Mr and Mrs Jinnah Read online

  ‘Was it the first time you put on a sari?’ Ruttie asks, referring to a fete that Padmaja had attended in her school wearing a sari. It’s been over a year or more since Ruttie herself must have graduated from schoolgirl frocks to saris, a rite of passage into adulthood that all girls looked forward to, and by now, she is wearing her sari with a style and sophistication that other young women envied and wanted to copy. But in her eagerness to establish a bond with her new friend, Ruttie says in her letter that she too was at first as awkward and uncomfortable wearing it: ‘I am quite accustomed to it [sari] now, but I remember the first few days I felt like a jackdaw in borrowed plumes, as I thought it a dignity I had not quite matured for.’

  ‘Do excuse my laziness and please don’t think me very rude because I did not reply to your epistle before,’ she further writes. ‘I know that I could and should have, but, oh dear, I am such an awful slacker. You will not take your revenge on me by making me wait too long for your letter? As I expect one.’ And then, unable to resist a pun that strikes her, she ends: ‘Revenge is Sweet, I know, but sweet things make one bilious. I have had that—“sweet things make you bilious”—so much dinned into me, but this is the first time I make any use of it.’ But the pun apart, Ruttie’s remark points to a physical ailment that persisted throughout her life, and that was her tendency to biliousness, which she seems to have inherited from her father. Sir Dinshaw suffered quite frequently from gastric attacks brought on, no doubt, by his overindulgence at the table. But in Ruttie’s case, her ‘biliousness’ was not just from her weakness for sweets that her mother or governess or both were trying to curb, or the spicy food she loved, but also because of her tendency to worry too much. Except her English governess, Irene, few people understood what a worry rat Ruttie actually was behind her persona ‘so lively and full of jokes and wit and high spirits’, as an old Parsi acquaintance once put it. Irene alone of all those who thought they knew Ruttie recognized her charge’s hidden temperament and was forever advising her not to worry too much and let things go.

  Of course, at this point of time with Padmaja, Ruttie is still a stranger, but working harder than she has done so far to get closer to her new friend, adding as a postscript: ‘I have just had an idea. Don’t you think it would be rather nice if you were to write me a description of yourself? I have been trying to picture you but have had no satisfaction—you know, a sort of essay on self. It would be rather fun, don’t you think so?’

  The next letter from Ruttie to Padmaja is in the summer of 1916 when she is in Mahabaleshwar with her parents, claiming to be bored and hot but in fact angry and frustrated. Like everyone else in their set, the Petits owned a villa in Mahabaleshwar but they—or at least Ruttie—were not staying at their own place during this trip. Datelined ‘St James Cottage. M’war 3rd May’, the letter shows Ruttie in an unusually petulant mood, complaining first of Padmaja writing to her about people she does not know: ‘It is no fun talking of people I have not seen and do not know—so enough.’ Then demanding that Padmaja come and visit her because she is feeling very dull: ‘When are you coming to spend the day with me? I want to see you badly and I shall expect an answer to the question.’ And then complaining about the hot weather: ‘Write to me soon as I feel very dull. It is so hot! and I am writing you this from my bed as it is much too hot to sit up and write—I am sure the effort of reading such a scrawl will send you to yours.’ And finally, venting her anger and frustration: ‘If this had not been quite such a polished civilized world, I might have resorted to the sensible means of swearing away the hot hours. Swearing would have relieved my state—and the heat would have justified my swearing.’

  Of course, Ruttie won’t spell it out but there is the undoubted disappointment of Jinnah spending forty days in nearby Poona while Horniman’s defamation case was going on and not coming up even once to see her in Mahabaleshwar. Since that winter holiday, while he was not exactly cold to Ruttie when they met anywhere, she could sense his withdrawal. To the Petits, of course, he gave a wide berth, although there were a few occasions when meeting each other was unavoidable, for instance, the condolence meeting on Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s death when Jinnah had to share the platform with Sir Dinshaw—both sat in silence, refusing to acknowledge each other. If Ruttie was hoping it would be different in the hills, and that he would let his feelings for her prevail over the offence that Sir Dinshaw had dealt him by rejecting his proposal so summarily, she was mistaken. He did not come up before leaving Poona, going straight to Bombay six days after her letter to Padmaja, leaving her sad and angry.

  In a mood now for any distraction, Ruttie first tried to persuade Padmaja to come and visit her in Mahabaleshwar, and that failing, decided to go herself to Panchgani to spend the day with her. But the thought of her grand friend descending on her in Panchgani left Padmaja panic-stricken. Having heard of her beauty and lifestyle from her mother, she was overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting Ruttie in person. Already feeling inadequate in comparison to Ruttie, Padmaja did not want to have to confess to her that she was still in school, a far cry from the life that Ruttie led, with her at-homes and receptions, and male suitors by the dozen. She was even more ashamed to admit that she had no car at her disposal, as Ruttie was expecting. It was something Ruttie had taken for granted that Padmaja would have her own means of transport like everyone else Ruttie knew, and Padmaja was overcome with the ignominy of it all. She wrote to her mother, hoping that Sarojini would do the needful, but all Sarojini did was to advise her to tell Ruttie the truth. But Padmaja baulked at it, making out instead that her ‘mo’ was not air-conditioned and would be unsuitable for Ruttie’s use during her trip. ‘It was a relief to read that your “mo” is not airconditioned,’ begins Ruttie’s next letter to Padmaja a fortnight later, on 18 May 1916, and then immediately putting Padmaja in another fix by asking: ‘Could you arrange one for Sat 27th? That gives you ten long days in which to arrange and reserve a suitable conveyance.’ Padmaja seems to have economized on the truth in other aspects of her situation as well: ‘I did not know you were staying at a school,’ Ruttie writes, struggling to imagine a nearly sixteen-year-old still in school. ‘I do not suppose you are studying, are you? You have come up for your holidays here, is that not so?’

  On her part, Ruttie is just as anxious not to leave any impression on her friend that she is anything like her parents, distancing from what according to her are their too conservative attitudes, like getting home early. ‘Oh, about that concert you were telling me about—I would very much like to but I can’t come because you see it will be in the afternoon at about five o’clock—at least I suppose so and it would end at say 6.30 or 7 pm and would be far too late by the time I reached home—not for me—nothing is too late for me, but for my parents.’ And questioning her governess’s wisdom and making a joke of her trying to coach her into submitting to authority: ‘Irene says not to grumble and never to worry and I must “give in” to the supreme wisdom of the sage. All sages are fools, do not you think with me? You could not be a “sage” without being a “fool”, but you can jolly soon be a “fool” without being a sage. I am at any rate. I feel quite startled at my own limpid logic, don’t you?’

  But despite the anxieties on both sides, Ruttie’s day trip to Panchgani, less than nineteen kilometres away, seems to have gone off very well. Both Padmaja and her younger sister, Leilamani, also in the same boarding school called The Knowle, run by a Mrs Kimmins, warmed instantly to the young woman from Bombay they had heard so much about and who, despite her surface worldliness and sophistication and intimidatingly beautiful looks, was so friendly and informal and eager to win their approval. After that, letters between Ruttie and Sarojini’s two schoolgirl daughters flew thick and fast, especially over the following year, all the earlier reserve and stiffness between them seemingly vanishing with that one visit, at least on the Naidu girls’ part. Each of the girls confided their heartaches to Ruttie, seeking her advice and trusting her not to betray their confidences
even to each other or their mother. And Ruttie, although she never failed to respond promptly to each of their queries—answering their calls for advice on love matters with surprising maturity for a sixteen-year-old—she herself does not do any of the confiding as befitted the elder sister’s role they thrust upon her. Whatever she thought or felt about her own confusing love life that was by now the talk of all Bombay, she is silent in these letters over the next fifteen months, unwilling, or perhaps merely unable, to expose her feelings fully to these two young friends, or anyone else for that matter—so deep was her natural reserve, despite the outer openness and friendliness.

  The next letter is written on 13 June 1916, twenty days after her trip to Panchgani when she was back in Bombay, exciting so much comment by merely being seen in the same room with Jinnah. The letter, addressed either to Padmaja or Leilamani (it doesn’t say who), despite being couched in impersonal generalities and romantic clichés, shows her fierce determination to hang on to her passion despite the impediments, feeling somehow ennobled by the process: ‘Your hungry passion for love is a yearning upon which you may build your whole character—your whole life. Make your personality the soul of love and sympathy and let your passionate desire grow into a fair and frequent flower—so beautiful that it shall draw and command love through its own loveliness. Just as the lily and carnation—just as the rose and the lotus. Pour love on the parched, unlighted souls, and through sympathy and understanding make them bright as the myriad lamps of heaven. Wisdom is a digit of Love—Love is the Supreme Wisdom. Love it is that makes the sighing winds balmy. Love it is makes the moon shine and gives warmth to the sun. Love it is makes the flowers blossom and the birds sing and the brook laugh through the forests. Love it is makes Life a span of suffering and a chant of joy. Love it is makes woman beautiful and man brave and noble. I understand your sweet emotion. And I find it as beautiful as a poem, as melodious as a sonata. If ever you are sorrowful, if ever you yearn and thirst for love—come to me, speak to me, write to me. Your friend, Rutty.’

  For all its vagueness, the letter appears to have found an answering echo in Padmaja’s own romantic heart, judging from Ruttie’s next letter to her. Datelined ‘Petit Hall, Malabar Hill, Bombay, 4th July 1916’, and written on notepaper with the Petit crest on it, Ruttie’s letter is ecstatic about Padmaja’s finely expressed emotions on love: ‘Your letter gave me exquisite pleasure. I wish you would always write me something beautiful like that. But I know that is impossible. You must write as you feel and according to your mood—otherwise it cannot be beautiful. At any rate write to me whenever you get into this wonderful phase, will you?’

  Each seems to be encouraging the other in this indulgence of emotion, and drawing each other out to further excess. ‘I am no Philistine who would think the outpour[ing] of fine emotions akin to madness,’ says Ruttie’s letter. ‘If it really is madness, why can’t all of us be mad! I like letters in that strain and I would very much more have liked to see you in this radiantly happy and inexpressibly sad mood. I can quite understand and appreciate your emotion for I too am somewhat like that. And G[od] it hurts, it hurts terribly! My conflicting emotions make me suffer more than anything. I suppose they do you too!’

  And each, or so it seems, prides herself on her utter spontaneity and disregard for conventions or caution. ‘Strange isn’t it,’ Ruttie writes, ‘but I also never re-read my letters once they are written. I don’t know why but somehow it would be unlike me to do so. There is something too tame and calculative about the idea.’

  But the letter having barely been sent off, Ruttie received another letter from Padmaja, panic-stricken that she had said too much. Ruttie reassured her that her ‘secret’, which she does not spell out, was safe with her. In a letter dated 8 July 1916, again from Petit Hall, she writes: ‘I could see that you had written your last letter on the impulse of the moment. Nevertheless that made it more beautiful—more like you. There is nothing “mad” or “stupid” in what you have written and I appreciate the trust you have in me and your sweet emotions shall be my own secret.’

  But when it came to her secrets, Ruttie was not prepared as yet to trust Padmaja with them. She would have preferred to talk to her mother, but Sarojini was now laid up in bed in Hyderabad, too ill even to read or reply to letters, except to her own girls’. The next sentence in Ruttie’s letter suggests how much she must have been missing this wise, older friend at a time when she felt so isolated from her own parents, who simply did not understand her passion for Jinnah. ‘Do remind your mother of her promise to send me a photo of herself—a large one. I have only got an amateur postcard with just her face, not even taking the whole of the postcard space.’ And goes on: ‘How is she at present? I hope her spine is alright. Perhaps it is just weakness through the long illness which has caused this pain in the spine. Let us hope it is nothing more.’

  To Ruttie, there could be no wiser counsellor in the world, especially in matters of the heart, than Sarojini. She could not imagine why the two Naidu girls, having such a mother, would seek advice from anyone else, including her. In one letter of which the first two pages seem to be missing, but clearly belonging to this phase, Ruttie writes: ‘. . . rather tell your mother than anyone else and I sincerely think that no one will ever listen to you with the same sympathy that she would. I would not say this to everyone, but your mother has a wonderful sympathy which to my mind is the very light of her being and her soul. Perhaps you do not like to speak to her, owing to her delicate condition of health? Perhaps you think that it might excite her over much. Of course if that is the case I can say nothing, it is best for you to feel your way and act according to the promptings within you.’

  And yet, she cannot resist urging: ‘Yet as an interested and sincere friend, I ask you to seriously think over what I have suggested. And I vouch for it, that if you do follow the suggestion, you will never never repent it.’ Then she adds, with her delicate tact that has won over Padmaja: ‘I have given you my opinion unasked, but please don’t let it give you offence. Write to me whenever you like and I shall always read your letters with interest.’

  Ironically, when Ruttie did eventually get the benefit of Sarojini’s advice, only a couple of months later, she bristled so much at what Sarojini had to say to her that they almost ended up quarrelling. ‘I have given your mother a light scolding,’ Ruttie confesses in her next letter to Padmaja, on 24 October 1916, ‘for having made a speech.’ It was unimaginable for Ruttie to have done this, to snub the older woman she had always sought out and hero-worshipped; but Sarojini apparently had taken her parents’ side on the issue of Jinnah’s suitability for someone as young as her. It was not the sort of thing that Sarojini often did, interfering in young people’s love lives, but she evidently felt strongly enough about this to say so openly to Ruttie, earning a snub for her pains. Ruttie’s put-down was delivered in no uncertain terms, as she says in her letter: ‘I am sure she will not do it again.’ However, she is beginning to feel a bit rueful at her burst of temper, as she indicates with a whole row of exclamation marks (twenty-seven in all) following the last sentence. And then she adds a placatory line, no doubt anxious not to offend Padmaja or her mother: ‘I remember your having written that it was very beautiful—I mean your mother’s speech. Do tell me where she spoke and on what occasion and all the rest of it.’

  From the dateline, Ruttie is back in Mahabaleshwar, staying this time at the Petits’ own place, Adorn Villa. She does not say what she is doing at the hill station—probably alone except for the servants—at the height of the Bombay season when her parents are usually busy throwing or attending parties day and night. But this is also a month that Jinnah was forced to spend in Poona, taking time off from his busiest year in his political career to appear before the inquiry committee he had asked the government to set up in order to clear his name after his rival in the recent legislative council election accused him of rigging it. If Ruttie hoped their paths would cross, she was disappointed. Jinnah came
and left Poona, once again without making any attempt to meet her. She was left seeking solace from the hills.

  ‘Mahabaleshwar is very beautiful all green and fresh and young!’ she writes in her letter. ‘But I have seen no fireflies as yet. All nature seems to be astir with song birds and little insects and often while you are feasting your soul on the exquisite and fierce grandeur of the ghats, the mist will rapidly and almost suddenly veil the scenery as though it were jealous. A few days ago while returning from Bombay Point, the delicate strains of a shepherd’s flute caught my ears. It was so beautiful, so simple that it could not help sounding mystic. Oh, it stirred all the fire of my soul! As such things are wont to do. Whenever I hear or see anything beautiful it invariably saddens me, and I simply cannot restrain from pining over it—but it is a melancholy in which I rejoice for I feel that it always leads me towards greater perfection and sympathy.’

  She makes a valiant attempt to cover up her feelings by resorting to her habitual flippancy: ‘By the way, who is this young Rajah? I am sure I know nothing whatsoever about him. I never even knew of his existence till Leilamani said something of his wearing the same coloured tie and shirt as my sari and following me about. I wonder whether Fido has been mistaken for a young gallant? He usually has the same coloured ribbon as my sari! Nevertheless whoever he be you are at liberty to send him your love (and mine also). I am extravagant, aren’t I?’