Ratan

Description

A palanquin bearer in the Pelham household, and the loosest tongue at any fire he sits at. Aggrieved about his wages and entirely unguarded about saying so — to other servants, to strangers, and to a serving havildar of the 67th he had never met before.

Background

He works one of Calcutta’s grandest households and is paid like a man who works one of its meanest. That gap is the whole of his character: it makes him talkative, acquisitive, and easy to buy.

At St John’s on 9 October 1814 he approached Pratap Singh among the carriages and the non-Christian servants, complained about his wages, and asked whether there were openings with the Company. Pratap rebuffed him flatly — the Company pays its soldiers three times what any local prince’s army offers, and that is precisely how the Company took India. When the party wanted the Pelham palanquin moved so their own carriages could get away first, negotiation failed, a swung fist missed him entirely, and rupees succeeded where both had not.

That evening at Garden Reach, with the second course going in and every hand busy, he was caught palming silver spoons from the Magistrate’s table.

Connections

• Roderick Pelham and Anne Pelham — his employers, and his grievance
• Havildar Pratap Singh — rebuffed him, swung at him, then paid him
• Charles Ashworth — whose spoons he was caught with
• Garden Reach — the servants’ fires

In Play

Chapter 4, Session 10 (9–10 October 1814) — caught, beaten, and bought. As the cloth came off inside, two of Bakar Ali’s under-servants dragged him across the fires to the havildar with two of the Magistrate’s crested spoons out of his waistcloth. His first account was that he had fallen and they had landed in his cummerbund. His second, offered fast, was the only coin he had: the Pelhams underpay their people and burn the petitions of the villages, the memsahib supervising the burning herself. Pratap ordered him beaten within an inch of his life and sent back to his palanquin rather than handed to the sahibs; Georgiana heard the screams from the dining table. He limped through the carriage brawl an hour later (Ratan and the Spoons). He now owes the havildar his place and his skin, and the Pelham house is reachable through him.

Appearances

Campaign Log

• Session 12 - The Governor’s Ball — Offered himself to Pratap Singh as a henchman and informant, presenting two hand-written cards (“a decent henchman, cheap to boot”; “handyman at core, cheap to boot”) in a very small hand. Refused Pratap’s fifty-rupee bribe to tail Surlish’s carriage, fearing for his post, after Lady Anne caught the exchange and reprimanded Pratap in Hindi.