Our Favourite Indian Stories

by Khushwant Singh

'Stop all this cain cain,' shouted her father-in-law as he came up from where he had been tarring the road to look at his grandchild. 'Get away', he said with a bluff of rudeness. 'It is no wonder that she had the little one all by herself. She is a peasant woman with strong loins like many other peasant women of our parts, who have given birth to sons all by themselves, so that our race can be perpetuated and our land tilled for grain...' And he picked up the whining baby from the basket like a practised hand and put the little shrieking one to his shoulder, saying with a gruff tenderness: 'Come, come, my lion, my stalwart, don't weep... come, it won't be so bad. Come, my son, perhaps with your coming, our luck will turn...'

  Of Cows and Love

  Atul Chandra

  The day seemed to be preparing for a sundowner. A small herd of cows grazed leisurely along the thin strips of green on the other side of the road adjacent to my house. My neighbours had not stirred out. Nor was there any passer-by in sight to break the monotonous stillness.

  I do not know how long I stood there before realising that I had been watching cows. What a moronic pastime, I told myself. Yet I stood there, arms resting on the cold iron of the gate, watching cows.

  I felt lonely and miserable. Involuntarily I searched for the line of happiness on my palm. What have I done to deserve this fate, I mumbled? This was not the first time that I had put this question to myself. Like always, there was no answer. I looked skyward for the bluebird of happiness to fly by. It was nowhere to be seen.

  Suddenly, a cow's frantic cry startled me. My eyes turned in the direction of the cow tottering towards my house, tail up, eyes popping and froth at the mouth. I caught a glimpse of a swift, slithering movement in the grass. Before I could say "snake" the cow fell right in front of me, sprawled across my gate.

  'Oh Saba, what has happened?' I suddenly heard a shocked voice. It was Preeti's, who seemed to have just come out of the neighbouring house. 'What is wrong with this cow? Looks like it's dying,' she continued almost in the same breath.

  'But how did it happen?' chimed in Prabha, the fat middle-aged woman popular in the colony as aunty, covering her nose and mouth with her pallu as if the fallen cow was stinking already and the germs would invade her nostrils.

  I could see a glint of suspicion in her eyes as she gave me one of those penetrating looks of hers. I could immediately guess what was going on in her mind. It has become so easy to read people's mind these days. She must be thinking I had killed the cow. Just imagine!

  I hate to use the word, but Prabha aunty is a bitch.

  'It seems a snake has bitten her,' I explained, a little concerned about the cow and what I could do to save it. I knew I should drop some water on the thick, dark, protruding tongue. It would not have saved the animal but perhaps it could have reduced its suffering a wee bit... and brought salvation for these neighbours of mine. But their attitude forbade me from doing anything.

  I could feel a silent, impotent rage rise within me. All that these women could think and whisper within earshot was how the cow had come to die in front of my house. As if the animal had a choice!

  It was appalling. Despite the incidents of 1992, I never believed that religion could make people so inhuman and insensitive. Listening to their barbs made me feel sick.

  'I think she must have poisoned it...' murmured Prabha aunty.

  'These people are fanatics... all of them, even the women,' whispered Suneeta, who had studied with me in the university. In those days I had found her not only tolerant but also warm and friendly. She used to argue for amity between our two religions and talk of Lucknow's composite culture.

  Today it was a different Suneeta. Perhaps this was the real Suneeta. The transformation was indeed hard to believe.

  'Chhi, chhi, how could a cow die in front of her house,' said Sadhvi incredulously. She did not seem to care about my hurt feeling or sad reaction. These women did not even bother to consider how rabid their thoughts and utterances were.

  The irony was that I belonged to the place. I was not new to them nor they to me. I had lived there for thirty years, growing up with some of them, sharing meals and friendly embraces on Holi and Id.. Yet at the moment they all seemed bent on making me feel like an alien.

  In our teens when we would discuss boys, we would never talk of religion. Looks and intelligence were the traits which some of us mohalla girls found attractive in the boys we knew and pined for.

  That was then... years ago. It's different now. The heart really has its reasons. And the mind is where the fallen angel often finds refuge.

  By now I was seething with anger and could hold it no more.

  'So what if it has died in front my house?' I burst out. 'I have not touched it to make it untouchable for you all. Don't you worship it?... Can't you pour a few drops of Ganga jal or just tap water?... You all have warped minds to be thinking like this...' I thought I would go on and make a spectacle of myself.

  Since they had known me for so long, they were also familiar with my temper. Of course I was certain that my losing cool would not spark off riots... just as the death of this cow outside my gate would not. And it didn't. They simply made a face, gave me angry, piercing stares and walked off.

  Their turning their backs on me did not work like a coolant. My blood pressure was still high and another incident flashed through my mind.

  Prabha aunty had come over to my house one evening about three months ago. She had a bad cold and my mother asked me to make tulsi ki chai, the age-old prescription for common cold.

  Thinking that I would have to go to someone's house to get tulsi leaves, Prabha aunty asked me not to bother. I told her, 'Aunty it will be no trouble at all as we have a tulsi plant in our house.'

  In total disbelief and with her usual sarcasm she said, 'Haan bhai, kalyug hai na.' It took me some time to figure out what was so strange about a tulsi plant prospering in my house.

  I took her to a corner of my lawn where stood a bushy, green tulsi plant. Prabha aunty was both disappointed and jealous. What is a tulsi plant doing in the house of a non-Hindu? As if plants and animals were classified on religious lines!

  'Saba,' she blurted out crudely, 'why don't you give this plant to me... it should be in my house and not yours, don't you think so? I don't know what is wrong but tulsi plants don't survive in my house,' she added rather dejectedly.

  'That's precisely the reason why you shouldn't ask for it,' I said. 'Besides, aunty, it is a medicinal plant and for that reason anybody can grow it,' I quietly told her while plucking a few leaves.

  After this, whenever she came to our house, Prabha aunty would find an excuse to go to the lawn and look at the tulsi plant with envy. Each time she would unabashedly repeat what she had said on first seeing the plant, 'This should not have been in your house.'

  It was irritating. I offered to get her another plant but she wouldn't agree. I decided not to let her go anywhere near the lawn. Finally, she took the sensible decision of not coming to my house at all. It made me happy and I did not bother to find out if she also felt the same.

  The cow had by now turned into a carcass. What should I do? These people who are ready to shed blood over a cow are not even concerned about it when it is dying. Their annoyance was over the animal dying in front of my house. That had deeply hurt their religious sentiments. I know they would not have touched it anyway.

  The problem was getting the carcass removed. It was blocking the way to my house and I had to find a scavenger before it was too late. There was no other way but to go looking for one.

  I locked my house and went to see if Radheyshyam, my rickshaw-man, was around. Fortunately, he was. I told him about my problem. He said he knew somebody and agreed to take me to him. At this time of the day he would charge a lot of money, Radheshyam warned as I sat on the rickshaw.

  I was not worried about money. My only worry was what if the man refused? Radheshyam took me to a narrow lane where pigs lolled in filth in one corner. Some children sat in a row, defecating. A short
distance away men and women sat on charpoys. It was a world that had barely changed even as we entered another century with much fanfare.

  The rickshaw stopped near a man in striped underwear, smoking a bidi. 'Kallu, bahanji wants to get a carcass removed.'

  'Please remove it today as it is blocking the passage to my house. I am ready to pay you extra for it,' I pleaded.

  'I will charge five hundred rupees,' he said without batting an eyelid. I was quiet for a while. Five hundred was a lot of money. But I had no choice. 'Okay,' I said feebly and Kallu did not waste any time in picking up a rope and hopping on to his bicycle.

  Once there, Kallu parked his bicycle against a wall. He then tied the legs of the carcass with the rope and laboured hard to drag it to a vacant piece of land away from my house. 'I will do the rest tomorrow,' he assured me.

  After paying Kallu and Radheshyam, I decided to take a shower.

  The day's events had drained me physically and emotionally and I wanted to forget everything. Yet, as I lay in bed the rewind and play buttons in the mind's video got automatically pressed. I could see and hear those women talk in audible whispers.

  Memories of the days when I was still young, and in love, came galloping. He and I had spent a good part of our lives together, walking across the rainbow into a world of prismatic beauty. My family had left the search of a suitable boy to me and I thought I had found one.

  I realised my naivete when he told me that his family would not accept me as a daughter-in-law. I had woven all my dreams around him but he chose to hurl me from rainbow heights to the depths of loneliness. He awakened mental and bodily stirrings but left at the point where I could experience ecstasy. He did not marry me because I was from a different community. Our thoughts did not reflect religion. Nor did our breaths and emotions. I was shattered. But I accepted his verdict as fait accompli and set him free.

  Even now his memory fills my mind and body with an indescribable emotional amalgam of pleasure and pain. I don't long for him. Yet, in some remote corner of my heart he is still there. Wrapped in folds of love. And I knew why I could not hate my neighbours.

  The Road to Tikratoli

  Shoy Lall

  Somebody once told me that I live on one of the most beautiful roads in the world. Yet the road to Tikratoli, not unlike the events in my life that led me to it, is full of ups and downs. You drive through a variety of countryside once you leave the road of Ranchi and, starting with an outcrop of twisted and tortured rocks, which bear a striking resemblance to a deserted landscape on some alien planet, you roll down to a narrow bridge which spans a dry rivulet. Then you climb steeply to a single clump of bamboo, and to a solitary Jackfruit tree which look strangely out of place in the barren countryside.

  From there, the road slopes downwards again to a brick kiln on your right, and then climbs steadily once more to a coppice of trees on a wooded hillock. Under the Sal and Eucalyptus trees, at this spot, you will pass a tribal graveyard, and a little mud hut where you can always get the local brew, and will then come into flat, open country with many thousands of small, square fields, crowded one upon another, as far as the eye can see. I call this "The Rice Bowl" for, during the monsoons, it is a vast, seemingly endless plain of tender green blades of rice. There are a couple of tanks, by the side of the road here, in which there is usually some water, but they have more weeds and lotus flowers in them than fish. There are no trees on this stretch of the road, save for a single, massive Kusum, which has an old, partly hollow gnarled trunk and twisted branches that seem to be forever reaching for the sky.

  Every summer, this tree comes into bloom, and when it dons its cloak of brilliant red, it can be seen for miles. And you drive along the flat, straight road until you are suddenly among the hillocks again, and you branch off left, and begin the final gentle climb. You turn sharply right into the gates of Tikratoli, and you are at once in the midst of tall, cool pines, the leafy Cassias, the Gul Mohars, ever green Acacias, Jacarandas, Firs and Silver Birches. And you forget the world outside, the harsh eroded land, the dirt, the overcrowding, and the poverty in the neighbouring town.

  The story of my farm, and the life I have chosen for myself in this quiet rural setting, is a very personal one; and the road which brought me to Tikratoli was, and still is, a long and varied one. It was a road which I struggled along, despite temptations to turn back and abandon for more lucrative offers from a crowded and smoke ridden city. It was a road I was compelled to take after a long, trying and expensive illness in Switzerland. And when I first stepped upon it, I took a journey into the unknown for, almost twenty years ago, I hadn't the faintest idea what starting a farm in India, from scratch, particularly on a shoestring budget, would entail.

  If anyone had told me at the time, that it would involve converting myself into something of an architect, engineer and builder, accountant, entomologist, vet and animal husbandry man, agronomist, botanist, horticulturist and forester, all rolled into one, I would have felt deeply discouraged and dismayed, to say the least. Yet today, when I look back down that road, it seldom bothers me that, after so many years of farming and, more recently a few years in commerce and industry, I have gradually learned to be a jack of most trades while actually being master of none. Nor would I now ever dream of altogether forsaking my rural interests for urban ones, of leaving this quiet corner of the country, or of setting foot on any other road which might take me away from Tikratoli, or the simple village folk who live around me here. Admittedly, there have been times when I have been discouraged; when I have felt that this is a road without an end; when I have found the way strewn with boulders, with obstacles which have seemed insurmountable. But equally, there have been other moments when my road has unexpectedly skirted these, when I have found that it is sometimes better and more satisfying to journey down a road which has indeed no end.

  And the people I have met all along the route have been helpful and kind. They have taught me that if the road rises, it also falls; that an outcrop of curiously twisted rocks at one spot, does not necessarily mean that there are boulders all along the way; that barren countryside can suddenly, unexpectedly, be replaced by cool, wooded knolls; that even adjacent to a quiet cemetery it is possible to find love and life and laughter; that in a parched and unyielding land, the lotus blooms in stagnant pools, even in the midst of burning summer; that at some stage of the journey, when you are hungry, and wonder where your next meal is coming from, there will always be a full rice bowl awaiting you; that a single flowering tree, however old, can provide you the cool, welcome shade you need; that if you should stumble and fall, there is always a pair of eager hands to help you to your feet, and that, sooner or later, after a hard day, you will climb that last hillock and come home to a well earned rest.

  They have taught me to work with my hands, to smile calmly in the face of famine, to conserve water in almost every possible form, to sleep under a clear, starry sky, and to husband and respect the soil, even when it fails to yield. They have taught me to tell from the direction of the prevailing winds whether it is going to rain or remain dry, and to gauge from the chatter of the birds, the incessant drumming of the cicadas, exactly how many days away the monsoons are. They have taught me not to discard entirely, old beliefs, old values for new ones in a fast changing rural environment, but to successfully blend together the two so as to get, in the end, the best of both worlds. They have also shown me, through their tribal culture, through traditional custom and usage, how simple it is to take pride in a profession and a way of life, which is still largely looked down upon and regarded as a poor and an illiterate man's occupation in this country.

  Twenty years ago when I first came to Tikratoli and started building my home, I was very much a bachelor. At that time, with my finances and my horizons rather limited, it did not seem even remotely possible to me that I would one day marry and acquire a ready made family. Yet, something of a sixth sense, if you can call it that, kept prompting me throughout the long years I
spent building, to construct a house in which there would be room to breathe; a home which could be the pride of my family which might, one day, come after me to Tikratoli.

  So I built myself something of a country mansion in these sylvan surroundings, never for a moment thinking that I would actually be thankful one day for having done so and spread myself out over the years and made myself quite comfortable. I had plenty of room and I encouraged friends to come and stay with me every so often in order to relieve the tedium and the monotony of a lonely life in the country.

  During these years, while I was building Tikratoli, I also tried my hand at Journalism and, thanks to the encouragement and help I received from friends and colleagues, (in particular, the very valuable advice and assistance I received from one of the Editors of The Statesman) I was able to travel fairly widely and see something of farming in different parts of India, Australia and the UK.

  Just when I thought my building days were over, (I have since built a complete home nearby for my sister and set up an entire Rubber Factory in Ranchi), fate played an unexpected part in my life and brought into it a young widow, already the mother of three children, whose family and mine had known each other for a great many years. Of the three children, the eldest was a girl of thirteen years, and the younger two twins, a boy and a girl, twelve year old at the time.

  So I made a few structural alterations inside the house to give them each a little nook of their own, and we soon settled down to the joy of living together as a family. If Tikratoli was a nice, spacious and attractive bachelor's den, when I got married and acquired my family, it soon became a beautiful and a complete home. My wife and children filled it, bringing into it light and music and laughter, where before there had only been the sounds of silence, and the vacuum of many quiet summers—years of wasted hours.

  Today, combining as I do my industrial and my agricultural pursuits, I race the Sun from east to west each day and view distantly, even more gratefully, all my yesterdays with a growing sense of tranquillity and fulfillment. Today, I watch the colours spring to life in my quiet garden, sit in the sanctuary of my restful home, far from the smoking chimneys and the smothering smog of industry, and see my children grow in salubrious surroundings, able to distinguish for themselves, proper values of life in both the city and the country. On all the winding roads that lead to Tikratoli, their myriad tracks and pathways, there are visible signs of movement and transformation. A stirring and an awakening.