Fable of a Ring

Premi, 20-year-old daughter of Jairamdas Doulatram, governor of Assam province, was lazily floating in a boat on Ward lake at Shillong, hill-station capital of Assam, feeding fish from her slight, delicate hand. As she dabbled her fingers in the water, a diamond ring, a family heirloom, slipped from her finger, went twinkling down through the clear blue water.

Governor Doulatram, 59-year-old former journalist and orator, was a notable bungler as India's food minister in 1948-49, but in Assam he is, after all, the governor. Divers were sent down to recover Premi's ring, and when they failed, the governor ordered the L-shaped, quarter-mile-long lake to be drained. Assam has one of the highest rainfalls in the world, and everybody knew that Ward lake would soon fill up again. Thousands of Assamese came to see the act. As the water went down & down they began to feel a grave concern, as Hindus should, for the welfare of the fish in Ward lake. Was it just, they asked, to kill millions of fish merely to recover a piece of jewelry? Was it not possible that a fish may have swallowed the ring? Would it not be simpler and kinder to catch the fish, subject them to an X-ray examination, and then free them? These scruples spread to Assam's legislative assembly. Assembly members plied the Chief Minister with questions. Said one: "There will be repercussions on a huge number of fishes in the lake." The minister promised to prepare a formal answer. The press was mildly indignant. "A modern governor's household is expected to be less imperious than that of a medieval potentate," said Calcutta's Hindustan Standard. The episode, said the newspaper, reminded one of "the lover who promised the whole of Samarkand and Bokhara for a mole on the cheek of his beloved."

At week's end the emptying of Ward lake had become a political issue for Governor Doulatram, but Premi's ring had not been found.

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