Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  Then she turned to him. ‘Nabha Da,’ she said with an air of finality as if to seal his mouth, ‘I’m no good at telling stories. What had to happen has happened. It was God’s will. There’s a hidden blessing in what He does.’

  ‘Tell me one thing,’ Nabha Da said. ‘Are you happy – I mean happy with Kamal Babu?’

  ‘Yes,’ Swati said, nodding her head more vigorously than was necessary. ‘Very happy. And what about you?’

  Nabha Krishan slowly turned his face towards Swati. ‘Did you tell Kamal Babu?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘About you and me?’

  ‘That was one big blunder that I made,’ she said.

  ‘Why, doesn’t he love you?’

  ‘He loves me all right. But when he approaches me something goes wrong. As if something comes between us.’

  ‘What something?’

  Swati was silent.

  ‘Tell me, what something?’ Nabha Krishan persisted.

  ‘You.... Anyway let’s forget about it. It happened so very long ago. I try to be his, forgetting the past. But every time he makes me feel that I’m faithless to him, that I’m in someone else’s arms.’ Swati began to cry.

  ‘But is he faithful to you?’

  Suddenly Swati got up in a huff. She looked at Nabha Krishan as one looks at an enemy.

  ‘I’m a ruined man,’ he cried, shifting his gaze into middle distance.

  ‘What am I hearing?’ In one leap, Swati’s anger had suddenly changed into curiosity. ‘You have children. You have a wife.’

  ‘You mean Madhavi? You know everything and yet you know nothing.’

  ‘Your wife is a goddess. Twice a week she goes to Dakshineshwar and bows her head before the Mother.’

  ‘She’s a goddess indeed. And that’s the whole trouble. I don’t want a goddess. I want a woman. Yes, a woman,’ he repeated. ‘A man may be pious, full of rectitude and very cold. But a time comes when he must hobnob with a woman. Can he do all that with a goddess? Tell me, can he?’

  ‘Hisht!’ Swati hid her face behind her sari.

  ‘I mean it,’ Nabha Krishan continued. ‘Day and night she strives to exalt herself into a goddess. She just makes me feel debased, as if I’m not a man but an animal.’

  Swati sat thinking for a while. ‘You’re to blame for it,’ she said. ‘Yes, you. You men drive women into becoming goddesses. You kindle the fire in their bodies but do you really know how to quench it?’ Swati lowered her eyes and continued. ‘I’m not talking of you in particular. But, tell me, have you ever loved her or just lusted after her? You made her spawn children and that was the end of it.’

  ‘She’s a harridan, a witch!’ Nabha Da cried. ‘She even strips me of my clothes.’

  Swati burst out laughing as one does at a child for saying something funny. ‘Can one love without taking off one’s clothes?’ she asked.

  She ran into the kitchen and ground some black pepper and coriander leaves, making them into a paste. Every now and then she stopped to wipe her smarting eyes. Nabha Krishan was amazed at the vigour she put into the job.

  ‘Marriage is a nuisance,’ Nabha Krishan said when she returned. ‘Every marriage is proof of the fact that man is yet an untamed beast.’

  Swati looked at Nabha Da uncertainly. How unpredictable men were! One moment they owned their guilt in a most facile manner and the next moment they denied it most brazenly. She applied the paste to his forehead.

  Aha, aha!’ he said, feeling greatly relieved.

  As Swati bent down over the bed he could see her youthful curves poised over him. ‘You know, Swati,’ he said, ‘only the body is covered with clothes, not the soul.’

  Then he babbled on as if in a delirium: ‘Unless the soul sloughs off everything and takes a dip in the Mansarovar in a naked state it cannot become one with its Master. All souls are ethereal in form. I’ve removed my blanket. I will cast off the bed sheet too, and then peel off Kamal Babu’s clothes as well. Come, Swati...’

  Kamal Babu came sailing in at about four. Swati had just thrown the tub water on to the street. But he moved away just in time, escaping a drenching. A juicy, paan-smeared invective catapulted from his mouth.

  He was surprised to find Nabha Krishan lying there in a neatly made bed.

  Kamal Babu was a stockily built man. When he spoke, the words came out inflated from his mouth, perhaps because of his large teeth or maybe because his mouth was always full of paan. He greeted Nabha Krishan Babu with great warmth and became even more effusive when he learnt to his satisfaction that his friend was a prey to fever and could not even sit up straight.

  ‘What will you have?’ Swati asked Kamal Babu. ‘Something to drink or eat. Have some nimbu pani Oh, how hot it is! May I bring you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Let me have a breather first,’ Kamal Babu said testily. ‘You start pestering me the moment I come in.’

  Swati started fanning him although the electric fan under the ceiling was working at full speed. And when she tried to wipe the perspiration from his neck with the pallav of her sari, he rudely pushed her aside.

  He got up and, after squirting a jet of paan juice into a corner, proceeded to take off his kurta. ‘Well, Nabha Da,’ he said in a bland voice, ‘what has made the Lord descend upon the house of a pauper like me?’

  Before Nabha Da could reply, Khokhi edged forward. ‘Pa, what about my sandesh? Have you brought it?’

  ‘Get away, you wretch!’ Kamal Babu said, looking thoroughly peeved. ‘My new truck broke down and you can think of nothing except ramming sandesh down your throat.’

  Pulling a long face, Khokhi took refuge with her mother.

  Pleased to find Nabha Krishan in such bad shape, Kamal Babu talked to him in animated tones. Old rivals had come to terms. While talking, Kamal Babu sprayed paan juice over Nabha Da, which he didn’t seem to mind, or maybe he was too helpless to take notice of it. Kamal Babu knew too well that Nabha Da was a man of some consequence. He hobnobbed with ministers and was friendly with big shots. Kamal Babu felt flattered that he had deigned to visit him in his own house.

  Kamal Babu suggested scores of remedies for Nabha Da’s illness. But the real cause, he maintained, was Nabha Da’s dormant bodily heat. He winked at Nabha Da. ‘Unless you draw it out you won’t get well.’

  Nabha Da gave a wan smile.

  ‘You just drop me a hint....’ And Kamal Babu winked at him again.

  Finding that Nabha Babu did not take the cue, he mentioned Sandhya who used to act in Lok Vani.

  Nabha Krishan said angrily, ‘She’s worse than a bitch!’

  Kamal Babu laughed in instalments. ‘Nabha Da,’ he said, ‘tell me, which woman is not a bitch?’

  Nabha Da looked around. Thank God, Swati was out of earshot.

  ‘The fact is,’ Kamal Babu picked up the thread again, ‘if you call a woman a bitch she would pounce upon you and tear your legs apart.’

  ‘I won’t mind meeting Sandhya again,’ Kamal Babu continued. ‘When she played the main female role in Meghdoot one felt she was in heat. Care to have a paan?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How killing she looked, standing there on the stage, one foot planted a little apart from the other. Bap re bap!’ Then he brought his mouth to Nabha Krishan’s ear. ‘May I tell you one thing, Nabha Da?’

  Nabha Krishan looked at him expectantly.

  Kamal Babu looked to his right and left and then drew his chair closer to Nabha Krishan’s bed.

  ‘When I’m making love with Swati,’ he said, ‘I’m always thinking of Sandhya.’ And he started laughing in instalments.

  Nabha Da looked at Kamal Babu, astounded, and then hatred crept into his eyes. He turned his face away.

  It was ten minutes to five when Nabha Krishan suddenly sat bolt upright and shot out his hand towards Kamal Babu. ‘Just feel my hand. Have I a temperature?’

  Like an experienced hakim, Kamal Babu placed his fingers on Nabha Da’s wrist, searching for his pulse. ‘No,’ he pronounced.

  Swat
i came out hurriedly and felt Nabha Da’s hand. ‘No, you have no temperature,’ she said.

  ‘He must have called!’ said Nabha Da.

  ‘Who?’ Swati and Kamal Babu asked in unison.

  ‘That devil of an intermittent fever, who else?’

  ‘Where?’

  At my house, where else! At Asutosh Mansion.’ Nabha Da stared ahead of him. ‘Now it must be standing right in front of my house,’ he said. ‘Yes, there it is, knocking on the door! Doors don’t mean anything to it. It’s ethereal, you know, having no body as such. It can even penetrate through the walls.’

  Swati pulled away her hand and placed it on her heaving bosom.

  ‘Yes, I can see it clearly,’ Nabha Krishan continued. ‘It peeped in and had found my bed empty.’

  He looked wildly at Kamal Babu and Swati. ‘Every day it requires one pint of blood,’ he said. ‘Its blood group is the same as mine. That’s why it is always after my blood. Ready to squeeze me dry. But today...today it’ll have to go without blood. I have given it the slip. I’m here, at your house. It would never know. But no, it has occult powers. It will just close its eyes and come to know. Is the door locked?’

  Swati held her breath. ‘O Mago!’ she cried. ‘He’s gone out of his mind!’

  Nabha Krishan stretched out his hand and, firmly gripping Swati’s hand, placed it on his chest. Alarmed, Swati looked at Kamal Babu. ‘Let it remain where it is,’ he gestured to her with his eyes. After all, it was only a hand.

  ‘It’s coming.’ Nabha Da raved. ‘I can see it coming.’

  ‘Dada, how can you see something that is not there?’ Kamal Babu said.

  ‘Me?’ Nabha Krishan said, panting. ‘I too possess occult powers. It will soon be here. There, it has already taken a turn towards the lane. Don’t open the door!’

  But the visitor had pushed it open.

  Madhavi was in a spotless white sari. There was a glow on her face due to the anger in her heart. Without greeting anybody she made straight for Naba Krishan. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ Nabha Krishan replied.

  He seemed to have lost his tongue. If at all he spoke in reply to any question, the words came out mechanically from his mouth like a card dropping out of the slot in a weighing machine.

  ‘It was getting too much for me,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘I was feeling utterly forlorn so I dropped in here. When alone I feel so jittery. Maybe because I’m getting on in years.’

  Wordlessly she stood before him. Nabha Krishan felt he was looking at a block of ice. ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asked.

  ‘I know everything,’ Madhavi said in a contemptuous tone. ‘You talk in your sleep, that’s how.’

  Then her face darkened with anger. ‘You knew that today was my birthday,’ she said. ‘And that the children had come down from the hills. And yet you took it into your head to slink away from home and bide your time in another’s house.’

  ‘This is not another’s house, silly!’ Kamal Babu said.

  A certain suspicion suddenly assailed Madhavi’s mind. She steadily gazed at Nabha Krishan. ‘Have you again touched the bottle?’ she asked.

  ‘No.... Yes,’ Nabha stammered.

  And smoked cigarettes too? Plenty of them?’

  ‘Not while in our house,’ Swati said, defending Nabha Krishan.

  ‘Go back home,’ Madhavi said in a blistering voice.

  ‘Home?’ Nabha Krishan said gloomily.

  ‘Where’s home? It’s a temple.’

  Kamal Babu helped Nabha Krishan out of bed.

  ‘It’s five,’ Nabha Krishan said. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  Swati brought Nabha Krishan’s blanket. She had stuffed the end of her sari into her mouth.

  ‘Swati, I’m going!’ Nabha Krishan said.

  Silently she watched his receding figure.

  (Translated from the Urdu by Jai Ratan)

  F I V E

  The Birdman

  MARGARET BHATTY

  ‘Uncal Francees! Coo – ee!’ Jacinta called as she turned in at the rickety gate and went up the path. Judy trotted behind, hauling little David by the hand.

  Pawpaw trees, slender arecanut palms and coconuts formed a thick canopy over the old bungalow and its red tiled roof was green with damp and moss. The sultry morning was heavy with the smell of cashew forests in bloom all over the hills of Goa.

  ‘Uncal Francees? Coo – ee?’

  Jacinta now stood on the worn stone steps of the front verandah. It was enclosed with a freshly painted green lattice. From somewhere behind the house the three could hear the twitter and flutter of birds. ‘Sala! Haramzada!’ a parrot swore hoarsely in Hindustani.

  The house was old, like most of the houses that clustered in tiny hamlets in the Goan countryside. It had not been whitewashed for years. Tiles had broken off, exposing rotting wooden rib work underneath. The eaves looked like a row of large uneven teeth. Grass grew out of cracks in the walls.

  Jacinta peered through the lattice and called again, cupping her hands. ‘Anybuddy home? Yoo-hoo? Uncal Francees?’

  There was the sound of a chain rattling as it fell, and a very large middle-aged man appeared behind the lattice door. Opening it, he stared dully at the three – the girl in her short frock of shiny pink silk, and the two English children on the path.

  David and Judy stared. He was bare-bodied with shabby pyjamas tied low under his bulging stomach. His heavy shoulders sloped down to massive tattooed arms. Hair grew all over him. Bunches of it even sprouted from his ears, and his teeth were large and uneven. A hulk of a man, broken-down, like the house he inhabited.

  ‘You was sleeping, Uncal?’ Jacinta cried, accusingly. ‘It’s almost eleven, m’n!’

  Blinking in the daylight, he scratched his chest with blackened nails on thick fingers. His eyes were small and dull, his face puffy, his lips heavy and coarse. He peered at the busty young girl in a gaudy dress and silver high-heeled shoes, and then at Judy and David.

  ‘Remember me, Uncal Francees? I’m Jacinta – Jacinta Fernandes? From Mapusa, m’n!’

  ‘Jacinta! Of course, Jacinta!’ he exploded suddenly. Gathering her into his hairy arms he gave her loud smacking kisses on her face. ‘Jacinta so beeg I’m not knowing you! A grand young lady, huh?’

  She struggled to escape, her short frock riding high on her dusky thighs. ‘No, Uncal Francees, m’n!’ she protested.

  ‘But what you doing here – in Panjim?’ he asked, dropping his arms.

  ‘We came by car – from Bombay. Mr Goodman, he’s an engineer – with the mines. His company send him so we all came. From here we going onto Ooty for a holiday,’ Jacinta explained, patting her hair tidy again and pulling down the hem of her dress.

  ‘They German?’

  ‘No, English – ’

  ‘But you Ma told me you’re working for Germany family – ’

  ‘Yes, that was before. They left and then I work with Canada family. Now I work with Mr and Mrs Goodman -they English. I look after the children. This is Judy, she’s seven, and this is David, he’s five – ’

  ‘Five-and-a-half,’ David amended gravely, reaching up to shake the man’s great paw.

  ‘This is my uncal, Mr D’Goa,’ Jacinta said, smiling at them.

  ‘Where you staying, Jacinta?’ asked D’Goa.

  ‘Belvedere,’ she replied.

  ‘That posh place close to here? I know Correia at the Reception.’ He dropped his voice. ‘They got dollars to sell?’

  ‘How should I know, m’n?’ she said, evasively. ‘You ask them.’

  ‘Pounds, then?’

  She shrugged and looked away towards the gate.

  ‘Dollar is selling for sixteen rupees over at Mapusa. I’ll come to the Belvedere tomorrow morning, okay?’

  ‘I’m going home – first bus tomorrow, for Carnival,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘After that then? How about after that?’ he insisted.

  You sti
ll have birds, Uncal Francis?’ she asked, changing the subject. Actually, I brought the children only to see your birds.’

  ‘I still have my birds,’ he chuckled, a wink screwing up one side of his broad face. ‘This bachelor uncal of yours always has birds. C’mon, kids, I show you. Maybe your Dad buys some for you, hey? With pounds sterling!’ He led the way behind the house through the overgrown garden.

  The back verandah was screened with wire mesh and converted into an aviary. There were budgerigars, lovebirds and a number of brilliantly coloured parrots and macaws. They began to flutter about excitedly as soon as D’Goa appeared. Clinging to the wire mesh, they watched him closely with bright beady eyes, hoping for some titbit.

  ‘Shaitaan ka bachcha!’ screeched a green parrot.

  ‘My – ee! How rude, m’n!’ Jacinta squealed.

  ‘What does it say, Jacinta?’ asked Judy.

  ‘It calling Uncal Francis a son of Satan.’

  D’Goa opened the door carefully and entered. ‘Mittoo! Mittoo! Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!’ he crooned to the bird which had just sworn at him.

  ‘Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!’ it crooned in reply.

  ‘Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!’ repeated Judy and David.

  There were six splendid macaws, vivid with splashes of red, yellow, blue and green. They flapped and screeched as they climbed along the perches, using claw and beak.

  ‘Hullo!’ said D’Goa to a red and yellow one grumping alone on a stand to which it was tethered with a light chain.

  ‘Does it talk?’ asked Judy, peering up at it.

  ‘When he wants to. One helluvah bastard, this one. Got to keep him chained. And what a boozer, Jacinta! Simply loves feni. I got him in Trinidad when I worked as a shippee – ’

  The bird ignored D’Goa. Sidling along to the end of its perch, it dipped its beak into a small tin of water and drank. Then it raised its head and looked away into the trees as it delivered a short sentence in Konkani.

  Jacinta gave a startled gasp and clapped her hands over her ears.

  ‘What did it say. Jacinta? What did it say?’ the children demanded.

  Jacinta lowered her eyes and turned very red in the face. But D’Goa leered at her through the wire, his belly jiggling as laughter rumbled in his barrel body. The bird repeated the line and calmly moved to the other end of the perch. D’Goa opened his mouth wide and roared with laughter. Looking up, David and Judy could see his stained and broken teeth and a very pink palate.