‘Have you shown him to a doctor?’ asked the broken-eared wrestler on his side.
‘No, brother, not yet,’ replied Hari, shaking and trembling. ‘There is no dakdar at the mill. The Chimta Sahib has given me leave to take the boy to the hospital in town. But, of course, I will lose my job now. The Sahib is very angry that I have not put in full time on the first day of my work in the weaving-shed.’ Saying this, disconsolate and broken, weary and pathetically lonely in his despair at not being able to cope with his manifold responsibilities, he made to go. Then, as if he had forgotten something, he returned and said to Munoo: ‘Brother, when you come, bring the mother of my child home with you. She will not know the way on her own.’
When Hari had gone Munoo’s heart went out to him. He felt he must go and bear the child on his back to the hospital, because the old man would get tired, trudging through the dust of the half-finished thoroughfares which led from the factory to the town. He could see him go past the iron rails, past the stacks of timber and the rusted steel girders which lay by the upturned earth outside. He could see him walk by the pool, where cows and buffaloes would be submerged up to their necks in the murky, green water. He could see him cast a glance at their home in the straw hut with the ragged jute cloth hanging, and then get lost on the rottenness and slime on the outskirts of the town below the hide-covered plateau. Munoo did not know where the hospital was, and he could not see Hari except in the hazy desert on the edge of the town. What if the boy died on his shoulder before Hari got there? Munoo felt it would be unbearable to live with Hari and his wife if that happened, because they might connect their misfortune with their association with him. It was good that they did not know that he was an orphan, otherwise they were sure to think that he was an ominous person to have about them. ‘Am I really ominous?’ he asked himself. ‘My father died when I was born, and then my mother, and I brought misfortune to Prabha, and, it seems, I have brought misfortune to Hari now. If I am ominous, why don’t I die? My death would rid the world of an unlucky person. I would like to die. It were better to be dead. Yes, better to be dead, because this town has turned out wrong. It is so hot working here, and my aunt’s mud hut in the hills was better than the damp straw hut in Sahib’s Lane.’
He felt alone now that Hari was not there and he had no connection with any of the coolies. The endless, deafening roar of the machine got on his nerves. He felt torn, and hunger gnawed at his ribs like a rat, a big slimy rat, whose very sight was sickening. The demons outside him and in him crowded round his head, diffusing his thoughts, as the collision of waves diffuses the water into froth. The tiny skiff of his soul tossed to and fro on the soft, sun-speckled edge of this foam, as if it were a small point struggling in vain to cross the river, and as if it were threatened with extinction by an unforeseen storm.
The visions of the gay bazaars with their mixed populations of superior sahibs and rich merchants and poor men, the pictures of gigantic, wonderful houses in the town, of the tall houses in the workers’ colony, the view even of the factory in which he was enclosed, cast the glamour of the strange, as-yet-unknown, about him. The illusion gathered force from the sound of the money the Chimta Sahib had fixed as his pay, more money than he had ever earned, from the feel of all the desirable things that he thought he would buy with it: black boots, a watch and chain, sola topee, shorts, a tunic and all the paraphernalia of sahibhood. But these were secret wishes, secret hopes, not to be spoiled by looking at.
‘To be sure,’ he said to himself, to ensure the safety of these thoughts. And again he reached out to life, the joy of life which registered in his mind’s eye the clear hieroglyphs of numerous desires: ‘I want to live, I want to know, I want to work, to work this machine,’ he said; ‘I shall grow up and be a man, a strong man like that wrestler. . . .’ He looked towards the wrestler, and, as if his thoughts had been actually talking to the broken-eared coolie, he heard him say:
‘My name is Ratan. I come from the Punjab. You look as if you were a hillman.’
‘That is so. But I worked in the plains at Sham Nagar and Daulatpur.’
‘We be compatriots, then. What is your name?’
‘Munoo,’ the boy replied. And he could not help admiring the frank, open look on the man’s face. And he felt he was not alone.
But exactly when he had begun to feel at home the whistle blew, and panting, fuming, hoarse and excited, the machines came to a standstill. The coolies rushed as if they were tigers who had scented flesh from afar.
Munoo entered the spinning-shed on his way out.
It was full of women with babies tied to their backs, in their laps, or wallowing in the dust on the floor, crying, screaming, sobbing, precariously perched near the claws of the machine which sifted cotton on the far side of steel plates, pistons and steam.
Munoo wondered that all the children had not grazed their arms, knocked their heads or been cut up into pieces by the parts of the machine which jutted out, without any wiring to keep them safe out of harm’s way.
Lakshmi was weeping when Munoo found her. He could not weep, but felt embarrassed and ill at ease as they walked away together.
By the factory clock above Nadir Khan’s head nine hours had elapsed since they had entered the factory, Munoo figured.
The vertical sun had already gone down and the darkness of twilight spread like dirty linen hanging out on the milky way. A strange humidity had overtaken Bombay with the tense oppression of grey clouds that rolled heavy-footed across the heavens to India’s farthest plains.
The afternoon of Saturday was a half-holiday, even for the coolies.
Hari had to bear his son to the hospital in town to get his arm dressed again. Lakshmi wanted to look at the shops. And Munoo was eager to see the wonders of civilization.
As the little troupe wended its way among the crowds of other coolies, who were off on a binge at the toddy shops, or for a razzle in Grant Road, a vague, sulky heat around the dusty earth which spread in a brown amber desolation filled the atmosphere, and gigantic clouds stalked the sky from south to north.
Munoo looked at the heavens, bewildered by the phenomena. Then he looked down again, gasping for breath, staring sideways for a cool spot in the foggy haze, and thankful that he had not a clammy shirt sticking on to his skin in the torrid heat of this breathless day.
A blast of cool, sharp air struck him at the corner of the hospital. He could not see who had plunged this sudden dagger into the heart of the lull.
They had to wait in the outpatients’ ward before the boy was attended to. But Hari had long since learnt to be patient. Lakshmi completely effaced herself. The little girl was excited, while the boy stared blankly at the world from his father’s lap. Munoo alone was conscious of the heavy atmosphere of the waiting-room, charged with the pungent smell of strange medicines and by the superior grace of the beautiful pink nurses who seemed to walk like electricity and talk like nightingales.
He got up from the hot corner of the last row of benches where he had taken a seat, while Hari and his family sat down on the cemented floor. There was an electric fan on top of the first row where, he thought, the air would be less stale. He walked to it and sat down on the edge of the bench.
A sick merchant in muslin who sat there moved away and pressed his weight on to the patients next to him.
A nurse, who was writing the names of the patients on a register at a small table adjacent, rose, stepped up to where Munoo had taken his seat, and, frowning so that her face was covered with lines, hissed: ‘Jao.’
Munoo retreated, embarrassed and blushing. He was ashamed to look at Hari and the other coolies who sat on the floor, although they were merely listless and did not care whether he was insulted or not. He walked out of the waiting-room into the passage.
At the entrance to the outpatients’ ward he could hear the sonorous gurgle of what he guessed was the Arabian Sea, not very far away. He ran to the end of the street, and there, past a slanting beach, he could see the agita
ted waves roaring onwards, prancing like angry frothing white horses. The violence with which they broke their knees across the beach and fell back grazed and wounded, gripped him, and he stood motionless.
Then, suddenly, a distant peal of thunder tore at the heart of the sky and scribbled vivid flashes of lightning.
As the earth seemed to shake and the elements to reverberate with a weird agitation, Munoo was unnerved and ran for safety back towards the hospital.
Hari’s little girl greeted him with childish glee, pointing to a lone kite that soared across the sky, flapping its wings in its struggle against the wind, which was too strong for it.
But Munoo was troubled by the darkened skies from which descended sheet upon sheet of blazing light, followed with terrific suddenness by deafening roars of thunder.
He dragged the child in.
He met Lakshmi and Hari, with the boy in his arms, coming out.
Hardly had they returned to the street, where the oil lamps burnt with a fiery heat and steam oozed out of the pans in a cook-shop, when there was a hysterical growling in the sky, as if a pack of lions were at war. And then there was a mad charge of wildly neighing horses, whose steel hoofs struck fire on the cobblestones of the heaven’s surface as their riders, driving the shafts of their spears into their prey, caused large drops of rain to fall like cold blood from the injured bodies of hunted beasts.
The rain fell, long, sharp, sudden, vertical, solid rain, vast and unceasing. It flooded the thirsty land with a terrific sweep of pent-up energy, so that neither man nor beast could stir.
Two hours later, when the bubbles did not explode quite so quickly on the road, Hari led his cavalcade back to the basti in pelting rain. The roads were like rivers, the plain outside the city was a lake, and the tank had overflowed and washed away the straw huts.
Drenched to the skin, soaking wet, trembling with fear at the wild noise of the rain, the sudden claps of gurgling thunder, the sharp, tearing rents of bright, white-red lightning overhead and the uncertain earth of the mill land under their feet, the family sought shelter under a grove of plantain and palm trees, which stood upon a hill surrounding the temple at the edge of the pond. Hundreds of other workers whose huts had been damaged by the monsoon were gathering in the darkness.
‘Ram, Ram!’ muttered Hari, in long-drawn-out accents as he led the way.
Munoo followed quietly. Lakshmi shivered with the vibrations of the elements. The children moaned and sobbed.
‘Ohe Mundu! Ohe Mundu,’ a hoarse voice suddenly fell on Munoo’s ears as he bent under the weight of Hari’s daughter on his back. He was occupied by memories of the flood as it used to come in his village and the delights it brought, for his mother fried sweet pancakes to celebrate the season of rains. So he was not aware of the call.
‘Ohe Mundu!’ the voice came again, heavy, hilarious and familiar.
‘Who could it be?’ Munoo wondered as he steadied his gait and looked round, exploring the dark.
‘O seducer of your daughter,’ came the friendly voice near at hand. ‘Wait, I can help you if your hut has been washed away and you want accommodation.’
Munoo recognized Ratan, the wrestler, who was his neighbour at the factory. He waited.
‘Ohe, stop! wait!’ came the voice, happy and guttural, and the figure of Ratan towered above him, laughing and slipping.
Hari was bent beneath the weight of his son on his shoulder. Lakshmi was beautiful and poignant, as she struggled to sustain her frail form, modestly assimilating the clothes which stuck to her bust and her legs like the folds of a drapery round a goddess in the temple. They were both too cold and miserable to wait for the voice in the dark.
‘Stay, Hari brother,’ shouted Munoo eagerly, turning round. ‘Here is Ratan.’
But as he looked at Ratan, he saw a wild light in his eyes, the deep flush of a broad grin on his cheeks, the faint smell of wine on his thick lips. And he was afraid lest the man was trifling, playing some practical joke, since the wrestler was usually very hearty and frivolous in the factory. His nervousness and trepidation increased as he saw Hari and Lakshmi look back towards him, and as Ratan burst out chuckling with delight at the ridiculous sight they presented, struggling to keep themselves from slipping in the mud and slush of the pathway.
‘Come to our chawl,’ said the wrestler, thumping Munoo on the shoulder with a bonhomie which seemed to become more dangerous. ‘Come, come,’ he bawled out, ‘come, seducers of your daughters, wretches, come, I know you have nowhere to go.’
‘But I am with Hari and his family!’ said Munoo.
‘Come, come, all of you,’ roared Ratan, drunk and generous. ‘Ohe miserable beggars. I know how hard it is to fight for a wage in this cursed world and then to have nowhere to go, nowhere, nowhere but a toddy shop! Ha, ha, ha! Come, swine! I will take care of you. Trust old Ratan! Trust the Rustum of Hindustan to guard you! Trust the mightiest wrestler in the world!’ And as he thumped his chest vigorously to confirm the loud boast he slipped and fell with a curse. ‘Oh, seducer of his daughter! This rain! This rain!’
He heaved his body two or three times and rose at length, apologetically and with hiccups: ‘Forgive me, forgive the old Ratan. He is slightly drunk, you know! But he is safe! He is quite safe! Don’t be afraid! He will take you to a nice place!’ And, slipping, walking, stepping up precariously, dangerously, he led the way.
Munoo waved his arm to Hari, who stood dubious and afraid.
‘Come, come, come all of you!’ assured Ratan, in a more normal tone. ‘Trust the Rustum of Hind to help you in time of trouble!’
Munoo ran up to Hari and dragged him back. They followed the great, comic figure of the wrestler. The boy had somehow sensed Ratan’s open, frank nature, where the Southerners were hesitant and full of doubts and misgivings.
‘Is it true? Is it true that Ratan has space for us in the room where he lives?’ Hari asked, as he quickened his steps into short capers.
‘Come, come, wretches!’ urged Ratan, with a sincerity that broke through his throat. ‘Come.’
The procession slipped, slid, walked and jumped past ditches, struggled through the desolate loneliness of the dark, uneven mill land, haunted now by sharp cries, now by the wild sound of tom-toms, which kept time with the deafening swish of unceasing rain, with the flashes of lightning and the thunder in the sky.
Each one of them fell with a resounding thud in turn, and once three of them stumbled simultaneously. But they helped each other, all numb with cold and fear, except Ratan, who, though now reticent, was still warm and hearty and urged them on, till they reached the foot of the tall tenement houses three lanes away from the straw hut which they had occupied.
‘Now come, wretches, come,’ said the wrestler, slapping Munoo on the back with a fresh turn of his boisterous good humour that revived the boy’s spirits, though it did not warm his chill back.
‘I thought my poor son would die tonight,’ said Hari, almost on the verge of tears. ‘But may the blessings of God be upon you both, Munoo and Ratan. You have saved his life and prevented me from dying without a son to perform my funeral rites.’
‘Come, come, come upstairs,’ said Ratan. ‘What am I a wrestler for if I can’t help you? Who would call me the Rustum of Hindustan if with a big body I had not a big heart? Come. . . .’
Munoo conceived a wild admiration for Ratan. He had found a new hero. He would try to be like him.
The chawl to which Ratan took Munoo and Hari and his family was a three-storied tenement, built without any planning of the space into a courtyard, garden or playground, but closed in on all sides by other chawls and separated from them by gullies barely a yard or two wide.
The room on the third floor, confusingly like hundreds of other rooms in the building, and approached by a narrow, winding, iron staircase, was bigger than their hut.
As Ratan led the strangers into the atmosphere of wood smoke that packed it, Munoo discerned the figures of a skeleton-like man who limped abou
t, of a pale, slim young woman who sat huddled on her knees, and of a little girl child.
The family greeted them with a tense, forbidding silence. But Munoo was becoming accustomed to the strange reticence that prevailed among the mill people, few of whom seemed anxious to know each other, though they lived and worked only a yard or two away.
The pale flame of a small, oil lamp struggled against the gloom that descended through the solitary window on the north side of the room, from the dense, dark rain-clouds that still massed the sky. But, now and then, the draught that whistled through the chinks of the window to the chinks of the door inflamed the fuel in the two brick fireplaces in the corner, and enlarged the shadows of the occupants on the south wall.
‘You said you wanted to rent out half this room, ohe Shibu,’ said Ratan, as he stood at the doorway waiting for the whole troupe to come up the stairs. ‘I have brought you a family with whom this boy from our parts lodged. Their straw hut in the Sahib’s Lane has been washed away.’
‘Acha,’ said Shibu, puffing at a hubble-bubble with a coconut bottom. ‘Come, come and sit down, come on our head, you are welcome,’ he greeted as he saw Hari and his wife struggle in. ‘And where in the North do you come from, ohe Munooa?’
‘From Kangra, brother,’ Munoo replied, as he put the weight of Hari’s daughter off his back on the cement floor and stood excitedly surveying the room.
‘Oh, from Kangra, from Kangra; I have been to Kangra,’ began the old man garrulously. ‘Of course it was in the days when I was a small child. I went to the shrine where the goddess Kali appeared in the mountains.’
‘Here is your pancake,’ said Shibu’s wife to stem the tide of his effusive flow.
‘Oh father, tell us, then, what happened?’ said his pert little daughter.
‘Go to sleep, you little witch,’ snapped Shibu, who wanted to discuss business before he began to entertain the newcomers. He leaned over to Ratan and whispered something in his ear.
‘This room will be too hot to sleep in tomorrow,’ thought Munoo as he crouched, ‘but now I am cold in it. It will always be smoky, of course,’ he further reflected, ‘because there is nowhere for the smoke to get out except the window. But it is better than the straw hut. The floor is solid.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 41