A passage to India
of whom strode stark naked through the streets. Asked what was the
name of the chief idol at Ujjain, he replied that he did not know,
he had disdained to enquire, he really could not waste his time
over such trivialities. His outburst took some time, and in his
excitement he fell into Punjabi (he came from that side) and was
unintelligible.
Aziz liked to hear his religion praised. It soothed the surface of
his mind, and allowed beautiful images to form beneath. When the
engineer’s noisy tirade was finished, he said, “That is exactly my
own view.” He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to
glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from
his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with
anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke
to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they
agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the
hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some
comparison between mankind and flowers. The squalid bedroom grew
quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were
stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent
air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the
feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance
that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had
felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for
them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses, but tulips and
roses do not go. And the sister kingdoms of the north—Arabia,
Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched out their hands as he sang,
sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore,
where every street and house was divided against itself, and told
her that she was a continent and a unity.
Of the company, only Hamidullah had any comprehension of poetry.
The minds of the others were inferior and rough. Yet they listened
with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their
civilization. The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that
Aziz had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery
guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of beauty. He
just sat with his mind empty, and when his thoughts, which were
mainly ignoble, flowed back into it they had a pleasant freshness.
The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing
reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale
between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna,
it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for
the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved. Aziz it
left thinking about women again, but in a different way: less
definite, more intense. Sometimes poetry had this effect on him,
sometimes it only increased his local desires, and he never knew
beforehand which effect would ensue: he could discover no rule for
this or for anything else in life.
Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of
notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two
Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like
one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone
abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had
been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee
would vanish also. He was glad that Aziz, whom he loved and whose
family was connected with his own, took no interest in politics,
which ruin the character and career, yet nothing can be achieved
without them. He thought of Cambridge—sadly, as of another poem
that had ended. How happy he had been there, twenty years ago!
Politics had not mattered in Mr. and Mrs. Bannister’s rectory.
There, games, work, and pleasant society had interwoven, and
appeared to be sufficient substructure for a national life. Here
all was wire-pulling and fear. Messrs. Syed Mohammed and Haq—he
couldn’t even trust them, although they had come in his carriage,
and the schoolboy was a scorpion. Bending down, he said, “Aziz,
Aziz, my dear boy, we must be going, we are already late. Get well
quickly, for I do not know what our little circle would do without
you.”
“I shall not forget those affectionate words,” replied Aziz.
“Add mine to them,” said the engineer.
“Thank you, Mr. Syed Mohammed, I will.”
“And mine,” “And, sir, accept mine,” cried the others, stirred each
according to his capacity towards goodwill. Little ineffectual
unquenchable flames! The company continued to sit on the bed and
to chew sugarcane, which Hassan had run for into the bazaar, and
Aziz drank a cup of spiced milk. Presently there was the sound of
another carriage. Dr. Panna Lal had arrived, driven by horrid Mr.
Ram Chand. The atmosphere of a sick-room was at once re-established,
and the invalid retired under his quilt.
“Gentlemen, you will excuse, I have come to enquire by Major
Callendar’s orders,” said the Hindu, nervous of the den of fanatics
into which his curiosity had called him.
“Here he lies,” said Hamidullah, indicating the prostrate form.
“Dr. Aziz, Dr, Aziz, I come to enquire.”
Aziz presented an expressionless face to the thermometer.
“Your hand also, please.” He took it, gazed at the flies on the
ceiling, and finally announced “Some temperature.”
“I think not much,” said Ram Chand, desirous of fomenting trouble.
“Some; he should remain in bed,” repeated Dr. Panna Lal, and shook
the thermometer down, so that its altitude remained for ever
unknown. He loathed his young colleague since the disasters with
Dapple, and he would have liked to do him a bad turn and report to
Major Callendar that he was shamming. But he might want a day in
bed himself soon,—besides, though Major Callendar always believed
the worst of natives, he never believed them when they carried
tales about one another. Sympathy seemed the safer course. “How is
stomach?” he enquired, “how head?” And catching sight of the empty
cup, he recommended a milk diet.
“This is a great relief to us, it is very good of you to call,
Doctor Sahib,” said Hamidullah, buttering him up a bit.
“It is only my duty.”
“We know how busy you are.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And how much illness there is in the city.”
The doctor suspected a trap in this remark; if he admitted that
there was or was not illness, either statement might be used
against him. “There is always illness,” he replied, “and I am
always busy—it is a doctor’s nature.”
“He has not a minute, he is due double sharp at Government College
now,” said Ram Chand.
“You attend Professor Godbole there perhaps?”
The doctor looked professional and was silent.
“We hope his diarrhœa is ceasing.”
“He progresses, but not from diarrhœa.”
“We are in some anxiety over him—he and Dr. Aziz are great friends.
If you could tell us the name of his complaint we should be grateful
to you.”
After a cautious pause he said, “Hæmorrhoids.”
“And so much, my dear Rafi, for your cholera,” hooted Aziz, unable
to restrain himself.
“Cholera, cholera, what next, what now?” cried the doctor, greatly
fussed. “Who spreads such untrue reports about my patients?”
Hamidullah pointed to the culprit.
“I hear cholera, I hear bubonic plague, I hear every species of
lie. Where will it end, I ask myself sometimes. This city is full
of misstatements, and the originators of them ought to be discovered
and punished authoritatively.”
“Rafi, do you hear that? Now why do you stuff us up with all this
humbug?”
The schoolboy murmured that another boy had told him, also that
the bad English grammar the Government obliged them to use often
gave the wrong meaning for words, and so led scholars into mistakes.
“That is no reason you should bring a charge against a doctor,”
said Ram Chand.
“Exactly, exactly,” agreed Hamidullah, anxious to avoid an
unpleasantness. Quarrels spread so quickly and so far, and Messrs.
Syed Mohammed and Haq looked cross, and ready to fly out. “You must
apologize properly, Rafi, I can see your uncle wishes it,” he said.
“You have not yet said that you are sorry for the trouble you have
caused this gentleman by your carelessness.”
“It is only a boy,” said Dr. Panna Lal, appeased.
“Even boys must learn,” said Ram Chand.
“Your own son failing to pass the lowest standard, I think,” said
Syed Mohammed suddenly.
“Oh, indeed? Oh yes, perhaps. He has not the advantage of a relative
in the Prosperity Printing Press.”
“Nor you the advantage of conducting their cases in the Courts any
longer.”
Their voices rose. They attacked one another with obscure allusions
and had a silly quarrel. Hamidullah and the doctor tried to make
peace between them. In the midst of the din someone said, “I say!
Is he ill or isn’t he ill?” Mr. Fielding had entered unobserved.
All rose to their feet, and Hassan, to do an Englishman honour,
struck with a sugar-cane at the coil of flies.
Aziz said, “Sit down,” coldly. What a room! What a meeting! Squalor
and ugly talk, the floor strewn with fragments of cane and nuts,
and spotted with ink, the pictures crooked upon the dirty walls,
no punkah! He hadn’t meant to live like this or among these
third-rate people. And in his confusion he thought only of the
insignificant Rafi, whom he had laughed at, and allowed to be
teased. The boy must be sent away happy, or hospitality would have
failed, along the whole line.
“It is good of Mr. Fielding to condescend to visit our friend,”
said the police inspector. “We are touched by this great kindness.”
“Don’t talk to him like that, he doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t
want three chairs; he’s not three Englishmen,” he flashed. “Rafi,
come here. Sit down again. I’m delighted you could come with Mr.
Hamidullah, my dear boy; it will help me to recover, seeing you.”
“Forgive my mistakes,” said Rafi, to consolidate himself.
“Well, are you ill, Aziz, or aren’t you?” Fielding repeated.
“No doubt Major Callendar has told you that I am shamming.”
“Well, are you?” The company laughed, friendly and pleased. “An
Englishman at his best,” they thought; “so genial.”
“Enquire from Dr. Panna Lal.”
“You’re sure I don’t tire you by stopping?”
“Why, no! There are six people present in my small room already.
Please remain seated, if you will excuse the informality.” He
turned away and continued to address Rafi, who was terrified at
the arrival of his Principal, remembered that he had tried to
spread slander about him, and yearned to get away.
“He is ill and he is not ill,” said Hamidullah, offering a
cigarette. “And I suppose that most of us are in that same case.”
Fielding agreed; he and the pleasant sensitive barrister got on
well. They were fairly intimate and beginning to trust each other.
“The whole world looks to be dying, still it doesn’t die, so we
must assume the existence of a beneficent Providence.”
“Oh, that is true, how true!” said the policeman, thinking religion
had been praised.
“Does Mr. Fielding think it’s true?”
“Think which true? The world isn’t dying. I’m certain of that!”
“No, no—the existence of Providence.”
“Well, I don’t believe in Providence.”
“But how then can you believe in God?” asked Syed Mohammed.
“I don’t believe in God.”
A tiny movement as of “I told you so!” passed round the company,
and Aziz looked up for an instant, scandalized. “Is it correct that
most are atheists in England now?” Hamidullah enquired.
“The educated thoughtful people? I should say so, though they don’t
like the name. The truth is that the West doesn’t bother much over
belief and disbelief in these days. Fifty years ago, or even when
you and I were young, much more fuss was made.”
“And does not morality also decline?”
“It depends what you call—yes, yes, I suppose morality does
decline.”