Gujarát and the Gujarátis/Shett Jamál Gotá, Philanthropist
SHETT JAMÁL GOTÁ, PHILANTHROPIST.
In the course of my itinerary through Gujarát I was never so much amused and shocked as when learning the particulars of a truly extraordinary life. The history of Khán Báhádur Jamál Gotá, J.P., may show, amongst other things, how certain native families have risen. Shett Jamál Gotá, I must explain, is an extreme case of social oddity.
How he Rose.
Khán Báhádur Jamál Gotá is the only son and heir of his father by his "own mother," as he proclaims to the world. Jamál Gotá pater was an honest liquor-shop keeper at Charub. One Christmas Day he took a bottle of countrymade mowrá to Colonel Buttercup, Cantonment Magistrate. The Colonel and his wife, Mrs. Millicent Buttercup, were at dinner with Collector Jalap, when Jamál Gota approached " the presence," sáláming[1] repeatedly, with something like a bottle wrapped in a clean white napkin. Making his best bow to the company, Jamál unwrapped the bottle and placed it on the table; then folding his arms, as the Parsi does before his Keblá, orated to this effect:—"Námdár Sirkar Sáhib, it is our custom to lay before such feet as yours (Buttercup had left his feet on the field of Assaye) the first-fruits of the season. Hence the trouble, Lord Sáhib, for which your pardon, General Sáhib!" Buttercup, who neither relished the allusion to his absent feet nor the bottle in the presence of the strict Jálap, affected to be thunderstruck. After a gasp or two, he found coherent articulation enough to ask, "Are you mad, Parsi? Who are you?" Jámal Gota, who had come prepared, hereupon fell to the ground, sobbing as if his heart would break, and whining "Oh, Sáhib, you are my mábáp. Is it not the duty of a son to keep his mábáp Khush? Do what you like with it, but don't give me back the bottle. I am a disgraced man, and poison is my only remedy now." Buttercup could not resist the force of such reasoning, and that on a Christmas Day. So he nodded to the suppliant, remarking by way of reward, "You old humbug! How can I be your mábáp? We shall suppose, for the fun of it, that I am your báp, but how can you make me out your má?—unless he means you, my dear," whispered the wicked Buttercup, turning to his spouse. At this sally there was a great laugh. Jamál gathered strength, and offered to serve his dároo[2] with his own hands. The request was granted. Jamál knew he had made his fortune. In less than a week he installed himself head butler. He stuck to his shop, too, but at dinner time he would be at the bungalow, with one novelty or other to provoke appetite. It need not be said that Jamál rose rapidly in importance. He was on confidential terms with Mrs. Colonel Buttercup, they knew. She consulted him upon every concern. When there was cholera, Jámal would advise madam to fly to a distant village with her dear Colonel. And off they would go, leaving everything to Jamál. When they returned, Jamál would explain how he had burnt or buried the metal, wood, or other utensils at home, for fear these should retain the germ of the horrid disease. "What is money before your health, Sahib?" The Buttercups were delighted with Jamál's deep devotion. They made a contractor of Jamál, who in less than four years rose to be the leading Shett of the town.
But as he grew in public importance he deteriorated in domestic virtues. (This is generally the case.) Jamál found that his marriage with the present Mrs. Jamál Gota was a mistake, that his only son and heir was also a mistake. They tried to humour him every way at home, but Shett Jamál was not to be reconciled. At last, "with the advice of friends and patrons," he took to him a second wife. Bigamy was no offence then; but the first Mrs. Jamál, whom, strange to say, her husband treated better after his second marriage, repaid the kindness by dying within three months. Young Jamál accused his father of having killed the old woman by Jadoo.[3] This was too much for Shett Jamálji, who swore that he had disinherited the young "thief," and in a fit of passionate upbraiding, was carried off before he could make another will.
Jamál Gotá Fils at Home and in Public.
Come we now to the history of Jamál Gotá Fils, Justice of the Peace, Khán Báhádur, &c. &c. Young Jamál's first care was to look into the finances of the house. He ascertained that he was master of about five lakhs of rupees. He then counted how much he should spend every month, so as to leave a few thousands for his "brats," as he paternally called his sons. Having settled this point, he opened his campaign of luxury, dissipation, and waste. He pulled down house after house and built bungalows instead. He organised dinner parties and nautch[4] parties, and other immoral entertainments. He invited the élite of the town three times a week on one pretence or another. He took a Mehtá[5] in confidence, only bargaining that he should be supplied with what he wanted daily, the family to be reared with strict economy. He spent Rs. 1,000 one night on a party, and threatened the Mehtá (clerk) with dismissal next morning for allowing to the family of eleven members besides servants Rs. 2 for bazaar expense. He denied that his family had any claim upon him. "Did they bring this money?" he asked of remonstrating friends. He kicked his wife and children, and abused them frightfully in the presence of his dancing girls. He married his children with great pomp, spending large sums on dinners and other parties, and then put down double those sums against their names, explaining that each had already received his or her share of the inheritance,and that none should expect anything more. He, however, promised them their two meals a day provided they behaved themselves. The boys, seeing no future, asked to be sent to school, though already fathers themselves. Shett Jamál hereupon levelled a pistol at them, saying they wanted to dishonour him. Why should they go to school like poor people? Had they not every blessing of life—a generous parent, fine handsome wives, and a number of children? Was he not feeding them all? It was no use arguing with the man. The sons then went to the Collector who had made Jamál Gotá a Khán Báhádur, and said, "Sir, we are starving; give us to eat." The Collector gave them respectable berths under him, asking them to learn soon to qualify themselves for the posts. When Shett Jamál heard of this he ran up to the Collector, took his turban off his head, put it at the Sáhib's feet, unclasped his Khán Báhádur medal, and said, with tears in his eyes, "Sir, you made me Khán Báhádur; this great honour has given me a chair beside Queen Victoria; the sun smiles on me, the moon courts my smile: all this I owe to you. Now take away this honour and kill me. My ábru[6] is all gone, and you, my own patron, have done this by making clerks of my sons. Oh! oh! Why did I live to see this day? What will the Queen say to this? Oh! oh! ungrateful sons! wicked wife! I would kill them all."
"You old brute," replied the infuriated Collector, "you old, vicious, stinking brute! Had I known you were a drivelling idiot like this! Talking of Queen and sun and moon, when you have no more sense than my stable-boy! Here, remove this man; take him to the Magistrate; let him be bound over to keep peace towards his unhappy family. Oh, you putrescent carcase," broke out the Collector, half laughing.
The butler was immediately sent with instructions to take the "beast" home, lest he should die of fright before the Magistrate whom he had so often feted.
His Decline and Fall.
Khán Báhádur Jamál was done for. He took to his bed. He would see nobody (except his nautch girls). He would eat nothing (except sweetmeats). No, no; he had done with life. But he had still about a lakh of rupees left, safely invested by the Mehtá. He withdrew this sum, and left it with a Bombay firm which promised 12 per cent, interest. In about six months the firm broke, and it was with immense difficulty Jamál could get back about 40,000. This, with a couple of bungalows, is all that is now left to Khán Báhádur Jamál Gotá. He now leads a retired life, away from his family, whom he has altogether discarded. But, indulgent father as he is, he has still "kept his son's saláms," he explains to friends—that is, once a year his sons go to salám him from a distance, in the faint hope of getting a hundred or two from the natural wretch. Vain, vain is the hope. The father is a thief and a traitor, developing a degree of selfishness which is absolutely fiendish. And still he is an ornament of mofussil society! He is ever on the alert to catch the eye of the public. He presents a stable-house to the Anjuman,[7] and his charity is loudly praised. "Leaders of society" crowd at his dinners, call him a public benefactor, while at the same time they know that the imbecile, whose substance they are eating up like pariahs, has a family literally starving—the sons going about from office to office for work which they have not been taught to perform, the daughters eking out a precarious existence by sewing and stitching, and the wife, the "lady of the house," daughter of a true gentleman, is ending her days in sorrow and in suffering, aggravated by the cries of adults and infants of an ever-increasing family. And honest editors immortalise the virtues of Jamál Gotá, Esquire, Justice of the Peace, Khán Báhádur, "our great philanthropist," whom they know to have been an undutiful son, a wicked husband, an unnatural parent, a false friend, so worse than brutal in selfishness, that the veriest brute would have blushed for him had Jamál Gotá been assigned the place in creation which he so richly deserves.