The telegram from Montgomery was courteous in its phrasing, but it carried the weight of an order.
FROM: DC HARRINGTON, MONTGOMERYTO: SPECIAL ADMINISTRATOR M.A. JINNAH, SANDALBARSUBJECT: PUBLIC INFORMATION (RADIO)
THE VICEROY IS PLEASED WITH THE RECEPTION STOPHOWEVER INFORMATION DEPARTMENT REQUESTS DEDICATED SEGMENT EXPLAINING IMPERIAL SYSTEM AND PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT STOPDESIRE THAT RURAL POPULATION UNDERSTAND CROWN'S STATED PURPOSE: ORDER JUSTICE PUBLIC HEALTH AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT STOP
Jinnah read it once, then again, slower the second time. The words were neat. The intent was blunt.
"They want a lecture slot," he said quietly, setting the paper down as though it might stain the desk. "They want the radio to become a notice-board."
Ahmed Khan frowned. "It will kill the station, Sir. People tune in for Sohni's voice and Balvinder's jokes. If we start reading proclamations, they will switch off."
Jinnah's eyes stayed on the telegram, but his mind was already measuring consequences.
"Credibility is a glass vase, Ahmed," he said. "Once it cracks, you do not repair it. You hide the crack and hope no one notices. If the 'Voice of Sandalbar' becomes the tongue of revenue men and clerks, it dies."
If they smell 'sarkari' on the broadcast, they will treat every message like a trap, Bilal murmured. Even your medical advice will become suspicious.
Jinnah nodded once, as if agreeing with himself.
"Then we give them what they want," he said, "without giving them what they think they want."
1) The Compromise
He met Harrington at the district border—an ugly stretch of road where the canal land gave way to dry scrub and the air smelled of dust and hot iron. Harrington arrived in his black sedan, hat immaculate, face slightly drawn. A man who lived between two worlds: the paperwork above, and the fires below.
He greeted Jinnah with the respect due to a dangerous ally.
"Mr. Jinnah," he said carefully, "I wish I could have sent this by letter. But the pressure has come down quickly."
Jinnah folded the telegram and slid it into his coat pocket.
"I understand pressure, Mr. Harrington," he replied. "I have defended men in court who felt it around their necks. The question is: must we hang ourselves to satisfy Simla?"
Harrington exhaled through his nose—half sigh, half restraint.
"They want a return on their investment," he said. "They consider the station a Crown instrument. If they do not hear the Crown in it, they will ask why they allowed it at all."
Jinnah's tone did not change, but the edge in it sharpened.
"I cannot broadcast politics to farmers," he said. "Not speeches. Not decrees. Not anything that sounds like a clerk scolding them. The moment they feel preached at, they will stop listening. And once they stop listening, we lose the only tool in the district that can correct a rumor before it becomes a riot."
Harrington hesitated. "Then what do you propose?"
Jinnah looked down the road, as if watching the argument approach in a cloud of dust.
"We make it cultural," he said. "Not propaganda that smells of orders. Education that smells of stories."
Harrington's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"You mean… soft power."
"Call it what you like," Jinnah replied. "We speak of how systems work, not how men must obey. We speak of clean water, courts that cannot be bought, municipal discipline—things even a villager can understand without feeling insulted. You want them to admire British character? Fine. We will show them a functioning method, not a loud slogan."
Harrington considered him for a moment. Then his voice softened into reluctant agreement.
"If I send a man from Lahore—someone from the Information Department—will you cooperate?"
"I will accept a scriptwriter," Jinnah said. "And I will finalize the edit. Every word."
Harrington gave the smallest nod.
"I will put it in writing," he said. "So no one later claims you refused."
Jinnah's mouth twitched—barely a smile.
"Excellent," he said. "We will satisfy Simla, and we will not poison our own well."
Correct, Bilal whispered. You don't fight the Empire head-on. You redirect it—like canal water.
2) The Rooster Arrives
The next day, the "scriptwriter" arrived at the Canal Bungalow.
He was not a writer.
He was Captain Montague: young, stiff, freshly pressed, and carrying a cane he did not need. His shoes were too polished for Sandalbar dust. His tone was too loud for a room that worked on discipline.
He stepped into the studio as if it were a courtroom and he had been born judge.
"Right," he announced, dropping a thick stack of papers on the table. "I have prepared a twenty-minute reading on the Magna Carta and the Durbar of 1911. The Sikh fellow"—his eyes flicked toward Balvinder—"will read the English text first, and then translate it verbatim."
Balvinder stared at the pages as if they were a medical diagnosis.
"Sahib," he said slowly, "my tongue will break on these words. 'Habeas…' what is this? A disease?"
"It is the King's English," Montague snapped. "Then learn it."
Abdullah Shafi adjusted his glasses, saying nothing. His silence was not weakness; it was calculation. He watched the room the way a teacher watches a classroom that is about to become disorderly.
Montague turned toward Sohni.
She sat on her low stool near the microphone, shoulders pulled inward, eyes down. Behind her, her father and uncle held their simple instruments—chimta and dholak—like men holding steady work tools, not stage props. They were there for one reason: to keep the miracle supervised, anchored, respectable.
Montague's voice cut through the room.
"And no—" he made a dismissive motion with his hand, "—no wandering-tribe wailing today. We require something… proper. A patriotic marching tune. 'Rule Britannia,' perhaps."
The studio went cold.
Sohni's uncle's fingers tightened around the dholak straps. Her father's jaw hardened, but he did not speak. They were guardians, not fools; they knew which battles were won by restraint.
Balvinder's shoulders rose.
Abdullah looked down at his hands.
Jinnah watched it all from the corner chair, expression unreadable. But he felt what mattered: the spirit of the station—fragile, new, hard-earned—starting to collapse under one arrogant man's boot.
He stood.
"Captain," he said softly.
Montague turned, pleased with himself. "Yes, Mr. Jinnah? I assume you approve?"
Jinnah did not answer him.
He looked instead at Evelyn Cartwright, who was leaning near the doorway, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. She had the posture of a doctor who had seen too many preventable deaths and had stopped being polite about it.
Jinnah gave her a small, deliberate nod.
Go ahead.
Then he walked out, closing the door with a clean, decisive click.
3) The Schooling
Montague blinked. "Where is he going?"
Evelyn stepped forward, calm as winter.
"He's leaving," she said. "Because he refuses to watch you break what he built."
Montague stiffened. "Doctor, I am an officer of the—"
"You're a rooster," Evelyn cut in. Her voice was sharp, controlled, and humiliating in its precision. "Strutting into a coop that doesn't belong to you."
She picked up his script and flipped through it as if inspecting a contaminated bandage.
"The Magna Carta," she said. "To farmers worried about bollworms, fever, and stolen cattle. You think this will inspire loyalty?"
"My orders are to explain British greatness," Montague snapped.
"Then explain it," Evelyn returned immediately. "Greatness is not a parchment dated centuries ago. Greatness is clean water. Greatness is a court that cannot be bribed. Greatness is a system that works when the powerful are tempted to cheat."
She tossed the script back onto the table.
"You force Balvinder to read this rubbish, and you will make everyone hate the station. And when they hate the station, they will stop hearing the hygiene advice. They will stop coming for treatment early. They will come late—when infection has already won."
Montague opened his mouth.
Evelyn stepped closer, eyes level with his.
"If you sabotage this project," she said, "I will walk to the Governor's office myself and report it plainly: not as a complaint, but as a medical fact. That you destroyed the most effective public-health instrument in rural Punjab because you wanted to hear your own slogans."
Balvinder cracked his knuckles—slowly, helpfully.
Abdullah remained serene, which was worse. Serenity in Punjab meant: I can wait for you to ruin yourself.
Montague swallowed.
"Well," he managed, voice smaller now, "what do you suggest?"
"Sit down," Evelyn said. "I'll do the talking. And you will learn what your department never bothered to learn: how to speak to people without insulting them."
4) The Angel's Story
That evening, the "Voice of Sandalbar" went live.
There was no Magna Carta. No marching band. No stiff reading.
Instead, Evelyn sat at the microphone, and her voice—usually crisp and clinical—became reflective, human.
"Sisters and brothers of Sandalbar," she began, "you call me 'Doctor-ni,' and some of you have been kind enough to call me an angel."
Balvinder translated, but more gently than usual, as if he feared breaking the mood.
"I am not an angel," Evelyn continued. "I am a doctor. But I want to tell you where I come from—so you understand what I mean when I speak of cleanliness and order."
She told them about a small English village—not an empire, not a palace, but a place with farmers and muddy lanes and sickness that once travelled through water like a thief in the night.
"A hundred years ago," she said, "we had cholera. We had bad water. We had filth that people accepted as fate."
Balvinder's voice softened as he translated.
"She says… her home was once like ours. They suffered too."
"And then we changed," Evelyn said. "Not because we became better people. But because we learned discipline. We built drains. We boiled water. We created rules that protected the poor as much as the rich. A poor man's house became his castle—not because he was powerful, but because the system decided he deserved protection."
Montague sat in the corner, silent, stunned. His entire script—his neat little lecture—had been replaced by something far more dangerous: truth spoken in a form villagers could absorb without resentment.
Evelyn paused, then shifted the focus.
"But I have learned here too," she said. "In my country, people can be cold. Here, in Punjab, I have found a warmth that melts snow."
She spoke of Balvinder and Abdullah—not as tools, but as men. Men who protected the clinic, kept order, and treated her as a colleague instead of a curiosity.
When Balvinder translated that part, his voice cracked.
"She says… she says we are men of honor. She says she is safe with us."
Across the villages, men lifted their chins. Women nodded. Respect mattered. Praise mattered. It made discipline feel like pride, not punishment.
Evelyn finished simply.
"So take the best of my world—hygiene, reliable systems, lawful order—and mix it with the warmth of your world. That is the Crown at its best: not a master, but a method."
She did more for British prestige in five minutes than Montague could do in five months, Bilal observed.
Jinnah, listening from the balcony, replied without moving his lips.
Because she did not beg for love. She offered proof.
5) The Song of Spring
When Evelyn finished, the studio held a heavy silence—respectful, almost reverent.
Even Montague looked humbled, as if he had finally understood that power could be quiet.
"And now," Abdullah said gently, "we end with music."
Sohni's father struck the chimta—bright, metallic rhythm.Her uncle gave the dholak a steady heartbeat.
Sohni lifted her face toward the microphone and sang.
Not a court performance. Not a polished salon raga. A folk melody—clean, aching, and familiar to the soil. The kind of song that belonged to fields and riverbanks, now made louder by wires and valves, made impossible to ignore.
In the villages, hookahs went quiet.
Men stopped mid-sentence.
Women listened without shame, because the voice came with her father behind her, her uncle beside her—guardians visible, making it respectable. Making it safe.
The song ended. The air stayed still for a breath longer than expected—like the villages themselves were reluctant to return to ordinary noise.
Then the broadcast closed.
The "On Air" light died.
Balvinder leaned back, satisfied.
Abdullah exhaled, relieved.
Montague picked up his cane more slowly than before, as if it suddenly weighed something real. He did not speak.
He simply slipped out.
The rooster had entered confident.
The angel had kept the microphone.