A Suitable Boy
Other cards came in as well, and letters of congratulation, and telegrams, many of them with stock phrase number 6: ‘Best congratulations on new arrival’.
A couple of weeks after the baby’s birth, it was decided by consensus to name her Uma. Mrs Rupa Mehra sat down with scissors and paste to make a grand congratulatory card to celebrate the baby’s arrival. It had taken her a little while to accept the fact that she did not yet have a grandson; and now that she was happy with her granddaughter, she decided to give tangible expression to her pleasure.
Roses, a small, rather malignant-looking cherub, and a baby in a crib were pasted together, and a puppy and three golden stars completed the picture. Under the three stars the three letters of the baby’s name were inscribed in red ink and green pencil.
The message inside was a rather prosaically formatted poem in Mrs Rupa Mehra’s small and careful hand. She had read it about a year ago in an edifying volume, The Fragrant Minute for Every Day by a certain Wilhelmina Stitch—an appropriate name in view of Savita’s present condition—and she had copied it out at that time into her small notebook. It was the poem for the ‘Twelfth Day’. She was certain that it would draw from Savita’s and Pran’s eyes the same tears of gratitude and joy that it had drawn from her own. It read as follows:
THE LADY BABY
‘A Lady Baby came to-day—’ What words are quite so nice to say? They make one smile, they make one pray for Lady Baby’s happiness. ‘To-day a Lady Baby came.’ We have not heard her winsome name, we can address her all the same, as Lady Baby-Come-to-Bless.
When Lady Baby came to earth, her home was filled with joy and mirth. There’s not a jewel of half the worth of Lady Baby-to-Caress. We’re glad that Lady Baby’s here, for at this sunless time of year, there’s nought that brings such warmth and cheer as Lady Baby’s daintiness.
Hush! Lady Baby’s fast asleep, the friendly fire-flames dance and leap and angel’s wings above her sweep as on her eyes a kiss they press. ‘A Lady Baby!’ Lovely phrase, it means she’ll have such gentle ways, and grow to goodness all her days—may God this Lady Baby bless!
13.19
Sir David Gower, the Managing Director of the Cromarty Group, looked through his gold-edged, half-moon spectacles at the short but confident young man standing in front of him. He had shown no sign of intimidation, which, in Sir David’s experience, was unusual, given the vastness and plushness of his office, the great distance from the door to the desk which he had had to walk under scrutiny, and his own intimidating bulk and glower.
‘Do sit down,’ he said eventually.
Haresh sat down in the middle chair of the three facing Sir David across his desk.
‘I’ve read Peary Loll Buller’s note, and he has had the kindness to call me up as well. I didn’t expect you quite so soon, but, well, here you are. You say you want a job. What are your qualifications? And where have you been working?’
‘Just across the road, Sir David.’
‘You mean at CLFC?’
‘Yes. And before that I was at Middlehampton—that’s where I studied footwear technology.’
‘And why do you want to work with us?’
‘I see James Hawley as an excellently run organization, in which a man like myself has a future.’
‘In other words, you want to join us to better your own prospects?’
‘Put like that, yes.’
‘Well, that’s no bad thing,’ said Sir David in a sort of growl.
He looked at Haresh for a while. Haresh wondered what he was thinking. His glance did not appear to take in his clothing—slightly sweaty for having bicycled over—or his hair, just smoothed and combed back. Nor did it appear to look into his soul. It appeared to concentrate on his forehead.
‘And what do you have to offer us?’ said the Managing Director after a while.
‘Sir, my results in England speak for themselves. And I have, in a short space of time, helped turn around CLFC—in terms both of orders and a sense of direction.’
Sir David raised his eyebrows. ‘That is quite a claim,’ he said. ‘I thought Mukherji was the General Manager. Well, I think you should see John Clayton, our own General Manager.’ He picked up the telephone.
‘John, ah, you’re still here. Good. I’m sending a young man, a Mr’—he glanced down at a piece of paper—‘a Mr Khanna, to you. . . . Yes, the one old Peary Loll Buller phoned me about a few minutes ago when you were here. . . . Middlehampton. . . . Well, yes, if you think so. . . . No, I leave it to you.’ He put down the phone, and wished Haresh good luck.
‘Thank you very much, Sir David.’
‘Well, whether we take you on or not depends on what Clayton thinks of you,’ said Sir David Gower, and dismissed Haresh from his thoughts.
A letter arrived on Monday morning from James Hawley. It was signed by the General Manager John Clayton, and specified the terms they wished to offer Haresh, which were generous: Rs 325 as salary, and Rs 450 as ‘dearness allowance’—an adjustment for inflation over the last few years. That the tail was bigger than the dog struck Haresh as odd but pleasant.
The injustice with which he had been treated by CLFC receded, the crawliness of Rao, the creepiness of Sen Gupta, the decent ineffectuality of Mukherji, the high-handedness of the distant boss Ghosh—and he began to think of his new future, which struck him as glowing. Perhaps some day he would sit on the other side of that huge mahogany desk. And with a job as good as this one, one that was not a cul-de-sac like his job at CLFC, he could embark on married life without any qualms.
Two letters in hand, he went to see Mukherji.
‘Mr Mukherji,’ he said, once they were both seated, ‘I feel I should take you into confidence. I have applied for a job with James Hawley, and they have made me an offer. After last week’s events you can imagine how I feel about continuing here. I would like your advice on what I should do.’
‘Mr Khanna,’ said Mr Mukherji quite unhappily, ‘I am sorry to hear this. I assume that you must have applied some time ago.’
‘I applied on Friday afternoon, and got the job within the hour.’
Mr Mukherji looked startled. If Haresh said so, however, it must be the truth.
‘Here is the letter of appointment.’
The General Manager scanned it, and said, ‘I see. Well, you have asked me for my advice. I can only say that I am sorry about the way that that order was taken out of your hands last week. It was not my doing. But I cannot accept your resignation myself—certainly not immediately. The matter will have to go to Bombay.’
‘I am sure Mr Ghosh will agree.’
‘I am sure he will,’ agreed Mr Mukherji, who was his brother-in-law. ‘But, well, it has to have his sanction before I can accept it.’
‘At any rate,’ said Haresh. ‘I am tendering my resignation to you now.’
But when Mr Mukherji phoned him to tell him that Haresh was leaving, Mr Ghosh was livid. Haresh was important for the success of his Kanpur factory, and he was not willing to let him go. He was due to go to Delhi to procure a government order for army footwear, and he told Mr Mukherji to hold on to Haresh Khanna until he himself came to Kanpur immediately afterwards.
Upon his arrival he summoned Haresh and tore into him in the presence of Mukherji. His eyes were bulging, and he seemed almost berserk with anger, although he was far from incoherent.
‘I gave you your very first job, Mr Khanna, when you arrived in India. And, if you recall, you gave me your assurance at the time that you would stay with us for two years, as long as we wanted you. Well, we do. Looking for another job is an underhand action on your part, and I refuse to let you go.’
Haresh coloured at Ghosh’s words and manner. A word like ‘underhand’ was like a red rag to him. But Ghosh was an older man, and one whose business sense at least he admired. Besides, it was true that he had given him his first job. ‘I do recall that conversation, Sir,’ he said. ‘But you might remember that you gave me certain assurances as well. You said
, for one thing, that I should accept three hundred and fifty rupees at the time, because you would increase it once I had proved my worth to the organization. Well, I have certainly proved my worth to you, but you have not kept your side of the understanding.’
‘If it is a question of money, there is no problem,’ said Ghosh abruptly. ‘We can accommodate you—we can match their offer.’
This was news to Haresh—and to Mukherji as well, who looked startled—but the word ‘underhand’ so rankled against him that he continued: ‘I am afraid it is not merely money, Sir, it is the whole style of things.’ He paused, then went on: ‘James Hawley is a professional organization. I can make my way up that ladder in a way that I cannot in a family organization. I am hoping to get married, and I am sure you will see that I have to look to the future.’
‘You are not leaving us,’ said Ghosh. ‘That is all I have to say.’
‘We shall see about that,’ said Haresh, very angry himself by Ghosh’s high-handedness. ‘I have a written offer, and you have my written resignation. I fail to see what you can do about it.’ And he stood up, nodded wordlessly to his two superiors, and left.
The moment Haresh left the office, Ghosh phoned John Clayton, whom he had met a number of times in Delhi in a couple of ministries; both had been concerned with procuring government orders for their companies.
Ghosh told Clayton in no uncertain terms that he considered his action in ‘pinching’ his man to be unethical. He refused to countenance it, and he would not release Haresh. If necessary he would take the matter to court. This was an extremely unfair trade practice, and no way for a reputable British company to behave.
Mr Ghosh was related to various important civil servants and a politician or two—it was partly as a result of this that he had been able to get government orders for CLFC’s shoes, which were not of the best quality. He was clearly a man who wielded a great deal of influence. At the moment he was also a very angry man, and he could create problems for James Hawley, indeed for the Cromarty Group as a whole, both in Kanpur and elsewhere.
A couple of days later Haresh got another letter from James Hawley. The crucial sentence read: ‘You will have to get clearance from your present employers before we can confirm our offer.’ There had been no question in the previous letter of the necessity of any confirmation, and it was clear that James Hawley had buckled under pressure. No doubt Ghosh now believed that Haresh would have no choice but to come to him cap in hand and beg for his old job again. But for Haresh one thing was certain: he would not work one day longer in CLFC. He would rather starve than cringe.
The next day he went to the factory to collect his things and unscrew his brass nameplate from his door. Mukherji happened to pass by as he was doing this, and murmured an offer of help for the future. Haresh shook his head. He spoke to Lee and apologized for the fact that he was leaving so soon after hiring him. He then spoke to the workmen in his department. They were upset and angry at the treatment meted out by Ghosh to a man they had grown to like and respect and whom they had even begun to see—in a curious way—as their champion; certainly they had got more work and more money since he had joined the company, even if he worked them, like himself, very hard. They even offered, astonishingly, to go on strike for him. Haresh could hardly believe this, and was touched almost to the point of tears, but told them that they should do nothing of the sort. ‘I would have been leaving in any case,’ he said, ‘and whether the management behaves nicely or nastily to me makes no difference. I am only sorry that I have to leave you to the incompetence of someone like Rao.’ Rao was standing nearby when he said this, but Haresh was past caring.
To take his mind off things, he went to Lucknow for a day to visit Simran’s sister. And three days later, seeing nothing further in Kanpur to keep him, and having very little money, he left for Delhi to stay with his family and to see what he might find there. He could not decide whether to write to Lata to tell her the news. He was deeply disheartened; he could see all his prospects of happiness receding into nothingness now that he was unemployed.
But this mood dissolved somewhat after a few days. Kalpana Gaur sympathized with him, his old St Stephen’s friends took him up into their jovial company almost as soon as he got to Delhi. And, being basically an optimist—or at any rate having an abundance, perhaps a superabundance, of self-confidence—he refused to believe, even in these hard times, that nothing at all would turn up.
13.20
His own foster-father was understanding, and told him not to be disheartened. But Umesh Uncle, a close friend of the family, who loved to dispense wisdom, told him he had made a big mistake to let pride get in the way of good sense.
‘You think you can walk down the street and job offers will drop down on you like ripe mangoes,’ he remarked.
Haresh did not say anything. Umesh Uncle always got his goat.
Besides, he thought that his uncle, although he had a Rai Bahadur in front of his name, and an O.B.E. behind it, was an idiot.
Rai Bahadur Umesh Chand Khatri, O.B.E., one of the six brothers of a Punjabi family, was a good-looking man: fair, with delicate features. He was married to the adopted daughter of a very rich and cultured man, who, having no sons, had decided to get a son-in-law to live in the house. Umesh Chand Khatri’s only qualifications were his good looks. He managed his father-in-law’s estate after a fashion, read perhaps one book a year out of his vast library, and gave him three grandchildren, including two boys.
He had never worked in his life, but felt compelled to tender advice to anyone within earshot. However, when the Second World War broke out, circumstances contrived to give him a fortune. He had access to the Adarsh Condiment Company, and he got government contracts for the manufacture of condiment powder, including curry powder, for the Indian troops. On the basis of this he minted money. He was created a Rai Bahadur ‘in recognition of war efforts’, became Chairman of the Adarsh Condiment Company, and continued to dispense advice even more insufferably to everyone except Haresh’s foster-father, who (being his not very tolerant friend) would tell him periodically to shut up.
Umesh Chand Khatri’s grouse against Haresh, whom he loved to needle, was the fact that Haresh was always smartly turned out. Umesh Chand believed that he and his own two sons should be the smartest and most elegant of all his acquaintances. Once, just before he left for England, Haresh had indulged himself by buying a silk handkerchief for thirteen rupees from the Army and Navy Stores in Connaught Place. Umesh Uncle had rebuked him publicly for extravagance.
Now that Haresh was down on his luck, Umesh Uncle said to him:
‘So—you think you’ve done a clever thing—coming back to Delhi to loaf around?’
‘I had no choice,’ replied Haresh. ‘There was no point to my remaining in Kanpur.’
Umesh Uncle laughed shortly. ‘You young men are too cocksure, too happy to drop perfectly good jobs. We’ll see what happens to all your bravado in two or three months.’
Haresh knew that his money would not last even as long as that. He got annoyed. ‘I’ll have a job—as good or better than the one I’ve given up—within a month,’ he said—indeed, almost snapped.
‘You’re a fool,’ said Umesh Uncle with genial contempt. ‘Jobs are not easy to get.’
His tone and certainty got under Haresh’s skin. That afternoon he wrote to several companies and filled in a number of applications, including one for a government job in Indore. He had already applied in vain a number of times to the great Praha Shoe Company. Now he applied once again. Praha, originally a Czech company, and still largely run by Czechs, was one of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the country, and prided itself on the quality of its products. If Haresh could get a decent job at the Praha Shoe factory either in Brahmpur or in Calcutta, he would have achieved two things at once: the reattainment of his self-respect, and proximity to Lata. Umesh Uncle’s taunts rang in his ears, as did Ghosh’s accusations of underhandedness.
It was a meeting with
Mr Mukherji that gave Haresh a contact in the Praha world. Someone told Haresh that his old boss was in town. Haresh went to see him. He had no grudge against Mukherji, who he felt was a decent man, if not a very courageous one. Despite his brother-in-law’s obdurate attitude to Haresh, Mukherji felt bad about what had happened. He had previously mentioned to Haresh that Mr Khandelwal—the Chairman of the Praha Shoe Company, and, very remarkably, not a Czech but an Indian—was in town on business. Haresh, who knew no one in the Praha organization, felt that this was a heaven-sent opportunity to try his luck with them—or at least to get an answer to his many requests and letters. He told Mukherji that he would be grateful if he would introduce him to Mr Khandelwal.
Mukherji took Haresh along late one evening to the Imperial Hotel, where Mr Khandelwal always stayed when in Delhi. In fact, Mr Khandelwal always stayed in the Moghul Suite, the fanciest suite of all. He was a relaxed sort of man, of medium height, running both to fat and to the beginning of grey hair. He was dressed in kurta and dhoti. Apparently, he was even more fond of paan than Haresh; he chewed three at a time.
Haresh could not at first believe that this man sitting in a dhoti on the sofa was the legendary Mr Khandelwal. But when he saw how everyone scurried around him, some of them actually trembling while handing him papers which he quickly scanned and commented on, usually in a couple of words, Haresh got a sense both of his acuity and of his undoubted authority. One short, eager Czech, moving around in a most deferential manner, took down notes whenever Mr Khandelwal wanted something done or checked or reported on.
When Mr Khandelwal noticed Mr Mukherji he smiled and welcomed him in Bengali. Despite being a Marwari, Mr Khandelwal, having lived in Calcutta all his life, was fluent in Bengali; in fact he conducted meetings with trade union leaders from the Prahapore factory near Calcutta entirely in Bengali.