Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘Who does not know that for a whole year, till his annual shraddha fully satisfied him – and for your information I was obliged to share half of the expense – I never stepped out of my house at night even at the most violent call of nature?’ declared Shombhudas, the moneylender.

  ‘No, Sahib, you, after all, are a stranger to them and a foreigner. How much do you know about the native ghosts? You ought not to trust them. If they get a chance they twist the necks of even the exorcists!’ revealed the second pandit of the school.

  ‘Of course it would be libellous to say that there are no good-natured ghosts at all. As a boy I saw the illustrious Mahatma Languly Baba. Yes, I saw him with these very eyes which I sport before you. Will you, kindly, Baboo, explain to the Sahib that the Baba wore not even a finger-long linen? I saw him when he was three centuries old. Isn’t the history of his birth and his life most amazing? Once a terrible plague struck the land and the Mahatma’s mother, taken for dead, was thrown on the cremation ground as people were fed up with burying or burning their dead with so many dying every day. And what do you think happened? The Mahatma was born right there in the cremation ground and howled for one full day and night beside his mother’s corpse until he was picked up by a couple of vagrants. Tell me, who protected the Mahatma for twenty-four hours? Jackals and dogs and vultures and ravens were all there, but all sat twelve yards away, watching the Mahatma in silent awe. Tell me, who threw an invisible cordon around the infant Mahatma?’

  One of our prominent villagers threw this question like a challenge to all and sundry while inching nearer the professor, and promptly provided the answer himself: ‘Evidently, a committee of enlightened ghosts. Did Languly Baba ever care to talk to human beings or did he care to wear clothes? Never! If at all he talked, it was with the invisibles around him.’

  ‘And, Sahib, isn’t the issue of believing in God or not quite absurd? Is God a moneylender or pawnbroker that the question of trust should arise? He created the earth, he brought us down here, he will take us away elsewhere, he will bring us here again, he will take us away, again he will... ’

  All heads swayed in rhythm suggesting general approval of the head pandit’s explanation.

  I translated the observations faithfully. The professor leaned back. ‘Fantastic!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Beyond the river, Sahib, there is the place where Languly Baba took birth. You can see the place yourself if you doubt the story!’

  Dr Batstone brightened up at the reference to the river, ‘No hot water for me tomorrow, please,’ he told me. ‘I must have a dip in your sweet river. The water looks so inviting! There are no crocodiles, I hope.’

  My knowledge of my village was meagre, having lived in the town since childhood. I questioned my people about crocodiles. They seemed scandalized and put this counter-question to me almost in a spirit of protest: ‘Crocodiles? Of course they are very much there in the river, Baboo! They cannot live atop trees or hills, as you should know better than us having read bulky books! But do they ever harm the people of our village? What have we to fear from a crocodile as long as the Crocodile’s Lady is there?’

  Several of them pointed their fingers in a certain direction.

  I had no desire to translate their statements in full. I simply informed the professor that there was no cause for fear from crocodiles.

  But the professor had to know everything the villagers said. Their pointing their fingers in a certain direction had not escaped his notice.

  I had to tell him what I knew:

  ‘Dr Batstone, that is a crazy story. You know how credulous our people are. Years ago there lived an old couple on the river bank. They had a daughter who had been married at the age of three and had become a widow at four. She lived with her parents and, people say, grew up to be a beautiful damsel.

  ‘One day while bathing in the river with the other women, she was dragged away by a crocodile. She was given up for dead. But a decade later she suddenly reappeared in the village. Her father had died and her mother was dying. Their little hut on the river was in shreds.

  ‘One morning, two days later, a crocodile was found crawling on the embankment behind her hut. The earth, loose at one place, gave way under its weight. It slipped down on the village side of the embankment and the people thrashed it to death.

  ‘The young lady’s mother died and perhaps the lady was too sad to talk to anybody. She wept and kept to her hut. Somehow a strange story began to circulate: the crocodile who had carried away the girl had in due course married her. After ten years the girl had returned home to see her parents. The crocodile, unable to bear the separation, had come to take her back!’

  ‘Great!’ exclaimed the beaming professor.

  ‘And there is a sequel to this legend. Our people say that out of respect for the woman who had once married a member of their species, the crocodiles of the river do not harm our villagers. And this in spite of the fact that the chivalrous crocodile had been killed,’ I added.

  ‘And what happened to the lady?’ asked the professor, beaming and agog with excitement.

  ‘She is very much there – must be in her nineties – known as the Crocodile’s Lady,’ I replied. ‘By turns the villagers feed her. They also repair her hut when necessary.’

  ‘But what did the woman really do during that mysterious decade? What could have happened to her after the crocodile had carried her away?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I doubt if anybody ever took the trouble to investigate. She narrates some tales when asked and that satisfies our womenfolk and kids.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ cried the professor, ‘Please, Baboo, let us once interview the venerable lady. Let us dig out the facts. Let us solve the enigma for our own satisfaction!’

  Moonrise was still an hour away. I led the way with a torch. The professor stumbled twice, first against a mildly protesting dog and then against a tortoise out for a nocturnal meander. But the professor did not mind the inconvenience.

  The Crocodile’s Lady sat crouching beside a kerosene lamp in a corner of her hut, softly singing to herself, with her chin on her knees. She smiled at us most affably.

  We sat down facing her and poured into her ancient stone vessel some crushed rice and sweetened milk with which her toothless gums would have no difficulty. She smiled again.

  ‘Look, Granny, here is a sahib, not a native baboo, mind you, but a genuine sahib, who has come to our land from beyond the seven seas. He desires to hear something from you.’

  She showed neither surprise nor hesitation. ‘I will tell you about the Wandering Prince and the Charming Princess,’ she offered.

  ‘Oh no, Granny, we would like to hear something about yourself. People call you the Crocodile’s Lady, don’t they? But will you tell us what happened to you during the ten years you were away from the village – where exactly did you live and what did you do?’

  She had no difficulty in hearing. And what amazed me was the ease with which she spoke although her voice was no louder than a bee’s drone. Dr Batstone asked me to translate every word she uttered, and I did so as literally as possible:

  ‘After the crocodile caught me, my son, he took me down, down, down – seven-palm-tree deep! I did not know what to do....’

  ‘Oh no, Granny, we are not interested in tales. We wish to know what really happened. To begin with, how did you manage to escape from the crocodile?’ I interrupted her.

  There was no change in her tone. She continued, ‘Under seven-palm-tree deep water, my son, when I regained my consciousness, I saw the crocodile intently staring into my eyes. I don’t know what happened to me. I could not take my eyes away from his....’

  ‘Granny, if you don’t remember how you escaped from the crocodile, at least tell us all about your life thereafter,’ I interrupted her again.

  ‘But how could have I escaped, my son?’ she asked. ‘Could I take away my eyes? No! Under seven-palm-tree deep water, there was no sun, no moon, no day, no night. How can I say how long I
remained like that?’

  I gave up, partly because I found her impossible, but mainly because of the irresistible curiosity and the rapt attention with which Dr Batstone was listening to her. I resigned myself to faithfully rendering into English whatever she said.

  She talked for nearly one and a half hours. In the flickering flame of the lamp our phantom shadows danced on the mud wall and occasionally we could hear the oars stabbing at the waters in the river behind her hut.

  With great zest and earnestness she went on narrating the story of her life with the crocodile, in a deep pit at the confluence of two rivers, some miles to the north of our village.

  She would have tried to escape, but floating on the surface of the river she had discovered a terrible thing, her own reflection on the water: ‘It was that of a crocodile!’ Was it when the crocodile carried her, unconscious, to his home that the change had come over her? Or was it when they remained looking at each other? She did not know.

  She felt miserable and wept. The crocodile tried his best to make her accept the condition in good humour. But he did not succeed. At last the melancholy crocodile told her: ‘Well, then, take this mantra. Whenever you recite it thrice, you will resume your human form. But it will not work as long as I am near you, for the moment you recite it, I cannot help reciting a different mantra to counter its effect.’

  The crocodile could not restrain his tears when he went out for his regular swim the next day. ‘I know, I will not find you when I return. But take care not to recite the mantra while you are in the deep waters. If you do, you will turn human and get drowned! Recite it only after swimming up to your village ghat, close to the bank,’ was his parting advice.

  But the crocodile found her waiting for him when he returned.

  He was overjoyed.

  And he continued to find her day after day after day....

  They swam together happily from shore to shore and from confluence to confluence.

  One day they swam into a bigger river and swam for many miles until they arrived at the famous ghat of a holy city. The lady asked the crocodile, ‘May I go into the city for a glimpse of the deity?’ He gladly agreed and waited. She went near the ghat, recited the mantra, assumed her human form, visited the temple and returned by evening. As soon as she jumped into the water the crocodile uttered his mantra and changed her into his mate. What a delight was theirs!

  This was repeated several times; she visited several holy spots on the river. But despite her great longing, she avoided visiting her own village lest she should fail to return to her crocodile.

  It was only after ten years that she felt overwhelmed by the memory of her parents. The crocodile gave her permission to go to see them upon the condition that she would return within a day.

  She came and found that her father had died years ago. Her mother was on the point of death with no one to attend upon her. She remained in the hut for two days until her mother breathed her last. But in the meantime the anxious crocodile had risked climbing the embankment, only to be killed.

  The Crocodile’s Lady had lived alone in her hut for nearly seventy years.

  A pair of jackals howled right in front of the hut and the professor woke up from his trance.

  The bright moonlight was softened by mist.

  We walked silently. The professor stumbled against the same dog which did not protest any more and perhaps the same tortoise now on its way back to the river. But his mind did not seem to register the experience. He walked like a somnambulist.

  He suddenly stopped on the river bank and asked, ‘Where is that confluence?’

  ‘Which confluence?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, where they lived – the crocodile and his lady!’ I laughed and uttered the professor’s pet word, ‘Fantastic!’ and added, ‘Dr Batstone, I’m afraid, you took Granny’s tale too seriously!’

  The professor became grave. We resumed our homeward walk. But now he walked like the intellectual scholar he was.

  Many years later the professor wrote to me from his city of skyscrapers: ‘Often I pass into a reverie remembering the days and nights I spent in your village. Surely, I was under the spell of a mantra (who uttered it?) for a brief time. Fantastic!’

  F O U R T E E N

  Descent from the Rooftop

  ANITA DESAI

  ‘It’s on the top floor,’ said Vivek as he bent to open the door and let her out of the car. She gathered the brocade hem of her sari about her ankles and stepped out on the pavement that was, as she knew it would be, richly painted with splotches of betel juice and papered with greasy paper bags that had bits of food still attached to them. The whole street, being a gully between the tall blocks of flats that appeared to be composed entirely of kitchens and drying rooms for laundry, retained its every sound and smell, echoed and magnified them till the smells and sounds themselves stood as thick and solid as walls and blocks of concrete.

  Skirting the group of watchmen who sat at the entrance, smoking, they entered the lobby. She would have liked to stand there, nevertheless, and read the names on the wooden board by the lift – the parochial variety of names in Bombay amused her so much – but the lift doors slid open as soon as Vivek pressed the button.

  ‘Top floor,’ he told the lift man and they ascended with an aching slowness that made her certain the lift would stick between floors. (She had been told that her fear of lifts only showed what a villager she was, so she did not mention this to Vivek.) It passed each floor with a guttural, grinding sound, then continued lazily to the top. She looked quickly into the mirror before following Vivek out – but too quickly to see more than the blur of her face turning, a circle of crimson in the lower half, a sparkle of gems at the sides, turning away. Worried at not having made sure her hair was smooth, her lipstick unsmeared, she followed Vivek out. She was to be introduced to some of Vivek’s best friends, the Ramchandanis. If they were not his closest friends, they were certainly those of whom he felt most proud.

  The door of their flat stood hospitably open but they hesitated to enter – even Vivek was hesitant, she noticed, and it made her still more nervous. There was the stillness of complete vacancy in the mirrored hall and in the drawing room beyond it. She stood staring at the very sumptuous carpets – not laid on the floor but hung upon the walls which struck her as a most original piece of sophistication – and the black marble of the floor that glittered and reflected the white upholstery and the numerous pieces of bronze, copper and stone statuary that decorated the room and, by their silence and immobility, emphasized its vacancy.

  ‘Are you sure it was tonight?’ she murmured, clutching her handbag, and he turned to snap at her when a servant in white livery came skimming forward on the white boat of his reflection upon the black marble floor, and said, ‘Sahib is on the terrace.’

  ‘Oh, is he?’ cried Vivek with an expression of relief in his voice.

  ‘This way, please,’ the servant pointed. But Vivek said, ‘I know the way, I know it,’ and gave Sita a push in the right direction. He followed her, his shoes pounding the staircase with the same ring of relief that his voice had had.

  As they went up they heard voices, voices that sounded plangent and yet fragile, night-blooming voices. She hesitated on the top step and Vivek took her by the arm, saying, in his affable party voice, ‘Wonderful idea, having your party out in the open.’

  Since Vivek himself knew none of the other guests, the fact that he had brought with him his new wife received attention from no one but the hostess who did not seem unduly interested or excited. She merely said, ‘What is your name? Sita? Come, let me introduce you...’ and let her into the ring of chairs set out under the stars. She placed Sita next to a woman with a broad creamy face like a bowl of cream in which the two goldfishes of her orange lips were half-sunk, and told her: ‘This is Vivek Ahuja’s new bride – she has just come to Bombay,’ and left her to see to Vivek’s drink.

  ‘From where?’ asked her neighbour, off-handedly, out of an automat
ic and stale politeness.

  ‘Saurashtra,’ said Sita in a rasping voice, and cleared her throat, acutely conscious of the smallness of her home town and its distance from the metropolis.

  ‘The desert!’ exclaimed the orange-lipped woman with an awe that was, however, short-lived, for the next thing she did was to turn to the woman at the other side and resume their interrupted discussion of the price of Kundan jewellery in Meena Bazaar.

  Their host, a bald and rotund man dressed in impeccable white Dacron trousers, a white terylene bush-shirt and dazzling white shoes, came to ask her what she would like to drink.

  ‘A soft drink, please,’ rasped Sita, embarrassed, and cleared her throat again.

  For a few minutes he tried to persuade her to have whisky instead but she flushed, shook her head and repeated her ‘No, thank you’ so often that he tired and went away to send her a glass of Coca-Cola diluted to insipidity by four ice cubes.

  After that no one spoke to her again and she was left in perfect solitude to observe, listen and study. It was not her first cocktail party in Bombay but it was her smartest, and its very setting – in between layers of lights, the stars in the deep, aquatic night sky and the lights of the city below – had an elevated theatricality about it that quite awed her. All the sounds and smells of which the city seemed composed when one was at ground level had remained in the gullies below, far below, dwindled into insignificance, unreality even. All the city was composed of, when seen from the rooftop, was light – brave lights, gay lights, gentle lights, in clusters, in garlands of silver and gold, interspersed by the violent shades of neon signs – pink, green and violet. In the harbour the ships lifted their illuminated masts against the low hills and the dimmer stars. The different levels of these lights and stars, the straight lines and the elevations and descents, resembled a sheet of music written in light. It occurred to her that the grandeur of the scene was like the grandeur of a symphony and the idea pleased her.