V. Naipaul: The Mystic Masseur

At last there was some applause.

‘All of you know that Ganesh write some major book about God and thing.’

The heckler took off his hat and waved it up and down. ‘Oh God!’ he screamed. ‘But it making stink!’

Ganesh could see his gums.

‘Brothers and sisters, I now ask the man of good and God to address a few words to you.’

And Ganesh missed his cue. Stupidly, completely missed his cue. He forgot that he was talking to a crowd of impatient strikers as a man of good and God. He talked instead as though they were the easy-going crowd in Woodford Square and he the fighting M.L.C. and nothing more.

‘My friends,’ he said (he had got that from Narayan), ‘my friends, I know about your great sufferings, but I have yet to give the matter further study, and until then I must ask you to be patient.’

He didn’t know that their leader had been telling them the same thing every day for nearly five weeks.

And his speech didn’t get better. He talked about the political situation in Trinidad, and the economic situation; about constitutions and tariffs; the fight against colonialism; and he described Socialinduism in detail.

Just when he was going to show how the strike could be the first step in establishing Socialinduism in Trinidad, the storm broke.

The heckler took off his hat and stamped it into the mud. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No! Noooh!’

Others took up the cry.

The leader waved his hands about for silence.

‘My friends, I —’

The heckler stamped on his hat again and shouted, ‘Noooooh!’

The leader stamped on the platform and turned to his committee. ‘Why the hell black people so ungrateful?’

The heckler left his hat alone for a while and ran to the platform and tried to seize the leader by the ankles. Failing, he shouted, ‘Nooooh!’ and ran back to stamp on his hat.

Ganesh tried again. ‘My friends, I have —’

‘Ganesh, how much bribe they bribe you? Noooh! Noooh!’

The leader said to his committee, ‘If I live for a million years I ain’t going to lift up my little finger to do a thing for black people again. Talk about ungrateful!’

The heckler was still stamping on his hat. ‘We don’t want to hear nothing! Nothing! Nooooh!’ He was so enraged he was in tears.

The crowd stepped nearer the platform.

The heckler turned to them. ‘What we want, man? We want talk?’

The whole crowd answered. ‘No! No! We want work! Work!’

The heckler was right below the platform.

The leader panicked and shouted, ‘Keep your dirty black hand off the white people box! Look, move away quick sharp now —’

‘My friends. I cannot —’

‘Keep your tail quiet, Ganesh!’

‘If you ain’t move away quick, I calling the police and them over there. Look, haul all your tail away, you hear.’

The heckler tore at his hair and beat his fists on his chest. ‘All you hearing that fat-arse man? You hearing what he want to do?’

And somebody shrieked, ‘Come, man, let we done with this damn nonsense.’

The crowd flowed thickly forward and surrounded the platform.

Ganesh escaped. The policemen took care of him. But the strike committee were badly beaten up. The leader in the brown suit and one member of the committee had to spend some weeks in hospital.

Later Ganesh learned the whole story. The leader had of course been bribed; and what he had started as a strike was nothing more than a lock-out during the slack season.

Ganesh called a Press conference at the end of the week. He said Providence had opened his eyes to the errors of his ways. He warned that the labour movement in Trinidad was dominated by communists and he had often unwittingly been made their tool. ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘I pledge my life to the fight against communism in Trinidad and the rest of the free world.’

He expanded his views in a last book, Out of the Red (Government Printer, Trinidad. Free on application). It was left to Indarsingh to note the ‘capitalist mentality inherent in the title’; and he wrote an article for a weekly paper blaming the violence at Lorimer’s Park on Ganesh, since he had cruelly raised the workers’ hopes without having anything to offer them.

Ganesh never walked out again. He went to cocktail parties at Government House and drank lemonade. He wore a dinner-jacket to official dinners.

In the Colonial Office report on Trinidad for 1949 Ganesh was described as an important political leader.

In 1950 he was sent by the British Government to Lake Success and his defence of British colonial rule is memorable. The Government of Trinidad, realizing that after that Ganesh stood little chance of being elected at the 1950 General Elections, nominated him to the Legislative Council and arranged for him to be a member of the Executive Council.

Indarsingh was elected in Ganesh’s old ward, on a platform of modified Socialinduism.

In 1953 Trinidad learned that Ganesh Ramsumair had been made an M.B.E.

IN THE SUMMER of 1954 I was at an English university, waiting for the results of an examination. One morning I got a letter from the Colonial Office. A party of Colonial Statesmen were in Britain for a conference, and would I be willing to entertain a statesman from my own territorry? It was the vacation and I had much time on my hands. I agreed. It was arranged that I should be host for a day to G. R. Muir, Esq., M.B.E.

The day of the visit came and I was at the railway station to meet the 12.57 from London. As the passengers got off I looked among them for someone with a nigrescent face. It was easy to spot him, impeccably dressed, coming out of a first-class carriage. I gave a shout of joy.

‘Pundit Ganesh!’ I cried, running towards him. ‘Pundit Ganesh Ramsumair!’

‘G. Ramsay Muir,’ he said coldly.