The train slid into Montgomery station with a long sigh of steam and metal. The platform was a strip of sun-baked dust with a thin veneer of brick; beyond it, the landscape opened into the geometry of the canal colony — straight roads, straight fields, straight lines of trees marching along watercourses.
Jinnah stepped down from the compartment, cane in one hand, hat in the other. The air was different from Bombay: drier, sharper, full of earth instead of salt.
Better for the lungs, Bilal noted. Worse for anyone who likes oceans more than wheat.
A man cannot live on sea air alone, Jinnah replied inwardly. Grain matters more than waves in the world that is coming.
Near the end of the platform, the Commissioner of Montgomery district, Harrington, waited with his assistant and a modest official entourage. No band, no excessive ceremony — just the correct amount of recognition for a man whose name appeared too often in files to be ignored.
"Mr. Jinnah," Harrington said, stepping forward with a hand outstretched. "Welcome to Montgomery."
"Commissioner," Jinnah said, shaking it. "I appreciate your taking the trouble to receive me in person. I know your schedule cannot be idle."
"In this district," Harrington replied dryly, "the canals ensure that no one is idle. Come, the car is waiting. We can talk as we drive."
They walked together down the platform, followed by the assistant and a tahsildar in a carefully pressed turban, clutching a folder as if it contained his entire career.
The Canal Bungalow
The district car — dusty but polished where it counted — rattled along the metaled road out of town. On one side, fields stretched in squares and rectangles, green where the canal water reached, brown where it did not. On the other, a line of eucalyptus trees tried their best to look like shade.
"The colonies are… precise," Jinnah observed, watching the fields slide by.
"They were designed that way," Harrington said. "Surveyors with rulers and the luxury of empty land. Not like the old villages, where every boundary is an argument."
The tahsildar in the front seat half-turned, eager to be relevant.
"Citizens here are very progressive, Sir," he said. "New villages, new thinking."
He means the revenue is regular and the complaints are written instead of shouted, Bilal said.
Progressive enough for our purposes, Jinnah replied.
After about ten minutes, the car turned off the main road through a brick gateway, its gate half-open and rusting slightly. Inside, a gravel drive curved toward a large bungalow: high ceilings, deep verandah, sloping tiled roof. Around it, a boundary wall rose higher than a man, topped with broken glass in some places.
The garden was overgrown but not wild: bushes needed trimming, grass needed cutting, but the bones of order were evident. To one side, a small outbuilding leaned toward a line of trees; in the distance, the canal glinted through the foliage.
Jinnah stepped out of the car and took in the scene.
Walls already built, Bilal murmured. That's a discount line item.
"This," Harrington said, coming to stand beside him, "is one of the older canal residences. Built for an engineer who died in '22. Since then, used occasionally for inspections, but mostly left to the lizards. We quarter staff here in the hot season, nothing more."
He nodded toward the wall.
"The enclosure is good," he added. "High walls, only one proper gate. If you're looking for a temporary base while you poke about at estates, this would serve better than any dak bungalow in town."
The tahsildar brightened.
"Yes, yes, Sahib," he said as trying to speak English as much he could but almost end of his vocabulary. "Very strong walls, very good well, even a small storeroom on the side."
Jinnah walked slowly along the verandah, fingertips brushing the rail. The plaster was cracked in places, paint peeling, but the structure was sound.
Inside, rooms opened off a central hall: a large drawing room with shuttered windows, a dining room, three bedrooms, and a smaller space that might once have been an office. The floors were mosaic tile, dusty but intact.
Clinic here, Bilal whispered, as Jinnah paused in the smaller room. Outpatients, basic meds. Close to the main entrance, but not inside the private quarters.
And the hall? Jinnah asked silently.
Meetings, Bilal replied. Officially: literacy classes, agricultural lectures, maybe a reading room for tenants. Unofficially: Farabi training sessions — conflict resolution, logistics, chain of command. No uniforms, no slogans. Just "improving the estate."
Jinnah turned his head as Bilal started to call his future security team as farabis, eyes resting briefly on the hall, then the office-like room, then the verandah.
"And you are suggesting," he said aloud, "that I use this as a temporary residence?"
"For the time being, yes," Harrington said. "No need for you to camp at a second-rate hotel in town. The wall is high, the neighbors are mostly wheat and canal inspectors, and we can put a few of our malis (gardeners) to work cleaning it up. You pay rent at the regular scale, and the Public Works Department will be delighted someone is using the place."
"I would not wish to displace any officer who—"
"There is no one to displace," Harrington interrupted. "Nobody wants to live out here properly. My engineers come and go, but they prefer their own quarters nearer the headworks."
He gave Jinnah a measuring glance.
"You, on the other hand," he said, "have specifically asked for somewhere ten minutes from the line and a little removed from town. This fits suspiciously well."
"It seems providential," Jinnah said.
Or well-greased by the file chain, Bilal muttered. Either way, we take it.
"And," Harrington added, almost casually, "the walls being what they are, it's easier to regulate who comes and goes. For your comfort, of course. And for any guards you may decide to employ."
He gestured toward the outbuilding.
"That old structure there," he said, "was once used as a store for survey equipment. It has a solid roof and a clear patch of ground beside it. If you decide you really do want a wireless mast, that would be the natural place for it. Out of your way, but with a clear line to the sky."
Wireless mast there, Bilal echoed. Nice. Keep it boring: scheduled messages, weather, crop reports. Hide the interesting stuff in routine.
Jinnah nodded.
"And the canal itself?" he asked. "How close does it run?"
"You'll see it better from the back," Harrington said. "Come."
They walked through the house and out the rear door. Here, the boundary wall ran along a slight rise; beyond it, fields sloped down toward a shimmering line of water and the darker band of the canal bank.
"About three hundred yards," Harrington said. "Close enough to irrigate, far enough that you won't get every village child using your compound as a shortcut."
Grain depot near that back corner, Bilal said. Inside the wall, but with a side gate toward the fields. Buffer stock. When the chaos comes, you'll be the only consistent shop in the district.
"Is there space," Jinnah asked, "to construct additional storage — granaries, for example, or sheds?"
Harrington's eyes flicked sideways at him, amused.
"Already planning expansions, Mr. Jinnah?" he asked.
"I have an unfortunate habit," Jinnah replied, "of thinking of worst-case scenarios. It has kept me alive in court and occasionally out of riots."
"There is space," Harrington said. "Within the wall and beyond, if you acquire adjoining plots. The tahsildar can show you the maps after lunch."
The tahsildar nodded eagerly, patting his folder.
"Very good maps, Sir," he said. "All straight lines."
Straight lines, Bilal thought. Easier to rewire than ancestral mazes.