Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 2

by Khushwant Singh

  They strolled in the garden. The visitor tried to make up to his hostess. ‘The argument always goes the same way. I suppose it always has. To wit:

  Myself when young did eagerly frequent

  Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

  About it and about: but ever more

  Came out by the same Door as in I went’

  ‘Maybe!’ she responded graciously. ‘But I still stick to my point: “I cannot dream that this watch exists but has no watch maker!” Whoever said that!’

  ‘Voltaire. But the analogy does not apply. We know the world exists, unless it is one grand delusion – Maya – as some Hindus and Sikhs believe, but we do not know anything about the World-Maker. Even assuming there is a Creator, there is no reason to worship Him. There is more evil in the world than good. It is best to observe silence. This is the door to which no one has found the key, the veil beyond which no one can see. It’s more honest to say “I do not know” than posit theories which go contrary to reason. I neither know that there is a God, nor know that there is no God. That’s why I call myself an agnostic’

  ‘Sure, sure!’ said the host condescendingly. ‘You are welcome to your lack of belief. But leave alone those who would rather believe till it is positively proved that their beliefs have been wrong. Live and let live. And now let’s talk of something else.’

  But the visitor persisted: ‘What I cannot stand is religiosity, the asinine worship of miracle men who are no better than common jugglers churning up age-old and unproven theories of God, Soul, Love and what-have-you! And the millions of asses who get taken in by them!’

  ‘It’s God we are discussing, not miracle men,’ intervened the hostess. ‘What amazes me,’ she added, ‘is that a man who disdains all belief in the supernatural should be so obsessed with the subject of God as you are. You provoke it as a man with a sore tooth provokes pain by feeling the tooth with his tongue. Perhaps in your strong protestations is an element of faith which you refuse to admit – like a man shouting in the dark to give himself courage.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed the host. ‘Reminds me of those lines from Francis Thompson:

  I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

  Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

  I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

  But with unhurrying chase,

  And unperturbed pace,

  Deliberate speed, Majestic instancy,

  They beat – and a Voice beat

  More instant than the Feet –

  “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

  He will catch up with you one day – even if you denigrate Him as the Red Rubber Ball.’

  It was time for dinner. They returned to the house. The hostess clapped her hands and called out: ‘On the table, children!’

  As soon as everyone was seated and the hostess began to heap food on her children’s plates, the little fellow began to giggle: ‘God is a Red Rubber Ball!’

  ‘Let’s make plans for tomorrow.’ The hostess tried to change the subject.

  ‘Gas Balloon – no, my Red Rubber Ball…’ clucked the little brat.

  ‘Stop that now!’ admonished the hostess. ‘Not another word or I’ll really blow up.’

  God was not mentioned on the table that night. But the next morning at breakfast the youngsters were eager to get their parents and the visitor to restart the argument. The little one picked up the red rubber ball and put it in the visitor’s lap with a meaningful remark: ‘You take this.’ His mother glowered at him. ‘Remember, any more of that and I will call off the picnic’

  It was a Sunday morning. Late monsoon time. Clouds rolling overhead casting deep shadows on the earth. Showers came down as suddenly as they went to let the sun stream through and span the. sky with rainbows. ‘Lovely day for a picnic in the park,’ revelled the hostess.

  They drove to the park. The children took the red rubber ball with them. They began to toss it at each other, then into the trees and waited to catch it as it bounced off the branches. The host and hostess showed the visitor the newly laid-out rose garden.

  They came to the massive peepul tree. The oldest boy tossed the ball high into the air to let it drop on the tree. It soared up and came downwards, bouncing off from one branch to another. The boys waited for it with hands outstretched. The ball bounced upwards off the lowest branch, came down and was embedded in a Y-shaped cleft. ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ groaned the lads, ’the ball is stuck in the tree.’

  They spent the next half hour hurling stones and sticks to dislodge the ball. Their father’s patience came to an end. ‘We can’t spend the rest of the morning trying to get the ruddy ball down! Let’s go and have something to drink.’

  The boys abandoned their attempts. But their spirits were dampened. They went to the aerated water stall and sipped their drinks without enjoying them. ‘Arey baba!’ protested their mother. ‘It’s only a rubber ball! You don’t have to look as if the world has come to an end! I’ll buy you another one.’

  It did not change the boys’ mood. Neither did the plates of potato chips, tomato ketchup and the ice creams. After an hour, the party wended their way back through the park towards the car.

  They came under the peepul tree. The red ball was still firmly embedded in the cleft of the branches. They all looked up. ‘It’s still there.’ This time no one made any attempt to dislodge it.

  The visitor friend tried to cheer them up. He proclaimed very loudly: ‘All right. If that red rubber ball drops into my hand now, I’ll believe there is a God.’

  A gentle gust of breeze swayed the branches and the red rubber ball fell neatly into the visitor’s hands.

  They stood in silence, gaping at each other.

  ‘That will teach you a lesson!’ hissed the hostess.

  ‘Damn!’ swore the Agnostic.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Bottom-Pincher

  KHUSHWANT SINGH

  I am not a bottom-pincher. I am a law-abiding citizen. My employers think well of me. I belong to the best club and am on the governing body of the YMCA. In short I am a respected member of the community. This inhibits me from taking any liberties with female bottoms save with my eyes. As soon as I get close to one I would like to stroke, I warn myself of the consequences. I tell myself that the lady may not like my interfering with her bottom. She may start a shindy. She may collect a crowd and some sanctimonious type, though he may be a bottom-pincher himself, may take the law into his own hands and beat me up. Such thoughts bring beads of sweat on my forehead.

  For me bottom-pinching has been a spectator sport. Again I use a wrong expression. The sport is limited to watching bottoms. I have never had the privilege of watching anyone pinching them.

  A crowded city like Bombay provides ideal conditions for bottom-watching. And the garments in which Indian female bottoms are draped are infinitely more varied than anywhere else in the world: saris, gararas, lungis, skirts (Indian-style ghagras as well as the European full-lengths and minis), stretch pants, bell-bottom trousers, churidars – you can encounter all varieties in fifteen minutes any time, any place.

  My favourite beat is the half-mile stretch from my office to a conjunction of five roads round a statuary called Flora Fountain. The best time is the lunch hour when it is most crowded. It is not much of a walk – it is more like an ant’s crawl, dodging people, bumping into them, brushing off beggars, grinning past whores soliciting for a ‘nooner’, snarling at touts who want to exchange foreign money. However, I like this bit of the bazaar precisely because it is so damnably crowded. There are many roadside bookstalls. The pavements are lined with all varieties of smuggled goods: French perfumes, cosmetics and chiffons; Japanese tape-recorders, cameras and transistors playing at full blast. And, inevitably, a large number of women shoppers. One has to be very careful not to brush against their bosoms or bottoms. Who
wants to be very careful?

  It was one such lunch hour that I witnessed a memorable performance of bottom-pinching. I was browsing at a pavement bookstall alongside the Dadiseth Parsi Fire Temple. My attention was attracted by a sudden convergence of beggars towards the iron-grilled gate meant to keep out non-Parsis. From the Fire Temple emerged a thin, tall gentleman in his sixties, wearing a light-blue suit, sola hat and thick post-cataract glasses. He dipped into his pocket and dropped a coin in the hand of every beggar. It was apparent that they knew the gentleman and the time he made his appearance; in the crowd were lepers who had to drag themselves and a blind woman carrying a child on her shoulder. Although I have very strong views on giving money to beggars, I could not help admiring one who must, by any reckoning, part with a small fortune every afternoon.

  The gentleman proceeded to walk in the direction of my office. I followed a few paces behind. His charity did not end outside the Fire Temple. He continued to dip in his right-hand pocket and drop a coin in every outstretched hand. Then I noticed that, as he passed a group of three women bending over some article at a stall, his left hand brushed the bottom of one of them.

  By the time the woman straightened up to see who had done it, the gentleman was a few paces ahead in the crowd. He did not look back but walked on, ramrod straight. So it went on. Right hand to give alms to the needy, left hand to stroke unguarded, unwary female bottoms. What a character! What tremendous risks he ran of being caught, exposed, manhandled!

  Next afternoon I was back at the bookstall. I had one eye on a magazine, the other on the gate of the Fire Temple. The beggars had already collected, displaying the capital of their trade – lepers with their stubby fingerless hands and toes, men on crutches, the blind woman with her babe at her breast. The gentleman emerged from the prayer house; the same light-blue suit and sola topee, and behind the thick lenses a pale, sexless, expressionless face. He went through the same motions; disbursing his pocketful of coins to outstretched hands. For the blind woman he had more; a rupee note which he insisted on handing to the babe. He said something to the mother which I could at best guess as: ‘This is for the little one.’ In the process he had a nice brush with the young woman’s bosom. He was rewarded with a smile. What is a little touch on the breast if you get a rupee for it!

  He proceeded on his triumphal march through the milling crowd. It was easy to keep him in sight because of his height, the sola topee bobbing above the sea of heads and the sudden surprise with which women turned to see who had paid a left-handed compliment to their bottoms.

  I followed him all the way. He entered the massive Chambers of Commerce building. The commissionaire saluted him. There was a long queue for the elevator. He went straight into the lift without anyone protesting. He was obviously a big shot.

  Some weeks later I was walking back from my office past the Chambers of Commerce building. I saw a cream-coloured Mercedes-Benz parked alongside the kerb. Inside were two women – one a squat and grey-haired lady bunched up in a corner of the rear seat, the other a teenaged girl, apparently her daughter. The chauffeur opened both the doors on one side of the car. The commissionaire deposited a briefcase and a stack of files in the front seat. Our hero of the Fire Temple came out, trailed by two men who looked like his assistants.

  The girl bounced out of the car, ran across the pavement and embraced him, shouting: ‘Daddy!’ She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Very lovely too! Nut-brown hair falling on her shoulders. Healthy open-air type. And a figure right off the walls of some ancient Hindu temple: large bosom bursting out of the blouse, narrow waist and again a bottom – large, protuberant and provocative.

  No wonder our hero had such an obsession with bosoms and bottoms. Constant exposure to such temptation! Constant frustration because of not being allowed to touch them!

  The next evening I got to know his name. This time the Mercedes-Benz was there without its lady passengers. I pretended to admire the car and casually asked the chauffeur whom it belonged to.

  ‘The Burra Sahib.’

  ‘Which Burra Sahib?’

  ‘Lalkaka Sahib, who else!’ he replied truculently.

  There were fourteen Lalkakas in the Bombay telephone directory. All the first names down the list were Parsi – Cyrus, Darius, Framroze, Jal, Jehangir, Nausher. Then two Ps. One alongside the address ‘Chambers of Commerce Building’, the other against ‘Residence: Lalkaka Mansion, Malabar Hill’. My repertoire of Parsi first names beginning with P was limited to one. Phiroze. Next morning at eleven, when the chances of any member of the family being at home would be minimal, I dialled the number. A servant took the call.

  ‘Phiroze Lalkaka Sahib hai?’ I asked.

  The servant replied in a Goan English accent: ‘Here no Phiroze Lalkaka. Residence of Pesi Lalkaka. He had gawn ophiss.’

  ‘Is Miss Lalkaka at home?’

  ‘Also Missy Baba gawn college. Memsahib awt. No one home. Who calling?’

  I hadn’t thought of the answer to that question. On the spur of the moment I told the servant to take down my name. I spelt it out slowly for him: ‘Mr Bottom-Pincher.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘He knows my number.’

  Pesi Lalkaka was not at the Fire Temple the next day. Nor for the whole week following. The beggars assembled at the trysting hour and dispersed with their palms empty. I felt sorry for them. I felt sorry for the good man whose indulgence in a harmless pastime I had put an end to. I had been a spoilsport.

  I wondered how Pesi Lalkaka had reacted to the telephone message. Maybe his wife or daughter had got it first. ‘What an odd name: Bottom-Pincher! Who is he, Daddy?’

  Pesi Lalkaka must have turned pale and stuttered: ‘I don’t know.’ They might have questioned the servant. ‘He say Sahib know number.’ They might have scanned the telephone directory. There wasn’t even a Bottom or a Bottomely there. They must have dismissed the matter. ‘Somebody trying to be funny.’ But poor Pesi Lalkaka! What agonies he must suffer knowing that he had been spotted!

  A fortnight later Pesi Lalkaka was back at the Dadiseth Fire Temple. He looked uncomfortable. He dropped money in the hands of the few beggars who accosted him. He looked around to see if he could recognize anyone, then proceeded towards his office. I followed him. He continued to dole out money with his right hand. But this time his left hand was firmly embedded in his coat pocket. Each time he passed a woman he turned back to look if he was being followed. Poor, poor Pesi Lalkaka!

  He resumed his lunch-hour routine of prayer followed by almsgiving on the way back to the office. But now his left hand was always in the coat pocket. And each time he passed a woman he turned round to look over his shoulder like one pursued by a ghost. So it went on for some time. Pesi Lalkaka seemed to be getting the better of his obsession. He was becoming a commonplace bore.

  Not so. It appeared that Pesi Lalkaka had assured himself that the man who spotted him in flagrante delicto once had disappeared from the scene. One afternoon he was threading his way through the crammed pavement with me trailing a few yards behind him. I saw three women ahead of us examining some merchandise at a stall. Their bottoms presented a tempting variety of sizes and coverings. One was a young girl in blue skin-tight jeans; her buttocks were like two nicely rounded, unripe watermelons. Beside her was an older woman in a bright red sari. She was massive, like one big pumpkin. The third in the row was a twelve-year-old Lolita in a white and so mini a skirt that when she bent down it exposed all her thigh and a bit of her bottom as well. I could see Pesi Lalkaka’s left arm twitch.

  The triumvirate of bottoms thus served up too powerful a temptation to resist. His hand came out of the pocket and caressed the three in quick succession. By the time the women straightened up and turned round, Pesi had gone ahead and I was directly behind the three. The old woman glowered and swore: ‘Badmash! Rascal!’ Her younger companion hissed: ‘Mummy, don’t create a scene.’ I had a narrow escape.

  I was determined to teach Pesi Lalkaka
a lesson. As soon as I got to my office I rang up his residence. It was the same voice at the other side: ‘Sahib gawn ophiss. Memsahib resting. Missy Baba gawn college. Who calling?’

  ‘Mr Bottom-Pincher.’

  ‘Give number please!’

  ‘Tell him I will ring again in the evening.’

  That would fix him! It did.

  Pesi Lalkaka was not at the Fire Temple for many days. When ultimately he did appear, his left arm was in a sling. He looked paler than ever before. I was sure he had hurt himself deliberately. Poor Pesi Lalkaka!

  The beggars made solicitous enquiries. He simply waggled his head. As usual I followed him through the crowded corridor. In the few days he seemed to have developed a stoop. He plodded on without turning back. Whenever he came to a woman looking the other way, his pace slackened. He inclined his head, gave her behind a brief mournful look and proceeded on his way. This time I really felt sorry for him. Or did I? Why didn’t he use his right hand to do what his left hand could not?

  That evening I rang him up. It was the same servant at the other end of the line.

  ‘Hullo! Who’s calling?’

  ‘The doctor. I want to speak to the Sahib.’

  A few seconds later a voice identified itself: Tesi Lalkaka this side.’

  ‘How’s the left hand, old man?’

  ‘Who is it?’ he demanded in a faltering voice.

  ‘Never mind. Try using your right hand. It’s more fun.’ I slammed down the receiver.

  I saw no more of Pesi Lalkaka at the Dadiseth Fire Temple for many weeks. Perhaps he had changed his lunch-hour place of worship. Perhaps he had found an alternative route where no one trailed behind him. I felt it as a personal affront. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  The next few days I took my post-lunch stroll round the block of the Chambers of Commerce building. I saw Pesi Lalkaka return to the office by different routes. I tried to get him on the phone in his office. He never picked it up himself, I refused to communicate through his secretary. I tried him at home. Here too it was his servant, wife or daughter who took the call. Every time they asked me who I was, I replied I would ring later. It never occurred to me that the fellow might get Bombay Telephones to keep a check on his incoming calls.