One monsoon evening, when the sky was overcast with threatening clouds, Rahim Khan returned from the fields a little earlier than usual. He found a group of children playing on the road. They ran away as they saw him, and even left their shoes behind in their haste. In vain did Rahim Khan shout, ‘Why are you running away? I am not going to beat you.’ Meanwhile, it had started drizzling and he hurried homewards to tie up the bullocks before the big downpour came.
Entering his hut, Rahim Khan lighted the earthenware oil lamp and placed some crumbs of bread for the sparrows before he prepared his own dinner. ‘O Nuru! O Bundu!’ he shouted, but the sparrows did not come out. Anxious to find out what had happened to his friends, he peered into the nest and found the quartet scared and sitting huddled up within their feathers. At the very spot where the nest lay, the roof was leaking. Rahim Khan took a ladder and went out in the pouring rain to repair the damage. By the time the job was satisfactorily done he was thoroughly drenched. As he sat on the cot, Rahim Khan sneezed, but he did not heed the warning and went to sleep. Next morning he awoke with a high fever.
When the villagers did not see him going to the fields for several days, they grew anxious and some of them came to see what was the matter. Through a crack in the door they saw him lying on the cot talking, so they thought, to himself, ‘O Bundu, O Nuru, who will feed you when I am gone?’
The peasants shook their heads sympathetically. ‘Poor fellow,’ they said, ‘he has gone mad. We will send for his wife to look after him.’
Next morning when Rahim Khan’s wife, anxious and weeping, came with her sons, a group of neighbours collected in sympathy. The door was locked from the inside, and in spite of loud knocking no one opened it. When they broke their way in they found the large and gaunt frame of Rahim lying in the brooding silence of the room, broken only by the fluttering of four sparrows.
The Mark of Vishnu
KHUSHWANT SINGH
‘This is for Kala Nag,’ said Gunga Ram, pouring the milk into the saucer. ‘Every night I leave it outside the hole near the wall and it’s gone by the morning.’
‘Perhaps it is the cat,’ we youngsters suggested.
‘Cat!’ said Gunga Ram with contempt. ‘No cat goes near that hole. Kala Nag lives there. As long as I give him milk, he will not bite anyone in this house. You can all go about with bare feet and play where you like.’
We were not having any patronage from Gunga Ram.
‘You’re a stupid old Brahmin,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know snakes don’t drink milk? At least one couldn’t drink a saucerful every day. The teacher told us that a snake eats only once in several days. We saw a grass snake which had just swallowed a frog. It stuck like a blob in its throat and took several days to dissolve and go down its tail. We’ve got dozens of them in the lab, in methylated spirit. Why, last month the teacher bought one from a snake charmer which could run both ways. It had another head with a pair of eyes at the tail. You should have seen the fun when it was put in the jar. There wasn’t an empty one in the lab. So the teacher put it in one which had a Russels viper. He caught its two ends with a pair of forceps, dropped it in the jar, and quickly put the lid on. There was an absolute storm as it went round and round in the glass tearing the decayed viper into shreds.’
Gunga Ram shut his eyes in pious horror.
‘You will pay for it one day. Yes, you will.’
It was no use arguing with Gunga Ram. He, like all good Hindus, believed in the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the creator, preserver, and destroyer. Of these he was most devoted to Vishnu. Every morning he smeared his forehead with a V mark in sandalwood paste to honour the deity. Although a Brahmin, he was illiterate and full of superstition. To him, all life was sacred, even if it was of a serpent or scorpion or centipede. Whenever he saw one he quickly shoved it away lest we kill it. He picked up wasps we battered with our badminton rackets and tended their damaged wings. Sometimes he got stung. It never seemed to shake his faith. More dangerous the animal, the more devoted Gunga Ram was to its existence. Hence the regard for snakes; and above all, for the cobra, who was the Kala Nag.
‘We will kill your Kala Nag if we see him.’
‘I won’t let you. It’s laid a hundred eggs and if you kill it all the eggs will become cobras and the house will be full of them. Then what will you do?’
‘We’ll catch them alive and send them to Bombay. They milk them there for anti-snakebite serum. They pay two rupees for a live cobra. That makes two hundred rupees straightway.’
‘Your doctors must have udders. I never saw a snake have any. But don’t you dare touch this one. It is a phannyar—it is hooded. I’ve seen it. It’s three hands long. As for its hood!’ Gunga Ram opened the palms of his hands and his head swayed from side to side. ‘You should see it basking on the lawn in the sunlight.’
‘That just proves what a liar you are. The phannyar is the male, so it couldn’t have laid the hundred eggs. You must have laid the eggs yourself.’
The party burst into peals of laughter.
‘Must be Gunga Ram’s eggs. We’ll soon have a hundred Gunga Rams.’
Gunga Ram was squashed. It was the lot of a servant to be constantly squashed. But having the children of the household make fun of him was too much even for Gunga Ram. They were constantly belittling him with their new-fangled ideas. They never read their scriptures. Not even what the Mahatma said about non-violence. It was just shotguns to kill birds and the jars of methylated spirit to drown snakes. Gunga Ram would stick to his faith in the sanctity of life, he would feed and protect snakes because snakes were the most vile of God’s creatures on earth. If you could love them, instead of killing them, you proved your point.
What the point was which Gunga Ram wanted to prove was not clear. He just proved it by leaving the saucerful of milk by the snake hole every night and finding it gone in the mornings.
One day we saw Kala Nag. The monsoons had burst with all their fury and it had rained in the night. The earth which had lain parched and dry under the withering heat of the summer sun was teeming with life. In little pools frogs croaked. The muddy ground was littered with crawling worms, centipedes and velvety ladybirds. Grass had begun to show and the banana leaves glistened bright and glossy green. The rain had flooded Kala Nag’s hole. He sat in an open patch on the lawn. His shiny black hood glistened in the sunlight. He was big—almost six feet in length, and rounded and fleshy, like my wrist.
‘Looks like a King Cobra. Let’s get him.’
Kala Nag did not have much of a chance. The ground was slippery and all the holes and gutters were full of water. Gunga Ram was not at home to help.
Armed with long bamboo sticks, we surrounded Kala Nag before he even scented danger. When he saw us his eyes turned a fiery red and he hissed and spat on all sides. Then, like lightning Kala Nag made for the banana grove.
The ground was too muddy and he slithered. He had hardly gone five yards when a stick caught him in the middle and broke his back. A volley of blows reduced him to a squishy-squashy pulp of black-and-white jelly, spattered with blood and mud. His head was still undamaged.
‘Don’t damage the hood,’ yelled one of us. ‘We’ll take Kala Nag to school.’
So we slid a bamboo stick under the cobra’s belly and lifted him on the end of the pole. We put him in a large biscuit tin and tied it up with string. We hid the tin under a bed.
At night I hung around Gunga Ram waiting for him to get his saucer of milk. ‘Aren’t you going to take any milk for Kala Nag tonight?’
‘Yes,’ answered Gunga Ram irritably. ‘You go to bed.’
He did not want any more argument on the subject.
‘He won’t need the milk any more.’
Gunga Ram paused.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. There are so many frogs about. They must taste better than your milk. You never put any sugar in it anyway.’
The next morning Gunga Ram brought back the saucer with the milk still in i
t. He looked sullen and suspicious.
‘I told you snakes like frogs better than milk.’
Whilst we changed and had breakfast Gunga Ram hung around us. The school bus came and we clambered into it with the tin. As the bus started we held out the tin to Gunga Ram.
‘Here’s your Kala Nag. Safe in this box. We are going to put him in spirit.’
We left him standing speechless, staring at the departing bus.
There was great excitement in the school. We were a set of four brothers known for our toughness. We had proved it again.
‘A King Cobra.’
‘Six feet long.’
‘Phannyar.’
The tin was presented to the science teacher.
It was on the teacher’s table, and we waited for him to open it and admire our kill. The teacher pretended to be indifferent and set us some problems to work on. With studied matter-of-factness he fetched his forceps and a jar with a banded Krait lying curled in muddy methylated spirit. He began to hum and untie the cord around the box.
As soon as the cord was loosened the lid flew into the air, just missing the teacher’s nose. There was Kala Nag. His eyes burnt like embers and his hood was taut and undamaged. With a loud hiss he went for the teacher’s face. The teacher pushed himself back on the chair and toppled over. He fell on the floor and stared at the cobra, petrified with fear. The boys stood up on their desks and yelled hysterically.
Kala Nag surveyed the scene with his bloodshot eyes. His forked tongue darted in and out excitedly. He spat furiously and then made a bid for freedom. He fell out of the tin on to the floor with a loud plop. His back was broken in several places and he dragged himself painfully to the door. When he got to the threshold he drew himself up once again with his hood outspread to face another danger.
Outside the classroom stood Gunga Ram with a saucer and a jug of milk. As soon as he saw Kala Nag come up he went down on his knees. He poured the milk into the saucer and placed it near the threshold. With hands folded in prayer he bowed his head to the ground craving forgiveness. In desperate fury, the cobra hissed and spat and bit Gunga Ram all over the head—then with great effort dragged himself into a gutter and wriggled out of view.
Gunga Ram collapsed with his hands covering his face. He groaned in agony. The poison blinded him instantly. Within a few minutes he turned pale and blue and froth appeared in his mouth. On his forehead were little drops of blood. These the teacher wiped with his handkerchief. Underneath was the V mark where Kala Nag had dug his fangs.
Cargo from Singapore
MANOHAR MALGONKAR
In some ways I am sorry for Mathrani. All I wanted to do was to settle an old score—pay him back in his own coin. What I seemed to have done was much more than I had bargained for.
It all began in Singapore, more than a year ago. I had gone to Malaya for my paper. They wanted a few articles on the ‘Emergency’. The Templer plan was reported to be proving successful, and they wanted some first-hand reports.
Post-war Singapore is the most fascinating city I know—the sort of place where anything can happen. Nowhere else does the mysterious East seem more mysterious. The watefront has a heady, electric atmosphere all its own: perhaps it has something to do with the mixture of smells so characteristic of all Eastern ports. The pungent Singapore smell has a richness which is unique.
Within a few hours of landing in Singapore, I ran into some friends—British officers of the old Indian Army who were now serving in the Far Eastern Land Forces in Malaya. Singapore, and the whole of Malaya, is full of old Indian Army officers. You run into them everywhere, friendly and full of ‘Do you remember . . .’ My friends were very helpful. Thanks to them, I was able to travel over most of the peninsula. They even arranged a light plane trip to an outpost in Negri Sembilan. I wrote some really snappy articles for my paper, all from the ‘on-the-spot’ angle. None of these was published; they didn’t fall in line with my paper’s policy. When I got back to Singapore after my round of the interior, I got a longish wire from my Editor telling me what he thought of my articles and I am afraid I sent him one back, rather thoughtlessly, resigning my job.
That has little to do with this story, except that it explains why I happened to be in Singapore and at a loose end in September last year.
I had saved some money and, living in a modest hotel, I could have carried on for months. Actually, if I had wanted to, I could have easily got a job there. One of my old Indian Army friends is now a big noise in Radio Malaya and, as soon as he heard that I had resigned, he offered me a job in the radio station, just for old times’ sake. If you have been in the Indian Army during the war, you certainly don’t lack friends in Singapore.
But I didn’t take the job. I wanted to get back to India, although I was in no hurry, and for the time being I was content to aestivate in the warm haze of Singapore. I spent my time wandering along the outer reaches of the waterfront, threading my way through the crowded Malay kampongs and watching the assortment of strange craft, when the idea struck me: Why not journey back to India in one of those sailing boats?
The more I thought about it, the more fascinating it seemed. I had never travelled in a sailing boat in my life, not even in one of those small dinghies with their snow-white sails that one sees strutting about near Ballard Pier in Bombay. To travel all the way from Singapore to India in a sailing boat seemed to be what I had wanted to do all my life.
For the next few days, I made inquiries from all kinds of shipping agents. But their response was discouraging. They did not know of any country-boats which could take me on as a passenger. They were all quite certain that such boats did make occasional journeys between Malay and Indian ports, but they never seemed to carry passengers. One or two Chinese agents vaguely promised to see what they could do, but they didn’t give me much hope. It was not easy to get a passage, they said, it depended on a lot of things, and then they proceeded to give me a formidable list of the factors it depended on.
At the end of the week, I was quite fed up with my Chinese agents; they would never tell me anything definite, and I had at last resigned myself to giving up the idea.
Then one day, I was talking to Walter Arnold about it. He is the chap who works in Radio Malaya. He was the only one who did not laugh at me, as most others had done. He pursed his lips and tapped his head in an unconsciously theatrical gesture, as though he were in deep thought. Then he said, ‘The only man who might be able to help you is Mathrani. In fact, I’m almost certain he will be able to help you. He is supposed to know all the country-craft Nakhodas.’
‘Where do I get hold of this man?’ I asked.
‘It is easy enough to get hold of him,’ he said. ‘Everyone seems to know him; he is perhaps the most well-known character on the waterfront. Any sampan man in the harbour will tell you where to get hold of him.’ Then Walter paused and looked at me. ‘It is just that he is a bit on the shady side. Not quite pucca sahib; you know what I mean. I am not sure you will want to meet him.’
Walter did not laugh as he said this, but I did. Obviously Walter still regarded me as the typical Indian Army officer of the old days, with inflexible rules about what is done and what is not done; brought up in the tradition that one must ‘never be seen on the wrong side of the counter,’ particularly with the regimental tie on. It was all very well in the army, being particular about people you associated with, but in my profession—as a newspaper man—you couldn’t go on being squeamish. I told Walter so.
I met Mathrani the next day, at the Cholon-Bar. He seemed to spend most of his day there, and had an air-conditioned office on the first floor. Walter thought that he owned the Cholon-Bar, but he wasn’t sure.
The Cholon-Bar on Johore Road is said to be an exact replica of one of the famous nightclubs in New York. It was all chromium and yellow leather, and thick blue carpets; and, of course, air-conditioned. It was quite empty when I got there, soon after eleven, and Mathrani was waiting for me.
He was a well-b
uilt man in his early thirties, and he was dressed in the somewhat flashy manner favoured by the wealthier Indian merchants in Singapore. He wore a beige sharkskin suit, pressed to perfection, and a purple silk shirt. His wide tie and the handkerchief, which was kept in position with a gold-capped pen and pencil set, were of the same material; and they both had designs of enormous, blue pineapples. His socks matched, too, and his shoes were the most aggressive shade of what the American magazines call ‘tan’. It was enough to put anyone off.
But the way he dressed had nothing to do with me. He was an affable enough man. He welcomed me with a dazzling smile, held out his gold cigarette case, and said, ‘Time for a Tiger?’
For a few seconds I blinked uncomprehendingly. Then I said, ‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’ Tiger beer is perhaps the most widely advertised product in Singapore; even most of the clocktowers in the city display the slogan. Whenever you look up to see the time, enormous scarlet signs remind you that it is ‘Time for a Tiger’.
We sat down, and the boy brought our beer. And Mathrani said, ‘So you want to go to Calcutta on a sailing boat?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘or to any Indian port.’
For several seconds, Mathrani looked at the tip of his burning cigarette. Then he smiled—a meaningful, foxy sort of smile—and, still studying the tip of his cigarette, asked me: ‘What is it?’
Best Loved Indian Stories of the Century, Volume 1 Page 8