A passage to India
“Excuse the question, but if this is the case, how is England
justified in holding India?”
There they were! Politics again. “It’s a question I can’t get my
mind on to,” he replied. “I’m out here personally because I needed
a job. I cannot tell you why England is here or whether she ought
to be here. It’s beyond me.”
“Well-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.”
“I guess they do; I got in first,” said Fielding, smiling.
“Then excuse me again—is it fair an Englishman should occupy one
when Indians are available? Of course I mean nothing personally.
Personally we are delighted you should be here, and we benefit
greatly by this frank talk.”
There is only one answer to a conversation of this type: “England
holds India for her good.” Yet Fielding was disinclined to give
it. The zeal for honesty had eaten him up. He said, “I’m delighted
to be here too—that’s my answer, there’s my only excuse. I can’t
tell you anything about fairness. It mayn’t have been fair I should
have been born. I take up some other fellow’s air, don’t I, whenever
I breathe? Still, I’m glad it’s happened, and I’m glad I’m out
here. However big a badmash one is—if one’s happy in consequence,
that is some justification.”
The Indians were bewildered. The line of thought was not alien to
them, but the words were too definite and bleak. Unless a sentence
paid a few compliments to Justice and Morality in passing, its
grammar wounded their ears and paralysed their minds. What they
said and what they felt were (except in the case of affection)
seldom the same. They had numerous mental conventions and when
these were flouted they found it very difficult to function.
Hamidullah bore up best. “And those Englishmen who are not delighted
to be in India—have they no excuse?” he asked.
“None. Chuck ’em out.”
“It may be difficult to separate them from the rest,” he laughed.
“Worse than difficult, wrong,” said Mr. Ram Chand. “No Indian
gentleman approves chucking out as a proper thing. Here we differ
from those other nations. We are so spiritual.”
“Oh that is true, how true!” said the police inspector.
“Is it true, Mr. Haq? I don’t consider us spiritual. We can’t
co-ordinate, we can’t co-ordinate, it only comes to that. We can’t
keep engagements, we can’t catch trains. What more than this is
the so-called spirituality of India? You and I ought to be at the
Committee of Notables, we’re not; our friend Dr. Lal ought to be
with his patients, he isn’t. So we go on, and so we shall continue
to go, I think, until the end of time.”
“It is not the end of time, it is scarcely ten-thirty, ha, ha!”
cried Dr. Panna Lal, who was again in confident mood. “Gentlemen,
if I may be allowed to say a few words, what an interesting talk,
also thankfulness and gratitude to Mr. Fielding in the first place
teaches our sons and gives them all the great benefits of his
experience and judgment——”
“Dr. Lal!”
“Dr. Aziz?”
“You sit on my leg.”
“I beg pardon, but some might say your leg kicks.”
“Come along, we tire the invalid in either case,” said Fielding,
and they filed out—four Mohammedans, two Hindus and the Englishman.
They stood on the verandah while their conveyances were summoned
out of various patches of shade.
“Aziz has a high opinion of you, he only did not speak because of
his illness.”
“I quite understand,” said Fielding, who was rather disappointed
with his call. The Club comment, “making himself cheap as usual,”
passed through his mind. He couldn’t even get his horse brought
up. He had liked Aziz so much at their first meeting, and had hoped
for developments.
CHAPTER X
The heat had leapt forward in the last hour, the street was deserted
as if a catastrophe had cleaned off humanity during the inconclusive
talk. Opposite Aziz’ bungalow stood a large unfinished house
belonging to two brothers, astrologers, and a squirrel hung
head-downwards on it, pressing its belly against burning scaffolding
and twitching a mangy tail. It seemed the only occupant of the
house, and the squeals it gave were in tune with the infinite, no
doubt, but not attractive except to other squirrels. More noises
came from a dusty tree, where brown birds creaked and floundered
about looking for insects; another bird, the invisible coppersmith,
had started his “ponk ponk.” It matters so little to the majority
of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human,
desires or decides. Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind
how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England
concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is
more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and
readier to resume control as soon as men are tired. When the seven
gentlemen who had held such various opinions inside the bungalow
came out of it, they were aware of a common burden, a vague threat
which they called “the bad weather coming.” They felt that they
could not do their work, or would not be paid enough for doing it.
The space between them and their carriages, instead of being empty,
was clogged with a medium that pressed against their flesh, the
carriage cushions scalded their trousers, their eyes pricked, domes
of hot water accumulated under their head-gear and poured down
their cheeks. Salaaming feebly, they dispersed for the interior of
other bungalows, to recover their self-esteem and the qualities
that distinguished them from each other.
All over the city and over much of India the same retreat on the
part of humanity was beginning, into cellars, up hills, under
trees. April, herald of horrors, is at hand. The sun was returning
to his kingdom with power but without beauty—that was the sinister
feature. If only there had been beauty! His cruelty would have been
tolerable then. Through excess of light, he failed to triumph, he
also; in his yellowy-white overflow not only matter, but brightness
itself lay drowned. He was not the unattainable friend, either of
men or birds or other suns, he was not the eternal promise, the
never-withdrawn suggestion that haunts our consciousness; he was
merely a creature, like the rest, and so debarred from glory.
CHAPTER XI
Although the Indians had driven off, and Fielding could see his
horse standing in a small shed in the corner of the compound, no
one troubled to bring it to him. He started to get it himself, but
was stopped by a call from the house. Aziz was sitting up in bed,
looking dishevelled and sad. “Here’s your home,” he said
sardonically. “Here’s the celebrated hospitality of the East. Look
at the flies. Look at the chunam coming off the walls. Isn’t it
jolly? Now I suppose you want to be off, having seen an Oriental
interior.”
“Anyhow, you want to rest.”
“I can rest the whole day, thanks to worthy Dr. Lal. Major
Callendar’s spy, I suppose you know, but this time it didn’t work.
I am allowed to have a slight temperature.”
“Callendar doesn’t trust anyone, English or Indian: that’s his
character, and I wish you weren’t under him; but you are, and
that’s that.”
“Before you go, for you are evidently in a great hurry, will you
please unlock that drawer? Do you see a piece of brown paper at
the top?”
“Yes.”
“Open it.”
“Who is this?”
“She was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come
before. Now put her photograph away.”
He was astonished, as a traveller who suddenly sees, between the
stones of the desert, flowers. The flowers have been there all the
time, but suddenly he sees them. He tried to look at the photograph,
but in itself it was just a woman in a sari, facing the world. He
muttered, “Really, I don’t know why you pay me this great
compliment, Aziz, but I do appreciate it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, she was not a highly educated woman or even
beautiful, but put it away. You would have seen her, so why should
you not see her photograph?”
“You would have allowed me to see her?”
“Why not? I believe in the purdah, but I should have told her you
were my brother, and she would have seen you. Hamidullah saw her,
and several others.”
“Did she think they were your brothers?”
“Of course not, but the word exists and is convenient. All men are
my brothers, and as soon as one behaves as such he may see my
wife.”
“And when the whole world behaves as such, there will be no more
purdah?”
“It is because you can say and feel such a remark as that, that I
show you the photograph,” said Aziz gravely.
“It is beyond the power of most men. It is because you behave well
while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to
come back just now when I called you. I thought, ‘He has certainly
done with me; I have insulted him.’ Mr. Fielding, no one can ever
realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize
it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget,
though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that
more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.” His voice seemed
to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal
surface, he said, “We can’t build up India except on what we feel.
What is the use of all these reforms, and Conciliation Committees
for Mohurram, and shall we cut the tazia short or shall we carry
it another route, and Councils of Notables and official parties
where the English sneer at our skins?”
“It’s beginning at the wrong end, isn’t it? I know, but institutions
and the governments don’t.” He looked again at the photograph. The
lady faced the world at her husband’s wish and her own, but how
bewildering she found it, the echoing contradictory world!
“Put her away, she is of no importance, she is dead,” said Aziz
gently. “I showed her to you because I have nothing else to show.
You may look round the whole of my bungalow now, and empty
everything. I have no other secrets, my three children live away
with their grandmamma, and that is all.”
Fielding sat down by the bed, flattered at the trust reposed in
him, yet rather sad. He felt old. He wished that he too could be
carried away on waves of emotion. The next time they met, Aziz
might be cautious and standoffish. He realized this, and it made
him sad that he should realize it. Kindness, kindness, and more
kindness—yes, that he might supply, but was that really all that
the queer nation needed? Did it not also demand an occasional
intoxication of the blood? What had he done to deserve this outburst
of confidence, and what hostage could he give in exchange? He
looked back at his own life. What a poor crop of secrets it had
produced! There were things in it that he had shown to no one, but
they were so uninteresting, it wasn’t worth while lifting a purdah
on their account. He’d been in love, engaged to be married, lady
broke it off, memories of her and thoughts about her had kept him
from other women for a time; then indulgence, followed by repentance
and equilibrium. Meagre really except the equilibrium, and Aziz
didn’t want to have that confided to him—he would have called it
“everything ranged coldly on shelves.”
“I shall not really be intimate with this fellow,” Fielding thought,
and then “nor with anyone.” That was the corollary. And he had to
confess that he really didn’t mind, that he was content to help
people, and like them as long as they didn’t object, and if they
objected pass on serenely. Experience can do much, and all that he
had learnt in England and Europe was an assistance to him, and
helped him towards clarity, but clarity prevented him from
experiencing something else.
“How did you like the two ladies you met last Thursday?” he asked.
Aziz shook his head distastefully. The question reminded him of
his rash remark about the Marabar Caves.
“How do you like Englishwomen generally?”