Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  The girl is still confused. She looks up at her teachers nervously. Something within her has withered. I want to tell her that she is beautiful and sensitive, that this race doesn’t matter, that it’s just a silly system that grown-ups invented for their own selfish reasons. I want to give her something to make her feel better.

  In my hand I have an orange. Impulsively, I reach forward, take the hand of this child and put the orange into it. ‘Take this,’ I say to her. ‘It’s for coming second.’

  At once I realize I have made a mistake. On her face I see shock, disbelief and more humiliation. She takes the orange, runs back and is lost among the lines of children.

  Perhaps I chose the wrong words to say to her. Maybe the suddenness of the gesture startled her. But even if I had never come that way, that child would have wanted nothing more than to become a faceless girl in a line, not an object of ridicule, separate and alone.

  The races continue – I leave.

  The sea foams gently, still pulling away from the land; a swift wind skims along the wet sand; a dog barks insanely at the froth of receding waves.

  I walk towards Versova, beyond the colourful Juhu shacks, the quiet northern end of the beach.

  I see a man and a woman, looking for a place of privacy, self-consciously holding hands, uncomfortable in their clothes, their shoes sinking in the soft sand as they walk.

  They will find a place, finally, among the palm trees. They will talk, kiss, embrace, will share a moment of loving. But always in fear: fear of being watched, of being disturbed, of being molested; fear of being seen by relatives, friends, parents, enemies; fear of having done something wrong.

  I want to reach out to them, touch them, run my hand over their tired foreheads, rumple their hair. I want to say: Take off your shoes, feel the sand under your feet, feel the mellow sun, forget about other people. This moment belongs just to you, to nobody else. What you feel is sacred, it is not a sin.

  But I say nothing. It would be unwelcome, it would be misunderstood. But here lies the emotional tragedy of Indian youth. Our own minds prevent us from loving without a sense of guilt, our people cannot bear the sight of young people in love and our cities are devoid of sanctuaries.

  Everywhere I see the symptoms of a society sick in its soul: generations being brought up in fear of authority, living in fear of society, dying in fear of the unknown. And I wonder: What is the use of a life that is spent in fear?

  In an hour the sun will sink into the waterlined distance in a sizzling blaze of orange and red. Far away, sailing boats of the fishermen are now headed for the coast. I pause, turn back, making a fresh track of footprints. The tide too has turned and, in time, will erase all traces of my having walked this shore. A flock of sandpipers, flying low, wing their wanton way along the shifting edge of water, looking for pickings in freshly washed patches of sand.

  The schoolchildren have gone away, the races are over. But others are filling the beach. Elderly couples walking with their dogs, enjoying the twilight of their lives. Girls, in secure clusters, preening themselves. Men walking vigorously, boys strolling aimlessly watching the girls in the distance.

  I see Pooja, my daughter, and Siddharth, my son, playing in the dry sand. They too see me, drop their pails, spades and red plastic mugs and run up to me. I pick them up, kiss them, share their excitement. They want me to play with them. Together we start building sand castles.

  I watch them play: faces alive with laughter, restless hands clutching the sand, putting it into place. And there is so much I want to say....

  Pooja, my baby, you’re beautiful. You took the best from both of us: my skin and hair, Protima’s eyes, nose and mouth. You took her zest for life, her vivacity and left out my brooding. We watched you grow with joy. In your games and foibles, we discovered again an early childhood. Now you are three and a half years old and I, unwillingly, am sad within myself.

  When you were born, I had many visions, many dreams. I thought this is my child, my own, she must be a child free in her spirit. Pooja, we really tried, baby. We kept your ‘don’ts’ down to survival level. We let you discover for yourself how far into this sea you could toddle or how fast you could afford to run around the house without banging into furniture. We let you choose the dress you wanted to wear each day. We wanted you to flower, to discover the world in your own special way.

  Now, at three and a half, you’re a little lady. You have your own friends, your own stubborn opinions. All this is super. But I’m sad because now you come and tell me about the Buddhi Mai coming to get you, and ghosts in the dark, and you’re afraid of the water because you’ll ‘doob’ in it and a hundred other fears.

  My baby, you grew up loving the dark, enjoying the sea and you reached out to people. Now you withdraw from people, looking for the Buddhi Mai in disguise. You cry in the dark and you’re afraid of this magnificent sea.

  Who put all that garbage into your lovely head, baby? I shouldn’t be asking. I know this answer. It’s the other children, your friends, who tell you this. And how can I be angry with them? I can only be angry at the twisted minds of grown-ups who put these fears into the minds of children to make them behave. Already you are wounded in the mind and the scars will remain a long, long time.

  And I am sad because your mind will be wounded even more over the years. Your schools will use fear to make you behave: fear of punishment, fear of ridicule, fear of humiliation. They don’t want you to behave, baby, they just want you to conform. Bit by bit they will try to kill what makes you different from others, the differences that made you so distinct as a child.

  They’ll tell you...

  ...all good children go to heaven. And good children are children who think like other good children. The best children, of course, win races and come first in class. Try to be like them.

  If you question their stupidities, they’ll throw you out.

  And I’m sad because there is nothing I can do about it. At least not now, when you need to understand this but cannot. I can’t isolate you, baby. You have to live in the world and that’s the way it is. Now your mind is full of fear and I am sad. I must give up my dreams.

  Siddharth, my golden boy, you’re still pure as rainwater, warm as the sunsets you love to watch, rich as the music you pester us to hear. But, my son, you’re only two years old and the Buddhi Mai is coming to get you too. You’re sensitive and introverted, you’re going to have the toughest time. Pooja is more physical, more vivacious, more naughty. All that may help her survive the system. I hope it does. But what about you, golden boy? Shall I keep you at home or send you to a monastery? Isn’t there any way in this country to preserve you as you are?

  You know, Siddharth, whenever I look at you, I think of something I read a long time ago:

  Children are Masters of Zen.

  Curious about everything.

  Adults are serious and boring.

  What happened?

  I know what happened. We all know what happened. Only I don’t want it to happen to you, golden boy...

  The sand castle is complete now. We stick a twig into it. That’s the flag!

  People have gathered around us now. They have recognized Kabir Bedi, the film actor, playing with his children. I wonder if they are really looking at me or an image of me in their minds. Some say ‘Hello’, I say ‘Hello’. Some shake hands with me. The crowd moves in closer, the children are uneasy, uncomfortable. It’s time to go.

  Perhaps I will return later, in the night, when the beach is quiet and the sea writhes with dark energy.

  But now I must return home with Pooja and Siddharth, away from the crowd. Within me, I have fears too – I am afraid that one day I will begin to look at this crowd as a faceless mass of people, not as individuals who tumble through the cruelty and comedy of life with hopes, fears, desires, tears, laughter and love.

  As I walk away, more people drift onto the beach. In ones and twos, threes and fours. On their faces, an expectancy, a search. Faces seeking
other faces. Within them the human spirit that looks for excitement, for beauty, for newness, for adventure. But the mind is full of walls, endless walls, a maze from which the human spirit finds no escape.

  As long as that spirit struggles to be free, there is hope. If not for us, then for our children. For the spirit always seeks a mind without walls: open, wind-blown, carefree -like the beaches we love to walk on.

  F O U R

  Intermittent Fever

  RAJINDER SINGH BEDI

  The block of houses in the lane had become hot like bricks baking in a kiln. Inside the houses the electric fans were revolving at full speed, churning hot, damp air. People had closed their doors to keep out the oppressive heat.

  Swati heard someone scrabbling at the door of her house, followed by an insistent pounding. She was sitting in a state of careless abandon, and hastily threw her sari over her shoulder. The bunch of keys tied at the end struck against it, making her wince with pain: ‘O Mago!’

  She rushed towards the door, waddling like a duck making frantically for the safety of the pond to escape a marauding dog or cat.

  A man swathed in a grey blanket, despite the intense heat, was standing outside the door, panting heavily.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Swati asked, watching him through the half-closed door.

  ‘Me,’ the man replied. Slightly built, he almost stumbled as he tried to enter the house. But a woman and a house are synonymous. No one can have access to them without proper scrutiny.

  ‘Let me in, Swati,’ he said in a faint voice. ‘I’m running a temperature...fever.’

  Swati recognized the man as soon as he uncovered his face. ‘Nabha Da!’

  Yes, it was Nabha Krishan all right, his face an alloy of copper and brass which, defying all rules of metallurgy, turned flaming red when enraged, and pale when his temper cooled down.

  Recognizing Nabha Krishan, Swati nervously hitched up her sari and tightly draped it round her body. Even so her body spilled out of it. A short, swarthy woman with good looks, her husband had shaken her body into wakefulness but had never succeeded in putting it back to sleep.

  ‘You here?’ Swati asked surprised. ‘Is Madhavi not at home?’

  Nabha Krishan was once very intimate with Swati – both in body and mind. Before marriage he had no compunction in straying into the inner sanctum of her house. She would tremble at the sight and sometimes even swoon. His presence gave her a strange sense of exhilaration.

  And then, as are the ways of the world, Kamal Babu took away Swati in marriage and Madhavi fell to Nabha Krishan’s lot.

  Nabha Krishan was a great one for the ladies. Among the three thousand odd theatrical companies of Calcutta his play Lok Vani had been a great hit. He did not much care for money and lavishly distributed it among his fellow actors, feeling as contented as one does after finishing with a woman. When he reached home, dangling his arms, his wife would go at him hammer and tongs, which is much worse than a man bludgeoning his spouse.

  Nabha Da wrote his own plays and acted in them. When the hall resounded with people’s plaudits and they rushed forward to put garlands round his neck, he would take the garlands and put them round his co-stars, Sandhya Rani or Bhim Nag. Sometimes his wife, Madhavi, would share this acclaim with him, though she was not prepared to sweat and submit to the rough and tumble of the stage to perpetuate the glory.

  Estranged from his wife in the course of time, Nabha Da contrived to elevate himself to the status of a ‘stage idol’ while Madhavi looked after the house and took care of the five children who appeared on the domestic scene in a wild spate. The aftermath turned her intensely religious, making her resort to puja and meditation. A woman who could not do without meat, fish and chicken now totally banned them from her house.

  Though fitfully, Nahba Krishan was undoubtedly making his way up the ladder of success. The poet Nazrul had given him an autographed copy of his latest book of poems, and word had gone round that if anyone wanted to win an election he must solicit the help of Nabha Krishan Babu of Bhowanipore.

  ‘Swati, I have intermittent fever.’

  ‘Intermittent fever!’

  ‘Yes, it afflicts me every alternate day. You have seen a cotton comber, haven’t you?’ Nabha Krishan said, ‘and the way he makes cotton wool fly in the wind. When the fever comes on, my condition becomes just like that. The attack will come at five today.’

  Swati looked at Nabha Krishan. Her heart filled with compassion.

  ‘I have knocked at your door just to throw the devil off the track,’ Nabha Krishan said.

  ‘Nabha Babu, you must know he is not at home,’ Swati said. ‘I mean Khokhi’s father.’

  ‘You mean Kamal Babu? But what have I got to do with him?’ He looked at her with feverish eyes. ‘Swati,’ he implored, ‘does a man in fever have any gender?’

  Entering the house in faltering steps, Nabha Krishan proceeded to remove the blanket from his body. Then he had a bout of shivering and again tightly wrapped the blanket round his body.

  As he stood there, he cast his eyes around the room to see if he could spot any relic of the amour of his bygone days, say, a photograph or a scroll of honour received from the Lok Vani people, which he might have passed on to Swati for keeps when she did small, naughty bit roles in his plays. But here was only one small photograph of a girl of five or so in a sandalwood frame resting on the table, evidently her daughter. Savouring the situation, Nabha Babu made some quick calculations. Khokhi must be thirteen or so by now.

  A swing of the kind one generally finds in Gujarati homes was suspended from a wooden beam. It was being used as a repository for the knick-knacks of the house, and even for dumping discarded things which should have been consigned to the garbage heap.

  Nabha Da wondered how Swati, who had the feline virtue of keeping clean and sought order and method in everything she did, could allow the house to run to seed. Even discarded clothes were hanging on the clothesline giving off the stench of yesterday’s perspiration.

  At this point Swati entered the room with Khokhi in tow, wondering whether Nabha Da would recognize the girl.

  ‘She has grown, hasn’t she?’ Nabha Da said, looking at the girl. ‘A few years more and she’ll start looking like you.’

  Swati looked at Nabha Krishan and smiled. ‘Take off your blanket, Nabha Da. Watching you, my own body has started sizzling. O, Ma Kali! What heat! It’s the worst summer since last twelve years – a record.’

  ‘If I remove the blanket I feel chilly.’

  ‘Chilly? In this heat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll bring in the cot and make the bed for you. I’ll give you a thick handloom bed sheet It’ll keep the cold away. O Mago! Your blanket is drenched.’

  Swati brought in a cot which had been resting against the verandah wall. From the next room she brought a newly purchased Mirzapur carpet and spread it on the cot, over which she lay a double-knit coverlet, and then a dazzling white bed sheet. At the foot of the bed she arranged a thick handloom bed sheet. Nabha Krishan gingerly removed his blanket. His dhoti and kurta were drenched as if he had bathed in a pond with his clothes on.

  ‘Wait,’ Swati rushed to the other room and came back holding her husband’s banian, dhoti and kurta. ‘Go in and change,’ she said.

  ‘How can I?’ Nabha Krishan hesitated. ‘Don’t you see I’m ill?’

  ‘Nabha Da, go and change,’ Swati insisted, pointing towards the next room. ‘And let me have your clothes. I’ll wash them.’

  Swati went into the kitchen and quickly lighted the chulha, asking Khokhi to hand her splinters of wood and charcoal to keep the fire going. And then she boiled some tulsi leaves in a pot.

  Nabha Krishan came back, feeling at odds with himself as if by wearing those clothes he had been transformed into Kamal Babu. Otherwise would Swati have given him such an abashed smile?

  Lying on the cot, with the cotton bed sheet pulled up over his body, Nabha Krishan watched Swati presiding ov
er the domestic scene. His expression mellowed, as if he were watching the back pages of his life in retrospect. The sound of heavy clapping resounded in his ears – they were acclaiming him for his virtuosity in the leading role in Lok Vani. In company with Swati and without her. How nice if she had been his. Then there would have been no Madhavi and her stoic rigidity forcing him to take the rosy path to dalliance, and visiting the haunts of bazaar girls.

  ‘Nabha Da, drink it up!’

  Jerked out of his reverie, Nabha Da found Swati leaning over him, holding a cup in the pallav of her sari. Struggling to throw off his handloom coverlet he asked if the concoction would bring down his fever.

  ‘Of course, yes, it’s tulsi leaves,’ Swati assured him. After you finish it, I’ll apply a paste of black pepper and coriander leaves over your forehead. And lo, you’ll be well.’

  ‘Your concoction will do me no good,’ Nabha Da dubiously shook his head.

  ‘But you must drink,’ Swati said teasingly, making a chuckling sound with her tongue. ‘Drink it up, please.’

  After drinking the concoction, Nabha Krishan lay down on his back. ‘Swati!’ he caught her hand. ‘That paste of yours is not going to do me any good. It’s a job for a spellbinder. Only a charm can cool intermittent fever.’

  ‘A charm? I don’t know of any.’

  ‘Yes, someone told me there’s a particular religious discourse whose recitation drives away the fever.’

  ‘What religious discourse and who recites it?’

  ‘They say there’s a professional pandit at Kalighat who’s very good at it. For that matter, you can do it as well.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Why not recite the story of what happened when Madho, your father, got scent of our affair, and how he knocked the hell out of you?’

  ‘Khokhi!’ Swati shouted in sudden panic. ‘Should it take you an hour to wash two clothes?’