The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories

by Stephen Alter

  Then Varma turned and looked at his son. His face was so out of control and all in pieces, that the multitude of expressions that crossed it could not make up a whole and convey to the famous man exactly what his father thought of him, his skill, his art.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he croaked. ‘Let me die, I tell you.’

  ‘Papa, you’re joking,’ his son smiled at him, lovingly.

  ‘I’ve brought you a new tonic to make you feel better. You must take it, it will make you feel stronger again. Here it is. Promise me you will take it regularly, papa.’

  Varma’s mouth worked as hard as though he still had a gob of betel in it (his supply of betel had been cut off years ago). Then he spat out some words, as sharp and bitter as poison, into his son’s face. ‘Keep your tonic—I want none—I want none—I won’t take any more of-of your medicines. None. Never,’ and he swept the bottle out of his son’s hand with a wave of his own, suddenly grand, suddenly effective.

  His son jumped, for the bottle was smashed and thick brown syrup had splashed up, staining his white trousers. His wife let out a cry and came running. All around the old man was hubbub once again, noise, attention.

  He gave one push to the pillows at his back and dislodged them so he could sink down on his back, quite flat again. He closed his eyes and pointed his chin at the ceiling, like some dire prophet, groaning, ‘God is calling me—now let me go.’

  Chunilal Madia

  The Snake Charmer

  Jakhra, a snake charmer, was playing his flute studded with white, flower-like shells. He was playing it so loudly, it was as if he was puffing at the bellows of a blacksmith. And he was blowing so hard that it seemed his cheeks would burst. The show was at its climax. The male and the female cobras, which he had caught hissing from the ant-hill in the reef of Ujadia, were now swaying in the midst of that tightly packed crowd. The snakes were raising themselves in midair, spreading their hoods wide like sieves.

  The more the snakes swayed, the more Jakhra, who was kneeling when the show started, raised himself up and up. The muscles of his face became more and more tense every minute. It looked as if he was dragging air from the deepest hollows of his stomach and stuffing it in his flute.

  And, there was justification too for all this, for he had dragged into his basket a divine pair of cobras that would never have come under the spell of any spirit. And, even if they had, they would never have remained prisoners in the basket. Jakhra had achieved that difficult feat through the magic power which he had inherited from his dead father and which, at least in these parts, had not been equalled. At the instance of the head of the village, he was giving his first public performance that afternoon.

  The cobra pair was swaying and moving in the direction of the alluring music of the flute. Their movements were like the motion of ears of bajra (millet), full with fresh big grains, swaying with the wind passing over the fields. The audience was deeply absorbed in what they saw. All eyes were fixed on the pair. The two snakes, with their graceful curves near their heads, looked like two lean bodies, standing bent at the waist.

  This was the supreme moment of Jakhra’s life. It was the moment of fulfilment of that sacred power which his father had passed on to him, and for the attainment of which, the worshipper had to adopt arduous restraint.

  Jakhra’s quest had begun, many years ago. Old Ladhu, who could not maintain an all-round purity, initiated his only son into the sacred power so that it should not be forgotten. At the same time he warned his son about the difficulties and dangers of the path. He said the pursuit of the path demanded purity that would go beyond the austerities of the yogis of Jullundur. He emphasized that the threefold purity of mind, body and speech was absolutely essential if one wanted to follow this way. The slightest deviation—and one would roll down to the valley from the heights of attainment.

  Jakhra was then very young; yet he was not inexperienced in the field. When his father went from village to village with the basket of ‘animals’ on his shoulders, Jakhra would accompany him carrying the bag of tarpaulin in which would be stuffed the flute, the bowl and the snake charmer’s bag and many other odd things. When the show was on, his father would concentrate his eyes on the snakes. And Jakhra with his sharp eyes, would pick up small coins thrown by the onlookers in the dust. He made all the preparatory arrangements before the show began—such as playing the little trumpet to draw the crowd—first the children and then the grown-ups, clearing the place for the show, pulling out the mongoose from the bag and fixing his nail in the ground. In the meanwhile Ladhu would smoke dhattura to prepare himself for his arduous work. At the end of the game, when he gave threatening orders to the children to get some flour from home (and cursed their mothers if they did not bring any) and when the fear-ridden children did at last bring some leftover stuff, it was Jakhra who collected all the bits and pushed them into his bag.

  It was the unwritten, universal practice that the father and the son should get out of the town by evening. They had to face the police if they failed to do so.

  Actually, when they left the border of the town, they had to allow the guard to inspect all their paraphernalia—in case they were hiding in one of their baskets a high-caste child!

  The father and the son would go far into the forest and take out the crumbs of bread. If there was not enough to eat, Ladhu would make Jakhra eat even if he himself had to go hungry. He would pour milk in a shallow bowl for the snakes. At times, when the rays of the moon, filtering through the thick, vast tamarind tree, played hide-and-seek on Jakhra’s rosy, charming face, Ladhu thought of Jakhra’s mother who was as rosy and as charming. But the asceticism in Ladhu would check his emotions and bring him back to his senses. He would say to himself: ‘You were mad about her; as such you lost your hold over that magic power which is worth a lakh of rupees. Can the pursuer of this path ever afford to be mad about a woman? It needs strong willpower. If you make the slightest mistake, in no time it would take our own life. It is difficult to master the art. But it is more difficult to exercise it even after you have mastered it. You can cool the milk of a lioness only in a gold bowl—for it won’t cool in an earthen pot. When the Ganges was brought down to the earth, was not the great Mahadev himself present on the scene in person?’

  And at moments like these, Ladhu’s irrepressible ambition would begin to stir and whisper in his ears: ‘Let your son fulfil the unfulfilled desire of your heart. You learnt the magic with great difficulty. Let it not be forgotten. Let your son do what you could not do and put to shame all the charmers of the entire area.’

  Prompted by pride and ambition, he ordered Jakhra to remain a brahmachari. An ascetic’s life is full of hard tasks and sacrifices. Right from his childhood Jakhra had been living the hard life of self-denial. He would not even look at a six-month-old female child. All women were looked at as a sister or a mother. He would not eat forbidden food. Again, he would not drink the water polluted by someone else. He would keep his body clean. He would not slip his feet into his shoes without tapping his shoes thrice to shake off the dust and reciting the ordained mantra. And if, even by mistake, he touched an ‘unholy’ man, he would promptly have a bath.

  Jakhra grew up to be very handsome—graceful like a peacock. He was a well-proportioned mixture of his father’s manly strength and his mother’s charming grace. Rigorous training of the mind and a vigilant control over the senses gave a lustre to his shapely, handsome face. Every line of his body spoke eloquently of his ascetic power and the dazzling expression on his face spoke of his attainment in his art at so young an age.

  He put to test his knowledge of the magic by experimenting on a pair of cobras. It was rumoured that the pair was living in an ant-hill in a field at Ujadia. Great snake charmers had been playing on their flutes till they could play no more, but those snakes had not so much as raised themselves out of their ant-hill. Jakhra went there and began to play his flute which was studded with shells, white and pure like two rows of teeth. Two days passed but
nothing happened. But on the third day the cobras could no longer resist the sweet melody of the flute. They could not help swaying their bodies to the sweet tunes. Majestically, the pair slid out of the ant-hill. Jakhra suddenly brought them under the spell of his mantra. By the spell of his music the cobras lay stiff like pieces of wood and were at last closed in Jakhra’s basket.

  In his last moments, Ladhu had said: ‘God will be pleased with us only if we think of even the animals as our own flesh and blood. A snake should be held captive for fifteen days and released on the fifteenth day. If held even a day more it will amount to harassing dumb creatures and God will punish us.’ Guided by this counsel, Jakhra was aware that once the poisonous gland of the snake was removed even a child could safely play with it. Still as one who was proud of the maddening melody of his flute, he felt that he could control the deadliest of snakes without pulling out their fangs. So Jakhra had not bothered doing this with the pair of cobras in the basket.

  The wind carried the news that Jakhra had caught a new pair and through his flute alone had kept them under his spell. The news reached the elders in the village and they sent for him.

  Jakhra set the stage for the play. The swelling audience was rapt in attention. All eyes were concentrated on the cobras as they swayed in ecstasy. But there was a pair of eyes that was fixed not on the flute, nor on the swaying cobras, but on the handsome player of the flute. To those eyes, the one who could sway the cobras was more charming than the swaying snakes. They were the eyes of Teja Ba who was hiding behind the balcony door at the gate of her castle. She was the new Thakarani. Teja Ba was the very fountain of charm and grace. The entire village was under her spell. Teja Ba was so proud that she did not even care to glance at great princes. But it was Teja Ba’s greatest despair that she had not yet come across anyone who matched her. When she saw Jakhra, she at once felt that he was the man she would most certainly like to have.

  Jakhra, puffing up his cheeks as big as coconut shells, was swaying and with him was swaying the pair of cobras. In the centre of the hood of the male cobra was a lovely pale black mark. And that dark, beautiful hood on the bluish-white neck of the cobra was very charming indeed. It reminded one of the chhatra over the Shivalinga. And the female cobra, swaying by the side of her male, expressed her mighty power through her majestic curve which was very much like the arch of Puradwar. Jakhra’s eyes, ears and nose, his entire self were now concentrated only on the snout of the male cobra and on the brightly shining eyes of his female. Jakhra had become one with his flute.

  Those eyes that were stooping in that evocative silence— why didn’t they rise up just once, just for a moment?

  Finally, Teja Ba brushed her bangles on the door—so that those stooping eyes should be diverted to her.

  And at the tinkling sound, for a moment, yes, only for a moment Jakhra’s eyelashes rose.

  And in that wink of a moment, just in that brief moment Jakhra had an experience of his lifetime.

  The cobra pair had reached the pinnacle of joy when the notes of the flute had reached their climax. To bring them back from their ecstatic swaying, the tempo of the flute music was to be gradually slowed down. Instead, there was a sudden break—and that disturbed the absorbed cobras. The resultant agony was terrible. And the wrath and the consequent poison were still more terrible.

  With a frightening hiss the hood of the cobra struck Jakhra’s palm, and its sharp teeth made a wound there. The flute slipped from Jakhra’s hand. There was confusion in the crowd. But Jakhra was still alert. He somehow managed to get the cobras back in the basket.

  Very soon a glass-green round mark rose where the cobra had stung. The coins that the appreciative audience had thrown for him remained untouched, and Jakhra, resting his head on the basket in which he had just shut the cobras, fell into a swoon.

  Promptly the news spread all over the town that Jakhra had been bitten by the cobra.

  One of the people in the crowd remarked: ‘You may bring up a snake on milk, but it is a snake after all! It does not give up its nature so easily as all that!’

  ‘And then,’ came another remark, ‘however small, a cobra is always a terrible thing. Poison will always kill a person. It may be a small quantity or it may be big—poison is poison.’

  And again: ‘Is it not said that a mason would die as he is building and a pearl-diver would die in the stormy sea? In the same way, the snake charmer too would meet his death through his snakes!’

  ‘Is it a joke, keeping such enormous snakes in such big baskets? It is a task as difficult as walking on a razor’s edge. One must do penance like the most austere yogis—and one must deny oneself lots and lots of things. Only with the power of such purity can these “animals” be kept under control. It is, after all, not easy to shut the dwellers of the ant-hills in a basket!’

  ‘Moreover, an elderly, experienced snake charmer, may at least try to do something. This Jakhra is a mere boy. What could he do?’

  ‘And believe me, this profession of snake charmers is an art by itself—and it is a very difficult art at that. You must look after the snakes as if they are your own children. If you catch them, you can’t keep them in your basket longer than a fortnight.’

  ‘Even within that limit, is it a joke to have a pair of cobra snakes dance to the tune of the flute just for the sake of a few coins! You must have a heart of steel. And, it is not easy to have a heart of steel. Your mind must be pure. And your eyes should be clear like pouring oil. Even a little impurity can do a lot of harm. Snake charmers are destined to beg and so they have got to hold out their hand at every door. But their eyes must be always stooping. Even if the bracelets of the lady of the house jingle, the eyes of the snake charmer should never look up.’

  ‘That is how you can go along the path of knowledge. And knowledge is like mercury. Only the deserving and the learned can digest it. Moreover, it is an art to tame the snakes and to make them dance. The meek and the weak can’t hope to do it. It is easy to learn the trade of the snake charmers; but it is difficult to acquire real mastery of the art. Only a genius can do it!’

  The bhuva of Vacchda, who was the greatest expert in the whole area, came to relieve Jakhra of the pain of the poisonous sting of the cobra. He chanted mantra after mantra, and he tried his very best, but he was still unable to bring any relief.

  People were disappointed. Jakhra was lying stiff, as if in deep sleep. He seemed to have no consciousness at all!

  The audience expressed its disappointment in various ways. They were like a challenge to the bhuva who now started chanting his mantras desperately. But his efforts were still futile. He tried the final remedy against snake-bite. He took a long piece of cloth and recited some more mantras. And then, he gave one last warning to the snake. Now everybody expected that the poison from Jakhra’s wound would come out. If not, the bhuva would start tearing that piece of cloth from end to end and the snake too would get torn like that!

  People sitting beside Jakhra’s body heard him mutter something in his semi-conscious state. He was supposed to have said: ‘Bhuva, why are you harassing those dumb creatures in the basket? Had it been only the poison of the snake, it would have gone long ago. But with that poison is mixed that other poison which is sweet and yet sour—and there your magic won’t work.’

  And, even before the bhuva could properly try his last trick, Jakhra lay lifeless.

  But those two eyes, glistening bright behind the balcony door, remained fixed on Jakhra’s dead body.

  Translated from Gujarati by Sarla Jag Mohan

  P.S. Rege

  Savitri

  Whomsoever I desire, him I make bold,

  him the knower, him the seer, him of sharp intellect.

  Rig-Veda (X; 10: 125)

  I

  Tirupet: Coorg

  April 1939-July 1939

  We were not even acquainted. I wrote to you and you responded in the same impulsive manner. How shall I introduce myself to you? I hardly know myself how I grew
up—motherless and close to Appa, who was always engrossed in work. The first thing I ever learnt was to forget myself. The name you know already. Some call me Sau. But Appa once said: Child, you are joy itself (the word used by Appa was Anand-bhavani, which suggests joy-unfolding). Words like these come to him without effort—and since then I am like this (as you thought me in the beginning), joyous. You wrote and said—unreserved.

  When I was a child Rajamma had told me a story: An old woman and her little granddaughter, Lachhi, lived by a wood far away from the village. One day a peacock came near the old woman’s hut. When Lachhi saw the peacock she began to dance. The peacock danced too. Lachhi insisted the peacock be tied in the courtyard. The old woman asked: How can it be? Where have we the corn to feed him? The two couldn’t decide on anything. So the peacock himself said: I will stay here close by. I don’t need the corn. There’s the wood all around. But there is one condition. Whenever I come, Lachhi must dance. Lachhi agreed at once. The old woman was also satisfied. But dancing was no easy matter. If one must dance to order, the mind must be tuned. After that Lachhi was always joyous. One couldn’t really tell when exactly the peacock would come. Later on she wasn’t even aware whether the peacock had come and gone. Rajamma never tells you the point of her stories. I often think she makes them up herself and in the telling gives them imperceptibly the shape of grandma’s tales.

  I said: if one wants a peacock, one must become a peacock oneself. Whatever it is one wants, one has to be that oneself.

  It will be long before I leave this place. I will come to you some time, just like that, without letting you know.

  II

  In the train you expressed ‘surprise’ that I spoke in two different languages to the children with me. You fondly called it a marvel. But actually it was quite effortless. One of the boys belonged here, so his language was Tulu. The other was very small—two-and-a-half-years old—his language was Konkani. I had been entrusted with seeing them to their homes. In a way I am multi-lingual. But it has always been my experience that language is not much of a problem in dealing with children.