The next visitor did not wait for an invitation.
Sarojini Naidu arrived as she always did—like a song suddenly turning into a door-knock.
The servant barely had time to announce her name before she swept into the drawing room, sari a riot of indigo and gold, eyes bright, bracelets chiming softly as she moved.
"Mr. Jinnah," she declared, hands spreading in theatrical dismay, "I leave you alone for a few years and return to find you swallowed whole by Government House. If I look closely, will I still find a human spine, or only a telegraph pole?"
Jinnah stood, allowing himself something close to warmth.
"Mrs. Naidu," he said, "I see the songbird has flown out of the cage of meetings and descended into the sewer with the rest of us."
She laughed, delighted.
"If the sewer is where the people are," she said, "then even a poet must learn to hold her nose."
They exchanged the usual courtesies, but she did not waste much time.
Once settled with tea—she insisted on more milk, less leaf; he disapproved silently—Sarojini tilted her head, studying him.
"I have heard strange things about you lately," she said. "From Bombay, from Delhi, from the whispering wires of Congress gossip."
"Congress gossip is rarely strange," Jinnah said dryly. "It merely loops."
"Well, this loop says," she went on, ticking the points off on her fingers, "that Mohammed Ali Jinnah has become a magician of drains, that he bullies poor municipal officers, that he has turned respectable Farazis—Farabis?—into a private army for the Raj, and that he now spends dinners criticising Gandhi instead of the British. Which part would you like to correct first?"
She will not let you hide behind precision, Bilal remarked. Answer her whole.
"I do not bully municipal officers," Jinnah said. "I simply remind them that cholera does not accept excuses. As for Gandhi, I spend my dinners criticising inefficiency, wherever I find it. If he sits near the plate, that is not my fault."
She clicked her tongue.
"So you do not deny that you criticise him?" she pressed. "People say you have become… anti-Gandhi."
Jinnah set his cup down gently.
"Then 'people' have misunderstood me," he said. "I am no more 'anti-Gandhi' than a left wheel is anti the right wheel of a cart."
Her eyebrows rose.
"Go on," she said. "You have my poet's attention. Make this metaphor walk."
Jinnah folded his hands.
"Gandhi," he said, "moves the soul of India in a way that I neither can nor wish to imitate. He speaks a language of sacrifice, of spinning wheels, of voluntary poverty. He reaches into villages where my suits and my Urdu would both seem foreign."
He paused.
"I," he continued, "understand the machinery of British law, of administration, of negotiation. I am fluent in the language of files, not fasts. Where he can make millions sit down by sheer moral force, I can take a badly written bill and turn its teeth toward our people instead of into them."
He looked at her steadily.
"Both skill sets are necessary," he said. "A nation that feels deeply but cannot draft an ordinance will remain enslaved. A nation that can draft ordinances but feels nothing will become a colony of its own elite."
Sarojini rested her chin on her hand.
"So," she said slowly, "you see yourself and Gandhiji as… complementary?"
"As two wheels of the same cart," Jinnah said. "If one wheel insists on rolling only on its own track, the cart will tip. If both roll together—him on the moral track, me on the legal and administrative—then perhaps we can move forward without spilling the passengers."
She considered that, eyes narrowing in thought.
"And yet," she said, "your quarrels are not imaginary. You have opposed his methods. He has criticised your style. People choose camps."
"People enjoy theatre," Jinnah said. "I will not pretend we see eye to eye on everything. I think his mass movements are often too loosely controlled. He thinks my insistence on constitutional methods is too slow, too cold. But disagreement is not enmity."
He leaned forward slightly.
"You know me well enough to answer this honestly," he said. "Have you ever heard me say that Gandhi hates India?"
"No," she admitted. "You say he miscalculates. Not that he betrays."
"And has he ever, in your hearing, called me a traitor to the country?"
She smiled faintly.
"He calls you… stiff-necked," she said. "And sometimes 'too British in his bones.' But no, not a traitor."
"Then the rest," Jinnah said, "is noise generated by those who profit from turning every difference into a feud."
Good, Bilal said softly. You are offering her a frame: rivalry without rupture.
Sarojini toyed with her bangle.
"You didn't call me here just to defend your reputation," she said. "You want something. I can smell it. It's like the scent of ink on your pocket."
"Indeed," Jinnah said. "I want your voice."
"Flattery," she replied, "will get you dessert. Not obedience."
"Then I will try something stronger than flattery," he said. "Truth."
He outlined, briefly but clearly, the shape of the cholera plan. The local sanitary councils. The rings of isolation. The Farabis. The religious leaders. The songs. The station wards. The invisible leash over lazy officials.
"And where do I come in?" she asked.
"In two places," Jinnah said.
"First: Congress voters and sympathisers in Lahore and the surrounding towns trust you. They may dislike me. They may distrust Harrington. They may suspect the Governor. But if you stand up in a gathering or on a platform and say: 'Whatever we think of politics, in this matter listen to the doctors, listen to the sanitary councils, obey the cordons,'—they will hear."
She nodded slowly.
"And the second place?" she asked.
He hesitated for a heartbeat.
"Ask Gandhi," he said, "to visit Sandalbar the next time he is in Punjab."
Her eyes widened.
"You want Mahatmaji," she said, "to walk into your little military estate? With your wireless sets and your armed Farabis and your British doctor?"
"I want him," Jinnah said evenly, "to see what we are trying to do with hygiene, with education, with village industries. I want him to see that not all discipline is oppression. That a spinning wheel in a hut and a wireless set in a Farabi post can serve the same purpose—if guided with integrity."
He allowed himself a tiny smile.
"And I will be happy," he added, "to welcome him into my house any day. I may even remove my shoes if it makes him feel more at home."
Sarojini laughed.
"The day you voluntarily remove your shoes in your own drawing room," she said, "I will consider it proof that miracles exist."
Her laughter faded into a softer expression.
"Do you really believe," she asked, "that you and he can pull in the same direction?"
"I believe," Jinnah said, "that when bodies are being carried out of lanes day after day, the luxury of pure disagreement shrinks. He can tell people why their lives have dignity. I can tell the municipality how to keep that dignity from being washed away in a fetid drain. If he will walk with me even a few miles on that road, I will not argue about the rest of the journey today."
She needed to hear that you will bend on sequence, not principles, Bilal noted.
Sarojini looked down at her hands, then up again.
"I will write to him," she said. "Carefully. He is tired, you know. The weight of so many expectations, so many failures… it grinds more slowly than cholera but just as surely."
"I know," Jinnah said quietly. "I have seen it in his eyes."
She held his gaze.
"And you?" she asked. "What grinds you?"
"Stupidity," he said. "And preventable death. The rest, I can negotiate with."
She smiled, sad and bright at once.
"You have become more human since you started counting latrines," she said. "Less marble. It suits you."
"Do not tell anyone," he replied. "It might ruin my reputation as an ice statue."
They sat in companionable silence for a moment.
Then she added, more lightly:
"As for the local clergy—Hindu side—I will speak to a few temple committees, a few leaders in the wards. I will tell them that the Goddess does not reside in the filth they fear to remove."
"That would be… helpful," Jinnah said, in the understated way that meant deeply necessary.
She tilted her head.
"One condition," she said.
"Name it," he replied.
"When this cholera storm passes and you go back to your estate and your clever schemes," she said, "promise me you will not lock yourself away entirely. Write. Speak. Let the people see the man who can say 'wolf' and 'cart' in the same conversation without losing his balance."
"I will consider it," Jinnah said.
"That," she said, rising, "is the closest thing to a yes we will get today."
She moved toward the door, then turned back.
"Oh—and Mohammed Ali?" she added, eyes glinting.
"Yes?"
"If I do bring Gandhi to Sandalbar," she said, "be ready. He will test your wolves with his goats."
He almost smiled.
"Then let us hope," he said, "that the pack has learned enough restraint not to start with meat."
She laughed and was gone, leaving the room feeling, briefly, like a stage after the curtain falls—voices still echoing in the walls.
Two wheels, Bilal murmured. A falcon, a wolf, and a songbird. Not a bad menagerie for a man who used to walk alone into court.