Flame Tree Road Page 10

  And the people!

  Exquisitely gowned women with impossible waists and astonishing hats step in and out of carriages, their skirts lifted daintily in gloved hands. Their hats baffle me, as they can resemble anything from a plumbing fixture to a plumed creature of frightening proportions. Handkerchiefs are dropped strategically in front of select gentlemen to invite conversation. The Englishman carries himself with palpable pride. You can see it in the tilt of his chin, the swing of his cane, the cut and fashion of his clothing. They tip their hats and exchange polite nods. Even among acquaintances there is a level of formality and restraint. Watching them interact is like watching a courtly play of manners. How unlike the ways of my own countrymen with their loud cries of recognition and foot-waggling chatter over cups of tea.

  The imperial prosperity of Britain is evident everywhere. Every wall in the city is plastered with advertisements of get-rich-quick investments, outrageous inventions and miracle health remedies. Small paperboys with chapped cheeks and the scheming eyes of grown men cry, “Payper! Payper! Speyshul.” They zigzag across the tram track under the noses of thundering horses. Waiflike shopgirls stare out at the street with vacant eyes, and the grand old coachman in his long dark coat perched on top of his cab tips his hat and calls you “guvnor.”

  My old friend Samir Deb—who now calls himself Sammy—was at the port to meet me. He was hard to miss in his shiny blue suit with a pink carnation in the buttonhole. With his pomade-slicked hair, small tidy moustache and ivory tipped cane, he is quite the dandy. Sammy had an English girl on his arm whom he introduced as Dottie Dawson. Dottie has brass-colored hair and talks in an accent I can barely follow. She appears to be Sammy’s latest love interest, although Sammy tells me—aside, in Bengali—his mother is looking for a girl for him to marry in India.

  At the end of two exhausting days of sightseeing—and getting pickpocketed in Piccadilly—I will leave for Cambridge tomorrow where the most important chapter of my life is waiting to begin.

  Cambridge

  28th September 1889

  This is my fourth day in Cambridge. Yesterday I walked around till I got a hole in my shoe. There is a substantial hole in my funds, as well. I am now reduced to six shillings and forty pence. Just as well, my food and board is paid for, but I will need to buy an umbrella, soap and candles, so I must look for part-time employment without further delay.

  It is frightfully cold. The marshy lowlands surrounding Cambridge exude a crypt-like damp that gnaws at the bone. For accommodations I have been assigned a monk-like cell with moth-colored walls in a crumbling boardinghouse called Brockwell Lodge. It is right next to the university library and a ten-minute walk from King’s College where I will be spending most of my time. The room is a double occupancy but I am told my roommate, a gentleman by the name of E. M. White, who was expected to arrive from Dublin, has taken ill and will not be joining this term, so for the moment I have the room to myself. The room is sparsely furnished with a desk and bed. The high ceilings make it rather drafty. Thank God for the coal fireplace. I may have to use my last penny to buy coal. Next on my list are stamps and candles. I will forgo the soap for now.

  On the whole I feel a sense of elation. It is nothing short of a miracle that I am in Cambridge, England. There is a monastic stillness about this place. The pale stone architecture with its archways, turrets, spires, the great carved frescos and pillared halls, so richly steeped in history and legend, make me feel like I am on hallowed ground. To think of all the monumental discoveries, movements in science, art, literature and emerging political thought that have taken place within these walls, and to walk the same hallways and breathe the same air as Darwin, Newton, Tennyson and Donne, feels rather unreal. The enormity of it all is just beginning to sink in.

  The hole in my shoe and my wet socks are a constant reminder I will need to earn money soon. I checked the help-wanted sections on the notice boards of different colleges. There is part-time work available at the bindery of the University Press. Also odd jobs such as gardening, cleanup, woodworking, painting, roof repairs, welding—all of which I am capable of doing thanks to my training at Saint John’s Mission. I will be eternally grateful to them for that. Had I arrived here straight from the village I would have been completely useless. Tomorrow I will make inquiries and see which jobs are still available. First, I must find a cobbler in town to mend my shoe. I have stuffed a piece of cardboard inside for now. Also, I find an umbrella is not enough. I may have to invest in a secondhand raincoat.

  Cambridge

  30th September 1889

  Yesterday I worked the night shift in the bindery. I came back to my room to find a note slipped under my door inviting me to an evening soiree to meet the Bengali student group of Cambridge. It was signed Samaresh Bannerjee, and the address is a boardinghouse in Kingsway, about a fifteen-minute walk from my hostel.

  Samaresh Bannerjee is a brilliant philosophy student completing his doctorate in Cambridge. A genteel Bengali with a pampered moustache, he has a musical voice and dresses in silk pajamas and gold embroidered slippers. Samaresh hails from the famous Bannerjee family of Calcutta. They are high caste Brahmins who denounced orthodoxy to form the Bhramo Samaj, a reformist group who are pushing social change for women. The Bannerjee clan is very wealthy, having amassed vast fortunes through their family business in law, indigo, shipping and publishing. What I admire most is their commitment to philanthropy. Samaresh is older than the other students in this group. I would put his age around twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He is already married with a young wife in Calcutta.

  As a postgraduate student he enjoys the privileges of a large pleasant room with a comfortable seating area, to which he has added brightly colored silk bolsters, a Kashmiri carpet and Madhubani paintings to create a cozy feeling of home. The windows of his room look out on a peaceful communal garden with stone benches dappled with the shade of plane trees. There is a kindly patriarchal air about Samaresh, and his room has become the gathering place for the Indian students of Cambridge.

  Most Indian students, I find, do not socialize with the English. They stay glued to academics and rarely venture outside their rooms or study halls. The class and cultural differences create some awkwardness, as well. English students bond through sports and extracurricular activities. Cambridge attracts scholars of exceptional merit from around the world. It is also the wealthiest university in Europe and funded almost entirely by endowments. The majority of Cambridge students are sons of English aristocracy or landed gentry who take university education for granted. For them it is simply a rite of passage and not a life raft—like it is for some of us.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Samaresh had a crackling log fire going and two braziers for added warmth. With plenty of sweet cardamom tea and arrowroot biscuits to go around, a nostalgic mood prevailed among the Bengali students gathered in his room. One of them pulled out the harmonium and started singing a popular song. Another accompanied him with a tabla beat drummed on a wooden desk. When several voices joined in a rousing chorus, there was hardly a dry eye left in the room. A sentimental song about rivers, heartbreak and monsoon skies never failed to stir up a deep longing for home.

  Later the conversation turned, as it invariably did with Bengalis, to politics.

  “The English people have a superiority complex,” declared Ram, a third-year medical student. “They think they can rule the world just because they are white.”

  Samaresh thoughtfully stroked his well-tended moustache. He sat in a half-lotus position, one arm draped over a raised knee like a maharaja. “It’s more than being white,” he said in his sonorous voice. “The English know how to manipulate minds.”

  “I think their secret is the power of organization,” said Biren. “The British public school curriculum focuses on leadership training. In Indian schools we focus on bookish knowledge. We don’t encourage crit
ical or analytical thinking.”

  Ram frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is the British upper class is trained to think like leaders from a very early age. Look at the curriculum of English public schools—competitive sports encourage physical discipline and teamwork, subjects like logic, rhetoric and philosophy help to organize ideas and present arguments. The focus is on leadership. I think there’s something to be learned there.”

  “Yet, if you think about it,” said the sage-like Samaresh, “it is this same elitist education that divides British society and creates class barriers. English public school students go on to study in Oxbridge. They become members of Parliament and make laws that serve the interests of the upper class. Look at it this way—the caste system may divide India, but it is class that divides Britain. Every country finds a way to keep society divided into the haves and the have-nots. It’s not so much about money as it is about entitlement.”

  Biren grew quiet as he thought about his mother. Society had found a way to keep her trapped as a widow. Irrespective of money or caste, the plight of all Hindu widows was the same. They had no voice; it was almost as if they did not exist.

  It would take a new law to eradicate this social evil, thought Biren. Two other social evils—widow burning and child marriage—were both abolished by the British only after they enforced strict laws in India. This was the very reason why he was in Cambridge. To study law and effect change from the inside.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Cambridge

  7th February 1890

  Dear brother Nitin,

  I wonder how long my letter will take to reach you. Postage to India is dear, so my letters to you and Ma may not be as frequent as I would like, but I will try to fit in as much news as I can.

  I am glad to know you are doing well in school. You seem to have better sporting abilities than me. Congratulations on being appointed captain of the football team. Sports and extracurricular are valued highly in English universities, and you will find it very easy to fit in. We are both lucky to have studied at Saint John’s Mission.

  I am still settling in. The student accommodation provided for me is very basic. I am thankful my room has a coal fireplace. I can heat a kettle for tea, make toast and boil an egg or two. Some days I have to skip my evening meal as I am usually out doing some odd job or other. The nights are frightfully cold.

  The beautiful row of poplars on the way to Grantchester is still bare of leaves. There is a lonesome beauty in their naked branches. England has the most beautiful trees you can imagine. Magnificent horse chestnuts, lindens and leafy willows along the Cam. I can’t wait to see the meadows in spring. The purple crocuses have just started to bud behind Trinity College, and there is a wilderness area that runs riot with anemones and daffodils. Cambridge colleges are located in picturesque natural settings right out of an English storybook.

  I work part-time at the bindery of the Cambridge University Press. I also do odd jobs—carpentry, painting and repairs. The drama club needs props, the rowing club needs boat painting and repairs before the annual Lent bumps, which is a boat race of sorts. To the untutored, the bumps would appear nothing more than a jostling and slamming of boats down the narrow Cam to get to first place. The victorious teams celebrate by decorating one another with willow branches followed by long sessions of feasting and drinking.

  I spend a lot of time at the Cambridge Union Society. I am considering joining a private debating club, but membership to the best ones are by invitation only. The most interesting one is called the Erudites. They pick excellent thought-provoking topics but occasionally a completely inane one. I went to a debate where the topic was “Why laugh?” The speakers presented the most hair-splitting arguments on the whys and why-nots of laughter, all delivered in a formal parliamentary style, which made the whole debate unbearably funny. I’ve concluded the purpose of such insanity is not merely to amuse but to sharpen mental agility and develop nimble arguments.

  The Indian scholars I have met here are some of the brightest and the best. If such groups of enlightened thinkers return to our homeland, India will break free of her narrow bonds and be transformed forever.

  Not a single day goes by when I don’t think of you and Ma. I have saved ten shillings, which I will send you. If Uncle is still managing the basha funds, I wonder if poor Ma is given any money at all for her personal use. When you go home, please give her eight shillings and keep two for yourself.

  I remain your affectionate brother,

  Dada

  CHAPTER

  24

  There was always some news or other ringing the grapevines of Cambridge. First, there was Attila, the malevolent swan who hid in shadowy willows of the Cam and flapped out to bite innocent bystanders. Attila brought summer activities like punting and fishing along the river to a halt. The proctors, with the help of the townspeople, made several attempts to capture and relocate Attila, but ended up relocating two friendly black swans, while Attila still lurked darkly in the shadows.

  The bigger news making the rounds was a scathing article that appeared in the Archangel, a magazine published by a feminist group at Girton, which, along with Newnham, were the two women’s colleges of Cambridge. The article was an exposé on a recent debate held at the Cambridge Union Society, the controversial topic of which was that “Newnham and Girton are useless and dangerous and ought to be abolished.”

  Female education was still a contentious issue in Cambridge and the students attempting to earn degrees were jeered at and ridiculed. Cambridge had barred female students for centuries, and the male bastion was not going to give in easily. Biren had assumed the existence of two exclusive women’s colleges would level the playing field, but clearly this was not the case. It was ironic that girls in India had no opportunity for education, while in England they had the opportunity, but that did not necessarily translate into equality.

  This prejudice was clearly voiced in the Archangel article. The writer described Cambridge male students as a boorish, misogynistic bunch—nothing more than prehistoric creatures under their thin veneers of civility that viewed women only as useful ornaments. The article was signed E.L. Judging by the tone, the author had to be a woman, but there were no existing records of any females in the audience that day.

  Biren scrutinized the article.

  “It’s brilliantly worded,” he conceded. “I love the sarcasm of the writer. It must be a firsthand account because I was at the debate that day and every argument quoted here is almost verbatim. You can’t write with this kind of detail unless you were present there and taking notes.”

  “Some students did notice a fellow taking notes,” said Ram. “He was effeminate-looking, French, I believe, sitting in the second row on the right.”

  “Effeminate, you say? How interesting,” mused Biren. “This article is written from a woman’s perspective. What if that fellow was actually a woman disguised as a man?”

  “Oh, that’s impossible!” Ram laughed. “A disguise is not an easy thing easy to pull off—onstage, yes, but not in real life. But think of the risk. Which woman would even dare to do it?”

  “An interesting woman, for sure,” said Biren. “One with a daredevil streak and a sense of fun. Man or woman, I would love to meet this E.L. person someday.”

  Cambridge

  18th March 1890

  I have been busy working on a stage set for the drama club’s upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The painted tree cutouts and backdrops are taking a long time to dry, thanks to the inclement weather here. The carpentry workshop where I work is located behind the drama club. It is the meeting place for the theater types. All kinds of people drop by, to play Carrom, chat or borrow something.

  Yesterday a rather curious fellow came by. He is overweight with short legs and looks a little fray
ed about the gills. He introduced himself as Bertie McInnis and asked me if I was Indian. Bertie is a Cambridge dropout who has a passion for the theater. He is part owner of a private theater company called the People’s Playhouse in town. They perform mostly Shakespeare and the occasional burlesque. Bertie is quite a talker. He has heard fascinating stories about India from his uncle, who was a famous surveyor for the British government. His uncle spent several years navigating the remote and dangerous jungles of northeast India, where he almost got scalped by a cannibal tribe! The famous tea-growing region of Assam was mapped out by his uncle’s own hand.

  Bertie’s theater company is badly in need of backstage help. He asked me if I could help out on Tuesday evenings for two hours in return for free tickets. Their current production is a popular burlesque called The Runaway Shopgirl. I agreed to meet him at the playhouse behind the stables of the Red Roof Inn next week.

  Cambridge

  24th March 1890

  Not only did I help backstage, I got roped into playing a minor role as a railway porter in The Runaway Shopgirl. It was easy enough. All I did was wear a brass-buttoned blue uniform and carry bags behind a rather buxom female. Samaresh and a few other Bengali friends to whom I had given free tickets were highly amused to see me. I must admit I rather enjoyed my five seconds of fame. Later Bertie asked me if I would be interested in playing another minor role as a courtier in their upcoming production of Twelfth Night. I agreed for the fun of it. I admitted I had not done much acting. He convinced me that learning voice projection and other drama techniques would enhance my debating skills. I suppose he has a point. As long as I don’t have to spend too much time in rehearsals, this could be interesting.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Following a freak storm in mid-April, Biren returned to his room in Brockwell Lodge to find his study desk covered with water from a roof leak. The damage was severe, and he had to vacate his room and look for temporary accommodation while the roof got repaired. His choices were limited. Many students lived in private boardinghouses around the university but the rents were much higher than he could afford.