A Suitable Boy, Page 59

  ‘Surely you must then also tie the knot,’ said Biswas Babu.

  7.19

  Later that evening, in the same room, Mr Justice Chatterji, who was wearing a dhoti-kurta rather than his black tie of the previous evening, said to his two elder sons:

  ‘Well, Amit—Dipankar—I’ve called you here because I have something to say to both of you. I’ve decided to speak to you alone, because your mother gets emotional about things, and that doesn’t really help. It’s about financial matters, our family investments and property and so on. I’ve continued to handle these affairs so far, for more than thirty years in fact, but it puts a heavy burden on me in addition to all my other work, and the time has come for one or the other of you to take over the running of that side of things. . . . Now wait, wait’—Mr Justice Chatterji held up a hand—‘let me finish, then both of you will have the chance to speak. The one thing I will not change is my decision to hand things over. My burden of work—and this is true of all my brother judges—has increased very considerably over the last year, and, well, I am not getting any younger. At first I was simply going to tell you, Amit, to manage things. You are the eldest and it is, strictly speaking, your duty. But your mother and I have discussed the whole issue at length, and we have taken your literary interests into account, and we now agree that it does not have to be you. You have studied law—whether or not you are practising it—and Dipankar, you have a degree in economics. There are no better qualifications for managing the family properties—now, wait a second, Dipankar, I have not finished—and both of you are intelligent. So what we have decided is this. If you, Dipankar, put your degree in economics to some use instead of concentrating on the—well, the spiritual side of things, well and good. If not, I am afraid, Amit, that the job will fall to you.’

  ‘But, Baba—’ protested Dipankar, blinking in distress, ‘economics is the worst possible qualification for running anything. It’s the most useless, impractical subject in the world.’

  ‘Dipankar,’ said his father, not very pleased, ‘you have studied it for several years now, and you must have learned something—certainly more than I did as a student—about how economic affairs are handled. Even without your training I have—in earlier days with Biswas Babu’s help, and now largely without it—somehow managed to deal with our affairs. Even if, as you claim, a degree in economics doesn’t help, I do not believe it can actually be a hindrance. And it is new to my ears to hear you claim that impractical things are useless.’

  Dipankar said nothing. Nor did Amit.

  ‘Well, Amit?’ asked Mr Justice Chatterji.

  ‘What should I say, Baba?’ said Amit. ‘I don’t want you to have to keep on doing this work. I suppose I hadn’t realized quite how time-consuming it must be. But, well, my literary interests aren’t just interests, they are my vocation—my obsession, almost. If it was a question of my own share of the property, I would just sell it all, put the money in a bank, and live off the interest—or, if that wasn’t enough, I’d let it run down while I kept working at my novels and my poems. But, well, that isn’t the case. We can’t jeopardize everyone’s future—Tapan’s, Kuku’s, Ma’s, to some extent Meenakshi’s as well. I suppose I’m glad that there’s at least the possibility that I might not have to do it—that is, if Dipankar—’

  ‘Why don’t we both do a bit, Dada?’ asked Dipankar, turning towards Amit.

  Their father shook his head. ‘That would only cause confusion and difficulties within the family. One or the other.’

  Both of them looked subdued. Mr Justice Chatterji turned to Dipankar and continued: ‘Now I know that you have your heart set on going to the Pul Mela, and, for all I know, after you have submerged yourself in the Ganga a few times, it might help you decide things one way or another. At any rate, I am willing to wait for a few more months, say, till the end of this year, for you to mull over matters and make up your mind. My view of it is that you should get a job in a firm—in a bank, preferably; then all of this would probably fall comfortably into the kind of work you’ll be doing anyway. But, as Amit will tell you, my views of things are not always sound—and, whether sound or not, are not always acceptable. But, well, if you don’t agree, then, Amit, it will have to be you. Your novel will take at least another year or two to complete, and I cannot wait that long. You will have to work on your literary activities on the side.’

  Neither brother looked at the other.

  ‘Do you think I am being unjust?’ asked Mr Justice Chatterji in Bengali, with a smile.

  ‘No, of course not, Baba,’ said Amit, trying to smile, but only succeeding in looking deeply troubled.

  7.20

  Arun Mehra arrived at his office in Dalhousie Square not long after 9.30. The sky was black with clouds and the rain was coming down in sheets. The rain swept across the vast facade of the Writers’ Building, and added its direct contribution to the huge tank in the middle of the square.

  ‘Bloody monsoon.’

  He got out of the car, leaving his briefcase inside and protecting himself with the Statesman. His peon, who had been standing in the porch of the building, started when he saw his master’s little blue car. It had been raining so hard that he had not seen it until it had almost stopped. Agitated, he opened the umbrella and rushed out to protect the sahib. He was a second or two late.

  ‘Bloody idiot.’

  The peon, though several inches shorter than Arun Mehra, contrived to hold the umbrella over the sacred head as Arun sauntered into the building. He got into the lift, and nodded in a preoccupied manner at the lift-boy.

  The peon rushed back to the car to get his master’s briefcase, and climbed the stairs to the second floor of the large building.

  The head office of the managing agency, Bentsen & Pryce, more popularly known as Bentsen Pryce, occupied the entire second floor.

  From these surroundings, officials of the company controlled their share of the trade and commerce of India. Though Calcutta was not what it had been before 1912—the capital of the Government of India—it was, nearly four decades later and nearly four years after Independence, indisputably the commercial capital still. More than half the exports of the country flowed down the silty Hooghly to the Bay of Bengal. The Calcutta-based managing agencies such as Bentsen Pryce managed the bulk of the foreign trade of India; they controlled, besides, a large share of the production of the goods that were processed or manufactured in the hinterland of Calcutta, and the services, such as insurance, that went into ensuring their smooth movement down the channels of commerce.

  The managing agencies typically owned controlling interests in the actual manufacturing companies that operated the factories, and supervised them all from the Calcutta head office. Almost without exception these agencies were still owned by the British, and almost without exception the executive officers of the managing agencies near Dalhousie Square—the commercial heart of Calcutta—were white. Final control lay with the directors in the London office and the shareholders in England—but they were usually content to leave things to the Calcutta head office so long as the profits kept flowing in.

  The web was wide and the work both interesting and substantial. Bentsen Pryce itself was involved in the following areas, as one of its advertisements stated:

  Abrasives, Air Conditioning, Belting, Brushes, Building, Cement, Chemicals and Pigments, Coal, Coal Mining Machinery, Copper & Brass, Cutch & Katha, Disinfectants, Drugs & Medicines, Drums and Containers, Engineering, Handling Materials, Industrial Heating, Insurance, Jute Mills, Lead Pipes, Linen Thread, Loose Leaf Equipment, Oils inc. Linseed Oil Products, Paints, Paper, Rope, Ropeway Construction, Ropeways, Shipping, Spraying Equipment, Tea, Timber, Vertical Turbine Pumps, Wire Rope.

  The young men who came out from England in their twenties, most of them from Oxford or Cambridge, fell easily into the pattern of command that was a tradition at Bentsen Pryce, Andrew Yule, Bird & Company, or any of a number of similar firms that considered themselves (and were considered by
others to be) the pinnacle of the Calcutta—and therefore Indian—business establishment. They were covenanted assistants, bound by covenant or rolling contract to the company. At Bentsen Pryce, until a few years ago, there had been no place for Indians in the company’s European Covenanted Service. Indians were slotted into the Indian Covenanted Service, where the levels of both responsibility and remuneration were far lower.

  Around the time of Independence, under pressure from the government and as a concession to the changing times, a few Indians had been grudgingly allowed to enter the cool sanctum of the inner offices of Bentsen Pryce. As a result, by 1951 five of the eighty executives in the firm (though so far none of the department heads, let alone directors) were what could be called brown-whites.

  All of them were extraordinarily conscious of their exceptional position, and none more so than Arun Mehra. If ever there was a man enraptured by England and the English it was he. And here he was, hobnobbing with them on terms of tolerable familiarity.

  The British knew how to run things, reflected Arun Mehra. They worked hard and they played hard. They believed in command, and so did he. They assumed that if you couldn’t command at twenty-five, you didn’t have it in you. Their fresh-faced young men came out to India even earlier; it was hard to restrain them from commanding at twenty-one. What was wrong with this country was a lack of initiative. All that Indians wanted was a safe job.

  Bloody pen-pushers, the whole lot of them, Arun said to himself as he surveyed the sweltering clerical section on his way to the air-conditioned executive offices beyond.

  He was in a bad mood not only because of the foul weather but because he had solved only about a third of the Statesman crossword puzzle, and James Pettigrew, a friend of his from another firm, with whom he exchanged clues and solutions by phone most mornings, would probably have solved most of them by now. Arun Mehra enjoyed explaining things, and did not like having things explained to him. He enjoyed giving the impression to others that he knew whatever was worth knowing, and he had virtually succeeded in giving himself the same impression.

  7.21

  The morning mail was sorted out by Arun’s department head Basil Cox with the help of a couple of his principal lieutenants. This morning about ten letters had been marked out to Arun. One of them was from the Persian Fine Teas Company, and he looked it over with particular interest.

  ‘Would you take down a letter, Miss Christie?’ he said to his secretary, an exceptionally discreet and cheerful young Anglo-Indian woman, who had grown accustomed to his moods. Miss Christie had at first been resentful of the fact that she had been allocated to an Indian rather than a British executive, but Arun had charmed and patronized her into accepting his authority.

  ‘Yes, Mr Mehra, I’m ready.’

  ‘The usual heading. Dear Mr Poorzahedy, We have received your description of the contents of the shipment of tea—take down the particulars from the letter, Miss Christie—to Teheran—sorry, make that Khurramshahr and Teheran—that you wish us to insure from auction in Calcutta to arrival by customs bond to consignee in Teheran. Our rates, as before, are five annas per hundred rupees for the standard policy, including SR&CC as well as TPND. The shipment is valued at six lakhs, thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy rupees, and the premium payable will be—would you work that out, Miss Christie?—thank you—yours sincerely, and so on. . . . Wasn’t there a claim from them about a month ago?’

  ‘I think so, Mr Mehra.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Arun pointed his hands together under his chin, then said: ‘I think I’ll have a word with the burra babu.’

  Rather than call the head clerk of the department into his office, he decided to pay him a visit. The burra babu had served in the insurance department of Bentsen Pryce for twenty-five years and there was nothing about the nuts and bolts of the department that he did not know. He was something like a regimental sergeant major, and everything at the lower levels passed through his hands. The European executives never dealt with anyone but him.

  When Arun wandered over to his desk, the burra babu was looking over a sheaf of cheques and duplicates of letters, and telling his underlings what to do. ‘Tridib, you handle this one,’ he was saying; ‘Sarat, you make out this invoice.’ It was a muggy day, and the ceiling fans were rustling the high piles of paper on the clerks’ desks.

  Seeing Arun, the burra babu stood up. ‘Sir,’ he said.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Arun casually. ‘Tell me, what has been happening lately with Persian Fine Teas? On the claims side, I mean.’

  ‘Binoy, tell the claims clerk to come here with the claims ledger.’

  After Arun, who was dressed in his suit, as was appropriate to (and unavoidable for) one of his position, had spent a sweaty but enlightening twenty minutes with the clerks and ledgers, he returned to the chilled sanctum of his office and told Miss Christie to hold off typing the letter he had dictated.

  ‘Anyway, it’s Friday,’ he said. ‘It can wait, if necessary, till Monday. I won’t be taking calls for the next fifteen minutes or so. Oh yes, and I won’t be in this afternoon either. I have a lunch appointment at the Calcutta Club and then I have to visit that damned jute factory at Puttigurh with Mr Cox and Mr Swindon.’

  Mr Swindon was from the jute department, and they were going to visit a factory that another company wished to insure against fire. Arun could not see the sense of visiting a particular jute factory, when the insurance for all such factories was clearly based on a standard tariff that depended upon very little other than the process of manufacture used. But Swindon had apparently told Basil Cox that it was important to look over the plant, and Basil had asked Arun to accompany him.

  ‘All a waste of time if you ask me,’ said Arun. Friday afternoon by tradition at Bentsen Pryce usually meant a long, leisurely meal at the club followed by a round of golf and possibly a token appearance at the office around closing time. The week’s work was effectively over by Thursday afternoon. But, upon reflection, Arun thought it possible that by asking him to help with a matter of Fire Insurance when his normal duties fell under Marine Insurance, Basil Cox was attempting to groom him for wider responsibilities. In fact, now that he considered it, a number of matters of General Insurance had also been marked out to him lately. All this could only mean that the powers above approved of him and his work.

  Cheered by this thought, he knocked at Basil Cox’s door.

  ‘Come in. Yes, Arun?’ Basil Cox gestured to a chair, and, taking his hand off the mouthpiece of the phone, continued: ‘Well, that’s excellent. Lunch then, and—yes, we’ll both look forward to seeing you ride. Bye.’

  He turned to Arun and said: ‘I do apologize, dear boy, for nibbling away at your Friday afternoon. But I wonder if I can make up for it by inviting you and Meenakshi to the races at Tolly tomorrow as our guests.’

  ‘We’d be delighted,’ said Arun.

  ‘I was talking to Jock Mackay. It appears he’s riding in one of the races. It might be rather fun to see him. Of course, if the weather keeps up, they’ll be swimming their horses round the track.’

  Arun permitted himself a chuckle.

  ‘I didn’t know he’d be riding tomorrow. Did you?’ said Basil Cox.

  ‘No, I can’t say I did. But he rides often enough,’ said Arun. He reflected that Varun, the racing fiend, would have known not only that Jock Mackay was riding, but in which race he would be riding, on what horse, with what handicap and at what probable odds. Varun and his Shamshu friends usually bought a provisional or kutcha racing form the moment it appeared on the streets on Wednesday, and from then until Saturday afternoon would think about and discuss little else.

  ‘And now?’ Basil Cox prompted Arun.

  ‘It’s about the tariffs for Persian Fine Teas. They want us to insure another shipment.’

  ‘Yes. I marked that letter out to you. Purely routine, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  Basil Cox stroked his lower lip with his thumb and wait
ed for Arun to go on.

  ‘I don’t think our claims experience with them is so good,’ said Arun.

  ‘Well, that’s easily checked.’

  ‘I’ve already done so.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Claims are a hundred and fifty-two per cent of premiums if you take the last three years. Not a happy situation.’

  ‘No, no, indeed,’ said Basil Cox, considering. ‘Not a happy situation. What do they usually claim for? Pilferage, I seem to recall. Or is it rainwater damage? And didn’t they have a claim for taint once? Leather in the same hold as tea or something like that.’

  ‘Rainwater damage was another company. And taint we disallowed after getting a report from Lloyds, our claims settlement agents on the spot. Their surveyors said that taint was minimal, even though the Persians appear to judge their tea more by fragrance than by flavour. It’s pilferage that has really harmed them. Or, rather, us. Skilful pilferage at the customs warehouse in Khurramshahr. It’s a bad port, and for all we know the customs authorities may be in on it.’

  ‘Well, what is the premium at present? Five annas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put it up to eight annas.’

  ‘I’m not sure that would work,’ said Arun. ‘I could call upon their agent in Calcutta and do that. But I don’t think he’d take kindly to it. He once mentioned that even our five-anna rate was barely competitive with what Commercial Union was willing to insure them for. We would very likely lose them.’

  ‘Well, do you have anything else to suggest?’ said Basil Cox with a rather tired smile. From experience he knew that Arun very likely did have something else to suggest.

  ‘As it happens, I do,’ said Arun.

  ‘Ah,’ said Basil Cox, pretending surprise.

  ‘We could write to Lloyds and ask them what steps had been taken to prevent or reduce pilferage from the customs warehouse.’

  Basil Cox was rather disappointed but did not say so.