by Premchand
But it is one thing to make a timetable, another to follow it. I would break the rules from the very first day. The greenery of the sports field, the sweet breeze that blew there, the joy of running after the football, the pick-and-throw of kabaddi, the speed and sureness of volleyball—all these would pull me in strange and unknown ways. Once on the sports field, I would forget everything else. That murderous timetable, those books that would blind me one day—I would remember nothing. And Big B would get yet another occasion to give his lecture. I began to run from the very sight of him. I would try my best to stay away from his all-seeing eyes. I would enter the room on tiptoe lest he spotted me. The moment he looked in my direction, I could feel my life ebbing out of me. I constantly felt as though a sword dangled above my head. But just as man remains caught up in the affairs of the world even at a time of trouble or death, my interest in fun and games remained unabated despite the scoldings and insults.
II
The yearly exams took place. Big B failed, I not only passed but also stood first in my class. There was now only a difference of two classes between him and me. There was a lot I wanted to tell Big B: ‘What happened to all your hard work? Look at me; I had a lot of fun playing and yet I have stood first in my class.’
But he was so sad that I felt truly sorry for him and the thought of sprinkling salt on his wounds seemed a shameful thing to do. My self-confidence, however, grew—as did my pride. And with it Big B’s awe lessened. I began to take part in fun and games with a greater sense of freedom. I had decided: if he ever tries to give me a lecture I shall tell him what I think. I shall say, ‘What have you gained after all the long hours of labour? Look at me, I played all day and yet I stood first in my class!’ Though I didn’t have the courage to actually say these words aloud, it was clear from my behaviour that Big B’s days of tyrannical rule over me were a thing of the past.
Big B sensed it. He was quite clever in these simple matters. One day, when after playing gulli-danda all morning, I was returning home in time for my meal, Big B was ready and waiting to attack. He pounced on me, ‘I can see that passing this year and coming first in your class has gone to your head. But, my dear brother, remember that many great men have lost their pride; you are nothing in comparison to them. You must have read about Ravan’s fate. What have you learnt from reading about him? Or did you just read without understanding? Simply passing in History is not enough; the real thing is the growth and development of your brain. You must understand whatever you read. Ravan ruled over a large empire. Such kings are called chakravarti kings, or supreme rulers. The English too rule over large parts of the world but they cannot be called chakravarti. Many countries do not accept the supremacy of the English; they remain independent and free. But Ravan was a chakravarti ruler. All other rulers paid him a tax. Even the gods obeyed him. Even the gods of fire and water accepted him as their master. Yet what was Ravan’s end? Pride caused him to fall. In the end, there was no one with him. A man may do any wrong but he must not be proud. The day you become proud, your days are numbered.
‘You must have read about Satan. He began to believe that there could be no greater believer in God than him. In the end he was pushed out from Heaven and thrown into Hell. The Emperor of Rome too became a victim of pride. He died a beggar. You have merely passed one class and it has gone to your head. Remember, you have not passed because of hard work; it is simply good luck, a matter of chance. But it won’t happen every time. In gulli-danda sometimes you get a blind shot; it doesn’t make you an expert player. The expert player is one whose shots never go waste. Don’t go by the fact that I have failed. When you come to my class you will know how tough it is. When you have to read Algebra and Geometry, the History of England, and remember the names of the kings, all eight Henrys! Do you think it is easy to remember which event took place during which King Henry’s rule? If you write Henry VIII instead of Henry VII you lose all your marks. Not even a zero; you get nothing! What do you know about anything? There were dozens of James, another dozen Williams and thousands of Charles. It is enough to make your head spin. They couldn’t even think of new names; instead, they kept adding II, IV, V after the same name. I could have told them a million names, had someone asked me.
‘And Geometry . . . only god can save you from it! If, instead of a b c, you write a c b you end up losing all your marks. No one ever asks these cruel examiners what is the difference between a b c and a c b? Why do they kill innocent students over pointless, silly things? Whether you eat rice, dal and roti or dal, rice and roti—what is the difference? But do these examiners care? They want students to memorize every word that is written in the textbooks. And this learning by rote they have called Education. But what is the use of memorizing these pointless things? If you drop that perpendicular over this line, then the base will be double the first line. Ask them what is the advantage or purpose? Whether it is double or half—how does it benefit me? But if you want to pass in the exams you have to remember all these nonsensical details.
‘Or they say—write an essay on Punctuality in two–three pages. You open your copy, pen in hand, lost in thought. Everyone knows that it is good to be punctual, it brings order and discipline in a person’s life, people like a punctual person, it is good for business. But how can you write four pages on this? What is the point of taking four pages to write on something that can be said in one line? I call this stupidity. This is wasting time, not saving it. I think people should say what they have to say as briefly as possible and then get going. But, no, you have to cover four pages with ink, no matter how you do it. What is this if it isn’t cruelty towards students? And to top it all, they say “Write in brief”! Write on Punctuality but take four pages! Wonderful! It is like telling someone to run fast slowly! Does it make any sense? Even a child knows it is silly but not these teachers. They think they are know-alls. You will know how tough it is when you come to my class. You are flying high these days because you have stood first in your class. But you must listen to me. I may have failed but I am older than you. I have more experience of the world than you have. Listen carefully to what I have to say, or else you will regret.’
Fortunately, it was time to go to school or no one knows when that lecture would have ended. My meal seemed tasteless. If I am insulted like this after passing, I wondered, what would be my fate if I fail? I was terrified of the scary picture Big B had painted of the sheer amount of work that had to be done in his class. It is a wonder that I didn’t run away from school after that lecture. But despite all the insults that had been heaped upon me, my disinterest in books remained as before. I never allowed any opportunity to play to slip from my hands. I would read, but very little—just enough to complete the work given to me and save me from the teachers’ scoldings. The confidence I had gained soon disappeared and I went back to living like a guilty thief.
III
The yearly examinations came around once again and it so happened that I passed once again and Big B failed yet again. I hadn’t worked very hard but I don’t know how I stood first in my class. I myself was amazed. Big B had tried his level best. He had memorized every word of the syllabus. He would study till ten in the night and then again from four in the morning and from six till nine before leaving for school. Yet he failed. I pitied him. When the results were announced, he burst into tears. My own joy was dimmed. If I had failed too Big B would have been less unhappy but who can undo the doings of Fate.
Now only one class separated Big B and me. An unkind thought arose in my mind: If Big B were to fail yet again, he and I would be in the same class. How would he, then, scold me? But with a great deal of effort I removed the wicked thought. After all, Big B scolded me for my own good. While I hated his lectures when he was delivering them, I knew it was because of his constant preaching that I cleared one class after another, and that too with such good marks.
By now Big B had softened a great deal. Several times, despite finding ample opportunities to scold me, he
would hold on to his patience. Perhaps he had realized that he no longer had the right to scold me, or if he had the right then it was much reduced. My wilfulness increased. I began to take unfair advantage of his patience. I began to believe that I would pass—whether I studied or not—because Fate was with me. And so, the little studying I used to do because of Big B’s terror stopped. My newest hobby was kite-flying and my entire day would pass in pursuing it. But I still respected Big B. So I would go off to fly kites when he wasn’t looking. The various issues relating to kite-flying—how to tie knots expertly, how to cut the strings of competitors’ kites, how to enter kite-flying competitions—were dealt with secretly. I didn’t want Big B to think that my respect for him had lessened in any way.
One day, close to evening, I was far away from the hostel, running madly after a cut kite. My eyes were glued to the sky and my heart was set on that traveller from the skies that was slowly heading towards the ground as though a heavenly spirit was disinterestedly about to enter a new body. An army of boys, armed with long poles and thorny twigs, was running to catch it. No one was concerned about anything else except the trailing kite. It was almost as though all of us were flying with the kite through the skies where there were no cars, no trams, no lorries.
Suddenly, I ran into Big B who was perhaps returning from the market. He caught my hand there and then and spoke angrily, ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself—running around with these urchins after a worthless kite? Have you no sense? Don’t you know you are no longer in a lower class? You are now in the Eighth Standard, just one class behind me. You must give some thought to your position in life. There was a time when people passed the Eighth Standard and became Deputy Tehsildars. I know so many Middle School Pass who have risen to become top-class Deputy Magistrates and Superintendents. So many of our country’s leaders and newspaper editors have passed only the Eighth Standard. Some of the most learned men work under them whereas you—you who are studying in the same Eighth Standard— go running around after kites with a bunch of street urchins! I feel saddened by your thoughtlessness.
‘You are intelligent, there is no doubt about it, but what good is intelligence if it destroys our pride in ourselves? You must be thinking—I am only one class behind my elder brother and so he doesn’t have the right to say anything to me any more. But you are wrong. I am five years older than you. Even if you and I are studying in the same class—and if I continue to get the same results I shall, no doubt, end up in the same class as you and maybe next year you will leave me to go into the next class—the five-year difference between us shall always remain. Not you, not even god, can remove that difference.
‘I am five years older than you and shall always remain so. You can never match the experience I have of life and of this world—not even if you do an MA or a DPhil. and a DLitt. You don’t get a sense of right and wrong from books alone; you get it from seeing and understanding the world. Our mother has never studied in any class and our father hasn’t studied beyond the Fifth or Sixth Standard. You and I can study everything there is to study in the entire world, but our parents will always have the right to scold and correct us. Not because they have given birth to us, but because they have far more experience of the world and shall always have more experience than us. What sort of government does America have, or how many times did Henry VIII marry, or how many planets are there in the universe—they may not know these things, but there are thousands of other things they know that you and I do not.
‘God forbid, if I were to fall ill today, wouldn’t you panic? You would be able to do nothing except send a telegram to our father. But if our father were here instead of you, he wouldn’t send any telegram to anybody; he would neither worry nor panic. He will first try to understand the ailment and cure it as best as he can; if he doesn’t succeed he will send for a doctor. Forget falling ill, you and I don’t even know how one month’s expenses should be made to last the entire month. Whatever our father sends us each month gets finished by the 20th or the 22nd and we are left with nothing. Our breakfast is stopped. We have to evade the washerman and the barber. Whereas our father has spent less than half of what we spend in a month for the bulk of his life. Not only has he lived well and with dignity but he has supported a large family which includes nine dependents.
‘Look at our Headmaster . . . He has done an MA and that too not from here but from Oxford. He gets a thousand rupees, but who runs his home? His elderly mother! His degree is of no use in this field. He used to run his household on his own earlier but the money would always run short. He was always in debt. Ever since his mother has taken over the reins, it is as though Goddess Lakshmi has entered their home. So, my dear brother, you must get rid of this pride that you have come closer to my class and are, therefore, free to do as you wish. I can’—(raises his hand as if to slap)— ‘use this too. You hate my words right now, don’t you?’
In the face of this new argument, I lowered my head with humility. In front of Big B I felt truly small. Real respect for him swelled in my heart. I spoke with wet eyes, ‘No, not at all. Every word you say is true and you have every right to say it.’
Big B clasped me to his bosom and said, ‘I don’t forbid you from flying kites. I too sometimes feel like flying one, but what can I do? If I go astray, how can I protect you? After all, that duty rests on my head.’
By chance, at that very moment, a kite trailed over our heads. Its cut string dangled behind. A bunch of boys was running to catch it. Big B was tall; he jumped and caught hold of the string and began to run madly towards the hostel. I ran after him.
8
The Shroud
At the door of their hut, father and son sat silently beside a burnt-out fire. Inside, the son’s young wife, Budhiya, was in the middle of giving birth to a baby. From time to time, she would let out such a loud, pain-filled scream that father and son would get startled. It was a winter night. Nature slept under a heavy blanket of silence. The entire village lay hidden under a sheet of darkness.
‘It looks like she won’t make it. You have spent the whole day going in and out—now go in again and take another look,’ said Ghisu, the father.
His son, Madhav, answered in an irritated voice, ‘If she has to die, why doesn’t she get it over and done with? What can I do by looking at her?’
‘You are a heartless fellow!’
‘I can’t see her in so much pain.’
They belonged to a family of chamaars—the lowest among the untouchable castes since their caste dealt with dead animals. And these two had earned a particularly bad name for themselves in the village. Everyone knew that Ghisu would work for one day and take off for the next three days. Madhav was so lazy that if he worked for half an hour, he would stop and smoke his pipe for an hour. So the two hardly ever found any work. As long as there was even a handful of grain in their house, they would not bother to look for work. It was only after they had had to starve for a few days that Ghisu would climb a tree and break off some twigs, and Madhav would sell these as firewood in the market. After this the two would loiter about for as long as the money would last.
There was no shortage of work in the village. It was a village of farmers and for a hard-working man there were lots of jobs to do. But only those who were willing to hire two people to do one man’s job gave them work. They were like a pair of sadhus—satisfied with whatever little they had. Being happy came naturally to them.
Theirs was a strange life. Their home had no worldly possessions except for a pair of clay pots. They covered their naked bodies with a few torn rags. Their lives were free of any worldly cares even though they were heavily in debt. People heaped abuses on them, even beat them, but father and son remained without a care in the world. They were so poor that, sometimes, kind-hearted people lent them some money knowing that they would never get it back. To beat their hunger, they would sometimes steal some peas or potatoes from someone’s field and roast them or pull out half-a-dozen stalks of sugar cane to suck a
t night. Ghisu had led this happy-go-lucky existence for sixty years and, like a dutiful son, Madhav was following in his father’s footsteps. If anything, Madhav was proving to be even better and giving an extra shine to his father’s name!
The two now sat before the burnt-out fire, roasting the potatoes they had earlier dug from someone’s field. Ghisu’s wife had died a long time ago. Madhav had got married last year. Ever since his wife had entered their house, she had tried to introduce some order in their disorderly lives and keep their stomachs filled as best as she could. But with her arrival, the father and son had become not just more lazy, but cocky too! If someone wanted to hire them for some work, they would boldly ask for double the normal rate. And now when the poor woman lay dying while trying to give birth to Madhav’s child, the two sat waiting for her to die so they could go to sleep in peace and quiet.
