The Governor steepled his fingers.
"And beyond the wards," he said. "Railways. Highways."
"Yes," Jinnah said. "City arteries."
He spoke without looking at his notes now.
"Every major station must set up an isolation annex," he said. "Visible. Staffed. Every incoming train has a marked carriage assigned as a temporary isolation unit. Anyone visibly ill is placed there, assessed, redirected if necessary before they vanish into alleys."
The Health Member spread his hands.
"We do not have the staff," he protested. "We barely man the hospitals."
"Then train more orderlies," Jinnah said crisply. "Recruit from students, volunteers, even recovered patients. Use simple triage: severe cases diverted immediately; mild cases educated and marked for follow-up."
He did not soften his tone. Lives were already being wasted on hesitation.
"And the religious sites?" the Governor asked. "You wrote something… provocative on that point."
Jinnah inclined his head a fraction.
"I propose," he said, "that each major mosque, temple, gurdwara, and church be asked to set aside one hall, veranda, or courtyard as an auxiliary ward—especially for mild or recovering cases."
The Premier looked alarmed.
"You will have an uprising," he said. "People will say we are polluting the sacred."
"People are already carrying corpses past their gates," Jinnah said sharply. "Purity has succumbed to denial. If the faithful see their own houses of worship sheltering the sick—feeding them, fanning them, praying over them—they will no longer be able to pretend that this is someone else's misfortune."
He let the next words land carefully.
"And if, after that, they still defy instructions," he said, "you will be able to say honestly: 'We brought the problem into your most honoured spaces and begged you to listen. You chose not to.' Guilt will sit where it belongs."
The Governor's expression was thoughtful, not shocked.
"The clergy may object," he said.
"Some will," Jinnah agreed. "Others will see a chance to fulfil their own scriptures' commands on caring for the sick. Choose those. Publicly honour them. Let them overshadow the objectors."
Farabis as Invisible Leash
Harrington had been silent, observing. Now he spoke.
"You also mentioned," he said, "using your Farabis beyond the estate."
The Premier stiffened.
"Yes," Jinnah said. "As auxiliary enforcement."
He anticipated the objection and cut it off with a raised hand.
"I am not suggesting a parallel police," he said. "I am suggesting that in selected critical areas—wards with repeated non-compliance—you second small Farabi units to assist sanitary teams."
"To obey whose orders?" the Premier asked, eyes narrowed. "Yours?"
"On paper, the Governor's," Jinnah said. "In structure, they would attach to the Health Department, with Dr Evelyn Harrington as chief coordinator of the sanitary effort."
He glanced at Sir Geoffrey.
"They would not replace municipal officers or police," he continued. "They would stand behind them. A visible reminder that someone is watching the watchers. Their daily reports—on which lanes resisted, which officials delayed—would go by wireless not to the local board, but to a central Emergency Control Room in Lahore."
"And who sits in this Control Room?" the Chief Secretary asked drily.
"Dr Harrington during the day," Jinnah said. "Myself in the evenings. Any file you like can make that official. If you prefer, assign an ICS officer to sit there as well, to soothe any nerves in Simla."
A faint ripple of amusement passed through the room.
The Governor studied him.
"You are asking me," Sir Geoffrey said, "to let your private militia become my eyes on my own machine."
"I am offering you a nervous system," Jinnah replied. "At the moment, your government touches the city at scattered points and has no idea where the pain is until the newspapers scream. This way, you will hear the pain at once. If an inspector is lazy, if a councillor quietly undermines instructions, you will know before the bodies pile up."
"And what do we do with that information?" the Premier asked. "Suspend them? Publicly shame them? We have political realities."
"Use it as you see fit," Jinnah said. "Transfer, warning, or simply a private word. The point is not to humiliate, but to make sure everyone in the chain knows that someone is checking. When people believe there is no consequence, they drift. When they know there is a line to Government House, they at least hesitate."
A leash, Bilal reminded him. You are giving them words. You are giving yourself a leash.
Narrative and Blame
The Health Member flipped through his notes.
"You are asking for a great many things," he said. "Religious cooperation, entertainers, new councils, cordons, wards in temples, auxiliary forces. Even if we accept the structure, how do we hold the city together? Rumour moves faster than any telegram."
"Then you must move faster with your story," Jinnah said.
He leaned forward slightly, voice cool but intense.
"From the first day this plan is announced," he said, "you must repeat one simple line across every medium you have: 'Those who block the doctors are the ones who bury the children.' Put it on radio. In the mouths of imams. In the songs. Let it seep."
The Premier looked uneasy.
"You want us to set neighbour against neighbour," he said.
"I want you to place responsibility where it belongs," Jinnah countered. "At present, whenever there is an outbreak, everyone blames 'Government' in the abstract. No one examines the man who refuses to close his well, the family who hides their sick, the councillor who calls boiling water foreign nonsense."
He spread his hands.
"Either you allow the blame to remain a cloud that settles on you alone," he said, "or you let it fall, in part, on those who actually obstruct the remedies. I am not asking you to incite mobs. I am asking you to state calmly, again and again: 'We tried. We asked. They refused. Their refusal killed.'"
The Governor looked at him for a long moment.
"That is a ruthless moral framing," Sir Geoffrey said quietly.
Jinnah held his gaze.
"Morality without ruthlessness," he said, "is a sermon over a mass grave."
Gandhi would phrase it more gently, Bilal murmured. But he would understand the arithmetic.
Terms and Conditions
The room sat with that for a time.
Finally, the Premier cleared his throat.
"Let us say," he began cautiously, "that we adopt this scheme—partly or fully. What are your conditions, Mr. Jinnah?"
It was blunt, but useful.
Jinnah answered without ceremony.
"Three," he said.
"First: clarity of authority. If I am to lend my name and my Farabis, the order establishing this emergency structure must be signed by His Excellency and circulated to all district and municipal officers. There must be no ambiguity that, in sanitary matters for the duration of the outbreak, Dr Harrington has coordinating authority, and that directives coming through the Emergency Control Room carry Government weight."
The Chief Secretary scribbled.
"Second: protection from sabotage," Jinnah went on. "If local notables—zaildars, councillors, religious figures—deliberately undermine isolation zones or attack health workers, the Government must act. Quietly if you like, but firmly. Transfer. Suspension. Loss of grants. Something visible enough that others understand you are serious."
"And the third?" the Governor asked.
"Third," Jinnah said, "this must be explicitly temporary. When the outbreak subsides—when your own medical officers declare the emergency over—this structure dissolves. The Farabis return fully to estate duty. The Emergency Control Room closes. I do not wish to sit as a permanent second government inside your own. That would be unhealthy for both of us."
The Premier's shoulders eased a fraction at that.
"You seek no office from this," he said, sounding almost surprised.
"I seek fewer funerals," Jinnah said simply. "And a province that remembers, the next time someone shouts for 'freedom,' that the word includes clean water and functioning latrines."
The Governor looked from Jinnah to Harrington to the Premier.
"You have heard the terms," he said. "Do any of you find them impossible?"
The Premier hesitated, then shook his head slowly.
"Politically uncomfortable," he said. "Not impossible."
The Health Member sighed.
"Medically sound," he admitted. "If applied as firmly as he suggests."
Harrington, asked nothing directly, merely said:
"It is the only coherent scheme on the table."
The Governor's Decision
Sir Geoffrey rose, signalling the end of formality.
"Very well," he said. "We will refine the language, but the bones stand. Mr. Jinnah, you will remain in Lahore for the next fortnight. We shall set up this Emergency Control Room at once. Dr Harrington will be summoned from her rounds and briefed."
He extended his hand again.
"You understand," he added, "that if this works, you will have done more to protect this province than many men who shout more loudly than you in its name."
Jinnah accepted the handshake.
"If it works," he said, "the shouters may even be grateful—for a year or two. Then they will forget, and we will all start again."
But the ten villages, Bilal reminded him, and perhaps a few wards of Lahore, will remember in their bones. That is how change survives forgetting.
As he left the chamber, the map on the wall caught his eye: red marks, black circles, lines of ink that meant suffering.
Soon, if the wireless sets hummed and the songs spread and the rings of isolation held, there might be fewer new marks.
It would not be a triumph.
But it would be, in Jinnah's precise, unsentimental mind, something more valuable than speeches.
It would be proof that, for once, law and administration had managed to run faster than a microbe.