‘Jayadeva, uncle,’ said Victor, coming forward and bending to touch the symbolic dust off his feet.
During the ceremonial greetings, Raja Parduman Singh kept a stern silence. But as soon as Victor stood back, his uncle began the attack again:
‘Ohe, darkness has come over the world!—Darkness! Brazen young man, you lose the deeds about our property and then have stupid little brown-paper letters sent to me from your office, ignoring my just demands! Do you think that you can evade the issue?’
‘But, uncle, I am willing to talk it over with you.’
‘What is the use of talking now?’ said Raja Parduman Singh, stalking up to the veranda and studiedly sitting back into a cane chair. ‘What is the use of repentance now that the sparrows have eaten away the grain from the fields? You first write little chits to us. Then you ignore our letters and refuse even to see our emissaries.’
‘I was at Simla, Raja Sahib,’ apologized Victor.
‘Han, han, we knew how you were eating the ashes in Simla. You had spoilt your religion already by eating beef. Now, after sleeping with a beef-eating memni, not even the waters of Ganges can purify you. I don’t know what the world is coming to! Our family was known for its purity and grandeur. You have reduced the prestige of our house and dragged our good name into the dust!’
‘Nowadays, young people are rather free about their taste in food and women,’ I said, to lighten the conversation.
‘Acha, I agree that princes and noblemen will rape women,’ the old man said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘But to pollute one’s religion by eating beef! And to lose one’s head completely!’
‘Brother,’ said the young Thakur Shiv Ram Singh, ‘you yourself went across the black water in the First World War and spent some time in France.’
‘Chup raho, you young dog, you are no one to speak. I know the direction in which you are going! . . . And are you not concerned with your rights that you are taking sides with this pup?’
‘Let us discuss the real question, then, rather than religion,’ said Victor, summoning all his courage to face his enemies.
‘There is no talk,’ snarled Raja Parduman Singh, his eyes flashing like that of a mongrel dog. ‘We have presented our demands for the restitution of our rightful properties. As you did not do anything about them, we have appealed to the Sarkar at Delhi. And, as the Praja Mandal is out for your blood, your only chance is to concede our demands and have one enemy the less.’
‘I won’t be bullied like that!’ said Victor, averting his face and trying to suppress the anger in his voice.
‘Well then, we shall show you!’ raved Raja Parduman Singh, standing up and striking his huge stick on the cement floor of the veranda of the lodge.
For a moment the abundant greenery of the forest outside seemed to be ablaze with the heat of the argument, which had ignited the broad glare of the day.
‘Leave me alone for a month or so, and I shall call the whole brotherhood and settle any just claims you may have according to the documents,’ said Victor.
‘But you say the documents are not to be found,’ said the young Thakur Shiv Ram Singh.
‘Son, you can’t evade the issue for ever with your promises,’ said Thakur Mahan Chand.
‘There is no question of waiting for a month,’ shrilled Raja Parduman Singh. ‘There is no talk with a blackguard like this . . . .’
‘Uncle,’ said Victor. ‘I have borne your abuse patiently enough. But I shall not be responsible for the consequences if you go on like this!’
‘I for one am not talking to a lecher like you!’ shouted the old Raja. ‘Come, boys, let us go. This illegally begotten has no intention to settle with us. . . .’
At this Victor leapt, like the lithe tiger he was, to attack his uncle.
General Raghbir Singh came in between them and held him back.
‘You see the rascal, he is not above attacking his old uncle! The swine! The idiot! The lecher! The good-for-nothing scoundrel!’ Raja Parduman Singh yelped like this even as he walked away with frightened, shaky legs towards the garden.
Victor’s face was red with patches of white on the forehead.
‘I knew it was no use talking to this bastard,’ continued the old man. ‘He is like the English, evasive, and he tries diplomacy on an old rogue like me! I knew before we came that we would get nowhere with this swine!’
‘Uncle—stop your foul tongue!’ Victor shouted, stretching himself to his full feeble height and frothing at the mouth.
‘I shall say what I like, you pup!’ shouted the old Raja, brandishing his thick stick at him from a safe distance.
The victoria in which the three noblemen had come moved away.
The frenzy of the quarrel rose across the air, burning up and shrivelling everything, until the dazzling yellow glare shimmered before our eyes like the sheen on the top of a huge jungle fire.
On our arrival at the Sham Pur city palace we found Ganga Dasi waiting anxiously for Victor in his drawing-room.
‘I hear of trouble all over the state,’ she said. ‘And where have you been? I have been so worried about you. Vicky, you might have left a message for me as to where you had gone. I have sent messengers all over the place to look for you!’
Victor was hot with the mounting suffocation of the Sham Pur late summer afternoon, irritable with the hangover of his quarrel with his uncles and cousins, and hungry, as we had not stayed for lunch at the lodge after the awful scene. And as we had heard the sound of spasmodic firing near Panna village, His Highness had been worried all the way, even though General Raghbir Singh told him that the army would clear up the trouble in no time. His face was rigid, as though a sort of nullity had come over him, a kind of hopelessness, or even the sense of some impending disaster. He had not said much on the way back.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked as though she had forgotten about turning him out the previous night and was blissfully unconscious of anything wrong between them. And she went up to him with a swinging of her hips and, making eyes at him with the most charming of blandishments, tried to melt him.
He stood away, confused and angry. Then he looked at her, uncomprehending.
She laughed at him with a mellow look in her eyes, and purred like a cat full of the bliss of her own exuberant sex, radiant. He was afraid to be drawn, for he seemed to realize that she would only bring him to herself and then throw him over again. He looked agonized even as his lips puckered into a smile.
Suddenly, she touched his harrowed face and stroked it. And, instantly, he bent towards her and looked into her green eyes and her face, and, catching hold of her, buried his face in hers, kissing her gently, with a soft, tender movement of his lips, and with ever so delicate an abandon. This gave me time to withdraw discreetly away.
‘My life,’ he was saying, ‘my dearest life! Why did you turn me away last night? Why? I will do anything for you. You know that, my darling, don’t you? I will gladly wear a peasant’s torn clothes and go and work in the fields if the States Department doesn’t let me marry you and make you my Maharani. Only be good to me, and I will sacrifice myself for you. . . . My beloved. . . .’
My curiosity had made me stand long enough outside the door and eavesdrop on this declaration. But I was scared to be seen thus listening and went towards my room. I knew in my bones, however, that this was only a partial reconciliation. And that she was playing tricks with this fool, in order to exact from him the full measure of the security she wanted, and that, while he would really surrender to her because she seemed to him the only tangible, secure thing in the world he could hang on to, there was much venal greed in her callow soul above the genuine core of the affection she had for him.
During the whole of that day, I did not see Vicky. Apparently, the homecoming had been very cordial, the warm greetings having transformed themselves into the play function of sex. And I was glad enough of a respite until, on coming home from a swim in the river Sutlej on the morning of the next day, I found
a letter waiting for me with a strange, impatient scrawl on the envelope. Francis, my bearer, friend, guide and philosopher, told me that he had been handed the letter in the Sham Pur bazaar, where he had gone to buy a packet of cornflakes for my breakfast. When I sat down to breakfast, I opened the letter and read its contents. My mind eagerly yielded to each word as though it came to my ears like a sigh of despair uttered by some distant voice at the moon’s downing, when the earth is engulfed in a deep dark night.
‘Dear Dr Shankar,
‘I write this letter to you in the vain hope that it might reach you and touch your half-dead conscience and make you influence the young tyrant under whose autocratic rule I and several of my comrades are counting the days of our likely sojourn in the living hell of Udham Pur Jail.
‘I was arrested with six others on the fourteenth of August, 1946, for leading a procession of villagers into Sham Pur to demand a moratorium on debts and the abolition of various illegal taxes like Elephantauna and Motrauna, etc. Since then, without any charge being made against me and my comrades, without a trial, we have been detained here. We have protested to the Maharaja, to the Diwan, and to the Government of India, against our detention without trial, but there is no answer, and we have begun to feel that perhaps the outside world does not exist. I hope you will acknowledge this letter if only to make us believe that the conscience of the world is not quite dead.
‘While you may not be able to help us by persuading the stubborn Maharaja that we should either be tried in a court of law or released, we feel that you could at least bring to his notice the barbarous and inhuman conditions that prevail in this jail so as to relieve the agony of our detention.
‘On our part, in order to touch any bit of conscience that may have survived in the ruler, we are beginning today a hunger strike and we shall go on fasting till our demands begin to be considered. ‘Before I tell you of our demands, I want to acquaint you with some of the facts of our existence here.
‘The two leaders, Devi Prasad and myself, are kept in a Class I cell, which is a small black hole, continually stinking with the smell of our own urine in open pots. The heat of the Udham Pur summer chokes us, till every breath we take seems to be our last without being the last. As we move about in the congested space of nine feet by six, all our movements are watched through the strong iron bar gates, by the armed warder who is always parading up and down. ‘All the other détenues, about twelve, are now being kept in a Class III dormitory, which is thirty foot by ten. Here they are huddled together, and, as there is no lavatory in this dormitory they have to relieve themselves at night in one corner, which has caused all of them to go down one by one with malaria, hookworm, anaemia and TB.
‘As none of us are given any bedding or blankets to spread on the cement platform on which we have to sleep, two détenues died of pneumonia last winter, while one succumbed to colic, and the rest complain of rheumatism.
‘The Jail doctor seldom visited us till one of the sick détenues assaulted the jailor and threatened to kill him if he was not given medical attention. And though this détenu died, the Jail doctor began to visit our cells once a week.
‘We have to cook food in turns. Each of us gets a quarter of a seer of rice per day and we have all become skeletons of ourselves. We eat out of iron pots, which lie about in the cells after the meal is finished, so that flies fester round us all day.
‘As the kitchen is about ten yards away, the smoke of wood fuel spreads to our cells in the evening, and, through the absence of a drain, the kitchen water flows into the small courtyard before us, seeping ultimately into the open well about twenty-five yards away, over which there is the continual drone of mosquitoes, our deadliest enemies.
‘The concentration camps of the Nazis may have been worse, but this jail of ours certainly is not better than the Lahore and the Delhi forts, where the British tortured the détenues during the war. And, from the proportion of people who die here, this jail compares with the notorious Newgate and Dartmoor jails of the 18th century, in England.
‘Day and night our necks, hands and feet remain fettered with heavy iron chains, even while we cook or work, until the flesh of some of us is bruised and full of pus.
‘No books, no papers, or writing material, is given to us. I am writing this letter on paper which the convict warder stole out of the jail office for the bribe I gave him of the silver ring I had smuggled in.
‘In the evenings we are made to hold compulsory prayers, during which we are made to chant—“Maharaja Sahib ki jai!” “Sham Pur Raj ki jai!”
‘The jailor has established a fifth column among convicts, which informs him against any other prisoner who does not get his relatives to pay a bribe, that is shared between the jailor and the convict warders. And the whole hierarchy of officials and warders resembles the big flies who suck the blood of the little flies, with the little flies encroaching on the littler flies, until men begin to lose all faith in each other.
‘In view of all this, I want to put forward before you the following concrete demands which I would like you to put before the Maharaja for speedy action. Only if these demands are conceded are we willing to break our fast.
‘1. All prisoners detained without trial should either be tried in an open court or immediately released unconditionally.
‘2. The classification of détenues should be abolished, and the same food, clothing and medical treatment should be given to all.
‘3. All détenues must be given access to books and newspapers.
‘4. All détenues should be given adequate family allowances by the State.
‘5. An inquiry committee should be set up to look into the jails and improve conditions in these Belsens and Buchenwalds, so that the light of humanity and justice might prevail.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Som Nath.’
I contemplated this letter in a state of perturbation which can only be described as utter confusion. For, the appeal of the note to my conscience was immediate, even as the threat of the guerilla who had accosted me at Panna Lodge had been immediate. And yet the invidious position which I occupied in the service of the Maharaja was pulling me in the direction of caution and restraint. From the floating lightweight, who skipped from one emotion of the Maharaja to the other, I suddenly felt I had become a massive weight of misery, overburdened with the sense of guilt at my ineffectual life, while these fighters were fasting and sacrificing themselves for their ideals. I felt the shadows thickening over my eyes, my blood pulsed darkly as if it was mounting to my head in a fury from the welter in my soul. Again and again, I tried to fix the central theme of the détenues’ demands and the core of the whole problem of Sham Pur before me. But, apart from the gleams of half-truths and certain aspects of the whole, there was only a vacancy in my mind. I could not think consistently. I could only feel the vague cloud of fear hover over me about having to take a radical decision. And yet the very sources of my being, where I could take any decisions, were corroded by the sloth that I felt in the face of life.
At last I tried to make the effort to get back to the essential things about myself, and to begin to think anew. Though the thoughts I thought were not uttered, I was really talking aloud to myself in a colloquy which went somewhat like this:
‘Who are you?’
‘I am a man. That is to say, I have the gift of reason and speech and can choose and select what to do. I have free will and am not enslaved or subject to anything.’
‘But you are talking of an ideal man. Actually, you are enslaved and have little free will. Of course, you have reason and, through that, you are distinguished from the beasts and cattle. And you are a citizen with certain rights and responsibilities.’
‘Yes, there is the rub. I am capable of considering the connections of things and can comprehend some aspects of the universe, but I am limited. And yet my hands and feet can’t move except in the interests of the whole of my body. I can’t really live without considering all the claims the w
orld has on me.’
‘But, most of the time, your hands and feet do move without considering the whole of your body. And your body is seldom in the control of your mind. And the mind never wholly aware. So that though the whole may be superior to the parts, in fact you act from partial knowledge and unascertained motives. And usually you do things which are more immediately agreeable, whatever the misery that may come afterwards.’
‘Then I fall short of the ideal man?’
‘Yes, indeed, you fail to live up to the ideal all the time.’
‘Then there is really no difference between me and cattle, who chew the cud of complacency and pursue the pleasures of resting in the slimy mud?’
‘That is inevitable.’
‘And do you think that by yielding lazily to the pleasures of the moment, or the immediate future, that is to say, by not considering what might happen to other people in the world through your sloth, you do not lose anything?’
‘I only become slightly insidious, hiding my faults cleverly, behind the facade of my vanity, and get along fairly well because most other people are doing the same.’
‘So you make no effort to fight the demons in you. If you were a student and did not work to improve your knowledge of a certain science, you would fail in the examination, wouldn’t you? Would you rather fail or would you try to remove your ignorance and come through the test?’
‘I am not sure whether it is worthwhile to get to know things and pass exams and become aware. Where does it get you, if other people remain ignorant and stupid?’
‘What would you feel like if you lost your job and had no money?
‘I would be miserable if I were destitute.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 66
