Sir Moksa’s speeches were long, like all political speeches; they were loud, and peppered with stimulative slogans, demanding the abolition of racial discrimination, a rightful place in the sun for everyone, and a good life for everybody. These demands were passe enough to displease no one and to give ‘the masses’, as Sir Moksa termed them, an impression that Sir Moksa was both brave and an anti-colonialist (the first requisite for any politician in South East Asia). He hoped thus to collect votes, and never to discuss fundamental issues, such as Rubber.

For Rubber, and also Tin, were sacred, and the only man who had dared to talk of nationalization of the country’s resources had lost his job, and Sir Moksa’s friends all agreed that independence must come only very very slowly; none of them felt’ ready’ for it. They never would.

Sir Moksa found Rubber easy to keep out of his speeches. After all, everyone he knew had money in rubber, and no one in rubber (or tin) wanted to be nationalized, income tax increased to that exorbitant rate which the often invoked British taxpayer (a dire example of the expensiveness of freedom) forked out without a squeak.

Having given Government assurance that, whatever might be said in the hot clangour of speech, the Progressively Independent Party would fully respect investments, Sir Moksa was persona grata to form a political party and compete for the elections. Tethered freedom is better than no freedom at all; however unpleasant detention camps may be, one could come back and out of them, but one never came back from the grave. And that slight edge of virtue was worth crawling for, even if the time of walking never came in sight.

Starting in life as plain Thomas Jones, son of Joseph Jones, a Christian Tamil, with a Scots ancestor from the East India Company in the family tree, Sir Moksa had done the best for himself by changing with the times from Thomas Jones to Moksa Bakrar.

In the Asia-conscious Asia of today, where on every sidewalk, here called five-foot way, white or brown or darker Indians, light brown Malays, swarthy Chinese or fair Eurasians, and all the other wonderful mixtures of South East Asia, now aware of the selfsame sky and earth, were speaking pridefully of ‘we Asians’, a European sounding name might go less far at elections than an Asian one.

In his veins flowed the bloods of half a dozen cultures, and even Sir Moksa at times felt fiercely Asian, burningly anti-white. But he was a rich man, possession-tied to a beneficent colonial status, the law and order which had made wealth possible. And then the First Secretary, at golf on Thursdays, took his arm, and called him ‘Timmy’, and every time Sir Moksa knew a little catch in his throat, and a surge of love for the British in his breast.