Selected Short Stories

  When I returned home, I found that this half-rupee had caused a full-scale row. Mini’s mother was holding up a round shining object and saying crossly to Mini, ‘Where did you get this half-rupee from?’

  ‘The Kabuliwallah gave it to me,’ said Mini.

  ‘Why did you take it from the Kabuliwallah?’ said her mother.

  ‘I didn’t ask for it,’ said Mini tearfully. ‘He gave it to me himself.’

  I rescued Mini from her mother’s wrath, and took her outside. I learnt that this was not just the second time that Mini and the Kabuliwallah had met: he had been coming nearly every day and, by bribing her eager little heart with pistachio-nuts, had quite won her over. I found that they now had certain fixed jokes and routines: for example as soon as Mini saw Rahamat, she giggled and asked, ‘Kabuliwallah, O Kabuliwallah, what have you got in your bag?’ Rahamat would laugh back and say – giving the word a peculiar nasal twang – ‘An elephant.’ The notion of an elephant in his bag was the source of immense hilarity; it might not be a very subtle joke, but they both seemed to find it very funny, and it gave me pleasure to see, on an autumn morning, a young child and a grown man laughing so heartily.

  They had a couple of other jokes. Rahamat would say to Mini, ‘Little one, don’t ever go off to your śvaśur-bāri.’ Most Bengali girls grow up hearing frequent references to their svaśur-bāri, but my wife and I are rather progressive people and we don’t keep talking to our young daughter about her future marriage. She therefore couldn’t clearly understand what Rahamat meant; yet to remain silent and give no reply was wholly against her nature, so she would turn the idea round and say, ‘Are you going to your śvaśurbāri?’ Shaking his huge fist at an imaginary father-in-law Rahamat said, ‘I’ll settle him!’ Mini laughed merrily as she imagined the fate awaiting this unknown creature called a śvaśur.

  It was perfect autumn weather. In ancient times, kings used to set out on their world-conquests in autumn. I have never been away from Calcutta; precisely because of that, my mind roves all over the world. I seem to be condemned to my house, but I constantly yearn for the world outside. If I hear the name of a foreign land, at once my heart races towards it; and if I see a foreigner, at once an image of a cottage on some far bank or wooded mountainside forms in my mind, and I think of the free and pleasant life I would lead there. At the same time, I am such a rooted sort of individual that whenever I have to leave my familiar spot I practically collapse. So a morning spent sitting at my table in my little study, chatting with this Kabuliwallah, was quite enough wandering for me. High, scorched, blood-coloured, forbidding mountains on either side of a narrow desert path; laden camels passing; turbaned merchants and wayfarers, some on camels, some walking, some with spears in their hands, some with old-fashioned flintlock guns: my friend would talk of his native land in his booming, broken Bengali, and a mental picture of it would pass before my eyes.

  Mini’s mother is very easily alarmed. The slightest noise in the street makes her think that all the world’s drunkards are charging straight at our house. She cannot dispel from her mind – despite her experience of life (which isn’t great) – the apprehension that the world is overrun with thieves, bandits, drunkards, snakes, tigers, malaria, caterpillars, cockroaches and white-skinned marauders. She was not too happy about Rahamat the Kabuliwallah. She repeatedly told me to keep a close eye on him. If I tried to laugh off her suspicions, she would launch into a succession of questions: ‘So do people’s children never go missing? And is there no slavery in Afghanistan? Is it completely impossible for a huge Afghan to kidnap a little child?’ I had to admit that it was not impossible, but I found it hard to believe. People are suggestible to varying degrees; this was why my wife remained so edgy. But I still saw nothing wrong in letting Rahamat come to our house.

  Every year, about the middle of the month of Māgh, Rahamat went home. He was always very busy before he left, collecting money owed to him. He had to go from house to house; but he still made time to visit Mini. To see them together, one might well suppose that they were plotting something. If he couldn’t come in the morning he would come in the evening; to see his lanky figure in a corner of the darkened house, with his baggy pyjamas hanging loosely around him, was indeed a little frightening. But my heart would light up as Mini ran to meet him, smiling and calling, ‘O Kabuliwallah, Kabuliwallah,’ and the usual innocent jokes passed between the two friends, unequal in age though they were.

  One morning I was sitting in my little study correcting proof-sheets. The last days of winter had been very cold, shiveringly so. The morning sun was shining through the window on to my feet below my table, and this touch of warmth was very pleasant. It must have been about eight o’clock – early morning walkers, swathed in scarves, had mostly finished their dawn stroll and had returned to their homes. It was then that there was a sudden commotion in the street.

  I looked out and saw our Rahamat in handcuffs, being marched along by two policemen, and behind him a crowd of curious boys. Rahamat’s clothes were blood-stained, and one of the policemen was holding a blood-soaked knife. I went outside and stopped him, asking what was up. I heard partly from him and partly from Rahamat himself that a neighbour of ours had owed Rahamat something for a Rampuri chadar; he had tried to lie his way out of the debt, and in the ensuing brawl Rahamat had stabbed him.

  Rahamat was mouthing various unrepeatable curses against the lying debtor, when Mini ran out of the house calling, ‘Kabuliwallah, O Kabuliwallah.’ For a moment Rahamat’s face lit up with pleasure. He had no bag over his shoulder today, so they couldn’t have their usual discussion about it. Mini came straight out with her ‘Are you going to your śvaśur-bāṛi?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going there now,’ said Rahamat with a smile. But when he saw that his reply had failed to amuse Mini, he brandished his handcuffed fists and said, ‘I would have killed my śvaśur, but how can I with these on?’

  Rahamat was convicted of assault, and sent to prison for several years. He virtually faded from our minds. Living at home, carrying on day by day with our routine tasks, we gave no thought to how a free-spirited mountain-dweller was passing his years behind prison-walls. As for the fickle Mini, even her father would have to admit that her behaviour was not very praiseworthy. She swiftly forgot her old friend. At first Nabi the groom replaced him in her affections; later, as she grew up, girls rather than little boys became her favourite companions. She even stopped coming to her father’s study. And I, in a sense, dropped her.

  Several years went by. It was autumn again. Mini’s marriage had been decided, and the wedding was fixed for the pūjā-holiday. Our pride and joy would soon, like Durga going to Mount Kailas, darken her parents’ house by moving to her husband’s.

  It was a most beautiful morning. Sunlight, washed clean by monsoon rains, seemed to shine with the purity of smelted gold. Its radiance lent an extraordinary grace to Calcutta’s back-streets, with their squalid, tumbledown, cheek-by-jowl dwellings. The sānāi started to play in our house when night was scarcely over. Its wailing vibrations seemed to rise from deep within my ribcage. Its sad Bhairavī rāga joined forces with the autumn sunshine, in spreading through the world the grief of my imminent separation. Today my Mini would be married.

  From dawn on there was uproar, endless coming and going. A canopy was being erected in the yard of the house, by binding bamboo-poles together; chandeliers tinkled as they were hung in the rooms and verandahs; there was constant loud talk.

  I was sitting in my study doing accounts, when Rahamat suddenly appeared and salaamed before me. At first I didn’t recognize him. He had no bag; he had lost his long hair; his former vigour had gone. But when he smiled, I recognized him.

  ‘How are you, Rahamat?’ I said. ‘When did you come?’

  ‘I was let out of prison yesterday evening,’ he replied.

  His words startled me. I had never confronted a would-be murderer before; I shrank back at the sight of him. I began to feel that on this auspicious morn
ing it would be better to have the man out of the way. ‘We’ve got something on in our house today,’ I said. ‘I’m rather busy. Please go now.’

  He was ready to go at once, but just as he reached the door he hesitated a little and said, ‘Can’t I see your little girl for a moment?’

  It seemed he thought that Mini was still just as she was when he had known her: that she would come running as before, calling ‘Kabuliwallah, O Kabuliwallah!’; that their old merry banter would resume. He had even brought (remembering their old friendship) a box of grapes and a few nuts and raisins wrapped in paper – extracted, no doubt, from some Afghan friend of his, having no bag of his own now.

  ‘There’s something on in the house today,’ I said. ‘You can’t see anyone.’

  He looked rather crestfallen. He stood silently for a moment longer, casting a solemn glance at me; then, saying ‘Babu salaam’, he walked towards the door. I felt a sudden pang. I thought of calling him back, but then I saw that he himself was returning.

  ‘I brought this box of grapes and these nuts and raisins for the little one,’ he said. ‘Please give them to her.’ Taking them from him, I was about to pay him for them when he suddenly clasped my arm and said, ‘Please, don’t give me any money – I shall always be grateful, Babu. Just as you have a daughter, so do I have one, in my own country. It is with her in mind that I came with a few raisins for your daughter: I didn’t come to trade with you.’

  Then he put a hand inside his big loose shirt and took out from somewhere close to his heart a crumpled piece of paper. Unfolding it very carefully, he spread it out on my table. There was a small handprint on the paper: not a photograph, not a painting – the hand had been rubbed with some soot and pressed down on to the paper. Every year Rahamat carried this memento of his daughter in his breast-pocket when he came to sell raisins in Calcutta’s streets: as if the touch of that soft, small, childish hand brought solace to his huge, homesick breast. My eyes swam at the sight of it. I forgot then that he was an Afghan raisin-seller and I was a Bengali Babu. I understood then that he was as I am, that he was a father just as I am a father. The handprint of his little mountain-dwelling Parvati reminded me of my own Mini.

  At once I sent for her from the inner part of the house. Objections came back: I refused to listen to them. Mini, dressed as a bride – sandal-paste pattern on her brow, red silk sari – came timidly into the room and stood close by me.

  The Kabuliwallah was confused at first when he saw her: he couldn’t bring himself to utter his old greeting. But at last he smiled and said, ‘Little one, are you going to your śvasur-bāṛi?’

  Mini now knew the meaning of śvaśur-bāṛi; she couldn’t reply as before – she blushed at Rahamat’s question and looked away. I recalled the day when Mini and the Kabuliwallah had first met. My heart ached.

  Mini left the room, and Rahamat, sighing deeply, sat down on the floor. He suddenly understood clearly that his own daughter would have grown up too since he last saw her, and with her too he would have to become re-acquainted: he would not find her exactly as she was before. Who knew what had happened to her these eight years? In the cool autumn morning sunshine the sānāi went on playing, and Rahamat sat in a Calcutta lane and pictured to himself the barren mountains of Afghanistan.

  I took out a banknote and gave it to him. ‘Rahamat,’ I said, ‘go back to your homeland and your daughter; by your blessed reunion, Mini will be blessed.’

  By giving him this money, I had to trim certain items from the wedding-festivities. I wasn’t able to afford the electric illuminations I had planned, nor did the trumpet-and-drum band come. The womenfolk were very displeased at this; but for me, the ceremony was lit by a kinder, more gracious light.

  The Editor

  While my wife was alive I didn’t give much thought to Prabha. I was more involved with her mother than with her. I was happy to watch her play and laugh, to listen to her half-formed speech and respond to her affection; I would, whenever I was in the mood, romp around with her; but the moment she started to cry I would return her to her mother’s arms and make a speedy escape. I never considered what care and effort were needed to bring up a child.

  But with the sudden and untimely death of my wife, Prabha’s upbringing passed to me, and I clasped her warmly. I don’t quite know whose concern was the stronger: mine to bring up my motherless daughter with double affection, or hers to look after her wifeless father. But from the age of six, she took charge of the house. It was plain to see that this little girl was trying to be her father’s sole guardian.

  It tickled me to put myself entirely into her hands. I noticed that the more useless and helpless I was, the more she liked it; if I picked up my clothes or umbrella myself, she reacted as if I had infringed her rights. She had never before had a doll as big as her father; she revelled all day in feeding him, dressing him, settling him down to sleep. Only when I took her through her arithmetic book or the first part of her poetry reader did my paternal responsibility come slightly alive.

  From time to time I remembered that to marry her to a suitable groom would cost a lot of money – but where was I to get that money? I was educating her as well as I could: it would be awful if she ended up in some nincompoop’s hands.

  I gave my attention to the need to earn money. I was too old to get a job in a government office, and there was no way I could get into any other office either. After much pondering, I started to write books.

  If you punch holes in a hollow bamboo stick, it doesn’t become a receptacle; you can’t keep oil or water in it; it can’t be put to any practical use. But if you blow into it, it makes an excellent cost-free flute. I had the idea that anyone who was unfortunate enough to be useless at any practical work would certainly write good books. Confident of this, I wrote a satirical farce. People said it was good, and it was performed on stage.

  The dangerous result of my sudden taste of fame was that I now couldn’t stop writing farces. With knotted brow, I spent all day writing them.

  Prabha would come and ask, with a loving smile, ‘Won’t you have your bath, Father?’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t bother me now.’

  Probably the girl’s face darkened like a lamp suddenly blown out; but I never even noticed her silent, pained withdrawal from the room.

  I flared up at the maid, and cuffed the male servant; if a beggar came calling for alms I would drive him away with a stick. If an innocent passer-by spoke through my window to ask the way (my room looked on to the street), I would tell him to go to hell. Why couldn’t people understand that I was, at that moment, writing a hilarious farce?

  But the money I earned was not at all proportionate either to the hilarity of my farces or to my fame. Nor, at the time, was the money uppermost in my mind. Meanwhile, in unthought-of places, grooms suitable for Prabha were growing up who would set other fathers free from their duty to their daughters, and I failed to notice. Probably only starvation would have brought me to my senses; but now a new opportunity came my way. The zamindar of Jahir village invited me to be the salaried editor of a paper he was starting. I accepted, and within a few days I was writing with such fervour that people used to point me out in the street, and in my own estimation I was as blindingly brilliant as the afternoon sun. Next to Jahir was Ahir village. The zamindars of the two villages were bitter enemies. Previously their quarrels had led to brawls – but now the magistrate had bound them over to keep the peace, and the zamindar of Jahir had engaged poor me in place of his murderous lāṭhiyāls.

  Everyone told me I discharged my duties most honourably. The Ahir villagers were utterly cowed by my pen. The whole of their history and ancestry was blackened by it.

  This was a good time for me. I became quite fat. There was a perpetual smile on my face. I fired devastating verbal sallies at the people of Ahir and their ancestors, and everyone in Jahir split their sides at my wit. I was blissfully happy.

  In the end, Ahir village also brought out a paper
. They didn’t mince their words. They hurled insults with such zeal and in such crude and vulgar language that the very letters on the page seemed to shriek before one’s eyes. The people of both villages knew exactly what was intended. But I, as was my custom, attacked my opponents with humour, subtlety and irony, so that neither my friends nor my enemies could understand what I meant. The result was that though I had won the argument everyone thought I had lost. I then felt compelled to write a sermon on good taste – but I found that this too was a grave mistake, for whereas it is easy to ridicule what is good, it is not so easy to ridicule what is already ridiculous. The sons of Hanu can happily make fun of the sons of Manu, but the sons of Manu can never be so successful at pillorying the sons of Hanu: whose snarls, therefore, drove good taste out of town.

  My employer cooled towards me. I was not welcome at public gatherings. When I went out, no one hailed me or spoke to me. People even began to laugh when they saw me. My farces, meanwhile, were completely forgotten. I felt like a spent match; I had flamed for a minute, and then burned out. I was so disheartened that however hard I scratched my head, not a line of writing would come. I began to feel there was no point in living any more.

  Prabha was now scared of me. She did not dare approach unless she was invited. She had come to see that a clay doll was a much better companion than a father who wrote satires.

  One day it became apparent that the Ahir paper had started to concentrate on me rather than on the zamindar. Vile things were written. My friends each brought me the paper and read it out with great amusement. Some of them said that whatever the content, the language was superb: by which they meant that the slanders it contained were easy to understand. I heard this same opinion throughout the day.

  There was a small plot of garden in front of my house. One evening I was pacing there alone, utterly sick at heart. As the birds returned to their nests and stopped their singing, freely consigning themselves to the peace of the evening, I was taken with the thought that there are no satirists’ cliques among birds, no arguments about good taste. But I was still preoccupied with how I could best reply to my slanderers. One of the drawbacks of refinement is that not every sort of person understands it. Boorish language is relatively commonplace, so I decided I would write a reply in appropriately boorish style. I would not give in! At that moment I heard a small, familiar voice in the darkness of the evening, and next I felt a tender, hot hand touch mine. I was so worried and distracted that even though the voice and touch were known to me, they did not sink in. But a moment later the voice was gently sounding in my ears, and the delicate touch was intensifying. A little girl was beside me, and was softly calling, ‘Father.’ When she got no answer she lifted my right hand and pressed it lightly against her cheek; then she slowly went indoors.