But people heard of it here and people heard of it there, and they came with grain and hay and kumkum water saying, ‘We have a strange visitor, let us honour her.’ And merchants came saying, ‘Maybe she’s Lakshmi, the Goddess, and we may have more money next harvest,’ and fell at her feet. And students came to touch her head and touch her tail, saying, ‘Let me pass the examinations this year!’ And young girls came to ask for husbands and widows to ask for purity, and the childless to ask for children. And so every Tuesday there was a veritable procession of people at the Master’s hermitage. But Gauri would pass by them all like a holy wife among men, and going straight to the Master, would nibble at his hair and disappear among the bushes. People unable to take back the untouched offerings gave them to the river and the fishes jumped to eat them as at a festival; but the crocodile had disappeared from the whirls of the deep waters. And one fine morning the Master woke in his bed to hear the snake and the rat playing under him, for when the seeker finds harmony, the jackal and the deer and the rat and the serpent become friends. And Gauri was no doubt a fervent soul who had sought the paths of this world to be born a sage in the next, for she was so compassionate and true.
And people were much affrighted, and they took the women and the children to the fields beyond and they cooked food beneath the trees and lived there—for the army of the Government was going to take the town and no woman or child would be spared. And doors were closed and clothes and vessels and jewels were hidden away, and only the workmen and the men ruled the city, and the Master was the head of them all, and they called him President. Patrols of young men in khadi and Gandhi cap would go through the streets, and when they saw the old or the miserly peeping from behind the doors they called them and talked to them and led them to the camp by the fields, for the Master said there was danger and nobody could stay but the strong and the young. Grass grew beneath the eaves and the dust of the monsoon swept along the streets while the red men’s trains brought army after army and everybody could see them for the station was down below and the town upon a hill. Barricades lay on the streets like corpse-heaps after the last plague, but the biggest of them all was in the Suryanarayana Street. It was as big as a chariot.
Men were hidden behind it and waited for the battle. But the Master said, ‘No, there shall be no battle, brothers.’ But the workmen said again, ‘It is not with, “I love you, I love you,” that you can change the grinding heart of this Government,’ and they brought picks and scythes and crowbars, and a few Mohammedans brought their swords and one or two stole rifles from the mansions, and there was a regular fighting army ready to fall on the red man’s men. And the Master went and said this and the Master went and said that, but the workmen said, ‘We’ll fight,’ and fight they would. So deep in despair the Master said, ‘I resign from the presidentship,’ and he went and sat in meditation and rose into the worlds from which come light and love, in order that the city might be saved from bloodshed. And when people heard this they were greatly angered against the workmen, but they knew the workmen were right and the Master was right, and they did not know which way the eye should turn. Owls hovered about even in midday light, and when dusk fell, all the stars hung so low that people knew that that night would see the fight.
But everybody looked at the empty street-corners and said, ‘Where is she—Gauri?’
At ten that night the first war-chariots were heard to move up, and cannons and bayonets and lifted swords rushed in assault.
And what happened afterwards people remember to this very day. There she was, Gauri, striding out of the Oil Lane and turning around Copper Seenayya’s house towards the Suryanarayana Street, her head held gently bent and her ears pressed back like plaits of hair, and staggering like one going to the temple with fruits and flowers to offer to the Goddess. And she walked fast, and when people saw her they ran behind her, and crowd after crowd gathered round her and torch and lantern in hand they marched through the Brahmin Street and the Cotton Street and past the Venkatalakshmamma Well, and the nearer she came to the barricades the faster she walked, though she never ran. And people said, ‘She will protect us. Now it’s sure she will save us,’ and bells were brought and rung and camphors were lit and coconuts were broken at her feet, but she neither shuddered nor did she move her head; she walked on. And the workmen who were behind the barricades, saw this and they “were sore furious with it, and they said, ‘Here, they send the cow instead of coming to help us.’ Some swore and others laughed, and one of them said, ‘We’ll fire at her, for if the crowd is here and the red man’s army on the other side it will be terrible.’ But they were afraid, for the crowd chanted ‘Vande Mataram’ and they were all uplifted and sure, and Gauri marched onwards her eyes raised towards the barricades. And as she came near the temple square the workmen laid down their arms, as she came by the Tulsi Well they folded their hands, and as she was beneath the barricades they fell prostrate at her feet murmuring, ‘Goddess, who may you be?’ And they formed two rings, and between them passed Gauri, her left foreleg first, then her back right leg, once on the sandbag, once on the cart-wheel, and with the third move men pushed her up and she was on top of the barricades. And then came a rich whispering like a crowd at evening worship, but the red man’s army cried from the other side of the barricades, ‘Oh, what’s this? Oh, what’s this?’ and they rushed towards the barricades thinking it was a flag of truce. But when they saw the cow and its looks and the tear, clear as a drop of the Ganges, they shouted out, ‘Victory to the Mahatma! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and joined up with the crowd. But their chief, the red man, saw this and fired a shot. It went through Gauri’s head, and she fell a vehicle of God among lowly men.
But they said blood did not gush out of the head but only between the forelegs, from the thickness of her breast.
Peace has come back to us now. Seth Jamnalal Dwarak Chand bought the two houses on either side of the barricades, cut a loop road through them, and in the middle he erected a metal statue for Gauri. Our Gauri was not so tall nor was she stiff, for she had a very human look. But we all offer her flowers and honey and perfumed sweetmeats and the first green grass of spring. And our children jump over the railings and play between her legs, and putting their mouths to the hole in the breast—for this was made too—shout out resounding booms. And never have our carpenters had gayer times than since Gauri died, for our children do not want their baswanna-bulls but only ask for Gauris. And to this day hawkers cry them about at the railway station, chanting, ‘Gauris of Gorakhpur! Polished, varnished and on four wheels!’ and many a child from the Himalayas to the seas of the South pulls them through the dusty streets of Hindustan.
But even now when we light our sanctum lights at night, we say, ‘Where is she, Gauri?’ Only the Master knows where she is. He says: ‘Gauri is waiting in the Middle Heavens to be born. She will be reborn when India sorrows again before she is free.’
Therefore it is said, ‘The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but he is right about the fullness of love in all creatures—the speechful and the mute.’
Sparrows
K.A. ABBAS
The sun was setting behind the mango grove which fringed the western extremity of the village when Rahim Khan returned from the fields. Broad and strong despite his fifty odd years, with the plough on his shoulders, and driving his two oxen, he walked through the main street of the village with a haughty and unfriendly air. As he approached the chaupal, where a dozen or so peasants were collected for their evening-smoke, the hilarious tones of gossip died down to cautious whispers. It was only when he had vanished round the corner and the heavy tread of his footsteps was heard no more that Kallu, passing the communal hookah to another, remarked, ‘There goes the hard-hearted devil!’ To which Nanha, the fat sweet-seller, added: ‘He is getting worse and worse every day. Only yesterday he beat poor Ramoo’s child for throwing a pebble at his oxen.’ Ramnath, the officious zaildar, volunteered further details of Rahim Khan’s recent cruelties. ‘An
d the other day he very nearly killed my mare for straying into his field.’ The zaildar, of course, thought it quite irrelevant to mention that the straying of his mare had been specially planned by his own mischievous sons. The old, grey-haired Patel was, as usual, the last to open his toothless mouth. And as usual, his words were prefaced by a pious invocation to the Almighty. ‘Hare Ram! Hare Ram!’ he muttered, ‘I have never seen such a cruel man. He has compassion neither for the child nor for the helpless animal. No wonder his own sons have run away from home.’
The subject of their conversation, meanwhile, had reached his hut which, almost symbolically, stood gaunt and aloof, at a distance from the neighbouring cluster of houses. Leaning the plough up against the low wall of his house, he proceeded to tie the oxen to a pair of big wooden stakes embedded in the ground just in front of the doorway.
‘Bhai Rahim Khan!’ an obsequious voice said behind him as he was about to enter the house.
‘What is it?’ he gruffly queried, turning round to address the old woman who had come out of the house nearest his own. As she hesitated to speak, he fired a volley of questions: ‘What is it? I won’t eat you. Why don’t you speak, woman? Has your son been arrested again for revenue arrears or has your daughter-in-law delivered another baby?’
As he stopped for breath, the woman summoned up all her courage to utter two words, ‘Your wife . . .’ ‘. . . has run away.’ He completed the sentence with a grin, which broadened with the realization that he had guessed right.
‘No, no,’ the woman hastily explained with an apologetic look, as if she herself were responsible for his wife’s absence. ‘She has only gone to her brother at Nurpur and will be back in a few days.’
‘Bah!’ he flung back at her, opening the door. He knew that his wife would never come back.
Seething with inward wrath he entered the dark hut and sat down on the charpoy. A cat mewed in a corner. Finding no one else to vent his anger on he flung it out, slamming the door with violence.
There was no one to give him water, to wash his dustladen feet and hands, no one to give him supper, no one whom he could curse and beat. Rahim Khan felt uncomfortable and unhappy. He had always been angry with his wife when she was there, but her absence angered him still more.
‘So, she’s gone,’ he mused, lying down on the cot, having decided to go to sleep without his food. During the thirty years of their married life he had always felt that she would leave him one day and, at one time, he had even hoped she would. Six years ago, his eldest son Bundu had run away from home because of a more than usual severe beating. Three years later, the younger one, Nuru, joined his brother. Since that day, Rahim Khan felt sure his wife, too, would run away to her brother’s house. But now that she had gone, he felt unhappy—not sorry, no, for he had never loved his wife—but only uncomfortable, as if a necessary piece of furniture had been removed. With her gone, on whom could he shower the outpourings of an embittered heart?
For thirty years his wife had been both the symbol and target of all his grievances against family, against society, against life.
As a youth there had been none in the village to beat him in feats of athletic skill—in wrestling, in kabadi, in diving from the canal bridge. He had loved a girl, and wanted to join a touring circus which happened to pass through the village. In the circus he had felt, lay the key to his ambitions—a career after his own heart—travel, fame. And in Radha, the daughter of Ram Charan, the village bania, he thought he had found his soulmate. He had first noticed her watching him at a wrestling match and it had been the greatest moment of his life when, standing up after vanquishing his adversary, he had found Radha looking at him with the light of love in her eyes. After that there had been a few brief and furtive meetings when the unlettered but romantic youth had declared his love in passionate though halting words. But his parents had killed both ambitions. Circus work was too lowly and immoral for a respectable peasant. Anyway, his father, grandfather and all his ancestors had tilled the land, so he, too, had to do it. As for marrying Radha, a Hindu, a kafir, the very idea was infamous and irreligious.
For some time, Rahim Khan, with youthful resentment, toyed with the idea of open rebellion. But the tradition of centuries of serfdom ran in his blood, and, however indignant he might have felt at his father’s severity, he could not summon up enough courage to defy paternal authority and social traditions. After a few days, the circus left the village without Rahim Khan, and the furtive romance with Radha, too, came to an abrupt end. Rahim Khan’s father slyly suggested to Ram Charan that his daughter was now fifteen and ought to have been married long ago, not failing to hint at the disastrous consequences of late marriages. Within a few weeks Radha was married to Ram Lal, a middle-aged, pot-bellied bania of the neighbouring village. With a few sad tears shed in the solitude of the night in memory of her hopeless romance with Rahim Khan, she quickly reconciled herself to her fate and proceeded forthwith to be the mother of half-a-dozen children.
Rahim Khan also married. He had, of course, no choice in the matter. His parents selected the girl, fixed the date, ordered some gaudy clothes for him and some silver ornaments for his bride, sat hig on a horse and, to the beat of a brass band, took him to the girl’s house where the nikah was duly performed. To the Kazi’s formal questions Rahim Khan mechanically nodded his head. Any other course was impossible. Nobody, of course, cared to ask the shy little girl who sat huddled in a dark room only dimly conscious of the fate to which she had been condemned. After the ceremony, Rahim Khan’s father, in a mood of self-congratulation, boasted to his wife: ‘See how meekly he obeyed me. You always feared he might refuse to fall in with our arrangements. I know these youngsters. They are apt to be restless if their marriage is delayed. That is why our fathers believed in marrying away their children early. Now he will be all right!’
At that very moment, standing on the threshold of the room, where his wife awaited him much as a sheep awaits the butcher, Rahim Khan made a terrible resolve to avenge himself on his parents, his family, on society. He held them all responsible for the frustration of his life’s dreams. And in his confused, illogical mind he regarded his bride as the symbol of the persecution to which he had been subjected. On her he would wreak his vengeance. Iron entered his hitherto kindly soul as he rudely pushed open the door.
That was thirty years ago, Rahim Khan reflected as he lay there on his cot in the dark hut. And hadn’t he had his revenge? For thirty years he had ill-treated his wife, his children and his bullocks, quarrelled with everyone in the village and made himself the most hated person in the whole community. The thought of being so universally detested gave him grim satisfaction.
No one in the village, of course, understood or tried to understand the reasons for this strange transformation of the cheerful and kind young man into the beast that he had become. At first, their attitude towards him was one of astonished hostility, but later it changed to indifference mingled with fear. Of understanding and sympathy he received none. Shunned by everyone, with a bitterness ever gnawing at his heart, Rahim Khan sought consolation in the unquestioned authority over his wife which society allowed him.
For thirty years his wife had submitted to his persecution with the slave-like docility that is the badge of her tribe. Lately, indeed, she had become so used to corporal chastisement that it seemed unnatural if a whole week passed without a beating. To Rahim Khan beating his wife had become a part of his very existence. As sleep gathered round him, his last thought was whether he would be able to endure life without having an opportunity of indulging in what had now become second nature. It was perhaps the only moment when Rahim Khan had a feeling, not exactly of affection for his wife, but of loneliness without her. Never before had he realized how much the woman he hated was a part of his life.
When he awoke it was already late forenoon and he started the day by cursing his wife, for it was she who used to wake him up early every morning. But he was in no great hurry today. Lazily he got up and, a
fter his ablutions, milked the goats for his breakfast which consisted of the remains of the previous day’s chappatis soaked in the fresh milk. Then he sat down for a smoke, with his beloved hookah beside him. Now the hut was warm and alight with the rays of the sun streaming in through the open window. In a corner they revealed some cobwebs and, having already decided to absent himself from his fields, he thought he would tidy his hut. Tying some rags to the end of the long pole, he was about to remove the cobwebs when he saw a nest in the thatched roof. Two sparrows were fluttering in and out, twittering constantly.
His first impulse was to wreck the nest with one stroke of his pole, but something within him made him desist. Throwing down the pole, he brought a stool and climbed up on it to get a better view of the sparrows’ home. Two little featherless mites of red flesh, baby sparrows hardly a day old, lay inside, while their parents hovered round Rahim Khan’s face, screaming threateningly. He barely had a glimpse of the inside of the nest when the mother sparrow attacked him.
‘Oh damn you vixen, you might have plucked out my eye,’ exclaimed Rahim Khan with his characteristic hollow laugh and climbed down from his perch. He was strangely amused by the little bird’s heroic efforts to save her home and children. The sparrows’ nest suffered no harm that day and peace reigned in Rahim Khan’s hut.
Next day he resumed his daily work. Still no one talked to him in the village. From morning till late in the afternoon he would toil in the field, ploughing the furrow and watering the crops, but he returned home before sunset. Then he would lie on his cot, smoking his hookah and watching with lively interest the antics of the sparrow family. The two little ones had now grown into fine young birds, and he called them Nuru and Bundu after his lost sons whom he had not seen for several years. The four sparrows were his only friends in the world. His neighbours were still frightened of him and regarded his recent peaceful behaviour with suspicion. They were genuinely astonished that for some time no one had seen him beating his bullocks. Nathoo and Chhiddoo themselves were happy and grateful and their bruised bodies had almost healed.
Best Loved Indian Stories of the Century, Volume 1 Page 7