Mr and Mrs Jinnah Page 26

  It is easy to read between the lines and sense the depth of her wistfulness to be back again among her dear friends instead of this place she had to call home. ‘I have had such a ripping time with you all in Hyderabad,’ she writes in the same letter, ‘that I am quite spoilt for this fun-forsaken place.’ She tries to adopt a light-hearted tone which she gives up midway through her sentence: ‘It is impossible to offer you “formal thanks in formal words” (De Profundus!!!) when I think of the delightful unconventionalism of “The Golden Threshold” but you will understand how very much I appreciated everything when I tell you that it will remain among the happiest of my’ . . . ‘memories’, she was about to write but changed it to ‘recollections’.

  Even the memory of two old-worldly acquaintances of the family who paid her a customary courtesy gets a fond mention: ‘Haider was a perfect brick and old Ansari turned up at some station or another with a bottle of scent (which I have no doubt Papi would have loved) and gave it to me with all due ceremony.’

  To add to her sense of alienation at being back home, Fatima, whom she was beginning to dislike intensely, came to spend the day with them because it was Sunday and her appointed day to meet her brother. Unmindful of her manners, she began to tease her serious-minded sister-in-law, pretending to make a joke of it. As she recounted in her letter: ‘By the bye, I told Fatima that I went to Hyderabad to look up some eligible man for her and I showed her Taufik’s photo as being one of them.’ Oblivious to both Jinnah’s and Fatima’s reaction, she kept up her merciless ragging, taking pleasure in putting Fatima down as a confirmed old maid still unmarried at the advanced age of twenty-six. But something in Jinnah’s expression must have shamed her into stopping—those eyes, ‘twin lamps of truth’, as someone later called them—and she was still smarting the next day at the look she received from him. As she wrote: ‘She quite believed it at first, but J didn’t quite play up to his part and I observed fast a shadow of a doubt in those deep grave eyes of hers.’

  But while she was left with some uneasiness at this ‘joke’ of hers that had misfired, Ruttie was as yet unaware of the other subject on which they were soon going to disagree sharply, and that was her careless extravagance. She had done some shopping while in Hyderabad—casually ordering whatever caught her eye—bric-a-brac and wooden furniture and brass and clay palm-stands—in her effort to try and refurbish the rather dingy South Court into a house that was more to her taste. She had, of course, not yet told him how much she had spent—nor did she need to—but knowing what a stickler he was for accounts, and sensing how much her vague indifference to money must irritate him, and even anxious perhaps to regain his approval after seeing the recent condemnation in his eyes over the Fatima incident, she was suddenly interested in finding out from Padmaja how much money she might have actually spent while in Hyderabad. She got down to it with a would-be air of businesslike efficiency: ‘And now I am going to worry you—regarding my bills for which I have enclosed cheques. If the furniture man from Secunderabad has sent all the articles will you please forward this cheque in his name.’ But it was difficult for her to focus on settling the bills even as her mind ran to other things she still wanted to get from Hyderabad: ‘If you can manage to get hold of somebody who you think understands the type of work of the [clay] palm stand and urn at Mahomed Ali’s please show it to him and let me know.’ And then flitted back again to purchases that were about to arrive: ‘Burton hasn’t yet sent in his bill. I am writing to him directly and I really don’t think that there is a likelihood of his ignoring my instructions.’

  And having got the tiresome business of bills out of the way, she could get back to being herself, ending with a breezy: ‘Please give my love to your father and Baba [Padmaja’s brother, Jaisoorya],’ going on to add a personal message to one of Padmaja’s friends, a keen rider like herself: ‘and tell Naik that I have not forgotten the talk we had on our last ride’.

  But by her next letter, she is seething again. Written a fortnight later, on 25 February 1920, it begins cheerfully enough, recounting to Padmaja the contents of an amusing letter she had just received from one of her new acquaintances in Hyderabad, a young woman who presumably ran a small business in home-made cosmetics, and was seeking Ruttie’s sponsorship: ‘What do you think old Rehana has done? Written to me advising me not to use the lotions she sent me. And (at the same time) begging for my “patronage and photograph”. I personally think that her frankness deserves some return, don’t you? However I really don’t intend sending her my photograph. For heaven’s sake don’t tell Papi this, as she is sure to go and ask her [Rehana] all about it. I sat convulsed for quite half an hour after reading her letter, it was so funny. And the idea of her advising me not to use her lotions tickled my sense of humour.’

  But her simmering resentment against Jinnah had to be vented: ‘It is rather a shame about the horse,’ she wrote, referring to a horse she bought on impulse during her visit to Hyderabad which Jinnah vetoed on the ground that it had not been properly vetted. ‘I wish the owner had succeeded in his ruse of bribing the vets. At any rate I do hope J won’t be idiotically sensible about it. After all, I never had him vetted before I married him! But horses I suppose are far more valuable!’

  In her desire to be independent of Jinnah and his criticism, implicit or otherwise, of her spending decisions, she tried once again to get a grip over the accounts of her shopping spree in Hyderabad. But it was no use; she continued to be befuddled, with one of the cheques she issued being returned to her. ‘The cheque along with your letter arrived just as J and I were going out, so I am afraid I cannot enclose a fresh cheque in this. I shall however send it to you tomorrow.’ But on the morrow when she tried to clear her debts without Jinnah’s assistance, her pride coming in the way, she got mired in difficulties, her confusion increasing manifold because of the conversion she had to do from British Indian rupees to Hyderabadi rupees, or the ‘Moghlai’ currency, as she called it. ‘I owe the stand man 335/- in British money, that is equivalent to 245/- in Moghlai roughly. The brass fellow has to be paid 463/- British, or 485/- Moghlai—463/- + 235/- = 698/-. I am not a bit sure of all these mathematics so please correct it if there is a mistake. Of course I shall be owing you more, as I have asked for a professional packer and the deal cases etc. I shall send you the sum on hearing from you,’ she wrote in yet another letter, undated, to Padmaja.

  By the following week, the friction between them had come to a head, with Jinnah, who had thus far suffered in silence her penchant for thoughtless expenditure, no longer mincing his words about her extravagance. She was wounded, of course, but not so mortally that she could not give it back to him in her spirited fashion. The letter to Padmaja, written on 3 March 1920, begins on a note of attempted lightness too feeble to pass off as humour and was evidently to oblige Padmaja who specifically begged for an amusing letter from Ruttie to raise her flagging spirits. She picks on the subject of their mutual friend Kshama Row’s writing ambitions, an unfailing source of amusement apparently. ‘It is always rather fatal to ask for an amusing letter,’ Ruttie writes. ‘I am however going to rely on the green of my paper to dispel the clouds from your chaotic mind. Kshama hasn’t been particularly amusing of late. She tried very hard to pump me about you people in the interests of literature, specially about Dr Naidu, so I told her that among his more prominent characteristics is his passion for devouring little boys. I am afraid she did not believe me! Her object is to write a play centred round the lives of your father and mother—And as she doesn’t know the one and cannot understand the other, she looks to me for enlightenment. I have half a mind to tell her that . . . Dr Naidu writes the poems and in his magnificent generosity lets your mother take the credit. It might appeal to her sense of sacrifice!’

  ‘J for his part hasn’t been so alarming of late,’ Ruttie writes, referring to the incident with the dogs that had caused her such trauma. ‘Every now and again he seriously shakes his head at Loafer-ul-Mulk and calls him a treacher
ous animal.’ But her resentment against him now spills out despite herself: ‘In consequence of my extravagance—and here she interjects two words as an afterthought—‘I suppose’—‘he has been trying to convince me that he is not the calf that lays the golden eggs.’ While Jinnah uncharacteristically mixed up two metaphors to make his point—referring at the same time to the biblical sacrificial lamb and the Aesop’s fable of the goose that laid golden eggs, the barb was not lost on Ruttie, who was left smarting at his unfairness, considering that it was she and not Jinnah who had made the sacrificial offering of herself at the marital altar, having flung away her fabulous inheritance in order to marry him. But if she was silent about his unjust barb, she was in a mood to subvert him. ‘But alas!’ she writes in kindling defiance, ‘This is all futile!’ In the same spirit, refusing to feel compunction just because he expected it, she is delighted at more packages arriving at South Court: ‘The brass arrived last night. It was beautifully packed; whoever did it deserves to be congratulated!’

  But these were minor squabbles, insignificant compared to the other source of friction that was threatening to split them wide apart, and that was their differences over Fatima. Ruttie had never liked the older woman but she had been accommodating of her till now, not stopping Fatima from spending every Sunday with them, monopolizing the one day of leisure that Jinnah allowed himself in his busy week. But now that the gloves were off between her and him, she didn’t see why she had to put up in silence with this ‘deadly serious’ sister of his.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They had ample reason to hate each other. Ever since she left school nine years ago, Fatima had been encouraged by her entire family, including Jinnah, to groom herself into being her brother’s sole companion. And now, after having earned their esteem—not to speak of envy—by the close bond she managed to build with him, and after being accepted by everyone around her as the only woman in her beloved ‘Jin’s’ life, to be ejected so summarily from his home, asked to come and see him once a week like a poor relation—it was a state of affairs unlikely to endear her to the usurper of her brother’s heart. But Fatima was not the sort who would make a fuss openly in front of her brother—or anyone else, for that matter. Instead, she turned those weekly visits into a torture for herself and Jinnah, her grave, silent presence a constant reproach to him for his betrayal.

  It wasn’t easy for Ruttie either, to be stuck with her dour sister-in-law for the whole of Sunday. Nearly seven years older than her, Fatima had little charm or sympathy, nor was she by any means anxious to please despite her friendless state. She was never really ‘herself’, as Sarojini once put it, having ‘always been so repressed’. Had she been younger perhaps, and not so disapproving of Ruttie, she might have tried harder to get along with her. There was a time, even at twenty, when she had been eager to reach out and make friends, and Sarojini, ever generous and warm, especially with the young and lonely, had suggested to her thirteen-year-old daughter that she befriend the lonely Fatima. ‘I am asking Fatima Jinnah to write to you,’ Sarojini had written to Padmaja from London in 1914. ‘She is twenty but very fond of you from all I told her about you in Bombay and as she is constantly writing about you to me, she may as well write to you and I hope you will write to her nice letters.’ But that penfriendship, if it ever began, seems to have died a natural death, given the difference in their age and temperament.

  Ruttie, too, must have felt the difference, but she had put up with her sister-in-law as long as she believed that J was on her side and felt—like her—that Fatima’s presence was an intrusion and imposition on both of them. But lately, she had begun to doubt it—far from sharing her opinion of his sister, he regarded her with an affection that surpassed his love for any of his other four siblings, all of whom he kept at arm’s length, unwilling to share either his time or himself with any of them unless it was to give a handout now and then, when one of them was in obvious distress. And this too was done dispassionately, especially with his brother who was never allowed to drop in at the house, only visit him in his chamber. But with Fatima, it was entirely different and Ruttie was far too quick and perceptive not to see that, even though neither brother nor sister ever betrayed by sign or word the strong bond between them.

  They seemed strangely unlike any brother and sister she had ever known. She herself had been close to all her three brothers, especially Fali, closest to her in age and temperament. As the eldest and the only girl, she mothered them all. They, in turn, had adored her, looking up to her to lead them in their games and pranks which she did with boyish zest; but they also left her alone when she wanted to be by herself. As the only bookworm in the family, they knew and respected her tastes, even little Manik knowing at the age of eight or nine exactly which novel of Charlotte Bronte to get his sister for her twelfth birthday. There had certainly never been a dull moment when the four of them had been together, with laughter and jokes, and playing Three Musketeers or going riding together. Whereas these two, Jinnah and Fatima, barely exchanged a word with each other even though Fatima came religiously every Sunday, spending the whole day with her brother, who mostly ignored her, not even bothering to glance up from the book or newspaper he was reading. And while it was true that Fatima’s eyes often rested on her brother, either in reproach or devotion, she hardly ever spoke to him unless spoken to, just sitting there silently every single Sunday, with her book open in front of her in a way that filled Ruttie with extreme irritation.

  There seemed to be no resemblance between them, either in features or temperament, with Fatima’s thin lips pressed in perpetual disapproval and her deep-set eyes in such contrast to J’s chiselled charm and dry humour and his openness towards the young, unlike his sister’s severe disapproval of the young generation’s free and modern ways. What intrigued and fascinated Ruttie—apart from arousing her envy—was the silent connection between two such apparently dissimilar individuals. She could not resist trying to get a reaction out of Jinnah when Fatima was around; while he, in his stubborn way, refused to be provoked into shedding his wooden mask and revealing his true feelings.

  The first time Jinnah really upset her was the day she returned from her holiday in Hyderabad and when she thought she was just having some innocent fun at Fatima’s expense, pretending that she had gone to Hyderabad only to hunt for a suitable husband for Fatima. Jinnah simply refused to play along, making her feel like an outsider in her own home. Even worse than watching the silent solidarity between brother and sister, was to see the silent condemnation in his eyes and know in her heart that it was richly deserved. It was true that she had always loved playing pranks, especially when she was still living in Petit Hall, but her jokes had never been this malicious; this taunting of a confirmed spinster, even if it was a sister-in-law who was so provokingly judgemental.

  But the next time there was friction between her and Fatima, she didn’t think she deserved to have Jinnah punish her with his cold look. It upset her that J did not support her even though Fatima was talking down to her. At the best of times, Ruttie found Fatima irritatingly self-righteous and solemn; but on a day when she was already jarred by Jinnah’s unfair accusations of spending too much money, she could not suffer her sanctimonious sister-in-law in silence. As she wrote to Padmaja in her letter on 3 March 1920: ‘Fatima’s deadly reason quite upset the last Sunday. She was reading the Quran, so I told her that it was “meant to be talked about and not to be read”. So in all seriousness she asked me “how one could talk about a book one hadn’t read”.’ Jinnah’s unspoken solidarity with his sister in this instance must have made Ruttie feel suddenly that he too was a stranger that she hardly knew, and she felt an alien in her own home.

  She was pushing his buttons as well without knowing it. For all his outward appearance of being a born and bred Englishman, somewhere inside him was the Mohammed Ali raised to put family duty and honour above all else. Even as a young student in England, while at a safe enough distance from home to start shedding his o
ld baggage, his father could recall Jinnah back to who he was with a mere few words. ‘Do not bring shame on the family name,’ Jinnah Senior wrote to his son when Jinnah joined a drama company in London and wrote to his father afterwards outlining his plans for a stage career. But his father’s words were enough to make Jinnah quit the stage and return home to take up his duties as the head of the house. Although Jinnah was only twenty-one then and had yet to establish himself, his father had already begun to lean heavily on him, expecting him to handle all his tangled business and personal affairs.

  Chief among these problems was to arrange suitable marriages for the two elder daughters. This was by no means easy. Rahmat, the sister who was born two years after Jinnah, was already nineteen. At that age most girls in their community were already mothers of several children. But Jinnah’s father, broken by his wife’s untimely death and his bankruptcy, had left her marriage hanging until Jinnah got back and took care of it. Against all odds, even though he was just twenty-one himself and without a job or connections, Jinnah did manage to settle her marriage soon after he returned from London with a well-to-do businessman from Calcutta.