35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘THERE’S BLOODLETTING AS WE SPEAK’
to imply, even though I knew the Calcutta clubs operated pretty
much on the same lines as they had during the Raj.
Mansoor came up with a solution: He’d get the GM to fax him a
letter authorising me to dine at the club as his guest in absentia.
Armed with the precious document, he escorted me in a car to
the massive Victorian edifice. Winds and rain roughed up our car as
we drove through dreadfully bleak and forlorn streets in a
preternatural twilight, banded darknesses teeming with eyes. Even
the luminous dome of the Victoria Memorial, that last gesture of
imperial might, was plunged abruptly into darkness as we approached
it. The floodlights were only left on until the son et lumière was over:
Calcutta couldn’t afford to waste anything, particularly light.
Floods had knocked out the Bengal Club’s phones, so we had not
been able to discover in advance whether the fax tactic would work.
An entire antique switchboard was on its side in the dingy lobby,
being overhauled, as we entered. Overall, the place now reminded
me of some seedy government office. We climbed tired wooden
stairs that had once shone with wax, as countless old photographs
attested. Mansoor suggested we stop in for drinks, in case he
recognised someone else who could take me in to dinner. The
famous bar was another disappointment; it looked and felt like
something from a run-down no-star hotel off the Bayswater Road.
Several small clutches of men sat around the nearly empty room
with their beers in silence, barely looking up as we came in. The
tired, musty atmosphere absorbed us indifferently, a façade of what
it must once have been. Nonetheless, membership remained a
prerequisite for status in Calcutta society.
Locating the secretary, a chubby, sarcastic fellow in a stained white
shirt whose tails hung over the shiny seat of his trousers, Mansoor
presented the fax and the situation. The secretary scrutinised this
crumpled document, shaking his head.
‘We have rules,’ he announced. ‘No guests without members.’
The hotel manager tried appealing to a better nature I could see
this man did not possess.
‘No point in having rules if they aren’t obeyed,’ I said, since he
clearly enjoyed sarcasm. I imagined how many Indians had been
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