Her own husband, meanwhile, was saying to Sandeep Lahiri: ‘I understand you got into trouble this time last year over some pictures of Gandhiji?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Sandeep. ‘One picture, actually. But, well, things have sorted themselves out.’
‘Sorted themselves out? Hasn’t Jha just managed to get rid of you?’
‘Well, I’ve been promoted –’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what I meant,’ said Mahesh Kapoor impatiently. ‘But you’re very popular with everyone in Rudhia. If you weren’t in the IAS, I’d have made you my agent. I’d win the elections easily.’
‘Are you thinking of standing from Rudhia?’ asked Sandeep.
‘I’m not thinking of anything at the moment,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Everyone else is doing my thinking for me. My son. And my grandson. And my friend the Nawab Sahib. And my Parliamentary Secretary. And Rafi Sahib. And the Chief Minister. And this most helpful gentleman,’ he added, indicating the politician, a short, quiet man who had shared a cell with Mahesh Kapoor many years ago.
‘I am only saying: We should all return to the party of Gandhiji,’ said the politician. ‘To change one’s party is not necessarily to change one’s principles – or to be unprincipled.’
‘Ah, Gandhiji,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, not willing to be drawn out. ‘He would have been eighty-two today, and a miserable man. He would never have reiterated his wish to live to be a hundred and twenty-five. As for his spirit, we feed it with laddus for one day of the year, and once we’ve performed his shraadh we forget all about him.’
Suddenly he turned to his wife: ‘Why is he taking so long making the phulkas? Must we sit here with our stomachs rumbling till four o’clock? Instead of dandling that baby and making it howl, why don’t you get that halfwit cook to feed us?’
Veena said, ‘I’ll go,’ to her mother and went towards the kitchen.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor once more bowed her head over the baby. She believed that Gandhiji was a saint, more than a saint, a martyr – and she could not bear that anything should be said about him in bitterness. Even now she loved to sing – or to hear sung – the songs from the anthology used in his Ashram. She had just bought three postcards issued by the Posts and Telegraph Department in his memory: one showed him spinning, one showed him with his wife Kasturba, one showed him with a child.
But what her husband said was probably true. Thrust to the sidelines of power at the end of his active life, his message of generosity and reconciliation, it seemed, had been almost forgotten within four years of his death. She felt, however, that he would still have wanted to live. He had lived through times of desperate frustration before, and had borne it with patience. He was a good man, and a man without fear. Surely his fearlessness would have extended into the future.
After lunch, the women went for a walk in the garden. It had been a warmer year than most, but this particular day had been relieved by a little morning rain. The ground was still slightly moist, and the garden fragrant. The pink madhumalati creeper was in bloom near the swing. Mixed with the earth beneath the harsingar tree lay many small white-and-orange flowers that had fallen at dawn; they still held a trace of their fugitive scent. A few gardenias remained on one of two sporadically bearing trees. Mrs Rupa Mehra – who had been singularly quiet during lunch – now held and rocked the baby, who had fallen fast asleep. She sat down on a bench by the harsingar tree. In Uma’s left ear was a most delicate vein that branched out into smaller and smaller ones in an exquisite pattern. Mrs Rupa Mehra looked at it for a while, then sighed.
‘There is no tree like the harsingar,’ she said to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘I wish we had one in our garden.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor nodded. A modest, unhandsome tree by day, the harsingar became glorious at night, full of a delicate fragrance, surrounded by enchanted insects. The tiny, six-petalled flowers with their orange hearts wafted down at dawn. And tonight it would again be full, and the flowers would again float down as the sun rose. The tree flowered, but kept nothing for itself.
‘No,’ agreed Mrs Mahesh Kapoor with a grave smile. ‘There is no tree like it at all.’ After a pause she added: ‘I will have Gajraj plant a seedling in the back garden at Pran’s house, next to the lime tree. Then it will always be as old as Uma. And it should flower in two or three years at the most.’
15.7
WHEN Bibbo saw the Nawabzada, she quickly thrust a letter into his hands.
‘How in heaven’s name did you know I would be coming here tonight? I wasn’t invited.’