The Last Candles of the Night. Ian Bedford

or the Razakars.

      They walked on. Thin jungle, on both sides of the road, was cleared in places and in one of these clearings a small boy sat alone by a pile of flat stones which could only have been dumped from a lorry. He was beating stone on stone, without much dinting them but with the effect of an intricate rhythm to which he sang – in a formed voice, no infant treble. A kingfisher, a gorgeous green, light-green at the throat and with a bit of russet at the head, darted from a thorn-bush. There must be paddy-fields somewhere, to account for the bird. “They’re harmless to us. The only real harm they do is to themselves,” said Anand, declaring his opinion at last.

      “What are they? Communists?”

      “If they’re Communists, we’ll see at the mandi. There’ll be a hammer-and-sickle on every building. I think they’re Communists. The reason they’ve let us come so far is that they own the village.”

      “Own the village?”

      “They occupy the village. Not all the time, but they depend on these villagers. But they’re too near the road. The police will come. They’re taking one hell of a chance,” said Anand as if he, a rival in politics, would take no such chances. “I’ve seen them like this outside Warangal: standing around, unconcerned, in broad daylight, as if they were immortal – I don’t understand it. I don’t understand this way of fighting.”

      “So your people don’t just stand around, they offer satyagraha. The gaols are full of them. How many Congress workers are in gaol as we speak?”

      “Swamiji may call it off. He’s beginning to think it’s the wrong tactic.”

      “And where is Swamiji? Isn’t he in gaol?”

      For a newcomer and outsider, who knew nothing about right and wrong tactics, and least of all in Hyderabad, where both the Congress and the Communists were banned, Philip – in Anand’s company – found much to say. He expressed his views, poked fun and made light of matters. And this was encouraged in him, for the sake of friendship! Philip had discovered a friend like his friends in Australia: one rather better informed, entrusted with weightier responsibilities for his tender years, but alike! – and at times perplexingly different. The marvel of it all was that Anand, from their first chance meeting, had gravitated to Philip like a snake to an anthill. They entered the market square. At one stall the bus passengers had gathered and at another were the driver, the conductor, and the driver’s companion, a fixture on these buses. Companions were a part of the scene in India, whoever you went looking for and whoever helped you look. The doorman, the mechanic, the doctor, even the cycle-rickshaw driver had his companion. For every incumbency, its shadow. Both Anand and Philip would have liked to confer with the bus crew about what they thought was going on – but they did not have the Telugu language. Anand tried in Urdu and was met with a single word: badmash.

      “If they’re badmash, then why aren’t we dead? All those words wasted,” said Anand. “That speaker of theirs poured his heart out, but to the conductor they’re still badmash.”

      “They’re badmash to me.”

      “The passengers were the real audience. I wonder what they think.”

      The fare at these stalls, to Philip, was not very appetising. Wherever something looked appetising – a basket of moist dates – the flies buzzed. But he did like the square, the bare earth pounded by generations of bare feet, the procession of trees with shaped leaves, like the trees in watercolour miniatures at the old British Residency in Hyderabad – he must learn trees’ names. A handful of people, not enough in the market at this hour of the day for real haggling. Sun-dazed, the entire spectacle. But there, parked under the trees at the very margin of the scene – beyond the whitewashed storehouses, all inscribed with the hammer-and-sickle and with messages in two scripts, Urdu and Telugu – was a vehicle, a bus like their own, the sight of which, before he knew why, lured him. Anand placed a hand on his arm. “Not there. Don’t go there. Aren’t you thirsty?” – and Philip was thirsty, thirsty enough to accept and drain a soft-drink, unrefrigerated, from a dubious bottle. And then another. Wasn’t that an all-woman bus?

      Philip disregarded the warning and approached the bus. How cheering, the cluster of rural women surrounding the bus in their bright cholis, red, green, matched with the subdued colours of the saris draped over their shoulders, their brown midriffs bare, legs swathed to the ankles, arms stacked to the elbow with coloured bangles, the flash of jewelled nose-rings and toe-rings, the beauty of their features which were all of a kind, that aquiline beauty he had inspected in the miniatures from Golconda in the Residency collection. Telengana women. They were happy to greet him – what was Anand’s warning about? Then he saw. At the open windows of the bus, not at one window but at successive windows, like a frieze of nodding flowers, heavenly enticements, a sight appalling in its majesty and beauty: he turned away. A vision no man should contemplate – except in his imagination. Anand consoled Philip on his return. “Don’t be put out. You’re an Englishman. I don’t mean Englishman, you know what I mean. A kind of blundering fool. You can get away with it.”

      “We call that ‘peeping tom’.”

      “What a good word for it.” As Anand hustled him still further away, a lorry, its carrier space filled to bursting with sashed and turbanned figures bristling with weaponry, bounced at speed along the unevenly tarred road that bordered the square and vanished in the Warangal direction, rounding the bend. Anand affected to take no notice. “Where there are women, there are babies,” he said. “They all need feeding, or they set up a wail. Don’t be ashamed. That was mortifying, but we need people like you. Let me tell you why we need such people.”

      But Philip had ceased to listen. “Who was that? Police, or …”

      “Or Razakars? That was the police. The Razakars have much better uniforms.”

      Philip was blinded by an after-image, not of the police lorry, but of the windows of the all-woman bus: a confusion of naked breasts, of gaping or feeding infants. With their placid, silent dream-countenances, these mothers were nothing like the mothers he knew. The mothers he knew did not chew betel or expose their breasts. He felt that it was somehow his duty to reappear at those windows and explain something, explain himself, to this universe of women.

      “Expensive, too,” said Anand, still referring to the Razakar uniforms. “We don’t know who pays for them. Perhaps, where you’re situated, you can find out.”

      “Where I’m situated? At the school?”

      “Let me tell you why we need people like you. We need the kind of foreigners in India,” said Anand, “who won’t be put off, people who butt in and out wherever they like out of sheer ignorance. People who will always be forgiven.”

      “Who needs such people?”

      “They’re needed by the nationalist movement. They’re needed for their access to government.”

      Was he speaking in jest or earnest? Philip could not be sure. “Who pays for the Razakar uniforms, is that the question? You want me to find out in Hyderabad. You want me to spy for you!”

      “I don’t mean spy on the Nizam, the Nizam is nothing. The Nizam is too stingy to pay for uniforms, even his own. I mean Laiq Ali, or his Cabinet, or a Cabinet Secretary. You must know someone.”

      “I know Englishmen. I don’t know any Cabinet Secretary.”

      “Englishmen! We’re back where we started!” But just as Philip was sure that his leg was being pulled, that this was not a serious request, Anand changed his mind for him. “We do have very poor intelligence where government is concerned. We don’t know what they’ll do next. We were sure the Nizam would sign the Standstill Agreement. But he took weeks. What were the obstacles? What happened? They’re unpredictable. But they know all about us! Congress decision-making in Delhi is splashed all over the Urdu newspapers.”

      “I’ll hear what I’ll hear. I won’t go looking for it. You’ve heard my objections.”