Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1 Read online

  But wait, there is a chance still. Within the two thousand yards separating the clean elegance of Park Street and the dirty turbulence of Dharmatalla (now renamed Lenin Sarani – West Bengal’s homage to pseudo-Marxism), there is sufficient hope that Ashfaq will become a revolutionary. And if he does, he will shame Ajoy, who is a revolutionary merely in intent. Ashfaq will not only go to the villages and die a hero of the people but also understand what he is dying for. What happens to the knowledge then? That noiseless thunder, etc.?

  Three cups of tea later everything is utterly confused. Ashfaq is finally defeated by his background, by that sofaset.

  Lily was surprised and delighted. She had initiated virgins before, but this chap was overdoing it a little. He was a bit of an unusual case. He was trying to impress her, of course, but more than her he was trying to impress himself. What the hell! It was his money, wherever he had stolen it from (his father, probably) – all she could do was give him a good time and she would do it and she was unused to thinking so much anyway.

  Ashfaq breathed in the comfort of the atmosphere, and what difference did it make that the room cost eighty rupees a day? He luxuriated in the air-conditioning, the silence. He threw off his aged shoes and sank his feet into the three-inch luxury of the carpet. The room was warm and heavily curtained against the evening sunlight. He had heard of how these things were done. Speaking loudly and crudely to hide his nervousness at using the telephone for room service, he ordered Scotch, and ignored the smirk on the waiter’s face as he left the bottle and two glistening glasses on the table. His head pressed against the foam of the armchair, he watched Lily undress, then the tingle became a storm as she, with a smile, unbuttoned his shirt.

  He had never felt so clean before. Soaking in the bathtub in warm water, Lily scrubbing his back, her nipples against his eyes and lips.

  He wore a thin tie (he had bought it recently from the New Market, for seven rupees, when the prospects of the interview for the muncipality job were bright) when he went to have dinner. It was a fantastic world, and even though Ashfaq knew about these things and knew what to expect he was still a little surprised. Certain words which had been fantasies took on life. Dance. Loud foreign music, couples gyrating, swaying like snakes, luxuriating in comfort, money.

  This was the Life. How miserable to exist without knowing the softness of a carpet, or the sharp taste of this chicken.

  Ashfaq burped and suddenly laughed out loudly. Lily became furious and embarrassed. ‘Stop it, men!’ The waiters – more correctly dressed than the customers – were perturbed by this obnoxiously loud laugh.

  If it wasn’t for her he probably wouldn’t have stopped laughing so soon. He did not want the night to be ruined. Ashfaq was happy; he had found the final answer: f— everything.

  For the first time in his life, Ashfaq relaxed on a foam mattress, and on a milkwhite bedsheet. He felt a tinge of nostalgia when he thought of Ayesha; however foolish it might have been, the affair had been a precious experience.

  Ashfaq’s suicide in a posh hotel room in the early hours of the morning on January 21 (as the newspapers said) did cause a few minor ripples. Lily was scared by the whole thing, especially at the prospect of being accused of murder. And it was bad publicity for the hotel, which disturbed the management, and the clerk at the booking counter was fired for not being choosy enough about his guests. (Without being sentimental we might still state that the clerk in question was now in for a very hard time, what with three children to support and no prospects of another job.) Ashfaq’s parents were, understandably, heartbroken. Job or no job, money or no money, a son will be missed and a brother remembered.

  In the Diamond, a distance developed between the three remaining friends. After the funeral they talked the whole thing over. ‘What a goddam coward, what a weak person!’ Ajoy declaimed angrily. The other two told him to put his Marxism up his arse and shut up.

  In the course of fruitful time, Ayesha married a foreign-returned wealthy Muslim businessman who danced very well, spoke English with an excellent accent, and was, after a fashion, intelligent too.

  T W O

  Why Does the Child Cry?

  MULK RAJ ANAND

  Abdul Latif, the potter’s son, was called Late Latif by everyone. The fact was that, at eleven, he had the energy of a seven-year-old and could not walk quickly enough from home to school. Of course what he lacked by way of physical vitality he made up in mental agility. This lack had sharpened his curiosity about birds, which he wanted to catch and bring home as pets. So he lingered on the way from anywhere to anywhere. But as he could seldom catch one of these birds, he was always late. And then his other passion was to go fishing with his friend Ali, the fisherboy, on the Padma, and fishing being a long business, he was frequently delayed.

  On the day when they sang the Bangla Desh song of Tagore at the end of school hours, Abdul Late Latif lingered in the school premises to write down the words, so that he could remember the whole poem by heart. He had felt the same feelings about the paddy fields and the Padma and the fishermen’s cries as the poet. But he had not found words of his own to explain to his father and mother why he had stolen a papaya from Jalal’s garden; and how he had been nearly drowned in the river when his companion gave him a ducking; and how Ali had saved him. His waywardness had been dubbed as a kind of idiocy by his father, though his mother excused the slow crawl home of Abdul Late Latif, in spite of the anxiety she felt when he did not turn up until hours after the other boys.

  As he hoped to recite to his mother the words of the Bangla Desh poem, he felt he had an alibi today. Having copied the song, he salaamed his master, Ilias, solemnly and fairly ran towards home, a mile away. Even if they had opened a school in the Nadi Nagar hamlet of fishermen, where his father and mother made clay pots, he would still have preferred to walk to and back from school in the big village of Rangpur, because Master Ilias recited new poems during every period, while there was no poetry in his native place except the fishermen’s song, Hia, Hia, as they pulled the boats upstream.

  ‘My Golden Bangla Desh...’. The word ‘golden’ seemed to lift the broken-down huts of Nadi Nagar in his mind and give them a charm which he had never felt before. And he was reconciled to the idea of reaching home sooner or later.

  Meanwhile he decided, as per usual, to drift towards the Padma to catch fish for the evening meal. He sighted his friend Ali, the son of fisherman Zain-ul-Abdin, already proceeding towards a side stream. Ali was his class fellow but a duffer at words and figures and much despised by everyone, except by Abdul Late Latif.

  ‘Oh Ali!’ Abdul shouted.

  Ali did not stop.

  ‘Oh Ali-i-i-i!’ Abdul prolonged his shout after taking a deep breath.

  Ali did not stop but began to run, taking cover behind the trunks of fallen trees on the track leading to the lagoon off the Padma.

  In a panic of not knowing why his friend was evading him, Abdul began to run and chase Ali. He was soon out of breath, because his tubby little frame had never put in so much exertion. He stopped and shrieked: ‘Ali... Ali...e...ee! Oh Alee!’

  As Ali did not heed his call, Abdul looked hard at the dissolving figure of his school fellow and felt angry with frustration. That his friend, who usually waited at home to go fishing with him in exchange for the gram which he, Abdul, gave him, ignored him was something unusual. Abdul was sure that Ali had heard his call. He even thought the fellow had turned round to look at him. But then the fisherboy had deliberately run away and was hiding somewhere. Perhaps he had stolen sweets from his mother’s box and wanted to eat them alone. Abdul nearly wanted to cry.

  He sat down on the stump of a tamarind tree which had been freshly cut down. He saw Ali ahead, jumping out from behind one felled banana tree after another.

  But why had all the trees in the grove by the lagoon been felled?

  He craned his neck to look beyond the felled plantain trees to keep Ali within sight even though his friend had not stopped. Th
e boy was still hopping from behind one shelter to another.

  As soon as he had a breather, Abdul felt he would go and catch Ali.

  Suddenly, he had the feeling that he was like one of his father’s empty pitchers, which had cracked. He could not even make a sound. He remembered his father’s words: ‘My son, you are as yet unbaked clay. We can fill you with empty words and you will remain intact. As soon as we fill you with water, you will begin to leak.’

  This reminded him that he had been asked to come direct from school and take the donkey with the loaded pitchers to Rangpur to Bania Mukhia’s shop. Not to be able to catch fish – because Ali had deserted him – and to go back home to do the chores for his father irked Abdul. In his empty mind arose the verse which his mother always repeated after each fairy story:

  Why does a child cry?

  Oh why, oh child, dost thou cry?

  Oh, why does the ant bite me?

  Oh why, oh why, ant, dost thou bite me?

  Koot! Koot! Koot!

  Mother was funny. She was illiterate. But she had told him more stories than Master Ilias had taught him poems.

  ‘She does not know what she is saying,’ he acknowledged, ‘but she burr-burrs like the water flowing in the mainstream of the Padma. She says it is a good thing to have no sense of why and how and what – but rely on Allah Mian!’

  And her complaint against his father was that he had not brought her a mat to say five prayers all these years, nor taught her the suras of the Koran. Father said he was God incarnate, because he made pots and there was no need for prayers to Allah Mian. Why could not she pray to him?

  As he had been brooding by himself, sitting on the stump of the tamarind tree, he saw the hulk of the tree further down, in a pit, and discovered a monstrous army tank. By the side were two dead soldiers.

  He got up and ran away.

  ‘Ma!’ his soul cried out. ‘Ma!’

  He felt like a top spinning.

  And yet he was moving towards Nadi Nagar. There were some uprises of rubbish dump of the peasant’s manure, heaped up to put into the harvest. A startled peacock shrieked and flew, heavy-bottomed, up from a pit, from one empty paddy field to another.

  The evening light was enveloping the fields, making the cacti hedges look like horny ghosts.

  Abdul explored the mound of Nadi Nagar, with its straggling fishermen’s houses, for the evening lights. There seemed to be no lights today. Perhaps it was early, though the fishermen, who had their food before dark to go for night fishing, did burn their hurricane lamps before twilight.

  Suddenly, he felt that the approach road crescent around Nadi Nagar seemed eerie. There were deep pits where the cart grooves had been. And...Oh, there was another giant tank, with its gun pointing to the sky, while some corpses lay scattered about.

  ‘Ma!’ Abdul cried spontaneously. And he plunged into Karim’s potato patch, to skirt round possible jinns of the spirits of dead soldiers and reach home. He was like a ball of fire, only made of straw. He felt he would soon burn out, fall and die.

  His father’s potter’s yard was a clearing which the family had annexed from the edge of a mosque by the grave of a pir.

  ‘Ma!’ the boy called as though the aura of the pir’s ghost was preventing him from crossing the field.

  ‘If only Ali had not run away!’ And, for comfort, he called out to the she-donkey: ‘Oh Begum! Begum Donkey! Are you ready loaded with the pitchers?’

  The momentum of fear of the ghosts carried him up the plinth of his father’s yard.

  ‘Horror!’

  All the pitchers lay broken. And, underneath the heap of baked clay lay Begum, ashen white, with mouth open, the teeth jutting out.

  ‘Ma...Ya Allah!’ Abdul’s hoarse throat cried out. And he stumbled and fell on the heap of broken pitchers.

  For a moment he was stunned. His breath came and went quickly. His head swam. He felt he had bruised his knees on the edges of the hard baked clay. His mouth was open but no sound came from the jaws. His throat was parched. His body was covered with sweat. And this liquid mixed with his tears. He lay inert, as though to silence his shrieking nerves.

  His head was raised towards the straw hut above the plinth, which was his home. The cottage had caved in.

  He heaved himself up and made the effort to go and look for his father and mother, crying hysterically: ‘Ma? Ma? Where are you?’

  Only the hookah of his father stood near the doorstep, looking like a question mark.

  Abdul tried to lift the fallen straw wall. He could not do so. He lay flat and burrowed into the gaping hole, calling: ‘Ma!’ At the same time he was frightened that he might touch her dead body suddenly and the jinn of her spirit might come and catch him for comfort and he might be whisked off by the angel Gabriel to keep her company.

  There was nothing inside the hole.

  He explored the dark floor of the house with a sweep of his arms, anxious to find the dead bodies and yet crazed by fear and whining a protracted whine:

  ‘Why does a child cry?’

  There was nothing for it but to stop and shout.

  ‘Ma!’

  Hoping that the more resourceful father might turn up, he at last cried out: ‘Papa?’ There was no answer.

  Only the muggy warmth of the space under the caved-in straw roof filled his nostrils, mixed with the smell of his own sweat and wet earth.

  He crawled out slowly, feeling that he had hurt himself on the face and hands in rubbing with the straw. As he emerged on to the plinth, he lay sweating and dazed and empty like the ‘unbaked pitcher’ his father had always called him. Only, now he was not cracked but broken.

  ‘Where had they gone? Oh where?’ He cried out without words. ‘And where am I to go?’

  Lying there on the level ground, he listened for any sounds that there might be. Even of gunfire. Or the gyrating wheels of tanks. Or of the Fauji Officers shouting orders.

  Peering into the half light, he saw that the huts on the mound of Nadi Nagar had all caved in. And only the silence spoke back, charged with the eerie soundless shrieks of jinns and bhoots of the spirits of the dead.

  Master Ilias had told the boys that the Faujis were razing villages to the ground. ‘Ma!’ the shriek came out of his stomach, up his throat and fell with a thud on the darkness. And there was emptiness again.

  A beetle whined far away, almost with the sound of a machine-gun firing away in a cantonment. The sound came from the riverside.

  ‘Ali...he might be there fishing!’

  Abdul did not pause to think. If his mother and father were not there and other villagers had fled, the only person who might help him was Ali. He had seen his friend alive, running towards the Padma. He would go and look for him. And he must hang on to his friend now that he was... he did not wish to pronounce the word to himself, and yet the word came up to his head: ‘Orphan’. But to mitigate the terror of the word, he thought: ‘Perhaps Ali is also an orphan.’

  After the resolve to go and look for Ali, there was the task of lifting himself up and going, past the pir’s tomb, to the Padma.

  ‘Ma!’ he cried for help.

  His limbs were inert, as though he had died. And yet he heard his own breathing.

  ‘I am alive,’ he told himself under his breath.

  ‘Why does a child cry?’ his mother’s nonsense verse came back to him. ‘Why does the ant bite me?’

  And he heaved himself, weak-kneed, but with his torso uplifted towards Venus, which had risen above the Padma. Curiously, the light of Venus put faith in him to go through the dark. He felt for the gram in his pocket. There were some remnants of the monkey nuts from the morning.

  ‘I will give Ali the nuts...and he will be my friend.’

  Not quite sure, he however found enough strength in his legs to begin walking. The need to escape from the jinns helped him run a few steps at a time. He remembered the time Ali had saved him from drowning. ‘Ali,’ he cried out as he reached the banana grove. ‘Ali, wait
for me! My friend, wait!’

  And he felt a tremor go through him at the thought that he would put his arm around Ali’s waist – as they had always done when they came back from truancy and had each other’s support in spite of the fear of a beating from their parents.

  ‘Ali!’ he called out into the dark.

  T H R E E

  Ramblings on a Beach

  KABIR BEDI

  The sea has rolled far back today. The beach is wider, flatter, more empty, more washed. In the distance I see schoolchildren in brown uniforms, standing in rows. Three teachers are busy straightening out the lines. Most of these children are five and six years old. Some are older. All of them are happy. They laugh and talk with the excitement that belongs to children alone.

  I am closer to them now. The three teachers, two women and a man, are putting the last of the children into position.

  I walk up to the man.

  ‘Why are you making the children stand in lines?’ I ask.

  ‘We are having a race,’ he explains.

  ‘Will you let them run around after the race is over?’

  He seems a little surprised. ‘Yes,’ he says, with a touch of impatience. I smile apologetically and move on.

  A while later, I return. The races are in progress. I stand near the ‘finishing post’ and watch the two girls being readied for the next race. On your marks, get set, go! Arms flailing, the girls rush forward. The stronger of the two wins. Naturally. The children clap and cheer, the teachers smile their appreciation. The girl who has won laughs happily and runs back in triumph.

  I look at the girl who has lost. In her eyes, I see shame, I see fear, I see despair. Shame at not being able to win, fear of what the others are thinking, despair at not knowing what to do next. I see the face of a child that has been hurt and humiliated. I see a soul that is slowly being bruised and brutalized by comparison: by being forced to compete with the physically stronger on the beaches and playgrounds. In the classrooms, the same game will continue. She will be compared to the more intelligent, the ones with better memories and those who can write faster than her.