The convoy from Montgomery arrived wrapped in dust and authority. Three trucks carried the Crown insignia. Behind them came a medical ambulance, and then Deputy Commissioner Harrington's black sedan, polished to the point of arrogance.
As the vehicles rolled through the gates of the Sandalbar Estate, Harrington leaned forward slightly in his seat, preparing himself for what he always found at relief camps: the smell first, then the noise. Unwashed bodies. Flies. Children crying. Men arguing. The grinding chaos of hunger.
Instead, when he stepped out into the glare, he heard almost nothing.
Not silence—there were too many people for true silence—but a low, rhythmic hum, like a workshop running properly. Footsteps on swept paths. Short instructions. The scrape of baskets. The occasional cough, quickly subdued.
Harrington stood still for a moment, letting the scene settle into his eyes.
The camp was laid out with the precision of a Roman garrison. Tents aligned in straight rows. Paths raked clean. Water points marked. No crowd pressing, no mob surging. And, most unsettling of all, there was no stink—only damp earth and the honest sweat of men working.
"Extraordinary," Harrington murmured to his assistant. "I was told they have two thousand refugees here. Where is the noise?"
1. The Medical Partition
The Civil Surgeon, a stout British officer named Dr. Morris, jumped out of the ambulance with the confidence of a man who believed medicine was mostly volume.
"Open air!" Morris shouted, clapping his hands at his orderlies. "Ventilation is key! Tables in the center lawn. Line them up!"
Before the first table leg touched the grass, Dr. Evelyn Cartwright stepped out from the verandah.
She wore her white coat like armor. Her hair was pinned back. Her expression made Morris hesitate, mid-command, as if some instinct had warned him he was about to embarrass himself.
"Dr. Morris," Evelyn said. Her voice cut through his bluster without effort. "If you set up in the open, you will treat half the population. The male half."
Morris blinked. "I beg your pardon?" "These are rural women," Evelyn said. "They will not bare their arms or discuss their ailments in front of men in a garden. Unless you want your relief mission to be a statistical failure, you will separate the camp."
She pointed, not dramatically—just precisely—to the bungalow.
"My clinic room is designated for women and children. I will handle triage there. You may handle the men here in the garden. We filter patients at the gate."
Morris puffed up, the way men do when they are losing ground.
"Now see here, I take my orders from the District—"
"Do it," Harrington interrupted quietly.
He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. His tone carried the weight of district authority, and it landed on Morris like a hand on the back of a neck.
Harrington looked at Evelyn. "She knows the terrain, Morris. Follow her lead."
Morris swallowed whatever argument he had prepared. The tables shifted. The orderlies moved. The camp, without protest, rearranged itself into two flows—women and children guided toward the bungalow, men held in the garden.
As the teams separated, Mary D'Souza approached Dr. Morris.
He was staring uneasily at the long line of peasant men forming up near the garden wall—rough faces, sunburned necks, eyes that looked too empty and too alert at the same time.
"Doctor," Mary said briskly.
"Yes, Nurse?" "I suggest you let a Farabi guard stand next to your table. Right there." She pointed to a spot by his elbow.
Morris gave a thin laugh, the kind that pretends superiority.
"I am a doctor, not a magistrate. I don't need a bodyguard for peasants."
Mary did not argue. She simply pulled her sari blouse aside—only a fraction, only enough to show the jagged pink top of a scar that ran down her ribs.
"I said that too," she replied, with no drama in her voice at all. "Then I got stabbed. These men are desperate, tired, and traumatized. Desperation makes people stupid. Let the guard stand there."
Morris stared at the scar. His throat moved.
"Right," he muttered. "Yes. Guard!"
A Farabi stepped into place beside the table, rifle slung, posture calm. He did not threaten anyone. He did not glare. He simply existed—quietly reminding every man in line that this was not a camp where shouting could buy priority.
2. The Inspection
Harrington left the doctors to their work and began walking.
He wanted to understand the machine.
He stopped at a station marked with a signboard: Nutrition Pharmacy.
A Farabi handed a slip of paper to a woman. She took it to a counter and received—no pills—just a basket: six eggs and a small tin of ghee.
"Prescribed food?" Harrington asked, as Evelyn passed by.
"Malnutrition is the disease, Commissioner," she said, not slowing. "Medicine is just a patch. Protein is the cure. Jinnah pays for it."
Harrington nodded slowly. It was radical. It was expensive. And it was, in a cold administrative sense, brilliant—because it was measurable. It would show results in weeks, not years.
He moved on.
Under a neem tree, a class was being held. A chalkboard leaned against a trunk. Children sat in straight rows, not in the loose, wandering clusters Harrington expected, but as if their bones had been taught geometry.
Three weeks ago, Ahmed's report had said the children were struggling with basic alphabets—Alif, Bay, A, B.
Today, a Farabi pointed to the board.
"C-A-T," the guard said.
"Cat!" the children shouted, in unison.
"Cat maane?"
"Billi!"
"The cat is…"
"FAT!"
Harrington raised his eyebrows. Sentences, in three weeks. Not rote chanting—actual attention. Focus. The children's eyes stayed fixed on the instructor, not because they were frightened, but because the lesson had rhythm, and rhythm produces obedience without whips.
But what struck Harrington most was the discipline everywhere else.
On the men's side, a single Farabi—Varun—stood near the water tank with a cane tucked under his arm. He did not swing it. He did not tap it. It was simply there, like an unused tool.
Three hundred men moved forward one by one, filled their cups, drank, and moved on. No shoving. No cutting. No argument.
On the women's side, it was even quieter. Mary stood by the clinic door. She did not carry a cane at all. When a woman tried to drift out of turn, Mary cleared her throat.
"Hmm."
Just one sound—low, sharp, and loaded with authority. The woman froze, glanced at Mary's face, and stepped back into line like a child corrected by a mother.
"Incredible," Harrington whispered. "Even the children don't cut the line."
He continued walking until he reached the latrines.
This was the place where every relief camp betrayed itself. If you wanted the truth of an operation, you did not look at speeches. You looked at latrines.
Harrington braced himself for the smell he associated with India's worst days: dysentery, rot, open sewer, despair.
He smelled… lime. And pine oil.
The latrines were spotless. A Farabi poured ash into a pit. Another swept the path. They did it the way soldiers clean weapons—without applause, without complaint, and without negotiation.
"It smells like a hospital," Harrington said. "Not a refugee camp."
3. The Speech
By noon, the supplies were distributed. Flour. Blankets. Medical packets. It happened without a riot, which in Harrington's mind was nearly a miracle.
The crowd gathered in the main courtyard. Harrington was ready now—the official moment, the public narrative, the part that would be written down and sent upward as proof of administration.
Jinnah stood on the steps.
He did not wave his arms. He did not shout. He waited.
The Farabis stood at attention, and the silence spread through the courtyard like a ripple on water. No one wanted to be the first person to break it.
"People of the Ten Villages," Jinnah began. His voice was calm, and the courtyard carried it naturally.
"Today, you have received flour. You have received blankets. You have received medicine."
He gestured to Harrington, who stood to his right, already feeling the pride rising in his chest.
"You must know who your benefactor is."
Harrington straightened his tie, almost unconsciously, preparing to accept gratitude like a man accepts a medal.
"The Crown," Jinnah said, "has sent this relief. The King-Emperor, through his representative Commissioner Harrington, has ensured that you do not starve."
He paused, letting the words settle into the crowd's mind.
"The Crown wishes for the well-being of its citizens. It has always wished for it."
Then Jinnah's tone shifted. Not louder—sharper. More intimate. As if he was letting them in on a truth the powerful preferred to keep vague.
"But in the past, when the Crown sent help… did it reach you?"
The crowd murmured.
"No. No."
"Why?" Jinnah asked. "Because the Crown is far away. And between you and the Crown stood the Zaildars."
The name drew a hiss of anger.
"The Zaildars took what was yours," Jinnah said. "The feudal lords kept the grain and gave you the husk. The Crown tried to help, but your local leaders failed you."
He turned to Harrington and bowed slightly—not deeply, not submissively, but with the precision of a man who understood optics.
"So this time, I requested Commissioner Harrington to come personally. I asked him to bypass the corrupt middlemen. I asked him to stand here and give it to you with his own hands, so you would know the truth."
He pointed to the trucks.
"The truth is that when the middleman is removed, the help arrives."
The crowd erupted.
"Harrington Sahib Zindabad! Jinnah Sahib Zindabad!"
Harrington felt warmth spread through his chest, like music. Jinnah was not stealing credit. He was doing something far more useful: absolving the Empire's distant image by putting every past cruelty on the shoulders of local feudal rot.
He leaned toward his assistant and whispered, almost excited.
"I must report this to the Governor. This is exactly the kind of counter-narrative we need against Congress."