Kiran called him into the next room and asked him in kind, soft tones, ‘Nilu, if you have that inkstand, give it me quietly and no one will say anything to you.’ Heavy tears welled from his eyes: he covered his face with his hands and wept. Kiran came out of the room and said, ‘Nilkanta did not steal your inkstand.’
Sharat and Satish both insisted, ‘No one but him could have stolen it.’
‘It wasn’t him,’ said Kiran firmly.
Sharat wanted to fetch Nilkanta to interrogate him, but Kiran said, ‘No. I forbid you to ask him anything about the theft.’
‘We should search his room and his box,’ said Satish.
‘If you do that,’ said Kiran, ‘I shall have nothing more to do with you. You shouldn’t cast suspicion on the innocent.’
As she spoke, tears collected in her eyelids. The appeal of those tears in her sad eyes ensured that no further action was taken against Nilkanta. But the unjust treatment of an innocent orphan boy sent a surge of sympathy through Kiran’s heart. That evening she entered Nilkanta’s room with a fine matching dhoti and chadar, two shirts, a pair of new shoes and a ten-rupee note. Her plan was to put these loving gifts inside his box without telling him. The tin box too had been given by her. Taking her bunch of keys from the end of her sari, she quietly opened the box. But she couldn’t fit her presents into it. Cotton-reels, bamboo-twigs, polished shells for cutting green mangoes, the bottoms of broken glasses, and various similar articles were heaped inside it. She decided that if she carefully rearranged these things, everything would go in. She began to empty the box. First of all the cotton-reels, spinning-tops and knives came out; then some clean and dirty clothes, and then, right at the bottom, Satish’s precious swan inkstand.
Amazed and flushed, Kiran sat pondering for a long time with the inkstand in her hand. When Nilkanta came into the room from behind her, she never even noticed. He saw everything: realized that Kiran had herself come like a thief to confirm his thieving, and that he had been caught. But how could he explain that he had not stolen like a common thief out of greed, that he’d done it in retaliation, that he’d meant to throw the thing into the river, and only in a moment of weakness had he not thrown it away but had buried it in his box? He was not a thief, he was not a thief! But then what was he? How could he say what he was? He had stolen something but he was not a thief! The fact that Kiran had suspected him – it was the cruel injustice of this that he would never be able to explain, never be able to bear.
With a long sigh, Kiran put the inkstand back into the box. Like a thief herself, she pressed the dirty clothes on top of it, then those boyish things – cotton-reels, twigs, spinning-tops, shells, pieces of glass; then she arranged her presents and the ten-rupee note.
The next day there was no sign of the Brahmin boy. The villagers said they had not seen him; the police said he was missing. ‘We must look at his box now,’ said Sharat.
‘Not on any account,’ said Kiran adamantly.
Later, she fetched the box into her own room, took out the inkstand and secretly threw it into the Ganges.
Sharat and his family went home; the house and garden lay empty. Only Nilkanta’s village dog remained. It wandered along by the river, forgetting to eat, searching, searching and howling.
Elder Sister
I
‘If you want my opinion,’ said Shashi’s neighbour Tara after describing in detail how one of the husbands in the village ill-treated his wife, ‘husbands like that should have burning coals shoved down their throats.’
Shashi, wife of Jaygopal, was appalled by such a remark. It did not do credit to a wife to wish anything other than the fire of a cheroot to be in a husband’s mouth, whatever the circumstances. But when she expressed her dismay, the hard-hearted Tara said with doubled venom, ‘Better to be widowed in seven successive lives than have a husband like that.’ And ending the conversation there, she went on her way.
‘I can’t imagine any fault in a husband so bad that one could feel such dreadful things about him,’ said Shashi to herself. As she reflected on this, her soft heart swelled with tender feelings towards her own absent husband. She stretched her arms over the part of the bed where he normally slept, kissed the vacant pillow, sensed a whiff of her husband’s hair, and then, closing the door, took from a wooden box an almost forgotten photograph of him and some of his letters. She sat alone in her room through the still afternoon, musing and reflecting, tearfully pining for him.
Shashikala and Jaygopal were not recently married. They had been married as children, and now they had children of their own. They had been together for a long time, and lived normally and straightforwardly. There had never been signs of exceptional passion between them. But when, after nearly sixteen years in which they had never been separated, her husband’s work had suddenly taken him away, Shashi felt a much more intense love for him. His absence pulled at her heart, tightening the knot of love; feelings whose existence she had never previously known tugged and twinged within her. So despite her years, and despite being a wife and mother, Shashi sat on her lonely bed, daydreaming like a fresh young bride. The love that had, unbeknown to her, flowed through her life like a river, suddenly woke her with its murmur: she began to see a succession of golden cities and flowering arbours along its banks, whose promise of pleasure was now beyond her reach, a thing of the past. She said to herself, ‘When I get my husband back I shall never again let life be dull, or the spring fruitless.’ Why had she argued so often with her husband over footling matters? Now, in her intensity of love, she resolved never to be impatient again, never to oppose his wishes or commands. She would meekly and lovingly accept his activities whether good or bad, because nothing was more precious or divine than a husband.
For many years Shashikala had been her parents’ beloved only child. So although Jaygopal earned little, he was not anxious about the future. He would inherit from his father-in-law Kaliprasanna enough to live like a prince, in village terms. But very unexpectedly, at an advanced age, Shashikala’s parents produced a son. Truth to tell, Shashi was rather scandalized that her parents should have done something so inappropriate to their years; and Jaygopal was not too happy either.
Her parents’ love for this child of their old age became extreme. Unknowingly, this new-born, suckling, sleepy brother-in-law robbed Jaygopal of his hopes, seized them in his tiny fists. Hence this job in an Assam tea-garden. Everyone had urged him to look for work nearer home, but whether out of grudge or from the notion that he would quickly rise high there, Jaygopal listened to no one. Leaving Shashi and their children in her father’s house, he went off to Assam. It was the first time he had ever been away from her.
Shashikala was very angry with her baby brother for causing this. A grievance that cannot be expressed openly always festers. He just sucked at the breast comfortably and shut his eyes in sleep, but his big sister resented having to warm his milk or cool his rice, making her own son late for school. Her resentment upset the whole household.
Within a short time the boy’s mother was dead. Before she died she entrusted her baby son to her daughter’s care.
It was not long before the motherless infant conquered his sister’s heart. He would leap with a shriek on to her lap and greedily gobble her face and eyes and nose with his toothless little mouth; he would grab her hair in his fist and refuse to let go; he would wake before dawn, snuggle close, tickle her gently and babble; whatever he did she was helpless! Soon he was calling her ‘Jiji’ and ‘Jijimā’,1 getting up to mischief when she worked or rested, eating what was forbidden, going where he was forbidden – she gave in totally to this wilful little scallywag. Because he had no mother, his hold on her was all the greater.
II
The boy’s name was Nilmani. When he was two years old, his father fell seriously ill. A letter was sent to Jaygopal, telling him to come at once. With great difficulty Jaygopal managed to get leave: when he arrived, Kaliprasanna was dying.
Before he died, he entru
sted his little son to the guardianship of Jaygopal and left a quarter of his estate to his daughter. Jaygopal therefore had to resign from his job and return to manage the estate.
Husband and wife were reunited after a long time. If a material thing gets broken it can be dovetailed together again; but there are no clean edges along which two people who have been apart for a long time can be stuck together. This is because the mind is a living substance, changing and ripening with every moment. For Shashi, to be reunited was a new emotional experience. It was as if she were marrying her husband again. The staleness that the habits of a long-standing marriage bring about had been dispelled by absence; she felt she was receiving her husband back more fully than before. She promised herself: ‘Whatever the future may bring, however long I live, I shall never let this bright new love for my husband grow dim.’
But Jaygopal’s feelings at the reunion were different. When they had lived together before, all his interests and habits had been bound up with Shashi: she had grown to be a permanent feature in his life – if ever he was without her, gaps were made in his daily routine. So when he first went away, Jaygopal found himself at a loss. But gradually the gaps were patched over with new routines. Not only that. Formerly, his life had been leisurely and serene; but now, over the last two years, he had become so ambitious to improve his circumstances that he thought of little else. Compared to this, his old way of life seemed thin as a shadow. In women, the greatest changes are worked by love; in men, by ambition.
Jaygopal did not get his wife back after two years exactly as she had been before. His little brother-in-law had added a new dimension to her life – one which was completely unknown to him, one in which he had no part. His wife tried to get him to share her love for the boy, but I cannot say she was successful. She would bring Nilmani in her arms and smilingly hold him up to her husband: Nilmani would cling to her, bury his face in her shoulder, would not acknowledge any kinship with him. She wanted her little brother to show Jaygopal his tricks – but Jaygopal was not very interested, and the boy was not keen either. Jaygopal could not for the life of him understand why this skinny, large-headed, solemn, dark-complexioned child deserved such affection.
Women are never slow to perceive real feelings. Shashi soon saw that Jaygopal was not enamoured of Nilmani. She then became very protective: doing her utmost to keep him away from her husband’s withering stare. The child became her secret treasure, the object of her love alone. Everyone knows that the more love is secretive, the more it grows.
When Nilmani cried, Jaygopal was extremely irritated, so Shashi would clasp him to her breast trying with all the force of her embrace to soothe him. And when her husband’s sleep was disturbed by Nilmani’s crying, and he shouted out in fury, full of aggression towards him, Shashi herself felt guilty and embarrassed. She swept him out of earshot, and soothed him to sleep again with meek and adoring repetitions of ‘My treasure, my jewel, my precious’.
Quarrels between children can flare up for various reasons. Formerly on such occasions Shashi would punish her own children, taking her brother’s part because he had no mother. But now a change of judge had brought about a change in the penal code. Nilmani had to suffer harsh punishments, unfair and undeserved. The injustice of it cut his sister to the quick: she would take her disgraced little brother to her room, give him sweets and toys, caress him and kiss him, do everything she could to heal the child’s wounded feelings.
The result was this: the more Shashi doted on Nilmani the more Jaygopal resented him, and the more dislike Jaygopal showed towards Nilmani the more Shashi adored him. Jaygopal never actually ill-treated his wife, and Shashi continued to serve him with silent, meek devotion; it was only Nilmani who was a concealed but ever-growing bone of contention between them. Silent animosity and jealousy of this kind is harder to bear than open conflict.
III
Nilmani’s head was out of proportion to his body. It was as if the Creator had blown a bubble on the end of a stick. Doctors were afraid sometimes that the boy would be as fragile and short-lived as a bubble. It took him a long time to learn to talk and walk. His mournful, solemn face made one think that his parents had piled their elderly worries on to this little child’s head. But his big sister’s careful nurturing got him through the dangerous years, and he reached the age of six.
In the month of Kārtik, Shashi dressed Nilmani up as a little gentleman in a red-bordered dhoti and performed the bhāiphõtā ceremony, marking his forehead with sandal-paste. Tara – the blunt-speaking neighbour mentioned earlier – appeared then, and picked a quarrel with Shashi. ‘What good will the paste do,’ she said, ‘when in fact you’ve been secretly ruining him?’
Shashi was thunderstruck. The rumour was – so Tara told her – that she and her husband had defaulted on the payment of duty on Nilmani’s estate, so that they could buy it back at auction in the name of Jaygopal’s cousin. Shashi cursed those who put about such slanders: they deserved to catch leprosy.
She then went tearfully to her husband and told him what people were saying. ‘You can’t trust anyone these days,’ said Jaygopal. ‘Upen is my cousin: I was entirely happy to leave the management of Nilmani’s property to him. I had no idea he had secretly defaulted on payment of duty, and bought the estate at Hasilpur himself.’
‘Aren’t you going to sue him?’ said Shashi in amazement.
‘How can I sue my cousin?’ said Jaygopal. ‘And there’d be no point – it would just be a waste of money.’
To trust her husband’s word was Shashi’s highest duty, but she had no faith in him now. Her happy family, her loving home, now seemed monstrously ugly. What had been a haven was suddenly a cruel trap, squeezing both her and her brother on all sides. How could she, a woman, on her own, protect the hapless Nilmani? What refuge was there? The more she thought, the more her heart filled with horror, and the more it filled with love for her little brother in his plight. She wondered if there was a way in which she could appeal to the Governor-General: maybe she could even write to the Queen of England to restore her brother’s inheritance. The Queen would never have allowed the Hasilpur estate – which brought in 758 rupees a year for Nilmani – to be sold. She went on thinking about how she would appeal to the Queen to secure full restitution from her husband’s cousin; but suddenly now Nilmani developed a fever, and started to have convulsions.
Jaygopal called the local Indian doctor. When Shashi begged him to call a better doctor he said, ‘Why, is Matilal such a bad one?’
Shashi fell at his feet, implored him. ‘All right,’ said Jaygopal, ‘I’ll bring the doctor from town.’
Shashi clasped Nilmani to her, lay down clutching him to her breast. Nilmani too never took his eyes off her; held on to her lest she should slip away while he was not looking. Even when he fell asleep, he continued to grasp her sari.
In the evening, after a whole day of this, Jaygopal returned and said, ‘I couldn’t get the town doctor – he’s gone to see a patient out of town somewhere. I’ve got to leave today to attend a court-case. I’ve told Matilal to visit the patient regularly.’
That night Nilmani began to rave in his sleep. In the morning Shashi, without pausing to consider the matter, boarded a boat with her sick brother and travelled all the way to the doctor’s house. The doctor was at home – he had not left to go anywhere. Seeing that Shashi was of good family, he arranged accommodation for her, with an elderly widow in attendance, and started to treat the boy.
The next day Jaygopal arrived. Blazing with anger, he ordered his wife to return with him at once. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me back,’ she said. ‘You and your people want to kill Nilmani: he has no mother, no father, no one but me. I’ll protect him.’
‘Then stay here,’ roared Jaygopal, ‘and never set foot in my house again.’
‘Your house!’ said Shashi, incensed too. ‘It’s my brother’s house!’
‘We’ll see about that,’ said Jaygopal.
For a few days, local peo
ple raised an uproar about these events. The neighbour Tara said, ‘If a woman wants to quarrel with her husband, she should do it comfortably at home. There’s no need to move out. After all, a husband is a husband!’
By spending all the money she had with her, and by selling her ornaments, Shashi managed to save her brother from death. She then heard that the large piece of land her family owned at Dvari village, on which their house stood, and which, all told, brought in an annual income of nearly 1,500 rupees, had been appropriated by Jaygopal in his own name and in collusion with the zamindar. The property now belonged to him, not to her brother.
When he had got over his illness and was up again, Nilmani said piteously, ‘Didi, let’s go home.’ He missed his playmates – Shashi’s own children. ‘Please, Didi, let’s go home,’ he said, over and over again. His sister could only weep and say, ‘Where is our home now?’ But there was no point in weeping. Nilmani had no one in the world now but his big sister. When this had sunk in, Shashi dried her eyes and went to see the wife of Tarini Babu, the Deputy Magistrate.
The Deputy Magistrate knew Jaygopal. He was annoyed that a wife of good family should want to leave her home and quarrel with her husband over property. Soothing her down, he wrote urgently to Jaygopal – who came at once, forced his wife and brother-in-law on to a boat and took them home.
For the second time, husband and wife were reunited after a separation. Fated to be united!
Nilmani was delighted to be back playing with his friends. It broke Shashi’s heart to see his carefree happiness.
IV
In the winter the English District Magistrate went out on tour and pitched his tent in the village, hoping to do some hunting there. Nilmani met the Magistrate on a village-path. The other boys made scarce, giving him as wide a berth as Chanakya recommends for animals with sharp nails, teeth or horns. But the solemn Nilmani stayed to examine the sāheb with calm curiosity.