It was on the whole a peaceful, happy life—till the October of 1947, when he found that the people around had begun to speak and act like savages. Someone or a body of men killed a body of men a thousand miles away and the result was that they repeated the evil here and wreaked their vengeance on those around. It was an absurd state of affairs. But there it was: a good action in a far-off place did not find an echo, but an evil one did possess that power. Our friend saw the tempers of his neighbours rising as they read the newspaper each day. They spoke rashly. ‘We must smash them who are here—’ he heard people say. ‘They have not spared even women and children!’ he heard them cry. ‘All right, we will teach those fellows a lesson. We will do the same here—the only language they will understand.’ But he tried to say, ‘Look here—’ He visualized his office colleague sitting on his right, his postman, the fellow at the betel- leaves shop, and his friend at the bank—all these belonged to another community. He had not bothered about their category all these days: they were just friends—people who smiled, obliged, and spoke agreeably. But now he saw them in a new light: they were of another community. Now when he heard his men talk menacingly, he visualized his post-office friend being hacked in the street, or the little girl belonging to that colleague of his, who so charmingly brought him lemon squash whenever he visited them, and displayed the few bits of dance and songs she knew—he visualized her being chased by the hooligans of his own community while she was on her way to school carrying a soap carton full of pencils and rubber! This picture was too much for him and he whispered under his breath constantly,
‘God forbid!’ He tried to smooth out matters by telling his fellow men: ‘You see . . . but such things will not happen here.’ But he knew that was wishful thinking. He knew his men were collecting knives and sticks. He knew how much they were organizing themselves, with a complete code of operations—all of which sounded perfectly ghastly to his sensitive temperament. Fire, sword, and loot, and all the ruffians that gathered for instructions and payment at his uncle’s house, who often declared: ‘We will do nothing by ourselves yet. But if they so much as wag a tail they will be finished. We will speak to them in the only language they will understand.’ Life seemed to have become intolerable. People were becoming sneaky and secretive. Everyone seemed to him a potential assassin. People looked at each other with suspicion and hatred. It seemed to him a shame that one should be throwing watchful, cautious looks over one’s shoulder as one walked down a street. The air was surcharged with fear. He avoided meeting others. Someone or other constantly reported: ‘You know what happened? A cyclist was stabbed in—Street last evening. Of course the police are hushing up the whole business.’ Or he heard: ‘A woman was assaulted today,’ or, ‘Do you know they rushed into the girls’ school and four girls are missing. The police are useless; we must deal with these matters ourselves.’ Such talk made his heart throb and brought a sickening feeling at his throat: he felt his food tasting bitter on his tongue. He could never look at his wife and children without being racked by the feeling, Oh, innocent ones, what perils await you in the hands of what bully! God knows.
At night he could hardly sleep: he lay straining his ears for any mob cries that might burst out all of a sudden. Suppose they stole upon him and broke his door? He could almost hear the terrified screams of his little ones. And all night he kept brooding and falling off into half sleep and struggled to keep awake, awaiting the howl of riotous mobs. The cries of a distant dog sounded so sinister that he got up to see if any flames appeared over the skies far off. His wife asked sleepily, ‘What is it?’ He answered; ‘Nothing. You sleep,’ and returned to his bed. He was satisfied that nothing was happening. He secretly resolved that he’d fetch the wood-chopper from the fuel room and keep it handy in case he had to defend his home. Sometimes the passage of a lorry or a cart pulled him out of his scant sleep and set him on his feet at the window: he stood there in the dark to make sure it was not a police lorry racing along to open fire on a murderous crowd. He spent almost every night in this anxious, agitated manner and felt relieved when day came.
Everyone mentioned that the coming Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of the month, was a critical day. There was to be a complete showdown that day. It was not clear why they selected that date, but everybody mentioned it. In his office people spoke of nothing but the twenty-ninth. The activity in his uncle’s house had risen to a feverish pitch. His uncle told him, ‘I’m glad we shall be done with this bother on the twenty-ninth. It is going to end this tension once for all. We shall clean up this town. After all, they form only a lakh and a half of the town population, while we . . .’ He went into dizzying statistics.
Zero hour was approaching. He often wondered amidst the general misery of all this speculation how they would set off the spark: will one community member slap the cheek of another at a given moment in a formal manner? ‘Suppose nothing happens?’ he asked, and his uncle told him, ‘How can nothing happen? We know what they are doing. They hold secret assemblies almost every night. Why should they meet at midnight?’
‘They may not be able to gather everyone except at that hour,’ he replied.
‘We don’t want people to meet at that hour. We do not ask for trouble, but if anything happens, we will finish them off. It will be only a matter of a few hours; it will work like a push-button arrangement. But we will avoid the initiative as far as possible.’
On the twenty-ninth most of the shops were closed as a precaution. Children stayed away from school, and said cheerfully, ‘No school today, Father—you know why? It seems there is going to be a fight today.’ The coolness and detachment with which his children referred to the fight made our friend envy them. His wife did not like the idea of his going to the office. ‘It seems they are not going to office today,’ she said, referring to some neighbours. ‘Why should you go?’ He tried to laugh off the question and, while setting out, said half humorously, ‘Well, keep yourselves indoors, if you choose, that is if you are afraid.’ His wife replied, ‘No one is afraid. As long as your uncle is near at hand, we have no fear.’
At the office, his boss was there, of course, but most of his colleagues were absent. There seemed to be a sudden outbreak of ‘urgent private business’ among them. The few that came wasted their time discussing the frightful possibilities of the day. Our friend’s head had become one whirling mass of rumours and fears. He hated to hear their talk. He plunged himself in work with such intensity that he found himself constantly exhausting its sources. So much so that, just to keep himself engaged, he excavated old files and accounts for some minute checking. The result was that it was past seven-thirty when he was able to put away the papers and leave the office.
The old files had had a sort of deadening effect on his mind. But now he felt a sudden anxiety to reach home in the shortest time possible. God knows what is happening to my family, he wondered. The usual route seemed to him laborious and impossible. It seemed to his fevered mind that it might take hours and hours. He felt the best course would be to dash through the alley in front of his office and go home by a short cut. It was a route he favoured whenever he was in a hurry although, under normal circumstances, avoided it for its narrowness, gutters, and mongrels. He snatched a look at his watch and hurried along the dark alley. He had proceeded a few yards when a cyclist coming up halted his progress. The cyclist and the pedestrian had difficulty in judging each other’s moves, and they both went off to the left or to the right together, and seemed to be making awkward passes at each other, till the cyclist finally slipped off the saddle, and both found themselves in the road dust.
Our friend’s nerves snapped and he yelled out, ‘Why can’t you ride carefully?’
The other scrambled to his feet and cried, ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see a cycle coming?’
‘Where is your light?’
‘Who are you to question me?’ said the other, and shot out his arm and hit the face of our friend, who lost his head and kicked the other in the bell
y. A crowd assembled. Somebody shouted, ‘He dares to attack us in our own place! Must teach these fellows a lesson. Do you think we are afraid?’ Shouts and screams increased. It was deafening. Somebody hit our friend with a staff, someone else with his fist; he saw a knife flashing out. Our friend felt his end had come. He suddenly had an access of recklessness. He was able to view the moment with a lot of detachment. He essayed to lecture to the crowd on the idiocy of the whole relationship, to tell them that they should stop it at once. But no sound issued from his voice box—he found himself hemmed in on all sides. The congestion was intolerable: everyone in that rabble seemed to put his weight on him and claw at some portion of his body. His eyes dimmed; he felt very light. He mumbled to someone near, ‘But I will never, never tell my uncle what has happened. I won’t be responsible for starting the trouble. This city must be saved. I won’t utter the word that will start the trouble, that will press the button, so to say. That’ll finish up everybody, you and me together. What is it all worth? There is no such thing as your community or mine. We are all of this country. I and my wife and children: you and your wife and children. Let us no cut each other’s throats. It doesn’t matter who cuts whose: it’s all the same to me. But we must not, we must not. We must not. I’ll tell my uncle that I fell down the office staircase and hurt myself. He’ll never know. He must not press the button.’
But the button did get pressed. The incident of that alley became known within a couple of hours all over the city. And his uncle and other uncles did press the button, with results that need not be described here. Had he been able to speak again, our friend would have spoken a lie and saved the city; but unfortunately that saving lie was not uttered. His body was found by the police late next afternoon in a ditch in that wretched alley, and identified through the kerosene ration coupon in his breast pocket.
Raja Rao
Companions
Alas till now I did not know
My guide and Fate’s guide are one.
—Hafiz
It was a serpent such as one sees only at a fair, long and many-coloured and swift in riposte when the juggler stops his music. But it had a secret of its own which none knew except Moti Khan who brought him to the Fatehpur Sunday fair. The secret was: his fangs would lie without venom till the day Moti Khan should see the vision of the large white rupee, with the Kutub Minar on the one side and the face of the Emperor on the other. That day the fang would eat into his flesh and Moti Khan would only be a corpse of a man. Unless he finds God.
For, to tell you the truth, Moti Khan had caught him in the strangest of strange circumstances. He was one day going through the sitaphul woods of Rampur on a visit to his sister, and the day being hot and the sands all scorching and shiny, he lay down under a wild fig tree, his turban on his face and his legs stretched across a stone. Sleep came like a swift descent of dusk, and after rapid visions of palms and hills and the dizzying sunshine, he saw a curious thing. A serpent came in the form of a man, opened its mouth, and through the most queer twistings of his face, declared he was Pandit Srinath Sastri of Totepur, who, having lived at the foot of the Goddess Lakshamma for a generation or more, one day in the ecstasy of his vision he saw her, the benign Goddess straight and supple, offering him two boons. He thought of his falling house and his mortgaged ancestral lands and said without a thought, ‘A bagful of gold and liberation from the cycle of birth and death.’ ‘And gold you shall have,’ said the Goddess, ‘but for your greed, you shall be born a serpent in your next life before reaching liberation. For gold and wisdom go in life like soap and oil. Go and be born a juggler’s serpent. And when you have made the hearts of many men glad with the ripple and swing of your shining flesh, and you have gone like a bird amidst shrieking children, only to swing round their legs and to swing out to the amusement of them all, when you have climbed old men’s shoulders and hung down them chattering like a squirrel, when you have thrust your hood at the virgin and circled round the marrying couples; when you have gone through the dreams of pregnant women and led the seekers to the top of the Mount of Holy Beacon, then your sins will be worn out like the quern with man’s grindings and your flesh will catch fire like the will-o-the-wisp and disappear into the world of darkness where men await the birth to come. The juggler will be a basket-maker and Moti Khan is his name. In a former life he sought God but in this he sits on the lap of a concubine. Wending his way to his sister’s for the birth of her son, he will sleep in the sitaphul woods. Speak to him. And he will be the vehicle of your salvation.’ Thus spoke the Goddess.
‘Now, what do you say to that, Moti Khan?’
‘Yes, I’ve been a sinner. But never thought I, God and Satan would become one. Who are you?’
‘The very same serpent.’
‘Your race has caused the fall of Adam.’
‘I sat at the feet of Sri Lakshamma and fell into ecstasy. I am a brahmin.’
‘You are strange.’
‘Take me or I’ll haunt you for this life and all lives to come.’
‘Go, Satan!’ shouted Moti Khan, and rising swift as a sword he started for his sister’s house. He said to himself, ‘I will think of my sister and child. I will think only of them.’ But leaves rustled and serpents came forth from the left and the right, blue ones and white ones and red ones and copper-coloured ones, long ones with short tails and short ones with bent tails, and serpents dropped from tree-tops and rock- edges, serpents hissed on the river sands. Then Moti Khan stood by the Rampur stream and said, ‘Wretch! Stop it. Come, I’ll take you with me.’ Then the serpents disappeared and so did the hissings, and hardly home, he took a basket and put it in a corner, and then he slept; and when he woke, a serpent had curled itself in the basket. Moti Khan had a pungi made by the local carpenter, and, putting his mouth to it, he made the serpent dance. All the village gathered round him and all the animals gathered round him, for the music of Moti Khan was blue, and the serpent danced on its tail.
When he said good-bye to his sister, he did not take the road to his concubine but went straight northwards, for Allah called him there. And at every village men came to offer food to Moti Khan and women came to offer milk to the serpent, for it swung round children’s legs and swung out, and cured them of all scars and poxes and fevers. Old men slept better after its touch and women conceived on the very night they offered milk to it. Plague went and plenty came, but Moti Khan would not smell silver. That would be death.
Now sometimes, at night in caravanserais, they had wrangles. Moti Khan used to say: ‘You are not even a woman to put under oneself.’
‘But so many women come to see you and so many men come to honour you, and only a king could have had such a reception though you’re only a basket-maker.’
‘Only a basket-maker! But I had a queen of a woman, and when she sang her voice was all flesh, and her flesh was all song. And she chewed betel-leaves and her lips were red, and even kings . . .’
‘Stop that. Between this and the vision of the rupee . . .’
Moti Khan pulled at his beard and, fire in his eyes, he broke his knuckles against the earth.
‘If only I could see a woman!’
‘If you want God forget women, Moti Khan.’
‘But I never asked for God. It is you who always bore me with God. I said I loved a woman. You are only a fanged beast. And here I am in the prime of life with a reptile to live with.’
But suddenly temple bells rang, and the muezzin was heard to cry Allah-o-Akbar. No doubt it was all the serpent’s work. Trembling, Moti Khan fell on his knees and bent himself in prayer.
From that day on the serpent had one eye turned to the right and one to the left when it danced. Once it looked at the men and once at the women, and suddenly it used to hiss up and slap Moti Khan’s cheeks with the back of its head, for his music had fallen false and he was eyeing women. Round were their hips, he would think, and the eyelashes are black and blue, and the breasts are pointed like young mangoes, and their limbs so tremble and fl
ow that he could sweetly melt into them.
One day, however, there was at the market a dark blue woman, with red lips, young and sprightly; and she was a butter woman. She came and stood by Moti Khan as he made the serpent dance. He played on his bamboo pungi and music swung here and splashed there, and suddenly he looked at her and her eyes and her breasts and the nagaswara went and became mohaswara, and she felt it and he felt she felt it; and when night came, he thought and thought so much of her and she thought and thought so much of him, that he slipped to the serai door and she came to the serai gate, flower in her hair and perfume on her limbs, but lo! Like the sword of God came a long, rippling light, circled round them, pinched at her nipples and flew back into the bewildering night. She cried out, and the whole town waked, and Moti Khan thrust the basket under his arm and walked northwards, for Allah called him thither.
‘Now,’ said Moti Khan, ‘I have to find God. Else this creature will kill me. And the Devil knows the hell I’d have to bake in.’ So he decided that, at the next saint’s tomb he encountered, he would sit down and meditate. But he wandered and he wandered; from one village he went to another, from one fair he went to another, but he found no dargah to meditate by. For God always called him northwards and northwards, and he crossed the jungles and he went up the mountains, and he came upon narrow valleys where birds screeched here and deer frisked there but no man’s voice was to be heard, and he said, ‘Now let me turn back home’; but he looked back and was afraid. And he said, ‘Now I have to go to the north, for Allah calls me there.’ And he climbed mountains again, and ran through jungles, and then came broad plains, and he went to the fairs and made the snake dance, and people left their rice shops and cotton-wareshops and the bellowing cattle and the yoked threshers and the querns and the kilns, and came to hear him play the music and to see the snake dance. They gave him food and fruit and cloth, but when they said, ‘Here’s a coin,’ he said, ‘Nay.’ And the snake was right glad of it, for it hated to kill Moti Khan till he had found God, and it himself hated to die. Now, when Moti Khan had crossed the Narbuda and the Pervan and the Bhagirath, he came to the Jumna, and through long Agra he passed making the snake dance, and yet he could not find God and he was sore in soul with it. And the serpent was bothersome.
The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories Page 10