L.N. Agarwal shook his head, then went on. ‘Until two this morning the MLAs were gathering around me like chicks around their mother. They were in a state of panic. The Chief Minister goes out of town for a few days and see what happens in his absence! What will Sharmaji say when he comes back? What capital will Mahesh Kapoor’s faction make out of all this? In Misri Mandi they will emphasize the lot of the jatavs, in Chowk that of the Muslims. What will the effect of all this be on the jatav vote and the Muslim vote? The General Elections are just a few months away. Will these votebanks swing away from the Congress? If so, in what numbers? One or two gentlemen have even asked if there is the danger of further conflagration – though usually this is the least of their concerns.’
‘And what do you tell them when they come running to you?’ asked the Rai Bahadur. His daughter-in-law – the arch-witch in Priya’s demonology – had just brought in the tea. The top of her head was covered with her sari. She poured the tea, gave them a sharp look, exchanged a couple of words, and went out.
The thread of the conversation had been lost, but the Rai Bahadur, perhaps remembering the cross-examinations for which he had been famous in his prime, drew it gently back again.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said L.N. Agarwal quite calmly. ‘I just tell them whatever is necessary to stop them from keeping me awake.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, nothing much. Just that things will blow over; that what’s done is done; that a little discipline never did a neighbourhood any harm; that the General Elections are still far enough away. That sort of thing.’ L.N. Agarwal sipped his tea before continuing: ‘The fact of the matter is that the country has far more important things to think about. Food is the main one. Bihar is virtually starving. And if we have a bad monsoon, we will be too. Mere Muslims threatening us from inside the country or across the border we can deal with. If Nehru were not so soft–hearted we would have dealt with them properly a few years ago. And now these jatavs, these’ – his expression conveyed distaste at the words – ‘these scheduled caste people are becoming a problem once again. But let’s see, let’s see…’
Ram Vilas Goyal had sat silent through the whole exchange. Once he frowned slightly, once he nodded.
‘That is what I like about my son-in-law,’ reflected L.N. Agarwal. ‘He’s not dumb, but he doesn’t speak.’ He decided yet again that he had made the right match for his daughter. Priya could provoke, and he would simply not allow himself to be provoked.
5.5
MEANWHILE, upstairs, Priya was talking to Veena, who had come to pay her a visit. But it was more than a social visit, it was an emergency. Veena was very distressed. She had come home and found Kedarnath not merely with his eyes closed but with his head in his hands. This was far worse than his general state of optimistic anxiety. He had not wanted to talk about it, but she had eventually discovered that he was in very grave financial trouble. With the pickets and the stationing of the police in Chowk, the wholesale shoe market had finally ground from a slowdown to a complete halt. Every day now his chits were coming due, and he just did not have the cash to pay them. Those who owed him money, particularly two large stores in Bombay, had deferred paying him for past supplies because they thought he could not ensure future supplies. The supplies he got from people like Jagat Ram, who made shoes to order, were not enough. To fulfil the orders that buyers around the country had placed with him, he needed the shoes of the basket-wallahs, and they did not dare come to Misri Mandi these days.
But the immediate problem was how to pay for the chits that were coming due. He had no one to go to; all his associates were themselves short of cash. Going to his father-in-law was for him out of the question. He was at his wits’ end. He would try once more to talk to his creditors – the money-lenders who held his chits and their commission agents who came to him for payment when they were due. He would try to persuade them that it would do no one any good to drive him and others like him to the wall in a credit squeeze. This situation would surely not last long. He was not insolvent, just illiquid. But even as he spoke he knew what their answer would be. He knew that money, unlike labour, owed no allegiance to a particular trade, and could flow out of shoes and into, say, cold storage facilities without retraining or compunction or doubt. It only asked two questions: ‘What interest?’ and ‘What risk?’
Veena had not come to Priya for financial help, but to ask her how best to sell the jewellery she had got from her mother upon her marriage – and to weep on her shoulder. She had brought the jewellery with her. Only a little had remained from the traumatic days after the family’s flight from Lahore. Every piece meant so much to her that she started crying when she thought of losing it. She had only two requests – that her husband not find out until the jewellery had actually been sold; and that for a few weeks at least her father and mother should not know.