The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories

by Stephen Alter

  ‘They have run away, the bastards! Sons of bitches!’

  He got up angrily and began shouting at the passengers: ‘Why did you let them go? You are all cowards! Impotent people!’ But the compartment was crowded with passengers and no one paid any attention to him.

  The train lurched forward. The old passengers of the compartment had stuffed themselves with puris and had drunk enormous quantities of water; they looked contented because the train was now passing through an area where there was no danger to their life and property. The new entrants into the compartment were chatting noisily. Gradually the train settled down to an even pace and people began to doze. The babu, wide awake, kept staring into space. Once or twice he asked me about the direction in which the Pathans had gone. He was still beside himself with anger.

  In the rhythmical jolting of the train I too was overpowered by sleep. There wasn’t enough room in the compartment to lie down. In the reclining posture in which I sat my head would fall, now to one side, now to the other. Sometimes I would wake up with a start and hear the loud snoring of the Sardarji who had gone back to his old seat and had stretched himself full length on it. All the passengers were lying or reclining in such grotesque postures that one had the impression that the compartment was full of corpses. The babu however sat erect, and now and then I found him peeping out of the window.

  Every time the train stopped at a wayside station, the noise from the wheels would suddenly cease and a sort of desolate silence descend over everything. Sometimes a sound would be heard as of something falling on the platform or of a passenger getting down from a compartment, and I would sit up with a start.

  Once when my sleep was broken, I vaguely noticed that the train was moving at a very slow pace. I peeped out of the window. Far away, to the rear of the train, the red lights of a railway signal were visible. Apparently the train had left some railway station but had not yet picked up speed.

  Some stray, indistinct sounds fell on my ears. At some distance I noticed a dark shape. My sleep-laden eyes rested on it for some time but I made no effort to make out what it was. Inside the compartment it was dark, the light had been put out some time during the night. Outside, the day seemed to be breaking.

  I heard another sound, as of someone scraping the door of the compartment. I turned round. The door was closed. The sound was repeated. This time it was more distinct. Someone was knocking at the door with a stick. I looked out of the window. There was a man there; he had climbed up the two steps and was standing on the footboard and knocking away at the door with a stick. He wore drab, colourless clothes, and had a bundle hanging from his shoulder. I also noticed his thick, black beard and the turban on his head. At some distance, a woman was running alongside the train. She was barefooted and had two bundles hanging from her shoulders. Due to the heavy load she was carrying, she was not able to run fast. The man on the footboard was again and again turning towards her and saying in a breathless voice:

  ‘Come on, come up, you too come up here!’

  Once again there was the sound of knocking on the door.

  ‘Open the door, please. For the sake of Allah, open the door.’

  The man was breathless.

  ‘There is a woman with me. Open the door or we shall miss the train . . .’

  Suddenly I saw the babu get up from his seat and rush to the door.

  ‘Who is it? What do you want? There is no room here. Go away.’

  The man outside again spoke imploringly: ‘For the sake of Allah, open the door, or we shall miss the train.’

  And putting his hand through the open window, he began fumbling for the latch.

  ‘There’s no room here. Can’t you hear? Get down, I am telling you,’ the babu shouted, and the next instant flung open the door.

  ‘Ya Allah!’ the man exclaimed, heaving a deep sigh of relief.

  At that very instant I saw the iron rod flash in the babu’s hand. He gave a stunning blow to the man’s head. I was aghast at seeing this; my legs trembled. It appeared to me as though the blow with the iron rod had no effect on the man, for both his hands were still clutching the door-handle. The bundle hanging from his shoulder had, however, slipped down to his elbow.

  Then suddenly two or three tiny streams of blood burst forth and flowed down his face from under his turban. In the faint light of the dawn I noticed his open mouth and his glistening teeth. His eyes looked at the babu, half-open eyes which were slowly closing, as though they were trying to make out who his assailant was and for what offence had he taken such a revenge. Meanwhile the darkness had lifted further. The man’s lips fluttered once again and between them his teeth glistened. He seemed to have smiled. But in reality his lips had only curled in terror.

  The woman running along the railway track was grumbling and cursing. She did not know what had happened. She was still under the impression that the weight of the bundle was preventing her husband from getting into the compartment, from standing firmly on the footboard. Running alongside the train, despite her own two bundles, she tried to help her husband by stretching her hand to press his foot to the board.

  Then, abruptly, the man’s grip loosened on the doorhandle and he fell headlong to the ground, like a slashed tree. No sooner had he fallen than the woman stopped running, as though their journey had come to an end.

  The babu stood like a statue, near the open door of the compartment. He still held the iron rod in his hand. It looked as though he wanted to throw it away but did not have the strength to do so. He was not able to lift his hand, as it were. I was breathing hard; I was afraid and I continued staring at him from the dark corner near the window where I sat.

  Then he stirred. Under some inexplicable impulse he took a short step forward and looked towards the rear of the train. The train had gathered speed. Far away, by the side of the railway track, a dark heap lay huddled on the ground.

  The babu’s body came into motion. With one jerk of the hand he flung out the rod, turned round and surveyed the compartment. All the passengers were sleeping. His eyes did not fall on me.

  For a little while he stood in the doorway undecided. Then he shut the door. He looked intently at his clothes, examined his hands carefully to see if there was any blood on them, then smelled them. Walking on tiptoe he came and sat down on his seat next to me.

  The day broke. Clear, bright light shone on all sides. No one had pulled the chain to stop the train. The man’s body lay miles behind. Outside, the morning breeze made gentle ripples across the ripening wheat.

  The Sardarji sat up scratching his belly. The babu, his hands behind his head, was gazing in front of him. Seeing the babu facing him, the Sardarji giggled and said, ‘You are a man with guts, I must say. You don’t look strong, but you have real courage.

  The Pathans got scared and ran away from here. Had they continued sitting here you would certainly have smashed the head of one of them . . .’

  The babu smiled—a horrifying smile—and stared at the Sardarji’s face for a long time.

  Translated from Hindi by the author

  Sunil Gangopadhyay

  Shah Jahan and His Private Army

  Suddenly one day a huge commotion broke out in the marketplace at Gajipur. The sweet potato-sellers were forever sparring with the pumpkin-vendors on the choicest spots to set up shop, and from time to time things would rise to a feverish pitch. This time there was really more smoke than fire. So people yelled their heads off, while others gave vent to long nourished curses; there was plenty of pushing and shoving, and a few even went so far as to brandish sticks in threat of yet greater violence. But it was just one lone head that caught the blow of any of the sticks. And whose would that have been, besides Hazu’s? Hazu sold neither sweet potatoes nor pumpkins; it was simply his nature to be in the middle of whatever was happening, no matter what.

  Startled by the blood pouring out of the open wound on Hazu’s head, the two warring factions stopped their quarrel at once and practically stumbled over each othe
r in their rush to reach him. And what cries of lamentation they raised! As for Hazu, knocked on the head by someone’s stick and thrown on the ground, he did not utter a sound. Cradling his sore head in his arms, he shot quick glances from side to side like a terrified wild animal. He acted as if the mistake was all his. And so, indeed, it might have been, for no sooner had the waves of pity rolled over him, when all and sundry began their abuses. ‘What were you doing anyway, sticking your head under flying sticks?’

  Such had always been Hazu’s luck. It was as if disaster courted him. There had been the incident right there in the marketplace at Gajipur when someone had given the tail of a bull a good twist and let it go. Straightaway it had made for Hazu, butted him with all its might and knocked him over. Everyone else had escaped without so much as a scratch. And then, way back even before the bull, Hazu had once gone to the lake to gather some edible grasses when a water mocassin had sunk its fangs into him. Needless to say, it was the very first time anyone in Gajipur had ever been bitten by such a snake.

  You must be wondering by now what Hazu was doing wandering around the marketplace at Gajipur in the first place, and well might you ask. After all, he had nothing to sell and nothing to buy. The truth was that he was roaming around there for no good reason whatsoever. He wore a dark cloth, wrapped around him in the fashion of a sarong and an undershirt and he was still straight, which no doubt accounted for the impression that his arms and legs were far too long for the rest of him. He shaved just about once a week or so. Even odder, he had the habit of fixating on a face in the crowd, stranger’s, friend’s and just staring at it. Mind you, that is not to imply that there was anything importunate about his glaring; on the contrary, he seemed to want nothing from the world around him.

  The marketplace at Gajipur was hardly a saintly place. Plenty of money changed hands there, always giving the vultures something to keep their eyes on. Nor was there any shortage of people ready and willing to cause friction between the Hindus and Muslims or instigate more serious trouble between them. Though the petty shopkeepers were mostly Hindus, their suppliers were Muslim. The latest local official was a Muslim, Sheik Anwar Ali, but his defeated rival, the Hindu, Visnu Sikdar, still had enough power. With all of this, the peace in the marketplace hung on a slender thread which could snap at the slightest pull.

  It needed a clever man to make his way in such a setting, and even the smartest of men still needed something behind them, if not the power of a mighty mouth, then the power of muscle, and if neither of these, then at least the power of money. Hazu had none of these. Nor did he seem to be endowed with much commonsense. He knew neither how to ask something of another person nor how to give. When he had been just a bit younger, he could be seen to spend his days in a deserted field, perched atop a palm tree he had climbed, staring intently into the sky. As the sun set and a part of the heavens would sink into a sea of red, Hazu seemed to discover some particular meaning in all that splendour. There were even those who went so far as to wonder whether the boy would grow up to be some kind of a sage or a holy man.

  And then one day Hazu fell out of his palm tree. That was the last of his sky-gazing from his lofty perch; from then on he had to content himself with staring into the reflection of the red sky in the waters of the irrigation channel.

  When Hazu got his head split open that fateful day in the marketplace of Gajipur, his uncle’s friend Mozammel Ganda made a poultice of leaves to apply to the wound. Then, pressing a cigarette into Hazu’s hand, he asked, Think hard now. Who was it that hit you? Did you get a good look at him?’

  Hazu Sheik just shook his head from side to side, ‘No, uncle Mozammel.’

  Mozammel shot him a look of contempt as he went on, ‘Who says you re good for nothing? You stopped the fighting with that broken head of yours, at least. Who knows otherwise how far things might have gone. Go, go home.’

  Puffing on his cigarette, Hazu set off for home. Mozammel’s comments had not made the slightest impression on him. His head still smarted, and a stream of blood continued to trickle down his neck onto his back where it stained his undershirt red.

  Hazu walked across the irrigation channel, dried out in the cold season, and ambled slowly across the field. No one had ever seen him walk any faster; everything in his life was governed by the same sluggish rhythm. That was the way God had made him; who was he to protest? And so he walked on underneath the afternoon sky, which he watched as it spread its shadow around him.

  Though the son of a mullah, Hazu was as useless as a sterile cow to a Hindu homestead. There was not a thing he could do: not work in the fields, not work around the lakes, not even the simplest of household chores. At one time his incompetence had been the occasion for more than one sound thrashing from his uncle and father, but finally they had given up on him. For Hazu was not shirking; he really could not do a thing. Even when he was sent out to the fields to weed, all he did was squat there with the scythe in his hand, staring in silence at the weeds. It might have seemed that he was steeped in profound meditation, when the fact that he was completely and utterly empty-headed was closer to truth.

  Still, Hazu’s life had followed the normal course; he too had been married off when his time had come. He had fathered four sons. But Hazu was not quite the husband other men were, nor quite the father, either. None of his sons paid him any heed and they always used a surly tone whenever they spoke to him. His wife, Sayeda, was a born complainer; she bickered and grumbled from morning till night, and when her mouth was dry from all her yapping she would just give out. Hazu did not seem to take much note of any of this; he neither got wary nor smartened up. He just stayed where he had always been.

  Just before he reached home Hazu stopped to wash his feet in the lake. Slowly, deliberately, he rubbed the sole of one foot against the other. He hadn’t the slightest cause for hurry; all he would do anyway until nightfall was to sit on the verandah and wait until someone brought him something to eat. Eating was in fact, the one thing Hazu seemed to care about; Hazu took real pleasure in food.

  Nowadays Hazu did not always get his three square meals a day. When he was still a part of the larger extended family he would manage, by hook or by crook, to get whatever he wanted. Mothers somehow do seem to have an extra tenderness for skinny children, and Hazu’s mother had felt an added twinge of concern for her son who did not seem to make his own way. It was a year now that his mother was gone; his father had died sometime before her. Hazu’s eldest brother had broken away from the extended family and set up his own household, leaving Hazu unsure of how he would support his wife and children.

  Sayeda was the first to notice. ‘Do I see blood on your head?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It is blood.’

  ‘Now what have you done to yourself? Hm? Don’t tell me you’ve gone and fallen again?’ With each word Sayeda came one step closer and her voice grew louder and louder. Sayeda was strong and solidly built; to look at her you would never know that she had given birth to four children. She worked herself to death all day long, doing the work of two hefty men all by herself. And there was power enough in her tongue, too.

  Hazu’s eldest son was thirteen, though he had already learned to talk like an adult. He worked as a cowherd for one of the families in the village. Now he joined forces with his mother and added his own insults which he hurled at his father. One by one the other members of the household gathered until they were quite a crowd.

  Hazu was calm and cool. He knew that this was just like any other day. They would all yell at him for a while and then eventually they would stop. The darkness of night would descend; jackals and nocturnal birds would cry, and then at last all would be still. Just like any other day. But Hazu had no inkling of the momentous change that was to shake his life this time.

  It soon came out that Hazu had not, in fact, fallen and split his head open; someone had struck him with a stick. There were those present who were indifferent at that news; others were outraged and some just felt genuinely sorry fo
r Hazu. They were all certain that a simple, kind soul like Hazu would never have done anything to deserve such a beating. But, alas, how strange are the ways of the world. It was, after all, Hazu who had got his head cracked open.

  Hazu’s hair was matted with blood in places. He listened to everything that was being said, though he revealed no change of emotion on his face. He bore no one any ill-will; he harboured no resentments. All he had to say was: ‘Who knows why someone hit me. I felt this whack on the head and down I went. It’s really not so bad, just a little blood, that’s all.’

  Sayeda’s elder brother, Eklas had shown up earlier in the day and now heard Hazu’s latest misadventure. Eklas himself had been burnt plenty in his own life; he had seen his share and he knew exactly how treacherous the world was these days for the innocent and unwary. He and Sayeda came from a village just two villages beyond Hazu’s. Eklas had been living in the city for some time but kept his ties with home. His ears sharpened by his sojourn in the city, he seemed able to hear the village groan and creak as it crumbled into the dirt.

  Eklas had just dropped in on his way back to the city, but seeing how matters stood, he suddenly proposed that he would take Hazu to the city with him. In the city, he would make a man out of Hazu; besides, Hazu could work there and earn something for himself.

  At first no one even took Eklas seriously. Hazu was such a fool he was sure to get run over by a car in his first few days in the city. And as for his earning a living—well, that was hardly likely. After all, what did Hazu know how to do? Even in the village he had never been able to do a thing, and everyone knew that in the city it was dog eat dog.