Chapter 46

A brisk run brought him beyond the pump, and he looked back to see that he was not being followed or observed. No. And ahead of him the coast was clear. He put his left hand on the sharp bamboo edge of fence and jumped clean over the thorns of the rose trees that grew in the garden. He hesitated a little on the dusty pathway that led through the garden bowers to the verandah, becaus: no onc seemed to be in sight at the bungalow and he did not know how he could approach the Chimta Sahib. A vision of the foreman's hulking shape hovering over the verandah urged him on. His heart was thumping as he came up to the steps of the verandah and faced a memsahib, whom he presumed to be the foreman's wife. Nellie Thomas, a dried-up small woman with streaks of grey mixed with her shock of brown hair, her sharp face bright with enthusiasm, her thin hands knitting a jumper with austere impatience, sat with her legs spreading wide on the arm chair, in defiance of all Munoo's conceptions of modesty. The boy stood afraid for a moment. Then he raised his hand to his forehead and said: 'Salaam.' 'Salaam,' she whispered. And, turning to where Jimmi stood helping himself to a peg, shrilled with alacrity: 'Oh, oh, pretty boy, you do look pretty. You are the worse off for drink and 'ere is an employee to see yer." Jimmy Thomas veered round where he stood and flung the bottle of whisky in his hand straight at Munoo, believing that the coolie had come to stab him with a dagger to re- venge himself and the other employces for the notice of short work. 'Police! Murder!' shouted Nellie, jumping from the chair. At this Jimmie completely lost his temper, and went with fist upraised towards his wife. But he slipped and fell with a thud, beating his fist on the floor. Nellie, who had taken up a teapot from a tray, threw it at Jimmie in self-defence. Muroo bolted. 276 But Mr. Little hearing the shouts of police and murder had rushed up. 'What has happened?" asked Mr. Little. "What is the arinalter?" Nellie whisked dingily but electrically from where she siood and with great presence of mind, said: 'It was like this 'ere, Sir. I was sittin' knittin', and 'oo should come in but 'im, and of course he was the worse fo drink. 'E says to me, 'e says, I ought to 'ave some r clothes on, damned sauce. And then 'e goes to the be A boy comes in to see 'im, one of them hemployees, I th -'e loses is temper and throws the bottle at 'im. 'Em have killed the poor nigger. And I hollered out Police anu Murder. 'E wert to fist me and slipped and fell Mr. Little lifted his eyebrows and Nellie, who had pau.ed to draw breath, continued with the next chapter of her narrative: 'I 'ave told 'im not to kick anyone when they's down, Sir.The boy wasn't hurt. And I am quite willing to let bygones be bygones.' The bland courtesy was still on Mr. Little's face, but it was mingled now with the faintest frown of dubiety. He stood looking at them like a small, puzzled question mark. 'I 'it 'im in self-defence, Sir,' Nellie confessed. 'Me life. isn't safe with 'im. I can't bear it. I shall leave 'im.' And she began weeping with the most rueful, the most heart- rehding sobs. The coolies of the Sir George White factory crept like ghosts through the waste land of the mills that afternoon. They were dazed by the sudden shock of the announce- ment which deprived them of the only privilege left them; the privilege of work-a privilege, indeed, because it meant wages, whereas its withdrawal would mean starvation! They were willing to work. They were only too willing to haul and clean the cotton in the godowns, to tend the machines and sweep the lint along the floor, to help to turn the cotton thread into cloth. They were willing to do anything, so 277 long as they could have their regular pay, even with a little cut for damaged cloth and for the foreman's commission and the interest of debts, so long as they could have enough to pay the landlord and to buy rice and lentils for the mo.. But to be told to go on short work! They seemed to have died all of a sudden, that little spark of life, which made them move about willingly, had died; and left them a queer race of men, dried up, shrivelle, flat-footed, hollow-chested, hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed. Their wretchedness had passed beyond the confines of suffering and left them careless, resigned. 'I went to see the Chimta Sahib about getting your job... back,' said Munoo to Ratan. 'But he was very angry. Hé threw a bottle at me. He must be very angry with you that he has passed the order about short work for all of us. 'It isn't his anger with me, you idiot, but the big Sahib's greed that is responsible for the order,' said Ratan. 'You come with me to the meeting and you will understand. The coolies from all the factories are coming, and the trade union is going to declare a strike.' "Oh! Munoo exclaimed. Then I blamed the Chimta Sahib for nothing.' 'No, 'not for nothing!' shouted Ratan, wildly. 'He is a scoundrel. I will break his head, you wait and see. And I. will break the head of that burra Sahib who comes in his motor car and cuts your pay!' Hari walked, bent-backed and bandy-legged behind the the blind rage in his heart catching fire from Ratan's bla ing tongue, but smothered by the weight of misery th oppressed him. The other coolies followed, grim and tense like Hai. treading the earth with their big feet and occasionally shaking their heads to greet each other, and spreading out their hands in vague gestures of despair. The sun cast angry glances at the chimneys of the mills, as the huge crowd gathered in the desolate ground outside Indian Trade Union Federation. The figures of the coolies 278 were silhouetted against the earth as they waited for the speakers. The babble of many tongues whispering, half in fear, half in expectation, rose in waves. The loud words - Official from the middle of the throng shrilled aloft as'a kite or a crow flying in a zigzag curve across the sky. A pırasę like 'down with wage cuts' soared in the shimmer- ing air and poised itself like a song-bird above the horizon, The luctuating voice of the myriads of men becoming the one pointed symbol of their poverty and wretchedness, a pregnant cry reverberating with the pain of all these 'dwellers of the slums, the feeble new-born babes, the naked children with distended stomachs, the youths disfigured by small-pox, and sores and hook-worm, the men who were pld without ever having been young, the women whose ellies were always protuberant with the weight of the un- born, the aged whơ hobbled about slobbering down the sides of their mouths and stinking, so that they were the butts for the jokes of their own smelly sons and sons' sons. 'Down, down with the Union Jack; up, up with the Red Flag,' cries rose, and stilled the whole crowd for a moment as the electric shock of a cricket suddenly quietens the teeming vegetation of the tropical earth in the evening. The hatred and revenge latent in the slogan stirred the chords of their beings till their faces flushed and gleams of wild, hot fire shot from their eyes and hovered on their lips. "This is an evil age,' said a wizened old workman, fetching the words from somewhere in the depths of his chest. 'Indeed,' said a middle-aged man. 'How can we live in such times?' "By protesting against the wage cuts,' said a youngster. 'Aye,' said the old man, 'the youths of to-day have no respect for anybody.' 'Grandfather,' returned the youth, 'I join my hands to you every morning, do I not? But I will not prostrate my- self before the Burra Sahib in the motor car. He rides in comfort and I have to walk on the dusty road under the sun. And then he declares the factory on shor 'Yes, he is a bad master, indeed,' agreed the 280/350 279 man. 'My children have no shoes. The little girl hurt. foot on a bit of glass the other day and the doctor says her foot must be cut off.' "These Englishmen think a mere pittance can keep while they talk git mit, git mit with their lendis,' said the youth, half mockingly. Then he became earnest and-ex-thusiastic members of the congregation shouted. 'Quiet!' said Ratan, standing up. 'Onka Nath, Presi dent of the Union, is going to speak to us. Then Sauda Sahib, Mishta Muzaffar and Jackson Sahib'of the Red Flag Union. The President, the President, come on President!". His face flushed with the dramatic flourish with which he ended up. 'Come on, President!' Munoo shouted, taking the cue from his hero. 'Come on, President!' the cry was taken up by other members of the throng. Lalla Onkar Nath, a prim, well-groomed man, dressed in a homespun silk tunic and silk dhoti, came up to the dais. He was about forty, but his hair was greying pre- maturely, and his eyes and brow wrinkled darkly near the edges of the expensive tortoiseshell glasses. His lower lip was twisted into a sardonic contempt of everything but kim- self, and gave his whole sleek, clean-shaven face a curious, conceited look which adequately expressed what had hap- pened to him since his Oxford days. He had sought glory for himself through the adoption of a Socialist programme, thinking that either Gandhi or the Government. would buy him off in recognition of his balanced policy of compromise. But he had missed the bus. Now he had plunged into the lap of ancient and honourable Mother India and gone back on the modernity he had cultivated in England, though he said he tried to mingle the message of East and West by relating the old Indian ideas of Labour and Capital. 280 'Brothers,' he said, with a dignity that fell flat. 'What about declaring a strike, President?' said Ratan, who was not very far from the dais. Is he the person who wouldn't see you the other day when you were discharged?" asked Munoo, pulling at "Ratan's tunic. 'Yes,' said Ratan, brushing Munoo's hand away lightly. "Well, President, what is the talk?" 'Ratan, brother, sit down,' said Muzaffar, rising from be- hind the dais. 'Listen all, listen to the President.' 'Acha,' said Ratan, and sat down. Brothers began Onkar Nath again. 'In all ages labour, skilled and unskilled, organised or unorganised, has been a necessary agent for the production of wealth. In ancient India the part played by labour in national economy the problems arising out of the relationship between ployer and employed were recognised, and one finds wist in the old saying: 'For the labourer a discerning mast rare, as for the employer is a faithful, intelligent a. truthful servant. Mr. Radha Kumud Mukerji What is the Union going to do about the wage cut?" asked Ratan, whose grievance against the insult he had suffered from the President made him extremely impatient. 'Only a bad master would indulge in unreasonably over-working his men, raising their hopes without fulfilling them, withholding their wages or keeping them in arrears,' con- tihved the President, in the academic manner of his fore- fathers. 'Only a bad workman would ask for wages in the course of his work and it is only a bad master who will not pay his labourer wåges due for work done.' 'Bad workman, Ratan murmured. 'What about the strike?' someone shouted. "What is the Union going to do about the order for short work?" The President screwed up his sardonic lip a little more contemptuously. "The All-India Trade Union Federation will enter into negotiations with the proper authorities,' he said. 281 'You did that at Jamshed Pur with the Tatas last year, and nothing came of it!' shouted Ratan, pushing his head high. 'Sit down,' commanded the President. 'Don't inter The Bombay mill owners are open to reason. It is no use: precipitating a hopeless situation by hasty action. I stand. for negotiation. There are thousands of unemployed men roaming the streets of Bombay, and we cannot go on strike without the sanction of the Indian National Congress, without the advice of Mahatma Gandhi.' 'Congress or no congress, we will not go on short work,' several voices broke out. 'Silence,' shouted the President. 'I have k known win the methods of the labour people in Vilayat. What has 'made the English working class strong and solid but organisation,? There wasn't a trade union in India till I arrived. No one had ever heard the name of such a thing. I have worked for you and I want you to take my advice and go the right way about it. The mill owners give you work. They are not your enemies. If they have declared you on short work, you must act in a sensible, organised way. The Union works in your interests. It also works for the common imesest oser the employer and labourer. You must have faith in the Union and the methods by which it brings about tion in industry between Labour and Capital 283/350 trust me and the exccutive committee.' 'Brothers,' shouted Sauda, suddenly ascending troop!- form and pushing the President aside. "The members of the Trade Union Executive Committee are here. I am one. We will decide the question forthwith. Lalla Onkar Nath has too much faith in the mill owners. He says that the mill owners are not your enemies. You know that they are not your best friends. In fact, there is a world of differe between