Rajmahal by Kamalini Sengupta

Author:Kamalini Sengupta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2010-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

5

The Book of Hope

WHEN POLO-WIDOW MAUDIE JESSOP MOVED IN WITH HER BROTHER David Norman, the Rajmahal was neither pleased nor dismayed. Uneasy, it was uneasy about the widow who spent so much of her time prettifying herself yet with a clothes pin on her tongue. The house was sorry for her, recognizing the incipient weakness in her will, knowing in its bricks she would take to drink and be quickly seduced, both possible during one of the Norman’s rambunctious parties. Too much drama around any inhabitant disturbed the house.

Maudie’s husband Anthony Jessop was a member of the Indian Police. While on district postings, they visited the Rajmahal often. Maudie would then replenish her wardrobe at “Right Away and Paid For,” Whiteaway and Laidlaw’s alias, or Hall and Anderson, or the New Market, and bask in the warmth of her brother’s household and ready parties. Her arrival was an excuse for these parties. Maudie didn’t unpin her tongue to blossom into the belle of the ball but she relished dancing and picking out tunes on the piano. The traditional Anglo-Indian fare lasted as long as their generation. Meats, curries, wines, cakes and confectioneries of which Maudie was the specialist in the rosy cocade, a rose-shaped candy finished in a dip of boiling syrup. They belonged to the top end of Calcutta society, accepted by British as well as native circles. Most Anglo-Indians would be shocked to hear themselves branded by the pejorative “native,” but that, as recognized by an outstanding member of their community who led them well into Independent India, was what they were. Even if the leader didn’t use the despised word itself, he recognized his community as Indian, first and last, whatever their color. Some of the community understood this, keener on adjusting to their difficult place in India than flaunting a superiority based on unreliable British patronage. Or claiming as their own an unknown, unseen country. The Jessops recognized this, and with Anthony’s successes in the Indian Police, stayed on without question. The first body blow to Maudie’s sense of a perfect life was her only child Eric’s death, when he was barely an adult. Independence had come and receded and Anthony’s climb in the police continued. But Eric hankered for the glamour of foreign lands. He, like many fellow students, and as expounded by Petrov in his diary passage on post-independent India, was sure Valhalla could exist nowhere but in the West. India held little immediate attraction. While some of his wealthy friends, mostly fully Indian, could afford a university education in England the rest stayed back, giving vent to their frustration through verbal tirades. But they stabilized in a few years. Those who became leftists and held lasting convictions, and that wasn’t just a pose but a solemn matter in Calcutta, entered into the violent politics of the state. The Jessops could afford to send Eric abroad too, but he couldn’t pass the entrance exams. Stuck in Calcutta, he tingled with sensitivity at what he imagined was his friends’ scorn toward Anglo-Indians.

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