c! JS II $9 127446 ii PRISON AND CHOCOLATE CAKE IIP* 1 PRISON AND CHOCOLATE CAKE Nayantara SaLgal ALFRED A. K^OPF NEW YORK 1954 L. a catalog card number: 54-5974 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, * PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. INC. & *& KNOPF,* ty COPYRIGHT 1954 by NAYANTARA SAHGAL. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any -form 'without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer -who may quote brief passages and reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Published simul- taneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Limited. Manufac- tured in the United States of America. FIRST EDITION TO MY PARENTS Vijaya Lakshmi and Ranjit Sitaram Pandit WHO HAVE MADE ALL GOOD THINGS POSSIBLE [vii ] PREFACE THERE are three of us Lefcha, older, myself, and Rita, younger than I. We grew up at a time when India was the stage for a great political drama, and we shall always remain a little dazzled by the performance we have seen. This is the story of its influence on our lives, and as such it may interest people whose child- hood was different from ours. Our lives were as normal as our parents could make them, but because they themselves had chosen to play a part in that drama, we could never live in quite the same way other children did. We had a somewhat un- usual background and, perhaps as the result of it, we have had some unusual opportunities. If I write haphazardly, it is because I describe events as I remember them and not necessarily in the or- der in which they occurred. It is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The pattern forms in its own way as the relevant pieces are located, and not in the neat, methodical way desired. Much of the atmos- phere we knew as children is fast vanishing, for already Gandhi/Vs name is history and Anand Bhawan, our home in Allahabad, is a deserted house. Only a memory remains of the glamorous aura that once surrounded it. Viii PREFACE So J have tried to recapture a little of that fading at- mosphere. I have said that in certain ways our lives were differ- ent from those of other children. One of the events that stand out as being "different" was our parents' de- cision to send us to America in 1943. The difference lay not in our going to America, but in the reason we went: apart from the fact that the political situation was tense and not conducive to study, education at that time was surrounded by restrictions. The non-co-operation movement begun in August 1942 was in full swing, and all over India thousands of men and women of all ages were in prison. Lefcha, too, had been arrested; her college education had been in- terrupted by seven months' imprisonment. When she was released, the police authorities in our town de- manded that she give a written guarantee to the effect that she would not talce part in any political activity or demonstration. A similar guarantee would have been expected of her no matter in which part of India she had chosen to continue her studies. It would also have been required of me, for I was about to enter college and was a member of a "suspect" family. Originally Lefeha was to have gone to Oxford, but in 1941, the year she was to have entered college, the blitz was on in London, and two years later the war situation was equally grave. So America, because it was a country comparatively untouched by the war, came into our scheme of things. PREFACE k Our parents did not want us to study in an India that was a vast concentration camp. They wanted us to have the opportunity, for the first time in our lives, to work, play, and live in an environment free from to crisis, grow up unembittered by the events talcing in place our country, and, above all, to have a happy girlhood to look back upon. This would never have been possible at home. Mummie and Papu made their plans during the brief interviews that they were permitted to have with other each in /aiL They were both in the same /ail, Nairn" Central Prison, near Allahabad, but were in- terned in separate barracks. In March that year Mum- mie was released on parole because of illness, and this gave her time to make a few hurried preparations for our departure. Papu was still in prison when it was time for us to leave. The authorities granted us a half-hour interview with him in the presence of the /ail superintendent and various /ail officials. Naini Central Prison was a long drive from Anand Bhawan. On a steamy hot day in the middle of April, Lekha, Rita, and I climbed into a two-wheeled, horse- drawn tonga to make the journey we had so often made beforer sometimes to visit American friends who lived in the Jumna Mission in Naini, sometimes to visit members of our family in prison. Once again we crossed the ugly red bridge over the Jumna River into Naini, and our tonga jogged along the road circling X PREFACE the high wall of the prison building, and through the outer gates to the main entrance to the jail. Barely two months earlier, when Lekha had been released from jail, I had come to fetch her and, wait- ing at the barred door, had seen my father in the super- intendent's office beyond. Suddenly I had rebelled against his being there, behind iron bars, and had started to cry in misery and helpless anger. Papu, hear- ing me, had come to the entrance and spoken to me quietly through the bars. "We mustn't let these people see us cry," he had reproached me gently, "especially not in such pretty clothes/' And he had admired my new silk sari, and the bright silver earrings I had put on for Lekha's homecoming. I stopped crying and tried to smile back at him. "Papu, when will they let you come home? There are so many things I want to talk to you about." * Papu handed me his large, rough khadi handker- chief, and I blew my nose, making it redder. "We will talk about everything when f come," he had promised. Then, seeing the guard waiting to escort him back to his barrack, he had left me standing there holding his handkerchief. Now we had arrived at the /ail once again, this time 1 a khadi, hand-spun, hand-woven cloth. It had special sig- nificance in India because it was used by all members of the Congress, in preference to mill-made and foreign cloth, as a means of encouraging Indian cottage industries. PREFACE XI to say good-by, and all the many things I wanted to say to him would have to remain unsaid. The entrance to the superintendent's office was low, and Papu had to stoop slightly when he walked in to greet us. He was nearly six feet tall, and very brown, with the bronzeness of a man who loves an outdoor life. His thick hair was crisp, curly, and black, with hardly a gray hair visible. He was dressed as usual in a 2 white khadi kurta-pa/ama, and wore brown leather sandals on his feet. Although his sensitive hands and contemplative eyes were those of a scholar and thinker, he had the determined chin of a strong-willed, hot- tempered man. Once in this very jail he had exchanged angry words with an impudent guard who had tried to insult my grandmother when she had come to visit him, and had been given solitary confinement for his behavior. To me he was the handsomest, the most lovable, kind, and understanding person I knew, the human being nearest my heart, and the one whose opinions I most respected. Toward him I had felt an inexplicable closeness since childhood, as though in some way my happiness and unhappiness were deeply bound up with his. Papu came into the dingy little room, bare except for the superintendent's desk and the bench on which 2 kurta-pajama, the dress of men in northern India, con- sisting of a long, loose shirt and loosely cut trousers. xii PREFACE to make we sat, and I swallowed my tears. We wanted our parting as cheerful as possible. But we need not have been afraid that it would be otherwise, for during that interview he laughed and teased us in his usual fun-loving fashion. Soon we were at ease too, ignoring the guard at the door and the superintendent busy at his deslc in front of us. Suddenly Papu leaned toward him and said: "Do you mind, Mr. Gardiner, if my daughters and I sing?" The superintendent, a jovial Anglo-Indian, looked up and smiled at the unorthodox request. "No, not at all/' We chose our song and took deep breaths, but just as we were about to sing, the jail gong in the yard out- side broke into a series of violently discordant clangs. We burst into laughter at this foiling of our attempt. "Come along, now/' said Papu, aroused as always by a challenge, "let's see who can make more noise, the British /ail gong or the Indian prisoner's family/" The prisoner's family won, because for the next few minutes we sang without restraint, while Papu accom- panied us by beating out the rhythm on our wooden bench with his practiced hands.