He slowed down to reassure himself that he was not engulfed in hallucinatory visions which were frightening him into cowardice. ‘I am a brave hill-boy who has walked alone hundreds of times, even past graves and cremation grounds,’ he said to assure himself. ‘Why should I be afraid? I wonder where Ratan is now, what he is doing? And Hari? Lakshmi and the children must be at home, sleeping perhaps. I don’t mind being away from them here, though. Why is it that because I have walked away from the mill land I don’t want to go back to it?’ A shriek stabbed the heart of the darkness that spread alarmingly like the recumbent figure of a huge corpse before him. There were loud voices vowing ‘Allah ho Akbar!’ He started to run. Looking into a side bazaar, he saw an old man with spindle legs running as fast as he could under the weight of his rags, followed by a giant Pathan. He stood tense and eager, gazing through the distance. Two long-bodied Muhammadans, who were coming from the opposite direction with staves in their hands, fell upon the old man, who now quaked with fear, like a hounded chicken, uttering: ‘Ram re Ram! My life is gone!’ The giant who had followed the wretch stabbed him in the back, crying: ‘Heathen! Son of Eblis!’ The old man shrieked, uttered a groan, and fell with a thud on the road.
Munoo turned his back on the hush that followed the tragedy and ran blindly, mistaking the breeze that came from the street towards which he was making for the hoarse whispering of Muhammadan conspirators pursuing him, their victim, with their long knives and staves. But as no one touched him, he ran on and on, feeling light and alert, till a very hurricane of noises engulfed his ears and his eyes met the leaping flames of a big house on fire, the flames almost licking the sky and illuminating the world in a sheer orgy of resplendent red, gold and indigo-black.
‘That is the house of Mulji Madharji’s sweet-shop, burnt down by the Pathans. Don’t go, they will kill you,’ said a Gujerati merchant, who stood at the doorway of his house with one hand on the door and the other on the shoulder of a friend whom he wanted to detain.
Munoo heard the remark and looked about casually to see if there was some empty space outside the barred doors of a shop, or a step at the foot of the rambling stairs of a house, where he could rest his head in safety for the night.
Hardly had he withdrawn his gaze when he heard the Muhammadan cries of ‘Allah ho Akbar!’ rise from under the circle of fire, followed by the noise of stamping feet rushing frantically towards him.
He bolted into a gully which led towards the Opera House, but he was greeted by the howls of a woman who slapped her breasts and tore her hair as she stood by the railings of a veranda saying: ‘Where are you, my son? Oh, where are you? Where have you gone?’
Munoo dared not go near her, for fear she should think he would assault her. He turned to see if he could go back the way he had come. No. The Pathan marauders were running riot in the street, shouting ‘Allah ho Akbar!’ as they broke the doors of the houses with the butt-ends of their rifles and staves, and flourished daggers in their hands. He stood panic-stricken, certain that he had walked into the valley of death. But batches of policemen came running from the direction for which he had been heading, soft-footed, Munoo knew, because they wanted to surprise the rioters. He stepped back into the hall of a shop, afraid now that one of the police might thrust a bayonet into him, and almost as certain of death as he had been a moment ago. The blue-uniformed men ran by, however, and even the woman seemed to have disappeared. He steadied himself and breathed a deep breath. Then he continued to crawl along, pressing himself to the walls, looking before and behind to make certain that he was not being noticed.
As, with hesitant steps, he reached the end of the lane, he was impelled by curiosity to look back and survey the scene he had left behind. The Pathans were towering over the policemen in a grim hand-to-hand fight. He was absorbed in the anticipation of seeing the dead fall on their backs, and he entered unconsciously into the open square, where two streams of rioters had met. He was plunged into the very maelstrom of passions.
Under the wild, half-smothered cries of ‘Allah ho Akbar’ and ‘Kali Mai ki jai! Siva ji ki jai!’ the bodies of Hindus and Muhammadans struggled in murderous embraces. ‘Mar! Mar! Hit and see!’ a voice challenged, and was quieted by the thrust of a dagger, so that it fell instantaneously and expired with a cry, ‘Killed!’
‘Son of an ass! Heathen!’ the aggressive shouts of the conqueror tore the warm, tense air.
‘This time death is certain,’ Munoo said to himself, as he edged away under cover of a tram which had drawn up by the curb-edge of the square. And he felt the hard impact of large knuckles at the back of his neck and then a sudden blow on his spine. He was stretched out.
As he looked up from where he had fallen he saw a Muhammadan outlined against the tramway. He instinctively closed his eyes and loosened his body to simulate the limpness of a corpse. The man kicked him with a contemptuous whisper of ‘Hindu dog!’ and then left with his companions, shouting, stamping, fierce and bloody. And for a moment there was utter silence in the square.
Then the cries of the half-dead arose with the swish of sea air that came from the Chowpatti beach, and fugitive forms nestled about as they emerged from strange unknown corners.
Munoo opened his eyes to scan a triangular flower garden that stood guarded by regular railings. He felt he would go and hide among the shrubs there.
But as he strained to lift his head on his elbow he heard someone writhing in agony, while a stave seemed to strike the earth with a metallic sound. He listened to the convulsed despair of the dying man in extreme nervousness. Escape in that direction seemed impossible. He lay back and held his breath for a minute until he heard the last cry of the wretch.
He hesitated between despair and a desire to go to the man. But his body was weighted down by fear, his head bowed down, his eyes half-closed by the fatigue of waiting in the dark. And he lay resigned.
Suddenly he felt the rush of eager feet about him. ‘Has my end come now?’ he asked himself. But there seemed to be no answer. He lay dumb, ready for his last breath to depart. He had no time to think of the past, and the glow of desire seemed to have left his body.
But his end had not come. For two men of the Social Service League lifted him and bore him to shelter in the veranda of a school, a hundred yards away, where hurricane lamps illuminated the bodies of a crowd of beggars, paupers and coolies, who had ostensibly been rescued from the streets where they ordinarily slept.
A doctor, who looked to Munoo not unlike the brother of the Sham Nagar Babu, because he wore a hat and suit, asked him where he was hurt. Munoo just moved his head negatively and lay wrapped in complete inertia. The doctor examined his body, wrote something on a paper and moved on.
A volunteer applied a cup of hot milk to his lips, and Munoo got up to drink, grateful and humble. The sweet, hot liquid rushed the blood to his face.
If only he had laid down to sleep he might have risen soothed and balanced in the morning. But he opened his eyes to his surroundings.
The veranda was dark. There was a horrible smell of urine and dung hanging over it. And the whispers of the poor rose like thick flakes of cotton in the closed air.
Munoo tried not to breathe through the reek too deeply, but his eyes were taking in the disgusting outlook of the diseased, broken men about him, some crouching with their sleek bellies, some bending over their hollow chests, some snoring woodenly as they slept against a wall, some contemplating their wounds and sores with weak eyes that blinked not, some coughing in unending fits of jerky reiterations.
The boy was going to open his mouth to breathe a word to himself. A gust of musty damp pepper and the foul reek of excrement assailed him. He shut his mouth and only sniffed at the air. He dilated his nostrils. Again there was the dirty smell going through him. He decided to bolt from the place. It was unbearable. He would go and sleep on the sea beach. There were booths there which lay empty all night. He had seen them. He hoped nobody else had thought of the idea, and that the place would
be empty.
He got up and began to walk. No one seemed to take any notice of him. The door was straight in front of him and people were coming and going. He emerged from the gate, and ran as if he were a rocket of fire going to be quenched in the sea. He was not conscious of his body. He shot past vast buildings across the Chowpatti bay like a whirlwind.
He sighted a broken wagon which was covered with a jute awning. He slowed down, panting. The marble statue of Parsee stood small and insignificant against the vast sheet of water which swished like a snake and spilled the white foam of its poison on the shores of India. He mounted into the wagon and groped around. There was plenty of space. He lay down and rested. The anarchy of the sea drowned him in sleep.
When he awoke, late in the morning, he did not know where to go, what to do, and what he wanted. No one had come to disturb him. He sat staring at the sunshine which flooded the wagon and heard the unending roar of the sea beyond the jute-cloth curtain. The night had been cold and he had shivered at dawn. But now it was quite warm, even hot. And it was so restful, were it not that he felt this emptiness in his soul and hunger in his belly.
He tried to console himself by feeling that he deserved this leisure after months of having to get up early at dawn. It was like the old days in the village, he felt, when he used to laze around in the afternoon and have a siesta while the cattle grazed. The wild pastures of the green sea had indeed something of the freedom of the open fields.
The mere habit of getting to the factory in the morning, however, had given him a conscience about work. And his conscience pricked him now. He felt he ought to get up and do something—anything.
But what was he to do? Where was he to go? What did he want? he asked himself again. And the answer came that he did not know. What was his kismet?—Lost!
It seemed to him that he had always felt like that when he was a derelict. During the days when he had worked, however, and come home to a meal, he had seldom been lonely, even though he was tired by work and suffered inconveniences. For he talked and heard people talk, played practical jokes on people, and slept, rising to face the morning.
Now, somehow, the essential loneliness of the soul, that apartness which he had succeeded in shattering by his zest and enthusiasm for work and for entering the lives of others, by the natural love he felt for others, came into him.
He realized suddenly that he had always come to something when he began to move, to act. For instance he had met Prabha when he ran away from Sham Nagar; the elephant-driver who brought him to Bombay; Hari; and he certainly wouldn’t have met Ratan if he had not come to Bombay. ‘But then there have been days, months and years,’ he said to himself, ‘when I have gone on working and wandering alone. Still, I will go back to the mill and see what is happening.’
He shook himself, stretched his arms, yawned, got up and jumped down from the wagon.
The beach was deserted except for the fishermen, who were casting their nets.
He walked up to the end of Chowpatti and saw the panorama of green, white and red houses, spread on the lower ridges of the Malabar Hill.
On the road life seemed natural and ordinary without any trace of the happenings of last night. The motor-cars sped swiftly past victorias and cycles. The boards on the shops greeted his rudimentary stare. One read: ‘Auto de Luxe’; another ‘Bhartiya Watch Works’; another ‘The American Auto Parts Co.’; a fourth ‘Clinical Laboratory of Dr N.J. Modi, M.B.B.S., M.R.C.P. (London)’; still another ‘Bharat Swadeshi Stores’.
When he got to Pariakh Mansions he saw some coolies, both men and women, bearing baskets of earth from a shop to a bullock-cart which stood with two bullocks harnessed to its shaft.
Munoo stopped and watched the bullocks emptily. The beasts had curved horns and were munching straw as they waited, patiently, without a lead, careless of the flies that sat on their rumps where the continual friction with the wood had bruised them. He wished he was like the bullocks.
The shops had not opened yet, but men passed quickly by on the pavements, umbrellas in one hand, the lower edges of their loincloths in the other, flourishing their bare, dark brown legs. Munoo watched them go by, till it seemed to him there was nothing but legs, legs, legs, everywhere.
‘What has happened?’ he wondered. ‘Has last night’s affair finished?’ Certainly everything seemed orderly this morning.
‘And yet,’ he said to himself, ‘it can’t be.’ And he felt that all these men were cheating him with a conspiracy of silence, that they were all passing him by, deliberately suppressing the secret of the insurrection.
He ached for contact with someone, to know what was happening.
Only a crow came and settled on a window-sill before him to see if it could pick up something.
Munoo looked away. For a moment his mind was empty.
Then he saw the policeman superintending the crossroads talking to a rich Parsee.
Munoo moved towards them and, simulating the manner of a pauper, began to pick up the fallen leaves of trees from near the bullock-cart.
‘As far as the police are concerned,’ said the constable to the Parsee, ‘the rumour about the kidnapping was groundless. And the police tried to broadcast a notice to restore confidence. But there was violence throughout the mill areas and the town, and the whole strength of the police, including the armed police, had to be mobilized to keep the disorderly elements in check. And though so many outrages were committed, the Sarkar did not call in the military. The police have won the day. The condition of the town is better this morning. The coolies in the railway workshops and the mills have gone back to work. As you see, people are walking about normally.’
Munoo was now possessed by a fit of conscientiousness. He must get back to work. The mill had opened. So there was no strike. Hari must have gone to the factory. ‘I will go,’ he said, and slunk away.
He had hardly gone a hundred yards when he heard two Congress volunteers engaged in a serious talk with a man in a suit, who jotted down words in a notebook which he opened and closed from time to time. He slowed down, shaking his right foot as if he were hurt, then settled down and poured dust on it, pretending to treat the wound on his toe.
‘At 7.30 this morning,’ one volunteer dictated, ‘Alve and Khasle, labour leaders, took a Muhammadan contractor named Rahim to the tea-shop at the corner of Suparibang Road to come to some settlement with the Pathans, when an unknown Pathan smacked Alve on the face. Within half an hour three to four thousand mill hands came down in a large body with sticks to attack the Pathan camp in retaliation for the assault on Alve. A cordon of armed policemen with a show of great favouritism protected the Pathans. The main part of the mob went back, but some of them halted at the Union office at the Damodar Thackersey Hall. The Deputy Commissioner of Police got the help of the army. Various platoons of the Warwickshire Regiment are spread over the town with machine-guns, and the Commissioner has wired to the Poona Brigade for more military aid. We have called a meeting of the Hindu and Muslim leaders here at the house of Mr Sirla—’
At this moment a limousine drew up by the pavement and the attention of the Congress-men turned to the tall, burly figure, in princely clothes and astrakhan decorated with ruby-red crescent moons, who emerged.
‘Bande Matram,’ Munoo heard the Congress-wallah greet his majesty. He did not know who he was. But he was impressed and curious.
‘What are your leaders doing?’ the dignitary exclaimed. ‘What are the police and the Government doing? What are the newly elected members of the corporation doing? What are the leaders of the Youth Movement doing? For a whole night the Pathans have been murdered by the Hindus and the Congress has done nothing about it. If Miss Mayo came to India and wrote a chapter about children being kidnapped for sacrificial purposes, would you not deny it as a wicked libel?’
The Congress-men kept quiet. The journalist with the notebook, however thrust himself forward and asked:
‘Is the situation likely to develop into an All India Hindu-
Muslim conflict, Maulana Hasrat Ali?’
‘Of course it will,’ replied the Maulana.
‘We are going to organize the Muhammadans for the purpose of self-defence,’ the Maulana’s voice broke out excitedly.
‘But Congress is forming a peace committee,’ said one of the Congressmen.
‘You are always talking of peace,’ said the Maulana. ‘You talk of peace but mean war. Meanwhile the Hindu hooligans of Kalbadevi have murdered three Mussulmans this morning, and fifty operatives of Muhammadan mills have been assaulted. We have just been to the King Edward Hospital. There are more Muhammadans wounded than Hindus.’
‘Well, salaam, Maulana,’ said the journalist, and cleared off.
‘Don’t publish the interview,’ the Maulana shouted after him. But the man had cycled away.
Another car rolled up.
Munoo saw another dignitary emerge and hail the Muhammadan leader and the Congress volunteers with ‘Bande Matram’. The Muhammadan seemed to take no notice of him as he walked into the palatial mansion. Pandit Madan Mohan Malabari, the new dignitary, in immaculate khaddar, followed them. The Congress volunteers began to direct the chauffeurs of the cars to move up.
The boy felt drawn towards the door of the house. He took advantage of the absence of the volunteers to go up and peer in. He could only see a long, polished flight of stairs, ascending up into the roof of the building.
‘Go away! Who are you?’ one of the Congress volunteers shouted as he returned to his post at the door.
Munoo started, blushed a confession of guilt, and capered on his way.
But two steps and he was riveted to the spot by the crackling noise of a long volley of shots in the direction of Hughes Road. He stared ahead; he could not see a soul. Then, suddenly, men came falling over each other, shrieking and wounded. He felt no pity for anybody, nor for himself. His mind was a blank.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 47