Far from becoming a dictator in charge of making proper arrangements for sleep, it was in fact because of lack of sleep that I was forced to resign from my job. What happened was that in those days it seemed that Mahatma Gandhi always made his plans in a manner somewhat like this: telegraphic wires regarding his activities never arrived in the newspaper offices before 1 a.m. Nobody had even heard of a teleprinter at that time and the chaprassi from A.P. or Free Press never came before one or one-thirty, and one or one-thirty in the morning was the time when we were all busy playing peekaboo between sleeping and waking. My nodding head would sometimes knock against the electric lamp and sometimes for a moment it would seem completely dark in the room. Sometimes, in this state, the table would become a mountain and I, as Farhad, would try to break it with my head instead of with an axe; and sometimes when I received some translation work to do in this state, after writing one or two lines, I would start to doze so soundly that the nib of my pen would double over and stop. On such occasions I would always pray that what they say about the transmigration of souls should be true, so that in my next birth, the All Powerful One would make me Mahatma Gandhi for a few days and make Mahatma Gandhi the junior translator for some daily paper.
One night, a wire regarding Mahatma Gandhi’s schedule arrived under such circumstances. It was almost 2 a.m. and I had already dozed off a couple of times; for this reason, I was trying to sleep with my eyes wide open instead of sleeping with them shut, out of fear of the editor-in-chief. Seeing my eyes open, he believed I was somewhat alert and threw the wire in front of me. I began to read it with little interest.
So there I was, trying to read the wire while my eyes kept dropping shut. At one point the editor noticed my stupor and my drowsy eyes met his, dull and sleep-deprived. I started somewhat, cleaned off my glasses with my kurta a bit and sat down. I put the hat I had been wearing back on the table, ran my hand over my head, took off my Fleet shoes which had become rather warm and, making myself neat and tidy, I sat down and this time I glanced once at the wire and then wrote:
Poona, 18 April—
Now, when I ran my eye below this, I found that there were two wires. One from Poona and one from Bombay. The one from Poona was a bit longer and was related to the Mahatma’s statement on the subject of Harijan Day, honouring untouchable sweepers; and the one from Bombay was about a speech of Mrs Gandhi’s. This was a little shorter. Due to my drowsiness, I resolved to take care of that one first and began to write something like this:
Mrs Gandhi …
At this point I began to feel sleepy and it occurred to me that writing ‘Mrs Gandhi’ wouldn’t be right; these Associated Press types were linked to a quasi-official agency: they would never write ‘the Mahatma’ for Gandhiji; they would just use ‘Mr’, and similarly, they would just write ‘Mrs Gandhi’ for Mother Kasturba. But I was the sub-editor for a national paper, so I should never do such a thing.
This idea flashed in my mind for just a moment in my semi-conscious state, and I cut ‘Mrs Gandhi’ and wrote:
Mahatma Gandhi’s esteemed wife, whom we call Shrimati Kasturba, said, in giving a speech in an assembly, that independence could only be won through swadeshi clothing …
At this point I dozed off a bit, and a speech by the local Swadeshi League for self-rule—which I had heard in the afternoon in the capacity of reporter—came to my mind, and after napping a bit, I cast one glance at the word ‘swadeshi’, and continued to write:
… leagues should be organized. The League secretary …
At this I again became drowsy.
‘Have you finished the Mahatma’s statement or not?’
‘Oh, that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Well then, send that for composing. Look at the time! What’s going on? The paper will be late.’
The press was only across the courtyard. I gave the written slip to the chaprassi and then, smoothing my hand over my head, I skipped three lines and began to translate Mahatma Gandhi’s statement—and who knows what I wrote down. The editor saw me dozing, so someone snatched the wire from my hand. He himself gave it a four-column headline and, because the man from the press was kicking up a ruckus, he filed it with my translated slip and gave it to him, and ordered, ‘Just look over the proof!’ He put his Gandhi cap on his head and went away without looking at me.
The next day I had only just arrived in the office when the managing director sent the chaprassi to summon me. I was completely sure that my prayers of the last six months for a raise had been heard. Surely I was about to be promoted. I took off my hat and ran my hand over my hair. Then I stuck the hat back on my head so it was straight, smoothed out the wrinkles in my kurta and dhoti, and, adopting an air of enthusiasm, I went into the room of the managing director, where I lowered my head and greeted him with a smile.
The managing director responded to my greeting with a slight nod and indicated to me to sit down in a chair. My face blossomed and I also felt shy, because, before this, a managing director had never offered me a chair.
When I sat down, he slid a fresh issue of the paper in front of me and said, ‘Please do me the kindness of reading this news item.’
It was the front page of our paper. The following news was printed below the four-column headline:
Householders Should Do the Work of Sweepers Themselves
Mahatma Gandhi’s Announcement Regarding
Harijan Day
Poona, 18 April—Mahatma Gandhi’s esteemed wife, whom we call Shrimati Kasturba, said, when making a speech to an assembly, that independence could only be won through swadeshi leagues, which should be organized. The League secretary, Mahatma Gandhi, commands that the programme should begin at five o’clock in the morning. Food and clothing should be gathered, and everyone should give what they can. It would be better if, instead of food and clothing, the gifts are collected in the form of cash. In this way, needy Harijans can be cleaned with whatever money is collected.
A.P.
After reading this news item, I began to scratch my head and, even then, I was just wondering if all these errors were mine or the press’s, when the managing director beseeched me respectfully and politely to have mercy on the paper and kindly submit a letter of resignation.
I looked at him rather pathetically, but he was staring at me in such a way that I felt compassion for him, and I didn’t consider it proper to refuse his request—he, who was the managing director; he was the one supreme emperor of the paper, who had, according to custom, sent for me by chaprassi, respectfully offered me a chair and beseeched me piteously with his hands clasped together to have mercy on the paper. And so I presented him with my letter of resignation.
Now the truth is that I am not so heartless as my friends: if someone makes such a request of me I feel I must comply. In fact, I have again and again complied with such requests, and if the All Powerful One gives me the strength, I shall continue to observe this duty of mine in the future as well.
Dying and Dying
He had been sitting in the first-class compartment for the last half-hour playing cards with his wife.
He didn’t like playing cards and, above all, he didn’t like playing cards with his wife. For an hour, he had been looking through the window, enjoying nature’s bounty as it was being bathed in the falling rain. But the moment the train pulled out of the last station, his wife, without any warning, had taken a pack of cards from her large black purse and started to deal. She didn’t even ask her husband if he felt like playing or not, or if he wanted to play any other game besides rummy.
He especially didn’t like playing rummy. For the past twenty-five years, he had considered himself an intellectual and rummy, in his opinion, was a game for which there was no need of a brain at all.
He started to feel jealous of the other passengers. A tall, fair young man, who looked like the owner or manager of some business firm, was reclining on the seat across from them, reading a newspaper. On the berth above the young businessman, fully str
etched out, was a man with very dark skin from some other country; he looked like an important officer in an army. The husband and wife had taken the Secunderabad Express from Poona at ten o’clock in the morning. Now it was eleven or eleven-fifteen, but the army officer was still sleeping soundly.
There was a passenger sleeping on the berth above the man and his wife. It was possible, the husband mused, that neither of these two men had slept well the night before, or perhaps sleeping was their favourite hobby; still, they both looked very comfortable to him. A little before the last station, the passenger lying above them had got up and gone to the bathroom a couple of times, but at that time the husband had been preoccupied with watching the view outside. He only had a vague sense of the passenger above him climbing down, going to the bathroom, spending quite a bit of time there, returning and climbing back up again to stretch out. He hadn’t even noticed his face.
Everyone was enjoying the journey as they pleased, but for the last half-hour he had been playing cards. With his wife. Rummy.
Truthfully, only his hands were playing cards. Or maybe, it would be better to say that his hands were entirely in charge of his game. His eyes would rest a moment on the cards and then take off outside the windows and travel through the densely forested mountains and the pale green valleys. Sometimes the train would cut along the side of a mountain and the showers cascading from above seemed to fall right on top of him. His attention would drift from the game, but his wife would continue to play with total concentration. Over the last quarter-century, they had made this trip countless times during the rainy season and, for his wife, there was absolutely nothing new about the journey. But the husband continued to be captivated by these sights. Perhaps this was because they helped him arrive at the memory of a particular scene from his honeymoon journey a quarter-century ago, one that would always be inextricably linked in his mind with taking a journey in this kind of weather.
With the passage of years, the details of that honeymoon journey should have dimmed in his mind and perhaps they had, but every time he felt them growing indistinct, he would sweep all the dust from that one particular scene and make it brand new.
Even now, he was engaged in dusting and polishing that scene in his mind. One of his eyes was listlessly engaged in arranging and discarding the cards, shuffling and making runs or rummy. The other eye, somewhat less listless, was involved in watching the scenes of nature outside; but his third eye, his true eye, was completely focused on that honeymoon scene.
He was fifty-five now. Just as he had kept his body fit even at this age—a symbol for him of the carefree days of his youth—he hadn’t allowed that scene of his honeymoon trip to fade from his memory. Perhaps his body sagged a bit now. His muscles were no longer as taut as they had been. But in that scene, their tautness had not diminished in any way.
‘Where has your mind gone?’ his wife interrupted his thoughts suddenly. The train had stopped at some station. The dark-complexioned army officer from the upper berth across from them was getting off the train. It was the husband’s turn to play but he was lost in his contemplation of that scene from the past, savouring its splendour.
He cast a cursory glance at the cards in his hand and discarded one. His wife picked up a card. It was of no use to her. She discarded it. He drew a card mechanically. He put it with another card in the hope of forming a run, and wearily discarded an ace. His wife’s hand fell on the ace with the alacrity of a raptor. Then he realized that this ace was the one he had meant to put together with the three in the hope of drawing a two, so he could form a run. But he didn’t care and picked up the next card off the stack.
After playing one or two hands a bit more attentively, his eyes again wandered out the window. A milky white waterfall cascaded down the mountain across from them. From where he was sitting, he could see the waterfall descend step by step—falling from high up on to a lower hill, and then plunging down into a deep valley.
The waterfall now behind them, his mind’s eye again became lost in that scene from twenty-five years ago …
This wife of his, with her puffy cheeks, buck teeth and wide waist—wide as a doorway, wider still than her chest—was then no bigger than a sprig. Sprightly, with fair plump cheeks, she was like a thali arrayed with all kinds of tasty delicacies set before a hungry man. Before Kalyan station, he had fastened the chain on the door of their two-passenger coupé and then dived into that thali as though he were starving.
Lying beside her up to Lonavala station, he had eased all her anxiety and shyness. When the train left Lonavala, he explained to her that it wouldn’t stop anywhere now for an hour and, with that, he slowly took off her blouse and everything else but her sari and petticoat. She was not prepared to remove her sari under any circumstances in a train compartment with open windows.
Clouds had gathered outside. The light drops of rain were barely visible. He felt almost drunk. He took off all his clothing and stood up in the middle of the coupé. He wanted his wife to follow his example. This scene had become etched in his mind forever: in the light of the open windows, in a first-class coupé, his member erect, hard, straight like an arrow—he loved that shape. How splendid it was to behold when that small lifeless worm with no bones stretched itself out, ready to create! It wasn’t for nothing that the first humans in creation had considered it a god, had seen it as exalted when joined with the vagina, and had set it up in a temple for worship …
This was the image of himself that he kept protected in his mind. His wife had not followed his example. But he was not interested in such details when he imagined the scene. Perhaps he had pulled at her sari angrily and had tried to get her to sit up on the seat, and his wife had sat up and lovingly put her arm around him and caressed him, pressing her flushed cheek against his thigh, and tried to make him sit or lie down on the seat. Or perhaps he hadn’t been able to hold back and his wife had been the successful one. But he had no interest in those details. The scene he imagined was the one in which he unveiled his firm body and the splendour of his erection; he had never allowed that scene to grow hazy—that symbol of his youth, power, strength, masculinity. Whenever this image of himself began to grow dim, he dusted it off again in his imagination.
Suddenly his wife opened her mouth and laughed, showing all her teeth. She brushed daily with Forhan’s toothpaste, but despite this there was still tartar caked on her teeth. He found that extremely repulsive. He had advised her many times to go to the dentist. But for some reason his crude wife, who, in conversation, was willing to show her teeth to all the world, was nervous to show them to a dentist.
She laughed because she was happy—not only had she not allowed her husband to win a single hand of cards, but she’d also made a diamond rummy and her lead had grown to a full one hundred points. She kept waving all the cards in her hand in front of his eyes, from the three up to the queen, to say, look, there’s no card missing! I got a complete rummy!
His wife was happy with her undisputed victory while he was happy that now she would leave him alone and he could do what he wanted: either watch the view outside or lose himself in memories of that journey long ago.
But his wife had not had enough. She dealt the cards again.
‘Arré, stop it with the rummy,’ he said with disgust.
‘Okay, let’s play two hands of sweep,’ his wife pleaded, and taking his silence as half approval, she put four cards under her leg and gave him four cards and then said, ‘Bid!’
He had got the ten of spades in the first four cards. Bored, he said without thinking, ‘Ten!’
His wife turned over the four cards from under her leg with great enthusiasm and first looked at them herself. Suddenly she smiled ruefully and said, ‘There you go! You have won the whole game in the very first turn.’
She threw down all four cards in front of him. The nine of spades, the ace of diamonds, the king of clubs and the queen of hearts!
His face lit up when he saw the cards. He suddenly became very int
erested in the game. He picked up the nine and the ace lying beneath his ten of spades. Twenty points in the very first hand!
His wife dealt the next eight cards. He picked up his cards. He looked even more cheerful than before. He only had to win nine more points. He had all three kings and one was already on the table—he decided to himself he wouldn’t let his wife get even one point.
Outside, the clouds had gathered in the valley and it had started to rain quite hard. He was now completely engrossed in the game when, from the reflection in the raised window across from him, he got the sense that someone’s arm was hanging down. The arm was hanging on to the seat strap and trembling.
Engrossed in the game though he was, he turned slightly. It wasn’t an arm, he saw, it was the leg of the passenger sleeping above. For an instant the leg trembled, then another leg dropped down and, instead of stopping on the arm of the seat, the two legs slid down and stopped for a moment on the trunk that was half-pushed under the seat across from them. The legs trembled and, before anyone could do anything about it, the entire passenger was sliding down from his berth like an avalanche of sand. He fell face down in the small space between their seat and the outside door. On one side was the trunk and on the other, the door of the compartment—his neck and legs were doubled over. His eyes, sunken in their sockets, rolled back, and he became completely unconscious.
Hats and Doctors: Stories Page 21