Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 2 Read online

  It was a minute before I knew him for good old Namu. He greeted me with ‘Ram Ram, Sahib.’

  ‘Namu, have you become a producer or something?’ He did look rather odd with those moustaches. ‘And, tell me, are those moustaches your own or…?’

  ‘Come, tug at them and see for yourself,’ said Namu. They all laughed.

  ‘But you’ve put on a lot of weight.’

  ‘Had six months’ rest!’

  ‘Rest?’

  ‘Don’t you know, P.L.?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That Namdevrao did a term.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Yervada.’

  ‘Not Yervada but Nasik,’ Namu corrected.

  ‘You mean you went to jail?’ I asked.

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For running a still.’

  ‘But, my dear chap, why did you give up your old bhatti for this one?’

  ‘Sahib, if the new one had gone on, I’d have produced a picture.’

  ‘So you have closed down the old one?’

  ‘Why should I? Look, there is my bundle of clothes – on that bike there.’

  Yes, there was one strapped to the carrier of a brand-new bicycle.

  ‘Bought a new one, eh?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how much?’

  ‘Sixty rupees. And for the dynamo, sixty sheprate.’

  ‘Sixty? Stolen goods, I suppose.’

  ‘How else will one give a new bike for sixty?’ asked Namu, without batting an eyelid. ‘How long are you going to be in Poona, Sahib?’ he asked me.

  ‘For a week or so…’

  This man, to whom six months in jail had done nothing, had shaken me a little.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Right here at the Jeevan.’

  ‘Shall I come for the washing?’

  ‘You needn’t. I’ll send it to that laundry over there. If you don’t bring them back in time, I’ll be in a soup.’

  ‘I’ll get them aarjant, Sahib.’

  ‘No, no. If you don’t bring them in time, you’ll have to send them to Delhi.’

  ‘Oh! Why send them all the way to Delhi? Your shirts will now fit me very well. I’m as stout as you are, Sahib, ain’t I?’

  Even then I gave him some shirts for washing. He failed to bring them back before I left Poona a week later. He must be using them himself. Next time I am in Poona, he will come and meet me. And, without blushing, he’ll tell me he has used them. And I’ll tell him that I won’t see his face again. And having told him that, I’ll once again give him some shirts for washing.

  Now there must be some good in the scoundrel to make me do it. What it is I’ll never be able to find out. I haven’t yet seen a man so naked and yet involved in the world of clothes. My middle-class respectability, prim and proper, is outraged by him; and yet, somewhere within, I envy the man. There, I think, lies the fascination Namu holds for me.

  (Translated from the Marathi by M.V. Rajadhyaksha)

  TWO

  No Status for Saints

  B.K. KARANJIA

  He was never quite the same after it happened. Not that I had seen him before. But my companions had. They recalled him as a well-to-do, self-centred young fellow, always keeping to himself. Recently Khush Khabar had been full of him, and we too couldn’t stop talking about him. Notorious characters exercise a strange fascination!

  We used to go for long morning walks. Each one of us was at that stage in life when walking was the only exercise left to us. Walking down to Chowpatty all the way from Nariman Point, we would squat at the foot of Lokmanya Tilak’s statue to recover our breath. He never joined us, but always sat a stone’s throw away under Vithalbhai Patel’s statue. The crows communicated better than we did, showering their indiscretions on a stone pugree as on wavy hair of stone.

  ‘What he does with his life is his own business,’ said Pesi, panting heavily, rubbing his close-cropped head with a handkerchief. ‘But that he should have played with the life of his only daughter, that is something I won’t forgive!’

  ‘Say, did you read the judgement in yesterday’s Khush Khabar?’ asked Munchee. ‘ The old man really let him have it. Khush Khabar front-paged it and continued across half of page nine.’

  ‘No wonder. They say it’s the worst scandal in Parsi history,’ opined Dinshaw. ‘Wonder how he can still show his face in public’

  ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘now that the case is closed, how Khush Khabar is going to fill its pages?’

  My companions were used to my irreverence and had long ago ceased to take notice of it. But let me tell you about Khush Khabar. It was one of the two dailies circulating almost exclusively among my community. At one time it had been the last bastion of the British Raj in India. Now its pages were full of weighty problems such as the shamelessness of Parsi girls who wore cholis so abbreviated that it was obvious that they put on neither sudra nor kusti and who were now beginning to sport the shalwar kameez which wasn’t a Parsi dress at all. Its pages were enlivened by controversies as to which of the three Parsi new years was the correct one to celebrate. It printed verbatim accounts of divorce proceedings in the Parsi Matrimonial Court. Khush Khabar, which means ‘Happy News’, was a misnomer: Happy news is no news at all.

  Well, Kersasp – for that was the name of our companion under the other statue – had for the past so many months been illustrating the morning’s headlines for us. His coat hung loosely from his shoulders as from a hanger. His cheap cotton socks fell over his bony ankles on to his canvas shoes. His curly hair standing up all around his head gave him a rather wild look. He walked with an eccentric springiness, and when he reached for his faded felt hat or his walking stick, he did so with quick darting movements.

  ‘No, I didn’t read the judgement,’ Pesi went on, opening his shirt buttons and starting to rub his chest and the back of his neck. ‘But I read his wife’s testimony – ’

  ‘His ex-wife’s, you mean,’ Munchee interrupted.

  ‘What if she is his ex-wife?’ cried Pesi. Even when excited he looked like one of those tubby statuettes of the Buddha in repose. His doctor had warned him to shed 50 pounds…or else. ‘What that simple, God-fearing woman had to go through, no Parsi woman should be allowed to go through…’

  ‘And all because of a woman from Falkland Road, a cheap 30-rupee prostitute.’

  I couldn’t contribute to the discussion because I never read Khush Khabar. My prejudices against it were political, dating from the freedom struggle. But scandal intrigued me vastly. So my contribution to the conversation comprised mostly questions, followed by exclamations.

  ‘I tell you, our community is going to the dogs.’ Pesi was on to his favourite topic. ‘Time was when you couldn’t find a Parsi beggar in the streets of Bombay. We used to boast there was not a single prostitute in our community. Can we do so now? All because of men like him!’

  Pesi should have been the official historian of our community. Instead he is a sandalwood seller in the vicinity of Wadiaji’s Fire Temple on Princess Street. Munchee is a bank clerk. He has the lean and hungry look and has spent a lifetime counting other people’s money. Dinshaw is an insurance salesman, always talking gloomily about safeguarding against what he euphemistically refers to as the Occurrence. I work for the Daily News. Don’t let this alarm you. You won’t find the byline ‘By S.M. Pavri’ staring at you from the editorial page of the News. I belong to the anonymous clan of political reporters.

  The crisp salty early morning air invigorated our talk. Behind us Back Bay was still enshrouded in a haze of sleepy blue. But Malabar Hill in front of us emerged as a developing photograph – glasspanes glinting in the sun, buildings defined into jagged squares and rectangulars, the dark background rolling into lush green. Fishing nets spread out to dry on the sand almost reached the water’s edge. The sea was still in a glass-eyed trance, not a ripple, not a cloud to reflect. A
fishing boat, sails drooping, lay still as in a painting.

  I would like to think that it was my professional nose for news that led me to the story. The truth is that had not the story landed in my lap I wouldn’t even have realized there was a story. You just try listening to and reporting ministers’ speeches continuously for a decade and you’ll understand. We had just refreshed ourselves with the sweet milk of coconuts, as was our normal practice before going our separate ways, when I noticed unusual activity under the other statue. Our friend appeared to be trying to lie down full length on the pedestal. He then sat up for a moment and again rolled down, arms and legs rigid, on to the footpath.

  ‘My God,’ I cried, ‘I think our friend’s having a fit or something!’

  Sure enough, when we rushed to him, we found him drenched in sweat, gasping incoherently through clenched teeth. He was trying feverishly to extract something from his left-hand trouser pocket. We took it out for him, a small bottle containing some pink pills, pentanitrine probably. Biting hard on one of these seemed to give him temporary relief. The wrinkles round his eyes and mouth cobwebbed his face. We enquired if there was anything else we could do to help. All he wanted was that we should get a taxi which could take him to hospital. Pesi just stood there with his mouth open, though for once no word came from it. Dinshaw had the ghastly look as when confronted by the Occurrence. However, he helped Munchee take Kersasp to the taxi. I followed carrying his hat and walking stick, feeling rather superfluous. However, I more than made up for it by accompanying him in the taxi.

  My only concern was to take him to hospital as fast as possible and leave him there. On the way he seemed to have another paroxysm. Perhaps the exertion was too much for him. I felt strangely helpless to do anything. I thought of the look on Dinshaw’s face and began muttering the hundred and one names of the Prophet that he shouldn’t die on my hands. When at last we reached the hospital and the nurses took over I breathed a sigh of relief.

  But they asked me to wait. As he lay writhing on the bed I found I couldn’t feel pity for him. My bourgeois morality seethed inside me. As the cardiogram machine was rolled in and the sister began to strap his ankles and wrists, the sordid details from the sensational trial came vividly to my mind. A young girl on the abortionist’s table, her legs held high and ankles clamped to canvas hooks hanging from the ceiling. And that girl, this man’s daughter, brought to the abortionist by him, this man now gasping in death agony. How right our Prophet was – Heaven or Hell we encounter in this life itself.

  When the doctor arrived, a sister took me aside for questioning. I gave her his name and informed her that to the best of my knowledge he worked in a film-processing laboratory. She wanted to know how I was related to the patient and produced some forms for me to fill up. I took no time in disillusioning her. She enquired who, since the patient’s condition was serious, she should inform. I couldn’t advise her whether it should be the ex-wife or the other woman. I got out of the predicament by saying I had another pressing engagement, assuring her that I would return later in the day and answer all her questions. The forms meant so much to her, I even promised to fill them up as fast as she could produce them.

  I needn’t have returned, but I’m glad I did, otherwise I might never have met Christa.

  The hospital room smelt strongly of disinfectant. The Fowler bed, now empty, had been freshly made. A woman was standing near the window, her back to me. She was in a dark-grey sheath dress and appeared to be Eurasian. The stoop of her shoulders, her bowed head conveyed the news even before she turned to face me. I introduced myself.

  She listened, head still bowed, her face pale and drawn as if all blood, all feeling had been drained from it.

  ‘Already they have taken him away,’ she said in a low, flat voice.

  I mumbled how sorry I was.

  ‘I knew it was coming. Since the trial I knew it.’ Then in a whisper, with the slightest trace of a tremor, confidingly: ‘It was over before I could come. I will not be able to pay even my last respects.’

  ‘There’s a place set apart at Dungerwadi,’ I hurried to explain, ‘where non-Parsis can wait and watch the body being carried away to the Tower.’

  ‘But she will be there, his wife.’

  ‘Well, it’s the wife’s right, I suppose.’

  A cloud crossed her face. Her eyes flashed. ‘She will not be there as his wife. She will be there as God’s representative.’

  ‘What a thing to say!’ I cried, past resentment against this woman welling up. ‘You of all people shouldn’t be saying it!’

  ‘Ah, you too are sitting in judgement. Another of God’s representatives!’ Her lips trembled. Without warning she broke into a muffled whimpering. ‘You will never forgive. You will never let a woman forget what she was!’

  She wrung her hands in a gesture of utter helplessness, then clasping them in front of her, hurried to the door. I was too taken aback to say or do anything. At the door she stopped and with a tremendous effort to keep her voice steady, added: ‘I thank you very much for being so kind as not to let him die in the streets like a dog.’

  For Pesi and others Kersasp’s death was the end of the chapter. They couldn’t spare a thought for the woman. But her face came to me at night. It came again and again, through the heavy curtain of sleep, convention and pretence peeling off in layer after layer till I was looking at the naked face of suffering. I couldn’t reason to myself why, but I had to see her again. Getting her address was no problem. What she did, where she stayed, who she saw – it was all over the papers.

  She stayed in a guest house in a street off Colaba Causeway, in a partitioned room in which one could hardly move without knocking over something. The bright curtains worked magic with it, so that it looked like a doll’s house.

  She didn’t seem surprised to see me. At least she didn’t show it. She offered me the single chair, while she sat on the bed. Her face now had a look of calm repose, almost of resignation. Her soft brown hair, tied at the nape with a ribbon and highlighted by silver streaks, contrasted with her comparatively young face.

  I began lamely that I felt I owed her an apology. She countered charmingly: ‘No, no. I should not have spoken about his wife the way I did. Still less about you, Mr Pavri. I had no excuse, no right to speak such things. You will accept my apology, please? Please.’

  The grace and charm, where I had expected coarseness, won me over. I was ready to be swept off my feet. Gallantly I insisted: ‘It is I who owe you an apology because I misjudged you. I was prejudiced by all that the papers wrote…’

  ‘But what the papers wrote about me, it was correct,’ she said quietly. ‘ I was…what they said I was. For eleven terrible years. What they did not write was that I despised that life, despised myself very much, and what I got out of it. Yes, he made me get out of it.’

  I hadn’t quite expected this confession. Yet I noticed something totally irrelevant – that she couldn’t pronounce her h’s and r’s. With the convert’s zeal I cried: That’s why I’m here. I want to know more about him – and about you. I sense a story here. I’ve got to have the story.’

  ‘But it is too late, no?’

  ‘No!’ The word exploded out of me, making her smile. I smiled too. She shrugged her shoulders and I drove my point home. ‘One of the basic things a journalist learns is that it is never too late to tell the truth. Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? How did you meet him?’

  ‘How did I meet him? He used to visit the house. One of the regulars. Once a week. The other girls, they made fun of me. “Your Parsi boyfriend, Christa!” A little joke between us, you understand? But I did not mind. He was always very gentle and considerate. And very, very unhappy,’ She shook her head gravely. ‘Only the unhappy come to women like us. But then we had no time for such considerations. I regret this very much. Between a gasping madam and haggling customers it was a ghastly race – who earned the most each night.’

  Her shapely manicured nails, tightly clasp
ed, betrayed the effort it cost her to speak.

  ‘You do not mind my being so frank, no? No. It happened after the abortion, my sixth. Funny the way men forget you exist, the same hungry miserable men who are responsible. But he was different, a gentleman, actually risking his reputation to come and see me at the hospital. Oh I remember the day like it was yesterday. I hear my name muttered and then who do I see but him with a sheaf of half-dead flowers. You know what I did? I laughed and I cried at the same time. Yes! He had never before bought flowers for any woman, it was so obvious. And then…’ she blushed to her ears. ‘And then everything changed for me. You understand? It was like having a second birth. You will have a coke, yes? Yes.’

  Looking under the pillows, opening and shutting drawers to locate the small change to finance my refreshment took time. I sat watching her. A lithe coltish figure. Lovely slim legs. When she went out looking for the hamal I examined the sparsely furnished room. Steel almirah. Old-fashioned wooden dressing table. Small square table with a tiffin carrier upon it. Knitting machine in a corner. Not a single photograph of a family member or a relative. By the side of the bed a framed painting of Jesus Christ meditating at Gethsaname after the Last Supper.

  ‘Now that your life’s changed, how do you manage?’ I enquired when she returned.

  ‘Somehow I manage. I work for the SPCA. The payment is small, but I like the work. Oh, I like it very much. That looks after the rent. Then I do a lot of knitting and that brings in enough for my meals. One thing I know. I will not go back to that life again!’

  I tried to imagine this slim creature, who appeared never to have worked with her hands, bringing to book gharrywallahs who ill-treated their poor horses, rushing to the rescue of cats caught on roof or treetops, of wounded crows and sparrows beating their wings in agony. ‘You know, you’re quite different really, whatever your past, from what the papers made you out to be. As a person, I mean.’