This Above all
Misadventures of a father & son
KHUSHWANT SINGH 

The story begins in the summer of 1906 with the inauguration of the Howrah railway station of the East Indian Railways. The General Manager, Mr Quested, has organised a grand reception on the occasion. The Governor and Burra Sahib are being entertained on the main platform with champagne and a band playing in the background.

In a separate room the Indian staff, comprising 70 clerks, is gorging on samosas, pakoras, jalebis and cups of tea. The seniormost among them is Tarini Chatterjee, in charge of two trains. Like his countrymen, he stuffs himself with sweets, savouries and chai till he is about to burst.

As the engine whistle blows, all of them board the train on its trial run. While his colleagues get into compartments meant for Indians, Tarini, in utter confusion, gets into the one reserved for whites and finds a window seat. While he is admiring the silk window curtains, an English girl takes the seat facing him. Just out of school in England, she is wearing a bonnet and a silk frock and introduces herself as Adela Quested, daughter of the big boss of the railway.

Tarini realises the blunder he has made. As the train begins to pull out, he throws up all he has eaten into the lap of Adela Quested.

Her father does not chastise Tarini in public, but sees to it that he is demoted with no chance of promotion. Tarini goes into depression and takes to drinking. Both he and his wife fade out of the world.

Tarini’s son, Abani Chatterjee, takes up their story. After a shaky start, he makes good as an actor in the newly started silent film industry, known in early years as bioscope. It is through these silent movies that the story of Bengal is told from the Black Hole of Calcutta (1756), Partition of Bengal (1905), the terrorist movement that was depicted as anti-Muslim rather than anti-British and the life of Sanskritist William Jones. In most of the mythological films the heroine’s role is played by an Anglo-Indian girl under the name of Durga.

Ironically, Abani’s end bears much similarity to that of his father. At the Bengal Club, which is exclusively for whites, the lawns are allowed to be used to celebrate the launch of a series of new bioscope productions under the guidance of a Marwari entrepreneur. At the party, Abani babu gets very drunk, his bladder is about to burst. He stumbles into the club cloakroom and begins to urinate in the ladies section. And guess who would he run into? Adela Quested.

She is celebrating her engagement to an Anglo-India tea estate and coalmines owner. Abani babu crashes into Adela and knocks her down and his Marwari patron sacks him.

The story, laced with wit and humour, holds the readers’ interest till the very end.

Cold thrill

I am not an admirer of detective fiction. When there are so many real cases of murder that defy reason because of the absence of motive, then why make up jigsaw puzzles of imagined murders give false leads to possible murderers till the end?

Be it Sherlock Holmes or Poirot, they are too clever by half and thrive on keeping the reader guessing and in suspense till the very end. These books are also called thrillers, but I don’t get much thrill by reading them. John Le Carre is one author who has made quite a name for himself in this genre of fiction with a succession of best-sellers starting with The Spy Who came in from the Cold and the trilogy — Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Sunlevy’s People.

A nephew presented me with an earlier novel A Murder of Quality. It was first published in 1962. However, I read the third edition printed two years ago by Hodder. But once started reading, I could not put it down. Le Carre is a product of Oxford, taught in Eton and was in the British Foreign Service for five years. The setting of the novel is a public school patterned after Eton. It is a small community of teachers and students conscious of their status compared to the hoi polloi (they dress for dinner even at home). Between the teachers there is class consciousness — those who come from public schools and universities like Oxford feel superior to those coming from grammar schools. Same kind of snobbery exists among the students.

A grammer school product marries a woman above his status. In due course of time she begins to hate and fear her husband. She writes to a religious journal about the threat to her life. The next night her blood-spattered body is found lying in the snow. Could the killer be her husband? Could it be the mad beggar woman who was often fed and clothed by the victim?

A few days later a boy, who often came for tuitions, is found drowned in a stream. Was it planned or was it an accident?

Thus the police and everyone else in the local pub and the school has his or her own theory about the two deaths. Though I enjoyed reading the novel, I learnt very little besides the mannerisms and style of living of the English gentle folk in the 1960s.

Gift packet

I bought a 5 kg tin of refined oil from the market and gave it to my wife Savinder. After some time she came and asked, "Where is the free gift?"

"What gift?" I asked.

She said: "There was a free gift with this tin. It means, the shopkeeper has cheated you."

I shouted: "What gift are you talking about?"

Then she showed me the tin on which was written "Cholesterol Free". Where is this free cholesterol", she asked.

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