The boy’s lettering was elaborate. He was never content with a plain letter; he shadowed everything and sometimes it was hard to read what he had written. But he was keen and everybody liked him. Beharry, who was also working on the posters, said, ‘I wish sometimes that God did give me a son like this. Suruj, he all right, but Suruj, pundit, he ain’t have brains, man. He always in some Remove class. It does beat me. I is a intelligent man and Suruj Mooma ain’t a fool.’
Beharry’s praise spurred the boy on and he designed the most famous poster of the elections:
GANESH is
Able
Nice
Energetic
Sincere
HOLY
Against all this it was clear from the start that Indarsingh didn’t have a chance. But he fought gamely. He got the support of the Party for Progress and Unity, the PPU, an organization hastily slung together two months before the elections. The PPU’s aims, like its organization, were vague; and Indarsingh had to fend for himself. His speeches were long, carefully thought-out things — later published by the author in book form with the title Colonialism: Four Essays — about The Economics of Colonialism, Colonialism in Perspective, The Anatomy of Oppression, The Approach to Freedom. Indarsingh travelled about with his own blackboard and a box of coloured chalks, illustrating his arguments with diagrams. Children liked him. They surrounded him at the beginning and end of a meeting and begged for ‘a little tiny little piece of chalk you did thinking of throwing away’. The older people called him the ‘Walking Dictionary’.
Once or twice Indarsingh attempted an attack on Ganesh but he soon learned better. Ganesh never mentioned Indarsingh at all.
Leela liked Indarsingh less and less as polling day came nearer. ‘All this fancy talk in all this fancy accent he are giving the people here, it are beat me why they don’t fling something big at his head.’
‘It ain’t nice to talk so, Leela,’ Ganesh said. ‘He is a good boy. He fighting a clean clean election and it ain’t so clean in the rest of Trinidad, I can tell you.’
Leela turned to Beharry. ‘You bear what he are saying? It are just this sort of goodness and big mind that is dangerous in Trinidad. He ain’t have enough, it look like, from people like Narayan.’
Beharry said, ‘Well, it have a lot in what the pundit say. Indarsingh is a good boy, but he still a boy. He does talk too big. Mark you, that all right for we here. I could understand and Ganesh pundit could understand, but is different for the ordinary people.’
One night Ganesh came back late to Fuente Grove from a prayer-meeting at Bamboo Walk, a village at the boundary of his ward. Upstairs in the drawing-room Leela, Beharry, and the boy were, as usual, working on the posters. They were at the dining-table. But Ganesh saw somebody else kneeling next to the refrigerator, filling in the outlines of a GANESH IS A MAN OF GOOD AND GOD poster spread on the floor. He was a big fat man; but it wasn’t Swami.
‘Hello, sahib,’ the man said casually, and went on filling in the letters.
It was Ramlogan.
‘Hello, Ramlogan. It have a long time I ain’t see you.’
Ramlogan didn’t look up. ‘Busy, sahib. Very busy with the shop.’
Ganesh said, ‘Leela, I hope you have a lot of food for me tonight. Anything that leave over, I could eat all of it. I hungry like a horse. Eh, but Leela, you ain’t give your father anything?’
She moved with alacrity to the refrigerator.
Ramlogan kept on filling in letters.
‘What you think of it?’
‘Is very nice wordings, sahib.’ Still Ramlogan didn’t look up.
‘Leela think them up.’
‘She is like that, sahib.’
Leela handed round the Coca-Cola.
Ramlogan, who was resting forward on his hands, knelt upright and laughed. ‘It have years now I selling this Coca-Cola but you know, sahib, I never touch it before. Is so it does happen. You ever notice that carpenters always living in some sort of breakdown old shack?’
Leela said, ‘Man, your food waiting for you in the kitchen.’
Ganesh went through the drawing-room to the large room next to the back verandah.
Leela had tears in her eyes. ‘Man, is the second time in my life you make me feel proud of you.’ She leaned on him.
He didn’t push her away.
‘The first time was with the boy and the cloud. Now is with Pa.’
She wiped her eyes and seated Ganesh at the kitchen table.
In the week before polling day Ganesh decided to suspend mystic activity and hold a Bhagwat, a seven-day prayer-meeting.
He said, ‘Ever since I small I promising myself to hold my own Bhagwat, but I could never find the time.’
The boy said, ‘But now is the time to move around, pundit, talking to the people and them.’
‘I know,’ Ganesh said sadly. ‘But something telling me that if I don’t have a Bhagwat now, I would never have one again.’
Leela didn’t approve. ‘Is easy for you, just sitting down and reciting prayers and thing to the people. But they don’t come to Bhagwat just for prayers, I can tell you. They come for the free food.’
However, The Great Belcher and Suruj Mooma and Ramlogan rallied round and helped Leela with the great week-long task of cooking. The Bhagwat was held in the ground floor of the house; people were fed in the bamboo restaurant at the side; and there was a special kitchen at the back. Logs burned in huge holes in the ground and in great black iron pots over the holes simmered rice, dal, potatoes, pumpkins, spinach of many sorts, karhee, and many other Hindu vegetarian things. People came to the Bhagwat from many miles around and even Swami, who had organized so many Bhagwats, said, ‘Is the biggest and best thing I ever organize.’
Leela complained more than ever of being tired; The Great Belcher had unusual trouble with the wind; Suruj Mooma moaned all the time about her hands.
But Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Is like that with women and them, sahib. They complaining, but it have nothing they like better than a big fête like this. Was the same with Leela mother. Always going off to sing at somebody wedding, coming back hoarse hoarse next morning and complaining. But the next time a wedding come round and you turn to look for Leela mother — she ain’t there.’
As a supreme gesture Ganesh invited Indarsingh to the last night of the Bhagwat, on the eve of polling day.
Leela told Suruj Mooma and The Great Belcher, ‘Is just what I are expecting from that husband of mine. Sometimes these man and them does behave as if they lose their senses.’
Suruj Mooma stirred the cauldron of dal with a ladle a yard long. ‘Ah, my dear. But what we go do without them?’
Indarsingh came in an Oxford blazer and Swami, as organizer of the Bhagwat, introduced him to the audience. ‘I got to talk English to introduce this man to you, because I don’t think he could talk any Hindi. But I think all of all you go agree with me that he does talk English like a pukka Englishman. That is because he have a foreign education and he only just come back to try and help out the poor Trinidad people. Ladies and gentlemen — Mr Indarsingh, Bachelor of Arts of Oxford University, London, England.’
Indarsingh gave a little hop, fingered his tie, and, stupidly, talked about politics.