The Last Candles of the Night. Ian Bedford
from, nor when, but the fact of her being there that so impressed him, that impressed both of them.
Anand was the next to speak. “You’re Ragini.”
It was not for such a magnificent creature to own to herself. Philip rose to the occasion. “Anand, this is Ragini. You two have to meet each other. She comes to the school.”
Ragini, hearing Anand’s name, did not seek to confirm it of him. “But why aren’t you at the school?” she asked Philip. “You should be. It’s term-time.”
“Term-time or not, I’ve shut down till next week. I have to make my report.”
“Your report, to whom?”
Philip knew this to be a dangerous question. “The usual people. The same people as usual,” he said vaguely.
“And those are?”
Heartened and entertained by this line of questioning, Anand again found his voice. “You try talking him out of it,” he said. “The Nizam’s people. He shouldn’t be teaching school, not for them.”
“But he’s a born teacher.”
Philip, the object of dispute, looked from one to the other.
“I’ve sat in on one of his lessons,” Ragini declared.
“Do you really think these lessons will continue,” said Anand, like a batter returning the shuttlecock, “once the Nizam’s Government is out of the way?”
“The Nizam’s Government. You hope it will fall.”
“I’m working to that end.”
“Anand is working to that end for the cause of India,” said Philip, so completing the introduction on both sides. “But he’s found it hard going in certain districts. I don’t believe too many people are listening to him.”
“I’ll listen to him. What’s this about India?”
“India is the name of our country. India is our nation,” said Anand, thrilled by his new audience though none too pleased with Philip’s brief digest of his adversities. “In places where this truth isn’t known – there are still a few places; Hyderabad is one of the biggest …”
“The biggest,” said Ragini.
“I’m a Congress worker. I tour the districts for the Indian National Congress.” Anand broke off. He had not meant to come to the point quite so soon. As in cricket, for a demon bowler, a short wind-up was necessary. But what most wrong-footed Anand – and Ragini, who perceived it – was a change in the motion of the bus. It was slowing down. After barely two miles, they were being pulled over yet again.
“More police,” said Philip. This time no lorry. But a van, uniforms. A senior officer, judging by his braid, and his constable climbed aboard. They spoke not a word, not even to the driver. They glanced without close inspection at the row of seats, and left morosely and abruptly, like men deceived. The journey was resumed.
Enduring this interval, Philip observed a detail in Ragini. Not just her agitation, as a lone Hindu woman, which she did well to disguise, but a surprising detail. “Have I seen you wear jewellery before?”
Ragini pointed to her nose-stud. That she always wore.
“No, no. Are those your best clothes?” He thought not. “Then why the jewellery? It makes you look …”
Anand would dearly have loved to supply the missing epithet. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the clothes, with the choli and sari, which were colour-matched: well-worn, but, of course, she’d been travelling. Nor could he object to the earrings. These dangled, resplendent, like something from a trousseau. Anand wondered, a trifle anxiously, if Ragini was married. She wore the pottu, the dot on her forehead, like all Hindu women except for widows. He was shocked by Philip, who acted as if he divined something. How did he come to be so free with her?
“Now you must admire these.” Ragini, to Philip, held out her wrists and forearms. “Normally it’s just two bangles, the chunky ones. Now see how many.”
“I like them.”
“They’re not for you to like or dislike. They’re not for anyone.”
“For the police, perhaps?”
“They’re to fool the police. You’re right. The earrings to show I’m a respectable person. The bangles to show I’m an authentic person. You do see why.”
“I can guess.”
Ragini switched her attention to Anand. “Because I’m a woman, I’m dangerous to the police. All women are dangerous, but not all women have to appear dangerous. You see these ammalu, on the bus, with their families. All these women are wearing jewellery.”
“The worse for them,” said Philip, “if the Razakars come.”
She ignored him. Her rebuff was intended. Ragini was afraid of his speaking out of turn. She did not want Anand to know the first thing about her.
Philip saw this, and held his tongue. Yet even if he blabbed, there was little enough he could tell. From the day Ragini appeared in his classroom (he had first thought – heaven help him – as his teaching assistant!) she had had the air of knowing him only too well. They could speak, directly, of whatever popped into their heads. But except for father and sister, and despite her infrequent tales of the medical college at Madras and of the two nursing hospitals, in Madras and Warangal – one outside and one inside the Nizam’s Dominions – he had learned nothing confidential, since she rarely confided. She belonged to the Andhra Mahasabha, a revolutionary organisation. She rode a green bicycle, she told lively stories of her forest rides, she came and went. He sensed her relief on her visits, an abatement of watchfulness – as if she assigned to Philip a recreational value.
Ragini, “always on the bus”, had not been on the bus at Warangal and had not been on the bus when it was intercepted. This left one place where she could have climbed on the bus.
“Are you a student?” she asked Anand.
“Do I look like a student?”
“No, answer me. Are you a student?”
“I am a graduate,” said Anand shortly.
“Graduate already. So you must be high up in the Congress Party.”
“I am not high up.” And it was not as a graduate that he meant to appear. Anand felt the initiative had been taken from him. For Ragini he described his posts, of which Warangal district was only one. In the Kannada-speaking districts, he watched Bidar airfield, from time to time, on the trail of the Cotton brothers. Anand’s account of himself was more halting than usual. He was all but tongue-tied. And yet he was feted for his eloquence in a number of places. His mother and sisters thought of him as a marvel, but they were not all. As a follower of the Swami, he was credited, in Hyderabad Congress circles, with a silver tongue. Two silver tongues – one speaking English, and one Marathi. Yet far from moving Ragini with his pro-India, pro-Congress oratory, he seemed only to awaken her skepticism, and – could it be? – her boredom, though she plied him with questions. The listener with whom he struck a chord was Philip. Philip was amazed to hear that the Cotton brothers – two of them? three of them? – sometimes landing at Bidar airfield, and widely supposed to be flying in arms and supplies for the Nizam’s besieged government, were Australians. “Don’t you go near them,” warned Anand.
“Go near them? I’d never heard of them. No-one has seen them. Have you seen them?”
“No.”
“Have you seen their plane?”
“Hobnob with the Nizam all you like,” said Anand, knowing full well that Philip was as far from the Nizam as he, on his airfield vigils, was from the Cotton brothers. His voice held a stoniness, a displeasure, which was as little lost on Ragini as on Philip. Yet neither attributed