‘No.’
Leela made a noise of deprecation and asked, ‘Why should not Sidda sit in our chair, Mother?’ Mother didn’t answer the question. Leela said a moment later, ‘Sidda is gone because he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep inside the house just as we do. Why should he always be made to sleep outside the house, Mother? I think he is angry with us, Mother.’
By the time Sivasanker returned, Leela had fallen asleep. He said, ‘What a risk we took in engaging that fellow. It seems he is an old criminal. He has been in jail half a dozen times for stealing jewellery from children. From the description I gave, the inspector was able to identify him in a moment.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked the wife.
‘The police know his haunts. They will pick him up very soon, don’t worry. The inspector was furious that I didn’t consult him before employing him . . .’
Four days later, just as Father was coming home from the office, a police inspector and a constable brought in Sidda. Sidda stood with bowed head. Leela was overjoyed. ‘Sidda! Sidda!’ she cried, and ran down the steps to meet him.
‘Don’t go near him,’ the inspector said, stopping her.
‘Why not?’
‘He is a thief. He has taken away your gold chain.’
‘Let him. I will have a new chain,’ Leela said, and all of them laughed. And then Mr Sivasanker spoke to Sidda; and then his wife addressed him with a few words on his treachery. They then asked him where he had put the chain.
‘I have not taken it,’ Sidda said feebly, looking at the ground.
‘Why did you run away without telling us?’ asked Leela’s mother. There was no answer.
Leela’s face became red. ‘Oh, policemen, leave him alone. I want to play with him.’
‘My dear child,’ said the police inspector, ‘he is a thief.’
‘Let him be,’ Leela replied haughtily.
‘What a devil you must be to steal a thing from such an innocent child!’ remarked the inspector. ‘Even now it is not too late. Return it. I will let you off, provided you promise not to do such a thing again.’ Leela’s father and mother, too, joined in this appeal. Leela felt disgusted with the whole business and said, ‘Leave him alone, he hasn’t taken the chain.’
‘You are not at all a reliable prosecution witness, my child,’ observed the inspector humorously.
‘No, he hasn’t taken it!’ Leela screamed.
Her father said, ‘Baby, if you don’t behave, I will be very angry with you.’
Half an hour later the inspector said to the constable, ‘Take him to the station. I think I shall have to sit with him tonight.’ The constable took Sidda by the hand and turned to go. Leela ran behind them crying, ‘Don’t take him. Leave him here, leave him here.’ She clung to Sidda’s hand. He looked at her mutely, like an animal. Mr Sivasanker carried Leela back into the house. Leela was in tears.
Every day when Mr Sivasanker came home he was asked by his wife, ‘Any news of the jewel?’ and by his daughter, ‘Where is Sidda?’
‘They still have him in the lockup, though he is very stubborn and won’t say anything about the jewel,’ said Mr Sivasanker.
‘Bah! What a rough fellow he must be!’ said his wife with a shiver.
‘Oh, these fellows who have been in jail once or twice lose all fear. Nothing can make them confess.’
A few days later, putting her hand into the tamarind pot in the kitchen, Leela’s mother picked up the chain. She took it to the tap and washed off the coating of tamarind on it. It was unmistakably Leela’s chain. When it was shown to her, Leela said, ‘Give it here. I want to wear the chain.’
‘How did it get into the tamarind pot?’ Mother asked.
‘Somehow,’ replied Leela.
‘Did you put it in?’ asked Mother.
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Long ago, the other day,’
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Leela.
When Father came home and was told, he said, ‘The child must not have any chain hereafter. Didn’t I tell you that I saw her carrying it in her hand once or twice? She must have dropped it into the pot sometime . . . And all this bother on account of her.’
‘What about Sidda?’ asked Mother.
‘I will tell the inspector tomorrow . . . in any case, we couldn’t have kept a criminal like him in the house.’
MOTHER AND SON
Ramu’s mother waited till he was halfway through dinner and then introduced the subject of marriage. Ramu merely replied, ‘So you are at it again!’ He appeared more amused than angry, and so she brought out her favourite points one by one: her brother’s daughter was getting on to fourteen, the girl was good-looking and her brother was prepared to give a handsome dowry; she (Ramu’s mother) was getting old and wanted a holiday from housekeeping: she might die any moment and then who would cook Ramu’s food and look after him? And the most indisputable argument: a man’s luck changed with marriage. ‘The harvest depends not on the hand that holds the plough but on the hand which holds the pot.’ Earlier in the evening Ramu’s mother had decided that if he refused again or exhibited the usual sullenness at the mention of marriage, she would leave him to his fate; she would leave him absolutely alone even if she saw him falling down before a coming train. She would never more interfere in his affairs. She realized what a resolute mind she possessed, and felt proud of the fact. That was the kind of person one ought to be. It was all very well having a mother’s heart and so on, but even a mother could have a limit to her feelings. If Ramu thought he could do what he pleased just because she was only a mother, she would show him he was mistaken. If he was going to slight her judgement and feelings, she was going to show how indifferent she herself could be . . .
With so much preparation she broached the subject of marriage and presented a formidable array of reasons. But Ramu just brushed them aside and spoke slightingly of the appearance of her brother’s daughter. And then she announced, ‘This is the last time I am speaking about this. Hereafter I will leave you alone. Even if I see you drowning I will never ask why you are drowning. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ Ramu brooded. He could not get through his Intermediate even at the fourth attempt; he could not get a job, even at twenty rupees a month. And here was Mother worrying him to marry. Of all girls, his uncle’s! That protruding tooth alone would put off any man. It was incredible that he should be expected to marry that girl. He had always felt that when he married he would marry a girl like Rezia, whom he had seen in two or three Hindi films. Life was rusty and sterile, and Ramu lived in a stage of perpetual melancholia and depression; he loafed away his time, or slept, or read old newspapers in a free reading room . . .
He now sat before his dining leaf and brooded. His mother watched him for a moment and said, ‘I hate your face. I hate anyone who sits before his leaf with that face. A woman only ten days old in widowhood would put on a more cheerful look.’
‘You are saying all sorts of things because I refuse to marry your brother’s daughter,’ he replied.
‘What do I care? She is a fortunate girl and will get a really decent husband.’ Ramu’s mother hated him for his sullenness. It was this gloomy look that she hated in people. It was unbearable. She spoke for a few minutes, and he asked, ‘When are you going to shut up?’
‘My life is nearly over,’ said the mother. ‘You will see me shutting up once and for all very soon. Don’t be impatient. You ask me to shut up! Has it come to this?’
‘Well, I only asked you to give me some time to eat.’
‘Oh, yes. You will have it soon, my boy. When I am gone you will have plenty of time, my boy.’
Ramu did not reply. He ate his food in silence. ‘I only want you to look a little more human when you eat,’ she said.
‘How is it possible with this food?’ asked Ramu.
‘What do you say?’ screamed the mother. ‘If you are so fastidious, work and earn li
ke all men. Throw down the money and demand what you want. Don’t command when you are a pauper.’
When the meal was over, Ramu was seen putting on his sandals. ‘Where are you going?’ asked the mother.
‘Going out,’ he curtly replied, and walked out, leaving the street door ajar.
Her duties for the day were over. She had scrubbed the floor of the kitchen, washed the vessels and put them in a shining row on the wooden shelf, returned the short scrubbing broom to its corner and closed the kitchen window.
Taking the lantern and closing the kitchen door, she came to the front room. The street door stood ajar. She became indignant at her son’s carelessness. The boy was indifferent and irresponsible and didn’t feel bound even to shut the street door. Here she was wearing out her palm scrubbing the floor night after night. Why should she slave if he was indifferent? He was old enough to realize his responsibilities in life.
She took out her small wooden box and put into her mouth a clove, a cardamom and a piece of areca nut. Chewing these, she felt more at peace with life. She shut the door without bolting it and lay down to sleep.
Where could Ramu have gone? She began to feel uneasy. She rolled her mat, went out, spread it on the pyol and lay down. She muttered to herself the holy name of Sri Rama in order to keep out disturbing thoughts. She went on whispering, ‘Sita Rama Rama . . .’ But she ceased unconsciously. Her thoughts returned to Ramu. What did he say before going out? ‘I am just going out for a stroll, Mother. Don’t worry. I shall be back soon.’ No, it was not that. Not he. Why was the boy so secretive about his movements? That was impudent and exasperating. But, she told herself, she deserved no better treatment with that terrible temper and cutting tongue of hers. There was no doubt that she had conducted herself abominably during the meal. All her life this had been her worst failing: this tendency, while in a temper, to talk without restraint. She even felt that her husband would have lived for a few more years if she had spoken to him less . . . Ramu had said something about the food. She would include more vegetables and cook better from tomorrow. Poor boy . . .
She fell asleep. Somewhere a gong sounded one, and she woke up. One o’clock? She called, ‘Ramu, Ramu.’
She did not dare to contemplate what he might have done with himself. Gradually she came to believe that her words during the meal had driven him to suicide. She sat up and wept. She was working herself up to a hysterical pitch. When she closed her eyes to press out the gathering tears, the vision of her son’s body floating in Kukanahalli Tank came before her. His striped shirt and mill dhoti were sodden and clung close to his body. His sandals were left on one of the tank steps. His face was bloated beyond all recognition.
She screamed aloud and jumped down from the pyol. She ran along the whole length of Old Agrahar Street. It was deserted. Electric lights twinkled here and there. Far away a tonga was rattling on, the tonga-driver’s song faintly disturbing the silence; the blast of a night constable’s whistle came to her ears, and she stopped running. She realized that after all it might be only her imagination. He might have gone away to the drama, which didn’t usually close before three in the morning. She rapidly uttered the holy name of Sri Rama in order to prevent the picture of Kukanahalli Tank coming before her mind.
She had a restless night. Unknown to herself, she slept in snatches and woke up with a start every time the gong boomed. The gong struck six through the chill morning.
Tears streaming down her face, she started for Kukanahalli Tank. Mysore was just waking to fresh life. Milkmen with slow cows passed along. Municipal sweepers were busy with their long brooms. One or two cycles passed her.
She reached the tank, not daring even once to look at the water. She found him sleeping on one of the benches that lined the bund. For just a second she wondered if it might be his corpse. She shook him vigorously, crying ‘Ramu!’ She heaved a tremendous sigh of relief when he stirred.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘Why are you here, Mother?’
‘What a place to sleep in!’
‘Oh, I just fell asleep,’ he said.
‘Come home,’ she said. She walked on and he followed her. She saw him going down the tank steps. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Just for a wash,’ Ramu explained.
She clung to his arm and said vehemently, ‘No, don’t go near the water.’
He obeyed her, though he was slightly baffled by her vehemence.
NEW STORIES
NAGA
The boy took off the lid of the circular wicker basket and stood looking at the cobra coiled inside, and then said, ‘Naga, I hope you are dead, so that I may sell your skin to the pursemakers; at least that way you may become useful.’ He poked it with a finger. Naga raised its head and looked about with a dull wonder. ‘You have become too lazy even to open your hood. You are no cobra. You are an earthworm. I am a snake charmer attempting to show you off and make a living. No wonder so often I have to stand at the bus stop pretending to be blind and beg. The trouble is, no one wants to see you, no one has any respect for you and no one is afraid of you, and do you know what that means? I starve, that is all.’
Whenever the boy appeared at the street door, householders shooed him away. He had seen his father operate under similar conditions. His father would climb the steps of the house unmindful of the discouragement, settle down with his basket and go through his act heedless of what anyone said. He would pull out his gourd pipe from the bag and play the snake tune over and over, until its shrill, ear-piercing note induced a torpor and made people listen to his preamble: ‘In my dream, God Shiva appeared and said, “Go forth and thrust your hand into that crevice in the floor of my sanctum.” As you all know, Shiva is the Lord of Cobras, which he ties his braid with, and its hood canopies his head; the great God Vishnu rests in the coils of Adi-Shesha, the mightiest serpent, who also bears on his thousand heads this Universe. Think of the armlets on Goddess Parvathi! Again, elegant little snakes. How can we think that we are wiser than our gods? Snake is a part of a god’s ornament, and not an ordinary creature. I obeyed Shiva’s command—at midnight walked out and put my arm into the snake hole.’
At this point his audience would shudder and someone would ask, ‘Were you bitten?’
‘Of course I was bitten, but still you see me here, because the same god commanded, “Find that weed growing on the old fort wall.” No, I am not going to mention its name, even if I am offered a handful of sovereigns.’
‘What did you do with the weed?’
‘I chewed it; thereafter no venom could enter my system. And the terrible fellow inside this basket plunged his fangs into my arm like a baby biting his mother’s nipple, but I laughed and pulled him out, and knocked off with a piece of stone the fangs that made him so arrogant; and then he understood that I was only a friend and well-wisher, and no trouble after that. After all, what is a serpent? A great soul in a state of penance waiting to go back to its heavenly world. That is all, sirs.’
After this speech, his father would flick open the basket lid and play the pipe again, whereupon the snake would dart up like spring-work, look about and sway a little; people would be terrified and repelled, but still enthralled. At the end of the performance, they gave him coins and rice, and sometimes an old shirt, too, and occasionally he wangled an egg if he observed a hen around; seizing Naga by the throat, he let the egg slide down its gullet, to the delight of the onlookers. He then packed up and repeated the performance at the next street or at the bazaar, and when he had collected sufficient food and cash he returned to his hut beside the park wall, in the shade of a big tamarind tree. He cooked the rice and fed his son, and they slept outside the hut, under the stars.
The boy had followed his father ever since he could walk, and when he attained the age of ten his father let him handle Naga and harangue his audience in his own style. His father often said, ‘We must not fail to give Naga two eggs a week. When he grows old, he will grow shorter each day; someday he will grow wings and fly
off, and do you know that at that time he will spit out the poison in his fangs in the form of a brilliant jewel, and if you possessed it you could become a king?’
One day when the boy had stayed beside the hut out of laziness, he noticed a tiny monkey gambolling amidst the branches of the tamarind tree and watched it with open-mouthed wonder, not even noticing his father arrive home.
‘Boy, what are you looking at? Here, eat this,’ said the father, handing him a packet of sweets. ‘They gave it to me at that big house, where some festival is going on. Naga danced to the pipe wonderfully today. He now understands all our speech. At the end of his dance, he stood six feet high on the tip of his tail, spread out his hood, hissed and sent a whole crowd scampering. Those people enjoyed it, though, and gave me money and sweets.’ His father looked happy as he opened the lid of the basket. The cobra raised its head. His father held it up by the neck, and forced a bit of a sweet between its jaws, and watched it work its way down. ‘He is now one of our family and should learn to eat what we eat,’ he said. After struggling through the sweet, Naga coiled itself down, and the man clapped the lid back.
The boy munched the sweet with his eyes still fixed on the monkey. ‘Father, I wish I were a monkey. I’d never come down from the tree. See how he is nibbling all that tamarind fruit . . . Hey, monkey, get me a fruit!’ he cried.
The man was amused, and said, ‘This is no way to befriend him. You should give him something to eat, not ask him to feed you.’
At which the boy spat out his sweet, wiped it clean with his shirt, held it up and cried, ‘Come on, monkey! Here!’
His father said, ‘If you call him “monkey”, he will never like you. You must give him a nice name.’
‘What shall we call him?’
‘Rama, name of the master of Hanuman, the Divine Monkey. Monkeys adore that name.’
The boy at once called, ‘Rama, here, take this.’ He flourished his arms, holding up the sweet, and the monkey did pause in its endless antics and notice him. The boy hugged the tree trunk, and heaved himself up, and carefully placed the sweet on the flat surface of a forking branch, and the monkey watched with round-eyed wonder. The boy slid back to the ground and eagerly waited for the monkey to come down and accept the gift. While he watched and the monkey was debating within himself, a crow appeared from somewhere and took away the sweet. The boy shrieked out a curse.