Sir-
(At least he knows that word, commonly used in Tamil for “teacher.”)
I am pleased to add my voice to the welcome cacophony which has greeted Mrs. Besant’s internment. Nothing is resolved without discussion, and I am certain this tempest will be confined in an appropriate teapot before long. I want to register my displeasure with Madam Besant’s reported increased popularity of which we, even so far away as Kulithalai Taluk, Thiruchinapalli District, have heard. Be assured that there are many in the provinces dedicated to the progressive aims of the Empire, Brahmins and non-Brahmins alike, and who understand that membership in the British family offers our motherland, India, her best chance for continuing her advance into the ranks of the world’s great nations. If there are those who now know nothing more than Madam Besant’s name and fame, and think, on that basis, to be led by her, this is but mere fad-which always shortly changes to “fade.”
Respectful regards,
Keeping Faith in Kulithalai.
“Kulithalai!” Vairum exclaims. “Was it written by one of your, um, friends?” He’s not sure what to call them, since they seem held together by something other than friendliness, a feeling he doesn’t quite understand but intends to: another reason he comes whenever he can.
“Better than that, son,” Minister says, going into his library, an adjoining room through a set of double doors. “It was written by yours truly.”
Who is mine truly? Vairum wonders, vaguely embarrassed. It sounds romantic.
Minister looks back when he doesn’t respond, and laughs. “Me! I wrote it. It’s about time they knew what we’re thinking out here about all that nonsense.”
“Oh! Quite,” Vairum says, one of his favourite English expressions of assent. “Quite.” He perches on the settee to read the papers and wait for the regulars to arrive, while Minister unwraps some new books, a package from Higginbotham’s in Madras, and another from Penguin of London, and sorts them into his already substantial collection.
Vairum regularly borrows from him, things he finds and things Minister recommends, from Sir Wm. Wedderburn’s book A. O. Hume: Father of the Indian National Congress to classical Tamil dramas, analyses of the Periya Puranam as well as Sarma’s Toward Swaraj. Minister reads all the tracts published by the Indo-British Association, such as Indian Problems: Caste in Relation to Democracy, or Indian Opposition to Home Rule: What the British Public Ought to Know, and Vairum struggles through these also, still unsure of what will be important to him as he makes his own way. Minister also takes newspapers of every political stripe, and Vairum browses the political and social pages but finds he pays most attention to business and finance. Sometimes, the same stories are covered in Tamil and English, a great help to his comprehension.
Minister doesn’t even keep track of which books Vairum borrows, trusting him to come and go as he likes, so Vairum has also groped his way through such reference works as Kissing in Theory and Practice, Pandora’s Letter Box: Being a Discourse on Fashionable Life by the Author of the Technique of the Love Affair and Marie Stopes’s Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties, which he found at least as informative as The Indian Constitution: An Introductory Study, though, again, to what end he is not sure.
He hears the first of Minister’s cronies coming up the stairwell off the veranda. Minister exits his library onto the balustraded corridor that connects all the upstairs rooms. He leans over the rail to shout through a skylight into the main hall below, “Gayatri! Snacks!” and then turns right to open another set of double doors into the salon, sliding bolts into the floor to hold them open. He checks the soil in two pots of ragged posies and adjusts the position of an occasional table as his cronies enter.
The two men arrive already arguing. They are close acquaintances and colleagues. One, whom Vairum has never heard speak below shouting volume, is N. Ranga, a Chettiar by caste, moneylender and compounder by trade, who now has several storefronts. His successes interest Vairum keenly. Ranga opened a Thiruchi branch, Ranga and Sons, some eight years back, where he stocks patent medicines and toilet products that he has test-marketed at his original location. The other is a Brahmin, Dr. C. P. Kittu Iyer, an undistinguished and lead-fingered practitioner (Vairum gathers) of the medical arts, who never ceases to criticize the compounder for pimping quack medicines. Kittu Iyer still sends his patients to Ranga to have prescriptions filled, though, because, as a medicine-maker, Ranga is skilled and honest, the best in the district. His dealings in skin-lightening lotions and tuberculosis tonics haven’t hurt his professional reputation, either because people don’t distinguish these from his legitimate trade, or because they understand the nostrums are purely a business concern.
“The man is a traitor!” Ranga hoots as though through a venom-filled whistle. “To us, and to his own people!”
“It is a victory for the right and might, but we must remain vigilant. There is no guarantee this is not a trick,” Kittu rejoins as though addressing a much larger audience.
“Do you get what they’re on about?” Minister asks Vairum, as he takes a seat beside his protégé.
Vairum shakes his head.
“Look again at the headlines. Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, made an announcement to the House of Commons, of Britain ’s intent to increase Indian representation in administration-see ?” He points to one article, and then to another: “‘… with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.’ There was no warning. Stunning.” He rearranges the papers so that the Madras Mail with his letter is once more on the top.
Vairum has heard enough about these matters in the salon, and from Minister, to have a sense of how its members will divide. Non-Brahmins such as Ranga, a Chettiar, will restate fears that granting India independence at this juncture would mean handing the country over to an elite coterie of northern Brahmins. Brahmins such as Kittu, an Iyer, believe this seems like a good idea. Minister will be the only Brahmin to oppose the move toward independence, and the one who will take the move most personally. His salon is decorated with drawings of Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament he made as a child, hung on the western wall above a row of fragile potted flowers; in one corner of the library is a stack of empty Peek Freans biscuit tins; on a shelf, his bottle of No. i McDowell’s brandy, proudly displayed. He drinks a carefully measured inch each night after supper. “I live with my mother and father,” he once told Vairum. “Loyalty. Habit. My country is a participant in-not victim of-a grand and noble scheme. The British do things better. Nothing wrong with the Indian way, but nothing to lose, wot?”
Vairum watches Minister now, one leg crossed over the other, bouncing nervously as the sportif Muthu, of the Reddiar caste, rounds the stairs. “The wires are buzzing-what a to-do!” Muthu says, puffing.
He mops his expansive brow and grins at the two first arrivals, who have taken seats as far as possible from one another, and at Minister, who smiles back paternalistically and responds, “But who are ‘they,’ dear chap?”
Vairum thinks, dear chap, dear chap, savouring the unfamiliar syllables as Minister goes on. “My impression is that much of the Commons was taken as off guard by this announcement as we. For whom does Montagu speak?”
Slim, chic K.T. Rama Sastri, another Brahmin-lawyer by training, lounger by inclination-recites from the doorway, “‘Now is God’s purpose in us perfected / Complete the work of Clive and Nicholson / When in this Empire that their swordblades won / Authority is mocked and buffeted / And England’s voice, no more the lion’s they knew / Becomes the whisper of this Wandering Jew.’ Nothing like a bit of doggerel to start the day off right.”