‘Oh!’ he exclaimed under his breath, tired and exasperated. And for a moment he stood defeated where he had bent down to the pitcher.
‘I shall go and get some water,’ said Sohini meekly.
‘All right,’ agreed Bakha without any show of formality, and going out of doors sat down on the edge of a broken cane chair, the only article of furniture of European design which he had been able to acquire in pursuance of his ambition to live like an Englishman. Sohini picked up the pitcher, poised it easily on her head, and ran past her brother.
How a round base can be adjusted on a round top, how a sphere can rest on a sphere is a problem which may be of interest to those who think like a learned babu. It never occurred to Sohini to ask herself anything like this as she balanced the pitcher on her head and went to and from her one-roomed home to the steps of the caste-well where she counted on the chance of some gentleman taking pity on her and giving her the water she needed. She had a sylph-like form, not thin but full-bodied within the limits of her graceful frame, well-rounded on the hips, with an arched narrow waist from which descended the folds of her salwars and above which were her full, round, globular breasts, jerking slightly, for lack of a bodice, under her transparent muslin shirt. Bakha observed her as she walked along swaying. She was beautiful. He was proud of her with a pride not altogether that of a brother for a sister.
The outcastes were not allowed to mount the platform surrounding the well, because if they were ever to draw water from it, the Hindus of the three upper castes would consider the water polluted. Nor were they allowed access to the nearby brook as their use of it would contaminate the stream. They had no well of their own because it cost a lot of money to dig a well in such a hilly town as Bulandshahr. Perforce they had to collect at the foot of the caste Hindu’s well and depend on the bounty of some of their superiors to pour water into their pitchers. More often than not there was no caste Hindu present. Most of them were rich enough to get the water-carriers to supply them with plenty of fresh water every morning for their baths and kitchens, and only those came to the well who were either fond of an open-air bath or too poor to pay for the water-carriers’ services. So the outcastes had to wait for chance to bring some caste Hindu to the well, for luck to decide that he was kind, for Fate to ordain that he had time—to get their pitchers filled with water. They crowded round the well, congested the space below its high brick platform, morning, noon and night, joining their hands in servile humility to every passer-by; cursing their fate, and bemoaning their lot, if they were refused the help they wanted; praying, beseeching and blessing, if some generous soul condescended to listen to them, or to help them.
When Sohini reached the well there were already about ten other outcastes waiting. But there was no one to give them water. She had come as fast as she could to the well, full of fear and anxiety that she would have to wait her turn since she could see from a distance that there was already a crowd. She didn’t feel disappointed so much as depressed to realize that she would be the eleventh to receive water. She had sensed the feeling in her brother’s soul. He was tired. He was thirsty. She had felt like a mother as she issued from her home to fetch water, a mother going out to fetch food and drink for her loved ones at home. Now as she sat in a row with her fellow-sufferers, her heart sank. There was no sign of anyone passing that way who could be a possible benefactor. But she was patient. She had in her an inbred fortitude, obvious in her curious reserve, in her docile and peaceful bearing.
Gulabo, the washerwoman, the mother of Ram Charan, her brother’s friend, had observed Sohini approach. She was a fair-complexioned, middle-aged woman, the regularity of whose supple body bore even in its decay the evidence of a form which must, in her youth, have been wonderful. But although her face was now covered with wrinkles she had pretensions to beauty and was notorious as an assertive hussy who thought herself superior to every other outcaste, firstly because she claimed a high place in the hierarchy of the castes among the low castes, secondly because a well-known Hindu gentleman in the town who had been her lover in her youth was still kind to her in her middle age.
Now Sohini, being of the lowest caste among the outcastes, would naturally be looked down upon by Gulabo. The delicate features of her rising beauty had inflamed Gulabo’s body. The girl was a potential rival. Gulabo hated the very sight of her innocent, honest face, though she would not confess, even to herself, that she was jealous of the sweeper-girl. But she unconsciously betrayed her feeling in the mockery and light-hearted abuse with which she greeted Sohini.
‘Go back home,’ said Gulabo mockingly. ‘There is no one to give you water here! There are so many of us ahead of you.’
Sohini smiled evasively, then, recognizing an elderly man in the company, she modestly adjusted her apron on her head so as not to show her eyes. And she sat still, crouching by her pitcher.
‘Have you heard of such immodesty!’ exclaimed Gulabo to Waziro, the weaver’s wife who sat near her. ‘This sweeper-girl goes about without an apron over her head all day in town and in the cantonment.’
‘Really!’ exclaimed Waziro, pretending to be shocked, though she knew Gulabo’s evil tongue and had nothing against Sohini. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ she said, winking an aside to the girl.
Sohini could not suppress her amusement at so comic an assurance of friendliness as Waziro’s and laughed.
‘Think of it! Think of it! Bitch! Prostitute! Wanton! And your mother hardly dead. Think of laughing in my face, laughing at me who am old enough to be your mother. Bitch!’ the washerwoman exploded.
Sohini laughed still more hilariously at the ridiculous abruptness of Gulabo’s abuse.
‘Arré, bitch! Do you take me for a buffoon? What are you laughing at, slut? Aren’t you ashamed of showing your teeth to me in the presence of men, prostitute?’ shouted Gulabo. And she looked towards the old men and the little boys who were of the company.
Sohini now realized that the woman was angry. ‘But I haven’t done anything to annoy her,’ she reflected. ‘She herself began it all and is abusing me. I didn’t pick the quarrel. I have more cause to be angry than she has.’
‘Bitch, why don’t you speak! Prostitute, why don’t you answer me?’ Gulabo insisted.
‘Please don’t abuse me,’ the girl said, ‘I haven’t said anything to you.’
‘You annoy me with your silence. Eater of dung and drinker of urine! Bitch of a sweeper-woman! I will show you how to insult one old enough to be your mother.’ And she rose with upraised arm and rushed at Sohini.
Waziro, the weaver’s wife, ran after her and caught her just before she had time to hit the sweeper-girl.
‘Be calm, be calm; you must not do that,’ she said as she dragged Gulabo back to her seat. ‘No, you must not do that.’
A flutter of excitement seized the little group; exclamations, shouts and cries of ‘Hai, Hai’, and strange looks of disgust, indignation and disapproval were exchanged. Sohini was a bit frightened at first and grew pale, but she kept intensely still and, avoiding the shock, subsided into a listless apathy. As she looked away, and cast her eyes up to the blue heavens overhead, she felt a sort of dreariness which, though she accepted it resignedly, brought a hurtfulness with it. Sad and wistful, she heaved a soft sigh and felt something in her heart asking for mercy. The sun overhead shot down sharp arrows of heat, and inspired a feeling of the passing of time, a feeling that made her forget the unsolicited quarrel with Gulabo, but cast over her the miserable, soul-harrowing shadow of the vision of her brother waiting for her at home, thirsty after the morning’s toil, aching for a cup of tea. And yet no caste Hindu seemed to be near.
Minutes passed in silence, intermittently broken by Gulabo’s sobs and sighs. ‘On the day of my little daughter’s marriage too! This inauspicious sweeper-woman has started my auspicious day so badly,’ she was saying. But no one heeded her. And then at long last, a belated caste Hindu visitor to the latrines was passing. He was a sepoy from the n
eighbouring regiment.
‘Oh, Maharaj! Maharaj! Won’t you draw us some water, please? We beg you. We have been waiting here a long time, we will be grateful,’ shouted the chorus of voices as they pressed towards him, some standing up, bending and joining their palms in beggary, others twisting their lips in various attitudes of servile appeal and abject humility as they remained seated, separate.
Either the sepoy was a callous brute or in too much of a hurry. But he passed by without heeding the request of the group collected at the foot of the well.
Luckily for the crowd of outcastes, however, there was another man coming a little way behind, no less a person than Pundit Kali Nath, one of the priests in charge of the temple in the town. The crowd repeated their entreaties more vehemently than before.
The Pundit hesitated, twitched his eyebrows and looked at the group, frowning with the whole of his bony, hollow-cheeked, deeply-furrowed face. The appeal seemed, even to his dry as dust self, irresistible. But he was an ill-humoured old devil, and had it not been that, as he stood and reflected, he realized that the exercise at the well might do some good to the chronic constipation from which he suffered, he would not have consented to help the outcastes.
He moved slowly on to the brick platform of the well. His small, cautious steps and the peculiar contortions of his face showed that he was a prey to a morbid preoccupation with his inside. He took his own time to prepare for the task he had undertaken. He seemed to be immersed in thought, but was really engrossed in the rumblings in his belly. ‘That rice,’ he thought, ‘the rice I ate yesterday, that must be responsible. My stomach seems jammed. Or was it the jalebis I ate with my milk at the confectioner’s. But the food at the home of Lalla Banarsi Das may have introduced complications.’ He recalled the taste of the various delicacies to which he was so often treated by the pious. ‘How nice and sweet is the kheer, sticking to the teeth and lingering in the mouth. And kara parshad, the hot, buttery masses of it melt almost as you put a morsel of it in the mouth. But the hubble-bubble usually keeps my stomach clean. What happened to this morning’s smoke? I smoked for an hour to no effect. Strange!’ During the time taken by these cogitations he had placed the brass jug in his hand to rest in a little hollow in the wooden frame of the well. The waiting crowd thought that it was the Brahmin’s disgust at serving them, the outcastes, that brought such deep wrinkles on his face and made it look peeved and angry. They didn’t realize that it was constipation, and a want of vigour in his lanky little limbs. But they soon found that out when, after a great many hesitant steps, he tied the iron can that lay near the frame to an edge of the hemp rope that skirted the pulley-wheel, and gently lowered it into the well. The handle slipped from his hand because of the weight of the bucket and revolved violently back, releasing all the coils of rope that were around it. He was a bit scared by the sudden unwinding of the wheel. Then he pulled himself together and renewed his attack. But he was soon upset again. To draw out a can, full of water, required limbs which had been used to exercise more strenuous than the Pundit had ever performed. His whole life revolved round endless recitation of sacred verses and the writing of an occasional charm or horoscope with a reed pen. He exerted all his strength and strained to turn the handle. His face was contorted, but not altogether unlit with pleasure, because already the exercise of his muscles made him feel much easier in the belly than he had done for days. The expectant outcastes were busy getting their pitchers ready, but as that only meant shifting themselves into position so as to be nearest to this most bountiful, most generous of men all their attention was fixed on him. And as that disclosed the apparent effort the athlete was making, they exerted all their energies, all their will-power to aid him in his task.
At length the can was on the brick platform. But the Brahmin becoming interested in the stirrings of his stomach, in the changing phases of his belly, looked, for a moment, absent-minded. A subtle wave of warmth seemed to have descended slowly down from his arms, to the pit of his abdomen, and he felt a strange stirring above his navel such as he had not experienced for days, so pleasing was it in its intimations of the relief it would bring him. Then, unfortunately, a sharp pain shot through the right-hand side of his waist and his demeanour assumed the anxious, agitated look habitual to it.
‘I am first, Pundit ji,’ said Gulabo impetuously, and suddenly disturbed the Brahmin who was absorbed in himself.
He frowned at her and, not noticing the vamping expression she had assumed, deprived her of the favourable attention that would have been her due if he had.
‘No, I came first,’ shouted an inconspicuous little boy.
‘But you know that I was here before you,’ shouted someone else.
And there was a general stampede towards the well that would, in ordinary circumstances, have flurried the priest into throwing water on all of them. But he had as good an eye for a pretty face as he had a bad ear for the sound of a request. Sohini had sat patiently away from the throng, the while it charged at the well. The Pundit recognized her as the sweeper’s daughter. He had seen her before, noticed her as she came to clean the latrines in the gullies in the town—the fresh, young form whose full breasts with their dark beads of nipples stood out so conspicuously under her muslin shirt, whose innocent look of wonder seemed to stir the only soft chord in his person, hardened by the congenital weakness of his body, disillusioned by the congenital weakness of his mind, brazened by the authority he exercised over the faithful and the devout. And he was inclined to be kind to her.
‘Oh, Lakha’s daughter, come here,’ he said, ‘you have been patient and the reward of patience, say the holy books, is supreme. Get away all you noisy ones, get out of the way!’
‘But Pundit ji!’ said Sohini, hesitating to receive the favour, not because she divined the Brahmin’s admiration, but because she was afraid of all those who had come before her.
‘Now come along,’ urged the Pundit, irritated by the beginning in his belly of the urge for excretion, and exhilarated by the thought of doing the beautiful girl a favour.
The girl advanced meekly and put her pitcher near the platform. The priest lifted the can with a great effort. For a moment he successfully handled the water, being surcharged with the glow of that warmth which he felt from being near Sohini; intoxicated by it. Then his normal weakness returned. He splashed the water and the outcastes flew on all sides, half wet, half dry.
‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted as he poured the water into Sohini’s pitcher. He was attempting to cover his weakness by bullying. At length the pitcher was three-quarters full.
‘Have you got enough now?’ asked the Pundit in triumph as he withdrew the empty can.
‘Han, Pundit ji,’ Sohini whispered, her head bent in modesty, as she wiped the outside of the pitcher to lift it on to her head.
‘Look, why don’t you come and clean the courtyard of our house at the temple,’ called the Brahmin as the girl withdrew. ‘Tell your father to send you from today.’ And he looked long at her, rather embarrassed, his rigid respectability fighting against the waves of amorousness that had begun to flow in his blood.
‘You will come today,’ he firmly said, lest there should be any misunderstanding left in her mind about it.
Sohini was grateful for the favour he had shown her. She shyly nodded and went her way, her left hand on her waist, her right on the pitcher and a balance in her steps like the rhythm of a song. The washerwoman cast dark and angry glances at her as she herself sullenly drew nearer the well with the rest of the crowd, which had now begun to appeal to a newcomer for help.
This was Lachman, a Hindu water-carrier, a Brahmin come down in life, who earned his living by washing the utensils of the caste Hindus. He cooked their food, fetched their water, and did other odd jobs about their houses. He was a young man, about twenty-six, with the intelligent though rather rugged features of the Brahmin who does menial jobs. A bamboo pole at the extreme ends of which were four strings, supporting wooden brackets to carry
pitchers, was on his shoulders. He rested it slowly on the ground and, ascending the well, joined his hands in greeting to the Pundit, saying ‘Jay deva’, and respectfully relieved him of the job of drawing more water from the well. As he threw the can easily into the well, however, he looked sideways towards Sohini who was retreating home. He too had noticed her before and felt a stirring in his blood, the warm impulse of love, the strange desire of the soul to reach out to something beyond, at first in fear, then in hope and then with all the concentrated fury of a physical and mental obsession. Sometimes he had playfully irritated her with mild jokes, when she came to the well and he happened to be there. She had responded with a modest smile and an innocent look in her shining, lustrous eyes. And he was, as he said, in the language characteristic of the Indian lover, ‘dead over her’. The Pundit caught him in the act of looking at her. Shame-faced, Lachman withdrew his gaze, and with that servility which he shared with the other menials, quietly turned to the job he had in hand. Soon the strength of his arm had brought the can full of water to the top of the well. He first filled the Pundit’s little brass jug and Gulabo’s pitcher, and then set about to help the others. The picture of Sohini disappeared from his mind.
She, however, figured conspicuously in the corner of the little mud-house which was her kitchen. Her father was abusing her as he now sat on his bed, puff-puffing away at the cane tube of his hubble-bubble though he was still wrapped in his patched quilt.
‘I thought you were dead or something, daughter of a pig!’ Lakha was shouting. ‘No tea, no piece of bread, and I am dying of hunger! Put the tea on and call those swine, Bakha and Rakha to me.’ Then he frowned in the gruff manner of a man who was really kind at heart, but who knew he was weak and infirm and so bullied his children, to preserve his authority, lest he should be repudiated by them, refused and rejected as the difficult old rubbish he was.
Sohini obeyed him at once, shouting for her brothers as she put the earthen saucepan on the fire.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 5