The jamun-pickers tried to be careful, but the lawn and flowerbeds did suffer. Well, thought Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, at least it is the monsoon, and the beauty of the garden at this time of year doesn’t really lie in its flowers but in its greenery. She had learned by now not to plant the few bright monsoon flowers – zinnias, balsam, orange cosmos – in the beds that lay close to the jamun trees. And she liked the jamun-pickers, who were cheerful, and without whom she would probably not have benefited even from those branches that did stretch out over her lawn.
Now she walked slowly around the garden of Prem Nivas, thinking of many things, but mainly of Pran. She was dressed in an old sari: a short, nondescript woman who to a stranger might almost have looked like one of the servants. Her husband dressed very well – if, as a Congress MLA, he was compelled to wear homespun cotton it had nevertheless to be of the best quality – and he had often rebuked her for her dowdiness. But since this was only one of many rebukes, just or unjust, she felt that she had neither the energy nor the taste to act on it. It was like her lack of knowledge of English. What could she do about it? Nothing, she had long since decided. If she was stupid, she was stupid; it was God’s doing.
The fact that year after year she carried away some of the best prizes in the Rose and Chrysanthemum Show in December as well as in the Annual Flower Show in February never ceased to amaze the more sophisticated inhabitants of Brahmpur. The committee of the Race Club marvelled that her roses displayed a compactness and freshness that theirs could never attain; and the wives of the executives of Burmah Shell or the Praha Shoe Company even deigned, in their anglicized Hindi, to ask her once or twice what it was she put into her lawn that made it so even and springy and green. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor would have been hard-pressed to answer even if she had fully understood their brand of Hindi. She simply stood with gratefully folded hands, accepting their compliments and looking rather foolish, until they gave up. Shaking their heads they decided that she was indeed foolish, but that she – or more probably her head gardener – ‘had a gift’. Once or twice they had tried to bribe ‘him to leave her by offering him twice his present salary; but the head mali, who was originally from Rudhia, was content to remain at Prem Nivas and see the trees he had planted grow tall and the roses he had pruned bloom brightly. His disagreement with her about the side-lawn had been amicably resolved. It had been left slightly uneven, and had become something of a sanctuary for her favourite bird.
The two under-gardeners were in government service, and had been allotted to Mahesh Kapoor in his capacity as Minister of Revenue. They loved the garden at Prem Nivas, and were unhappy that they were to be torn away from it. ‘Why did Minister Sahib resign?’ they asked sadly.
‘You will have to ask Minister Sahib,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, who herself was not happy about his decision, and thought it was an unwise one. Nehru, after all, despite his carping and complaining about his party, was still in Congress. Surely any precipitate action by his followers – such as resignation – was premature. The question was, would it help to force the Prime Minister’s hand, and make him leave as well, thus giving birth to a new and possibly more vigorous party? Or would it merely weaken his position in his own party and make things worse than before?
‘They will assign us some other house,’ said the under-gardeners with tears in their eyes. ‘Some other Minister and some other Memsahib. No one will treat us as well as you have.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. She was a gentle-hearted and soft-spoken woman, and never raised her voice at her employees. In consequence, and because she often asked about their families, and helped them out in small ways, they loved her.
‘What will you do without us, Memsahib?’ asked one.
‘Can you work for me part-time at Prem Nivas?’ she asked. ‘That way you won’t lose the garden you’ve worked so hard on.’
‘Yes – for an hour or two each morning. The only thing is –’
‘Of course, you’ll be paid for your work,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, anticipating their awkwardness and making a calculation of her household expenses. ‘But I will have to employ someone else full-time. Do you know of anyone?’
‘My brother would be a good man,’ said one.
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor in surprise. ‘Not my real brother – my uncle’s son.’
‘All right. I’ll let him work for a month on probation, and Gajraj will tell me how good he is.’