‘What news, bossie?’ called Inspector Bamji. ‘Ready for the war?’ He was applying lampblack to the headlights, leaving only a thin slit.
Gustad went up to him. ‘Night duty?’
Bamji nodded. ‘That’s why this maader chod black stuff.’ He wiped his hands on a rag. ‘Bastards want to fight, now they will get a fight. Bloody bahen chod bhungees think they can just come over and bomb our airfields. What did they expect, our planes would be sitting outside? Our boys are damn smart, bossie, damn smart. Everything in underground concrete hangars. Now they will be clean bowled — off stump, middle stump, leg stump — nothing left standing.’
Gustad pointed up at the building. ‘Looks like all our neighbours have done a good blackout.’
‘True,’ said Bamji. ‘But bossie, on first day everyone is enthusiastic. Then they get careless. And we get complaints at the police station. Same thing happened in ‘65. Any time a light is seen shining, it’s a Pakistani spy.’ The wet rag would not remove the black stuff off his fingers. He went home to try something stronger.
Chapter Twenty
i
Mr. Madon issued guidelines and directives concerning air raids and sirens. Wardens were appointed in each department to ensure, among other things, that those handling cash locked up before leaving their positions when the siren sounded. Employees were to retreat beneath their desks — only one person under one desk. Exceptions would be made for those sharing a desk if they were of the same sex; if not, they were to pair up with the nearest appropriate staff member. Wardens would supervise the propriety of the pairing. Mr. Madon wanted no flirting-below-desk-scandal to arise and stain his bank’s escutcheon.
The instruction list, like everything else at the bank, reminded Gustad of his departed friend. Dinshu would have had a field day in the canteen, mimicking Mr. Madon. And speculating on the thrills of going under a desk with Laurie Coutino, mini-skirt and all.
Now there were no jokes in the canteen, or song sessions. Instead, people talked endlessly about the war, repeating grim, gruesome stories of what was happening across the border. Rumour, fact, fantasy — all were devoured with equal zeal.
The debauched and alcoholic president of the enemy was said to be organizing unceasing bacchanals to keep his ministers and generals occupied: he feared an ouster if they regained their senses for too long. Thus did the crazed syphilitic cling to power, growing ever more desperate as he saw, through his haze of liquor, the unyielding worm gnawing contentedly at his brain.
Stories about the demoniacal occupation of Bangladesh were balanced by accounts of the Indian Army’s gallantry. On the radio and in cinema newsreels, the Jawans liberated towns and villages, routed the enemy, and took prisoners by the thousands. There was report after report of the citizenry’s generous support for the fighting men: about an eighty-year-old peasant who travelled to New Delhi, clutching her two gold wedding bangles, which she presented to Mother India for the war effort (some newspapers reported it as Mother Indira, which did not really matter — the line between the two was fast being blurred by the Prime Minister’s far-sighted propagandists who saw its value for future election campaigns); about schoolchildren donating their lunch money, their faces scrubbed and shining as they posed with a splendidly rotund Congress Party official; about farmers chanting Jai Jawan! Jai Kissan! and pledging to work harder by growing more food for the country.
Of course, in the newsreels, no mention was ever made of dutiful Shiv Sena patrols and motley fascists who roamed city streets with stones at the ready, patriotically shattering windows that they deemed inadequately blacked-out. Or the unlucky individuals mistaken for enemy agents and beaten up with great relish by personal enemies. Or the number of homes burgled by men posing as air-raid wardens come to inspect the premises. In short, no effort was spared to inform the country of its invincibility, unity and high morale.
So high was the morale that when, six days into the war, the USA heeded General Yahya’s call and ordered its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal, the populace was ready to take on even the mighty Americans. The nuclear-powered aircraft-carrier Enterprise moved out from the Gulf of Tonkin and led the Seventh Fleet through the Strait of Malacca. Its glorious mission: to frighten a cyclone-ravaged, war-torn province into submission. No one was greatly surprised by this, for mighty America always did like having military dictators for buddies. But as the Fleet drew closer, the names of Nixon and Kissinger became names to curse with, names which, if uttered, had to be followed by hawking and spitting. The illiterate could not read about the latest villainy but they learned to recognize the two villains’ pictures in the papers: the scowling one with rat’s eyes and the bespectacled one with the face of a constipated ox.
Old Bhimsen the office peon brought fresh news from the slums to Gustad and the others at the bank. He lived in a little kholi, in a jhopadpatti near Sion. During pauses between fetching tea or coffee, he told them how, in the slums, where children squatted over newsprint inside their shacks (because they were too young to go out alone and find a spot in an alley or a ditch), mothers took great delight in searching through discarded papers for the faces of the rat and the constipated ox to place under their babies’ behinds. The closer the Seventh Fleet came to the Bay of Bengal, the harder it was to find unadorned copies of the two pictures. Bhimsen decided to help his slum neighbours with their anti-imperialist toilet-training. He requested all bank employees to give him their daily newspapers whenever pictures of Nixon or Kissinger appeared. No one refused. They were happy to assist the war effort and keep morale high.
But it was not morale alone that dealt with the Seventh Fleet. Close on the heels of the US ships came an armada of Soviet cruisers and destroyers, sailing earnestly from the pages of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship. And true to the spirit of the treaty, there was no violence. Not even a harsh word. For the Soviets merely wanted to remind the Americans of the roles and identities which they had rehearsed for so long on all the important international stages: that Americans were a kind and friendly people, champions of justice and liberty, supporters of freedom struggles and democracies everywhere.
And the Soviet reminder worked. The Americans did not forget. There, in the Bay of Bengal, by the dawn’s early light, as the sun’s rays made the rippling blue sea to shimmer and the December sky to turn a perfect pink, they remembered every single one of their globally-famous, ever-sparkling virtues. With patriotic tears in their eyes, they put the dust-covers back on their mighty American guns and cannons.
When Gustad returned home through the darkened evening, he knew Cavasji’s blood-pressure was high again. Allopathic medicine was just not as efficacious as the subjo-on-a-string that Cavasji used to wear. He was leaning out to shake his fist against the black sky. Any more vehemence, feared Gustad, and the old man would topple over.
But Cavasji maintained his equilibrium. Only the light, a beacon of reproach, tumbled willingly from the open window into the compound, framing his disapproving silhouette. ‘I am warning You now only! If You let a bomb fall here, let one fall on Birlas and Mafatlals also! Bas! Too much injustice from You! Too much! If Khodadad Building suffers, then Tata Palace also! Otherwise, not one more stick of sandalwood for You, not one sliver!’