Munoo’s heart reached out into the space about him, straining like a wave to touch the shores of the women’s bodies, but it was beaten back before it got anywhere near them.
Piari signed to Bude Khan again and sang the first verse of a second song with a most affecting shuffle of her bangles, an arched glance of her eyes, a delicate movement of her head, and cast a spell over Ratan, which the lecherous accompanist drove home by just the right accent on the harmonium.
Piari stopped to receive the gift of another rupee, which prostitutes expect after the effective presentation of every verse of a song, once they have got the customer well in hand.
‘A little more dancing would please my friend,’ said Ratan, cunningly evading the payment.
Piari signed to the dancers, laughing in the face of a look from Bude Khan which accused her of forgetting her business.
The girls rose slowly, rolling their almond eyes, which now showed the deep lines of the cosmetic around them, under the smear of their thick eyebrows and their long, black lashes.
They took up the accents of Piari’s song on their fingers, and mounting the languid notes of the music, danced with a sudden, shrill brilliance, insinuating all the love, the passion, the lust of the poem, with elaborate artistry, by the suggestions of their bodies, the swaying of their tapering arms, the balanced, hurrying motions of snakes and vipers, the violence of panthers, the fine insinuating glides of innocent roes, the slow motion of enchantresses casting spells. The fine frenzies of their dazzling olive skins had now been transmuted from the artificiality of make-up into the transparency of mirrors which reflected the strange colour of their souls.
Ratan had bawled out approbation as the lusty chords of the song lashed his body: ‘Wah, wah! shabash!’—as is the custom in appreciating Indian music, for the audience is supposed to be an enthusiastic part of the performance, and not a chilly embodiment of external criticism. At the end of the song he took another rupee from his dhoti and put it as a douceur on a tray.
The dancers glided away. Bude Khan shuffled out behind them.
Munoo had been spellbound during the performance. Now he was agitated. And he grew flushed and hot.
‘The boy must be tired,’ suggested Piari, meaningly.
‘Han, Munoo brother, you go home,’ said Ratan. ‘It is late. I will follow you later.’
Munoo felt that he would die with the misery of not knowing what he wanted. That he wanted something, he knew. But what, he did not know. He rose. Piari patted him on the head. The boy was weeping bitterly as he rushed out. He returned from the street of pleasure long after midnight, through sleepless Bombay, where the eternally homeless coolies squatted, moaned and gossiped, outside closed shops, pale and ghostly under the glare of gas-lights.
On the outskirts of the town the roads were misty white in the uncanny darkness of the moonless night. But the deep ruts and pits of the plateau beyond them spread sinister and eerie, the more so because occasionally a firefly opened its jewel wings on a rubbish-heap and, suddenly, an owl droned its heavy, ominous song of desolation from the midst of a palm grove.
The queer disturbance in Munoo’s soul, after the excitement of the dance in Piari Jan’s house, seemed to become an oppressive weight on his chest. His brain reeled with the agitation of half-conscious desires that rose to his head like dim ghosts of thoughts. What is it I want? he asked himself, as his body struggled along with its weight of fatigue and its burden of vague perturbation. And, as he could not get an answer to his query, he walked in a jaded indifference. Then the tread of his feet seemed to become the giant stride of some monstrous demon, who, in spite of his largeness, was uneasy and afraid of the evil spirits of the dark, which huddled together with dishevelled hair, glistening white teeth, and sharp claws with long nails extended to scratch one’s eyes out. He closed his eyes to escape from the vision, but he stumbled and hit his left toe against a stone. Then he ran, ran hard, and came within sight of the tenements. The witches of the night had been left behind. And there was the bright point of a lamp in a hut, glistening with a comfortable glow. He felt he was safe, though the fear of the night still lingered in his bones. He walked up the stairs as if each breath he breathed were his last.
Hari’s wife was waiting for him, mending rags by the pale glimmer of an earthen saucer lamp, as she reclined against the wall, away from where everyone snored, moaned or shifted sides, in the enervating heat of the room. She looked at him with a pained, tender light in her eyes and strained to ask: ‘Where have you been so late?’
Munoo stared at her. The tears that had ebbed up to his eyes when Piari Jan put her hand on his head flowed into them again. He averted his glance from her and moved towards the part of the floor where he slept. When he looked up again, Lakshmi was bending over him with a trembling, wild light in her eyes, and a warm flush on her cheeks. He shook his head and bent it low so as to escape the contact which his instincts wanted. She raised his chin with a gentle, gentle brush of her hand and, with all the pathos, all the tenderness of her mother’s intuitive understanding of his need, kissed his forehead, murmuring in the faintest of whispers, like an incantation: ‘We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering! My love!’ And she lay down by his side and took him in her arms, pressing him to her bosom with a silent warmth which made him ache with the hurt of her physical nearness, which tortured him, harassed him, making him writhe with all the pent-up fury of his adolescent passion, till in the magic hours of the dawn it found an escape in death, in the temporary death of his body in hers.
Monday morning was like Doomsday to the coolies, especially after they had lost themselves in the ecstasy of human relationships on Sunday.
On Monday mornings they returned to work. And, as if the monster of death were some invisible power which throttled them as soon as they set out to work, they walked to the factory in a kind of stupor, in a state of apathy which made the masks of their faces assume the sinister horror of unexpressed pain.
Why were they sad? Munoo wondered, because he still had a little of the stored-up vitality his youth left in him. And he stared hard at them. Shivering, weak, bleary, with twisted, ugly faces, black, filthy, gutless, spineless, they stole along with unconscious, vacant looks; idiots, looking at the smoky heavens, as they sighed or murmured ‘Ram, Ram’ and the other names of God, in greeting to each other and in thanksgiving for the gifts of the Almighty. The boy recalled how his patron Prabha, in Daulatpur used to say that everything was the blessing of God, even Ganpat’s ill-treatment, the beating the police had given him, and the fever of which he nearly died—that all suffering was the result of our having committed evil deeds. Perhaps these people also believed in Karma. Hari, indeed, had often said so, and he had hoped that one day his luck would turn, because he had done some good deeds in his life. Ratan laughed at all such wisdom, and he alone went light-heartedly through life, with a brave, handsome face, beaming with smiles; he alone went with a pride and a swagger, while the other coolies cringed with humility.
Munoo felt a superstitious awe for Ratan’s fate; a sense of doom crept into his soul as he thought of him. He tried to dismiss his thoughts by repeating the Indian phrase: ‘I must not think of Ratan as handsome and lucky, lest my evil eye brings bad luck to him.’ But, as if his thoughts were echo auguries, the smile on the wrestler’s face faded one morning.
It was the Chimta Sahib’s habit to stand by the door of the preparing-shed every morning to exact salaams and other forms of homage from the coolies. A flourish of the hand, a curse, an oath, or abuse was the greeting he offered in exchange. This conduct was well suited to the preservation of peace in the mill, as even the sight of his big, beefy body cowed the coolies and put the fear of God into them, and they were then in the right frame of mind to perform their duties. Occasionally he kicked a coolie. But that was when he had got drunk early, or quarrelled with Mrs Thomas, and sometimes it was when he had read in the morning paper the news of a demonstration, a terrorist outrage, or an attemp
t at seditious Communist propaganda which he, as a member of the British race of India, considered to be more a personal affront than the pursuit of an ideal of freedom on the part of the exploited. He had long since forgotten the days during which he himself had eked out a miserable existence in Lancashire.
Ratan was an independent-minded person. He did not bow down to salaam the foreman. He had the confidence of his own personal strength and, behind that, the strength of the Union. He knew he was a good worker and deserved full pay at the end of the month. And when his pay was not forthcoming at the time when it was due, or when he was threatened with a cut for damaged cloth, or for being late, he agitated.
There was no love between the Chimta Sahib and Ratan.
‘Salaam, Sahib!’ the wrestler greeted the foreman cockily, as he strode past him.
‘Come here!’ called the Chimta Sahib in a sharp whisper.
‘Huzoor,’ said Ratan, with mock ceremony, coming back.
‘You are discharged,’ said the Chimta Sahib.
‘But Sahib! What is my fault?’
‘Jao! You are discharged.’
Ratan looked at the foreman, at first calmly, then he swayed like one struck to the heart. His full face concentrated into a knot of anguish, pride and power. Then his chin lifted a little, his teeth ground the bad taste in his mouth and the corners of his eyes were shot with gleams of fire. He stood upright, aching to express himself, to express the demon in him, the monster of pain which the actual knowledge of poverty, of the weakness of the people around him, and of their suffering, had given him. It was as if this sudden blow to his dignity had gone like a shock of electricity through him, and had illuminated his frame with the most intense sense of his own status. He raised his hand to strike. But the Chimta Sahib was moving away towards Nadir Khan, and Ratan could not violate the chivalrous law of the wrestler by hitting his adversary on the back. He shook his arms and threw off the tremendous weight of quiet power gathered in him. He loosened his muscles, bit his lower lip and felt the blood in his glittering eyes turning to water.
‘They say one must never pass behind a horse or in front of an officer,’ said Munoo consolingly. ‘I will go and beg him to take you back.’
‘No,’ said Ratan coolly. ‘I will show him. Just you wait.’
And he rushed away to the office of the All India Trade Union Federation, half a mile away, believing he would be able to put his cause before Lalla Onkar Nath, the President, who came from up-country and who, he knew, would be sympathetic.
‘I want to make a complaint to the President,’ he said to a clerk who sat on the veranda of the bungalow, which served as the office of the Trade Union Committee.
The clerk eyed him up and down and said that the Sahib was busy.
Ratan pressed a nickle piece of half a rupee into the man’s hand.
The clerk lifted the chic at the door of the office, went in, but returned automatically.
‘The Sahib says he is very busy,’ he reported. ‘He orders you write to him if you have any complaints to make. I will write the application for you for a rupee.’
Ratan felt impotent with rage. He could have wrung the man’s neck, but he realized that it was not the clerk’s fault, and he sat down to dictate an epistle seeking redress through the Union for the wrong he suffered.
There was the coming and going of many men in the room where Ratan lodged that evening.
The rumour had spread that the wrestler had been discharged, and coolies came from all corners of the mill land to sympathize with him, and to receive sympathy for the wrongs they too had suffered.
About half-past eight, however, arrived two Indian sahibs, Sauda and Muzaffar, and an Englishman, Stanley Jackson, whom the coolies had often seen lecturing in the mill maidan.
‘We hear you have been discharged, Ratan,’ said Sauda.
‘Han,’ said Ratan, smiling nonchalantly.
‘Did the foreman give you any reason?’ asked the Englishman, in broken Hindustani.
‘No, Sahib,’ said Ratan. ‘But he has been waiting for an opportunity to do this for some time. I don’t care about that so much as the insulting behaviour of Lalla Onkar Nath, the President of our Union, in refusing to see me.’
‘Why didn’t you come to us?’ said Muzaffar. ‘You have suffered because of your association with us. We have to take up your cause. Don’t be downhearted.’
‘I had hoped to get a job somewhere else,’ said Ratan, ‘and thought that if I came to you it would be known all over the mill world and that would jeopardize my chances.’
‘Why not go to the Chimta Sahib?’ put in Munoo, who sat eagerly listening to the conversation and rather excited by the dramatic visit of the Red Flag Union officials to the room.
‘Oh, no, there is no question of that,’ said Sauda, with a flourish of his hand. ‘Do not all the insults you people suffer rouse you from apathy to which you have succumbed? Does not all the misery, all the degradation you suffer, rouse you to indignation? I tell you that they have ground you down, they have fleeced and sweated you, they have tortured your lives enough!’
‘That is so,’ said Hari, shaking his head, as he sat bent with his curved spine.
‘Look at the room you live in,’ began Sauda. ‘Is it big enough to house you all? And thousands of you are content to live in these tenements, and straw huts which have no paved road, no playground, nor sanitation. How long can you live like this? At the best six months, and then you will go home to die. And those children of yours sweat hard all day for an anna and get stunted and never grow up. When will you wake up? When will you come to your senses?’
‘Don’t take offence at what the Sahib is saying,’ said Muzaffar, cautiously taking the sting off the vehement reproaches of Sauda. ‘The Sahib loves you. He, too, has suffered from poverty. And he knows a law with which to remove poverty if you will learn it.’
‘He will establish schools for your children,’ said the Englishman.
‘More than schools,’ said Sauda. ‘You want food. Your hands spin the cotton and weave the cloth on those machines. At home your hands ploughed the fields and produced the cotton. Your brethren plant grain and reap the harvest under the heat of the sun; they build the roads; work in the mines and on the plantations. The big employer Sahib takes away all that you produce, to Vilayat, and gives you a bare pittance with which you can hardly pay the rent, buy food, clothe yourself or pay your debts. You work for a while and then go away to die in the old village, and other men come to take your place. An epidemic of cholera starts and you are swept off. Now tell me, are you content to let your masters treat you like that?’
‘No,’ said Ratan. ‘No!’
‘But what can we do, Sahib?’ said a visiting coolie. ‘You are a clever man and like a sahib. So you can fight the other sahibs, but who are we to protest?’
‘You are human beings,’ said Sauda fiercely. ‘Have you forgotton your notion of izzat? Would you let anyone throw away the turbans off your head?’
‘No,’ replied the coolie.
‘But then where is your idea of izzat gone?’ asked Sauda. ‘Where is your dignity? Where is your manhood?’
‘I am a man,’ boasted Ratan, striking his hand on his chest.
‘That is why you have been discharged,’ said Munoo jocularly. ‘You are too proud of being a wrestler!’
Everyone laughed at this and the atmosphere became less tense for a moment. Then Hari spoke, wearily, shrugging his shoulders.
‘We have to work for someone, if not for the Chimta Sahib, then for someone else.’
‘Han, han, you have to work,’ said Sauda. ‘Work is good, but now you sweat eleven hours a day and get bad pay. If you do what I tell you, your hours will get shorter and your pay will be increased.’
‘What shall we do, Sahib?’ asked Hari.
‘You must walk out of the mill, all of you,’ said Sauda, ‘and refuse to work till your hours are shortened, your pay increased, your children given schools and till you
are given new houses.’
‘You go on strike,’ said the Englishman quietly.
‘I shall,’ said Ratan.
‘You are already on strike,’ Munoo teased his friend.
The other coolies remained silent. They knew that they had to slave hard, that they were being sweated and fleeced, that they were being starved to death slowly, but they thought of their immediate necessities during a strike, of the food their children would want and of their own hunger. And they were afraid, and hung their heads.
‘Think over what we have said,’ said Muzaffar reasonably. ‘Meanwhile, Ratan, brother, you had better come and see us tomorrow, and we will see what can be done.’
‘Salaam, Sahib,’ the coolies said.
‘Salaam, salaam, salaam,’ the three Communists returned, and walked down the stairs.
Munoo was very excited and enthusiastic.
The President of the All India Trade Union Congress was persuaded by Sauda, Muzaffar and Jackson to make representations to the Sir George White Mills on behalf of Ratan. An application was sent asking for his reinstatement and he was asked to call to see the manager personally.
The letter arrived with hundreds of other communications, concerning bales of raw cotton received in the railway godowns, orders for the dispatch of finished cloth, machinery imported from England, repairs to be undertaken, inquiries about prices and samples, and, most important of all, Sir George White’s dispatches.
The manager, Mr Little, was flurried in his rush to tackle the correspondence. He did not know where to begin. He caught sight of the ‘Dear Sir’ on one letter, the ‘Honoured Sir’ on another, the ‘As regards the hundred bales of cotton that were not delivered’ on another, the ‘Thanking you in anticipation’ on still another, and he was exhausted, his gaze fluttering wildly from the difficult sprawl of the railway goods clerk in dim carbon tracing on pink paper, the crude edges of Jamsetji Jijibhoy Mills’ dispatches, and the immaculate sheets of Sir Reginald White’s crested letter paper.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 44