The Last Candles of the Night. Ian Bedford
flag.”
“Did anyone look up this morning?” All eyes were on Philip, the last to arrive. “Was the flag aloft?”
“The flag?”
“The flag of India.”
“The flag of the Union: white, orange and green,” said Smart in a mock-Irish accent, “except for the chakra in the middle. What’s that for? Can anyone suggest to me what the chakra is doing? In India, it’s true, they may have spun their way to freedom. But now they’ll need Five-Year Plans.” He mistook the imperial chakra for the Gandhian charka or spinning-wheel.
Philip was intrigued. “The students ran up the Indian flag?”
“To the top of the building. They ran it up on Wednesday. Laiq Ali came over in person, to see it brought down. We had students from everywhere: five thousand in the grounds surrounding the entrance, including four busloads from Nizam College. The police hung back, Government brought in reinforcements. Whoever put up that flag must have scaled a sheer wall, like a gecko. I don’t know how it was done.”
“There are footholds,” Middleton suggested.
“You show me the footholds. No-one can climb that wall. The crack engineers, the team from the Irrigation Department, couldn’t bring it down. They lost face. They had to shoot it down – with ropes and arrows. There are still a few rags fluttering.”
“Were there arrests?” said Philip.
“None. All for show. The gaols are full.” That was Smart’s opinion, but Middleton corrected him: “The gaols are empty. Laiq Ali has just released all the satyagrahis. It’s whistle-as-you-work, pretend-it’s-a-natural-calamity, offend-nobody. A few lathi-beatings, that was the worst of it.”
“You see, where we are,” said Hardcastle gravely, to Philip, “we’re transcendent observers. We watched the whole tamasha from the Arts College portico. And what do we know? Nothing. We know nothing and we’re entitled to know nothing. So let’s get on with the job.”
The job that morning consisted of reports on schools. No official from the Nizam’s Government was present. Before the signing of the Standstill Agreement in November (Philip was told) the Education Office had kept a close watch on proceedings and, up till August 15, the date of the calamity of Indian independence, the Nizam himself had been interested in schools. Now all but the core functions of government had fallen away. The core functions no longer included education. New schools had opened, thanks to earlier decisions, and budgets were approved for these; but some had no teachers, and there was no consolidated record of the enrolment of pupils. “We’re the only ones counting,” Hardcastle said.
“There’s a teacher problem. Old, bearded moulvis are putting up their hands wherever we look, but they’re not what we want. We can’t get Hindus to apply.”
“Why would they apply?” said Smart.
“They’d apply for the money. Double pay, we’re offering, in some districts,” said Middleton, but Hardcastle shook his head. “We’ve ruled that out.”
“If we’ve ruled it out, I don’t see how we can manage.”
“We’ll manage till the heavens do fall. When the heavens do fall,” said Hardcastle, “we’ll have Muslim and Hindu teachers staffing the best English-language schools in the subcontinent. We won’t offer double pay. Double pay is for foreigners.”
“Meaning me,” said Philip.
“Son, you’re a headmaster. You’re on triple pay.”
Philip was mortified. This was news to him. He’d been quoted a salary in Australia, but – triple pay! in local terms, a fortune – and unmerited!
“We’ll find you an assistant to train. We’ll find you a Hindu. That should be possible, Sukku, don’t you think? – in a town like Warangal?”
All eyes were on Sukku – “Doctor”, as they sometimes called him, a Ph.D. in History from Madras University. Dr Sukhanandam was never absent, but seldom entirely present at these scheduled meetings. As Philip had explained to Rhondda, his associates in the reform project were mostly Englishmen. This fact had not lessened their commitment to primary education in the schools of Hyderabad. While the Nizam’s state faltered, they alone had the time for it.
“What do you say, Doctor?”
Sukhanandam did not appear to be listening. Yet his very abstractedness conferred on him a kind of mystique. He had not yet been known to fail a question, or to ask for its substance to be repeated. His voice was faint, yet his answer rang as clear as a bell. “No Hindu will teach.”
Hardcastle and the others repaired to the Secunderabad club. But Philip took Sukku to Monty’s. His guest, a teetotaller, accepted the gift of a vegetable samosa on a plate and surveyed, without energy – he was not energetic – but with tolerant curiosity, the threadbare appointments of this unusual place. Montgomery’s Club had no bar, two or three bearers and a kitchen. A screen at one end of the room blocked a few select tables, and the lights were dimmed. There were no posters, mirrors, paintings of gods or framed messages from the Qur’an, or indeed ornaments of any kind but for a wall clock of the kind you would find on a railway platform. The polished-wood, square tables, each with four upright chairs (lounging was not encouraged), aptly communicated the sober business ethos at Monty’s. Yet this was not a sober place.
In all Secunderabad and Hyderabad, Monty’s was the one establishment where Philip felt at home. Yet even here he glanced round him with precaution before selecting a table. Others besides him felt a similar affection for the place. On his very first visit to Monty’s, Philip had encountered a desperately out-of-pocket Australian who, finding himself in India, had wandered off the beaten track. He did not want to team up with such another.
The clock showed seven minutes past three, as it always did. Philip ordered, for himself, his first bottle of beer in a month, and plain water for Dr Sukhanandam. The bearers at Monty’s did not mind whether you drank big or small. You could stick to your post all day, for the little they cared. Round the room, table by solitary table, sat red-eyed garage mechanics and rickshaw drivers who had acquired the habit of drinking brandy at Monty’s rather than arrack in low-beamed, lantern-lit dens with their boisterous peers. So glad was Philip to have a glass in his hand that his spirit embraced theirs with emotion. “Anand should be here.”
Dr Sukhanandam was surprised. “Does Anand take alcohol?”
“Not much. But he’d sit here beside me, just as you do. We’ve had some of our best talks here.”
Sukku took this in. Though not himself a participant in ‘best talks’, it was he who had led Philip to Anand. Philip’s nocturnal glimpse of the outside of Anand’s hostel had been in his company. By a means all his own, without ever appearing to be at the centre of anything (or even to be paying attention) Sukku contrived a sort of access to widely dissimilar cliques and individuals, ranging from a priest at the Jain temple to Congress plotters and planners, as well as a nawab or two. He was neither an enthusiast nor a teacher: what then was his function in the reform group? He put people in touch with people.
“I have seen very little of Anand,” he said. “He is always touring.”
“He came to Warangal.”
“What kind of a bold spirit!” muttered Sukku, disturbed by the thought. To Philip he said, “You are another such person. You venture everywhere.”
“I don’t venture anywhere. I did venture to Bastar, when I first arrived. I go where I’m sent.”
“Always to villages.”
“Warangal is not a village.”
Sukku passed over this distinction. “I would not leave Hyderabad. I am called a socialist and a humanitarian, but the illiterate people of our villages, they are disturbing to me. I cannot go among them. Your British and Danish missionaries