if not halberdiers, announcing their bombastic honorifics?’

He pulled out a huge tome. What’s that? I asked.

‘The Indian Who’s Who, 1938. Listen to this, Gwalior first: His Highness Maharaja Mukhtar-ul-Mulk, Azim-ul-Iqtidar Rafi-ush-Shan, Wala Shikoh, Mohtasham-i-Dauran, Umdat-ul-Umra, Maharajadhiraja—Hisam-us-Sultanat George, Jiwaji Rao Scindia Allijah Bahadur, Shrinath-i-Mansur-i-Zaman, Fidwi-i-Hazrat-i-Malik-i-Mauzzam, Rafi-ud-Darja-i-Inglistan, Maharaja of Gwalior. What do you say to that Mr Bharucha? If someone were to announce a visitor into my house this way, apri tho naga fati jaye, my posterior would be ripped apart! Notice the barbaric mixture of languages—Urdu, Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit.’

Interesting fellow, I thought, this tutor and guardian to the prince. He sneezed so loudly though, through the two barrels of that large Roman nose of his, that the panes rattled. That 1938 tome was covered in dust and couldn’t have been eased out of the shelf for years. A minute later, he used the word ‘debacular’ for the princely order.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Debacular, I said. It’s a word I have coined, from debacle, you know, the kind of things that happen when stumps start flying and there’s a batting collapse.’

‘Are you a keen cricketer?’

‘Of course. I played in the Ahmedabad Quadrangular. Would have played in Bombay too, but my father insisted I concentrate on studies. That’s how Dinoo Driver got into the Parsee team. Still regret it.’

‘My father played the Bombay Quadrangular. Pidr sultan bood.’

‘Thu chirrah,’ he retorted and laughed. The fellow knew his Persian.

(I need to clarify this in my chronicle. The next generation is bound to be more ignorant than mine. English can never match the terseness of either the Urdu or the Persian epigram, ‘Father was a Sultan’. And the answer comes in a flash, ‘Thu chirrah, what are you, you bum?’)

He resumed his narrative. ‘Even the instincts of self-preservation are missing among most of them. I wouldn’t like to be a prince of a native state in 1947.’

Were things so depressing for them? I wondered. But I didn’t want to press on with the subject. ‘I thought you would give me the lie of the land.’

‘We’ll start with the palace, shall we, and the five begums?’

‘Five?’

‘One divorced, the second one known as the Junagadh Begum. The first is the Bhopal Begum, brought from a larger and better-known state to lend glory to Junagadh. She is the senior begum, no doubt about it—very hot-tempered lady, I believe. She once hit her ADC on his face with a tennis racket. The weal showed—or was it a cut?—for days. Her son Dilawar Khanji, is the heir apparent, wali ahad, as he is called here. Handsome fellow, good cricketer—bowls really fast, and a gentleman; got married about two years back. I was there at the wedding. Saw all the Kathiawar princes in their brocade achkans and their turbans encrusted with gleaming solitaires. The nawab is so shy that the Jam Sahib, that’s Maharaja of Jamnagar in case you don’t know, almost officiated as the father of Dilawar at the ceremony, though HH did make an appearance. And I must tell you, the Jam Sahib had an emerald bigger than a dove’s egg scintillating from his turban.’

He was unwilling to speak more. I think the lunch had tired him out. Dhansak always does. I went back home and pulled out my Oxford dictionary. Halberdier? Man armed with halberd, spear and battle axe. Really? The fellow must be a professor of English. Everyone was making these princes out to be a sad lot. What will the buggers do once the dhotiwallahs come to power, as they will, and bloody should?

Meanwhile the servants engaged my attention. There were all varieties here: a hamaal (porter), a pattawallah, Umar by name, who, for what reason I wouldn’t know, had a sash across one shoulder (that was the patta—made sense, the designation), his brother Ibrahim, a dog boy, whom I sent back for I didn’t have a dog—he couldn’t believe it, everyone who was anyone in Junagadh had a dog. The nawab was passionate about dogs—had three hundred of them. Umar always wore a fez cap. So did the hamaal. The fez was still in fashion.

A nightjar disturbed me at night with its tuk tuk tuk. The morning was bracing, saw a treepie dart away like an arrow, followed by its mate. They were lost in the tree. Saw a spider web glisten in the dew. Ibrahim, who laid the tea, told me I should walk barefoot on the dew—good for the eyes. I didn’t heed his advice—had heard Junagadh had plenty of snakes. The sawars were moving out with the horses, a dozen of them. They looked spirited enough as they whinnied and strained at the reins. Two hours later, they were back after their manoeuvres, the horses lathered in sweat and dust, the riders shouting away at them. I was surprised to see a lady riding a chestnut filly. She waved her riding crop at me and dismounted. A sawar took the mare away. I stood up as the lady walked towards me, her straw-coloured hair peeping from under her blue cap. She was slight of frame, with large grey eyes, her arms glistening with sweat. She wore blue britches and ankle boots instead of the knee-high riding boots the others wore.

‘You new to the place? Of course, you must be the new Law Member!’

Good god, I thought, one was already known without meeting a soul here. And the designation would stick. I had no trouble with Law, but definitely objected to the Member bit. Not that I could voice my thoughts to her.

‘I am Mrs Barnes, Claire Barnes.’

I bowed a wee bit involuntarily as I shook her hand—happens when you deal with white skin. In Bombay, I would have given her a half-hug and a sidelong kiss. I wasn’t sure of moffusil protocol. Good to be careful.

‘I am Saam Bharucha, yes, the new Law Member, as they call me here, not that I care for the designation.’ She laughed. I answered her queries: my wife, Zarine, and son would join me within a month, if not earlier.

‘A month! What will you do alone here? This can be a dreary place. My husband, Syd, is fed up with it already.’

‘What does Mr Sidney Barnes do?’

‘Not interested in what I do, is it? You’re turning into a Junagadhi already.’

I was a bit abashed, but put on a straight face. No point in being eternally apologetic. ‘If you are fed up with the workplace, you’re fed up with the place as such, the town. That’s how I asked.’

II

I soon come to know that the dewan has had a heart attack, and since the day he was stricken, his work had slackened—one doesn’t have to read tarot cards to tell you that. The nawab got an elevator installed in his house, the only one in Junagadh. Even HH doesn’t have one in his palace, I was told. The dewan also has a refrigerator, the servants informed me, a bit awed. It will be a while before he sees me. I go and see Gheewala, the chief secretary. It is more a courtesy call. No one has any opinion on how things will shape out. You can’t have any opinion when everything is so uncertain. Will the British leave at all? What’s going to happen to Jinnah and his Pakistan? Is he going to get his slice of the roast? Are we moving into a confederation of sorts? Or will there be two dominion states with one single viceroy lording it over from Delhi, where else? Or will there be three dominions—Hindu, Muslim and princely? There can be no fruitful discussion if no one knows the basic shape this landmass would be moulded into.

I need to take a closer look at the newspapers. I order the previous week’s papers too. That swine, Franco, in his four-minute message at midnight of the new year has the gall to say, ‘Christ’s equality, liberty and justice characterize our acts, and if for them, we merit the hate or rancour of the world, we are ready to face them.’ Not a shred of regret the fellow has. Gandhi starts his walking tour of Noakhali, arriving at Chandpur. He is given eight armed police escorts and disapproves of their presence. In Bombay, the Dharma Sewa Sangh gets 2,500 pandits to conduct a maha yagna, invoking goddess Shakti, to bring peace to India. Why Shakti? I try to think of a goddess of peace in that vast, over-populated Hindu pantheon, and fail.

The photographs are illuminating. Aung San in his great coat and baggy pants, with Nehru in sherwani and churidars. On another page, we have the dewan of Baroda, Sir Brojendra Lal Mitter, no less, in bowtie, his receding hairline prominent, elaborating on matters constitutional. He says that Nehru’s resolution in the Constituent Assembly declaring India a sovereign republic was ‘merely a statement of ideals and aspirations of the Indian people’. He does not rule out the possibility of ‘some units of the federation choosing a different Constitution.’ People seem to think there are various Constitutions on the shelf and you are free to pull out the one that suits you. Sir Mitter even adds that some ‘units may choose to retain the monarchical form.’ Really?

Abdul Qayyum Khan tours Hyderabad and talks of a Pakistan in the Deccan. Are we going to have more than one Pakistan? The thought troubles me. What some of these people need is a de-worming of fanciful notions.

The fourth week of January starts with Nehru shoveling mud on the divine right of kings. ‘We are the trustees of a great future even as we are the inheritors of a great past.’ He is good with words, this man. He also says that it is scandalous and intolerable that one man has any special divine dispensation to rule over other human beings. The Constituent Assembly okays the resolution.

I now expect the summons—and, sure enough, they come. Abdul Kadir wants to see me. His brat, Shafeeq, is playing outside, his knees bruised and face caked with mud—or is it chocolate? His sister, Laeeq, leads me to her father. The dewan looks overweight. He shakes me by the hand and says, ‘Welcome to Junagadh.’ I remind him, not very politely, that I had been close to three weeks here already. ‘That long?’ he asks with a benevolent smile. ‘I have not been too well, as you must have known.’

I make the necessary commiserating noises, clicking my tongue like an underfed gecko deprived of moth and mosquito for a week.

‘Well, what do you make of all this?

‘All what?’ I ask innocently, bland smile taped across my lips. But before he can react, I relent. ‘It’s the Constituent Assembly you are talking of, isn’t it?’

‘Precisely.’

‘It was only to be expected, sir. After all, they can’t root for a monarchy or a theocracy, can they? And they can’t have a Hindu state.’

‘Why not? Pakistan will be a Muslim country, after all. So why can’t they have a Hindu state here?’

‘The Congress has always been more inclusive, dewan sahib. (I am toying with the idea of ‘Prime Ministering’ the fellow, but can’t bring myself to do it.) They took the Muslims with them—Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Azad—and not just the leaders. They are not the Hindu Mahasabha.’

‘You think there’s a difference?’

‘Between the two?’

‘Between the two.’

‘Enormous, dewan sahib.’

‘Sovereign, democratic, republic, is it? So we get marginalized, pushed to the sidewalks; we sleep on the pavements.’

Does he mean Muslims or the princes? Best to keep quiet. ‘There are some encouraging statements though,’ continues the dewan.

‘You mean Sir B.L. Mitter’s? It can’t lie with the princes to choose how they’d be ruled. We have to look at the times, dewan sahib.’

Perhaps I get carried away and sound a wee bit ponderous. I actually want to add that the world had swivelled on its