The shop’s casual approach to commerce made it the favourite with locals as well as with the neighbouring settlements. If someone could not afford a full packet of, say, biscuits, Mrs. Kohlah would think nothing of tearing it open and selling half; she had faith that someone else would come along for the other half. If an item was not in stock, Mr. Kohlah would gladly order it as long as the customer was not particular about the delivery date. Even if the delivery date was crucial, there was not much to be done because deliveries depended on the roads, and roads depended on the weather, and everyone knew weather depended on the One Up Above. The morning newspaper usually arrived by early evening, when the regulars gathered on the porch to smoke or sip tea and discuss the news as they read it, calling out the headlines to Mr. Kohlah if he was pottering around inside the shop.
For all the vast inventory it carried, the shop’s backbone, ultimately, was a secret soft-drink formula handed down in the Kohlah family for four generations. There was a little factory in the cellar where the soft drinks were mixed, aerated, and bottled. An assistant washed and prepared the empties, and loaded the crates for delivery. To maintain the formula’s secret, Mr. Kohlah did the actual mixing and manufacturing himself; his eyepatch testified to that, covering the hole created by a defective bottle exploding under the pressure of carbonation.
With a handkerchief covering the mess on his face, he had gone upstairs to his wife. Barely a year had passed since their marriage, and it was their first crisis. Would she weep and wail, or faint, or stay composed? He was as curious about her reaction as he was concerned about his eye.
Seven months pregnant, Aban Kohlah was quite in control. “Farokh, would you first like a peg of brandy?” He said yes. She had a tiny sip herself, then drove him to the hospital down in the valley. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive — his spectacles had broken the impact of the glass projectile, keeping it from reaching his brain. But it was impossible to save the eye.
Mr. Kohlah said that was all right. “One eye is sufficient for the things I am looking forward to seeing,” he smiled, touching his wife’s swollen belly. Whereas, he added, the ugliness of the world would now trouble him only half as much.
He refused to have a glass eye fitted after the socket had healed. An eyepatch became part of his daily attire. He wore it while working in the store, and at social occasions. On his long evening walks through the hillside forest, however, the patch occupied his pocket while he admired for the umpteenth time the beauty of the place and munched on a carrot.
The loss of his eye allowed him to indulge his fondness for carrots. It had been kept in check by Mrs. Kohlah, who said that though carrots were a good thing, any kind of mania was a bad thing. But now she had to allow his passion full play: carrot juice, carrot salad, carrot-ma-gose, carrots in his pocket as walking companions.
“I need carrots,” insisted Mr. Kohlah. “My one remaining eye must stay fitter than ever, it has to do double duty.”
Their little son, growing quickly, soon learned about his father’s craze. When he was scolded for misbehaving, he would steal a carrot from the kitchen and carry it to his father as a peace offering, risking a second scolding from his mother.
After the accident Mr. Kohlah was extra careful in the cellar. He allowed no one in the area while the tired old machines rattled and hissed, filling bottles with the fizz of Kohlah’s Cola and the till with the tinkle of much-needed money.
His friends, fearing for his safety, showed their concern by joking about it. “Careful, Farokh, it can be dangerous when you go underground. Cola mining is as risky as coal mining.” But he laughed with them and ignored their hints.
Sacrificing subtlety, they suggested he should seriously consider replacing the ancient equipment, give some thought to modernizing and expanding the operation. “Listen, Farokh, look at it rationally,” they urged. “Kohlah’s Cola is so good, it deserves to be known throughout the country, not just in our little corner.”
But modernization and expansion were foreign ideas, incomprehensible to someone who refused even to advertise. Kohlah’s Cola (or Kaycee, as it was known) was famous through all the little settlements perched on hillsides for miles around. Word of mouth had been good enough for his forefathers, he said, and it was good enough for him.
From time to time contenders emerged with fanfare, touting rival brands, but soon went out of business, unable to compete with the Kohlah family’s product. Nothing could approach Kaycee, claimed the faithful patrons — its delicious flavour was as unique as the air in the mountains. The soft drink and the General Store flourished.
And so, by the time Maneck started school, the business was on a sound footing. Mr. Kohlah carefully guarded the formula that had salvaged their livelihood, waiting for the day when he would reveal it to Maneck, as his father had revealed it to him. An air of contentment surrounded his life, a quiet pride at having survived the ordeal by fire. It surfaced when neighbours gathered in the evening and the talk shifted gently to times gone by, to the stories of their lives; and when Mr. Kohlah’s turn came he told of his family’s glory days, not from self-pity or notions of false grandeur, nor to sing his own achievement in the present, but as a lesson in living life on the borderline — modern maps could ruin him, but they could not displace his dreams for his family.
Of course, the stories had all been heard before, many times over, yet there was always room for one more telling. And Mr. Kohlah was not the only one guilty of repetition.
Most of his and Mrs. Kohlah’s friends were army men and their wives, who, grown used to a lifetime of British-style cantonment living, had chosen to retire here in the hills, unable to countenance a return to dusty plains and smelly cities. They too had oft-told tales to tell, of bygone days, when discipline was discipline and not some watered-down version unworthy of the name. When leaders could lead, when everyone knew their place in the scheme of things, and life proceeded in an orderly fashion, without daily being threatened by chaos.
When these retired brigadiers, majors, and colonels came to tea at the Kohlahs’, they arrived suited and booted, as they called it, with watches in their fobs and ties around their necks. These trappings might have seemed comical to a nationalist bent of mind but had talismanic value for their wearers. It was all that stood between them and the disorder knocking at the door. Mr. Kohlah himself was partial to bow ties. Mrs. Kohlah served the tea on Aynsley bone china; the cutlery was Sheffield. If it was a special dinner at Navroze or Khordad Sal, she used the Wedgwood set.
“Such a lovely pattern,” said Mrs. Grewal. “When will they learn to make such beautiful things in this country?”
Brigadier and Mrs. Grewal were the Kohlahs’ closest neighbours, and dropped in fairly often. Mrs. Grewal was also the unchallenged leader of the army wives. Taking the cue from her, someone lightly struck a crystal glass to test the purity of its music; another inverted a plate to gaze lovingly at the manufacturer’s monogram. Praise was lavished in equal portions on the food and on the bowls and platters that held it. Chaos was successfully kept at bay for yet another day.
Later, the talk turned, as it had countless times before, to the nightmare that would haunt them to the end of their days — they anatomized the Partition, recited the chronology of events, and mourned the senseless slaughter. Brigadier Grewal wondered if the sundered parts would some day be sewn together again. Mr. Kohlah fingered his patch and said anything was possible. Consolation, as always, was found in muddled criticism of the colonizers who, lacking the stomach for proper conclusions, had departed in a hurry, though the post-mortem was tempered by nostalgia for the old days.