He walked down the pavement, which was punctuated almost at every step by some person or other. There was here an old astrologer with the intricate caste marks of priesthood painted on his forehead, a white flowing beard and a fat body immaculately clothed in long muslin robes, telling the fortune of a Gujerati clerk; there was next a Muhammadan barber with his razors and scissors spread before him, looking into a large dressing-table mirror as he puffed at his hubble-bubble while waiting for customers; close by was a bookseller, displaying books and magazines, with the coloured pictures of beautiful European women on them and some pamphlets which proclaimed the secrets and mysteries of life in bold Hindustani letters; there was a fruit-seller further ahead, and a sweetmeat-seller, and at the edge of a footpath in a corner a coolie lay huddled, pillowing his head on his arm, shrinking into himself as if he were afraid to occupy too much space.
Munoo’s heart sank at the recognition of a labourer lying about so precariously. ‘So even here the coolies sleep in the street!’ he suddenly realized, and the memory of the words of the coolie who had said that money was strewn about the streets of Bombay sounded falsely hollow in his brain. His throat was parched and dry with thirst. His limbs sagged. Before him arose the grim fear of the night coming and finding him alone and friendless in the streets. He tried to forget the oppressive thought. His mind became a blank and the picture faded out.
He had come to the edge of four roads, alongside which stretched avenues of tall, massive, stately edifices, eight stories high, something like those in the bazaar of the civil lines at Daulatpur, except that they seemed to continue for miles and miles.
He stood riveted to the spot for a moment, not knowing where to go and not daring to cross into the boulevards of civilization. Then he saw men walking up and down the pavements of the roads casually, among them even a few coolies with tunics much dirtier than his own. And he walked on.
He braved it and ran hurriedly past the raised arms of a black policeman, who wore a blue and yellow uniform, different from the up-country constables, bare-legged, his cap tilted nattily to one side. His heart beat wildly as he slowed down by the polished brass plates round the door lintels at the gates of a big building, on which were engraved black letters of the English alphabet. ‘COX & CO.’ he read on one of them, and he felt pleased with the strange connection they seemed to establish between him and the world of sahib-logs. He recalled, however, the rude way in which the Englishwoman in Daulatpur civil lines had spoken to him and he was again half afraid to go on. But there were plenty of Indians walking down the streets and only a few pink-faced men. So he went on. Only he felt more thirsty than ever, and as he walked he scanned the length of the bazaar to see if there was a charity water stall here like those in Daulatpur. The huge glass windows of furniture shops followed upon the long portals of an office, or the mysterious flight of steps of a bank, but there was no well or pump where he could get water.
At length he sighted a huge canvas lining, behind glass doors, a row of coloured soda-water bottles and, beyond the window, some people who sat on Angrezi chairs by marble tables, eating and drinking and chatting. He had once drunk soda water while on an errand in the streets of Daulatpur at the shop of Bali, the ice-seller. He felt he would like to drink a bottle now. But the clothes of the people who sat in the shop, as he saw from the wide-open door, were clean. They looked to be rich babus or merchants, and he felt he was only a dirty coolie. ‘But a bottle of soda water only costs an anna, and I have a rupee tied up in the end of my loincloth. I can go and buy one,’ he told himself.
He almost stumbled on the doorstep as, with heavy feet and light heart, he walked in and stood, blind and uncertain, in the commodious restaurant. He tried to steady himself, and felt everyone was looking at him. He sat down on a chair by an empty table that stood on his right. He felt he was floating in the air, so rapidly did his brain wheel round and round with confusion and embarrassment. He brushed his arm across his forehead to calm himself and to wipe off the sweat. He brazened himself into self-assurance and glanced at people pouring hot tea from their cups into saucers and sipping it with spattering sips. Hardly had he withdrawn his gaze from the queer people when a tall man in muslin, with his hair profusely oiled and parted in the middle, came up to him and said, ‘Coolie?’
‘Han,’ Munoo confessed, his heart almost missing a beat.
‘Sit down on the floor, there; what do you want?’ the man said insolently.
Munoo got up from the chair lamely and settled down on the cemented floor full of fear and without saying a word.
‘What do you want?’ the man asked again.
‘A bottle of soda water,’ Munoo said.
Some of the men who were spattering at tea in their saucers looked at him as if he were a leper, and the waiter winked at them a significant glance, half in mockery and half in contempt at the coolie who indulged in soda water.
Munoo felt wild with rage, but tried to still his mind by acknowledging the superiority of the clean-clothed rich people, whom he had always been told to respect. Feeling that all the men in the place were staring at him, he looked away into the street through the glass window.
‘Give me the money—two annas,’ the man shouted, coming almost on top of Munoo’s head suddenly.
Munoo started. Then with bent head, and conscious of the stares of everyone, he loosened the knot in his loincloth and handed over the silver rupee to the waiter. The man fetched a glass of frothing soda water from a high stand and gave it to Munoo. Then he counted fourteen annas change on to Munoo’s palm.
The sharp, cool, sweetish taste of the soda water tingled in Munoo’s mouth and brought tears of acid into his eyes. He would have liked to have sipped it slowly and enjoyed the full flavour of the drink in comfort. But he was nervous and feeling extremely guilty for having intruded into the rich man’s world. So he gulped the water down as fast as he could. And, placing the glass in a corner, he made to go. The aerated liquid had an instantaneous effect on his belly, and he belched in spite of himself.
‘Go away,’ the man shouted behind him.
Munoo darted away.
When he had gone a hundred yards or so, he looked back. The man was not following him. But he was terror-stricken. Looking furtively this side and that, fore and aft, he slunk away, cursing himself for having gone into a shop like that. He felt he had wasted his money. The man’s nastiness had left such a bitter taste in his mouth. ‘I was so thirsty, though,’ he said to console himself, ‘and now I am no more thirsty.’ He belched again, and this spontaneous confirmation of his thought by his belly made him laugh.
‘I should have fought hard if he had dared to turn me out or abused me,’ he said to himself. ‘I let him put me in my place as a coolie, but I was paying for the soda water and I am not an untouchable. I am a Hindu Kshatriya, a Rajput, a warrior.’
He felt strong and powerful at the thought of being of the warrior caste, strong and powerful and happy, his dignity coming back to him. He walked on elated and unconscious, exercising his rudimentary stare on a huge, coloured picture of a film star, which stared down at him, her large eyes and long lashes seductively askance, her milk-white body naked save for a pearly bodice and pearl loincloth. Lest the pleasure of contemplating so beautiful a vision be forbidden to a coolie, he arrested his ardent glance, looked around surreptitiously to see that no one was noticing him, and was going to move into a position from where he could command a clearer and more detailed view of the form that had now started a wild movement in his blood, when he suddenly heard the loud bellowing of raucous motor-horns, the tan-tan of tramway bells, the angry yells of phaeton drivers and shouts of ‘Dem fool!’ ‘Where are you going?’ He stood dumb and still in the deathliest fear of having got into the way of the traffic. He felt as if he were dead or dying. But a sudden impulse for life made him turn quickly on his feet. He saw that he was quite safe, but that on the other side of the pavement a scantily clad small man, dark, with grey hair and bowed legs, loaded
with bundles, was dragging at a loaded woman, who was dragging a boy, while a frightened little girl shrieked in the middle of the road behind them.
He rushed to where the terror-stricken child stood sandwiched between the dangerous streams of traffic and, lifting her under his arm, ran across to where the helpless family fussily muttered curses and prayed to the Lord.
‘Oh, may you live long, may you live, my son,’ said the woman, joining her hands to Munoo and eagerly receiving her daughter into a warm embrace. Then she addressed her husband: ‘What a place to bring us to!’
‘Keep quiet, woman, you nearly killed my children,’ said her husband.
‘You should have held them. You left me there on the road and crossed to safety yourself! Wah! Strange father you are!’ she spluttered.
‘Be patient, mother, be patient,’ said Munoo, assuming an air of grave filial piety for a moment.
‘Brother!’ the old man said, patting Munoo’s back and then joining his hands to him in supplication and gratitude, ‘that little witch would have been killed if you had not run to save her. These machines are like devils!’
‘You have so much to carry,’ said Munoo, ‘Where have you to go? I will help you with a load.’
‘I worked at the Sirjabite cotton factory six months ago, before I went to fetch my family from the village,’ said the old man. ‘I will go there in the morning and look for work again. Now I go into the city, where there may be a corner outside a closed shop or on a pavement where we can rest for the night. We are poor folk. Now we will be on our way. Ram, Ram.’ And he made to go.
‘Brother,’ said Munoo eagerly, ‘I am a newcomer to Bombay and I want a job too. Do you think it will be possible for me to get a job at the factory where you work? I am a coolie. I come from up-country.’
‘Ah, come, brother,’ said the old man. ‘If you can sleep the night with us we can all go together to the factory in the morning. And then I will present you to the big Mistri Sahib. And we can take a hut near the Meel and you can lodge with us.’
‘Brother, that is what I want,’ said Munoo, trying to instil as much seriousness into his tone as possible.
They walked away from where the vast masses of big business houses and the domed splendour of great buildings cast oppressive shadows and, passing by a playing-field, entered the eastern world of Girgaum.
Munoo bore the girl child on one shoulder, the boy on the other, and looked not unlike Hanuman, the monkey god, who is supposed to have carried Rama and Sita, the hero and heroine of the Ramayana, from Ceylon to Oudh. Now that he had found company, he found the former impish enthusiasm of his being again.
‘Brother,’ he said, running up to the old man, who led the way, ‘what is your name?’
‘They call me Hari, brother; Hari Har,’ said the old man, stopping to wipe the sweat which streamed down his forehead over his tender eyes to his rather thick black moustache. And, resting the weight on his back by the iron cage of a young tree, he blew a mouthful of hot breath.
‘How far have we to go?’ asked Munoo, concerned to see that the old man was tired and that the children were dozing on his shoulders.
‘We have only a little way to go through the Bhendy Bazaar to Dadar,’ replied Hari casually. And then he addressed his wife, who had come to a standstill a little distance away: ‘Arré, mother of Moti, sit down and rest a while.’
The woman modestly moved her head, thickly veiled under the apron, and shifted a small tin trunk which she held under the left arm.
‘The shades of the evening are falling and the children are already asleep,’ said Munoo, putting on an air of worldly wisdom. ‘Let us hurry.’
‘Let us mention the name of God, and go on,’ said Hari. ‘I know of a short cut to Dadar.’
They crossed into a narrow street where the houses jutted close into each other and small shops with their fabric sun-hoods, and naked serried windows opened into rickety, carved balconies, from which the heat had licked off the paint.
It was difficult to carve a way among the throngs which leisurely strolled along in garments of colours as varied as there are cheap foreign dyes, in forms as tawdry as can be obtained by mixing the styles of a hundred different races.
‘This,’ Munoo thought, ‘is no different from Daulatpur or Sham Nagar, only more confusing.’ And he shut his mind to the silver, the orange, the green, the gold, the blue, the flaming red of the trappings of the Arabs, the Hindus, the Muhammadans, the Parsees, the English and the Jews, and walked on, concentrating on himself.
But the riot of variety was soon illuminated by the electric bulbs which hung from every booth, stall and shop, and the vermilion, scarlet, yellow and green, which shone now garishly, now dazzlingly, upon Munoo’s eyes. He was, however, annoyed by the strange mixture of peoples, the queer din of forty odd lingos, and felt his Northern blood quiver with self-consciousness as he struggled along under the weight on his shoulders, on the pavement now teeming with men and women.
The wares displayed in the shops attracted him, especially the steel toys he saw on a stall, and big mangoes, bigger than those which he had seen in his village, in Sham Nagar or in Daulatpur. But the shops were surrounded by rich men, who haggled loudly over the prices of goods, and Munoo had of necessity to move on.
An emaciated man, the bones of whose skeleton were locked in a paralytic knot, dragged himself by the edge of the road, precariously near the wheels of passing victorias, begging with a wail, half metallic from repetition:
‘O man, give me a pice!’
‘Get away! Get away!’ the Parsee owner of a shop cried, flourishing a stick.
Further along, an old, blind man leant, half on the arm of his daughter, half on a stick which he held in the gnarled roots of his right hand. The girl, with clear-cut features that had once beamed with life but which now expressed nothing except abject humility, the absolute weakness of a smile and the shining, painful meekness of the eyes, joined her two hands in importunate beggary.
‘Go away! Go away!’ said a wisp-clothed Hindu, who sat killing flies in his shop, the red rubies in the gold rings of his ears reflecting a cruel glint of laughter on the woman’s mask of pain.
Munoo hurried to get abreast of Hari, who appeared to walk very quickly and energetically for his seeming two score and ten.
‘There is no air here, Hari brother,’ Munoo said, ‘let us run fast.’
‘Where is the mother of Moti?’ Hari asked suddenly. He had evidently forgotten all about her.
So had Munoo.
The old man ran back almost panic-stricken, causing anger and irritation among the crowd through whom he had to shoulder his way to search for his wife. Luckily, he found her buying bananas at a stall.
‘You will get lost,’ he cursed. ‘This isn’t the village that you can find your way back home. There is no home to go to here.’
The woman followed a little more quickly. Her heart went out to the bracelets, the culinary utensils, the ivory work and the gold and silver ornaments, which lay exposed in the shops on her left, and she could not help breaking through her modesty and saying to her husband:
‘I would like to come here to buy things when we are settled.’
This made Hari very angry, not with her, but with himself, and he bullied:
‘Walk on! Walk on! You have hardly a place to rest your head on for the night and you build castles in the air like Sheikh Chilli.’
Munoo had stood watching a quarrel between two phaeton-drivers who, caring nothing for the right of the road, had brushed past each other so dangerously as to alarm the rich, silken-saried Parsee women pedestrians into a grave anxiety about their lives. Then the old man and his wife joined up.
They emerged from the bazaar into a residential street with tall houses, decorated by facades of floral designs and arabesque reliefs, plastered and white-washed in imitation of the European styles. The huge posters outside a cinema at the end of the road, illuminated by bulbs of different colours, accentuated the air
of civilization.
‘What about sleeping here, brother?’ said Munoo.
‘No,’ replied Hari, ‘we cannot sleep near the houses of the rich. Many thefts take place here and honest folk are caught up with the dishonest loafers and thrown into prison. For us the street there, where shops close early and the boards are empty.’
Twenty weary steps and they had turned the corner.
But Hari came to a sudden halt when he should have turned to left or right.
‘Have you forgotten the way then?’ Munoo asked, as he saw Hari stand fixed.
‘No,’ said Hari, shaking his head despondently. ‘We are late. It will be difficult to find a place here. This street is full of men. We will have to wait till the shops in the bazaar that we have left behind close for the night, unless all the shelters there are taken by the coolies who work round about.’
Munoo looked back and saw Hari’s wife standing still, her apron still drawn over her face, and the coloured lights of the cinema far away in the street radiating happiness. Then he looked ahead of him exploring the avenue of the broad street by the pale light of infrequent gas lamps that illuminated it. The bodies of numberless coolies lay strewn in tattered garbs. Some were curled up in knots, others lay face downwards on folded arms, others were flat on their chests, pillowing their heads on their bundles or boxes, others crouched into corners talking, others still huddled together at the doorsteps of closed shops, or lay on the boards in a sleep which looked like death, but that it was broken by deep sighs.
‘If we go further, there might be a place for us somewhere,’ Munoo said, urged by the cool breeze that came like a snake swishing from the darkness of the sea on his right. And he bravely led the way.
He had hardly gone three yards when he stumbled on a heap of patched quilt that half enclosed the rotting flesh of a leper who was stretching his bandaged arm and legs as a warning to all passers-by.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 37