The Splendor Of Silence (20 page)

In larger cantonments and cities and towns, the boxwallahs were banished from the main clubs, seen for what they were, the bottom dregs of society, certainly not on a par with officers of the army, or with the civilians of the ICS who were considered heaven born. The term box-wallahs came from the local traveling merchants who carried their wares in boxes from house to house--knife sharpeners, cloth wallahs, vessel wallahs. How could these boxwallahs then even dare to breathe the same social air as the civil servants, how could the ICS wives and daughters be exposed to the ill manners of these lower classes who worked for a living, with profit in mind? The thinking went thus in the greater towns of the Raj. At Rudrakot, however, the boxwallahs were welcomed; there was a dearth of familiar-hued faces.

So the club invited all of these men, but not the prince of Rudrakot.

Raja Bhimsen's father, Jai's grandfather, had strolled into the club one morning, sat down to breakfast, and, to start, ordered a cup of coffee. The Indian bearers had dithered, so frightened that the coffee hiccupped its way out of the pot's spout, and a few drops bloomed around the saucer's rim, marring the virginal beauty of the white linen tablecloth. The club secretary, a Mr. Ryder, hovered around this table in acute distress, actually wringing his hands. He had not the gall or the courage to ask a raja to leave the premises. How would he say this? "Your Highness, the club rules state ..." "Your Highness, I have been informed ..." "I respectfully beg ..."

Mr. Ryder had come all the way to India to work at the Victoria Club, and had washed the dust of his common origins off his shoes just east of the Suez, to transform himself into a pukka sahib. A tall, thin man with
a c
arefully cultivated pallor that contrasted nicely with his black suits, Mr. Ryder had had no compunction before in banishing miscreants from the club. But damn, it was bloody hard to kick out someone who had to be addressed as being higher than he was in rank. And a prince to boot--a black prince to be sure, but still Mr. Ryder's father hauled coal in London and when he washed the soot off his face at the end of each day, his skin did shine the pearly pink of a pig's backside, but prick him and his blood was nothing special. That morning as he stood there, Mr. Ryder was uncomfortably aware that he had no pretensions to royalty. So Jai's grandfather had finished his breakfast, wiped his mouth with a white linen napkin embroidered with an entwined VC in gold thread, called for his cigarettes and another cup of coffee, and said to Mr. Ryder, "Write out a chit for this, will you?"

From that day onward, there was no stopping the rajas of Rudrakot from availing themselves of the club's facilities. The British resident at Rudrakot, of course, had an automatic membership in the club. And so when Raman came to stay as the political agent, he too could enter its premises when he wished.

When the Fourth Rudrakot Rifles took up residence on the other side of the road from the Rudrakot Lancers, its officers were, as a matter of course, admitted to the Victoria Club. Raman insisted that the officers of the Lancers, hitherto not given access because they were Indian, had equal rights.

It took a minor hared, a strike, to achieve this. Jai, who was then only thirteen, but prince of Rudrakot nonetheless and so a member of the Victoria, and Raman, sat cross-legged on the concrete steps of the club for two days in protest of this unfair policy. They held up placards that read ADMIT THE LANCERS. It was a huge embarrassment for the civil servants of Rudrakot and the Rifles regiment.

The British resident himself took the senior officers of the Rudrakot Lancers to the club on the evening of the second day, and gave them dinner at his table, along with a victorious Raman and a delighted Jai.

This story Mila and Ashok did not know, for Raman never talked about it, and Jai had long forgotten the thrill from his first attempt at civil disobedience.

Once thus invaded, the no-longer-sacrosanct and weakened Victoria Club began admitting women also. They were only allowed in certai
n r
ooms, not in the smoking room, not in the billiard rooms, only in the bridge rooms and the main dining hall. An additional wing was built behind the club and dubbed their special province, with its powder rooms and salons, as the blasted murgikhana--the henhouse.

Mila struck the gear into fourth and drove the jeep into the gateway of the Victoria Club. The watchmen's loose beards flew in the wind raised by the whizzing past of the jeep, and they had barely raised their hands to their foreheads in a salute before it disappeared in a whirl of dust and flying gravel. Once inside, she shifted down abruptly, and banged on the brakes. A long, waist-high hedge lined the enormous drive down to the clubhouse. Beyond the hedge was also club land, and most of it was bare, dotted with trees, skirted by desiccated attempts at sprouting a lawn in the hard ground. The lake was to the right, and the driveway, after going straight down the line of hedge for half a mile, curved around the huge white building, lakeside, to end under a pillared portico. The blinding sun harassed them all the way to the clubhouse, undulating in waves of heat across the building until the green of the hedges, the browns and reds of the earth, the white of the clubhouse all melded into a haze.

They arrived in the welcome shade of the cool portico, and a bearer came running down the stairs to take care of the jeep. Mila gave him the key and said to Sam, "The mela is set up on the lawns, Captain Hawthorne. I have to go find Mrs. Sexton, but Ashok can show you around."

"No, thank you," Sam said. "I'll find my way."

"We will leave in two hours," Mila said, though it was not necessary to remind him of that; they would see each other. But she thought that their guest, being American and unused to India, would not realize that they would not be able to converse much with each other at the mela.

"Thank you. I'll look for you before then." Sam turned and began to walk toward the lawns, and then he paused and seemed to ponder something. When he turned back, his face was disturbed. "Mila, what does the phrase 'four arenas to the rupee' mean?"

Mila and Ashok were struck into stillness at first, their expressions similarly stunned for a moment. They cast a sudden, synchronized glance at each other, but for the sake of politeness, it was over even before it had begun and they were again facing Sam, their expressions stoic.

"A rupee has sixteen arenas, Captain Hawthorne," Mila said carefully.

"Has someone been cheating you of your money? I would have thought you would be conversant with our currency by now."

"I am," Sam said. "But I did not understand that phrase."

"Where did you hear it?" Ashok asked. When Sam did not reply, he held up his hand, palm forward. "It doesn't matter, but it sounds very much like something quite a few people here would use."

"I see."

Mila sighed, and lifted an arm to brush hair from her forehead. "No, I'm afraid that you don't see, Captain Hawthorne. It's a derogatory term, humiliating."

Sam nodded. "I guessed that much."

"The Anglo-Indians ," Mila said, hesitating, trying to form an explanation that was succinct, "are born of both the British and the Indians. It has become shall we say fashionable, to refer to the amount of British blood they have in them as arenas to the rupee." She was red in the face by now, uncomfortable at having to talk about this, but when she lifted her gaze to his, it was direct and uncompromising. "Your girl, or boy, was one-fourth British."

"Thank you," Sam said. He had started to move again, hands in his pockets, when another thought struck him. It was a simple thought, one he voiced in an instant, without giving it too much weight, but it was one he would remember repeatedly for the rest of his life. So thus, casually, standing under the portico of the Victoria Club, Sam asked, "And this terminology does it apply to everyone who has some mixed blood in them? I mean, does the prejudice stretch beyond just Anglo-Indian alliances, to no matter what your parentage is?"

"You mean European or even American?" Mila gave him a hard smile. "But it is a prejudice on all ends of the world, Captain Hawthorne. We are as inflexible as anyone else is. Mixing of bloods, as you say, is frowned upon." When she voiced this truth, an ache blossomed within her. There were a few alliances between the Indians and the British that existed because of love and affection, but the prejudices existed also, and without an overwhelming, sweeping love, Mila could not imagine anyone opting for such a life in India. For the most part, the British held themselves remote, and those who moved away from these strictures to find love, and marry Indians were cast out of their own communities and wer
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onsidered to have horrifically "gone native." They were no longer "us" and had become "them." Even if Indians had been accepting of mixed alliances, the xenophobia of the British warranted no other response to Anglo-Indian alliances, and if for nothing else than as a defense against the xenophobia--Indian communities were now as prejudiced as British. Sam rubbed his face thoughtfully. He then raised his hand to say goodbye and went out onto the lawns toward the mela.

They watched him leave, and in both of their hearts there was the same yearning, though they had known Sam Hawthorne for such a short time. Mila was troubled by Sam's question, and worried in an illogical way that perhaps her answers would have prejudiced him further. Ashok thought so too. They did not want Sam Hawthorne to turn out to be ordinary, just like everyone else they had known who had spent some time in India and, in the end, become what they had abhorred when they had first gotten here. Mila and Ashok had heard that argument too many times from the so-called British socialists who had come to India full of ideals about the nationalist struggle, equality of all men, and who, in the end, succumbed to the prevalent British belief in India that Indians could not rule themselves when they could not control their beggars, manage their monsoons, battle the heat.

Mila rubbed Ashok's arm lightly. "What are you going to do?"

"Get a drink first," he said. He put an arm around her shoulder. "Were we rude, Mila?"

"I'm afraid we were."

"I like him though."

She was silent for a while, pondering this statement. "I do too." Ashok said, "Who is he? Why is he here? What is a U
. S
. Army officer doing in Rudrakot of all places?"

"I don't know," Mila said slowly. "I doubt Papa does either. How do you know he is from Seattle?"

"Sayyid," Ashok said. "It's on his uniform, sewn into the neck of the shirt."

Mila leaned against her brother. He had grown in the last two years, was no longer just a little brother. She had taught him to drive, and still sat with him at his lessons, although this was his last year in school. In a couple of months, they would have to decide where he was going for further studies. But they still had this summer here in Rudrakot, since Papa ha
d d
ecided not to send them to the hills for the hot season. She clasped her arms around his slim waist and looked up at him.

"The mustache is taking shape nicely; you might even grow one like Jai's."

He touched his upper lip. "There's no chance of that at all. To grow one as refined as Jai's on my face, I would have to drink like him, smoke like him, drive like a lunatic, sleep in the saddle, and dream of polo balls in the night sky instead of stars. At least that is what he thinks grew the hair on his chest. Have you seen his naked chest? Well, his overgrown chest?"

"Of course I haven't, Ashok. Don't be silly." She pinched the skin under his ribs. "Get your drink and eat some paan so Papa does not smell it on your breath. I'm off to battle with Laetitia."

She watched him leave and raised a hand in farewell. This was Ashok's last year at home, his last few months, really, and then he would thunder out into the world to become his own man. Papa and she could no longer tie him to them. It would be Kiran all over again. Kiran who was home now, who had failed his ICS examinations for the second time, whose two years in London had been a torrid waste of Papa's money and of Papa's energy. What would he do now? He was twenty-four, and the civil service was what he had been brought up to do. Kiran was not an army man, like Jai, although Jai had his princely title too, more than enough of a fallback option. Kiran had Jai's tastes, but none of Jai's resources.

She climbed the stairs and entered the club's cool front hall. A chest-high reception counter stood against the far wall. Two four-feet-by-six-feet portraits in oil hung on that wall, both of Queen Victoria. One was painted around the time of her coronation. In this one, she was a sylphlike figure with a minute waist, an enormous billowing pink skirt, and a tight bodice, jewels glittering around her slight neck and on her wrists, an ethereal crown of diamonds floating on her dark hair. Her shoulders were bare, dabbed by light from above somewhere, and her hands clasped the scepter and the orb. The second painting was also of the queen, only she was much older, and time had taken some hair away and lent gray to the rest, added heaviness around the eyes and in the cheeks, fattened the shoulders and thickened the waist. The gown was as resplendent as in the first portrait, the jewels as glittering and enchanting, the majesty even more so. This was our empress, Raman had said to Mila on the first day they visited the Victoria Club. Mila was seven that year, they had come by in the afternoon, before six o'clock
,
after which time no children were allowed at the club, and no members were allowed without their neckties and dress whites. How large is the empire, Papa? Many, many countries, on many continents. Mila had tried to imagine this much land belonging to this little woman. How had she managed all these lands and these people? Where had she lived? Had she ever come to see this corner of her empire, this country that people now called the jewel in the imperial crown?