He displayed a similar streak of winning and losing when it came to women. He would pluck a woman from a brothel or a party, groom her to perfection, place her on the high pedestal of fame, and then after he had destroyed every last bit of her womanhood, give her ample opportunities to take her affections to another man.
He met and played with the wealthiest of men and the prettiest of boys. Many fierce battles were fought. The dice was rolled and the game of politics played. But, always, he would thrust his hand in the thorniest bush, pluck the choicest flower and emerge unscathed. The very next day he would strut about with the flower in his buttonhole and create an opportunity to allow an opponent to pounce and get away with his trophy.
Once when he had been visiting a gambling den on Forres Road for ten days in a row, he became obsessed with the desire to lose. Though he had lately lost an extremely pretty actress as well as ten lakh rupees in a movie, the two events were still not enough to bring solace to his hungry heart. These two losses had occurred rather precipitously and were not entirely his doing. Miffed by his own lack of foresight, he was now determinedly losing a certain fixed amount everyday at the Forres Road gambling den.
He would set off every evening with two hundred rupees in his pocket. His taxi would cruise past the grilled cages of the prostitutes and stop beside an electric pole. He would step out, place the thick-rimmed spectacles firmly on his nose, adjust his dhoti, look to the right where an extremely beautiful woman would be sitting holding a broken sliver of glass and meticulously applying her make-up inside her iron-grilled room, and climb the stairs to the casino above.
For ten days now he had been coming to this casino in Forres Road to lose two hundred rupees every single day. Some days the two hundred rupees would go in a couple of rounds, some days it would be nearly dawn by the time he managed to lose them all.
On the eleventh day, when the taxi stopped beside the electric pole, he placed the thick-rimmed glasses firmly on his nose, adjusted his dhoti and happened to glance to the right, he suddenly realized that for the past ten days he had actually been looking at an extremely ugly woman. As always, she was sitting on a wooden settee looking into a broken hand mirror and was engrossed in putting on her make-up.
He approached her iron grill and looked closely at her. She was middle aged, with a smooth dark complexion, and the small blue dots tattooed on her cheeks and chin were nearly the same colour as her skin. Her teeth were crooked, her gums rotting with tobacco and paan. He wondered who in his right mind would come to this woman.
He took another step towards the iron cage and the woman looked up and smiled. She kept the mirror to one side, and asked crudely, ‘So, seth, will you stay?’
He looked more closely at the woman who even at her age seemed to think that she could still get clients. He was amazed. And so he asked, ‘How old are you?’
This seemed to hurt the woman somewhat. She made a face and flung an obscenity at him, probably in Marathi. He realized his mistake and so, with complete innocence, said, ‘Forgive me. I made an idle query, but I am surprised by one thing: I see you sitting here every evening, all dolled up. Do you get any clients?’
The woman didn’t answer. Once again, he realized his mistake. This time, without any particular eagerness, he asked, ‘What’s your name?’
The woman, who was about to part the curtain and go inside, stopped and said, ‘Gangubai.’
‘How much do you earn everyday, Gangubai?’
There was genuine sympathy in his voice. Gangubai approached the iron grill. ‘Six or seven rupees … sometimes not even that.’
‘Six or seven rupees and sometimes not even that,’ repeating Gangubai’s words he remembered the two hundred rupees in his pocket which he had brought along solely with the intention of losing. Suddenly he was struck by a thought. ‘Look here, Gangubai, you say you earn six or seven rupees every day — I will give you ten rupees every day.’
‘To stay?’
‘No, but if you like, you can think it is for staying with you,’ and he put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a ten-rupee note and passed it though the iron bars of the cage. ‘Here, take this.’
Gangubai took the note but there was a huge question mark on her face.
‘I shall give you ten rupees everyday at this hour, but I have a condition…’
‘What condition?’
‘That you take the ten rupees, eat your dinner, and go to sleep. I should not see your light on at night.’
A strange smile flickered across Gangubai’s face.
‘Don’t smile; I am a man of my word.’
And so saying, he went up to the casino. On the stairs, he thought, ‘I had to lose this money in any case. If not two hundred, I still have a hundred and ninety to lose.’
Several days passed. Everyday, without fail, his taxi would stop beside the electric pole. He would open the door and step out. Through his thick-rimmed glasses he would look towards the right and find Gangubai sitting on the wooden settee in her iron cage. He would adjust his dhoti, approach the grilled cage, take out a ten-rupee note and hand it to Gangubai. Gangubai would touch her forehead with the note in a gesture of salaam, he would climb the stairs to the casino to lose a hundred and ninety rupees. During these days, whenever he would come down after losing all his money — whether it was eleven or twelve in the night or three or four in the morning — he would always find Gangubai’s shop closed.
One day when he gave the ten rupees and came up, he ended up losing all his money by ten o’clock. He landed up with a hand of cards that relieved him of his hundred and ninety rupees in a matter of a few hours. As he came down and was about to get into his waiting taxi he saw that Gangubai’s shop was open and sitting on the settee in her cage was Gangubai — waiting for her clients.
He got out of the taxi and approached her cage. Gangubai saw him and looked nervously about, but there was nothing she could do.
‘What is this, Gangubai?’
Gangubai did not answer.
‘I am sad to see that you have not lived up to your promise. I told you, didn’t I, that I should not see your light on in the night? But look at you, you are sitting here like this…’
There was pain in his voice; it touched Gangubai.
‘You are bad,’ he said and started to move away.
Gangubai called out, ‘Wait.’
He stopped. Gangubai spoke slowly, biting every word with care: ‘I am bad. But who is good here? Seth, you can give ten rupees and cause one light to be switched off, but look around you … See … there are lights everywhere.’
He turned to look down the length of the narrow street lined with cages. There was a never-ending row of grill-fronted shops and countless bulbs were flickering in the muddy night air.
‘Can you cause all these lights to be switched off?’
Through his thick-rimmed glasses, he first looked at the naked bulb hanging above Gangubai’s head, then at Gangubai’s dusky earth-coloured face and bent his head. ‘No, Gangubai, I can’t.’
When he got into the taxi, his heart was as empty as his pocket.
A DAY IN 1919
It is about those days in 1919, brother, when agitations against the Rowlatt Act had sprung up all across the Punjab. I am talking about Amritsar. Sir Michael O’Dwyer had forbidden Mahatma Gandhi from entering the Punjab under the Defence of India Rules. Gandhiji was on his way when he was stopped near Palwal, arrested and sent back to Bombay. As far as I can understand, brother, had the English not committed this grave mistake, the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, which is the bloodiest chapter in the history of British rule in India, would never have occurred.
Whether Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs, all held Gandhiji in veneration. Everyone considered him to be a ‘mahatma’, a great man, a truly evolved spirit. When the news of his arrest reached Lahore, all business came to a standstill. When people in Amritsar heard of this, complete and total strikes paralyzed the city within the snap of a finger.