Our Favourite Indian Stories

by Khushwant Singh

  The young man replied, 'I love a girl but she does not return my love.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't know.'

  'In that case the girl's at fault. One who gives rise to sorrow in a fellow creature commits wrong. Come, let's go to her.'

  They went to the girl.

  'Why have you made him miserable?'

  'I have done nothing to him. But I cannot give him what he demands.'

  Mazook turned to the young man:

  'What have you asked of her?'

  'I long for her embrace.... I want all the pleasures that man expects of a woman.'

  'Young lady, why do you deny him this?'

  'Should I lose my purity just for the sake of his whims?'

  'Purity? The Kingdom of God has no place for such concepts. Out of such pretty words as Purity are made the chains that bind you. Have nothing to do with them! The hungry should be fed; the passionate should be gratified.'

  'Then won't we turn into beasts?'

  'Let it be so. Only thus one can achieve happiness. Which man has Morality ever made happy?'

  I laughed.

  'What's so funny?' asked Cinderella.

  'So this is your way of life?'

  'Yes.'

  'But why should the one who seeks gratification impose his will on another?'

  'That's true. There should be no compulsion. Suppose I wanted you to make love to me now and you were willing, then...'

  I looked away.

  Cinderella snuggled close to me. The cloak of morality in which I had shielded myself till now succumbed to her charms at last. I held her in my arms and kissed her fiercely.

  'Are you satisfied?'

  'No. This is only the beginning,' she replied.

  God alone knows for how long we remained locked in each other's arms. Suddenly the thought of my wife came to me and my grasp loosened.

  'What happened?' she asked.

  'I have to go home. It's late.'

  'Aren't you being unjust to me?'

  'I shall repent for it,' I replied, kissing her again.

  Sunday

  I don't smoke cigarettes. But I wanted to experience that state of transcendence they say one could achieve after smoking marijuana. We were sitting in a room of a hippie's house. Everyone had arrived in some state of undress, but no one felt self-conscious about this. Cinderella was completely naked.

  She ripped open a cigarette, mixed the tobacco with some hashish, rolled it in new cigarette paper and lit it.

  She took a deep drag at the cigarette, savouring the sweet aroma of its fumes before holding it at my lips.

  I sucked at it greedily. The smoke streaked to my brain. I coughed and gasped frantically. Cinderella slapped my back and cautioned soothingly, 'Slowly, slowly.'

  For the first time in my life I experienced the world revolving around me.

  'Enough,' I said.

  'You haven't seen anything yet. Have another drag.'

  'Stop!'

  The beast in me was aroused. Her naked torso stood before me. From it jutted out breasts and thighs to taunt me. There and then I satisfied my lust for her like a beast and afterwards continued to smoke till I passed out.

  When I returned to my senses I discovered that I had been sleeping with my head on Cinderella's bare midriff. Shaking my head, I got up and sat down. Cinderella was still asleep. I glanced at her naked body and shuddered. I could not believe that the lure of this flesh could have made me so blind. I looked at my own body. There was no cloak of morality there anymore. I felt ashamed of myself and, getting up put my clothes on.

  Cinderella was still unconscious. I could not bear to see her in that state any more. I found a bedsheet and covered her with it. I searched my pockets for a piece of paper but couldn't find any and there didn't seem any in the room either. Finally, I found a bill somewhere. On the back of it I wrote:

  Cinderella,

  Thank you very much. My urges have been satisfied. You are always welcome at my home. But please do not invite me to this place again. Your philosophy may be true and it also may be good but I am not accustomed to such a purely hedonistic existence. Neither do I wish to get accustomed to it.

  Yours

  I returned home that night but I didn't have the courage to look my wife in the face. Women intuitively understand such things. But if she did realise what was going on, she didn't utter a word.

  Sunday

  Cinderella didn't turn up after that. I kept thinking about her again and again. I was mortally afraid that she would drop in my absence and in her usual frank manner explain all that had happened between us to my wife. But she didn't come at all. When one evening I asked my wife if she'd like to come for a stroll on the beach at Colva, she replied, 'You want to meet Cinderella, isn't it? Why do you want me along? I wouldn't want to get in your way.'

  She had hit me where it hurt most. But I just laughed lightly and teased her, 'Are you jealous?'

  'I am not jealous. But the moment I saw that bitch step into the house I knew she was up to no good.'

  'All right, madam. Now get ready.'

  'There's work to be done. Who'll do that?'

  'Let's enjoy ourselves while we have the chance. In future who knows if we'll have the same opportunity, when we have children...'

  'If you want to go, go! Don't bother me.'

  Having said this, my wife went inside.

  I didn't move from that chair for a long time. On the one hand I was constantly reminded of Cinderella and on the other I didn't want to offend my wife. Feeling guilty as I was, I didn't have the courage to meet Cinderella without my wife.

  Eventually I did go to Colva alone.

  I met Paul the moment I stopped my car. He told me that Cinderella was sitting in a restaurant.

  Two couples were seated at a table drinking beer. 'Hi! Cinderella called me over.

  I pulled a chair and sat with them.

  'What'll you have?'

  'A Coke.'

  'Have some beer,' someone said. 'We're celebrating.'

  I wondered why and looked at Cinderella. She certainly wasn't the shy type but to my surprise she actually blushed.

  Before I could say anything somebody thrust a glass of beer into my hands.

  'Cheers,' I said.

  'Cheers to Cinderella and her baby in the womb!' said the other girl.

  My hand shook in agitation and beer spilled all over my clothes.

  'What happened?' the other girl inquired.

  'He's thrilled!'

  Taking a handkerchief from my pocket, I wiped the beer off my clothes and the cold sweat from my face. While I did this one of the hippies kissed Cinderella on the lips and caressed her belly with his left hand. Guiltily I hung my head down and began to sip the beer.

  Quietly, the others slipped away leaving only Cinderella and me at the table.

  'Cinderella, is this true?' I demanded, my voice hoarse.

  'I win. You lose,' Cinderella replied.

  'What do you mean, Cinderella?'

  'The other day you left a note for me and disappeared, didn't you? But I was sure that you would return. And here you are - I win.'

  I heaved a sigh of relief and asked her, 'Is it true?'

  'All the angels and saints will swear to it!'

  'Who is he?'

  'How should I know?'

  'It's not me, is it?'

  'I really can't tell... But you needn't look so worried. I'm going to bring it up as my very own illegitimate child.'

  'But why should the child suffer so?'

  'If the father has no guts what else can be done?'

  'But what about you, afterwards?'

  'Me? I'll become a mother!'

  'Without being married.'

  'What's wrong with that? My dear man, do you know you haven't congratulated me yet?'

  'Congratulations. May I leave?

  'Go! But don't forget me. Come here once in a while... Or should I come to your place?

  'Cinderella, I
find it very difficult to say this, but please do not come to my house. Please, as a favour.'

  'But you know, I didn't mean I'd come to your house for my delivery.'

  'I know that. But my wife...'

  'I won't say a word about what happened. I promise.'

  'No, Cinderella, it's not that.... We've been married for eight years and till today she has not conceived.

  Cinderella laughed. She said, 'In that case it's not yours!' and left.

  Translated by Augusto Pinto

  A Cup of Hot Coffee

  Edwin J. F. D'Souza

  The mere thought of going into the kitchen sent a chill down her spine. There was no one in the house but she really needed that glass of hot coffee. Her son would have preferred to say a "cup of hot coffee," she chuckled to herself inspite of her old bones creaking and the pit of her stomach demanding the warmth of caffeine.

  A cup of hot coffee! Modern house and modern terms had to be used. It was a well-equipped kitchen. 'It's nothing Mother,' he had said. 'Just the flick of a switch and the turn of a knob.' Now she had to do it all by herself.

  The rains! They had come, at last. The downpour was torrential, the sky being perpetually overcast. The air was chilly. She had known rain before but this was her first in the house her son had built. It had happened suddenly. She had found herself drawn out of her cocoon unawares.

  'Mother, this is our new home,' he had said proudly. His words had choked her. Home, he had said. Why not a house? This concrete giant which came alive at the flick of a switch and turn of a knob?

  Another chuckle was in order. She had glasses of coffee on an afternoon like this. Her man had been alive then. Her husband. Quite a man, quite a man. The warmth around the crackling firewood stove would be cosy. The coffee would be bubbling through a decoction of jaggery, providing the background music, and the warmth of aluminium tumblers would be in their hands. Quite a man, who had given her three sons. The first drank himself to death; the second was pulped in a bus accident. These two deaths took her man away leaving her the mud-walled house and the third son.

  And then she had taken up the reins herself. She had had to. The pace was so fast that only on the day her third one came and told her he was leaving for some place in the Gulf could she stop and look around.

  'No more mud-walls Mother,' he had said. 'No more milking cows, goats and rearing pigs. We are going to have a home of our dreams.' But she had never had any dreams.

  And he left; the firewood stove and the mud-walled house remained with her. He had written regularly and she had sent her replies through a nun whose convent received generous charity from her son. Even the Vicar was suddenly kind to her when she had dropped a hundred rupees in the mite box. She was gaining ground!

  And then came the daughter-in-law. Quite a doll. A working girl, smart and beautiful. She had twisted her lips when she had first entered the mud house. She had said, 'And once our home is up we will pull down these mud-walls and all the past with it.'

  She had said nothing. She had nothing to say.

  And then it had happened. A concrete giant had slowly risen next to her mud house. When the noise, dust and the hammering of steel had finally died down there had remained a brief silence only to be followed by a few more weak, floppy sounds. Her mud house no more stood there, even its dust had settled down so quickly! She saw her son standing amidst the rubble, his hands folded on his breast, looking way beyond the sky. Triumph was written all over his face. She too had looked up years ago when her husband's coffin had been lifted up on the shoulders of hired pallbearers. She had cried out in raging silence to her Creator — now, let the rest be upon me...

  How she needed that coffee!

  The kitchen was spotlessly clean. All she had to put together was some boiling water, a teaspoon of instant coffee, a dash of milk and sugar. She found a pan and filled it with water. It wasn't the firewood stove anymore; a shimmering, new cooking range stood in its place. And all the firepower was in that little red cylinder. She placed the pan on the cooking range and turned the knob. Hadn't he said, just the flick of a switch and the turn of a knob?

  Where were the matches?

  In her mud house everything was within her arms' reach. She looked around and searched for it. 'Oh damn you,' she screamed within herself, 'You and your home! You and your money! Where was it when your brothers died and your old man slowly wasted himself in grief? The bile rising in her throat choked her and she coughed briefly. There was a fishy smell in the kitchen and a faint hiss.

  'Everything has a place in here' her daughter-in-law had said. 'And everything should be in its place.'

  So where is the matchbox, she smiled to herself rather wickedly. Ah yes, her college-going grandchild... that chirpy, bubbly thing who was left behind with the grandmother... she had seen her puffing away to glory. She was supposed to be in her care. She wobbled her way up to her grandchild's bedroom and a brief search revealed not only the matchbox but also an ashtray filled to the brim with cigarette butts. It wasn't her concern anyway. All she needed was that coffee.

  Her joints creaking, she reached the kitchen once again. What was that obnoxious smell? New homes stink too? Should she twist her lips now? Everything has its own place, the words pounded in her ears. What is my place, she heard herself ask. Did I ask for all this? The firewood stove, the three deaths and the demolition of her house loomed large in front of her. Each scene distinctly carving her descent, bringing her down to a state with which she could not compromise.

  'What the hell,' she screamed, 'What the bloody hell!'

  And then she struck the match.

  ENGLISH

  The Portrait of A Lady

  Khushwant Singh

  My grandmother, like everybody's grandmother, was an old woman. She had been old and wrinkled for the twenty years that I had known her. People said that she had once been young and pretty and had even had a husband, but that was hard to believe. My grandfather's portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing room. He wore a big turban and loose-fitting clothes. His long white beard covered the best part of his chest and he looked at least a hundred years old. He did not look the sort of person who would have a wife or children. He looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandchildren. As for my grandmother being young and pretty, the thought was almost revolting. She often told us of the games she used to play as a child. That seemed quite absurd and undignified on her part and we treated it like the tales of the prophets she used to tell us.

  She had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was a crisscross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. No, we were certain she had always been as we had known her. Old, so terribly old that she could not have grown older, and had stayed at the same age for twenty years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful. She hobbled about the house in spotless white with one hand resting on her waist to balance her stoop and the other telling the beads of her rosary. Her silver locks were scattered untidily over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in inaudible prayer. Yes, she was beautiful. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of pure white serenity breathing peace and contentment.

  My grandmother and I were good friends. My parents left me with her when they went to live in the city and we were constantly together. She used to wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school. She said her morning prayer in a monotonous sing-song while she bathed and dressed me in the hope that I would listen and get to know it by heart. I listened because I loved her voice but never bothered to learn it. Then she would fetch my wooden slate which she had already washed and plastered with yellow chalk, a tiny earthen ink pot and a reed pen, tie them all in a bundle and hand it to me. After a breakfast of a thick, stale chapatti with a little butter and sugar spread on it, we went to school. She carried several stale chapattis with her for the village dogs.

  My grandmother always went to school with me because the school was att
ached to the temple. The priest taught us the alphabet and the morning prayer. While the children sat in rows on either side of the veranda singing the alphabet or the prayer in a chorus, my grandmother sat inside reading the scriptures. When we had both finished, we would walk back together. This time the village dogs would meet us at the temple door. They followed us to our home growling and fighting each other for the chapattis we threw to them.

  When my parents were comfortably settled in the city, they sent for us. That was a turning point in our friendship. Although we shared the same room, my grandmother no longer came to school with me. I used to go to an English school in a motor bus. There were no dogs in the streets and she took to feeding sparrows in the courtyard of our city house.

  As the years rolled by we saw less of each other. For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school. When I came back she would ask me what the teacher had taught me. I would tell her English words and little things of western science and learning, the law of gravity, Archimedes' principle, the world being round etc. This made her unhappy. She could not help me with my lessons. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about God and the scriptures. One day I announced that we were being given music lessons. She was very disturbed. To her, music had lewd associations. It was the monopoly of harlots and beggars and not meant for gentle folk. She rarely talked to me after that.

  When I went up to University, I was given a room of my own. The common link of friendship was snapped. My grandmother accepted her seclusion with resignation. She rarely left her spinning wheel to talk to anyone. From sunrise to sunset she sat by her wheel spinning and reciting prayers. Only in the afternoon she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. While she sat in the veranda breaking the bread into little bits, hundreds of little birds collected around her creating a veritable bedlam of chirrupings. Some came and perched on her legs, others on her shoulders. Some even sat on her head. She smiled but never shoo'd them away. It used to be the happiest half-hour of the day for her.