A Life Apart Read Online Free PDF Page B

especially that central rule
of the Raj – you didn’t treat the natives as equals. Of course, you were friendly with them, you worked with them (well, you had to), you invited them to certain parties, although not
all, but you most certainly didn’t treat them as equals, not after 1857, not after Cawnpore. The natives inhabited a different world from their masters and governors and the space in between
was, should be, unbridgeable. Rule set in stone, cast in iron. There was no deflection from that. If you swayed from it, you had to pay.
    Miss Gilby made sure that she moved around, talking to as many people as she could manage, especially the Indians and their wives, at every party. James’s were no exceptions. She cast
her mind back to the Ooty party of 1899 to place Nikhilesh Roy Chowdhury. He had been one of the men who had turned up not in the obligatory black tie but in his dhoti-kurta and a beautiful shawl,
the colour of a young fawn, embroidered so delicately that she had wanted to run her hands over the stitches and the fabric. He had been talking to the Major General, or someone from the Indian
Army. When she asked James who the Indian gentleman was, he said, ‘Oh, that’s Nik, Nikilesh. He’s a minor zamindar in Bengal. Jolly nice chap. Knows the Mertons and the
Leigh-Fermors. Some sort of Harrow connection, I think, but I’m not sure. Jolly good sort, you know. Not a drunken idiot like the rest of the nawabs around here. Here, let me introduce
you.’
    Miss Gilby’s first impression of Nikhilesh was of gentleness and refinement. He spoke English beautifully, with none of the low louting and fawning and other affectations, which so
afflicted the natives, and he spoke it in a soft, gentle voice. Miss Gilby was of the firm opinion that behind all the servile tics, the deep bowing and the ingratiating attitudes of most of the
natives, they were mocking the Anglos all the time, in fact using the very customs of the English and distorting them in such a way that it could only be a type of insolent sarcasm. She had first
had this feeling when the natives had carried the dinghies of English passengers over the unceasingly crashing breakers on to the beach in Madras, laughing all the time, as if they were having the
time of their life, while the seasick, frightened and tired Englishwomen screeched, cried and prayed. She was convinced the men were enjoying their discomfort and behind their ‘ haan ,
memsa’b’, ‘ na , memsa’b’, their begging and their over-eagerness, they were tilting the boats and making it that much more turbulent for the English
ladies.
    The exchange of greetings was barely over when Miss Gilby had the unshakeable feeling that this was one Indian man, possibly the first in her eight years in this country, who was not secretly
mocking her and her countrymen while keeping up an outward show of courteous, even flattering, behaviour. This may have had something to do with the fact that the nice gentleman did not have any of
the twitches of false obeisance and ridiculously exaggerated manners the natives were so given to, thinking this would be of advantage to them. Not a trace of that in this calm, refined man: he
held his head high when he spoke, enunciated clearly, balanced the teacup in his hand with poise.
    Miss Gilby can only guess how Nikhilesh Roy Chowdhury knows of her move up north to Calcutta from Madras, hardly more than a year ago. For the last year, she has been attached to the
household of the Nawab of Motibagh, in the capacity of governess to the Begum – funny how the upper class Indians seemed to call ‘companions’ to their wives
‘governesses’, as if they were little children in need of basic education in manners, speech and writing – and it would be surprising if that news did not travel fast in the
enclosed world of minor Bengal royalty. An event such as having an Anglo-Indian in the household was like throwing a stone in a tiny pond – the