‘We need a log of wood to awaken a log of wood,’ Ganpat said. ‘I will break your hard bones for you if you don’t rise early every morning and get down to work.’
There was a sound of knocking.
‘Wait, wait now, old hags,’ he said, opening the door.
‘What are you up to, beating those boys early in the morning, when you ought to be mentioning the name of God,’ said Lachi, a short, thick woman, beaming with a coquettish smile on her round, regular face and winking at Ganpat with a twinkle in her mischievous eyes.
‘Ram Ram Sethji,’ said the two old women who followed Lachi. They were grey-haired, bent and dim-eyed, and long years of toil were written in the wrinkles on their faces. They lifted their black skirts up to the knees to avoid soaking them in the passage and gathered their ragged aprons as they followed.
Ganpat had melted at the sight of Lachi and, averting his eyes, he went for his hubble-bubble to a corner of the niche.
‘Give us a little oil in our lamps and some cotton to make wicks with, vay Tulsi,’ said Lachi.
They worked in the darkness of the caverns by the inadequate pale light of little earthen saucer lamps.
‘All right! All right! You settle down to work,’ said Ganpat as he came to fill the chilm of his hubble-bubble with fire.
Tulsi had just poured some kerosene oil on the coal in the ovens and applied a match to it. And though the flames had leapt up, the coal had not yet caught fire.
Ganpat had to wait to fill his chilm.
Munoo felt oppressed with the presence of the slave-driver near him.
‘Rake up the ashes from under the other two fireplaces quickly!’ said Ganpat, impatient to fill his chilm.
‘Leave the boys alone, faithless one!’ said Lachi, ‘and come and count the apples to give to the women, or you will complain that I have stolen some.’
Ganpat went into the cavern.
Tulsi disappeared into the darkness behind him with a bottle of oil and some cotton-wool for the lamps.
Maharaj had gone up to the well and begun to draw buckets of water to pour on to barrels of fruit with the assiduity of a machine.
Bonga, unable to shake off the lethargy of sleep, came and began to arrange wood and coal in the two ovens which Tulsi had not attended to yet.
Munoo sat absorbed in the dying lustre of the flames which rose from the spirit-soaked coal in the oven above his head. His mind was empty and his hands sifted the cinders from the ashes without much effort.
For a while all was silent.
Then a draught bearing the mingled smell of damp earth, decayed fruit, half-baked pickles, mustard oil, strong spices and the essences of rose and keora brushed past him to the open gateway, chilling his body under the tunic, and spreading particles of ash on his long hair.
‘Strange place,’ he said to himself. ‘I hope I shall soon be able to get used to it. These people are all from the hills, and not like the babus, except Master Ganpat, who is a city man—’
His thoughts were dissipated by the fumes that the breeze from the cavern had spread all over the factory by smothering the leaping spiral-like flames which rose from the ovens.
Munoo felt choked by the pungent smoke. He felt the bitter taste of it in his mouth. Later, he felt it descend irritatingly down his throat. He coughed. He spat a mouthful of thick spittle. His eardrums seemed to have closed. But out of the clouds of smoke there came shrill, hoarse shouts which reverberated dully on his ears.
‘Oh, where are you? Where are you all, pigs? come out, ohe Prabha, lover of your mother! Yuh . . .!’ The voice seemed to die out in a loud asthmatic cough, or rather to linger in the cough, because when the voice was no more the cough continued, angry and hoarse in unending jerks.
Munoo applied his ears. He heard another voice, like a woman’s voice:
‘Dirty hillmen! Scum! Filth! The smoke! The smoke! It has entered my house even through the closed doors and windows. Hai! Hai! May you die! May you never live! May the fire of your ovens consume you! You have ruined our houses! We have had the walls white-washed only last spring! And now they are black. Hai! Hai! Where are you?’
Munoo wondered if it were not the nagging voice of his mistress in Sham Nagar that he heard in his imagination, though it was not so hard a voice, and it was husky. He looked up to Tulsi, whom he could dimly espy in the smoke, and he was going to ask, ‘Who is it?’
‘Sh!’ Tulsi whispered, his face paler than ever as he stood fanning the oven to raise a flame in the coal.
Munoo watched the fear in Tulsi’s face as he abandoned the fan and got down to bellowing with all his breath at the fire without exciting even so much as a glimmer in the oven, but sending thicker clouds of smoke up to the tin roof.
‘Where are you? Where are you, oh Prabha and Ganpat?’ shouted Rai Bahadur, Sir Todar Mal, BA, LLB, Vakil, Member of the City Municipal Committee, dressed in a black alpaca frock-coat, tight white cotton pyjamas and a great, big heap of a turban on his long black face. And as he spoke he thumped his thick stick agitatedly on a platform of bricks outside his house in the gully.
‘Yes, where are they? Where are they? Eaters of their masters!’ shouted Lady Todar Mal, dressed in a dhoti of homespun cloth which half-veiled, half-revealed her dried-up, dark form.
‘Why don’t you come out? Why don’t you come out? Wretches,’ roared Sir Todar Mal’s well-built, proud young son, Mr Ram Nath. ‘Rai Bahadur wants to talk to you. We must arrange to do something about it, or you will have to get out of here.’
Silence brooded over the factory while the thick clouds of smoke rolled and unrolled themselves in the heavily charged atmosphere.
‘Go away! Go away!’ said Ganpat, coming into the passage. ‘You may be a Rai Bahadur in your house, but you have nothing to do with us.’
‘Oh no?’ said the young man at the door. ‘So we have nothing to do with you! Come out into the gully, and I will show you.’
‘Oh, don’t stoop to talk to them, my child!’ said Lady Todar Mal. ‘Let us go away. We gentlemanly people have no way of facing these scum of the hills.’
She would have retreated at this, especially as Sir Todar Mal was going out for a drive in the city gardens in the tonga with his son before the morning advanced. But Ganpat rushed up to the door and pushed Ram Nath away into the gully.
‘Think of the impudence!’ shouted Sir Todar Mal, stamping his thick stick on the floor as he struggled to keep his feet against the onrush of his falling son.
‘Han, think of the impertinence. Look at this Ganpat!’ shrilled Lady Todar Mal.
But their son had leapt at Ganpat’s throat and begun fisting him according to the rules of the boxing ring he had learnt at college.
Munoo, Tulsi and Bonga rushed up to the door, frightened out of their wits.
Ganpat had fallen into the gutter. But he rallied back in a vain effort to catch his enemy by the waist and was getting it hard on his face. His nose was bleeding.
‘Oh, leave him, leave him!’ Sir Todar Mal shouted trembling with agitation, as he stood safely in the doorway of his own house.
‘The licentious brute! The drunkard! The rogue! The upstart!’ Lady Todar Mal vociferated, flinging her hands as if she were showering curses with them.
A crowd of women had gathered in the windows of the neighbouring houses in the gully and beyond, whispering and horror-struck.
Suddenly Prabha darted from the passageway behind Munoo, Tulsi and Bonga. Leaping headlong into the fray, he caught Ganpat by the waist and laid himself bare to Ram Nath’s attack, saying: ‘You can beat me, Babuji, you can do anything you like. Spare him. He is a fool!’
‘Leave them, my son, leave them,’ urged Lady Todar Mal. ‘Ashes on their heads! They have made our life bitter! They have raised their heads to the sky. Upstarts!’
‘You must not begin to fight like that, Ganpat,’ remonstrated Prabha, dragging his partner into the factory. ‘It is the business of our landlords to deal with them. Not ours. And now yo
u have got beaten! Wah!’
The goat-face retreated sullenly. He pushed the boys out of his way roughly, venting his impotent wrath on his own coolies, since he had been mishandled by his adversary.
‘Shanti! Shanti! you must not let anger possess you like that,’ said Prabha, with the simple humility natural to him.
Munoo had been thrown into the mud between two barrels, while Tulsi had grazed his knee, and Bonga had fallen on the platform in the niche.
They all stole to their places and began to work. Munoo went back to the ashes. Bonga got busy rubbing soft clay on the bottom of cauldrons. Tulsi began to fill a cauldron with leaves.
Maharaj, who had been drawing water, undisturbed by the commotion, like a blind man walking on and on, still drew the water, the thick blue veins of his legs and shins bulging out like the entrails of a dead animal.
‘Put some water into this cauldron, ohe Maharaj,’ said Tulsi.
Maharaj poured the water into the cauldron, instead of pouring it into the barrels of fruit, accordingly.
‘Come, ohe Munoo, you are wanted upstairs,’ said Prabha.
Munoo looked up to the master. Prabha made a sign towards his mouth to signify that there was something delicious to eat waiting for him upstairs.
If Prabha regarded the quarrel between Ganpat and Sir Todar Mal’s son as something which he could settle by joining his hands in humility to his neighbour, Sir Todar Mal was not going to let it rest at that. For Sir Todar Mal had a ‘reach’ in high quarters.
Sir Todar Mal had been for twenty years or more a luminary of the Daulatpur Bar, and was well known for his eloquent defences of many an aggrieved man and woman. The Government of India had recognized the value of his rhetoric when they made him a Public Prosecutor in the Daulatpur courts. And, though he had long since retired from that position, his prestige with the Government stood high because he had rendered great services in the war, contributing as much as twenty thousand rupees to the Viceroy’s fund. For the constant loyalty he had shown to the administration in the difficult task of maintaining law and order in the land, he had been given the title of Rai Bahadur; and in recognition of his services during the war he had been created a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire; while for his civic services he had been nominated an official member of the Municipal Committee of Daulatpur; impressive enough honours to cow the citizens of Daulatpur into believing him to be a great man, though they did not understand what being a Knight or a Municipal Commissioner meant.
Some people called him a ‘traitor’, on account of his strange decision during the last political riots to take refuge, with his family and most valuable possessions, in the Daulatpur fort. But everyone was afraid of him, and even those who did not respect him humbly joined their hands to greet him as ‘Rai Bahadur Sahib’ whenever he passed by in his richly upholstered tonga. He vaguely saw through their attitude of feigned flattery and would have gone away to live outside the city in one of his three bungalows if these had not brought in good rents from the Englishmen who lived in them. And Lady Todar Mal, being illiterate and not well-versed in European modes of living, would have found it rather uncongenial to reside among English people in the civil lines, and would have missed the opportunities for gossip and an occasional fight with the women of the gully that the city house afforded. Several times during recent years Sir Todar and Lady Mal had contemplated exile in order to escape from the smoke of the pickle factory. But the men and women of the neighbourhood, forgetting all about Sir Todar Mal’s betrayals, ‘had put their humble heads on his respected feet’ and, ‘glorying in his izzat with the Angrezi Sarkar’, begged him not to withdraw the shadow of his protection. So Sir Todar Mal decided to stay and die, as he had lived, among his brethren. True, he had sought to make his stay in the old house more comfortable by asking the landlords of the neighbouring house, the Dutt brothers, to turn the factory-wallahs out. But the Dutt brothers saw no reason why they should forgo the rent of an otherwise useless out-house. Sir Todar Mal had bullied the successive owners of the factory. Now that had ended in a brawl. The possibility of building a chimney had never occurred to him, or, for that matter, to anyone else.
He would write and complain to the Public Health Officer, Dr Edward Marjoribanks, his friend and colleague on the Municipal Committee. He wrote: To Dr Edward Marjoribanks, Esq., M.A., D.P.H., L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. and F.(Oxon). From Rai Bahadur, Sir Todar Mal, B.A., LL.B., K.C.I.E., Advocate High Court of Punjab, Retired Public Prosecutor, Daulatpur.
Honoured Sir,
The omission on my part to render you a tribute of the heart’s best regard and esteem due from man to man in the shape of occasional epistles is, I have always felt, a wrong, and such as I can hardly plead any cause to mitigate the enormity of. I am therefore greatly ashamed to present myself before you through the medium of this communication. Nevertheless, let me carry to you my cordial assurance that your name is indelibly impressed on the tablet of my memory as my greatest friend both inside and outside the Municipal Committee.
Now I have to request the honour of your visit to the Cat Killer’s Lane, which is full of smoke on account of the burning of stone coal in the pickle factory next door to my house.
I shall be greatly honoured if you do so, because shortly after dawn on the 26th ultimo my son, who told off the proprietors of the pickle factory about creating smoke in their blast furnaces, was attacked by one Ganpat. And, though Mr Ram Nath, my gallant son, turned the tip of Ganpat’s nose down, he received hurt himself: his face and limbs are stiff, cold and blue and his fingers contracted into hard fists.
My services to the Government are well known to you. I gave twenty thousand rupees to His Excellency the Viceroy’s War Fund, in recognition of which I have received the splendid title of knighthood. I hope that by bearing in mind the services I have rendered to the benign Empire you will come and rid me of the affliction of this smoke, which is a constant cause of worry, remorse and sorrow to me and mine.
With my wife’s modest salaams to Mrs Marjoribanks,
I am your most faithful servant and ever grateful memorialist,
Todar Mal.
Unfortunately the Health Officer ignored this letter.
When Dr Marjoribanks neither answered the letter nor visited the gully, Sir Todar Mal was angry. He waited anxiously for a general meeting of the Municipal Committee, which was to take place on the first of September.
On the morning of that day he rode out early, by the side of his groom, in a gig which he kept besides his tonga for use on ceremonial occasions. He went first for an airing in the city gardens and then to attend the meeting of the Municipal Committee, which was to take place in the Town Hall.
In his eagerness not to be late he arrived an hour too early for the meeting. The heat of the September sun and the fury of the grievance which he nourished in his breast made him sweat. And he walked up and down the corridor of the Town Hall in a towering rage, punctuated by fits of asthma.
At last the hour of ten struck on the bronze gong of the Town Hall, and he entered the Committee room.
He was the first member to be there.
For half an hour he was the only member to be there.
For an hour he was the only member to be there.
Then a peon came in to brush the chairs and tables.
Half an hour later the Secretary arrived, Mr Hem Chand, a young man with thick glasses, who bowed obsequiously to Sir Todar Mal, as he was in the habit of bowing obsequiously to every Municipal Commissioner, since his job was dependent on them.
‘Half past eleven, Babu Hem Chand,’ said Sir Todar Mal, taking out his gold watch by its heavy chain from the inside pocket of his frock-coat, ‘and no one here yet!’
‘You know what these lallas are,’ said Mr Hem Chand, flicking the ash from his cigarette and settling down to write the minutes of the last meeting, ‘they will never learn Local Self-Government, since they are so unpunctual.’
It was true, Sir Todar Mal knew, that most of the
members of the Municipal Committee were illiterate shopkeepers, who did not even know how to sign their names and had to make a mark with their thumbs whenever they signed a paper. And they did not understand a thing about the matters discussed by the Council. Would they be able to understand the nature of his complaint against the Dutt brothers, the owners of the pickle factory, and, most of all, against the Health Officer, who had completely ignored his letter? He had prepared a red-hot speech to deliver to the Council asking them to discharge the Health Officer. But would not the Hindustani words be a bit too difficult for these Punjabi lallas?
‘Oh, Sir Todar Mal,’ said Hem Chand suddenly. ‘Dr Marjoribanks showed me your letter about the smoke from the pickle factory in your neighbourhood. He seldom finds the time to go down visiting the gullies, but he said he would like to come down with you. Of course, under Regulation 317, para. 10 of the Local Self-Government Act—’
‘Mr Hem Chand,’ said Sir Todar Mal, ‘I want you to put a complaint against the Health Officer on the agenda for this meeting—’
‘Oh, Rai Bahadur,’ said Hem Chand. ‘You know how impossible it is to discuss anything in the Municipal Council. Most of the members are sycophants of the Government who don’t know a thing about civics. Lalla Churanji Lall will get up and make an oration lasting three hours; Sheikh Iftikhar-ud-din will pour forth his venom for an hour; Sardar Kharak Singh will wag his beard—and your motion will never be put to the vote, because everyone will say something different, and no one wants to discharge an English Health Officer, as the Government is only too ready to withdraw the privilege of Local Self-Government if its interests are not kept first. Dr Marjoribanks is in the office. I will ask him to go and inspect the pickle factory with you at once. You have been a well-wisher of the Government. Why make enemies with an Englishman in your old age?’
‘Very good, very good,’ said Sir Todar Mal, seeing the prospect of unpleasantness if he washed his dirty linen in public, and of honourable settlement out of court, as it were, in the way that the Secretary suggested. The vision of himself driving through the bazaars of his native city next to an Englishman flashed across his mind, with the implied prestige it would bring. For, however much the Indians disliked the English in India, most of them have a servile admiration for the white official and enjoy the thrill of contact with him.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 28
