Mr and Mrs Jinnah Page 22

  And then he walked out of the House in disgust, returning home to Bombay. But unlike Ruttie, he had plenty to occupy him even without his legislative work. There was his legal work and planning how to take the issue of the Rowlatt Act to the people. And the prospect, now that the War was finally over, that the British government would soon introduce the reforms it had been promising and he would once more take his place in the government, this time as the pre-eminent Indian leader. There was much he had to do before that in order to bolster his position.

  But she, meanwhile, spent the months she was alone in Bombay fighting off her feelings of being closed in by the baby that was growing in her. She hid away her dismay, especially on the rare weekends when Jinnah was home, wanting to protect him from hurt. And her pride would not allow her to admit her feelings to anyone else, not even Sarojini.

  Ruttie had barely seen Sarojini since her marriage, having met her only once in August the previous year when they both chanced to be in Bombay at the same time. Although Sarojini was by now a permanent resident at the Taj Mahal hotel, having taken a suite on monthly rent, she had hardly spent any time in it during the past year owing to her political tours. Her career as a political leader was beginning to take off, especially with the demand for oratorical skills calling her to unexpected corners of the country, leaving her with no time for either family or friends. In the past few months while Ruttie tagged along with Jinnah wherever his work took him, Sarojini had been touring the country far and wide, giving orations in places as far removed from each other as Benares and Coimbatore, or Madras and the Frontier Province. But finally, on 13 February 1919, their paths did cross again. It was Sarojini’s fortieth birthday and by a happy chance, she happened to be in Bombay for a couple of days. Ruttie arrived at Sarojini’s suite in the Taj, determined to see her after so long a gap. She carried a birthday gift—‘an exquisite [sari] border embroidered in opal colourings’. Sarojini was ecstatic—among the passions she shared with Ruttie were poetry and clothes. The afternoon passed in making delightful plans for going shopping for the right sari to match such an unusual border. It would have to be, the two decided, ‘a blue and silver sari which will look like a sunlit sea edged with sea-weed and anemones’, as Sarojini later rhapsodized in a letter to her daughter. The two parted in the best of moods, with Sarojini noticing nothing amiss. Nor did she seem to notice that Ruttie was pregnant. At least, she made no reference to it in the letter she wrote home that night. In fact, all she considered worth mentioning about her visit was the enchanting vision Ruttie presented ‘in floating raiment, all blue and gold and orange’.

  They met again two weeks later when Sarojini was next in Bombay. Ruttie dropped in at Sarojini’s Taj suite for a casual lunch ‘in a wonderful old embroidered Chinese sari and scarcely any blouse’, as Sarojini took care to describe in her daily letter home. After lunch—fresh oysters, a treat that could only be had in the Taj or in grand households like Petit Hall—Ruttie lingered on. She stayed till almost seven in the evening, when she had to go in the car to pick up Jinnah who was on a short trip back home.

  To Sarojini’s increasing, but concealed, irritation, this became the pattern each time she visited Bombay. Ruttie would turn up at her hotel room around midday, always exquisitely dressed but apparently with nowhere else to go and with nothing else to do. She stayed the whole day in Sarojini’s suite regardless of whether Sarojini had work or other visitors to talk to or simply wished to be alone, and would leave in the evening—if Jinnah happened to be in Bombay—to pick him up from his chambers. If Sarojini noticed that something was troubling Ruttie, she was far too tactful to pry. Outwardly, Ruttie appeared the same as ever, gay and stylish and full of fun. It was difficult for even someone as perceptive as Sarojini to imagine that a young woman of Ruttie’s beauty and fashion could be grappling with feelings of acute loneliness. But here she was, walking in uninvited into Sarojini’s suite every morning as soon as she had risen from bed and bathed, as if it was the most normal thing for a newly married woman to want to spend the entire day holed up inside a hotel room with an older woman instead of spending time in her own home or seeking the company of friends her own age. For the most part, Sarojini was all tact and affection with her uninvited guest, but she did complain now and then in her letters home of how Ruttie was monopolizing her, allowing her to do no work. But she was far too generous a host to be discourteous to Ruttie and order her off. Instead, she cheerfully ordered food for her from the restaurant downstairs, watching with maternal indulgence as Ruttie voraciously ate whatever the Taj kitchen provided. Sarojini herself held no high opinion of the Taj cuisine, considering it bland and tasteless compared to the rich, spicy Deccani fare she was used to. But Ruttie never seemed to tire of it, even playfully fighting with other guests in Sarojini’s rooms for the last biscuit on the plate. Her old playfulness and the impish sense of fun were still intact, and how was Sarojini to guess that it only surfaced when Ruttie was in her hotel room, and that she dreaded the hour when it was time to leave and head back to her desolate home in South Court.

  Cut off as she now was from her family, she yearned to be absorbed into Sarojini’s family instead, embracing as her own not only Sarojini’s four children but also Sarojini’s various siblings, taking a lively interest in their doings. Discovering, for example, that one of Sarojini’s colourful brothers, Harindranath Chattopadhya, had just written a book, Fears of Youth, she immediately demanded a signed copy for herself. But it was impossible really to ever find Sarojini by herself even in her hotel suite. A continuous stream of visitors poured into her room almost all day. The visitors, ranging from fashionable royalty to politicians and casual acquaintances, called either on work or for a chat, and invariably were all asked to stay for lunch or tea, depending on the hour. These impromptu parties in her suite were enlivening, with gossip and food adding to there charm. ‘I had a funny little teaparty in my room yesterday,’ Sarojini reported to her younger daughter, Leilamani, on 28 February, ‘with Ruttie looking like a French Marquese in fancy dress arraigned in a wonderful, hand-painted crepe of mauve with scarlet lanterns and geishas and butterflies spiralling out in drunken delight’. Sarojini’s other guests were equally fashionable, one of them being the socialite Leela Mukerji about whom she added with her characteristic bite: ‘looking more fulsome than ever swathed in a yellow gauze spilled and sprawled with some cubic designs—bare feet tucked into gold slippers, a somewhat enamelled loveliness of face with a beauty spot (which by the way Liakat Ali—for a male—wondered how Mrs Mukerji’s moles changed their places so often).’

  These encounters with Bombay’s society women were not always friendly, with some of them tempted to take sly digs at Ruttie in the safe environs of Sarojini’s suite. But she did not take it lying down, fighting back as spiritedly as Jinnah was doing both inside and outside the legislative council. In one instance, as Sarojini remarked in the same letter to Leilamani, ‘there was the mad Mehta with lantern face and bold eyes making malicious epigrams at them [Ruttie and Leela] both, which Leela couldn’t follow but which Ruttie took up and answered with equally quick and clever malice’.

  March was no different from February, although Jinnah was now back from Delhi for good, having walked out of the legislature. Ruttie’s visits to Sarojini’s suite were just as frequent and for as long. ‘The day has been full of people more than things,’ the exasperated poetess wrote home to say on 20 March, ‘especially of Ruttie who turned up in an embroidered net sari and some new photographs of herself.’ On other occasions, the two went shopping together. It was Ruttie who took Sarojini shopping to help her choose a wedding present for her friend Nellie Sengupta. They returned well satisfied with her purchase: ‘a gold tissue sari and choli piece’.

  Ruttie’s eagerness to be part of Sarojini’s family expressed itself in another way. She brought some fresh photographs of herself to be admired by Sarojini. She who had once been so impatient with her mother for wanting her to take fresh pictures of he
rself was now voluntarily putting herself to the trouble of going to a studio and getting her portrait done by a professional, even if it meant standing or sitting still for hours while the cameraman fiddled with his unwieldy equipment. She even volunteered to send a copy of it unasked to Leilamani. ‘Ruttie is sending you a new portrait of herself,’ Sarojini wrote to her younger daughter, adding, ‘and I believe something for your birthday. I have suggested a box of watercolour paints. Or is there anything else you would like better?’

  It is possible that the portrait was meant to be a gift for Jinnah on their wedding anniversary, which was the day before Leilamani’s birthday. But clearly his lack of appreciation left her yearning for something more. The anniversary itself, their first, went almost as unmarked as her birthday. That week, the Jinnahs were in Hyderabad. He had to appear in a murder case for a client, and Ruttie, eager to meet her friend Padmaja, leapt at the chance to go with him. But the visit had to be aborted hastily because a public speech that Jinnah had earlier delivered in Hyderabad raised the ire of the Nizam’s government and a ban order was slapped against his re-entry. The confrontation that followed between Jinnah and the Nizam’s government wiped out any intention he may have had to hold a special celebration for their anniversary. But then, Ruttie was getting used to forgoing personal celebrations for political reasons.

  It had been two months since Jinnah returned from Delhi, but Ruttie saw as little of him as before. Jinnah rose earlier than her and would have already breakfasted and left for the courts before Ruttie was up. In the evenings, after she picked him up from his chambers, they had a drink together and dinner, but after that he preferred solitude, retreating into his library supposedly to work on his legal briefs. For the first few weeks after he returned from Delhi, he was absorbed in his own dilemma. Should he resign from the legislature now that the government had passed the Rowlatt legislation ignoring the pleas and protests of members like him? He felt humiliated by the government’s attitude, but there was also the fear that it might be the end of the road as far as his political career was concerned. To take the issue of the Rowlatt Act to the people as Gandhi was already doing involved a twofold loss that was hard to contemplate: it meant giving up his own faith in bringing freedom to India through constitutional methods; and worse, it meant giving up his hard-earned position as the undisputed future leader of India, and fall in line behind Gandhi, whom he neither respected nor trusted.

  But in the end, reason won over his feelings, and on 28 March, he sent in his resignation to the viceroy, joining in the popular anti-Rowlatt agitation led by Gandhi.

  However, having once decided to follow Gandhi, he was no passive supporter. He plunged into the popular movement with his usual zeal and focus. And in less than two weeks after his resignation from the House, it was Jinnah whom the government feared, considering him a far more dangerous power centre than Gandhi. Unlike Gandhi, who sent out mixed signals about his approach to the British government, even volunteering to recruit Indian soldiers for the War effort without placing any conditions, Jinnah took on the British frontally. As a result, Bombay’s new governor, Sir George Lloyd, took an even more intense dislike to Jinnah than his predecessor, Lord Willingdon, had. In a letter to the secretary of state, Montagu, in London, he described Jinnah as ‘one of the worse characters, attractive to meet, fair of speech but absolutely dishonest in every way’. And as Jinnah relentlessly built up the anti-Rowlatt campaign, the government was alarmed enough to consider deporting both him and Gandhi to Burma. It was only when Gandhi suddenly stopped the campaign midway that the deportation plan was dropped.

  By April, Bombay wore a dismal, abandoned look. The hot season had set in and everyone on Malabar Hill had already deserted the metropolis for cooler climes. Ruttie’s parents, along with her three brothers, had left for Matheran, the hill station where they owned their own mansion. Her friend Kshama had departed with husband and child to Mahabaleshwar. There seemed nobody of any consequence left in the city except for her and Jinnah. The only friend who was still around in Bombay was Sarojini. She was waiting for a passage to England which proved more elusive than before the War had ended. She needed to go to England to consult specialists for her heart, but with so many soldiers and officials returning home after the War, it was impossible to secure a berth on a ship, even for someone with her connections.

  And because Sarojini was stuck in Bombay, her daughter Padmaja made a brief visit. It was a rare treat for Sarojini, who was ill and sorely missing her home. In honour of the visit from her favourite child, who, as her father’s housekeeper, rarely got a chance to leave Hyderabad, Sarojini cancelled all but her most urgent political engagements. But her plans for spending time alone with her daughter were sabotaged by Ruttie, who was determined not to be away from her friend even for a moment. If she could not persuade her friend to spend time with her in the Jinnahs’ home, at least nothing could dislodge her from Sarojini’s suite.

  But Padmaja’s visit did not last long. Within four days of her arrival, her father was urging her to return home. The hours once again seemed to drag interminably, with nothing to look forward to except the arrival of a baby she did not want. And when something did happen, it was worse. A week after Padmaja’s visit, Benjamin Horniman, the editor of the Bombay Chronicle and Jinnah’s oldest friend and devoted follower, was picked up by the police and bundled into a ship bound for London. The unsuspecting Horniman was picked up in the middle of the night from a military hospital where he had been admitted for a routine treatment, brought to the docks and put into a steamship that was setting out at once for England without stopping anywhere on the way. His deportation, on the hastily cooked up charge of publishing a false report that British troops were using soft-nosed bullets to disperse crowds, caught his friends, especially Jinnah, unawares. But in retrospect, this was hardly surprising. As the editor of the Bombay Chronicle, Horniman had earned the government’s ire by playing a leading role in exposing the establishment’s high-handedness, especially after the Jallianwala Bagh firing and the subsequent martial law imposed in the Punjab.

  Jinnah’s friendship with Horniman dated back to his student days in London where they had both worked briefly at a theatrical company. While the two were very unlike each other—Horniman a bachelor several years older than Jinnah, of a sentimental and ‘deeply unmethodical’ nature, according to Sarojini, in contrast to Jinnah’s unemotional and over-methodical persona—they were genuinely attached to each other. In fact, Horniman’s interest in working in India appears to have begun with his friendship with Jinnah whom he followed to India, at first taking up a job in Calcutta as the editor of the Statesman before Jinnah provided him a chance to work in Bombay as the editor of the newly launched national paper started by his other good friend and patron, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. The three men, all bachelors then, grew so close to each other that they spent all their leisure hours together, including holidays at Sir Pherozeshah’s monsoon retreat in Poona. The friendship between Jinnah and Horniman survived even after Sir Pherozeshah’s death and, in fact, led to Jinnah being appointed as chairman of the Bombay Chronicle’s board of directors. In 1915, following a heated argument with the newspaper’s board of directors, Horniman had walked out of the newspaper, taking his whole editorial team with him. His popularity was such that the board was forced to submit its resignation and a new board of directors was elected by the shareholders, with Jinnah as the chairman, whose first action was to reinstate Horniman and his team in their old jobs. After that there was no power that seemed capable of undermining their combined influence over the Bombay Presidency and beyond. While Jinnah took the lead on the political front, Horniman provided able support through the columns of his newspaper.

  Horniman’s deportation dealt a severe blow to Jinnah. The new Bombay governor, Sir George Lloyd, had engineered the deportation supposedly to calm the unrest in Bombay, but his real target was Jinnah. Like his predecessor, Lloyd was convinced that Jinnah was the government’s most d
angerous enemy and that his political influence had to be undermined at any cost. But instead of taking him head on, Lloyd decided to order a closure of the Bombay Chronicle on a fabricated charge. By closing down the paper which he felt had become a virtual mouthpiece for Jinnah’s views and political campaigns, the governor hoped to send his greatest enemy into political oblivion forever.

  Of course, Jinnah fought back. But the new governor proved more adept than his predecessor in tiring Jinnah out. His strategy was to sidestep Jinnah, avoiding a direct confrontation with the ace lawyer who had in his time taken all his battles to the courtroom and won them. The government tied him up in bureaucratic knots, denying him direct access to the governor to plead his case and refusing to spell out its terms and conditions for lifting the ban. Horniman had already set sail for England, so there was little Jinnah could do to help his friend until he reached England. But he threw himself into the struggle to get the ban lifted on his newspaper. He began by negotiating with the government, asking for an appointment with the governor in order to present his case. But the governor refused to meet him, referring him instead to the secretary of the judicial department. For the next few weeks, Jinnah bombarded the secretary with letters that became increasingly desperate as the government refused to respond to his queries or explanations. It took him over a month of daily correspondence for the government to finally relent and allow the newspaper to resume publication. But there were stiff conditions imposed, including a pre-censorship order on its editorial content. The shadow-boxing with the government consumed Jinnah to the exclusion of everything else. He became even more disassociated than before from his home front.