‘It’s very sunny outside,’ he explained. ‘This’ll do for a hat.’
He went off. By then, the crows had started cawing, and I could hear the trams rumbling by. I sat up hurriedly and called for Banamali.
‘Who was it that entered this room?’ I demanded.
‘Didimani’s cat,’ Banamali answered, rubbing his eyes.
At this, Pupu-didi looked bewildered. ‘Why, Dadamashai, all this while you’ve been telling me how you went to a feast and were visited in your room by Pallaram.’
I stopped myself just in time. I had been about to explain wisely that I had dreamt it from start to finish. That would have ruined it all. From now on, I would have to manage Pallaram as best I could. When the Creator interrupts our dreams, it doesn’t do to complain. When we do it ourselves, it seems most unkind.
Pupu-didi reminded me, ‘Dadamashai, you still haven’t told me whether they got married.’
I realized a wedding was necessary. ‘There was no way they could escape it!’ I told her.
‘Did you meet them after their marriage?’
‘I certainly did. It was half past four in the morning. The gas lamps on the streets were still burning. I saw the bride marching her husband along.’
‘Where to?’
‘To New Market, to buy some yams.’30
‘Yams!’
‘Yes. Mind you, the groom had objected.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d said he’d buy a jackfruit if they really needed it, but he wasn’t equal to yams.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘Our unfortunate He had to lug the big yam home on his shoulder.’
Pupu was pleased. She said, ‘Serve him right!’
* * *
20When Shiva married his ascetic bride: Shiva’s consort Parvati won her husband through long and severe penance.
21Narada: an ancient sage of great wisdom and musical prowess, but also known for his bad temper and contentiousness.
22Mahadeva: another name for Shiva.
23Mahakali: goddess of destruction; an incarnation of Durga.
24 Rangmashal: a popular children’s magazine of the time.
25Brahma: one of the principal Hindu gods; the creator of the universe, while Vishnu is the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.
26Babakaran,Taitilakaran,Vaishkumbhajog, Harshanjog, Bishtikaran, Asrikjog, Dhanishthanakshatra: words mocking the rigmarole of Sanskritic terms of ritual and ceremony.
27Goswami: a common surname or appellation of Vaishnavs.
28Bolpur: a town (originally a village) near Shantiniketan.The railway station for Shantiniketan is situated here.
29lungi: a length of cloth worn wrapped round the waist by men.
30 New Market was a fashionable European-style market. One would not go there to buy something as rustic as yams.
5
I WAS SIPPING MY TEA IN THE MORNING, WHEN HE TURNED UP.
‘Got anything to tell me?’ I asked.
‘I do,’ he said.
‘Well, tell me quick, because I have to be off in a minute.’
‘Where to?’
‘The viceroy’s.’
‘Does he often send for you?’
‘No, he doesn’t, but he would do well to.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d have found me a greater expert at inventing news than all his informants. No Rai Bahadur31 could ever measure up to me, as you know.’
‘I know, but nowadays you’re saying whatever you like about me.’
‘There’s a demand for fantastic tales, you see.’
‘Fantastic they may be, but even fantasy has its limits. Anybody could put together a string of commonplace, jumbled-up inventions.’
‘Let’s have a sample of your fantasy.’
‘All right, listen—’
Scholarly Smritiratnamashai,32 the Mohun Bagan goalkeeper, had swallowed five goals in succession from the Calcutta team. But far from satisfying his appetite, they made his stomach growl for more. He found himself in front of the Ochterlony Monument.33 He began by licking the bottom, but soon he had licked it up to its very tip. Badruddin Mian, cobbling shoes in the Senate Hall of the university, saw him and rushed out in horror. ‘You’re learned in the sacred books, and yet you contaminate this great monument with your spittle!’ he scolded.‘Fie, fie!’
He then himself spat thrice upon the monument and hurried off to report the matter at the Statesman House.34
Smritiratna suddenly regained his wits. He realized his mouth, too, had been polluted by the monument.
He went to the guard at the museum gate, and said, ‘Pandeyji, you’re a Brahmin like me, you must do me a favour.’
‘Comment vous portez vous, s’il vous plait?’35 answered Pandey-ji, twirling his goatee and touching his cap in a salaam.
‘That’s a very difficult question,’ said the pandit, after some thought. ‘I’ll look up the Sankhyakarika36 and tell you tomorrow. In any case, my mouth has been polluted today. I licked the monument.’
Pandey-ji struck a match and lit himself a Burma cheroot. He took two deep puffs and ordered, ‘Go home immediately, and look up the ritual of purification in Webster’s Dictionary.’
‘I’ll have to go all the way to Bhatpara37 for that,’ protested Smritiratna. ‘It can wait. Meanwhile, I want you to lend me that brass-bound cudgel of yours.’
‘What for?’ asked Pandey. ‘Got a speck of coal dust in your eye?’
‘How did you know?’ replied Smriratna. ‘It happened the day before yesterday. I had to rush off to Ultadingi, to consult the famous doctor MacCartney-saheb; he specializes in complaints of the liver. He sent for a shovel from Narkeldanga and scraped the eye clean.’
Pandey-ji asked, ‘But why do you need my cudgel?’
‘It’ll serve for a toothbrush,’ answered the pandit.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then!’ exclaimed Pandeyji in relief. ‘I thought you were going to stick it up your nose to bring on a sneeze. In that case, I’d have had to purify it with Ganga water.’
Having reached this point, He pulled the hubble-bubble closer and inhaled deeply. ‘You see, Dada, this is your way of telling stories. Instead of tracing them out clearly and simply with your forefinger, you write them out in exaggerated curves and flourishes, as if you had Lord Ganesh’s trunk for a pen.38 You must twist the familiar into the strange. It’s very easy. People might laugh when you say the viceroy’s set up trade in oil and is selling dried fish at Bagbazar, but the laughter you win by a cheap joke like that is of no worth.’
‘You seem out of temper.’
‘With good reason. The other day, you made up a string of stupid stories about me and reeled them off to Pupu-didi. Being a child, she swallowed it all. If you must tell fantastic tales, put some craftsmanship into the telling.’
‘You’re telling me there was no craftsmanship in my story?’
‘None at all. If you hadn’t got me involved, I would have kept quiet. But if you insist you’d treated your guest to curried giraffe, whale fried in mustard paste, pulao with a hippopotamus dragged kicking from the mud and stir-fried stumps of palm trees, I can’t but call it clumsy. Anyone can write like that.’
‘Well, how would you write if you had to?’
‘Are you sure you won’t be vexed? Dada, it’s not as if my powers of invention are any greater than yours. If it had been me, I’d have said—“I was invited to play cards in Tasmania,39 a simple game of dekha-binti.40 The man of the house, Kojmachuku, and his missus Shrimati Hanchiendani Korunkuna had a daughter called Pamkuni Devi; she had cooked us a kintinabu meriunathu with her own fair hands. You could smell it seven blocks away. The aroma excited the jackals so much that they threw caution to the winds and began howling in broad daylight— whether from greed or disgust, I couldn’t tell. The crows drove their beaks into the ground, got stuck and flailed their wings in despair for a good three hours. That’s just the vegetables. There were great barrels of kangchuno-sa
ngchani to follow. There was chewed peel of aankshuto, a fruit very popular in that region. And for dessert, there was a basketful of iktikutir bhiktimai.
‘“First their pet elephant came and pulped all this under his great feet. Then the largest animal of their land, the gandishangdung, as they call it—a cross between a man, a bull and a lion—came and licked the mixture with his spiky tongue, till it was a soft mush. Then they struck up a fearsome hammering of mortar and pestle before the three hundred expectant guests. The people there insist on this racket as a kind of appetizer; the noise brings in hordes of beggars from the distant reaches of the town. Those whose teeth are wrenched off as they eat donate their broken molars to the host before leaving. He stores them away in the bank and leaves them to his sons in his will. The more teeth one possesses, the greater one’s reputation. Many even steal the teeth collected by others and pass them off as their own. People have fought fiercely over this in court. A man who owns a thousand teeth will never give his daughter in marriage to someone with only fifty. If the insignificant possessor of just fifteen teeth suddenly chokes to death on a ketku sweet-ball, you won’t find a man in the Neighbourhood of the Thousand-Toothed who’ll stoop to cremating the body. The corpse has to be furtively floated off in the Chouchingi River. But now the people who live on its banks have begun to demand compensation; the battle has gone as far as the Privy Council.”’
By this time, I was panting for breath. ‘Stop, stop,’ I gasped. ‘But let me ask you what’s so special about the story you’ve just told me.’
‘It’s special because it isn’t just some chutney of pulped kul seeds. No one can complain if you feed your appetite for exaggeration by enlarging upon the impossible. Ofcourse, I don't claim even my story belongs to the highest order of humour. Only a story that makes you believe in the unbelievable can be said to have that extraordinary charm. I warn you, you'll end up in disgrace ifyou go on with shoddy exaggerations only good enough to hush a crying child.'
'All right, from now on I'll tell Pupu-didi such stories that we'll need an exorcist to drive out her faith in them.'
‘Good, but what did you mean by saying you were going to the viceroy’s house?’
‘I meant I wished to be rid of your presence. Once you sit down, you show no sign of getting up. It was just a polite way of saying, “Scoot!” ’
‘I see. I’ll be getting on, then.’
* * *
31Rai Bahadur: a title given by the British Raj to Indians considered loyal to it.
32Smritiratna: a degree awarded to Sanskrit scholars versed in the Smritishastras.
33Ochterlony Monument: a tower in the heart of Calcutta, named after Sir David Ochterlony, a soldier and administrator of the Raj. Now called Shahid Minar or Martyrs’Tower in memory of India’s freedom fighters.
34Statesman House: the office of the well-known newspaper, The Statesman.
35 Commez vous portez vous…:‘How are you, if you please?’The comic use of French is found in the original.
36 Sankhyakarika: the most important text of the Sankhya school of philosophy; written by Ishwara.
37Bhatpara: a place to the north of Calcutta, famous for its Brahmin scholars and priests.
38 Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, inscribed the Mahabharata to the poet Vyasa’s dictation.
39cards in Tasmania: in the original, the phrase is a pun on ‘taash’ (the Bengali word for cards) and Tasmania.
40dekha-binti: a card game where one scores extra points by holding three high-value cards in sequence.
6
AFTER A TRIP TO THE CIRCUS, PUPU-DIDI’S BRAIN SEEMS INFESTED BY tigers. She often meets tigers, to say nothing of their aunts. Their gatherings liven up only in our absence. The other day she came to ask me if I knew of a good barber.
‘What do you want a barber for?’ I asked her.
Pupu informed me that a tiger had become a perfect nuisance, pestering her about his whiskers. They had become too bushy; he wanted a shave.
‘What put the idea into his head?’ I asked.
‘Each morning, after Father’s drunk his tea, I give the tiger the dregs left in the cup,’ Pupu explained. ‘That day, when he came for his drink, he caught sight of Panchu-babu. He’s convinced he’ll look exactly like Panchu-babu once he’s had a shave.’
I said, ‘He isn’t entirely wrong in thinking that. But there’s a problem. What if he finishes off the barber before the unfortunate fellow can finish off the shave?’
Pupu-didi had a brainwave. ‘You know, Dadamashai, tigers never eat barbers.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why not?’
‘To eat a barber is a sin.’
‘Excellent, we needn’t worry. We’ll take him to the English hairdresser on Chowringhee.’41
Pupu clapped her hands and shrieked, 'What fun! He'd never touch white flesh, it'd disgust him!'
'If he does, he'll have to cleanse himselfin the holy Ganga. But how did you learn so much about the dietary norms of tigers, Didi?'
Pupu-didi smiled sagely. ‘I know everything.’
‘And I don’t, I suppose?’
‘Tell me what you know,’ challenged Pupu-didi.
‘They never touch the flesh of farmers of the kaibarta caste, especially those who live on the western banks of the Ganga. Their scriptures forbid it.’
‘And what about those who live on the eastern bank?’
‘If they happen to be kaibarta fishermen, their flesh is sacred. Tigers are supposed to eat them by tearing off chunks of flesh with the left paw.’
‘Why the left paw?’
‘That’s the correct ritual. Their pandits maintain that the right paw is dirty. Mind you, Didi, barbers’ wives disgust them. You see, barbers’ wives paint women’s feet red with alta.’42
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Well, the pandits say that alta is a mere imitation of blood. It isn’t real blood drawn by scratching or biting or tearing flesh. Therefore, it’s a dishonest thing to put on. They despise such shady dealings. Once, a tiger entered a turban-seller’s house. There was a tub of magenta dye in a corner. Mistaking it for blood, he happily plunged his face into it. It was fast dye, if nothing else. The tiger’s cheeks and whiskers came up bright red. He went to the densest part of the forest, the region where the tiger-pandits lived. Seeing him, the head tiger, the best mauler among them, exclaimed, ‘What on earth! Why’s your whole face scarlet?’
‘Ashamed, the tiger lied, “I’ve just polished off a rhino, it must be the blood I’ve drunk.” His lie was found out. The pandit declared, “I don’t see a trace of blood on his claws.” He sniffed at his mouth and announced he could smell no blood. Everyone
chorused, “How disgraceful! This is neither blood nor bile nor brain nor marrow—he must have gone to some human settlement and drunk unholy vegetarian blood.” A committee debated the issue. The biting expert among the tigers roared, “He must perform a penance!” And so he did.’
‘What if he had refused?’
‘Oh, that would have been a disaster! He has five daughters, all keen-clawed and of marriageable age. Even if he tucked his tail beneath his belly, and offered a dowry of twenty-eight buffaloes, do you think he’d ever find them suitors? And then there would be an even greater punishment.’
‘What’s that?’
‘When he died, no priest would agree to perform the funeral rites. In the end, perhaps, they’d have to call in a wolf-priest from the cane jungles. That would be a terrible disgrace, seven generations of descendants would be unable to hold up their heads for shame.’
‘Why have a funeral at all?’
‘Just listen to that! Why, his ghost would starve to death.’
‘But he’s already dead, how could he die again?’
‘It’s even worse, you see! Death by starvation is permissible, but starvation after death is a fearful calamity.’
This cast Pupu-didi into deep thought. After a while, she asked, frowning, ‘In that case, what doe
s an Englishman’s ghost eat?’
‘What he ate while alive lasts him seven lives. But our bellies start rumbling long before we’ve even crossed the Baitarani43 at the mouth of the underworld.’
This doubt cleared, Pupu-didi immediately asked, ‘What sort of penance did he have to perform?’
‘A tiger learned in the rites of roaring and other tigerish customs decreed he would have to remain in the south-west corner of the square where the shrine of the tiger-goddess stands, from the beginning of the dark lunar fortnight to the middle of the moonless night of Amavasya, feeding only on a shoulder of jackal. Furthermore, the kill could be made by none other than his paternal aunt’s daughter or the second son of his wife’s maternal cousin. Even worse, the tiger could only use his right hind-paw to tear off the flesh. When he heard this awful sentence passed, the tiger’s insides churned. Clasping his four paws in entreaty, he began to howl piteously.’
‘Why, what was so awful about it?’
‘Good heavens, jackal’s meat! It’s as profane as meat can be! The tiger swore never to repeat his crime. He whimpered, “Feed me a mongoose’s tail, if you will, but not a shoulder of jackal flesh!” ’
‘Did he have to eat it in the end?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Dadamashai, tigers must be very orthodox in matters of religion!’
‘Certainly. Do you think they’d abide by as many rules if they weren’t? That’s why jackals hold them in such respect. If they find a tiger’s half-eaten prasad, it becomes a family heirloom! If the thirteenth day of the month of Magh44 happens to be a Tuesday, many jackals make a pilgrimage to lick the feet of an old tiger in the depths of the night. They believe this wins them religious merit. Innumerable jackals have laid down their lives in the effort.’
Pupu-didi found this hard to swallow. ‘If tigers are so very religious, how can they bring themselves to kill for meat? And eat it raw, for that matter?’