Indarsingh lost his deposit and had a big argument with the secretary of the PPU who had also lost his. Indarsingh said that the PPU had promised to compensate members who lost their deposits. He found he was talking to nobody; for after the election results the Party for Progress and Unity just disappeared.
It was Beharry’s idea that the people of Fuente Grove should refer to Ganesh as the Hon’ble Ganesh Ramsumair, M.L.C.
‘Who you want?’ he asked visitors. ‘The Onble Ganesh Ramsumair, Member of the Legislative Council?’
Here it might be well to pause awhile and consider the circumstances of Ganesh’s rise, from teacher to masseur, from masseur to mystic, from mystic to M.L.C. In his autobiography, The Years of Guilt, which he began writing at this time, Ganesh attributes his success (he asks to be pardoned for using the word) to God. The autobiography shows that he believed strongly in predestination; and the circumstances which conspired to elevate him seem indeed to be providential. If he had been born ten years earlier it is unlikely, if you take into account the Trinidad Indian’s attitude to education at that time, that his father would have sent him to the Queen’s Royal College. He might have become a pundit, and a mediocre pundit. If he had been born ten years later his father would have sent him to America or Canada or England to get a profession — the Indian attitude to education had changed so completely — and Ganesh might have become an unsuccessful lawyer or a dangerous doctor. If, when the Americans descended on Trinidad in 1941, Ganesh had taken Leela’s advice and got a job with the Americans or become a taxi-driver, like so many masseurs, the mystic path would have been closed to him for ever and he would have been ruined. Today these masseurs, despite their glorious American interlude, are finding it hard to make a living. Nobody wants the quack dentist or the unqualified masseur in Trinidad now; and Ganesh’s former colleagues of the world of massage have had to keep on driving taxis, but at three cents a mile now, so great is the competition.
‘It is clear,’ Ganesh wrote, ‘that my Maker meant me to be a mystic.’
He was served even by his enemies. Without Narayan’s attacks Ganesh would never have taken up politics and he might have remained a mystic. With unfortunate results. Ganesh found himself a mystic when Trinidad was crying out for one. That time is now past. But some people haven’t realized it and today in odd corners of Trinidad there is still a backwash of penurious mystics. Providence indeed seemed to have guided Ganesh. Just as it told him when to take up mysticism, so it told him when to give it up.
His first experience as an M.L.C. was a mortifying one. The members of the new Legislative Council and their wives were invited to dinner at Government House and although a newly-founded scurrilous weekly saw the invitation as an imperialist trick all the members turned up. But not all the wives.
Leela was shy but she made out that she couldn’t bear the thought of eating off other people’s plates. ‘It are like going to a restaurant. You don’t know what the food are and you don’t know who cook it.’
Ganesh was secretly relieved. ‘I have to go. But none of this nonsense about knife and fork for me, you hear. Going to eat with my fingers, as always, and I don’t care what the Governor or anybody else say.’
But the morning before the dinner he consulted Swami.
‘The first idea to knock out of your head, sahib, is that you going to like what you eat. This eating with a knife and fork and spoon is like a drill, man.’ And he outlined the technique.
Ganesh said, ‘Nah, nah. Fish knife, soup spoon, fruit spoon, tea spoon — who sit down and make up all that?’
Swami laughed. ‘Do what I use to do, sahib. Just watch everybody else. And eat a lot of good rice and dal before you go.’
The dinner was a treat for the photographers. Ganesh came in dhoti and koortah and turban; the member for one of the Port of Spain wards wore a khaki suit and a sun helmet; a third came in jodhpurs; a fourth, adhering for the moment to his pre-election principles, came in short trousers and an open shirt; the blackest M.L.C. wore a three-piece blue suit, yellow woollen gloves, and a monocle. Everybody else, among the men, looked like penguins, sometimes even down to the black faces.
An elderly Christian Indian member didn’t bring a wife because he said he never had one; instead he brought along a daughter, a bright little thing of about four.
The Governor’s lady moved with assurance and determination among the members and their wives. The more disconcerting the man or woman, the more she was interested, the more she was charming.
‘Why, Mrs Primrose,’ she said brightly to the wife of the blackest M.L.C. ‘You look so different today.’
Mrs Primrose, all of her squeezed into floriferous print frock, adjusted her hat with the floral design. ‘Ah, ma’am. It ain’t the same me. The other one, the one you did see at the Mothers’ Union in Granadina, she at home. Making baby.’
Sherry, opportunely, passed.
Mrs Primrose gave a little giggle and asked the waiter, ‘Is a strong drink?’
The waiter nodded and looked down his nose.
‘Well, thanks. But I doesn’t uses it.’
‘Something else, perhaps?’ the Governor’s lady urged.
‘A little coffee tea, if you has it.’
‘Coffee. I am afraid coffee wouldn’t be ready for some time yet.’
‘Well, thanks. I doesn’t really want it. I was only being social.’ Mrs Primrose giggled again.
Presently they sat down to dinner. The Governor’s lady sat on the left of Mr Primrose. Ganesh found himself between the man in jodhpurs and the Christian Indian and his daughter; and he saw with alarm that the people from whom he had hoped to learn the eating drill were too far away.
The members looked at the waiters who looked away quickly. Then the members looked at each other.
The man in jodhpurs muttered, ‘Is why black people can’t get on. You see how these waiters behaving? And they black like hell too, you know.’
Nobody took up the remark.
Soup came.
‘Meat?’ Ganesh asked.
The waiter nodded.
‘Take it away,’ Ganesh said with quick disgust.
The man in jodhpurs said, ‘You was wrong there. You shoulda toy with the soup.’
‘Toy with it?’
‘Is what the book say.’
No one near Ganesh seemed willing to taste the soup.
The man in jodhpurs looked about him. ‘Is a nice room here.’
‘Nice pictures,’ said the man with the open shirt who sat opposite.
The man in jodhpurs sighed wearily. ‘Is a funny thing, but I ain’t so hungry today.’
‘Is the heat,’ the man with the open shirt said.
The Christian Indian placed his daughter on his left knee, and, ignoring the others, dipped a spoon in his soup. He tested it with his tongue for warmth and said, ‘Aah.’ The girl opened her mouth to receive the soup. ‘One for you,’ the Christian said. He took a spoonful himself. ‘And one for me.’
The other members saw. They became reckless and ate.
Unoriginal disaster befell Mr Primrose. His monocle fell into his soup.
The Governor’s lady quickly looked away.
But Mr Primrose drew her attention to the monocle. ‘Eh, eh,’ he chuckled, ‘but see how it fall down!’
The M.L.C.s looked on with sympathy.
Mr Primrose turned on them. ‘What all you staring at? All you ain’t see nigger before?’
The man in jodhpurs whispered to Ganesh, ‘But we wasn’t saying anything.’
‘Eh!’ Mr Primrose snapped. ‘Black people don’t wear monocle?’
He fished out the monocle, wiped it, and put it in his coat pocket.
The man with the open shirt tried to change the subject. ‘I wonder how much car expenses they go pay we for coming here. I ain’t ask to dine with the Governor, you know.’ He jerked his head in the Governor’s direction and quickly jerked it back.