UNTOUCHABLE

by Unknown

  ‘ Are you up ? Get up, you illegally begotten ! ’ came his father’s shout again and stirred the boy to a feeling of despair.

  ‘ The bully ! ’ Bakha exclaimed under his breath as he listened to the last accents of his father’s voice die out in a clumsy, asthmatic cough. He just shook himself and turning his back to his father for sheer cussedness, averted the challenge of the dark, dingy, crowded, little room which seemed to have come with his father’s abuse. He felt that his bones were stiff and his flesh numb with the cold. For a moment he felt feverish. A hot liquid trickled down from the corners of his eyes. One of his nostrils seemed to be blocked and he sniffed the air, trying to adjust his breathing to the congested climate of the corner where his face was turned. His throat too seemed to have been caught, for as he inhaled the air it seemed to irritate his trachea uncomfortably. He began to swallow air in order to relieve his nose and his throat. But when a breath of air pierced the cavity which was clogged the other became impenetrable. A cough shook the inner tissues of his throat and he spat furiously into the corner where he lay. He leaned on his elbow and blew his nose under the carpet on which he lay. Then he fell back, his legs gathered together and shrunken under the thin folds of his blanket, his head buried into his arms. He felt very cold. And he dozed off again.

  ‘ Oh, Bakhya ! Oh, Bakhya ! Oh, you scoundrel of a sweeper’s son ! Come and clear a latrine for me ! ’ someone shouted from without.

  Bakha flung the blanket off his body, stretched his legs and arms to shake off the half-sleep that still clung to him, and got up abruptly, yawning and rubbing his eyes. For a moment he bent, rolling the carpet and the blanket to make room for the activity of the day, then, thinking he heard the man outside shout again, he hurried to the door.

  A small, thin man, naked except for a loin-cloth, stood outside with a small brass jug in his left hand, a round white cotton skull-cap on his head, a pair of wooden sandals on his feet, and the apron of his loin-cloth lifted to his nose.

  It was Havildar Charat Singh, the famous hockey player of the 38th Dogras regiment, as celebrated for his humour as for the fact, which with characteristic Indian openness he acknowledged, that he suffered from chronic piles.

  ‘ Why aren’t the latrines clean, you rogue of a Bakhe ! There is not one fit to go near ! I have walked all round ! Do you know you are responsible for my piles ? I caught the contagion sitting on one of those unclean latrines ! ’

  ‘ All right, Havildar ji, I will get one ready for you at once,’ Bakha said cautiously as he proceeded to pick up his brush and basket from the place where these tools decorated the front wall of the house.

  He worked away earnestly, quickly, without loss of effort. Brisk, yet steady, his capacity for active application to the task he had in hand seemed to flow like constant water from a natural spring. Each muscle of his body, hard as a rock when it came into play, seemed to shine forth like glass. He must have had immense pent-up resources lying deep, deep in his body, for as he rushed along with considerable skill and alacrity from one door-less latrine to another, cleaning, brushing, pouring phenoil, he seemed as easy as a wave sailing away on a deep-bedded river. ‘ What a dexterous workman ! ’ the onlooker would have said. And though his job was dirty he remained comparatively clean. He didn’t even soil his sleeves, handling the commodes, sweeping and scrubbing them. ‘ A bit superior to his job,’ they always said, ‘ not the kind of man who ought to be doing this.’ For he looked intelligent, even sensitive, with a sort of dignity that does not belong to the ordinary scavenger, who is as a rule uncouth and unclean. It was perhaps his absorption in his task that gave him the look of distinction, or his exotic dress however loose and ill-fitting, that removed him above his odorous world. Havildar Charat Singh, who had the Hindu instinct for immaculate cleanliness, was puzzled when he emerged from his painful half an hour in the latrines and caught sight of Bakha. Here was a low-caste man who seemed clean ! He became rather self-conscious, the prejudice of the ‘ twice-born1 ’ high-caste Hindu against stink, even though he saw not the slightest suspicion of it in Bakha, rising into his mind. He smiled complacently. Then, however, he forgot his high caste and the ironic smile on his face became a childlike laugh.

  ‘ You are becoming a gentreman, ohe Bakhya ! Where did you get that uniform ? ’

  Bakha was shy, knowing he had no right to indulge in such luxuries as apeing the high-caste people. He humbly mumbled :

  ‘ Huzoor it is all your blessing.’

  Charat Singh was feeling kind, though he did not relax the grin which symbolised six thousand years of racial and class superiority. To express his good-will, however, he said :

  ‘ Come this afternoon, Bakhe. I shall give you a hockey stick.’ He knew the boy played that game very well.

  Bakha stretched himself up ; he was astonished yet grateful at Charat Singh’s offer. It was a godsend to him, this spontaneous gesture on the part of one of the best hockey players of the regiment. ‘ A hockey stick ! I wonder if it will be a new one ! ’ he thought to himself, and he stood smiling with a queer humility, overcome with gratitude. Charat Singh’s generous promise had called forth that trait of servility in Bakha which he had inherited from his forefathers, the weakness, of the down-trodden, the helplessness of the poor and the indigent, suddenly receiving help, the passive contentment of the bottom dog suddenly illuminated by the prospect of fulfilment of a secret and long-cherished desire. He saluted his benefactor and bent down to his work again.

  A soft smile lingered on his lips, the smile of a slave overjoyed at the condescension of his master, more akin to pride than to happiness. And he slowly slipped into a song. The steady heave of his body from one latrine to another made the whispered refrain a fairly audible note. And he went forward, with eager step, from job to job, a marvel of movement dancing through his work. Only, the sway of his body was so violent that once the folds of his turban came undone, and the buttons of his overcoat slipped from their worn-out holes. But this did not hinder his work. He clumsily gathered together his loose garments and proceeded with his business.

  Men came one after another, towards the latrines. Most of them were Hindus, naked, except for the loin-cloth, brass jugs in hand and with the sacred thread twisted round their left ears. Occasionally came a Mohammedan, who wore a long white cotton tunic and baggy trousers, holding a big copper kettle in his hands.

  Bakha broke the tempo of his measured activity to wipe the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Its woollen texture felt nice and sharp against his skin, but left an irritating warmth behind. It was a pleasant irritation, however, and he went ahead with the renewed vigour that discomfort sometimes gives to the body. ‘ My work will soon be finished,’ he said to himself, seeing that he was almost at the end of one part of his routine. But the end of one job meant to him no escape into the haven of luxury. Not that he shirked work or really liked doing nothing. For, although he didn’t know it, to him work was a sort of intoxication which gave him a glowing health and plenty of easy sleep. So he worked on continuously, incessantly, without stopping for breath, even though the violent exertion of his limbs was making him gasp.

  At last when he had got to the end of the third row of latrines for the second time during the morning, he felt a cramp in his back and stretched himself out from the bent posture he had maintained all the while. He looked in the direction of the town. There was a slight misty haze before him, a sort of screen which the smouldering fire in the chimney where he had burnt the refuse last night had sent up to mingle with the vaporous fleecy clouds that rose from the surface of the brook. Through the thin film he could see the half-naked brown bodies of the Hindus hurrying to the latrines. Some of those who had already visited the latrines could be seen scrubbing their little brass jugs with clay on the side of the brook. Others were bathing to the tune of ‘ Ram re Ram,’ ‘ Hari Ram,’—crouching by the water, rubbing their hands, with a little soft earth ; washing their feet, their faces ; chewing little twigs bitten into the s
hape of brushes ; rinsing their mouths, gargling and spitting noisily into the stream ; douching their noses and blowing them furiously, ostentatiously. Ever since he had worked in the British barracks Bakha had been ashamed of the Indian way of performing ablutions, all that gargling and spitting, because he knew the Tommies disliked it. He remembered so well the Tommies’ familiar abuse of the natives : ‘ Kala admi zamin par hagne wala ’ (black man, you who relieve yourself on the ground). But he himself had been ashamed at the sight of Tommies running naked to their tub baths. ‘ Disgraceful,’ he had said to himself. They were, however, sahibs. Whatever they did was ‘ fashun.’ But his own countrymen—they were natus (natives). He felt amused as an Englishman might be amused, to see a Hindu loosen his dhoti to pour some water first over his navel and then down his back in a flurry of ecstatic hymn-singing. And he watched with contemptuous displeasure the indecent behaviour of a Mohammedan walking about with his hands buried deep in his trousers, purifying himself in the ritual manner, preparatory to his visit to the mosque. ‘ I wonder what they say in their prayers ? ’ he asked himself. ‘ Why do they sit, stand, bend and kneel as if they were doing exercises ? ’ Once, he remembered, he had asked Ali, the son of a regimental bandsman, why they did that, but Ali would not tell him and was angry, saying that Bakha was insulting his religion. And he recalled the familiar sight of all those naked Hindu men and women who could be seen squatting in the open, outside the city, every morning. ‘ So shameless,’ he thought ; ‘ they don’t seem to care who looks at them, sitting there like that. It is on account of that that the goras white men call them kala log zamin par hagne wala (black man, you who relieve yourself on the ground). Why don’t they come here ? ’ But then he realised that if they came to the latrines his work would increase and he didn’t relish the idea. He preferred to imagine himself sweeping the streets in the place of his father. ‘ That is easy work,’ he said to himself, ‘ I will only have to lift cow-dung and horse-dung with a shovel and sweep the dust of the road with a broom.’

  ‘ There is not a latrine clean. You must work for the pay you receive.’

  Bakha turned abruptly and noticed Ramanand the peevish old black moneylender shouting at him in his sharp southern diction. He bowed with joined hands to Ramanand who was staring at him, a pair of gold rings studded with rubies in his ears, a transparent muslin loin-cloth and shirt on his portentous belly, and a funny string cap of a turban on his head. ‘ Maharaj,’ he said and ran towards the latrines and busied himself with his job again.

  He hardly realised that he had lapsed into activity, so vigorously did he attack his job. And he was completely oblivious during the quarter of an hour he took to finish a fourth round of the latrines, oblivious alike of the time and of the sweat trickling down his forehead, of the warmth in his body and of the sense of power that he felt as he ended up.

  The spurts of smoke from the chimney near his house made him conscious of the next job he had to attend to. He went towards it half-heartedly, and after pausing for a while to pick up a trident-shaped shovel, began to stuff the aperture of the little brick pyramid with the straw in the baskets which he had collected from the latrines.

  Little pieces of straw flew into the air as he shovelled the refuse into the chimney, the littlest pieces settling on his clothes, the slightly bigger ones settling on the ground where he had to collect them again with his broom. But he worked unconsciously. This forgetfulness or emptiness persisted in him over long periods. It was a sort of insensitivity created in him by the kind of work he had to do, a tough skin which must be a shield against all the most awful sensations. Stooping down over the baskets full of straw, he gathered shovelfuls and cast them into the grate till it seemed congested and it would take no more. Then he picked up a long poker and prodded the fire. Quickly it flared up, suddenly illuminating the furnace with its leaping red, gold and black flames, an angry consuming power, something apart, something detached from the heaps of straw it fed on.

  The blood in Bakha’s veins tingled with the heat as he stood before it. His dark face, round and solid and exquisitely well defined, lit with a queer sort of beauty. The toil of the body had built up for him a very fine physique. It seemed to suit him, to give a homogeneity, a wonderful wholeness to his body, so that you could turn round and say : ‘ Here is a man.’ And it seemed to give him a nobility, strangely in contrast with his filthy profession and with the sub-human status to which he was condemned from birth.

  This was a long task, lasting almost twenty minutes. Bakha, however, did not seem to feel the strain of it as he had felt the strain of his earlier occupation. The burning flame seemed to ally itself with him. It seemed to give him a sense of power, the power to destroy. It seemed to infuse into him a masterful instinct somewhat akin to sacrifice. It seemed as if burning or destruction was for him a form of physical culture.

  When the chimney had consumed the last basket of straw and refuse Bakha closed its mouth and retreated. He felt thirsty. The edges of his lips were dry. He put back the shovel, the basket, the broom and the brushes in their place. Then he moved towards the door of his hut, sniffing the air full of smoke from the chimney, brushing his clothes and smoothing them out. His thirst became overpowering as he entered the room. Looking dazedly at the utensils lying about in a corner, he felt he wanted tea. But as he surveyed the room he heard his father still snoring under his patched quilt. His brother was not in the room. He knew at once where he would be—playing in the maidan by the street. As he stood staring round in order to get used to the comparative darkness, he saw that his sister was trying to light a fire between two bricks. She was blowing hard at it, lifting herself on her haunches as she crouched on the mud floor. Her head almost touched the ground, but each puff from her mouth succeeded only in raising a spurt of smoke and was beaten back by the wet wooden sticks that served as fuel. She sat back helpless when she heard her brother’s footsteps. Her smoke-irritated eyes were full of water. She turned and saw her brother. Real tears began to flow down her cheeks.

  ‘ Will you get up and let me blow at it ? ’ Bakha said. And without waiting for a reply he walked up to the corner of the room, sat down on his knees, shook the fuel and stooping, began to blow. His big, round mouth seemed like a real bellows as it sent the breath whirring into the fireplace and started first a few sparks, then a blazing fire through the damp sticks. He put the earthen pan over the little stove.

  ‘ There is no water in that,’ his sister said.

  ‘ I will get some water from the pitcher,’ he said, as he casually made towards the corner.

  ‘ There is no water in the pitcher either,’ she answered.

  ‘ Oh !’ he exclaimed under his breath, tired and exasperated. And for a moment he stood defeated where he had bent down to the pitcher.

  ‘ I shall go and get some water,’ said Sohini meekly.

  ‘ All right,’ agreed Bakha without any show of formality, and going out of doors sat down on the edge of a broken cane chair, the only article of furniture of European design which he had been able to acquire in pursuance of his ambition to live like an Englishman. Sohini picked up the pitcher, poised it easily on her head, and ran past her brother.

  How a round base can be adjusted on a round top, how a sphere can rest on a sphere is a problem which may be of interest to those who think like Euclid or Archimedes. It never occurred to Sohini to ask herself anything like this as she balanced her pitcher on her head and went to and from her one-roomed home to the steps of the caste-well where she counted on the chance of some gentleman taking pity on her and giving her the water she needed. She had a sylph-like form, not thin but full-bodied within the limits of her graceful frame, well rounded on the hips, with an arched narrow waist from which descended the folds of her trousers and above which were her full, round, globular breasts, jerking slightly, for lack of a bodice, under her transparent muslin shirt. Bakha observed her as she walked along swaying. She was beautiful. He was proud of her with a pride not altogether t
hat of a brother for a sister.