My Nine Lives by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Author:Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619028807
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2017-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Even well into her sixties, the Begum continued to be surrounded by admirers. They came in the evenings and had their usual drinks, no longer served by Amma but by Amma’s granddaughter. Otherwise everything was unchanged—including the Begum herself who still chainsmoked. At home she was always in slacks and a silk shirt and her hair was cut short and shingled; but there was something languid and feminine about her. She relaxed in a long chair with her narrow feet up and crossed at the ankles while she joked and gossiped with friends. They had two favorite targets: the crude contemporary politicians who amassed fortunes to cover their fat wives and daughters with fat jewels, and the wooden-headed army generals one of whom had long ago had the misfortune to be her husband. “What did I know?” she still lamented. “My family said his family was okay—meaning they had as much money and land as we had—and at seventeen I liked his uniform though by eighteen I couldn’t stand the fool inside it.”

It was only in Muktesh’s presence that she was not exactly tense—that would have been impossible for her—but less relaxed. By this time he was very important indeed and his visits involved elaborate security arrangements. He himself, in handspun dhoti and rough wool waistcoat, remained unchanged. Whenever I was there, he came as often as he could, mostly very late at night, after a cabinet meeting or a state banquet. The Begum, saying she was very tired, went to bed. I knew she didn’t sleep but kept reading for many hours, propped up by pillows, smoking and turning the pages of her books. She read only male authors and went through whole sets of them—ten volumes of Proust, all the later novels of Henry James, existentialist writers like Sartre and Camus whom everyone had been reading when she was young and traveling in Europe, usually with a lover.

Muktesh talked to me about the reforms he was trying to push through; he spoke of dams, monetary loans, protest groups, obstructive opposition parties and rebels within his own party. He spoke to me of his concerns in the way he must have done with my mother; but his mood was different. When he was young, he said, he could afford to have theories, high principles. Now he didn’t have time for anything except politics; and he drew his hand down his face as if to wipe away his weariness. But I felt that, though his mind and days were swallowed up by business and compromise, the ideals formed in his youth were still there, the ground on which he stood. And I might as well say here that, in a country where every public figure was suspected of giving and receiving favors, his integrity was unquestioned, unspoken even. It wasn’t an attribute with him, it was an essence: his essence.

Whenever Muktesh came on one of his official visits to London, he took off an hour or two to be with me and my father.

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