Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  The tea estates still have a very manicured look: whole hillsides covered in neatly clipped tea bushes with their long lines of pluckers snipping the proverbial two-leaves-and-a-bud (and a little bit more nowadays because America is a big market and appearance does not matter much in a tea bag).

  Our road snake-coiled up the mountains and the air had a nip in it because we had left the 5,000-ft line down below and were still climbing. The dusty deciduous trees of the plains gave way to shiny evergreens, but now even they were left behind and the tall trunks of conifers rose round us and the air was sharp with the tang of resin. For a while, we had caught glimpses of the tiny mountain train chugging away and then we had lost sight of it again, but now it had come into its own and was puffing clouds of indignant steam as we waited respectfully for it to pass across the road.

  And when the steam cleared, we saw Coonoor, red roofs stapled on the blueing hills, and we stepped back into another time....

  Coonoor is a tea town or, rather, it was a tea town till 1947, when the old Indian Army split into two and the Indian half went searching for a new Staff College to replace the old one left behind in Pakistan. They found it in the coniferous hills between Coonoor and the summer capital of the old Madras Presidency, Ootacamund. From then on, Coonoor became a Services town. Hundreds of keen young officers (and the terribly smart military wives) troop into Wellington and Coonoor every year and, though the names on the gateposts change, the accents alter only slightly, the manners not at all: the young men sport very bristly moustaches, their wives have brittle coffee parties in their bay-windowed cottages or, more daringly, join SCADS for a sly amateur dramatic dig at the local brass. And then there’s golf of an afternoon or, if the spirit has really got into your blood, fishing in the excellent trout waters deep in the mountains.

  Or then, again, you can ride to hounds if you would care to resurrect the Ooty Hunt. We were a bit puzzled at first when we saw the number of hunting prints displayed in the Staff College: each with the name of its donor carefully inscribed. We thought that a General had, in a moment of rashness, donated the first one and his junior officers had loyally followed their leader. We later learnt that, while this was partially true, it was also a fact that there used to be a thriving hunt tally-ho-ing over the downs. One of the last Masters of the Hunt was a Neptune-like naval officer from the Staff College who found nothing more delightful than donning his flaming jacket and tooting his horn as his beard fluttered in the early morning breezes of the Nilgiris.

  And if that is not enough to establish the atmosphere, they have even laid out a croquet court for the Staff College children. Flamingos, we presume, are provided by the Queen.

  The spirit of the Cheshire Cat was smiling insanely at us the next evening when Colleen and I met a very new-generation English couple: he, granny glasses, shoulder-length hair; she, close-cropped, black eyeliner, an expression of great weariness; both in baggy sweaters and leather belted jeans. We stood in the centre of a cocktail party and spoke of transcendental meditation, yoga and the efficacy of vegetarianism. They were, they told us, in search of peace. We asked them, politely, if they had found it in Coonoor.

  He stared into the middle horizon and she looked around languidly. The polished teak table gleamed with English silver and a white-liveried bearer wound his way through the chattering crowd. A very feminine girl, with lustrous black hair, in a Marks and Spencers suit, undulated past, trailing a cloud of Intimate. A burly young officer, wearing a regimental tie, guffawed loudly. Someone began to play the piano. The English girl’s tired eyes returned to me. She sniffed slightly and drawled: ‘Not peace. We haven’t found peace.’ She sniffed again and her husband smiled wanly. ‘But we have found history,’ she added. ‘Empire history.’ I might have been mistaken but there seemed to be a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

  Not that the chaiwallahs are far behind. Most of the young men who ‘go into tea’ are products of India’s public schools, and what the schools leave undone the companies complete. This is only natural in a trade where Brooke Bond and Lipton are still names to be conjured with. Down in the valley, at one end of the golf course, we danced on the wooden floors of the old Wellington Gymkhana. Mounted trophies of the hunt glared, glassy-eyed, down from the walls, and near the little bar was an Honours List of the Regiments that had manned the garrison.

  The secretary of the club is a retired Indian Army Brigadier, sabre straight, carnation in his buttonhole and no damned nonsense tolerated. Things don’t quite seem the same in the club as they are outside it. We were having chhota pegs with a young chaiwallah with a very Indian name, when someone brought a letter for his signature. He looked at it and then went cold with rage. ‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ he said, in a very proper accent, ‘that gentlemen are always addressed as “Esq.”, never, never, never as “Mr”?’ So compelling was the atmosphere of the club that we felt angry along with him, quite forgetting that Esquires and Misters had formally gone with the Raj twenty-seven long years ago....

  By Saturday, when we were driving into Ooty, I found myself referring to Colleen as ‘old girl’ – a term I hadn’t used for over two decades. It seemed to be appropriate in that hamlet with its undulating roads, bright gardens, velvet lawns and sudden glimpses of red brick and Tudor houses set amidst stands of tall conifers. We stopped at the village square...or what would have been the village square in another time and another land...and went through a little gate into a garden wild with British flowers, fronting a cottage as English as Victorian embroidery. Mrs Carter, whitehaired, brisk, very informative, has lived in the Nilgiris for years. She makes the most sought-after cheeses in the South – possibly in all India – and, in certain tea circles, no formal dinner is quite formal enough unless one follows it with Carter’s cheese.

  Mrs Carter is not the only Briton in the Nilgiris but most of them live out in the estates, managing properties as large as European principalities. Once a year, however, they all congregate for the wild UPASI week: seven days of parties and a general free-for-all hosted by the United Planters’ Association of South India. All tea trading in the Cochin auction stops and the up-and-coming young men in the brokerage firms make it a point of pilgrimage to be there and show the senior chaiwallahs that they have what it takes. During the UPASI week, Coonoor and Ooty become more Empire than one of Flashman’s more vivid memoirs.

  Our friend was manager of an estate, though he wasn’t British...at least not technically so...and we were sitting out on the lawns of his bungalow on our last day in the Nilgiris, watching the twilight touch the distant hills when the conversation turned to the UPASI week. Our host had a tweed jacket, grey bags, a clipped moustache and an even more clipped accent.

  ‘UPASI’s not what it used to be, ol’ boy. Not a patch.’ He puffed on his pipe reflectively. ‘Can’t be, of course. Times change. Pity.’ The briar glowed again. ‘Wonder if Charlie Brown’ll be there. God’s own Charlie Brown. Brick. Absolute brick.’ And then he looked across at me and barked: ‘Sundowner?’ I nodded and looked at the setting sun. I heard him clap his hands and yell: ‘Koi hai!’

  In spite of the hour, there are some places where the sun never sets.

  T W E N T Y

  Mataji and the Hippies

  BALWANT GARGI

  She sat on her haunches with nothing more than a saffron dhoti covering her body. She rubbed ganja in the palm of her hand. She was stocky as a filled-up gunnysack. Beads of sweat rolling off her body...age on her face...a trident tattooed on her forehead. A double-decker bun of matted hair atop.

  She intoned the name of Shiv Shankar and gave me her blessing. Sitting with her were her disciples – five young men and a girl. They were Americans who had wandered round the world in search of peace of mind and had ultimately found it in Benaras in Mataji’s little houseboat tethered to the banks of the holy Ganga. I took my seat beside her.

  Mataji rammed ganja down the nozzle of her long chillum. She wrapped a wet rag round the stem, put
it reverently against her forehead and roared the invocation of her patron deity:

  Bhum bhum bhum bhum

  Alakh Niranjan

  God of the Burning Ghats

  Destroyer of sorrows.

  The girl who wore a purple sarong around her waist got up. She made a taper from a piece of newspaper and lit it from an oil lamp burning in the corner. Mataji put the chillum to her lips as if she were blowing a sacred conch. The girl put the flaming taper to the pipe.

  Mataji inhaled deeply till the ganja was aflame. She took five quick puffs and then held her breath. She shut her eyes and held her breath; the veins of her neck seemed to be bursting. She handed back the chillum to the girl; her eyes were bloodshot. The girl bowed, took the chillum and, like Mataji, pressed it against her forehead before smoking it. She passed it on to her fellow-disciples.

  The houseboat was tethered at some distance from the ghat used as a cremation ground. I noticed that the inside of the boat was clean and tidy. On the wall there were many nude figurines dyed in deep colours. On a string nailed to the two sides were hung trousers, bush shirts and dhotis of many garish colours: green and pink and yellow. There were also a few loincloths.

  The disciples sat in silence while Mataji jabbered away at the top of her voice. Her speech was punctuated with loud slogans in honour of her gods. They imbibed every word she said as if it was nectar.

  Beside her was sprawled a young man in shorts with whiskers like those of Chengiz Khan. Next to him was a blue-eyed boy; then a youngster with a massive butcher’s beard. The fourth wore sadhu’s earrings and a saffron-coloured loincloth. The fifth sat rigidly in the lotus pose. On his yellow dhoti was printed ‘Ram Ram’. He was so thin and woebegone that each time he inhaled ganja he burst into violent coughs and his head collapsed on his navel. The girl was blonde, her hair tumbled over her shoulders down to her purple dhoti. She too wore the mark of the trident on her forehead; her eyelids had a green shadow about them. On her arms she wore several bracelets of basil seeds.

  Mataji was saying, ‘I’ve to bathe them, feed them, teach them. I give them a hundred sermons. If I did not look after these poor creatures they would die of hunger. They’re lost souls: they have dirty ways. You would not believe it but they eat with the same hand with which they wipe their bottoms.’ Her eyes sparkled when she emphasized her horror of their doings. She nodded towards the chap with the butcher’s beard. ‘He’s my Rama. Those two seated across are Bharata and Lakshmana and that chap sprawled at my feet is Kumbhakarna; and this girl is my favourite, Nandini. In her last life she was a fish in the Ganga. She performed good deeds and has been given human rebirth. And that fellow sitting across there in padmasana is my Prem Das. He does not eat or drink. Nothing stays in his stomach.’ She paused and said, ‘I must now go and make arrangements for their food. All they can do is to sit like cats staring at me.’ She got up and quickly swept out of the houseboat.

  The young man in saffron loincloth began to read loudly from a book on Confucius. The butcher-bearded Rama took out his flute and softly intoned the notes of the raga Bhairavi. The famished Prem Das sitting in the lotus pose engaged me in conversation. ‘We do not take ganja for its intoxicant effect or as a drink. This is worship. We are seeking ourselves. Who are we? Why? Where are we bound for? The past is dead, the future is lost. The older generation has sold our birthright. We have to atone for their follies. This “now” is helpless.... We...we are disillusioned and blinded. We cannot see objects lying under our very noses.’ He lit a cigarette and blew two jets of smoke down his nostrils. He continued, ‘Can you see any images in these jets of smoke? Can you see that the entire world is contained in the burning up of this cigarette? In this I see volcanoes erupting. I see valleys flooded with molten lava – cities reduced to ashes.’ He continued to smoke with his eyes fixed on the burning end of his cigarette. I asked: ‘Have you ever tried L.S.D.?’

  ‘Three times. Each time I saw new worlds open up before me. But in order to take L.S.D. you have to be in the proper frame of mind. You must have a guru, or someone who has been on the trip before. Here it is only the Mataji who can do so.’

  We began to discuss Mataji’s philosophy of salvation.

  There are many things said about Mataji on the banks of the Ganga. Some said that she had an affair with her cook. They had both come on a pilgrimage and the cook was swept away by the stream. Mataji had refused to return to her home. Others said that a party of sadhus had found her as an abandoned child in a bear’s cave and they had brought her to the Kumbh Mela and in time left her to the mercies of the holy river. Yet others said that she was descended from the Rani of Jhansi and had been performing penance and practising austerity for several incarnations.

  Prem Das had yet another version. ‘Mataji is from Gwalior. Her old father ran a paan-beedi shop on the main road. Different kinds of people came to this shop; truck drivers, tradesmen, tourists and sometimes gangs of dacoits. Mataji spent the day folding paan leaves for her customers. She was then eighteen, beautiful and bursting with youthfulness. She fell in love with a young Rajput named Mangal Singh.

  ‘Mangal Singh was the son of a wealthy landowner. He became a regular visitor to her father’s shop. It is there that he got to know that gangs of dacoits were in the habit of visiting the shop and drinking. One day Mangal Singh tricked the dacoits, informed the police and had them arrested. He had done all this because of his love for the eighteen-year-old girl. But the act of betrayal only converted Mataji’s love into hatred. Mangal Singh tried hundreds of ways to ask her forgiveness, but Mataji would not relent. “Get out of my sight; you are a low-born cur. Anyone who had suckled at the breasts of a Rajput mother would not practise such treachery. I do not want to see your face for the rest of my life.”

  ‘Mataji was so upset by this incident that she left her home one night and for many years she went about with parties of sadhus and then ended up here on the banks of the Ganga.’

  Prem Das spoke to me for almost two hours. I promised to see him again the next day and returned to my hotel. Many days later when I had nothing particular to do I decided to call on Mataji again. I bought a dozen bananas and apples and went to the houseboat. As I approached the houseboat I saw her striding up and down the sand bank. As soon as she saw me a broad smile lit her face. She greeted me: ‘Alakh Niranjan. Come along, son. The God of the Burning Ghats sent you here.’ She took me into the houseboat. Her disciples were sprawled on the floor. Only Prem Das was, as usual, sitting in the lotus pose with his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. His ribs showed through his chest.

  Mataji said: ‘Shankar has brought some fruits for you. Get up. You’ve not eaten anything since yesterday.’

  She sat down and crossed her legs. I placed the basket of fruits before her. She picked up a banana exactly as if it were her chillum, pressed it against her forehead, intoned the name of her gods, broke the fruit into two and threw away half as an offering to the sacred Ganga. The other half she gave to the butcher-bearded boy. He, too, pressed it against his forehead before he ate it. Mataji did not eat any of the fruit. She peeled and cut the bananas and apples and fed her brood. Only Prem Das did not eat.

  Mataji said: ‘My Prem Das will eat nothing today because I am fasting. It is masya – moonless night. Victory to Darkness! Victory to the God of the Burning Ghats!’

  I asked Mataji, ‘You make no secret of smoking ganja – what if the police found out?’

  She replied: ‘Ganja is a herb sacred to Lord Shiva. It’s no crime to smoke it. In Benaras alone there are eleven licensed ganja vendors. No one dare interfere with my sacred ritual. The Lord of the Burning Ghats would surely reduce him to cinders.’ To emphasize the point she stuck the sharp end of her trident into the wooden floor of the boat. With her red ganja-besotted eyes she glowered at me and cried, ‘Alakh Niranjan.’

  One banana and apple each made the disciples hungrier. Rama pleaded, ‘Mataji, please go to the bazaar and get us something to eat.’

 
‘When it’s time, I’ll go,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t yet received the Divine Command.’

  The disciples were silenced.

  At last Mataji relented. She rose and said, ‘All right, I’ll go and get you people something to eat. And for you Prem Das, rice and youghurt.’ She hurried out of the boat.

  The group maintained its silence for a while. Then Rama spoke. ‘Sometimes the spirit of Chandi, the Goddess of Destruction, comes into the body of our Mataji. When she loses her temper, we do not take it ill.’

  Suddenly there was a commotion outside. Shouting, stamping of heavy, hobnailed boots. The boat rocked. A huge police officer burst in. He had a pistol in his hand. A posse of armed constables followed him. The disciples sat where they were, lost in the haze of ganja fumes – unconcerned. I panicked.

  The police officer bared a row of glistening white dentures; his walrus moustache dyed a glossy black gave him a ghoulish appearance. ‘Stay where you are!’ he growled, pointing his weapon at the group.

  The constables began to look into the disciples’ bags, passports and papers. Their visas had expired. The officer ordered them out of the boat. The constables gathered their ganja chillums.

  The officer noticed me. He sniffed near my mouth to see if I had ganja odour. He asked my name and occupation and asked me to stand aside.

  ‘Take the lot to the station,’ he ordered.

  The disciples submitted without a protest. They were like a batch of passive resisters. Their faces glowed with beatific resignation. Only Prem Das murmured: ‘I am not well. You will have to feed me rice and yoghurt.’

  The police officer ignored the request. ‘March the bloody lot to the station,’ he barked.

  Down the sand bank came Mataji. Her arms were loaded with provisions. The setting sun lit up her ash and sweat smeared body in a crimson glow. She saw the police party and roared like a wounded tigress: ‘How dare you interrupt the worship of Bhairava! Get the hell out of here or the Lord of the Burning Ghats will reduce you to cinders!’ She descended like a thunderbolt.