Muni, now assured that the subject was still the horse and not the dead body, said, ‘This is our guardian, it means death to our adversaries. At the end of Kali Yuga, this world and all other worlds will be destroyed, and the Redeemer will come in the shape of a horse called Kalki; then this horse will come to life and gallop and trample down all bad men.’ As he spoke of bad men the figures of the shopman and his brother-in-law assumed concrete forms in his mind, and he revelled for a moment in the predicament of fellow under the horse’s hoof: served him right for trying to set fire to his home . . .
While he was brooding on this pleasant vision, the foreigner utilized the pause to say, I assure you that this will have the best home in the USA. I’ll push away the bookcase, you know I love books and am a member of five book clubs, and the choice and bonus volumes really mount up to a pile in our living-room, as high as this horse itself. But they’ll have to go. Ruth may disapprove, but I will convince her. The TV may have to be shifted too. We can’t have everything in the living room. Ruth will probably say what about when we have a party? I’m going to keep him right in the middle of the room. I don’t see how that can interfere with the party—we’ll stand around him and have our drinks.’
Muni continued his description of the end of the world. ‘Our pundit discoursed at the temple once how the oceans are going to close over the earth in a huge wave and swallow us—this horse will grow bigger than the biggest wave and carry on its back only the good people and kick into the floods the evil ones—plenty of them about,’ he said reflectively. ‘Do you know when it is going to happen?’ he asked.
The foreigner now understood by the tone of the other that a question was being asked and said, ‘How am I transporting it? I can push the seat back and make room in the rear. That van can take in an elephant’—waving precisely at the back of the seat.
Muni was still hovering on visions of avatars and said again, ‘I never missed our pundit’s discourses at the temple in those days during every bright half of the month, although he’d go on all night, and he told us that Vishnu is the highest god. Whenever evil men trouble us, he comes down to save us. He has come many times. The first time he incarnated as a great fish, and lifted the scriptures on his back when the floods and sea waves . . .’
‘I am not a millionaire, but a modest businessman. My trade is coffee.’
Amidst all this wilderness of obscure sounds Muni caught the word ‘coffee’ and said, ‘If you want to drink “kapi”, drive further up, in the next town, they have Friday markets, and there they open “kapi-otels”—so I learn from passers-by. Don’t think I wander about. I go nowhere and look for nothing.’ His thoughts went back to the avatars. ‘The first avatar was in the shape of a little fish in a bowl of water, but every hour it grew bigger and bigger and became in the end a huge whale which the seas could not contain, and on the back of the whale the holy books were supported, saved and carried.’ Having launched on the first avatar it was inevitable that he should go on to the next, a wild boar on whose tusk the earth was lifted when a vicious conqueror of the earth carried it off and hid it at the bottom of the sea. After describing this avatar Muni concluded, ‘God will always save us whenever we are troubled by evil beings. When we were young we staged at full moon the story of the avatars. That’s how I know the stories; we played them all night until the sun rose, and sometimes the European collector would come to watch, bringing his own chair. I had a good voice and so they always taught me songs and gave me the women’s roles. I was always Goddess Laxmi, and they dressed me in a brocade sari, loaned from the Big House . . .’
The foreigner said, ‘I repeat I am not a millionaire. Ours is a modest business; after all, we can’t afford to buy more than sixty minutes’ TV time in a month, which works out to two minutes a day, that’s all, although in the course of time we’ll maybe sponsor a one-hour show regularly if our sales graph continues to go up . . .’
Muni was intoxicated by the memory of his theatrical days and was about to explain how he had painted his face and worn a wig and diamond earrings when the visitor, feeling that he had spent too much time already, said, ‘Tell me, will you accept a hundred rupees or not for the horse? I’d love to take the whiskered soldier also but I’ve no space for him this year. I’ll have to cancel my air ticket and take a boat home, I suppose. Ruth can go by air if she likes, but I will go with the horse and keep him in my cabin all the way if necessary,’ and he smiled at the picture of himself voyaging across the seas hugging this horse. He added, ‘I will have to pad it with straw so that it doesn’t break . . .’
‘When we played Ramayana, they dressed me as Sita,’ added Muni. ‘A teacher came and taught us the songs for the drama and we gave him fifty rupees. He incarnated himself as Rama, and he alone could destroy Ravana, the demon with ten heads who shook all the worlds; do you know the story of Ramayana?’
‘I have my station wagon as you see. I can push the seat back and take the horse in if you will just lend me a hand with it.’
‘Do you know Mahabharata? Krishna was the eighth avatar of Vishnu, incarnated to help the Five Brothers regain their kingdom. When Krishna was a baby he danced on the thousand-hooded giant serpent and trampled it to death; and then he suckled the breasts of the demoness and left them flat as a disc though when she came to him her bosoms were large, like mounds of earth on the banks of a dug-up canal.’ He indicated two mounds with his hands. The stranger was completely mystified by the gesture. For the first time he said, ‘I really wonder what you are saying because your answer is crucial. We have come to the point when we should be ready to talk business.’
‘When the tenth avatar comes, do you know where you and I will be?’ asked the old man.
‘Lend me a hand and I can lift off the horse from its pedestal after picking out the cement at the joints. We can do anything if we have a basis of understanding.’
At this stage the mutual mystification was complete, and there was no need even to carry on a guessing game at the meaning of words. The old man chattered away in a spirit of balancing off the credits and debits of conversational exchange, and said in order to be on the credit side, ‘O honourable one, I hope God has blessed you with numerous progeny. I say this because you seem to be a good man, willing to stay beside an old man and talk to him, while all day I have none to talk to except when somebody stops by to ask for a piece of tobacco. But I seldom have it, tobacco is not what it used to be at one time, and I have given up chewing. I cannot afford it nowadays.’ Noting the other’s interest in his speech, Muni felt encouraged to ask, ‘How many children have you?’ with appropriate gestures with his hands. Realizing that a question was being asked, the red man replied, ‘I said a hundred,’ which encouraged Muni to go into details, ‘How many of your children are boys and how many girls? Where are they? Is your daughter married? Is it difficult to find a son-in-law in your country also?’
In answer to these questions the red man dashed his hand into his pocket and brought forth his wallet in order to take immediate advantage of the bearish trend in the market. He flourished a hundred-rupee currency note and asked, ‘Well, this is what I meant.’
The old man now realized that some financial element was entering their talk. He peered closely at the currency note, the like of which he had never seen in his life; he knew the five and ten by their colours although always in other people’s hands, while his own earning at any time was in coppers and nickels. What was this man flourishing the note for? Perhaps asking for change. He laughed to himself at the notion of anyone coming to him for changing a thousand—or ten-thousand-rupee note. He said with a grin, ‘Ask our village headman, who is also a moneylender; he can change even a lakh of rupees in gold sovereigns if you prefer it that way; he thinks nobody knows, but dig the floor of his puja room and your head will reel at the sight of the hoard. The man disguises himself in rags just to mislead the public. Talk to the headman yourself because he goes mad at the sight of me. Someone took away his pumpkins with
the creeper and he, for some reason, thinks it was me and my goats . . . that’s why I never let my goats be seen anywhere near the farms.’ His eyes travelled to the goats nosing about, attempting to wrest nutrition from the minute greenery peeping out of rock and dry earth.
The foreigner followed his look and decided that it would be a sound policy to show an interest in the old man’s pets. He went up casually to them and stroked their backs with every show of courteous attention. Now the truth dawned on the old man. His dream of a lifetime was about to be realized. He understood that the red man was actually making an offer for the goats. He had reared them up in the hope of selling them some day and, with the capital, opening a small shop on this very spot. Sitting here, watching the hills, he had often dreamt how he would put up a thatched roof here, spread a gunny sack out on the ground, and display on it fried nuts, coloured sweets and green coconut for the thirsty and famished wayfarers on the highway, which was sometimes very busy. The animals were not prize ones for a cattle show, but he had spent his occasional savings to provide them some fancy diet now and then, and they did not look too bad. While he was reflecting thus, the red man shook his hand and left on his palm one hundred rupees in tens now. ‘It is all for you or you may share it if you have the partner.’
The old man pointed at the station wagon and asked, ‘Are you carrying them off in that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said the other, understanding the transportation part of it.
The old man said, ‘This will be their first ride in a motor car. Carry them off after I get out of sight, otherwise they will never follow you, but only me even if I am travelling on the path to Yama Loka.’ He laughed at his own joke, brought his palms together in a salute, turned around and went off, and was soon out of sight beyond a clump of thicket.
The red man looked at the goats grazing peacefully. Perched on the pedestal of the horse, as the westerly sun touched the ancient faded colours of the statue with a fresh splendour, he ruminated, ‘He must be gone to fetch some help, I suppose!’ and settled down to wait. When a truck came downhill, he stopped it and got the help of a couple of men to detach the horse from its pedestal and place it in his station wagon. He gave them five rupees each, and for a further payment they siphoned off gas from the trucks and helped him to start his engine.
Muni hurried homeward with the cash securely tucked away at his waist in his dhobi. He shut the street door and stole up softly to his wife as she squatted before the lit oven wondering if by a miracle food would drop from the sky. Muni displayed his fortune for the day. She snatched the notes from him, counted them by the glow of the fire, and cried, ‘One hundred rupees! How did you come by it? Have you been stealing?’
‘I have sold our goats to a red-faced man. He was absolutely crazy to have them, gave me all this money and carried them off in his motor car!’
Hardly had these words left his lips when they heard bleating outside. She opened the door and saw the two goats at her door. ‘Here they are!’ she said. ‘What’s the meaning of all this?’
He muttered a great curse and seized one of the goats by its ear and shouted, ‘Where is that man? Don’t you know you are his? Why did you come back?’ The goat only wriggled in his grip. He asked the same question of the other too. The goat shook itself off. His wife glared at him and declared, ‘If you have thieved, the police will come tonight and break your bones. Don’t involve me. I will go away to my parents . . .’
A Pair of Mustachios
MULK RAJ ANAND
There are various kinds of mustachios worn in my country to mark the boundaries between the various classes of people. Outsiders may think it stupid to lay down, or rather to raise, lines of demarcation of this kind, but we are notorious in the whole world for sticking to our queer old conventions, prides and prejudices even as the Chinese or the Americans, or for that matter, the English . . . and at any rate, some people may think it easier and more convenient to wear permanent boundary lines like mustachios, which only need a smear of grease to keep them bright and shiny, rather than to wear frock coats, striped trousers and top hats, which constantly need to be laundered and dry-cleaned, and the maintenance of which is already leading to the bankruptcy of the European ruling classes. With them clothes make the man, but to us mustachios make the man. So we prefer the various styles of mustachios to make the differences between the classes.
And very unique and poetical symbols they are too. For instance, there is the famous lion moustache, the fearsome upstanding symbol of that great order of resplendent rajas, maharajas, nababs and English army generals who are so well known for their devotion to the King Emperor. Then there is the tiger moustache, the uncanny several-pointed moustache worn by the unbending unchanging survivals from the ranks of the feudal gentry who have nothing left but the pride in their greatness and a few mementoes of past glory, scrolls of honour granted by former emperors, a few gold trinkets, heirlooms, and bits of land. Next there is the goat moustache—a rather unsure brand, worn by the noveau riche, the new commercial bourgeoisie and the shopkeeper class who somehow don’t belong—an indifferent, thin little line of a moustache, worn so that its tips can be turned up or down as the occasion demands—a show of power to some coolie or humility to a prosperous client. There is the Charlie Chaplin moustache worn by the lower middle class, by clerks and professional men, a kind of half-and-half affair, deliberately designed as a compromise between the traditional full moustache and the clean-shaven Curzon cut of the sahibs and the barristers, because the babus are not sure whether the sahibs like them to keep mustachios at all. There is the sheep moustache of the coolies and the lower orders, the mouse moustache of the peasants, and so on.
In fact, there are endless styles of mustachios, all appropriate to the wearers and indicative of the various orders as rigorously adhered to as if they had all been patented by the Government of India or had been sanctioned by special appointment with His Majesty the King or Her Majesty the Queen. And any poaching on the style of one class by members of another is resented, and the rising ratio of murders in my country is interpreted by certain authorities as being indicative of the increasing jealousy with which each class is guarding its rights and privileges in regard to the mark of the mustachio.
Of course, the analysis of the expert is rather too abstract, and not all the murders can be traced to this cause, but certainly it is true that the preferences of the people in regard to their mustachios are causing a lot of trouble in our parts.
For instance, there was a rumpus in my own village the other day about a pair of mustachios.
It so happened that Seth Ramanand, the grocer and moneylender, who had been doing well out of the recent fall in the price of wheat by buying up whole crops cheap from the hard-pressed peasants and then selling the grain at higher prices, took it into his head to twist the goat moustache, integral to his order and position in society, at the tips, so that it looked nearly like a tiger moustache.
Nobody seemed to mind very much, because most of the mouse-moustached peasants in our village are beholden to the bania, either because they owe him interest on a loan, or an instalment on a mortgage of jewellery or land. Besides, the Seth had been careful enough to twist his moustache so that it seemed nearly, though not quite, like a tiger moustache.
But there lives in the vicinity of our village, in an old, dilapidated Moghul style house, a Mussulman named Khan Azam Khan, who claims descent from an ancient Afghan family whose heads were noblemen and councillors in the Court of the Great Moghul. Khan Azam Khan, a tall, middle-aged man, is a handsome and dignified person, and he wears a tiger moustache and remains adorned with the faded remnants of a gold-brocaded waistcoat, though he hasn’t even a patch of land left.
Some people, notably the landlord of our village and the moneylender, maliciously say that he is an imposter, and that all his talk about his blue blood is merely the bluff of a rascal. Others, like the priest of the temple, concede that his ancestors were certainly attached to th
e Court of the Great Moghuls, but as sweepers. The landlord, the moneylender and the priest are manifestly jealous of anyone’s long ancestry, however, because they have all risen from nothing, and it is obvious from the stately ruins around Khan Azam Khan what grace was once his and his forefathers. Only Khan Azam Khan’s pride is greatly in excess of his present possessions, and he is inordinately jealous of his old privileges and rather foolish and headstrong in safeguarding every sacred brick of his teetering house against vandalism.
Khan Azam Khan happened to go to the moneylender’s shop to pawn his wife’s gold nose ring one morning and he noticed the upturning tendency of the hair of Ramanand’s upper lip which made the bania’s goat moustache look almost like his own tiger moustache.
‘Since when have the lentil-eating shopkeepers become noblemen?’ he asked sourly, even before he had shown the nose ring to the bania.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Khan,’ Ramanand answered.
‘You know what I mean, seed of a donkey!’ said the Khan. ‘Look at the way you have turned the tips of your moustache upwards. It almost looks like my tiger moustache. Turn the tips down to the style proper to the goat that you are! Fancy the airs of the banias nowadays!’
‘Oh, Khan, don’t get so excited,’ said the moneylender, who was nothing if he was not amenable, having built up his business on the maxim that the customer is always right.
‘I tell you, turn the tip of your moustache down if you value your life!’ raged Khan Azam Khan.
‘If that is all the trouble, here you are,’ said Ramanand, brushing one end of his moustache with his oily hand so that it dropped like a dead fly. ‘Come, show me the trinkets. How much do you want for them?’
Now that Khan Azam Khan’s pride was appeased, he was like soft wax in the merchant’s sure hand. His need, and the need of his family for food, was great, and he humbly accepted the value which the bania put on his wife’s nose ring.
Best Loved Indian Stories of the Century, Volume 1 Page 3
