Hats and Doctors: Stories

by Ashk, Upendranath

  This girl, her honey-filled voice, her laughter, had made him suddenly young again. Her sideways glances had somehow stirred such vigour and energy into his veins that for the last few days he had started feeling like a completely changed man.

  Smoothing his hand over his head, he could feel how his hair had not stayed quite so thick, but it would still take many years for baldness to establish its dominion over his skull. Smiling with satisfaction, he tightened the loose knot of his necktie, picked up his pen and began to walk about the room.

  ‘But I’ll call out to you, my love, I’ll call out to you!’

  He held his hands behind his back; his left hand grasped the wrist of the right hand, in which he still held the pen; leaning forward slightly, he walked about the room, filled with an odd enthusiasm.

  ‘But I’ll call out to you, my love, I’ll call out to you …!’ he hummed to himself.

  The realization that even after crossing his fiftieth year, he could attract the attention of a completely unknown beauty had filled him with excitement. Whenever his female students in the college grew close to him, he would lovingly hold them on his knee, but they always thought of him as a big brother or a father. If they grew even closer, they would start calling him ‘Daddy’, the way his own daughters did, and he had pretty much become reconciled to his old age by then. Sometimes, when he was short of breath, or when his back, his finger joints, or his knees would start to ache—he would laugh and even mention his age … But this girl, and her glances, had made him believe that he was still attractive. In the mirror he had noticed that there was not one wrinkle on his face. Certainly the flesh on his throat had grown a little loose and one or two wrinkles were forming there, but they looked as though they had been caused by the tight knot of his tie. And then, there was a sort of glow to his face that he had never seen in the suffocating atmosphere of Kolhapur …

  He continued to walk about the room, his hands on his hips. He would get as far as the door, then turn back without lifting his eyes, as though absorbed in deep thought. Each time he wanted to look at her just once, but he did not lift his eyes. When he had already walked around in that manner three or four times and he felt sure that going and standing in the doorway now would look completely natural, he went to the door and did not turn back again. There he stood against the door frame and began to scratch his temple with the end of his pen while gazing into space, as if he were working through some deep problem.

  She was still sitting the same way, swinging her crossed legs at the edge of the terrace. The person talking to her had perhaps gone down to the beach. Professor Kanetkar’s gaze wandered around in space and then came to rest on her feet. She was wearing white nylon sandals. He couldn’t see the white netting from so far away, so it looked as though the soles of her sandals were bound invisibly to those fair slender feet.

  He gazed steadily at her sandals for a few moments, so that it would seem as if he were not really looking at her feet, but was instead absorbed in his own thoughts, staring off into space. Then, shyly, his gaze slid up to her milky white cambric shalwar and her deep blue silk kameez, and moved up to her face. But it didn’t stop there. She was staring right at him. His gaze moved from the bun in her hair and continued to rest on the western horizon.

  The setting sun had gathered up its rays. A light haze shadowed the horizon, where the sea and the sky embraced, and the sun’s huge vermilion platter seemed to rest upon it. But it was sinking imperceptibly with each moment. As Professor Kanetkar watched, it climbed down into the haze and began to shrink, becoming a huge orange. The lower part of the orange touched the surface of the ocean. Its reflection, a trembling golden minaret, reached from the ocean waves coming in with the tide, all the way to the shore. Professor Kanetkar’s gaze slid once up that trembling golden minaret, from the horizon to the shore, and from the shore back to the horizon, and then returned. The gleam of the minaret was growing dim with the sinking of the sun, and the ink of the waves was deepening. Far off on the horizon, first the sails of one ship became visible, then those of a second, then of a third. In the light of the sinking sun those sails looked to Professor Kanetkar like comforting shapes suddenly illuminated in the sky of his memory. At a distance, where Bandra Hill reached far out into the sea, the water was quite shallow. In the first rushing stream of the tide, rivulets of foam again and again formed and then disappeared; and, in some places, the foam advanced towards the shore on the surface of the sea, up to the rows of herons, drawing white streaks along the beach, then disappeared. The tide was just beginning to come in. With every rushing stream, more sections of the beach became wet; Professor Kanetkar stood watching the approaching tide for a few moments. Then he glanced at the girl out the corner of his eyes.

  She did not notice him. Her gaze was focused on the beach, her back towards him. At first it seemed to him that she might be searching for some acquaintance from among the people gathering on the seashore for their evening stroll. But there was not much of a crowd on the beach. A quarter of a mile ahead, on the Cadell Court beach, there was a large crowd. But in front of The Sea Foam there were very few people on the beach, and the ones who were there were just passing by. There was a bhel puri handcart, where four or five people were indulging themselves. Professor Kanetkar saw no face on the beach that could be the centre of her attention. Slowly he walked down the steps of his room and went and stood on the terrace behind the girl, at a little distance. She paid no attention to the sound of his footsteps. She continued to sit in that same position. Then he followed her gaze. He figured it out. She was watching with rapt attention the labourer boys doing gymnastics.

  For a moment, he too watched the boys playing. They had started a new game. Two boys would lie on their backs in the wet sand on the beach. One, who was slightly taller, would come back towards the terrace and start running. As he approached the boys who were lying down, he leapt up in such a way that his hands barely touched the ground, did a somersault and went tumbling over on to the sand, landing with a thump on the other side of the boys. Wrong, Professor Kanetkar said to himself, after landing on the sand, he should stand up completely straight; he shouldn’t fall over with a thump like that. And he wanted to go there and teach them how to perform a somersault in midair correctly. The second time the youth told three boys to lie down, the third time four …

  Professor Kanetkar coughed slightly, but the girl, completely unaware of his existence, was watching the boys intently. Then something got into him: he walked past her swiftly, nearly running, and then, a little beyond her, he placed his left hand lightly on the terrace railing and jumped clean over it like some youthful gymnast, landing on his feet in the sand approximately twelve feet below. His knees bent from jumping from such a great height; he felt he might tremble and fall over, but in the next instant he regained control and stood up straight. He was breathing heavily from running and jumping from such a height. His blood pulsed toward his head and, for a minute, he felt he would get dizzy and fall over, but he held steady and stood still for a few moments. When his breathing returned to normal he wanted to cast a glance up above, but he controlled that desire and walked toward the boys with a completely natural air.

  The boys had stopped their game and were looking at him. They were clearly impressed with the deftness of Professor Kanetkar’s leap. So when he reached them and said he would teach them how to do somersaults correctly, they agreed enthusiastically.

  The pen was still in Professor Kanetkar’s hand. He handed it to the biggest boy and told the other four boys to lie down. He took off his shoes and socks, rolled the bottoms of his trousers and hiked them up a little, and walked towards the terrace, focusing his gaze on the ground very calmly. Then he turned from the terrace and came running; the next instant he leapt up and somersaulted in the air, clearing all four boys and landing on his feet on the relatively hard sand near the water. For a fraction of a second he felt he would fall over backwards, but the next moment he stood up straight.


  When the labourer boy had somersaulted in the air, he’d fallen down on the sand and landed with a thump on his back, but Professor Kanetkar’s knees had not even buckled. He was able to stand up completely straight. True, he had felt slightly dizzy, there had been a slight twisting sensation in his back as well, but at this age he felt no small pride at his success. At that same moment, he turned and looked towards the terrace. It seemed to him that the girl was staring directly at him. The extraordinary thrill he felt from the touch of that remote gaze was enough to make his heart pound and the blood rush to his head. Almost drunkenly, he walked back around the boys who were lying down and ordered the remaining two to go and lie down too.

  The two boys, including the one who had been turning somersaults before, went and lay down with the rest of them.

  Then, walking proudly, pressing his heels into the sand, practically giddy, Professor Kanetkar went up to the terrace. He turned with lightning speed and came running like a bullet. As he neared the boys lying down on the beach, he leapt … But then, for some reason, he didn’t turn a complete somersault. He flew straight over the boys and fell on his head. His neck twisted and part of his lifeless body fell on top of the boys lying on their backs.

  The golden orange had sunk completely into the sea. On the surface of the sea, at the horizon, only a tiny golden sesame seed was visible.

  A boy came running down from one of the upper storeys of The Sea Foam when he saw a crowd gathering on the beach. He came up behind the girl sitting on the terrace and asked in English, ‘What happened?’

  ‘That silly old man,’ the girl said, motioning towards Kanetkar’s room, ‘has broken his neck over there.’

  The boy went running down to the beach. The girl sitting on the terrace was swinging her feet with a supremely listless air. To the west, the deep vermilion bonfire had burst ablaze, its tongues of flame licking out across the horizon. Suddenly, the waves on the surface of the sea were silvery and the boats that had not been visible before now began to appear in silhouette. The girl shifted her gaze away from the crowd and began to watch the outlines of the fishermen standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean. They were silhouetted against the silvery waves of the sea, as though they had been drawn there, just the way she herself was a silhouette, seated on the terrace.

  My First Letter of Resignation

  By now my letters of resignation have become commonplace. My circle of friends is well acquainted with this aspect of my personality and, when I start a new job in a totally new profession, from the very first day, they start looking forward to my letter of resignation. But the memories of the stir created when I handed in my very first letter of resignation at my first job are still fresh in my mind today.

  At that time I had recently joined the editorial section of a national daily as a translator, and, as was the custom, I proudly called myself a ‘sub-editor’. My friends envied my good fortune. But actually there was nothing to envy in my fate. There were very few advertisements in our newspaper. The ads in newspapers in those days were usually for the kind of illnesses that afflict men, known as ‘secret ailments’. Our paper was a national daily and it considered such ads harmful for the nation, so it didn’t print them. The result was that it befell us three or three-and-a-half editors to fill eight large pages. I say ‘three-and-a-half’, because the head editor limited his activities to just supplying the headlines. We poor translators had to do all the work. We all had to work during the day from twelve-thirty to six o’clock, and then at night from nine-thirty to twelve or one o’clock in the morning; but from twelve to two o’clock in the morning the translators took turns staying with the editor.

  But I kept my hardship to myself. To my friends I always said that even if someone were to offer me command of Kashmir or Hyderabad I would never leave this editorship. (I never called it a ‘translator-ship’.) ‘Listen, an editor is an emperor of the pen,’ I would say. ‘If he wishes, he can shake the foundations of empires, turn ordinary people into emperors and overthrow the thrones of power, and so on and so forth …’

  The result of my saying these things was that as soon as I handed in my letter of resignation from this ‘sub-editorship’ of mine, my friends and acquaintances were very critical of me. Whomever I ran into would stop me in the middle of the bazaar and ask why I had submitted a letter of resignation, as though I had been struck down by some horrifying illness and there was no hope of recovery, and he, kind gentleman, had come to nurse me back to health. Or as though this friend or acquaintance had come around looking for me to express his sorrow following the demise of someone or the other from among the enemies of my close relations (God forbid) and, when he met me, he had pinned me down and started in right then and there with, ‘I was so sorry when I heard the news, my brother.’

  I did recall that I was an ‘emperor of the pen’; I was a public man and it was my highest duty to tell my friends and acquaintances the reason for my suddenly withdrawing my hand from this emperorship of the pen—otherwise I would have run screaming from these rude questions. And so, my friend, I just answered some questions somehow or the other, but when I saw that this ‘somehow or the other’ of mine wasn’t working, I finally confessed to someone, ‘Yaar, being an emperor of the pen just doesn’t suit me. The work is so demanding it’s beyond the capabilities of this delicate body of mine. Shakespeare also once said, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” that is to say, being a ruler, whether it be of a pen or of a country, is the mother of all worries. And thus, yaar, I am fleeing from worry.’ I told someone else, ‘Sahib, it’s starting to get very hot, so I’ve got a job in Shimla. I thought I’d free myself from the daily grind.’ (I had forgotten the part about being an emperor.) I told another person about my grandfather being on his deathbed and that he loved me so deeply he had demanded that I abandon the editorship immediately, no matter how admirable it might be, and come to him.

  What I mean to say is that I managed through some ruse or another to satisfy those people whom I considered ‘acquaintances’ and those who were particularly interested in my letter of resignation, and who wanted to become heirs to my throne, to the point that they came to believe that in this era of economic depression, my submitting a letter of resignation from the editorship of that prestigious newspaper was, under the circumstances, not only necessary, but unavoidable.

  But now, why was it that my real friends were not satisfied by these clarifications of mine? They totally refused to listen to any explanation I gave, such as, the sorrowful condition of my grandfather; the terrible ill health of my wife and children and me, myself, ‘the emperor of the pen’; getting fed up with being ground to a pulp in the daily grind; sleeping during the day and then staying up most of the night like an owl or a flying fox and, at two in the morning, after getting off work, walking home while feeling one’s way through the alleyways, and bumping into the charpoy of someone sleeping in the bazaar, and running off followed by cries of ‘Thief! Thief!’, and then walking along holding one’s breath for fear of dogs. These were ordinary, or that is to say, two or three degrees centigrade less-than-ordinary types of reasons and, for those, how could a gentleman leave such a job in such times of unemployment? And they considered my submission of a resignation letter to actually mean that I had been forcibly removed from my job. Ever since I handed in that letter, I heard them often repeating the line from the ghazal, I was thrown from your home entirely dishonoured. No matter how many feeble faces I made, no matter how many times I said, ‘Yaar, I’ve started to suffer from insomnia from all this staying awake night after night. I’ve developed bleeding haemorrhoids from sitting in a chair all the time and diabetes is eating away at my insides,’ in response to my clarifications, I heard only side-splitting chuckles from my friends.

  Years have gone by since that first resignation letter and, after so many years, there’s no longer any reason to lie, because, to tell you the truth, for one thing, I wasn’t fired. I handed in my letter of resignation, and if
I then also happened to be fired, at least I wasn’t humiliated first. And then, the real reason for my resignation letter, or ‘escaping with my honour intact’, was in fact having to stay awake night after night.

  I can say nothing about those great souls who were born straight from their mother’s wombs with golden spoons in their mouths and who have no other work save to eat, drink and sleep; nor can I speak about those gentlemen, who, fed up with the struggles of life, go into the forests, eat roots and berries and follow a schedule of sleep and only sleep—because I think of meditation as just sleeping, even while awake. I can also say nothing about those sparkless, desire-less people who sit in the sun and consider killing flies in a state of semi-consciousness the equivalent of climbing Mount Kangchenjunga. Also outside my discussion are those healthy people who get up in the evening if they go to sleep in the morning, and get up in the morning if they go to sleep in the evening—such demigods of sleep have always been my ‘ideals’, and I have always considered imitating them as my birthright on par with national independence. Go ahead and say it: I got a job in a profession where even mentioning sleep is considered impious. Unfortunately, with me, just loosen the reins a little and I’ll fall asleep and stay asleep.

  In those days I used to think occasionally that if, somehow, I could become the dictator of India, the first ordinance I’d enact would be one that decreed as mandatory that each night editor sleep the first two days and nights of every week. Each of them would have a sentinel posted at his bedside so that if any of them should make even the slightest attempt to get up, he would first be put to sleep with a pat or a lullaby; and if even that did no good, according to the sleeping ordinance, the police would have complete authority to make him go to sleep by any means necessary. After this, my next deed would be to demolish the daily newspaper offices of bygone days and establish offices in which every editorial section included a bedroom, so that if the translator or the editor got at all sleepy, he could go into the bedroom and rest on his bed and refresh his mind by closing his eyes for a few minutes instead of sleeping with his eyes open.