India in Mind

by Pankaj Mishra

  Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the parao. Eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabers—sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.

  Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin-legged, grey-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half were duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the North; and that mixture told its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring between the two divisions. The old lady was going south on a visit—probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had sent up an escort as a mark of respect. The hillmen would be of her own people—Kulu or Kangra folk. It was quite clear that she was not taking her daughter down to be wedded, or the curtains would have been laced home and the guard would have allowed no one near the car. A merry and a high-spirited dame, thought Kim, balancing the dung cake in one hand, the cooked food in the other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder. Something might be made out of the meeting. The lama would give him no help, but, as a conscientious chela, Kim was delighted to beg for two.

  He built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for one of the escort to order him away. The lama dropped wearily to the ground, much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his rosary.

  “Stand farther off, beggar!” The order was shouted in broken Hindustani by one of the hillmen.

  “Huh! It is only a pahari [a hillman],” said Kim over his shoulder. “Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?”

  The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three generations.

  “Ah!” Kim's voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung cake into fit pieces. “In my country we call that the beginning of love-talk.”

  A harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his mettle for a second shot.

  “Not so bad—not so bad,” said Kim with calm. “But have a care, my brother, lest we—we,I say—be minded to give a curse or so in return. And our curses have the knack of biting home.”

  The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly. The lama suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o'-shanter hat into the full light of Kim's new-started fire.

  “What is it?” said he.

  The man halted as though struck to stone. “I—I—am saved from a great sin,” he stammered.

  “The foreigner has found him a priest at last,” whispered one of the Ooryas.

  “Hai! Why is that beggar brat not well beaten?” the old woman cried.

  The hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the curtain. There was dead silence, then a muttering.

  “This goes well,” thought Kim, pretending neither to see nor hear.

  “When—when—he has eaten”—the hillman fawned on Kim—“it—it is requested that the Holy One will do the honor to talk to one who would speak to him.”

  “After he has eaten he will sleep,” Kim returned loftily. He could not quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute to profit by it. “Now I will get him his food.” The last sentence, spoken loudly, ended with a sigh as of faintness.

  “I—I myself and the others of my people will look to that— if it is permitted.”

  “It is permitted,” said Kim, more loftily than ever. “Holy One, these people will bring us food.”

  “The land is good. All the country of the South is good—a great and terrible world,” mumbled the lama drowsily.

  “Let him sleep,” said Kim, “but look to it that we are well fed when he wakes. He is a very holy man.”

  Again one of the Ooryas said something contemptuously.

  “He is not a fakir. He is not a down-country beggar,” Kim went on severely, addressing the stars. “He is the most holy of holy men. He is above all castes. I am his chela.”

  “Come here!” said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim came, conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One skinny brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and the talk went this way:

  “Who is that one?”

  “An exceedingly holy one. He comes from far off. He comes from Tibet.”

  “Where in Tibet?”

  “From behind the snows—from a very far place. He knows the stars; he makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. But he does not do this for money. He does it for kindness and great charity. I am his disciple. I am called also the Friend of the Stars.”

  “Thou art no hillman.”

  “Ask him. He will tell thee I was sent to him from the Stars to show him an end to his pilgrimage.”

  “Humph! Consider, brat, that I am an old woman and not altogether a fool. Lamas I know, and to these I give reverence, but thou art no more a lawful chela than this my finger is the pole of this wagon. Thou art a casteless Hindu—a bold and unblushing beggar, attached, belike, to the Holy One for the sake of gain.”

  “Do we not all work for gain?” Kim changed his tone promptly to match that altered voice. “I have heard”—this was a bow drawn at a venture—“I have heard—”

  “What hast thou heard?” she snapped, rapping with the finger.

  “Nothing that I well remember, but some talk in the bazaars, which is doubtless a lie, that even Rajahs—small Hill Rajahs—”

  “But nonetheless of good Rajput blood.”

  “Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of their womenfolk for gain. Down south they sell them— to zemindars and such-all of Oudh.”

  If there be one thing in the world that the small Hill Rajahs deny it is just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazaars believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of India. The old lady explained to Kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely what manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. Had Kim hinted this when she was a girl, he would have been pommeled to death that same evening by an elephant. This was perfectly true.

  “Ahai! I am only a beggar's brat, as the Eye of Beauty has said,” he wailed in extravagant terror.

  “Eye of Beauty, forsooth! Who am I that thou shouldst fling beggar endearments at me?” And yet she laughed at the longforgotten word. “Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth. Ay, thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and be made a mock by beggars.”

  “Great Queen,” said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with indignation, “I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but nonetheless is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen's order that—”

  “Order? I order a Holy One—a Teacher of the Law—to come and speak to a woman? Never!”

  “Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order—”

  “It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?”

  A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and salaamed profoundly. The old lady recognized that, as the eyes and the ears of the lama, he was to be propitiated.

  “I am but the Holy One's disciple. When he has eaten perhaps he will come.”

  “Oh, villain and shameless rogue!” The jeweled forefinger shook itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle.

  “Nay, what is it?” he said, dropping into his most caressing and confidential tone—the one, he well knew, that few could resist. “Is—is there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we priests—” That last was a direct plagiarism from a fakir by the Taksali Gate.

  “We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to—” She checked the joke with another laugh. “Believe me, now and again, we women, O priest, think of other matters than sons.
Moreover, my daughter has borne her man-child.”

  “Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better still.” Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking discreetly earthward.

  “True—oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and gifts again to them, and they prophesied.”

  “Ah,” drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, “they prophesied!” A professional could have done no better.

  “And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and—perhaps the Holy One has heard of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamasery. It was to him I put the matter, and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The Brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said that it was through his prayers—which is a little error that I will explain to him when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go to Buddh Gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children.”

  “Thither go we.”

  “Doubly auspicious,” chirruped the old lady. “A second son at least!”

  “O Friend of all the World!” The lama had waked, and, simply as a child bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

  “I come! I come, Holy One!” He dashed to the fire, where he found the lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring him and the Southerners looking sourly.

  “Go back! Withdraw!” Kim cried. “Do we eat publicly like dogs?” They finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

  “Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here is a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on pilgrimage, she says, to Buddh Gaya. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well rested she would speak to thee.”

  “Is this also thy work?” The lama dipped deep into his snuffgourd.

  “Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?” Kim's eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils and stretched him on the dusty ground. “Have I failed to oversee thy comforts, Holy One?”

  “A blessing on thee.” The lama inclined his solemn head. “I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee—thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.”

  “And I have never seen such a priest as thou.” Kim considered the benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. “It is less than three days since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.”

  “Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered thee some service. Maybe”—he smiled—“I freed thee from a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.”

  “Maybe,” said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider imaginative. “Now, as regards that woman in the bullock cart, I think she needs a second son for her daughter.”

  “That is no part of the Way,” sighed the lama. “But at least she is from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!”

  He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard the sing-song cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-colored jewel in the same uncertain light. The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and re-forming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest the jeweled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like bull-frogs.

  At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded cotton quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

  “She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,” thought Kim. “Nonetheless, but for me, those gifts would not have come.”

  “A virtuous woman—and a wise one.” The lama slackened off, joint by joint, like a slow camel. “The world is full of charity to those who follow the Way.” He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.

  “And what said she?” Kim rolled up in his share of it.

  “She asked me many questions and propounded many prob-lems—the most of which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests who pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I said were foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.”

  “True. That is true.” Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of those who wish to draw confidences.

  “But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly that we should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I understand, for many days' journey to the southward.”

  “And?”

  “Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills! She knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River—nor the tale of the Arrow.”

  “And?”

  “I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her and make prayer for a second son.”

  “Aha! ‘We women’ do not think of anything save children,” said Kim sleepily.

  “Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we in any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her—at least as far as—I have forgotten the name of the city.”

  “Ohé! ” said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the Ooryas a few yards away. “Where is your master's house?”

  “A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.” He named the village.

  “That was the place,” said the lama. “So far, at least, we can go with her.”

  “Flies go to carrion,” said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.

  “For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.” Kim breathed the proverb impersonally to the shadow tops of the trees overhead.

  The Oorya grunted and held his peace.

  “So then we go with her, Holy One?”

  “Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She very greatly desires it.”

  Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady had recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable that she would be worth listening to.

  He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: “The husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.” Then Kim heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.

  The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have it—bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food, and new sights at every turn of the a
pproving eye. The morning mist swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant river in shrieking green hosts: all the well wheels within earshot went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved. There was no need to worry about food—no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded stalls. He was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and when they were respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. For the rest—Kim giggled here as he cleaned his teeth—his hostess would rather heighten the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her bullocks critically, as they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. If they went too fast—it was not likely—there would be a pleasant seat for himself along the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. The escort, of course, would walk. The old lady, equally of course, would talk a great deal, and by what he had heard that conversation would not lack salt. She was already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing her servants for delays.

  “Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop her ill-omened mouth,” cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles of bedding. “She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.”

  “The lead bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead bullocks!” They were backing and wheeling as a grain cart's axle caught them by the horns. “Son of an owl, where dost thou go?” This to the grinning carter.

  “Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray for a son,” the man called back over his high load. “Room for the Queen of Delhi and her Prime Minister the grey monkey climbing up his own sword!” Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the ruth bullocks backed and backed again.

  From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It did not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told him truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in his absence.