Even the bangle-seller, that old lecher in the market, had become friendly again. He came in search of Raman and paid an advance for a new sign-board to say NEWEST FASHION NYLON BANGLES AVAILABLE FOR ALL SIZES. He wanted also a little picture of a veena to be added, for some obscure reason, on the bottom line, and Raman had demanded an extra five rupees for it - in all, seventy-five rupees for five lines - and the bangle-seller had agreed. Raman forgave him all his old lapses, but just asked, ‘What about the last bill?’
The bangle-seller, who had behaved so aggressively in the shop, now shrank to modest dimensions and pleaded, ‘Between friends there should be no accounts to settle.’
Raman said, ‘You could have gone to Jayaraj instead of coming so far. He is just a step away from you at the market gate itself.’
His answer was gratifying: ‘In my business, I care for quality and elegance, otherwise I would not be selling bangles, I’d rather hang a blank board than cheap writing.’
That pleased Raman tremendously. The professional side to his nature revelled in rivalry, and success. He was trying to lose himself in all such activities, for if he allowed a little pause, thoughts of Daisy, came back, and the pain of separation racked him.
One evening he was at work in the back yard of his home, with the river flowing a few yards away. His aunt was away at the temple. The transactions and traffic of Ellaman Street were coming to an end, as the seller of sweet edible dolls had cried his wares and passed on towards Nallappa’s Grove. That meant it was nearer seven than six. Raman had planed the eighteen-by-twelve board smoothly and put on the primary coat of paint, turned it towards the wall to save it from sand particles, and was rehearsing on a small pad the actual lettering to come. Over the short back wall, where sometimes the head of a goatherd would appear, appeared another head now - he became aware of it from a corner of his eye. He turned his back and went on with his work. He ignored it for a long time but getting a feeling as if the nape of his neck had been tingled, he turned round. It took time to understand the import of the vision. Hallucination? Yes, too common when one’s mind was obsessed with a single figure. However, the sight thrilled him. He found it difficult to return to the word ‘Nylon’, which the bangle-seller wished to be emphasized on the sign-board. The danger nowadays was that he was likely to add ’Two Will Do - Limited Family Means ...’ to every message; Ah! Daisy! He looked again to check if the hallucination still persisted. The light in the sky was gone — a few stars were out, and recognition was possible only from the outline. There was no mistake. That large head, the flat forehead, and the pointed chin were unmistakable. She had her elbows on the wall and her face in her hands. He put away his board and pad, got up, approached the wall peering like a short-sighted man. The head was there. He put out his hand to touch it. Solid to the touch. ‘Daisy?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said the voice in that semi-masculine tone.
He could not find anything to say except, ‘Why didn’t you call at the front door?’
‘I did, no response, so I explored around.’
‘My aunt is away at the temple, that’s why ...’ He knew he was spinning out a sentence without thought to its sense. He was in a confusion. He began, ‘Madam...’
‘Why “madam” suddenly?’ she asked. He had a muddled desire not to offend her in any manner, and he had thought ‘madam’ would be a prophylactic against it. He said again, ‘Why are you here and not at the front door?’
‘Have I not told you already?’ she said.
‘Yes, yes, but I wanted to ask why you have come like this.’
‘How else do you expect — with drums and pipes?’
He avoided deliberately, with an effort, the inclination to say, Why not? That’s how a bride should come home! He was terrified of idioms associated with matrimony.
I am hardly out of the police station with one foot perhaps still in, he mused. Perhaps she is here to caution me, on second thought, that she has set the police on me and to advise me to run. Perhaps she has regretted her own impulse to betray me.
‘What’s going on in your mind?’ she asked, still gazing across the wall.
‘Only that I ... I missed you ... you see, I was busy. I’ve a few urgent works now on hand all of a sudden ...’
‘I was also busy, had to be writing my report of the three weeks’ survey.’
‘That must have kept your mind preoccupied so that you could not even say good night.’
‘When?’
‘When we came down from Koppal in that bus.’
‘I don’t think I said good morning to you that day either.’
‘That’s true,’ he said fatuously.
‘Even if I hadn’t come tonight, shouldn’t you have come to see me to collect your travelling allowance and things like that?’
‘Ah, that’s all a minor matter. I could always ask you for it.’
‘Not unless you signed the form and it was sanctioned at headquarters,’ she said, her habit of precise thought asserting itself now.
‘Why should we be talking here?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Because you are found here,’ she said.
His mental processes were all tangled up. It still seemed to him incredible that she should be here — unbelievable, it was all perhaps a day-dream. ‘Did you come for me?’
‘Well, I thought there could be no other reason to come to Ellaman Street.’
‘Well, one might come this way to reach the river!’
‘Why not?’ she said unexpectedly. He hopped over the short wall and reached her side. He was completely self-forgetful - abandoning the ‘Nylon’ script, forgetting that he had been working since the afternoon and needed a wash and a little combing of the hair. Her invitation cast a spell on him and he joined her. They walked along on the sand, side by side, in silence. They reached the river’s edge and went down a flight of granite steps. Luckily no one was there at this hour- though even if there had been, Raman was not in a mood to care. Daisy was here and he was back in her favour - that was all that mattered.
They sat on the last step with their feet in water. It was cold and refreshing. The stars shone, the darkness was welcome, cool breeze, cold water lapping the feet, the voices and sounds of the living town far away muffled and soft; habitual loungers on the river-bank passing across the sands homeward softly like flitting shadows. The air had become charged with rich possibilities. He threw a look at her, and felt drawn to her. He edged a few inches nearer involuntarily.
She did not move away, but said, ‘Don’t try to get into trouble again.’
He merely said, ‘I like you, I feel lost without you.’
‘Better than getting lost along with me,’ she mumbled on. ‘ ‘’’I love you“, ”I like you“, are words which can hardly be real. You have learnt them from novels and Hollywood films perhaps. When a man says ”I love you“ and the woman repeats ”I love you“ - it sounds mechanical and unconvincing. Perhaps credible in Western society, but sounds silly in ours. People really in love would be struck dumb, I imagine.’
‘Love is the same in any society,’ he said, after all venturing to utter the term ‘love.’ If she was going to push him into the river for it, well, he’d face it. He said, ‘I agree with you. I don’t believe in the romanticism created by the literary man. It has conditioned people’s thinking and idiom and made people prattle like imbeciles in real life too.’ She laughed at this observation, and he felt pleased that he had after all made some mark.
No further speech for a little while. Then his hand seemed to move by itself and find hers, which felt cold and soft. She did not reject this touch, but just laughed and said, ‘You are an incurable romantic in spite of what you say!’
‘Who wouldn’t be, with you so near?’ He wanted to say many things to her which would express his innermost feelings, with all the intensity, muddle, and turbulence. He wanted to place his whole life before her in a proper perspective so that she might take him seriously. He rambled on in a reminiscent
manner. He did not know where to begin or how to continue. He wished to express to her that meeting her had been a landmark in his existence - how much he owed her; wanted to speak of his philosophy of life; wanted to justify himself as a sign-board painter. A sign-board painter might look ordinary, but he concentrated in his hands the entire business and aspirations of a whole community. He had to explain why he chose this medium, and that took him back further to the starting point, and from there he drifted further back to his college days and to his adventures and romances at that period; how he paid attention successively to a short girl, a tall girl, a fat girl, a lean girl - more imagined than actual. He rambled on incoherently and Daisy listened with patience. He realized that he could not complete any sentence. Ideas got entangled and swung back and forth. In the darkness he could not see her face to judge whether she was listening cynically or with interest. He concluded rather irrelevantly, ‘Yes, you are right; I am an incurable romantic.’ And added. ‘Well, I think I have spoken enough about myself. May I know if you wish to say anything about yourself?’ feeling that perhaps she had come there to talk about herself rather than to listen to his biography.
‘What sort of information do you expect? Anyway I don’t think I can match the grandeur and the variety of your life.’ She laughed and continued, ‘However, you have known me for months now, and I realize how you must be bursting with curiosity. Now where shall I begin?’ She remained thoughtful for a while. ‘You remember that cranky old fellow in the temple in that village, who wanted to give a reading of my past? If you remember, he said something that seemed to me rather strange. You remember his saying that he saw me in a hut beside the sea and waves falling on the shore? I don’t know how he was able to guess it, but that’s where my father tracked me finally after searching everywhere. Don’t you want to ask how I got there or why? Neither that hut nor the sea-side was my birthplace. I must go to the beginning.’
Raman sat up, and took away his hand in order to concentrate on what she was going to say. She had never sounded so serious at any time and Raman blurted out, ‘Why are you telling me about yourself now?’
‘Well, just to pay off the debt of having listened to your own life.’
Raman said, ‘I don’t think I sounded very clear.’
She said, ‘I don’t think I am going to sound any clearer; anyway listen to me and don’t interrupt me. Much better you know me as I am, rather than have foolish notions. Your narrative has not been of any consequence to me because I didn’t have any notion or any curiosity about you, I took you as you came; you did some work for me satisfactorily, as I wanted it, but you behaved — well, well, let us not go into it now. Anyway, let me have my say, and don’t interrupt me.’ And she narrated the story of her early life in her village home somewhere beyond the mountain ranges and the rivers; she would not be specific about the geography, and he was afraid to interrupt her to seek an explanation. She was not very clear in the sequence of her narrative but he let her continue as she liked, without a question. She spoke of her childhood in some village home where her father owned fields, gardens, and orchards; theirs was a large joint family consisting of numerous brothers, sisters, uncles, sisters-in-law, grand-aunts, and cousins. Of this population fifteen were children. The household was like a hostel; at six o’clock in the morning the house was astir with the children getting ready for the day. Although it was a large, commodious house, children were all over the place. ‘I sometimes wished I could be alone; there was no time or place to consider what one should do or think. Practically no privacy. Wherever I turned I would be spoken to or somebody would involve me in a game or expect me to do something or other. The noise at home, which no one else seemed to notice, was enough to madden me: at all times the cry of babies; the shouting of children; the quarrels between some grown-up boys; and the voice of some elder over-shouting all the rest. It was a madhouse. Somehow everything there repelled me. I do not know for what reason since my parents were very kind; my uncles joked with me and petted me; and my sisters, brothers. and cousins were extremely friendly. But I did not like so much common living.’
At this point Raman ventured to ask, ‘Could this be the reason why you want our country also to be less crowded?’
She sounded vexed at this: ‘I became interested in the population question later in life, but it had nothing to do with my early impressions. Don’t connect things in this fashion; I do not believe in such psychological theories. It would not have made any difference to my future, even if I had been the only child at home.’ After this explanation she continued, ‘All of us were brought up together. We all would get up at six o’clock and immediately crowd around the well at the back yard with tooth powder in our hands, scrambling for the water pot; and we splashed about and washed and jeered and laughed and made a mess and stayed on until my parents or an uncle or aunt came and asked us to get out of that place. Then we were all fed, groomed, dressed, and sent off to different schools in various directions. No single school could take in all of us. Some of us walked across fields, some of us found some neighbour’s bullock-cart going that way and took a ride. In some manner or other all of us reached our classes in time. I had to walk a mile and wait on the highway for a bus to the town, where they had a convent school.
‘I found my studies dull and lifeless. I was always obsessed with the thought that I ought to be doing something better, something more useful than this routine life; that I was in a vast meaningless organization from which there seemed to be no escape. I had to live like all the other children at home.’
Raman said at this point, ‘I never thought you could express yourself so well ...’
She brushed aside the compliment and said, ‘I have told you not to interrupt me. At five o’clock in the evening the process was reversed and all the children converged on the house, ready to devour whatever was available in the kitchen. Once again we were all lined up and fed and washed and groomed and once again we scattered around the neighbourhood to play until it was time to be marshalled back home, to go through our evening prayers; facing the puja room, which was too small to accommodate the whole crowd, we recited holy verses in such a loud chorus that our elders could have no doubt that our voices reached the heavens! And we lined up for a night meal and then good night, sleeping on mats or carpets in various corners of the house with or without pillows, anywhere, and everywhere. All individuality was lost in this mass existence.
’I never dreamt there could be any other kind of life, any other interest in life, any other way of living. I had no idea that it could be changed until the air became charged with rumours of a marriage proposal for me. The other children giggled and taunted me. My father and his immediate younger brother discussed with serious faces what was to be done; there was mention of many letters passing. Studies of horoscopes and talks of details of a wedding celebration. People now looked at me with a meaning; I did not like it. My mother called me one day into a side room and told me to be prepared to be inspected by a prospective bridegroom. They had a shock at home when I told my people that I’d not allow anyone to inspect me as a bride and that I’d rather do the inspection of the groom! They felt outraged and my father’s younger brother, my father being too angry to speak to me, took me aside and said, “Don’t be mad! Don’t you know that it’s not done?” I replied, “If it is not done, it’s better that someone starts doing it now.”
‘ “What’s the matter with you, my dear, why do you want to spoil your chance of settling down in life?” I had to explain that that was not my aim in life. I had other aims. I said that I would like to work, rather than be a wife.’
A statement which sent a chill through Raman. ‘I hope you have achieved it, and now you can afford to change your views.’
She ignored this remark and continued, ‘I was finally persuaded. I was particularly fond of that uncle and could not brush him aside. I decided to go through the ceremony of being viewed and assessed. I had made up my mind that I’d hate the young fellow
and discourage him publicly. They decked me in all the jewellery pieces borrowed from my sister-in-law in the house, diamonds and gold all over my ears, neck, nose, and wrist, and clad me in a heavy sari crackling with gold lace. I felt suffocated with all that stuff over me. I felt sick and felt that I was losing my identity. But I bore it all patiently, as they fitted me out in the side room, and stood around and exclaimed at how well I looked, and the children gaped and cheered and joked. I hated the whole scene. I was seized with a feeling that I was in a wrong world, and that I was a stranger in their midst. I saw my mother’s face beaming with satisfaction and I was irritated at her simplicity. Although I was only thirteen, I had my own notions of what was good for me and what I should do in life. Although they admired me, I dreaded to look into the mirror myself. And then they seated me like a doll, and I had to wait for the arrival of the eminent personage with his parents. What a fuss they made when they arrived. It’s hard to get a bridegroom, and when one is available parents treat him as a hard-won prize. The young man was not bad-looking, but it didn’t concern me. He was a young landlord owning hundreds of acres and earning a lot of money. Seated on the best carpet, the boy’s father kept saying, “I have left everything in my son’s charge. He looks after everything.” He was very fond of his son and spoke incessantly of his greatness, his mother nodding approval to whatever he said. That I was the central figure in all this drama didn’t prevent me from feeling amused. I viewed it as a sort of entertainment, and behaved, I suppose, irresponsibly. When the moment came for me to pace before the visitors coyly and reverently - I just strode up like a soldier, the jewellery jingling and the horrible lace sari rustling.’
Raman began to laugh and said, ‘Oh, I can see the picture- that mug seated there squirming in his silk shirt and nodding his tufted head with his mouth agape.’
‘No, I didn’t say he wore a tuft. He had a cropped head, unlike most of the villagers,’ she said.
Raman felt terribly jealous of him and said, ‘I am sure he must have been squint-eyed.