The Collected Short Stories

by Satyajit Ray

  Within ten minutes of the incident, he had set off in his car. He had spent the night in the waiting room at the railway station in Burdwan, and started on his journey this morning, to find this forest bungalow that he had booked ten days ago.

  Someone knocked on the door. Once, twice, thrice.

  Mr Shasmal could only stare at the door. His whole body was trembling. He felt breathless. ‘Open the door, Jayant. It’s Adheer. Open the door.’

  It was the same Adheer he had shot the night before. When he left, Mr Shasmal was not entirely sure whether his partner was dead. Now, there could be no doubt. That dog, that cat, that snake, the bird—and now it was Adheer standing outside the door. If all the other creatures in the room had appeared here after death, it was only logical to assume that Adheer was dead, too.

  Someone knocked again. And went on knocking.

  Mr Shasmal’s vision blurred, but even so, he could see that the dog was advancing towards him, the cat’s eyes were only inches away from his own, the snake was gliding down a leg of the table with every intention of going straight for him; the bird flew down to sit on his bed, and on his chest had appeared countless little ants, his white vest was covered with them.

  In the end, two constables had to break open the door. Adheer Babu had brought the police from Calcutta. A letter from the tourist department had been found among Mr Shasmal’s papers. That was how they had learnt about his reservation at this bungalow.

  When he found Mr Shasmal lying dead, Inspector Samant turned to Adheer Babu. ‘Did your partner have a weak heart?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know about his heart. But, recently, his behaviour had struck me as most peculiar. No sane person could possibly have played around with our joint funds, or tried to cheat me, the way he did. I felt convinced that he had actually gone mad when I saw a revolver in his hand. To tell you the truth, when he took it out of his pocket, I simply could not believe my eyes. It took me ten minutes to get over my shock after he fired the gun and ran away. That was when I decided this lunatic must be handed over to the police. If I am alive today, it is really purely by chance.’

  Mr Samant frowned. ‘But how did he miss, if he fired at close range?’

  Adheer Babu smiled, ‘How can anyone die, tell me, unless he is destined to do so? The bullet did not hit me. It hit a corner of my sofa. How many people can find their target when it’s pitch dark? You see, there was a power cut in our area, and all the lights went off the minute he took out his revolver!’

  Translated by Gopa Majumdar

  First published in Bengali in 1979

  Pintu’s Grandfather

  Pintu had a great regret in life. Many of his friends had grandfathers, but not one of them was like his own. Raju’s grandfather cut ribbons out of red and purple tissue paper to make a long tail for his kite. Pintu himself had seen him do this. Swapan and Sudeep’s Dadu—whose red cheeks, beaming smile and snowy white beard always reminded Pintu of Father Christmas—wrote such funny rhymes. Pintu had heard one of them so many times from Swapan that, even now, he could recall a few lines:

  London, Madrid, San Francisco

  Akbar, Humayun, Harsha, Kanishko

  Andes, Kilimanjaro, Fujiyama

  Tenzing, Nansen, Vasco-da-Gama

  Riga, Lima, Peru, Chile, Chung King, Congo

  Hannibal, Tughlak, Taimurlingo . . .

  How interesting! One line of geography, and one of history. And he didn’t stop at just writing these poems. He set them to music, played the harmonium and sang each one for all the boys.

  Then there was Shontu’s Dadu. He was so good at shadowgraphy. Using his hands in the light of a candle, he could cast wonderful shadows on the wall. Ateen’s Dadu had a fantastic stock of shikar stories. Shubu’s Dadu knew of a magic component which he mixed in soapy water to create amazingly strong bubbles. Pintu had once seen one such bubble, as large as a number five football, bounce on the ground seven times before bursting.

  Pintu had often thought of his friends’ grandfathers, compared them with his own, and sighed.

  What his Dadu had was a name that was quite a mouthful: Tridibendra Narayan Guha Majumdar. This was followed by several letters from the alphabet, commas and full stops. These were supposed to be degrees he had obtained. Pintu had heard from his parents that a man so learned and erudite as his Dadu was rare not just in Bengal, but in the whole country. He had passed his matric exam when he was only twelve. Very little had had to be spent on his education, for he had won an amazingly large number of scholarships—a feat few other students could match. There was no end to the number of gold and silver medals that had been given to him. Besides, there were certificates of merit and felicitation presented by various universities, which covered every empty space on the walls of his room. Although he had a sound knowledge of most subjects, what he knew the best was something called philosophy. Dadu had written a book in English on this subject, which was published two years ago. Pintu had seen it. It had 772 pages, and it cost sixty-five rupees.

  There was no doubt that he was a learned man. But did being learned and knowledgeable automatically mean that one had to be grave and humourless? Pintu’s friends had turned this into a joke. ‘Hey, did your Dadu smile today?’ they would ask. Pintu could not tell how many times he had heard that question. If he were to say ‘Yes’ in reply, that would be a lie. In all his eight years, Pintu could not remember a single occasion when his Dadu was seen smiling. This did not, however, mean that he shouted at everyone, or even raised his voice. He did not have to, for no one in the house ever gave him the chance to get cross. If they did, they knew that there would be hell to pay. Pintu could never forget the tale he had heard from his mother. Apparently, before he was born, once their dhobi had accidentally put extra starch in his Dadu’s kurta. At this, his Dadu had picked up his sturdy wooden stick and beaten first their dhobi, and then the dhobi’s donkey. What the poor donkey had done, no one had dared ask.

  Last year, Pintu himself had broken a window pane in Dadu’s room. He had been playing danguli with his friends outside, in the open ground. At that moment, Dadu was resting—lying still in his bed, doing the yogic shavasan, after a hard day’s work. The little wooden piece had crashed through the glass and landed in his room. Dadu had shortly emerged on the balcony, the piece of wood in his hand. Pintu was still clutching the stick, so it was obvious who was responsible for the damage. Dadu saw him, but showed no sign of anger. He did not scold him. In fact, he did not utter a single word.

  When Pintu returned home later in the evening, his mother said, ‘Give me that stick you were playing with. It will now remain in your Dadu’s room. And for the next seven days, you are not to play any games with your friends.’

  Pintu could feel tears come to his eyes. What he minded more than not being allowed to play with his friends for a whole week was the loss of that piece of wood and the stick. Especially the wood. Srinivas had sharpened both ends so beautifully with a sickle. No one in the neighbourhood had such a good piece.

  The strange thing was that Pintu knew for sure that his Dadu had not always been like this—at least, not when he was a boy. There was an old photo album in the house. It was made in England, and its thick pages were edged with gold. In it, Pintu had seen a photo of Dadu, taken sixty-two years ago, when he must have been about the same age as Pintu. He was wearing loose shorts, in his hand was a hockey stick, and on his face a big smile. Pintu knew that the boy in that photo looked very much like him. The resemblances in their appearance were really quite striking. How could such a cheerful young boy, who was clearly interested in sports, change so dramatically with age?

  Luckily, Dadu did not spend all his time living with them. Pintu’s uncle—his father’s elder brother—worked in Assam as a senior officer in the forest department. He had a wonderful bungalow in the middle of a forest. Dadu went occasionally to spend a month with him. He always took a suitcase full of notebooks. When he returned, those notebooks were filled with writing.
r />   During his absence, the house took on a totally different air. His sister played the radio loudly to listen to film music; his brother went out to see two films every week (usually with lots of fights and action in them); his father smoked more cigars than usual; and his mother invited all the other ladies in the neighbourhood every afternoon and spent many a happy hour playing cards, or just chatting.

  When Dadu returned, things went back to the way they were.

  This time, however, things took a different turn.

  Dadu went to Assam for a month. Pintu, who slept in the same room as his parents, overheard their conversation one night, shortly before Dadu was expected back home. They were talking about him. He kept his eyes firmly shut, pretending to be asleep, and heard them talk for nearly five minutes. But his father was using such long and difficult English words that Pintu could not understand most of what he was saying. All he managed to gather was that his grandfather had got some sort of a disease.

  Two days later, Dadu returned, sick. Dr Rudra, their family physician, went with Pintu’s father to receive him at the station. They came back in his father’s Ambassador. Dadu got out, helped by Dr Rudra and Pintu’s father. They then held him from both sides and took him up the steps to the front veranda, then to the living room, and finally up the main staircase to his own room on the first floor. They even helped him to lie down in his bed.

  Pintu was standing at the door of Dadu’s bedroom and watching the proceedings, when his mother arrived, laid a hand on his head and said gently, ‘Don’t stand here. Go downstairs, please.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Dadu?’ Pintu couldn’t help asking. ‘He’s ill,’ his mother replied.

  To Pintu, Dadu did not look all that ill. However, he had to admit he had never seen him lean on two people just to walk. Could he have hurt his legs? If he had gone for a walk in the forest where his uncle lived, he could have fallen into a ditch or something. That would not have surprised Pintu at all. Or he might have been bitten by a snake, or a scorpion. That could have made him ill.

  Three days passed. Pintu’s bedroom was on the ground floor, directly below Dadu’s. Since he was not allowed to go upstairs, there was no way he could find out how Dadu was doing. If his older siblings were at home, they might have been able to tell him something. But his sister was in a hostel in Calcutta, and his brother had gone on holiday with a friend to Ranikhet. The previous night, Pintu had heard a bronze glass, or a bowl, fall on the floor in Dadu’s room. This morning, there had been other noises to indicate that Dadu was walking about. So, surely he could not be seriously ill?

  In the afternoon, Pintu could contain himself no longer. His mother had been upstairs to give Dadu his medicine. She had come down a while ago. His father was in court. A nurse was supposed to come in the evening and take charge, Pintu had heard. But right now, there was no one else in Dadu’s room.

  Pintu’s heart began racing faster. He just had to go upstairs and take a quick look. If Dadu was asleep, he would then go into the room and somehow find his wooden piece and the stick. In Dadu’s absence, the room was always kept locked; so he had never had the chance to slip in before.

  He did feel a little nervous going up. But Dadu was ill. What could a sick man do to him? The thought gave him courage. Pintu climbed the nineteen steps that led to the first floor, and walked on tiptoes until he came to the door to Dadu’s room. It stood on his left. A passage ran ahead, at the end of which was the door to the roof.

  The room was totally silent. The smell that greeted Pintu was a familiar one. It was the smell of old books. He loved it. There were some two thousand old books in Dadu’s possession. Pintu held his breath and stretched his neck to peer inside. Dadu’s bed was empty. Could he have gone out on the balcony?

  Pintu raised his right foot to cross the threshold. A noise reached his ears before his foot could touch the floor on the other side.

  Clang, clang, clang!

  Startled, Pintu took a step backwards. There was another sound. ‘Cooo-e-e-e!’

  Pintu’s eyes turned towards the door to the roof. It was ajar. A face was peeping from the other side.

  It was Dadu. But Pintu had never seen him look like this. His whole face was lit up by a smile. His eyes held a mischievous glint. Pintu could only stare at him, totally incredulous.

  Then Dadu stretched his right arm from behind the door. In his hand was clasped the wooden stick.

  He beckoned in silence, and disappeared from the door. Pintu moved forward to go up to the roof.

  It was a large roof. The piece of wood Srinivas had sharpened for him lay in the middle of it. Dadu looked at Pintu, grinned and took aim. Then he struck the piece with the stick. Clang!

  He missed the first time. The stick did not touch the piece of wood. Dadu tried again. This time, the stick hit the exact spot it was supposed to, making the piece rise and spin several feet high. Dadu struck it once more with all his might.

  The wooden piece flew like a rocket, shooting over the supari tree that stood at least twenty feet to the west. Then it disappeared in the direction of their neighbour’s house. Dadu burst into laughter, jumped and clapped his hands.

  Pintu moved away, and climbed down the stairs to find his mother. When he told her what he had just seen, she explained that that was the chief symptom of Dadu’s illness. Sometimes, apparently, old men caught this disease. When they did, they did not remain old any more. They turned into little boys.

  So Dadu had a disease. Never mind. For the first time, Pintu could tell his friends that he had seen his grandfather laugh—uproariously.

  Translated by Gopa Majumdar

  First published in Bengali in 1979

  Big Bill

  By Tulsi Babu’s desk in his office on the ninth floor of a building in Old Court House Street, there was a window which opened onto a vast expanse of the western sky. Tulsi Babu’s neighbour Jaganmoy Dutt had just gone to spit betel juice out of the window one morning in the rainy season when he noticed a double rainbow in the sky. He uttered an exclamation of surprise and turned to Tulsi Babu. ‘Come here, sir. You won’t see the like of it every day.’

  Tulsi Babu left his desk, went to the window, and looked out.

  ‘What do you want me to see?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, the double rainbow!’ said Jaganmoy Dutt. ‘Are you colour- blind?’

  Tulsi Babu went back to his desk. ‘I can’t see what is so special about a double rainbow. Even if there were twenty rainbows in the sky, there would be nothing surprising about that. Why, in that case one can just as well go and stare at the double-spired church on Lower Circular Road!’

  Not everyone is endowed with the same sense of wonder, but there was good reason to doubt whether Tulsi Babu possessed any at all. There was only one thing that never ceased to surprise him, and that was the excellence of the mutton kebab at Mansur’s. The only person who was aware of this was Tulsi Babu’s friend and colleague, Prodyot Chanda.

  Therefore, being endowed with this sceptical temperament, when Tulsi Babu found an unusually large egg while looking for medicinal plants in the forests of Dandakaranya, he was not particularly surprised.

  Tulsi Babu had been dabbling in ayurvedic medicine for the last fifteen years. His father was a well-known herbalist. Though Tulsi Babu’s main source of income was as an upper division clerk in Arbuthnot & Co., he had not been able to discard the family profession altogether. Of late he had started devoting a little more time to it because two fairly distinguished citizens of Calcutta had benefited from his prescriptions, thus giving a boost to his reputation as a part-time herbalist.

  The search for these herbs had brought him to Dandakaranya. He had heard that thirty miles to the north of Jagdalpur, there lived a holy man in a mountain cave who knew of some medicinal plants including one for high blood pressure. This plant was supposedly even more efficacious than the more common Rawolfia serpentina. Tulsi Babu suffered from hypertension; serpentina hadn’t worked too well in his case, and h
e had no faith in homoeopathy or allopathy.

  Tulsi Babu took his friend Prodyot Babu with him on a trip to Jagdalpur. Prodyot Babu had often been bothered by his friend’s unflappable nature. One day he had been forced to comment, ‘All one needs to feel a sense of wonder is a little imagination. You are so devoid of it that even if a full- fledged ghost were to appear before you, you wouldn’t be surprised.’ Tulsi Babu had replied calmly, ‘To feign surprise when one doesn’t actually feel it is an affectation. I do not approve of it.’

  But this didn’t get in the way of their friendship.

  The two checked into a hotel in Jagdalpur during the autumn vacation. On the way, in the Madras Mail, two foreign youngsters had got into their compartment. They had turned out to be Swedes. One of them was so tall that his head nearly touched the roof of the compartment. Prodyot Babu had asked him how tall he was and the young man had replied, ‘Two metres and seven centimetres.’ That was nearly seven feet. Prodyot Babu couldn’t take his eyes off this young giant during the rest of the journey; but Tulsi Babu did not register even a flicker of amazement. He said such extraordinary height was simply the result of the diet of the Swedish people, and therefore nothing to wonder about.

  They reached the cave of the holy man Dhumai Baba after walking through the forest for a mile or so and then climbing up about 500 feet. The cave was a large one, but since no sunlight penetrated inside, they only had to take ten steps to be engulfed in a darkness thickened by the ever-present smoke from the Baba’s brazier. Prodyot Babu was absorbed in watching, by the light of his torch, the profusion of stalactites and stalagmites while Tulsi Babu enquired after his herbal medicine. The tree that Dhumai Baba referred to was known as chakraparna, meaning ‘round leaves’ in Sanskrit. Tulsi Babu had never heard of it, nor was it mentioned in any of the half-dozen books he had read on herbal medicine. It was not a tree but a shrub, and was found only in one part of the forest of Dandakaranya, and nowhere else. Dhumai Baba gave adequate directions which Tulsi Babu noted down carefully.