River of Smoke(18)

‘Whose was the drawing, did ee say?’

‘Why sir, it is mine.’

Fitcher bent low over the page. ‘But the signature, if I’m not wrong, says not “Paul” but “Paulette”.’

*

Apart from Bahram himself, Vico was the only other person who knew that the Anahita was carrying three thousand chests of opium in her after-hold. Bahram and Vico had gone to great lengths to keep this a secret, fudging the bills of lading, rotating the stowage crews, and disguising some of the crates. To let the facts be widely known would have been imprudent on many counts, making insurance more difficult to obtain and increasing the risks of piracy and pilferage – for this shipment was not merely the most expensive cargo that Bahram had ever shipped; it was possibly the single most valuable cargo that had ever been carried out of the Indian subcontinent.

Bahram was one of the very few merchants who had the connections and reputation to assemble such a shipment, being almost without peer in his experience of the China trade: rare was the Indian merchant who could boast of travelling to Canton more than three or four times – but Bahram had made the journey fifteen times in the course of his career. In the process he had built, almost single-handedly, one of the largest and most consistently profitable trading operations in Bombay: the export division of Mistrie Brothers.

Although this firm was one of Bombay’s most prominent establishments, it had by tradition been quite narrowly specialized, with few interests outside shipbuilding and engineering. The export division was Bahram’s personal creation and it was he who had built this small unit into a worthy rival of the famous shipyard. In doing so he had faced no little resistance from within the firm; if he had persevered, it was largely because of his deep and abiding loyalty to his father-in-law, Seth Rustamjee Pestonjee Mistrie – the patriarch who had accepted him into the family, and given him his start in the world.

As with many others whose fortunes are transformed by advantageous union  s, no one set greater store by the reputation of the family he had married into than Bahram himself: in his case, his regard for the Mistries was tinged also with a great deal of gratitude, for it was they who had given him an opportunity to rise above the humble circumstances into which he had been born.

There had been a time once when Bahram’s own family had also been prosperous and well-respected, occupying a place of distinction in their hometown of Navsari, in coastal Gujarat; his grandfather had been a well-known textile dealer, with important court connections in princely capitals like Baroda, Indore and Gwalior. But in his waning years, after a lifetime of prudence, he had made a slew of rash investments, incurring an enormous burden of debt. Being a man of steely integrity he had taken it upon himself to pay off every loan, down to the last tinny, coproon and half-anna; as a result, the family had been reduced to utter penury, with no more than a handful of cowries in their khazana – too few, as the saying went, to string together on an arms-length of thread. Forced to sell off their beautiful old haveli, they had moved into a couple of rooms on the edge of town, and this had proved fatal for the old man as well as his son, Bahram’s father, who was a consumptive and had suffered from lifelong ill health; he did not live to see Bahram’s navjote – his ceremonial induction into the Zoroastrian faith.

Fortunately for the boy and his two sisters, their mother had learnt one lucrative skill in her girlhood: she was an exceptionally good needlewoman, and the shawls she embroidered were much prized and admired. When word of the family’s plight spread through the community, orders came pouring in, and by dint of thrift and hard work, she was able not only to feed her children, but also to provide Bahram with the rudiments of an education. In time her renown spread as far as Bombay, fetching her an important commission: she was asked to supply embroidered wedding shawls for the daughter of one of the foremost Parsi businessmen of the city – none other than Seth Rustamjee Pestonjee Mistrie.

The two families were not unknown to each other, for the Mistrie business had also been founded in Navsari – its origins lay in a small furniture workshop which the Modis, in their heyday, had lavishly patronized and supported. Attached to the workshop was a shed for building boats: although small to begin with, this part of the business had quickly outstripped every other branch. After winning a major contract from the East India Company, the Mistries had moved to Bombay where they had opened a shipyard in the dockside district of Mazagon. On taking charge of the firm, Seth Rustamjee had built energetically upon his inheritance, and under his direction the Mistrie shipyard had become one of the most successful enterprises in the Indian subcontinent. Now, his daughter was to marry a scion of one of the richest merchant families in the land, the Dadiseths of Colaba, and the wedding was to be celebrated on a scale never seen before.