A Suitable Boy

  ‘But if I do?’

  ‘If you do—I’ll make 450.’

  ‘And if I make 500?’

  ‘I’ll make 550.’ There was a recklessness in his answer and, indeed, a kind of intoxication to the challenge. Everyone was quiet.

  ‘And if I make 600?’

  ‘650.’

  Haresh put up his hand and said—‘All right! It’s done! Let’s go into the battlefield!’ There was no rationality to this exchange, merely a sense of drama, but it had been very impressive, and the issue had in effect been clinched.

  ‘The matter has been decided,’ said Haresh. ‘On Monday morning I will don my overalls and show you what can be done. But let us talk for the moment of a mere 400. I am prepared to stand and tell you here and now that if our production rises to that level, not a single man will be fired. And the week that you regularly make 400 pairs a day I will fight for all of you to be promoted by one grade. And if this does not happen I am prepared to resign.’

  There was a buzz of disbelief. Even Milon Basu thought that Haresh was a real fool. But he did not know of the two reassuring words—‘Yes. Try.’—scrawled in the Chairman’s hand on the sheet of paper in Haresh’s pocket.

  16.10

  The next Monday, Haresh donned his full overalls, not the natty, abridged ones he usually wore with his cream silk shirt, and told the workmen on his line to pile up the lasted shoes for welt-stitching. Six hundred shoes for an eight-hour day came to about ninety shoes an hour and still left an hour to spare. Each conveyor-rack contained five pairs of shoes. That meant eighteen racks an hour. The workmen gathered around, and those from other lines too could not resist betting on the odds of his succeeding.

  Ninety pairs came and went before the hour struck. When it was over, Haresh wiped the sweat from his forehead and said to Ram Lakhan: ‘Now I’ve done it—will you keep your side of the bargain?’

  Ram Lakhan looked at the pile of welted shoes and said: ‘Sahib, you’ve done it for an hour. But I have to do it every hour, every day, every week, every year. I will be finished, worn out, if I work at that rate.’

  ‘Well, what do you want me to do to prove you won’t?’ said Haresh.

  ‘Show me that you can do it for a whole day.’

  ‘All right. But I’m not going to close the production line for a day. We won’t stop the conveyor. Everyone will work at the same pace. Is that agreed?’

  The conveyor was started up, and the work continued. The operators shook their heads at the unconventionality of it all, but they were amused and worked as hard as they could. Just over 450 pairs were made that day. Haresh was completely exhausted. His hands were trembling from having had to hold each lasted shoe against a needle going in and out of it at high speed. But he had seen people in a factory in England doing this with a single hand, turning the shoe casually around on the machine, and he had known it could be done.

  ‘Well, Ram Lakhan? We have done 450. Now of course you’ll make 500?’

  ‘I said so,’ said Ram Lakhan, stroking his moustache thoughtfully. ‘I won’t shift from that stand.’

  After a couple of weeks Haresh got an extra man to assist Ram Lakhan with his crucial operation—mainly by handing him the shoes so that he wouldn’t have to reach out for them—and the production level reached the final figure of 600.

  What in Haresh’s mind was the Battle of Goodyear Welted had been won. The Praha standard of production and profit was floating higher—and Haresh’s own pennant too had ascended a notch. He was very happy with himself.

  16.11

  But not everyone was. One consequence of this whole business—and in particular the fact that Haresh had circumvented Novak—was that the Czechs, almost to a man, began to view him with intense suspicion. All kinds of rumours about him began to float around the colony. He had been seen allowing a driver to sit down in his house—to sit down on a chair as an equal. He was a communist at heart. He was a union spy, in fact the secret editor of the union paper Amader Biplob. Haresh could sense them cold-shouldering him, but he could do nothing about it. He continued to produce 3,000 pairs a week instead of the earlier 900—and to pour his energy into every task within his direct control, down to the cleaning of his machines. And since he had given his own soul to the organization, he believed that Praha too—maybe in the distant form of Jan Tomin himself—would sooner or later do him justice.

  He was in for a rude shock.

  One day he went to the Design Centre in order to make a few suggestions that would help streamline the design and production of the shoes under his supervision. He discussed his ideas with the Indian who was the number two in the department. Just then Mr Bratinka, who ran the Design Centre, came in and stared at him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said without even an attempt at civility and as if Haresh was trying to pollute his flock with the virus of rebellion.

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Bratinka?’ asked Haresh.

  ‘Why are you here without permission?’

  ‘I don’t need permission to improve productivity.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Mr Bratinka?’

  ‘GET OUT!’

  Mr Bratinka’s assistant ventured to suggest that there was some merit in Mr Khanna’s suggestions.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Mr Bratinka.

  Both Bratinka and Haresh were furious. Haresh filed a complaint in the open grievance book that Khandelwal had established for the redress of injuries. And Bratinka reported Haresh to his superiors.

  The result was that Haresh was hauled up before the General Manager and a committee of four others: a regular Czech inquisition with all manner of odd allegations other than that he was in the Design Centre without permission.

  ‘Khanna,’ said Pavel Havel, ‘you have been talking to my driver.’

  ‘Yes, Sir, I have. He came to see me about a matter concerning his son’s education.’ Pavel Havel’s driver was a quiet-spoken, extremely polite man, always spotlessly dressed: Haresh would have said that he was, in every sense that mattered, a gentleman.

  ‘Why did he come to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because he thought that as an Indian I might be sympathetic—or would at least understand the difficulties of a young man’s career.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ said Kurilla, whose Middlehampton comradeship with Haresh had helped him get his job in the first instance.

  ‘Just what I said. Perhaps he thought I could help him.’

  ‘And it was seen through your windows that he was sitting down.’

  ‘He was,’ said Haresh, annoyed. ‘He is a decent man, and a much older man than me. As he was standing, I asked him to sit down. He was uncomfortable, but I insisted that he should take a seat. And we discussed the matter. His son has temporary work in the factory on daily wages, and I suggested that in order to improve his prospects he should attend night classes. I lent him a few books. That is all there is to the incident.’

  Novak said: ‘You think that India is Europe, Mr Khanna? That there is equality between managers and staff? That everyone is at the same level?’

  ‘Mr Novak, I should remind you that I am not a manager. Nor am I a communist, if that is what you are implying. Mr Havel, you know your driver. I am sure you think he is a trustworthy man. Ask him what happened.’

  Pavel Havel was looking a little shamefaced, as if he had implied that Haresh was not trustworthy. And what he next said rather proved it.

  ‘Well, there have been rumours of your being the editor of the union newspaper.’

  Haresh shook his head in amazement.

  ‘You say you are not?’ This was Novak.

  ‘I am not. I don’t even think I’m a union member—unless I have become one automatically.’

  ‘You have been inciting the union people to work behind our back.’

  ‘I have not. What do you mean?’

  ‘You visited their offices and held a meeting with them secretly. I did not know of it.’
/>
  ‘It was an open meeting. There was nothing that was done secretly. I am an honest man, Mr Novak, and I do not like these aspersions.’

  ‘How dare you speak like this?’ exploded Kurilla. ‘How dare you do these things? We are the providers of employment to Indians, and if you do not like this job and the way we run things, you can leave the factory.’

  At this, Haresh saw red and said in a trembling voice:

  ‘Mr Kurilla, you provide employment not only to Indians but also to yourselves. As for your second point, I may leave the factory, but I assure you that you will leave India before I do.’

  Kurilla almost burst. That a chit of a junior should stand up to the mighty Czech Prahamen was something both incomprehensible and unprecedented. Pavel Havel calmed him down and said to Haresh: ‘I think this inquiry is over. We have covered all the points. I will talk to you later.’

  A day later he called Haresh to his office and told him to continue as before. He added that he was pleased with his job, especially with respect to production. Perhaps, thought Haresh, he’s had a talk with his driver.

  Amazingly enough, the Czechs, especially Kurilla, became fairly friendly towards Haresh after this incident. It had, in a way, cleared the air. Now that they believed he was not a communist or an agitator, they were neither panicky nor resentful. They were basically fair-minded men who believed in results, and his tripling of production, once it appeared in the official monthly figures, had the same sort of effect on them as the pair of Goodyear Welted shoes that Haresh had made—and which, as it happened, he had been facing throughout his inquisition in the General Manager’s office.

  16.12

  As Malati was walking out of the university library, en route to a meeting of the Socialist Party, one of her friends—a girl who studied singing at the Haridas College—got talking with her.

  In the course of exchanging gossip, the friend mentioned that Kabir had been seen just a few days earlier at the Red Fox restaurant, in animated and intimate conversation with a girl. The girl who had seen them was entirely reliable, and had said—

  But Malati cut her off. ‘I’m not interested!’ she exclaimed with surprising vehemence. ‘I don’t have the time to listen. I have to rush to a meeting.’ And she turned away, her eyes flashing.

  She felt as if she had been personally insulted. Her friend’s information was always correct, so there was no point in doubting it. What infuriated Malati most of all was that Kabir must have met this girl at the Red Fox around the time that he was making his protestations of undying love in the Blue Danube. It was enough to put her into a Black Fury.

  It confirmed everything she had ever thought about men.

  O perfidy.

  16.13

  On the evening before their meeting, while Lata had been at Ballygunge, Haresh was making last-minute preparations at the Prahapore Officers’ Club to entertain his guests the next day. The whole place was festooned with coloured crêpe for the Christmas season.

  ‘So, Khushwant,’ said Haresh in Hindi, ‘there will be no problem if we are as much as half an hour late? They are coming from Calcutta and something might delay them.’

  ‘No problem at all, Mr Khanna. I have been running the club for five years, and have grown used to adjusting to other people’s schedules.’ Khushwant had risen from being a bearer to becoming a cook-cum-bearer to becoming the virtual manager of the club.

  ‘The vegetarian dishes will present no difficulty? I know that that is not usual at the club.’

  ‘Please rest assured.’

  ‘And the Christmas pudding with brandy sauce.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Or do you think it should be apple strudel?’

  ‘No, the Christmas pudding is more special.’ Khushwant knew how to prepare a variety of Czech desserts as well as dishes.

  ‘No expense is to be spared.’

  ‘Mr Khanna, at eighteen rupees a head instead of seven, there is no need to mention such matters.’

  ‘It’s a pity the swimming pool has no water at this time of year.’

  Khushwant did not smile, but he thought that it was unlike Mr Khanna to be so concerned about things of this kind. He wondered what this special party was that he was being asked to cater for—at a lunch that would consume two weeks’ worth of Mr Khanna’s salary in two hours.

  Haresh walked home thinking about his next morning’s meeting rather than the Goodyear Welted line. It was a two-minute walk to the small flat that he had been provided in the colony. When he got to his room, he sat at his desk for a while. He faced a small, framed photograph; it was the well-travelled picture of Lata that Mrs Rupa Mehra had given him in Kanpur.

  He looked at it and smiled, then thought of the other photograph which used to travel with him. It had been left in its silver frame, but put away, lovingly and regretfully, in a drawer. And Haresh, after copying out in his small, slanting hand a few paragraphs and phrases from Simran’s letters to him, had sent all her letters back to her. It would not be fair, he felt, to keep them.

  The next day just at noon, two cars (the Chatterjis’ white Humber which had been kuku’d by Meenakshi for the day, and Arun’s little blue Austin) entered the white gates of the Prahapore Officers’ Colony and stopped at House 6, Row 3. From the two cars emerged Mrs Rupa Mehra, together with two sons and a son-in-law, and two daughters and a daughter-in-law. The entire Mehra mafia was met and welcomed by Haresh, who took them upstairs to his little three-room flat.

  Haresh had made sure that there would be enough beer, Scotch (White Horse, not Black Dog), and gin to keep everyone happy, as well as lots of nimbu pani and other soft drinks. His servant was a boy of about seventeen, who had been briefed that this was a very important occasion; he could not help grinning at the guests as he served them their drinks.

  Pran and Varun had a beer, Arun a Scotch, and Meenakshi a Tom Collins. Mrs Rupa Mehra and her two daughters asked for nimbu pani. Haresh spent a lot of time fussing over Mrs Rupa Mehra. He was, most atypically and unlike his first meeting with Lata, quite nervous. Perhaps his meeting with Arun and Meenakshi at the Khandelwals’ had given him the sense that they were critical of him. By now he and Lata had exchanged enough letters to make him feel that she was the woman for him. Her most affectionate letter had followed his announcement that he had lost his job; and he had been very moved by this.

  Haresh made a few inquiries about Brahmpur and Bhaskar, and told Pran that he was looking very well. How were Veena and Kedarnath and Bhaskar? How was Sunil Patwardhan? He made a little polite conversation with Savita and Varun, whom he had never met before, and tried not to talk to Lata, who he sensed was equally nervous, perhaps even a little withdrawn.

  Haresh was very conscious that he was under close family scrutiny, but he was not sure how to handle it. This was no Czech interview where he could talk about brass tacks and production. Some subtlety was required, and Haresh was not given to subtlety.

  He talked a little about ‘Cawnpore’, until Arun said something denigratory about provincial industrial towns. Middlehampton too met with a similar response. Arun’s amour propre and his habit of laying down his opinions as statute had clearly recovered from his setback at the Khandelwals’.

  Haresh noticed that Lata was looking at his co-respondent shoes with what appeared almost to be distaste. But the moment he looked at her, she turned away a bit guiltily towards his small bookshelf with its maroon-bound set of Hardy novels. Haresh felt a little downcast; he had thought a great deal about what to wear.

  But the grand luncheon was still to come, and he was sure that the Mehras would be more than impressed by the spread that Khushwant would lay on, as well as by the great wood-floored hall that constituted almost the entire premises of the Prahapore Officers’ Club. Thank God he was not living outside the gates where the other foremen lived. The juxtaposition of those humble quarters with the pink silk handkerchief tucked into Arun’s grey suit pocket, with Meenakshi’s silvery laugh, with the white Humb
er parked outside, would have been disastrous.

  By the time the party of eight was walking towards the club in the warm winter sunshine, Haresh’s general optimism had reasserted itself. He pointed out that beyond the compound walls lay the river Hooghly and that the tall hedge that they were passing bounded the General Manager Havel’s house. They walked past a small playground for children and a chapel. The chapel too was festooned for Christmas.

  ‘The Czechs are good chaps at heart,’ said Haresh expansively to Arun. ‘They believe in results, in being shown rather than told something. I believe they’ll even agree to my plan for brogues to be made in Brahmpur—and not by the Praha factory there but by small-scale manufacturers. They’re not like the Bengalis, who want to talk everything over the table and do as little work as possible. It is amazing what the Czechs have managed to create—and that too in Bengal.’

  Lata listened to Haresh, quite astonished by his bluntness. She had had something of the same opinion about Bengalis, but once their family had become allied to the Chatterjis, she did not make or take such generalizations easily. And didn’t Haresh realize that Meenakshi was Bengali? Apparently not, because he was continuing regardless:

  ‘It’s hard for them, it must be, to be so far away from home and not be able to go back. They don’t even have passports. Just what they call white papers, which makes it difficult for them to travel. They’re mostly self-taught, though Kurilla has been to Middlehampton—and a few days ago even Novak was playing the piano at the club.’

  But Haresh didn’t explain who either of these two gentlemen were; he assumed that everyone else knew them. Lata was reminded of his explanations at the tannery.

  By now they had got to the club, and Haresh, proud Prahaman that he had become, was showing them around with a proprietorial air.

  He pointed out the pool—which had been drained and repainted a pleasant light blue, and a children’s paddling pool nearby, the offices, the palm trees in pots, and the tables where a few Czechs were sitting outside under umbrellas, eating. There was nothing else to point out except the huge hall of the club. Arun, who was used to the subdued elegance of the Calcutta Club, was amazed by Haresh’s bumptious self-assurance.