‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr. Khanna. Mrs. Khanna was sitting at the table with her knees wide apart; she was painting her finger-nails.
Prem felt very nervous. So much depended on Mr. Khanna’s decision. He was smiling half expectantly, half fearfully, but he was unaware of this.
‘Well, yes now,’ said Mr. Khanna.
Prem croaked, ‘You sent for me,’ still smiling.
Mrs. Khanna said, ‘What time is the train arriving?’
‘Let me talk,’ Mr. Khanna said irritably. To Prem he said, ‘Quite right, I sent for you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Prem said.
‘There has been a complaint against you,’ Mr. Khanna said.
The smile came off Prem’s face. This was not what he thought he had come for. He felt betrayed.
‘It seems you don’t keep discipline in your class and consequently other classes are disturbed.’
‘I am only asking so I know what time we have to go to the station,’ Mrs. Khanna said.
‘This college has always been noted for its excellent discipline,’ Mr. Khanna said with a severe sincerity, as if he were challenging someone to contradict him.
‘Will it be after our tea or before?’ Mrs. Khanna asked.
‘Why don’t you let me do my work!’ Mr. Khanna turned on her. She continued to paint her nails with pursed lips and an air of dignity.
‘We have always had a most distinguished and reliable teaching staff,’ Mr. Khanna said, and again he made it sound as if it were true.
‘I cannot allow,’ he went on,’ any weak link in the college.’ He struck the table with his knuckles so that Mrs. Khanna’s bottles of nail polish shook: ‘You are a weak link,’ he accused.
Prem wanted to say something, to justify himself and show Mr. Khanna that it was a mistake and he was not a weak link at all. But he was too deeply shocked to be able to speak.
‘If you wish to stay with us,’ Mr. Khanna said, ‘you will have to improve yourself.’ Mrs. Khanna nodded in agreement. ‘Certainly he has a lot to improve,’ she said, without looking up from her nails.
‘I cannot undertake to pay out a monthly salary to someone who is not worthy of his hire’, Mr. Khanna said.
‘Everyone must be worthy of his hire’, said Mrs. Khanna.
‘I have the reputation of this college to consider,’ said Mr. Khanna. ‘The parents of my pupils expect me to provide a first-class teaching staff.’
Mrs. Khanna said, ‘Today I must have the staff-room cleared out for our guests.’
‘I can only keep up our high standard if every member of my staff pulls his weight.’
‘I will bring down the guest towels and sheets in the afternoon after our food. Before that it must be properly cleaned out and aired.’
‘Why do you keep interrupting me?’ Mr. Khanna shouted.
‘Who is interrupting?’ she shouted back.
‘Please remember what I have said,’ Mr. Khanna told Prem. ‘I cannot give a second warning. That will be all,’ he said sternly but Prem still stood there, dazed.
‘What do you mean—interrupting you? Perhaps now I should neglect all my household matters!’
‘You can go now!’ Mr. Khanna told Prem in a loud voice.
The fear of losing his job was a new one for Prem. He knew he was not very good at teaching, but he had never thought that this shortcoming might lead to his dismissal. It was not as if he shirked his duties—he was always there on time, never missed a lesson, hardly ever left before five. What more could he do? It was not his fault that he had not been born a good teacher. People should make allowances for one another’s weaknesses.
When he realized that Mr. Khanna was not disposed to make allowances and that he might even dismiss him, he was very much afraid. His mind leapt to the consequences of dismissal: the difficulty—or even impossibility—of finding another job, the destitution of himself, Indu and their baby. They would have to give up their own flat and go and live with one after another of their relations. Perhaps they would have more children, and everyone would be angry with him and say: ‘He earns not a pai to keep himself and still he loads his wife with children.’ Indu would have to sell all her pieces of jewellery, her satin blouses and fine saris would become old and frayed and she would have no money to buy new ones.
He knew that, whatever it might cost him, he had to hold on to his job. He had to do everything, accept everything, for the sake of holding on to his job. He had to be like Sohan Lal, quiet, patient, self-effacing, in the effort not to come under displeasurable notice; constantly alert not to offend.
He felt the weight of this new burden so heavily that not even Indu could lighten it. His pensive and melancholy mood made her think that he was annoyed with her and she withdrew from him and sulked by herself.
They were both sitting on the bed, both with their backs supported against the headrest with the entwined cupids, both with their legs drawn up and their eyes staring at the patchily whitewashed wall of their tiny bedroom. At last, with a sigh, he held out his hand towards her: ‘Come here,’ he said softly.
She did not move, only folded her arms to show obstinate defiance.
‘Please come to me,’ he said.
‘Why should I come to you? When you don’t want me, you sit quiet by yourself and I am nothing, some wooden toy perhaps, nothing more, but when you want me, I must run.’
‘Who said I did not want you?’
‘Then why do you sit by yourself like that—no, don’t come near to me! I don’t like you!’ But he came all the same. He said: ‘I was thinking. You don’t under stand——’
‘I see. Thank you. I don’t understand. I am stupid.’
‘What can I say to you?’ he said, half laughing, while he tried to kiss her.
‘Let me tell you, I am not stupid at all! On the contrary, when I was in the school, all the teachers said Indu can study very well if she tries, she has a good brain!’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ He was full of tenderness for her. The fact that he knew about the insecurity that would for ever threaten them and she did not, made him feel very loving towards her. He wanted to keep her innocent and unsuspecting, and to protect her.
‘In sums I was not so very good, but in rea ding and writing I was always first in the class! Oh, you there!’ she called to the servant-boy.
‘Why do you call him now?’ Prem said and tried to kiss her again.
‘If I don’t think of your food, then who will? Just see the lentils don’t boil over,’ she instructed the servant-boy.
‘Were you quarrelling with him?’ the boy asked.
‘I have never seen such an impertinent—— Get out!’ she shouted, which he did in a hurry. She grumbled, ‘I would like to tear the skin from him with my nails’, while Prem kissed her quite passionately.
But when he was away from her, all his melancholy thoughts came back. He even began to think rather longingly of his boyhood again: of living in his father’s house, looked after by his mother and with no responsibilities except those of passing in his examinations. Yet he knew he did not want that at all. He wanted to be looked after not by his mother but by Indu. And he wanted to look after her.
But he was weak and alone. He was on one side with Indu behind him and the coming baby, and on the other side were the Khannas and the Seigals and Mr. Chaddha and his students and doctor’s bills and income-tax forms and all the other horrors the world had in store for him. He felt that he was required to pit his strength against all these, and yet he knew from the beginning that it was hopeless because he did not have much strength. He knew that the only way he could survive was by submitting to and propitiating the other side.
These gloomy thoughts accompanied him to the college and back home again. On his return he found Mr. Seigal standing on the porch, looking out at the weather and probing at a tooth. ‘The monsoon should not be long now,’ he told Prem.
Prem stood beside him and also looked out at the weather. He felt small and weak beside Mr.
Seigal, who was tall with a big head and a big stomach thrust far in front of him.
‘Another week perhaps,’ said Mr. Seigal, concentrating on a cavity in his mouth and trying to pull something out of it.
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Prem. He was trembling with nervousness, but all the same he said, ‘I find your rent very high for me, Mr. Seigal.’
Mr. Seigal thrust his head back in an effort to get deeper into the tooth.
‘My salary is not very big and it is difficult for me to pay so much rent every month.’
‘Ai,’ said Mr. Seigal in irritation at his tooth and digging deeper.
‘Especially now I expect my expenses to go up higher.’ Prem looked out into the street where a man was passing with a barrowful of little cut cubes of sugar-cane. ‘Perhaps you know already—you see, I am expecting,’ he cleared his throat, ‘my wife is expecting a baby,’ he said and scuffed his feet. Mr. Seigal said ‘Ah’ as he dislodged the offending particle; then he said ‘Very nice’, and slapped Prem on the back; ‘let us hope for a boy.’
‘Thank you,’ Prem said.
‘Though nowadays, what does it matter—boy, girl, it is all the same. Very nice,’ he said again and went indoors.
Prem had not really expected anything better. He realized that no one was interested in his difficulties, that the problem of supporting himself and Indu and any family they might have was his alone. The harshness of the world filled him with bitterness and despondency. It seemed to him that adult, settled, worldly people—people like Mr. Khanna and Mr. Seigal—should be glad and even eager to help a young man just starting out in life and with a family to support. But nobody cared. ‘Wherever you look in the world,’ he told Sohan Lal, ‘people think only of themselves and they don’t love their neighbours at all.’ Sohan Lal looked sad in sympathy. ‘Everywhere there is selfishness and even cruelty, so that it is very difficult for a young man to make his way.’ Sohan Lal nodded and sighed; then he said, ‘I am going to see Swamiji this evening; you will come?’ Prem at once said he would. He wondered he had not thought of it himself. With the swami there would be an escape, for however brief a time, from his sense of the world’s oppression.
The swami had many visitors. People sat tightly packed against one another on the floor, and some stood against the walls and some were even out on the staircase. Prem and Sohan Lal managed to get in and to find room to sit on the floor. The swami waved and smiled to them and seemed very pleased they had come, though he did not say anything to them. The room was perfumed with incense and there were fruits and orange flower-garlands and a basketful of rose petals.
The fat Sethji, whom Prem had seen on his first visit, sat near the swami. He wore immaculate clothes of fine white muslin. There was a melancholy expression on his face, and he was saying: ‘I often think, if I could start again from the beginning, I too would give my whole life for the love of God.’
Vishvanathan, the tall, dark, angry young man, said, ‘And what is stopping you now?’
Sethji shrugged. ‘What can I tell you?’ he said.
‘I know what you will tell me,’ Vishvanathan said. ‘You will tell me that you have a wife and children and many commitments, daughters to marry and younger brothers to educate and widowed sisters to support. You will also tell me that there are many charities and other good works which depend on you, and for the sake of these you cannot leave off all your activities. Isn’t that so?’
Sethji said, ‘I have come to listen to Swamiji, not to you.’
‘Well, answer me at least,’ Vishvanathan said with a laugh.
‘Answer him,’ the swami smilingly urged. ‘Sometimes he also knows a little sense.’
Sethji told Vishvanathan, ‘What can I say to you? What do you understand of responsibilities which eat up a man’s life so that it is no longer his own life?’
‘Only this,’ said Vishvanathan. ‘That they are no stronger than threads of cotton compared with the responsibilities you have to God.’
‘It is easy enough for you to talk,’ Sethji said.
‘And I will tell you something more!’ Vishvanathan cried, loud enough to drown other voices which had begun to contribute to the conversation. ‘If once you feel your responsibility to God—which is nothing more than the responsibility to love Him—if you feel it once, only once, strong enough, here and here and here’—and he sharply struck his head and his chest and his belly with the flat of his hand—‘then at once you will forget everything you now think so important, and you will let it go and never even think of looking back!’
He spoke with such fire and truth that there was no place for argument. In the silence that followed, his words echoed in many minds. Prem felt himself much moved. He imagined how it would strike him, this love for God, and how he would leave everything and everyone behind him and devote himself to that alone. So sweet was this vision, so tempting and rapturous, that he had no regrets for what he would leave behind him; not even for Indu.
The swami said, ‘When I was a boy, I was like all the other mischievous boys in the village. I stole mangoes from the trees, I licked curds from the bowl, I cut down the fish hung up to dry. In the village they named me the Wild One. Then God called me.’ He was smiling, and yet there were tears in his eyes. ‘I left my village and I spent my time thinking of Him. I wanted Him to possess me entirely and to make me one with Him. But sometimes it was hard. I could not get a vision of Him and this tormented me. I would throw myself on the ground and beat it with my fists and drum my feet like a naughty child. I cursed Him and scolded Him and told Him I would kill myself because He did not want me. But then, at these moments, when I was sunk so deep in anguish that I thought I would never be able to rise from it again, then God would call me. Gently, softly, like the mother calls her child, He called me; and at once I was comforted and I was good again, as the child is good when it is restored to the embrace and forgiveness of the mother.’
Sethji said sadly, ‘He does not call everyone.’
‘He has called you,’ Vishvanathan said. ‘Only you don’t want to hear.’
‘No,’ the swami said, ‘he wants to hear but the world is too loud in his ears.’
Prem felt a desire to cry, I also want to hear! He thought he could if he wanted to, and at that moment it seemed to him that it would be easy to still the noise of the world in his ears. He was sitting quiet on the floor, with his legs tucked under him and his hands folded, but inwardly he trembled with new longings.
Someone began to sing. He sang: ‘You have many good sons on earth, O Mother, few fickle as I; and yet, O gracious one, it is not right for you to abandon me; a son may be bad, but never a mother.’ Everyone sat silent and listened. The voice was low and unemphatic but sonorous with feeling; it inspired at the same time both peace and longing. Prem looked at the swami, who sat crosslegged on the bed, his eyes half shut in ecstasy, his mouth open with the tip of the tongue protruding; and from him he looked at Vishvanathan, sitting on the ground at the foot of the bed, with his head erect and an expression of calm and certainty on his face. And Prem felt that his own life too had, like a river, found its own bed and was running with theirs in one current towards God.
But next morning he was thinking mainly of his job and his rent. Indu said, ‘You always look cross’, watching him step into his trousers.
‘I have many worries,’ he sighed.
‘What worries? It is I who have many worries.’
‘You also have worries?’
‘Of course,’ she said, rather proudly. He smiled and quickly bit her neck. ‘Get away from me!’ she cried.
He finished dressing and combed his hair in front of the mirror. He studied his face and noted, not without satisfaction, that it was a man’s face, no longer a boy’s. ‘Shall I grow a moustache?’ he said.
Indu covered her face and rocked with laughter.
‘What is funny? I think I shall look quite nice.’
Indu threw herself on the bed. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, ‘now
he wants to become a film star!’ She rolled herself from side to side. Prem watched her for a while, smiling, then he could bear it no longer and fell on top of her, covering her face and neck with kisses. ‘You are tickling me!’ she panted; but soon she stopped laughing and they were both very passionate.
Afterwards, as always when they had loved one another in the daytime, they were rather shamefaced. She helped him straighten the collar of his shirt and, with her face averted from him, murmured, ‘You will be late for your college.’ She accompanied him to the top of the stairs; suddenly, just as he was about to go down, she said, ‘I have been thinking something.’
‘What have you been thinking?’
‘I have been thinking …’ She stood and twisted her hands.
‘Please hurry, I have to go to the college.’
‘We have never had any guests.’
Prem laughed. ‘I will invite guests for you.’
‘Really?’she said. ‘When?’
He was already half-way down the stairs. ‘Soon!’ he called, without looking back at her.
She leant over the banister. ‘What shall I cook for them?’ and though she could no longer see him: ‘Will they like pilao, do you think?’
At lunchtime, on his way back from the college, Prem stepped in at the Seigals to use the telephone. He met no one except Romesh, who lay fast asleep on the floor with the fan blowing on him full blast. Mrs. Seigal could be heard having an argument with her servant in the kitchen. At the other end of the line Raj sounded cross: ‘You should not telephone to me in the office. It will create a bad impression.’
Prem said formally: ‘I am telephoning to invite you and your family to eat with us at one o’clock on Sunday, the twenty-second.’
‘The bus fare will come very expensive for me.’
‘I hope you will honour me by accepting this invitation,’ Prem said.
There was a short pause at the other end; then Raj said, ‘Oh all right,’ and added grudgingly, ‘Thank you.’
Prem replaced the receiver, feeling proud and pleased. Now, when he and Indu had cooked for and entertained their own guests, they would have grown to their full stature of householders and married couple.
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