The Mystic Masseur

  But there were moments when Ganesh was worried.

  When Narayan, for example, sitting as President at the table draped with the saffron, white, and green Indian tricolour, asked how Mr Partap, who, he knew, worked in Port of Spain and lived in San Fernando, could represent Cunaripo, which was miles away from either place.

  Ganesh at once jumped to his feet and said that Mr Partap, it was true, was an esteemed member of the Parcel Post Service in Port of Spain and belonged to an honourable family in San Fernando; but he also, no doubt for merit in some past life, owned land in Cunaripo.

  Narayan looked sick. He said drily, ‘Oh, well. I suppose I represent Port of Spain although I work in Sangre Grande, only fifty miles away.’

  There was general laughter. Everyone knew that Narayan lived and worked in Port of Spain.

  Then Indarsingh began to make trouble. In a speech lasting almost ten minutes he wondered, in impeccable English, whether all the branches present had paid their subscriptions.

  The Chief Treasurer, sitting next to Narayan, opened a blue exercise-book with a picture of King George VI on the cover. He said that many branches, particularly the new ones, hadn’t paid; but he was sure they soon would.

  Indarsingh shouted, ‘Unconstitutional!’

  There was silence.

  He seemed to have expected a howl of protest, and the silence caught him unprepared. He said, ‘Oh, I say, what?’ and sat down.

  Narayan twisted his thin lips. ‘It is a little curious, however. Let me consult the constitution!’

  Swami bellowed from the back, ‘Narayan, you ain’t going to consult no constitution!’

  Narayan looked miserable and pushed the booklet aside.

  ‘A man like you, robbing money that people scratch and scrape and save. Wanting to consult constitution!’

  Ganesh stood up. ‘Mr President, sir, I call on Dr Swami to withdraw those unkind remarks.’

  The meeting took up the cry. ‘Withdraw! Withdraw!’

  ‘All right, I withdraw. Eh, who saying, “Shut up”? He want to taste my hand.’ Swami looked menacingly around. ‘Look, I want to make we position plain. We ain’t here to fight anybody. We just want to see Hindus unite and we want to get the grant for everybody, not for one man.’

  Narayan looked sicker than ever.

  There was laughter, not only from Ganesh’s supporters.

  Ganesh whispered to the boy, ‘How you didn’t remind me about the subscriptions, man?’

  The boy said, ‘It ain’t for you, a big man, to talk to me so.’

  Indarsingh was up again. ‘Mr President, this is a democratic body, and in no other body – and I have travelled – have I heard of members who haven’t paid subscriptions being allowed to vote. In fact, it is my considered opinion that, by and large –’

  Narayan said, ‘Is this a motion?’

  Indarsingh looked hurt. ‘It is, Mr President. A motion, certainly.’

  Swami bellowed, ‘Mr President, enough of this damn nonsense motion and commotion, and listen to something sensible for a change. It is my motion that the constitution should be – be –’

  ‘Suspended,’ the boy prompted.

  ‘– be suspended, or anyway that part which say that members have to pay before they vote. Suspended for this meeting, and this meeting only.’

  Indarsingh lost his temper, bared an arm, quoted Gandhi, talked about the Oxford Union, and said he was ashamed of the corruption in the Hindu Association.

  Narayan looked wretched.

  At a signal from Ganesh, four men rushed to Indarsingh and lifted him outside. ‘Undemocratic!’ Indarsingh shouted, ‘Unconstitutional!’ He became quiet all of a sudden.

  Narayan said, ‘Who will second that motion?’

  Every hand went up.

  Narayan saw defeat. He took out a handkerchief and held it over his mouth.

  Then the mood of the meeting changed.

  The bearded Negro stood up and made a long speech. He said that he had been attracted to Hinduism because he liked Indians; but the corruption he had seen that day was entirely repugnant to him. It had, as a matter of fact, decided him to join the Muslims, and the Hindus had better look out when he was a Muslim.

  The Chief Treasurer, the guardian of the blue exercise-book, a splendid figure in orange turban and silk koortah, said that Indians were bad people, and Hindus particularly bad. He had lost faith in his people and no longer thought it an honour to be Chief Treasurer of the Hindu Association. He was going to resign then and there and not offer himself for re-election.

  Personal loyalties were forgotten. ‘Stay, punditji,’ the Hindu Association shouted, ‘stay.’

  The Chief Treasurer wept and stayed.

  Narayan looked crumpled and more miserable than ever when he rose to speak. He said – and his speech was fully reported in The Hindu – ‘Dissension and dissatisfaction prevail among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I have caused some of that dissension and dissatisfaction. I confess it.’ He was weeping. ‘My friends, will you forgive an old man?’

  ‘Yes, ji,’ the audience wept back. ‘We forgive you.’

  ‘My friends, we are not united. And now, with your permission, I am going to tell the story of an old man, his three sons, and a bundle of sticks.’ He didn’t tell it very well. ‘United we stand, then, and divided we fall. My friends, let us fall united rather than stand united. My friends, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru never wrangled with Shri Chakravarti Rajagopalacharya or with Shri Vallabhai Patel for the Presidency of the All-India National Congress. And so too, my friends, I have no desire to be the cause of dissatisfaction and dissension among the rank and file of Hindus in Trinidad today. My friends, I only want back my self-respect and I want your respect. My friends, I withdraw from public life. I do not want to be re-elected President of the Hindu Association of Trinidad, of which I am a founder member and President.’

  Narayan was cheered loud and long. Some people wept. Some shouted, ‘Long live Narayan!’

  He wept too. ‘Thank you, thank you, my friends.’ And sat down to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

  ‘A diplomatic son of a bitch, pundit,’ the boy said.

  But Ganesh was wiping away a tear.

  Ganesh was the only candidate for the Presidency and was elected without any fuss at all.

  Swami and Partap were among the new Assistant-Presidents. The boy was a simple Secretary. Indarsingh was offered the post of Fourth Assistant to the Chief Secretary, but declined.

  Ganesh’s first act as President was to send a cable to the All-India Congress. Awkwardly, it wasn’t the occasion of any important anniversary. He cabled:

  KEEP MAHATMAJI IDEALS ALIVE STOP HINDU ASSOCIATION

  TRINIDAD WITH YOU INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE STOP

  BEST WISHES

  GANESH PRESIDENT HINDU ASSOCIATION

  TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

  11. M.L.C.

  VOLUME ONE Number Two of The Dharma never came out.

  Swami and Partap could not hide their relief. But the boy told Ganesh, ‘I ain’t want to meddle in any more of this child-play, you hear.’ And he told Swami, ‘Next time you start up a paper leave me out.’

  But The Dharma had served its purpose. Narayan kept his word and retired from public life. The election campaigns for Trinidad’s first General Elections raged around him while he remained at his house in Mucurapo in Port of Spain a useless invalid. The Hindu dropped the Each One Teach One and Per Ardua ad Astra slogans and consoled itself once more with quotations from the Hindu scriptures. The Little Bird disappeared and its place was taken by Sparks from a Brahmin’s Log-fire.

  Ganesh didn’t have time for the affairs of the Hindu Association. The island elections were two months off and he found himself embroiled. Indarsingh had decided to go up in Ganesh’s ward and it was this rather than the promptings of the Association or Beharry or Swami that made Ganesh stand for the elections.

  ‘Narayan did have a little point there, pundit,’
Beharry said. ‘About religious visionaries. And Suruj Mooma too, she say curing soul go do but it wouldn’t put food in people mouth.’

  Ganesh asked Leela’s advice.

  She said, ‘But you have to go up. You not going to sit down and let that boy fool the people?’

  ‘Indarsingh ain’t a boy, man.’

  ‘It are hard not to believe that. Suruj Mooma right, you know. Too much of this education is a bad bad thing. You remain here, educate yourself, and yet you is a bigger man than Indarsingh for all the Ox-ford he say he go to.’

  The Great Belcher cried. ‘Oh, Ganeshwa, is the word I was waiting for from your mouth. Is your duty to go up and help the poor people.’

  So Ganesh went up for the elections.

  ‘But,’ Leela warned, ‘it are not going to make me happy to see my husband getting into all sort of low argument with all sort of low people. I don’t want you to drag your name in the mud.’

  He didn’t. He fought the cleanest election campaign in Trinidad history. He had no platform. And his posters were the simplest things: GANESH WILL DO WHAT HE CAN, A VOTE FOR GANESH IS A VOTE FOR GOD; sometimes even plainer statements, GANESH WILL WIN and GANESH IS A MAN OF GOOD AND GOD.

  He held no election meetings, but Swami and Partap arranged many prayer-meetings for him. He worked hard to expand his Road to Happiness lectures; three or even four taxis had to take the books he required. Quite casually, in the middle of a lecture, he would say in Hindi, ‘It may interest one or two of you in this gathering tonight to hear that I am a candidate for the elections next month. I can promise nothing. In everything I shall consult God and my conscience, even at the risk of displeasing you. But that is by the way. We were talking, you remember, about the transmigration of souls. Now, this theory was also put forward by a philosopher of Ancient Greece, but I have brought along some books tonight to show you that it is more than likely that the Greek got the idea from India …’

  Beharry said one day, ‘Suruj Mooma don’t think the sign in front the house look nice, pundit. She say it so mildew it spoil the whole house.’

  So Ganesh took down the sign which threatened that requests for monetary assistance would not be entertained, and put up a new and simpler one which said: Spiritual solace may be had here at any time.

  At a prayer-meeting one evening Ganesh noticed the boy among the helpers taking away the books from the taxis to the platform. Swami said, ‘I bring the boy to apologize for what he say, sahib. He say he want to make up by helping with the poster and them. He crying all the time, sahib. And don’t mind he look little, he have a master hand for painting signs.’

  The boy’s lettering was elaborate. He was never content with a plain letter; he shadowed everything and sometimes it was hard to read what he had written. But he was keen and everybody liked him. Beharry, who was also working on the posters, said, ‘I wish sometimes that God did give me a son like this. Suruj, he all right, but Suruj, pundit, he ain’t have brains, man. He always in some Remove class. It does beat me. I is a intelligent man and Suruj Mooma ain’t a fool.’

  Beharry’s praise spurred the boy on and he designed the most famous poster of the elections:

  GANESH is

  Able

  Nice

  Energetic

  Sincere

  HOLY

  Against all this it was clear from the start that Indarsingh didn’t have a chance. But he fought gamely. He got the support of the Party for Progress and Unity, the PPU, an organization hastily slung together two months before the elections. The PPU’s aims, like its organization, were vague; and Indarsingh had to fend for himself. His speeches were long, carefully thought-out things – later published by the author in book form with the title Colonialism: Four Essays – about The Economics of Colonialism, Colonialism in Perspective, The Anatomy of Oppression, The Approach to Freedom. Indarsingh travelled about with his own blackboard and a box of coloured chalks, illustrating his arguments with diagrams. Children liked him. They surrounded him at the beginning and end of a meeting and begged for ‘a little tiny little piece of chalk you did thinking of throwing away’. The older people called him the ‘Walking Dictionary’.

  Once or twice Indarsingh attempted an attack on Ganesh but he soon learned better. Ganesh never mentioned Indarsingh at all.

  Leela liked Indarsingh less and less as polling day came nearer. ‘All this fancy talk in all this fancy accent he are giving the people here, it are beat me why they don’t fling something big at his head.’

  ‘It ain’t nice to talk so, Leela,’ Ganesh said. ‘He is a good boy. He fighting a clean clean election and it ain’t so clean in the rest of Trinidad, I can tell you.’

  Leela turned to Beharry. ‘You bear what he are saying? It are just this sort of goodness and big mind that is dangerous in Trinidad. He ain’t have enough, it look like, from people like Narayan.’

  Beharry said, ‘Well, it have a lot in what the pundit say. Indarsingh is a good boy, but he still a boy. He does talk too big. Mark you, that all right for we here. I could understand and Ganesh pundit could understand, but is different for the ordinary people.’

  One night Ganesh came back late to Fuente Grove from a prayer-meeting at Bamboo Walk, a village at the boundary of his ward. Upstairs in the drawing-room Leela, Beharry, and the boy were, as usual, working on the posters. They were at the dining-table. But Ganesh saw somebody else kneeling next to the refrigerator, filling in the outlines of a GANESH IS A MAN OF GOOD AND GOD poster spread on the floor. He was a big fat man; but it wasn’t Swami.

  ‘Hello, sahib,’ the man said casually, and went on filling in the letters.

  It was Ramlogan.

  ‘Hello, Ramlogan. It have a long time I ain’t see you.’

  Ramlogan didn’t look up. ‘Busy, sahib. Very busy with the shop.’

  Ganesh said, ‘Leela, I hope you have a lot of food for me tonight. Anything that leave over, I could eat all of it. I hungry like a horse. Eh, but Leela, you ain’t give your father anything?’

  She moved with alacrity to the refrigerator.

  Ramlogan kept on filling in letters.

  ‘What you think of it?’

  ‘Is very nice wordings, sahib.’ Still Ramlogan didn’t look up.

  ‘Leela think them up.’

  ‘She is like that, sahib.’

  Leela handed round the Coca-Cola.

  Ramlogan, who was resting forward on his hands, knelt upright and laughed. ‘It have years now I selling this Coca-Cola but you know, sahib, I never touch it before. Is so it does happen. You ever notice that carpenters always living in some sort of breakdown old shack?’

  Leela said, ‘Man, your food waiting for you in the kitchen.’

  Ganesh went through the drawing-room to the large room next to the back verandah.

  Leela had tears in her eyes. ‘Man, is the second time in my life you make me feel proud of you.’ She leaned on him.

  He didn’t push her away.

  ‘The first time was with the boy and the cloud. Now is with Pa.’

  She wiped her eyes and seated Ganesh at the kitchen table.

  In the week before polling day Ganesh decided to suspend mystic activity and hold a Bhagwat, a seven-day prayer-meeting.

  He said, ‘Ever since I small I promising myself to hold my own Bhagwat, but I could never find the time.’

  The boy said, ‘But now is the time to move around, pundit, talking to the people and them.’

  ‘I know,’ Ganesh said sadly. ‘But something telling me that if I don’t have a Bhagwat now, I would never have one again.’

  Leela didn’t approve. ‘Is easy for you, just sitting down and reciting prayers and thing to the people. But they don’t come to Bhagwat just for prayers, I can tell you. They come for the free food.’

  However, The Great Belcher and Suruj Mooma and Ramlogan rallied round and helped Leela with the great week-long task of cooking. The Bhagwat was held in the ground floor of the house; people were fed in the bamboo restaur
ant at the side; and there was a special kitchen at the back. Logs burned in huge holes in the ground and in great black iron pots over the holes simmered rice, dal, potatoes, pumpkins, spinach of many sorts, karhee, and many other Hindu vegetarian things. People came to the Bhagwat from many miles around and even Swami, who had organized so many Bhagwats, said, ‘Is the biggest and best thing I ever organize.’

  Leela complained more than ever of being tired; The Great Belcher had unusual trouble with the wind; Suruj Mooma moaned all the time about her hands.

  But Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Is like that with women and them, sahib. They complaining, but it have nothing they like better than a big fête like this. Was the same with Leela mother. Always going off to sing at somebody wedding, coming back hoarse hoarse next morning and complaining. But the next time a wedding come round and you turn to look for Leela mother – she ain’t there.’

  As a supreme gesture Ganesh invited Indarsingh to the last night of the Bhagwat, on the eve of polling day.

  Leela told Suruj Mooma and The Great Belcher, ‘Is just what I are expecting from that husband of mine. Sometimes these man and them does behave as if they lose their senses.’

  Suruj Mooma stirred the cauldron of dal with a ladle a yard long. ‘Ah, my dear. But what we go do without them?’

  Indarsingh came in an Oxford blazer and Swami, as organizer of the Bhagwat, introduced him to the audience. ‘I got to talk English to introduce this man to you, because I don’t think he could talk any Hindi. But I think all of all you go agree with me that he does talk English like a pukka Englishman. That is because he have a foreign education and he only just come back to try and help out the poor Trinidad people. Ladies and gentlemen – Mr Indarsingh, Bachelor of Arts of Oxford University, London, England.’

  Indarsingh gave a little hop, fingered his tie, and, stupidly, talked about politics.

  Indarsingh lost his deposit and had a big argument with the secretary of the PPU who had also lost his. Indarsingh said that the PPU had promised to compensate members who lost their deposits. He found he was talking to nobody; for after the election results the Party for Progress and Unity just disappeared.