A Life Apart Read online

II.

  The rains have started early this season. Very soon, the Maidan is going to become a shallow lake, and Free School Street, Eliot Street, all muddy little streams and rivulets. Miss Gilby knows that the rains are going to bring with them ants, termites, cockroaches, a hundred other unnamed creeping and crawling creatures, and the incessant croaking of toads and frogs all night long in the puddles and ponds which accumulate everywhere during the monsoon. They talk to each other all night, an amphibian parody of antiphon and response, and it drills into Miss Gilby’s head with its monotonous regularity. Besides, she hates those ugly creatures. During the entire rainy season, there are scores of them in the front courtyard, sometimes even at the bottom of the stairs leading to her rooms. She had stepped on one of these inadvertently once. The experience still sends shudders down Miss Gilby’s spine: first of all, she hadn’t expected the creature to turn upside down, exposing its disgusting smooth white underneath, and then, before she had had time to step off it in horror, she discovered the resiliently springy texture of the animal, as if it were a large jujube or jelly. She was grateful the toad didn’t go ‘splat’ and explode under her shoe but it disturbed her no end that no sooner had she moved her foot than it hopped off, springing to life, the weight of Miss Gilby just a minor pressure on its innards of sponge. Ugh!

  If Mahesh gets more intransigent this season, Miss Gilby is going to discharge him from his duties. Not a single week passes when she doesn’t have to chide him for carelessness or sheer forgetfulness. He still hasn’t managed to ask the builder to come and look at the various leaks, one right in the ceiling of the drawing room, which dripped water down on to her floor, inches away from her Steinway. He had put pails and buckets to catch the drips but mostly in the wrong places so that the damage had already begun. When she had taken him to task for it, he had grovelled first and then dared to answer back – how was he to know where the leaks were if they didn’t start dripping in the first place. Unconscionable impudence. As if she hadn’t spent all of last Rainy Season pointing out the leaks to him over and over again.

  She will ask him to get the chairs from the verandah, especially her favourite planter’s long sleever, a present from James, in to the drawing room, remove all the cane chairs and tables, and let down the rattan shades so that the rains don’t flood her verandah every day. And then there will be the fraught business of packing up, storage, removal and relocation.

  Mr Roy Chowdhury had kindly offered to come down to Calcutta in his motorcar and drive her to Nawabgunj, which, of course, will save her a long, bone-rattling journey, for at least part of the way on a palkee. But some of her possessions are going to have to go by train and then by God knows what, in all probability a bullock cart; she is sure most of them are never going to arrive in one piece, jolted and shaken as they are certainly going to be on the atrocious Indian roads and the mud and kunkur tracks. The very thought makes her feel weak so she sits down and starts making lists. There is great comfort to be derived from lists: they organize life, bring order and method, cut the amorphous business of a messy life into manageable and sizeable chunks.

  She leaves at the end of the month to take up her position in the Roy Chowdhury family. She is excited at the prospect of making friends with an Indian woman who has so far been kept in the andarmahal but, thanks to her progressive husband, has been brought out of it and given a new world to move around in. Would she have been excited if she had been in Bimala’s shoes? Or just plain afraid? Is Bimala enjoying her new freedom, the huge expansion of her world? Mr Roy Chowdhury, in the course of their correspondence, had mentioned that she was literate, and competent in reading, writing, even arithmetic, but almost wholly in her own language, Bengali. She read voraciously, she even knew some English, which he had started her on but now didn’t find the time or the regularity that a new student needed. So Miss Gilby wasn’t really inheriting a tabula rasa – his term – but a compliant and intelligent student, he hoped, except that her problem was chronic shyness, indeed, fear at meeting an English lady and having to converse with her, eventually, in English; she was convinced she would not be able to cross the first hurdle, she would be a tongue-tied and hopeless student, Miss Gilby would give up in despair and leave etc etc.

  Miss Gilby knows all these symptoms. They are not just the classic signs of nerves and a sense of inferiority but also so much more. Imagine a woman, kept confined to the andarmahal, socializing only with the other women in the household, rarely coming across men, even her own father, imagine growing up with this great sense of awe and fear of men, nay, this sense of the great unknown, of the alien race that the male is to her, imagine whiling away an entire girlhood in games and housework and feminine chores till she gets married one day, without any consultation or involvement, to one of those very creatures she has seldom met in her life, creatures she has only seen during jaatra performances in her house through a chink in the curtains or the tatti which separates the women’s section of the audience from the men’s, imagine growing up in a society where on those very rare occasions when a woman suddenly comes across a man other than her husband she draws her veil instantly to cover her face and hastily leaves the room. Imagine all that. Then imagine her being catapulted into the big, wide, open world. It would be something akin to being thrown into an ocean when all you know is your little enamel bath. Miss Gilby herself would be very nervous in Bimala’s situation. She had seen with her very eyes Hindu women from wealthy, privileged families taking their annual dip in the holy Ganges by having their entire palanquin, shut and enclosed, lowered into the waters while they remained inside, and then being carried off back home on the shoulders of the bearers. Because the waters teemed with bathing men, it was an act that managed ingeniously to observe a sacred ritual without endangering any of the sanctions against women being seen in public.

  She remembers those painful visits with Miss Shepherd, Colonel Campbell’s wife and Mr Fearfield’s wife – all members of the Madras Ladies’ Club – to the Maharani of Mysore a few years ago. The process leading up to those visits itself comprised a story. For months she had importuned James and Sir George to do something about the Indian women of the Presidency: where were they? why didn’t they come, along with their husbands, to any of the events to which they were invited? why did only the men turn up? why were they so rigidly secluded? could the Anglos not do anything to break this down? James had patiently explained to her the status of women in Indian society. Well, then, if men posed so many threats and problems to them, surely the English ladies could do something? Send out an invitation for a ‘Ladies Only’ at the Club? Once again, James had explained to her, in his very patient and forbearing way, the problems Indian men had exposing their wives to foreigners. But surely they wouldn’t have problems ‘exposing’ them to foreign women? At which point James had thrown up his hands in despair and said if she wanted to so much, why didn’t she try, along with the other ladies of the Presidency, and see where they got. There was a stiff little lecture on how damnedest the Raj had tried to do away with barbaric Indian customs like suttee, purdah, the evils of zenana, the way Indian men treated their women as chattel, and if the bloody obstinate men were not going to allow them to meet their wives, he was damned if he was going to allow them to meet English ladies.

  Ah.

  So Miss Gilby, accompanied by the more stalwart and interested ladies, had set about getting to know these invisible Indian women. As sister of the District Collector, she sent out invitations for an ‘At Home’. Nearly no one bothered to reply. The chicken galantine with aspic jelly, cucumber sandwiches, anchovy and salad sandwiches, rout cakes, the proud madeira cake, petits fours, mango and custard apple ices – all the lovely things she and Iris Shepherd had planned so excitedly from their new Mrs Beeton had come to nothing. The most articulate of the refusals was sent to James. ‘Dear Sir,’ it said, ‘as my wife does not know English, she desires me to write this to you, regarding the “At Home” this evening. My wife is extremely thankf
ul to Mr’ – and then an ‘s’ added in ink after the typewritten ‘Mr’ – ‘Gilby for graciously extending the invitation to her, but regrets very much that as according to the prevailing custom of the country, no Hindu lady is likely to attend the party, she is afraid to be the solitary exception to it. Moreover, she will feel herself completely stranded in the midst of strangers, and would, I am afraid, make an awkward nuisance of herself as she has never attended a party in all her life, least of all one hosted by English gentlemen and ladies. She, therefore, sincerely regrets that she is unable to oblige and sends her heartfelt apologies etc etc.’

  Miss Gilby’s first thought was, God, if we haven’t given them anything else, we certainly have given them our language of evasiveness, and then, ashamed of this uncharitable and unusual flare-up in her generally kind soul, she began to comprehend the real problems the letter had expressed. How would the English and the native ladies communicate, how would she go about in her crusade of breaking down barriers, if they did not share a common tongue? It was of utmost importance that Indian ladies be educated in English. From there everything would follow, as the night the day.

  The goal proved much more elusive than Miss Gilby had initially reckoned it to be. Like a mirage, it kept receding further and further, not just out of her reach but, it seemed, almost a thousand miles away. The problem was this: how did you go about educating Indian women if you didn’t get to see them in the first place? But what would be the purpose of access if the two sides couldn’t talk to each other? She felt she was being whirled around in a giant cartwheel that had no beginning, no end, only a frustrating, endless going around in circles. James just grunted his ‘See, I told you so’ grunt and said things were best left as they stood; these Indian women were never going to be let out of their prison by their men. They played by very different rules here and why didn’t Maud just leave these things well alone and concentrate instead on other things.

  What other things?

  Oh, well, the Hart-Davises were having a polo week in Hyderabad, wouldn’t she like to go?

  And what would she do there?

  Well, erm, she could watch, couldn’t she?

  Well, Indian social traditions and the frosty complacency of the Raj hadn’t quite reckoned with the stubbornness of Miss Gilby. She pleaded, argued, debated, threatened, quarrelled, cajoled till she had extracted from her brother a firm promise to write to his friend (well, kind of friend), the Maharajah of Mysore, and wield his influence to get Miss Gilby and a few of her friends into his household to mingle with the ladies.

  The first meeting had seen Jane Fearfield, Iris Shepherd and Maud Gilby, excited and nervous as girls on the eve of their stepping-out ball, traverse a distance of more than three hundred miles by train and then received by the Maharajah’s carriage to be driven a liver-jostling five miles or so to the palace where the ladies would stay as royal guests for three nights. The ladies could not forget – how could they? they had been told so many times by so many different sets of people – the trouble James, a few other high-ranking Raj officials and His Highness the Maharajah of Mysore had been through to ensure this meeting. Rules had been broken on both sides, and rules, both spoken and unspoken, dense legions of them, had to be observed meticulously in this rare conjunction across the divide. The English ladies were to stick resolutely to the women’s quarters of the palace, they were not to drink alcohol or ask for it, there would be one Anglo and two Indian guards escorting them to the palace and staying in the servants’ quarters while they visited. The ladies had even been given a short, concentrated course on household customs in both Hindu and Muslim families so that they didn’t fall into easy errors, humiliating or offensive, to which an unfamiliarity with the dizzying sets of rules could easily have led them.

  The meetings hadn’t gone well from the very outset, when Jane Fearfield, the newest and the youngest member of their informal little club, hadn’t been able to control her giggling fit at being garlanded with flowers as soon as they had stepped across the threshold.

  Not a single lady in the Maharajah of Mysore’s family spoke or understood English. This was the first thing they had been told by a palace official – old and elaborately turbaned, with his eyes permanently focused on something an inch or so away from his feet – who was going to double as interpreter during the ‘honourable’ ladies’ visit to His Highness’s ‘humble abode’.

  Never mind, Miss Gilby thought, while watching Jane fidget with the silk and muslin handkerchieves they had been given as honoured guests of the Maharajah, delicate pieces of cloth doused to saturation point with some heavy attar – roses or maybe jasmine, but at this concentration it was impossible to tell – which immediately made the head reel and the temples clutch with the slow beginnings of an obstinate headache. Never mind their inability to speak English, Miss Gilby thought; the main thing was to meet, exchange news and views and become familiar, although how this was going to be done without a common language, she did not ask herself, instead choosing to pin her hopes on the interpreter and even on Iris Shepherd who had boasted she could hold a conversation in Hindi and understand some rudimentary Urdu.

  The room, or rather, the enormous hall where the meeting was going to take place was similarly perfumed, from a mixture of incense, attar, and the rose petals which had been strewn everywhere. The English ladies had tried to imagine what the insides of an Indian palace would be like; they had even read or been told about the ostentation of wealth and artistry in these palaces, but nothing had prepared them for this sumptuous feast of grandeur which made the senses swoon and assaulted them from so many quarters – the viscous fragrances, the monotone of the threnody being played on some mournful stringed instrument by a hidden player, the sea of colours, fabrics, jewels, ornaments, tapestry, curtains, rugs, pillars, chandeliers – that there wasn’t very much else to do except to obscure large sections of it in order not to drown in this gilded and marbled symphony of excess.

  The Indian women, eleven in all – Miss Gilby had done a swift count while the seating formalities were being taken care of by the interpreter – were seated on piles of velvet cushions and fabrics arranged on the marble floor into a separate section of the room. Two chaise longues and four elaborate chowpayas, all blue silk and gold embroidery and carved wood, had been arranged opposite this so that the two contingents of women faced each other. Between them, rose petals lying like wounds on the white marble, above them, the frozen crystal fountain of a chandelier. And the interpreter, somewhere out of sight, in one of the many shadows which stalked and lingered in the room despite the profusion of mirrors, chandeliers, candelabra, the fractured brilliance of glasswork.

  For a while, all of Miss Gilby’s attention was taken by the flash and fire of the jewels on the Indian women. Even their clothes were heavy with gold threads and wires, teeth of pearl, their fingers and hands dipped into the heart of Hindustan’s treasures and just withdrawn. There was gold around their necks – chokers, collars, necklaces and chains, which fell in solid waves down their fronts, sometimes to their waists. They wore gold flowers on their toes, paisley-shaped earrings that covered their entire ears, and when they moved their hands, diamonds would carelessly catch a stray beam of light and send out an angry flare as if to remind everyone of their presence. And on the dark black skin of the women the metals and stones came into secret lives of their own which they hid from other, paler people. It was almost as if the darkness had put on a special fireworks show for the visitors – the jewellery accentuated their black skin while the fire of stones and metals made the skin a darker shade of night.

  Miss Gilby hoped she hadn’t stared rudely at these decorated women for that was exactly what they were doing, unabashed, unashamed. Eleven pairs of huge, dark eyes stared unblinking at the English women as though they were exotic or mythical birds they had heard about all their lives and which had just been put up on captive display.

  Dazzled, literally, by the jewels, Miss Gilby came late to the realiz
ation that one of the princesses, hardly more than a girl, eleven or twelve maybe, was giggling shamelessly at the foreigners while a stately queen, perhaps some dowager maharani, maybe even Her Highness herself, was trying to shut her up.

  ‘Hanso mat,’ she ordered, her kohl-lined eyes flashing fire. This was a woman born to command, her lazy, cushion-propped body breathing arrogance and majesty through every pore.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ the interpreter dutifully translated, either unaware of the parties involved in that short exchange or untutored in the rules of interpreting.

  The elderly woman now broke out into her own language clearly directed at the minister to translate. After she finished, he droned, ‘Her Highness welcomes the English ladies to her court on this auspicious day. She is honoured that such esteemed ladies are condescending to visit her humble abode and hopes that they find everything to their liking.’

  Iris Shepherd replied with the necessary formalities. Quickwitted, that woman, Miss Gilby thought.

  Then there was a long silence during which two of the Indian women started whispering to each other. A third joined in, leaning over one of the older women. This seemed to cause no offence to the woman who was being used as a physical support to join, as it were, the two whispering camps. And there seemed to be no attempt to disguise or hide the fact they were talking about the three Englishwomen: they stared and then turned around to whisper; often they looked at their English guests askance while breathing out their words into someone’s ear. While this open display of whispering was in progress, Miss Gilby decided to introduce her party.

  ‘I am sure Her Highness has been informed about us but I thought I would take this opportunity to do so ourselves.’ She pointed to Iris Shepherd and said, ‘This is Miss Iris Shepherd . . . ’

  Before she could finish, a peacock flew into the room from somewhere, stalked a few rose petals, and then, with a harsh scream that made Jane drop her scented handkerchiefs and start out of her chaise longue, deposited unfeasibly large amounts of faeces on the marbled floor and ran to the end of the room that gave out on to the courtyard.