Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

The day before Robi was to leave for Darjeeling, we spent a long sleepy day in their house, lolling about in her room, looking for cool spots on the floor, reading and quarrelling. When the afternoon had dragged itself out and the sun had set, Ila threw open the shutters. The sight of the cars inching along the road below seemed to act on her like a tonic.

Come on, she said, tugging at my hand; let’s go out somewhere. We can’t lie about all day like this. Besides, Robi’s leaving tomorrow. I think we should give him a party.

Robi stirred torpidly on the floor and dropped the book he had been reading. A party, he said. In this heat?

Yes, said Ila. Let’s go somewhere and have fun.

Robi and I exchanged a long, doubtful look.

I haven’t got enough money, I said.

I’ve got money, she laughed. I’ll give you a treat.

But where can we go? said Robi.

I’ll tell you what, said Ila; let’s go to the Grand Hotel. I’ve heard they have a nightclub there.

What are we going to do in a nightclub? said Robi.

We can drink a few beers, said Ila. And watch the cabaret — that kind of thing.

Drink! cried Robi. In a place like that?

What’s the matter? she said sharply. You do drink don’t you? What about that story you were telling me about the send-off you got from your pals in college? You are a little hypocrite.

Judgements of that kind came very easily to Ila, because to her morality could only be an absolute. She could understand and admire someone who never ate meat on principle, but a person who was a vegetarian only at home was, to her, the worst kind of hypocrite. She knew that Robi was quite happy to risk expulsion occasionally by smuggling bottles of rum into his room and drinking the night away with his friends, and because she could not see that he would do those things in college precisely because there was a certain innocence about those exploits in those circumstances, the kind of monasticism that honours the rules of the order in their breach, she could not understand why Robi would feel himself defiled, drinking in a nightclub, surrounded by paunchy men with dark-pouched eyes. She could not understand the real nature of his prudishness because context had no place in her judgements.

It’s just petit-bourgeois nastiness, Ila had said to me once about Robi. It’s a mystery to me how he’s become such a legend in your college: I thought students were meant to be defiant of narrow-mindedness. But undergraduates respect muscles, I suppose, and he’s got plenty of those.

I had been puzzled too when I first discovered how much deference Robi commanded in college. It was hard to understand, for he did not excel particularly in any of the spheres which were held to confer distinction in that milieu: he was not unusually good at sports, just about good enough to keep a place in the college cricket eleven; he was good at his studies but not brilliant; he was not clever, not well dressed, not talented, nor in any way unlike a dozen others in our college, and yet, without asking for it, barely seeming to notice, he commanded a respect immeasurably greater than the best sportsmen and the most brilliant students.

It took me time to see that this respect was really a tribute to the superhuman simplicity of his view of the world: to the fact that he had no hesitation in making judgements — because there were whole domains of conduct within which he would not admit the possibility of argument — and no fear of defending them, because of his abundant physical courage. Once, for example, there was a great uproar in our college because a student had been expelled for some minor misdemeanour — for asking a girl up to his room for a cup of tea or some such thing. The students’ union was unanimous in calling for a strike. But Robi, alone in the whole college, refused to go along with everyone else: he didn’t argue or make speeches, he merely refused to attend the union meetings. And when some of the union’s leaders threatened to give him a beating, they found to their surprise that he was relieved at the prospect of settling the issue by a straightforward physical contest. Such was his standing in the college that eventually the leaders gave in and the strike was called off.

Later, I asked him: Why wouldn’t you join the strike? Tell me, just as a matter of interest.

He wouldn’t answer, so I asked him again, and then reluctantly he said: Because a rule’s a rule; if you break one you have to be willing to pay the price.

But is it a good rule? I asked. He only smiled, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get him to answer my question.

I understood then that he could not answer: that his authority grew out of that subterranean realm of judgement which we call morality, the condition of whose success is that its rulings be always shrouded from argument. I understood why his opinions always prevailed against his peers’: because while they had to find their way through a fog of ordinary confusions, in every difficult situation Robi had an intuition which led him directly to what he knew he ought to do, even if he did not know why. And they followed him since he, uniquely, was willing to defend those inconvenient, often ridiculous, scruples which they could only too easily be persuaded to forget. That was why they, and I, both admired him and feared him, and that was why his courage, even when it manifested itself physically, was moral in the purest sense.

Come on, enjoy yourself for once, said Ila. You’ll be going away soon anyway, so you can forget all about it afterwards.

But why do you want to go to the Grand Hotel? said Robi.

Because it’s the poshest place in the city, of course, said Ila, tipping her head back. Isn’t that the best possible reason?

I don’t want to go to a place like that, Robi said.

But once Ila had made up her mind she had to have her way. She bent down in front of him and touched her forehead to his feet.

Please, Robi-kaku, she said. Please, just this once. If you don’t like it, we’ll leave. I promise.

So we went: Ila resplendent in a silk blouse and a skirt, Robi and I grimly insistent on not changing out of our usual student uniform of kurta and crumpled trousers.

When we reached the entrance of the Grand Hotel and saw the beturbaned doorman’s dead-fish eyes flicking disdainfully over us, both Robi and I would have kept on walking, all the way down Chowringhee. But Ila was right behind us, and with a rustle of silk she shepherded us through the corridor, into a chandeliered hall. She led us to the reception counter and in the plummiest of her English accents she asked them to show us the way to the nightclub. Suitably awed, they sent a liveried attendant to show us the way. He led us down another corridor to a large, ornate door. He pushed the door open, pocketed Ila’s tip, and stood aside, bowing.

We heard the hum of an electric guitar echoing out of the darkness, somewhere inside the cavernous room.

I’m not going in there, said Robi. He pulled his hand out of Ila’s; he was sweating.

Oh come on, Ila said in exasperation. Come on, Uncle Robi. You’ve made your point: we’re willing to accept that you’re just a poor peasant horrified by the badness of the big city. So now you may as well relax and enjoy yourself.

She took his hand again and he let himself be led in.

It was so dark inside that the waiter had to lead us through the clusters of empty tables with an electric torch. I felt the touch of something moist and strangely furry on my face. Instinctively, my arm rose to fight it off. I felt it again, on my forearm, and jumped backwards, knocking over a chair.

What are those things? I cried, my skin tingling. Something touched me.

It’s only the decorations, sir, said the waiter. He brought us to a halt at an empty table and pulled back a chair for Ila. We sat down, and when our eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, we saw that every available space was covered with nodding palm fronds. There were catamarans painted on the walls and clusters of coconuts were dangling from the roof. Ila pointed at the band, on a platform beside the dance floor; it consisted of four men in dark suits, bow ties and straw hats.