The Moneylenders of Shahpur. Helen Forrester
and so seductive. No one looking at a Jain, he thought, could guess at the passions raging beneath their placid exteriors.
Smiling, both women advanced timidly, putting the palms of their hands together in salute.
As John bowed and said how pleased he was to see them again, he was thinking that if he were Dr Mehta, with a twenty-four-year-old daughter like Anasuyabehn, he would marry her off fast, before she got entangled with someone unscrupulous.
The office of the Vice-Chancellor of Shahpur University was extremely hot. It seemed as if the white walls of the Arts and Science Building had, that September morning, absorbed all the heat of the surrounding desert, and it had then become concentrated in the Vice-Chancellor’s usually pleasant room overlooking the carefully cultivated gardens in front of the building.
The Vice-Chancellor, Dr Yashvant Prasad, drummed his fingers irritably on his desk and tried to concentrate his attention on the papers before him, but the fan kept fluttering them and finally he closed the file and handed it to the Dean, Dr Mehta, who was standing by the desk.
The Dean’s gnarled brown hands shook a little as he took the file from his superior. Today was a fast day and he felt suddenly very weak and weary and thought wistfully of his retirement, still twelve months away.
He flicked over the pages of the file, which was neatly labelled Dr Tilak, Zoology, and said, ‘Dr Tilak should arrive this afternoon. I’m giving him two rooms in the students’ hostel for the present.’
‘That will do very well,’ agreed the Vice-Chancellor.
‘There’s a small room next to the Botany Museum which has water laid on, and I have arranged for him to have it as a laboratory.’ The Dean paled a little. He had long considered the requirements of Dr Tilak, the first staff member to be recruited for the new Department of Zoology. Would he, for instance, pin dead insects on to boards, as they had done in the Bombay Museum? Would he dissect animals? Perhaps, knowing how sacred life was in the Gujerat, he would teach with the aid of pictures and diagrams. Dean Mehta fervently hoped so, as he continued, ‘I – er am not sure what his research involves, but doubtless a little money will be forthcoming for equipment for him?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Vice-Chancellor glumly. ‘It was difficult enough to squeeze his salary out of the provincial government.’ He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘I’ll try again,’ he promised.
Several flies were buzzing round the office, so the Vice-Chancellor banged the bell on his desk and called to the peon outside the door to shut the window.
The peon, a thin wraith of a man clad in crumpled khaki, slipped down from his stool and trailed languidly across to the window, skilfully palming his small brown cigarette as he passed the Vice-Chancellor’s desk. He banged the window shut and returned to his stool.
The Vice-Chancellor leaned back in his wooden revolving chair and fretfully pulled at his long straight nose. He thought longingly of his native Delhi and wondered why he had ever agreed to come to the Gujerat to head this struggling university at Shahpur. He had, he thought despondently, only two fellow mathematicians on the staff – poor company for a Harvard man like himself.
The peon brought him a cup of lukewarm, oversweet tea, and, momentarily forgetting the Dean’s presence, the Vice-Chancellor viciously swatted a fly about to descend upon it. Flies all winter, roasting heat all summer; then the humidity before the rains, then the rains themselves with their following of cholera, typhoid and typhus. When the rains stopped there were clouds of mosquitoes carrying malaria to contend with. Really, Shahpur was only fit to live in for about two months of the year.
The Dean tucked the file on Dr Tilak under his arm and said anxiously, ‘I hope that a Maratha like Dr Tilak will fit comfortably into our Gujerati ways.’
‘I am from Delhi and I am managing to do so,’ responded the Vice-Chancellor tartly.
‘Ah, yes, indeed, my dear sir,’ said the Dean, realizing his slip immediately. ‘You are, however, so understanding.’
The Vice-Chancellor bridled and said jokingly, ‘Well, well, at least the British left us a common language, so that it makes no difference that Dr Tilak’s native tongue is Marathi, yours is Gujerati and mine is Hindi.’
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Dr Mehta hastily. But his mind revolted at the idea than an alien tongue united his beloved Gujerat with the cocksure southerners and the stupid northerners. His thoughts began to wander.
Although he was a professor of English, knew the plays of Shakespeare nearly by heart and had bookshelves crammed with the latest works in English, his heart lay in his little glass-fronted bookcase amongst his sacred Jain writings, laboriously collected over the years, some of them manuscripts written in Gujerati or Prakrit or Magadhi. Before this bookcase he would sometimes put a little offering of rice; and he would carefully take the writings out and dust them at the appropriate festival.
Vice-Chancellor Prasad glanced up at the Dean’s thin, lined face, clean-shaven except for a moustache, with its drooping eyelids and calm, firm mouth. The Dean saw the glance and came back to earth immediately. He pulled his watch out of his trouser pocket; it was a fine gold one which had belonged to his father, and he flicked the lid open carefully.
‘Dr Bennett is coming to see me for a few minutes at about twelve o’clock. He wants to go over the Marwari Gate temple; so if you will excuse me I’ll go now.’
‘Certainly. I should like to see Dr Tilak as soon as he arrives – I’m particularly anxious that our new Department should start off properly.’
‘I, too,’ replied the Dean with more fervour than he felt. He had advised against a Department of Zoology and he had an uneasy feeling that Dr Tilak could find himself on a collision course with Jain members of the staff.
That same morning, a very bored Anasuyabehn Mehta had been to the library to change her books. Domesticated and obedient as she was, she trusted implicitly her father’s promise to arrange another marriage for her. But in the meantime, she seemed to be living in an empty limbo, too old to associate with other single girls, yet without the advantages of matrimony.
Her aunt frowned at her as she entered and put the library books down in a corner. ‘Go and wash yourself, child, before entering the kitchen,’ she instructed. Then she turned to chide the boy servant for putting too much charcoal on the fire. ‘Savitri is waiting on the roof,’ she shouted, as Anasuyabehn trailed off to the bathroom.
Her friend, Savitri, knew her well enough to wait a little longer, thought Anasuyabehn, as she filled the bath bucket. Before commencing to wash herself, however, she went to the bottom of the stairs and called to Savitri that she would be up in a few minutes.
Savitri, comfortable in the shade of a tree taller than the bungalow, shouted that she had not to be back at work for an hour.
Anasuyabehn quickly bathed, washed her hair and changed her petticoat, blouse and sari. Then, taking a towel and rubbing her hair as she went, she climbed the stairs to the roof, promising herself that she would go down to help Aunt in the kitchen after a few minutes’ gossip with her friend.
Savitri lived such a full and interesting life, she thought enviously. She actually earned her living as a chemist. She herself had never been able to persuade her father to allow her to work.
‘Have you had lunch?’ she asked Savitri. Her voice was solicitous and deferential. It rejuvenated the other girl’s self-esteem, which always sank when she saw Anasuyabehn.
She turned her thin, heavily bespectacled face towards her friend and said she had eaten. She thought mournfully that she had a university degree and competed successfully in the world’s hardest labour market; but when she and Anasuyabehn walked together in the evening it was at Anasuyabehn that young men cast longing glances. Savitri’s needle-sharp