Before now, Bakha had often borne the brunt of his misery with a resigned air of fatalism. He had quietly suffered his father’s abuse and invective, and even occasional beatings with a calm that betokened his intense docility and gentleness. Today, however, he had had more than enough. The spirit of fire which lay buried in the mass of his flesh had ignited this morning and lay smouldering. A little more fuel and it flared up, like a wild flame.
He tore across the plain without even looking back. It was as though a demon had taken possession of him. He was not conscious of the shattering moment which had suddenly determined his flight. Nor was he aware of the feeling of revulsion that had filled the moment. It seemed as if the demon in him held a cruel sword with which it hacked everything in its way and by the force of the hacking, acquired a more sinister power, frightening in its intensity and weirdly fascinating in its transmutation of Bakha’s body into a wild horse.
As he moved over the fringe of flat earth facing the plain, the rim of the upturned sky was taking on the gold and silver hues of the afternoon sun, and the world lay encircled in a ribbon of crimson. Here he slackened his pace, for it was here that he had felt the first glow of the early morning sun creeping into his bones. It was through this plain that he had gone out to the world, full of the spirit of adventure.
The wide expanse was empty except for the interminable thread of men entering the mud-houses which clustered in the north like mushrooms, surrounded by rubbish heaps, filled with broken bottles, old tins, dead cats and rags and bones. So lofty did he feel in his mood of righteous indignation that he had the strange sensation of being a giant, commanding a full view of everything in the hollows and the hills.
‘Unlucky, unlucky day! What have I done to deserve all this?’ he cried in exasperation.
A sepoy on his way to the latrines was approaching. He jumped aside into a ditch so as not to be seen. He didn’t want to meet anybody. He wanted to be alone and quiet, to compose himself. When the man had passed, he crept out of the ditch and made for a pipal-tree which stood in the plain surrounded by a clay platform. He sat down under it, facing the sun.
Now he felt desolate and the fact dawned on him that he was homeless. He had often been turned out like that. As a matter of fact, when his father was angry he always threatened him and his brother with eviction. He remembered that once after his mother’s death his father had locked him out all night, for not looking after the house properly. It was a winter night. The east wind blew and he was sleepy. He was tired from the day’s work and yawned as he curled himself up in his overcoat behind two refuse baskets. How he had smarted under the pain of that callousness and cruelty. Could he be the same father who, according to his own version, had gone praying to the doctor for medicine? Bakha recalled he had not spoken to his father for days after that incident. Then his grief about his unhappy position had become less violent, less rebellious. He had begun to work very hard. It had seemed to him that the punishment was good for him. For he felt he had learnt through it to put his heart into his work. He had matured. He had learnt to scrub floors, cook, fetch water, besides doing his job cleaning the latrines and carting manure for sale to the fields. And in spite of the poor nourishment he got, he had developed into a big, strong man, broad-shouldered, heavy-hipped, supple-armed, as near the Indian ideal of the wrestler as he wished to be.
But this present disgrace! This could do no good, he thought. It was undeserved. Why should his father object to his taking a half-day off once in his life, especially as he knew he had been insulted in the town this morning and didn’t feel like working. Then he had not spent the afternoon uselessly. He had got a new stick. But that, it occurred to him, was something which his father could not appreciate. He didn’t like him to play hockey. That was what all the trouble was about. ‘Rakha must have told on me,’ he muttered, ‘because he could not go to play. What a day I have had! Unlucky, inauspicious day! I wish I could die!’ And he sat nursing his head in his hands, utterly given up to despair.
He had sat for a long while like that, his head in his hands. He felt sick and stifled with the knowledge that he was homeless and unwanted even by his own father. He had unconsciously chosen to sit down in a place where Chota or Ram Charan or someone from the outcastes’ colony might recognize him. As time passed and he became conscious of the emptiness around him, he felt that the sympathy he longed for would never come.
But he was mistaken. Colonel Hutchinson, chief of the local Salvation Army, was never very far from the outcastes’ colony. To his rather irreligious wife he always made the excuse that he was going out for a walk in the hills where the kingdom of Heaven was waiting to be found, though actually he went out wallowing in the mire for the sake of Jesus Christ, talking to some Untouchable among the rubbish heaps about divinity and trinity. You couldn’t miss him even if you saw him from a mile off, for he was one of the few living members of the band of Christian missionaries in India who had originated the idea that the Salvation Army ought to be dressed in the costume of the natives and live among them, if it was to achieve the true end of proselytizing. And he had designed the Colonel’s uniform he wore: a pair of white trousers, a scarlet jacket, a white turban with a red band across it. He had been a strong man once, if he wasn’t quite the image of Eugene Sandow now. In the old days, he had plenty of hair on his head. Now, unfortunately, he was bald, his wife said, because of the infernal turban he wore and because he was so fond of study. He also once had a turned-up moustache of the real Colonel kind, bushy and black. Now, though it was still bushy, it was grey and drooping, his malicious wife said, in defeat, because she alleged that the proselytizing mission of Christianity had, in his hands, been a complete failure, the number of conversions to his credit for the last twenty years being not more than five, and those five mainly from among the dirty black Untouchables. But in justice to the Colonel’s moustache, it must be said that his wife was being catty because she had a personal grievance against him. He had charmed her in his youth with his well-groomed, immaculate bearing, a conspicuous feature of which had been his fine black, upright moustache. She was a barmaid in Cambridge and had developed an aesthetic taste for the gem-like, glistening drops of liquor that adorned the edges of Hutchinson’s moustache when he had had a drink. She had married him for that. India, however, had embittered her. For, not only did she hate the ‘nigger’ servants in her house, but she discovered that her husband was too sombre for her gay card-playing, drinking and love-making tastes. Still, she had borne with him for a great many years, on the strength of whisky, but then Hutchinson’s moustache had grown grey and it had begun to droop under the weight of years, the Colonel now having turned sixty-five. Despite all that his wife said, therefore, people gave credit to Colonel Hutchinson for his unflinching devotions to duty and loyalty to the cause which he had taken up. He was marvellously active for his three score years and five, laying himself in hiding as of yore in deep pits of filth or behind heaps of dung, to wait for some troubled outcaste who might be tired and hungry and would listen in his despair to the gospel of Christ. He always carried a number of copies of the Hindustani translation of the Bible under his arm, and he stuffed the pockets of his jacket and overcoat with the gospel of St Luke, to thrust into the hands of any passer-by, be he willing or unwilling. He was a thin fellow, pitiably reduced now. But the edge of his tongue was like a pair of scissors which cut the pattern of Hindustani into smithereens as a parrot snips his food into bits. The impulse that had made him think of learning Hindustani before he started his mission was a noble one considering that his work lay among the natives; the habit of muddling through the language, and never learning it properly during the thirty years of his stay in India was most disastrous in its consequences.
‘Tum udas,’ said the Colonel, putting his hand on Bakha’s shoulder.
Bakha looked up with a start. He had hoped that Chota or Ram Charan might come and console him, or someone from the outcastes’ colony. He had not the foggiest notion t
hat he would be surprised by Colonel Hutchinson, who, although he freely mixed with the natives and had thus lost some of the glamour attaching to the superior, remote and reticent Englishmen, was yet a sahib, who wore trousers and used a commode. Bakha felt honoured that the sahib had deigned to talk Hindustani to him, even though it was broken Hindustani. He felt flattered that he should be the object of pity and sympathy from a sahib. Of course, he at once recognized the Colonel. Who didn’t know the missionary? But it was the first occasion on which he had found himself face to face with him. Being of a very retiring disposition and full of a feeling of inferiority, he had never talked to Hutchinson, although he remembered that the Colonel often visited his father when he (Bakha) was a child. His father, he recalled, also talked of the sahib, sometimes if he saw him in the distance, saying that the old sahib had wanted to convert them to the religion of Yessuh Messih and to make them sahibs like himself, but that he had refused to leave the Hindu fold, saying that the religion which was good enough for his forefathers was good enough for him.
‘Salaam, Sahib,’ said Bakha putting his hand to his forehead as he got up.
‘Salaam, salaam, you sit, don’t disturb yourself,’ squealed the Colonel in wrong, badly accented Hindustani, patting Bakha affectionately the while.
There was something wonderful in the brave effort the Colonel seemed to make to be natural in this unnatural atmosphere. But he was not self-conscious. He had thrown aside every weight—pride of birth and race and colour in adopting the customs of the natives and in garbing himself in their manner, to build up the Salvation Army in northern India. And he had swamped the overbearing strain of the upper middle-class Englishman in him, by his hackneyed effusions of Christian sentiment, camouflaged the narrow, insular patriotism of his character in the lingo of the white-livered humanitarian.
‘What has happened? Are you ill?’ the Colonel asked, bending over.
Bakha felt confused, embarrassed by this show of kindness. ‘Charat Singh,’ he thought, ‘was kind to me this afternoon; the Sahib is generosity itself.’ And he wondered if he were dreaming. He looked and saw the form of the Colonel real enough before him. And hadn’t he heard the strange, squeaky voice of the Englishman speaking Hindustani? Good Hindustani, Bakha thought, considering it was spoken by a sahib, for, ordinarily, he knew the sahibs didn’t speak Hindustani at all, only some useful words and swear words: ‘Acha (good); jao (go away); jaldi karo (be quick); sur ka bacha (son of a pig), kute ka bacha (son of a dog).’
‘Nothing, Sahib, I was just tired,’ said Bakha shyly. ‘I am sweeper here, son of Lakha, jemadar of the sweepers.’
‘I know! I know! How is your father?’
‘Huzoor, he is well,’ replied Bakha.
‘Has your father told you who I am?’ asked the Colonel, coming to the point in the practical manner of the Englishman.
‘Han, Huzoor. You are a sahib,’ said Bakha.
‘Nahin, nahin,’ said the Colonel. ‘I am not a sahib. I am like you. I am padre of the Salvation Army.’
‘Han, Sahib, I know,’ said Bakha, without understanding the subtle distinction which the Colonel was trying to institute between himself and the ordinary sahibs in India whose haughtiness and vulgarity was, to his Christian mind, shameful, and from whom, on that account, he took care to distinguish himself, lest their misdeeds reflect on the sincerity of his intentions for the welfare of the souls of the heathen. To Bakha, however, all the sahibs were sahibs, trousered and hatted men, who were generous in the extreme, giving away their cast-off clothes to their servants, also a bit nasty because they abused their servants a great deal. He knew, of course, that the Colonel was a padre sahib, but he did not know what a padre did except that he lived near the girja ghar and came to see the people in the outcastes’ colony. To him even the padres were of interest because of their European clothes. This padre did not wear a hat like the padre in the barracks of the British regiments. But that was of little account. He wore all the other items of clothes that the sahibs wore. He was a sahib all right. And this sahib had condescended to pat him on the back, to speak kind words to him, even to ask him why he was looking so sad. He could have cried to receive such gracious treatment from a sahib, cried with the joy of being in touch with that rare quality which was to be found in the sahibs. In spite of it all, however, he seemed to be vaguely aware of the difference the Colonel was trying to define.
‘I am a padre and my God is Yessuh Messih,’ emphasized the Colonel. ‘If you are in trouble, come to Jesus in the girja ghar.’ He was seeking vainly to paraphrase into Hindustani the promise: ‘Come all ye that labour and I shall give thee rest.’
Bakha was struck with the coincidence. How did the padre know he was in trouble. ‘And who is Yessuh Messih to whose religion my father told me this padre wanted to convert us. I wonder if he lives in the girja ghar.’ He recalled that the girja ghar had seemed to him a mysterious place whenever he had passed by.
‘Who is Yessuh Messih, really, Sahib?’ Bakha asked, eager to allay his curiosity.
‘Come, I shall tell you,’ said Colonel Hutchinson. ‘Come to the church.’ And dragging the boy by the arm, babbling, babbling, all vague, in a cloud, and enthusiastic as a mystic, he led him away on the wings of a song:
‘Life is found in Jesus
Only there ’tis offered thee;
Offered without price or money
’Tis the gift of God sent free.’
Bakha was dumb with amazement, carried away by the confusion, feeling flattered, honoured by the invitation which had come from the sahib, however much that sahib might mix with the natives. He followed willingly, listening to each word that the Colonel spoke, but not understanding a word:
‘Life is found in Jesus’
the Colonel sang again, absorbed in himself, and unconscious that he was in charge of a soul in trouble.
Jesus! Who was Jesus? The same as Yessuh Messih? Who was he? The Sahib says he is God. Was he a God like Rama, God of the Hindus, whom his father worshipped and his forefathers had worshipped, whom his mother used to mention quite often in her prayers? These thoughts came into Bakha’s mind, and he would have exploded with them, had it not been that the Colonel was absolutely absorbed in his song:
‘Life is found alone in Jesus
Only there ’tis offered thee,
Offered without price or money
’Tis the gift of God sent free.’
‘Huzoor,’ said Bakha, breaking in impatiently at the close of the third recitation, ‘who is Jesus? The same as Yessuh Messih? Who is he?’
‘He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood,’
answered the Colonel quickly, rhythmically, before Bakha knew what he had asked. He was still baffled. The answer, if it was an answer, was like a conundrum to him; words, words. He felt overwhelmed and uncomfortable. But being, of course, so happy to be seen walking with the sahib, he bore all, trying to remember parts of the Colonel’s song and asking himself what they meant. But apart from the muffled sound of words he could not catch anything.
‘Sahib, who is Yessuh Messih?’ Bakha persisted with Punjabi directness.
‘He is the Son of God,’ answered Colonel Hutchinson, coming down to earth for a moment. ‘He died that we might be forgiven.’
And he sang the verse again.
‘He died that we might be forgiven . . .’
‘He died that we might be forgiven,’ thought Bakha. ‘What does that mean? He is the son of God! How could anybody be the son of God if God, as my mother told me, lives in the sky. How could He have a son? And why did His son die that we should be forgiven? Forgiven for what?’
‘Who is Yessuh Messih, Sahib? Is He the God of the sahibs?’ Bakha asked, slightly afraid that he was bothering the white man too much. He knew from experience that Englishmen did not like to talk too much.
‘He is the Son
of God, my boy,’ answered the Colonel, ecstatically revolving his head. ‘And He died for us sinners:
‘He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.’
Bakha was a bit bored by this ecstatic hymn-singing. But the white man had condescended to speak to him, and he was happy and proud to be in touch with a sahib. He suffered the priest and even reiterated his enquiry: ‘Do you pray to Yessuh Messih in your girja ghar, Sahib?’
‘Han, han,’ replied the Colonel breaking into the rhythmof a new hymn:
‘Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me.
Let my sins be forgiven!
Let there be light
Oh, shed Thy light in the heart of this boy.’
Bakha was baffled and bored. He did not understand anything of these songs. He had followed the Sahib because the Sahib wore trousers. Trousers had been the dream of his life. The kindly interest which the trousered man had shown him when he was downcast had made Bakha conjure up pictures of himself wearing the Sahib’s clothes, talking the Sahib’s language and becoming like the guard whom he had seen on the railway station near his village. He did not know who Yessuh Messih was. The Sahib probably wanted to convert him to his religion. He didn’t want to be converted. It was all so puzzling that he thought of excusing himself by lying to the Sahib that he had to go to work and couldn’t come with him.
The Colonel saw Bakha lagging behind and, realizing that his new follower was losing interest, exerted the peculiar obstinacy of the enthusiastic missionary in him and dragging at the boy’s sleeve, said, ‘Yessuh Messih is the Son of God, my boy. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. He sacrificed Himself for us.’ Then again he became rapt in his devotional songs:
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 15