‘Why not? Just the right thing to do. I’m after all as human as yourself—not a Brahma. No one could be a Brahma . . . Just wait . . .’ He gave me the morning paper and disappeared for forty minutes and reappeared completely transformed into the usual picture of the presiding deity of the M.M.C. He handed me a letter for Dr Natwar, saying, ‘He is a good chap, though you may find him rather brusque. Take this letter and get an appointment for your mother and then see me.’
I had to spend the whole morning at Dr Natwar’s consulting room in New Extension. A servant took my letter in, and after I had glanced through all the old illustrated magazines heaped on a central table again and again, I sat back resigned to my fate. A half-door kept opening and shutting as sick persons with their escorts passed in and out. After nearly two hours the servant brought back my letter, marked, ‘Tuesday, 11 A.M.’ Tuesday was still five days away. Suppose the tufted man came before that? I asked the servant, ‘Can’t I see the doctor and ask for an earlier date?’ He shook his head and left. This unseen healer was like God, not to be seen or heard except when he willed it. The demigods were equally difficult to reach.
In her present mood it was not difficult to persuade my mother to submit herself to a second opinion, although I still had to pretend that I knew nothing of the test performed by Dr Kishen. I had to explain that one had to make sure, at her age, of being in sound condition and what a privilege it would be to be looked over by Dr Natwar. I didn’t tell her that it cost me a hundred rupees for this consultation. Gaffur’s taxi was available for fifteen rupees (the old Gaffur as well as the Chevrolet were no more, but his son now sat on the dry fountain, looking like him as I remembered him years ago, with an Ambassador car parked in the road) to take her over to Dr Natwar’s clinic.
Dr Natwar’s electronic and other medical equipment was fitted up in different rooms. I caught a glimpse of my mother as she was being wheeled about from section to section. She looked pleased to be the centre of so much attention and to be put through so many gadgets. She looked gratefully at me every time she passed the hall, as if to say that she had never suspected that I was such a devoted son. The demigod who had taken my letter on the first day appeared and beckoned me to follow him. All the rest had vanished—the trolley, the attendants, as well as my mother—had vanished completely, as if they had been images on the screen of a magic-lantern show. I followed him, marvelling at the smooth manoeuvring of the puppets in this institution. On the doctor’s word depended my future freedom. I was ushered into the presence of Dr Natwar, who seemed quite young for his reputation, a man of slight build and a serious face and small, tight lips which were hardly ever opened except to utter precise directions. His communication with his staff was managed with a minimum of speech—with a jerk of his head or the wave of a finger.
‘Mr Sambu, nothing wrong with your mother.’ He pushed towards me a sheaf of documents and photographs and paper scrolls in a folder. ‘Keep these for reference: absolutely nothing to warrant this check-up. Blood contents, urine and blood pressure, heart and lungs are normal. Fainting symptoms might have been due to fatigue and starvation over long periods. No medication indicated. She must eat at more frequent intervals, that’s all.’ Getting up, I muttered thanks, but hesitated. He was ready to press the bell for the next case. I shuffled my feet as if to move, but turned round to ask, ‘How long will she live?’ A wry smile came over his face as he rang the bell and said, ‘Who can answer that question? . . .’ As the next visitor was ushered in, he said simply, ‘I’d not be surprised if she outlived you and me.’
If she was going to outlive me and the doctor, I reflected on the way home, why could I not tell her straightaway that the time had come for us to dismiss her tufted cousin and his daughter from our thoughts. But I found her in such a happy mood as we travelled homeward, I didn’t have the heart to spoil it. She had already begun to talk of the wedding preparations. ‘The only thing that bothered me all along was that I might not have the strength to go through it all. Now I can; oh, so many things to do!’ I looked away, pretending to watch the passing scenes, cattle grazing in the fields, bullock-cart caravans passing and so forth. What a monomania, this desire to see me wedded! She was saying, ‘I must write to my brother and his wife to come ahead and help us: invitation letters to be printed and distributed, clothes and silver vessels . . . oh, so much to do . . . I don’t know, but my brother is a practical man . . .’ She went on chattering all the way. I was indifferent. Time enough to throw the bomb-shell. The drive and the air blowing on her face seemed to have stimulated her. With her health assured, she was planning to plunge into matrimonial activities with zest. I couldn’t understand what pleasure she derived from destroying my independence and emasculating me into a householder running up to buy vegetables at the bidding of the wife or changing baby’s napkin. I shuddered at the prospect.
The moment we got out of the taxi, the little girl came running, holding aloft a postcard. ‘The postman brought this letter.’
‘Oh, the letter has come,’ mother cried, thrilled, and read it standing on the house-steps and declared, ‘He is coming by the bus at one o’clock—never thought he’d come so soon . . .’
‘Who, the tuft?’ I asked.
She looked surprised at my levity. ‘No, you must not be disrespectful. What if someone has a tuft? In those days everyone was tufted,’ she said, suppressing her annoyance. She went up the steps into the house, while I paid off the taxi. When she heard the car move off, she came to the street and cried, ‘Why have you sent the car away? I thought you should meet him at the bus-stand and bring him home, that would have been graceful. Anyhow, hurry up to the bus-stop; you must not keep him waiting, better if you are there earlier and wait for the bus—they are such big people, you have no notion how wealthy and influential they are, nothing that they cannot command; if you went there, they could command big cars for your use, you have no idea. They grow everything in their fields, from rice to mustard, all grains and vegetables, don’t have to buy anything from a shop except kerosene. Before you go, cut some banana leaves, large ones from the back-yard garden.’ I cut the banana leaves as she ordered, went up to the corner shop and bought the groceries she wanted for the feast. I put down the packages while she busied herself in the kitchen and was harrying the servant girl. She was in high spirits, very happy and active. I hated myself for dampening her spirits with what I was about to say. I stood at the kitchen door watching her, wondering how to soften the blow I was about to deliver. She turned from the oven to say, ‘Now go, go, don’t delay. If the bus happens to come before time, it’ll be awkward to keep him waiting.’
‘Can’t he find his way, as he did that night? No one went out to receive him then.’
‘Now this is a different occasion; he is in a different class now . . .’
‘No, I don’t agree with you. He is no more than a country cousin of yours, and nothing more as far as I am concerned.’
She dropped the vessel she had been holding in her hand, and came up, noticing the change in my tone. ‘What has come over you?’
‘That tufted man is welcome to find his way here, eat the feast you provide and depart. He will not see me at the bus-stand or here.’
‘He is coming to invite you to meet his daughter . . .’
‘That doesn’t concern me. I’m going out on my own business. Feed him well and send him back to the village well-fed, whenever you like; I’m off . . .’
I went into my room to change and leave by the other door for the Boardless, haunted by the memory of pain on her face. I felt sorry for her and hated myself for what I was. As I crossed the pyol of the house and was about to reach the street, she opened the front door and dashed out to block my way, imploring tearfully, ‘You need not marry the girl or look at her, only I beg you to go up and receive that man. After all, he is coming on my invitation, we owe him that as a family friend, otherwise it’ll be an insult and they’ll talk of it in our village for a hundred years. I’d soone
r be dead than have them say that a wretched widow could not even receive a guest after inviting him. Don’t ruin our family reputation.’
‘Well, he came by himself the other evening.’
‘Today we’ve asked him.’ It was a strain for her to say all this in a soft voice, out of earshot of our neighbours. She looked desperate and kept wiping the tears with her sari and I suddenly felt the pathos of the whole situation and hated myself for it. After all, I had been responsible for the invitation. I wondered what I should do now. She begged, ‘Meet him, bring him home, eat with him, talk to him and then leave if you like. I’ll see that he doesn’t mention his daughter, you don’t have to bother about the marriage. Do what you like, become a sanyasi or a sinner, I won’t interfere. This is the last time. I’ll not try to advise you as long as I breathe; this is a vow, though let me confess my dream of seeing grandchildren in this house is—’ She broke down before completing the sentence. I felt moved by her desperation and secret dreams, pushed her gently back into the house and said, ‘Get in, get in before anyone sees us. I’ll go to the bus-stand and bring him here. I couldn’t see him clearly the other day, but I’m sure to recognize him by the tuft.’
CAT WITHIN
A passage led to the back yard, where a well and a lavatory under a large tamarind tree served the needs of the motley tenants of the ancient house in Vinayak Mudali Street; the owner of the property, by partitioning and fragmenting all the available space, had managed to create an illusion of shelter and privacy for his hapless tenants and squeezed the maximum rent out of everyone, himself occupying a narrow ledge abutting the street, where he had a shop selling, among other things, sweets, pencils and ribbons to children swarming from the municipal school across the street. When he locked up for the night, he slept across the doorway so that no intruder should pass without first stumbling on him; he also piled up cunningly four empty kerosene tins inside the dark shop so that at the slightest contact they should topple down with a clatter: for him a satisfactory burglar alarm.
Once at midnight a cat stalking a mouse amidst the grain bags in the shop noticed a brass jug in its way and thrust its head in out of curiosity. The mouth of the jug was not narrow enough to choke the cat or wide enough to allow it to withdraw its head. Suddenly feeling the weight of a crown and a blinker over its eyes at the same time, the cat was at first puzzled and then became desperate. It began to jump and run around, hitting its head with a clang on every wall. The shopkeeper, who had been asleep at his usual place, was awakened by the noise in the shop. He peered through a chink into the dark interior, quickly withdrew his head and cried into the night, ‘Thief! Thief! Help!’ He also seized a bamboo staff and started tapping it challengingly on the ground. Every time the staff came down, the jar-crowned cat jumped high and about and banged its hooded head against every possible object, losing its sanity completely. The shopman’s cry woke up his tenants and brought them crowding around him. They peered through the chink in the door and shuddered whenever they heard the metallic noise inside. They looked in again and again, trying vainly to make out in the darkness the shape of the phantom, and came to the conclusion, ‘Oh, some devilish creature, impossible to describe it.’ Someone ventured to suggest, ‘Wake up the exorcist.’ Among the motley crowd boxed in that tenement was also a professional exorcist. Now he was fast asleep, his living portion being at the farthest end.
He earned fifty rupees a day without leaving his cubicle; a circle of clients always waited at his door. His clients were said to come from even distant Pondicherry and Ceylon and Singapore. Some days they would be all over the place, and in order not to frighten the other tenants, he was asked to meet his clients in the back yard, where you would find assembled any day a dozen hysterical women and demented men, with their relatives holding them down. The exorcist never emerged from his habitation without the appropriate makeup for his role—his hair matted and coiled up high, his untrimmed beard combed down to flutter in the wind, his forehead splashed with sacred ash, vermilion and sandal paste, and a rosary of rare, plum-sized beads from the Himalayan slopes around his throat. He possessed an ancient palm-leaf book in which everyone’s life was supposed to be etched in mysterious couplets. After due ceremonials, he would sit on the ground in front of the clients with the book and open a particular page appropriate to each particular individual and read out in a singsong manner. No one except the exorcist could make out the meaning of the verse composed in antiquated Tamil of a thousand years ago. Presently he would explain: ‘In your last life you did certain acts which are recoiling on you now. How could it be otherwise? It is karma. This seizure will leave you on the twenty-seventh day and tenth hour after the next full moon, this karma will end . . . Were you at any time . . . ?’ He elicited much information from the parties themselves. ‘Was there an old woman in your life who was not well-disposed to you? Be frank.’ ‘True, true,’ some would say after thinking over it, and they would discuss it among themselves and say, ‘Yes, yes, must be that woman Kamu . . .’ The exorcist would then prescribe the course of action: ‘She has cast a spell. Dig under the big tree in your village and bring any bone you may find there, and I’ll throw it into the river. Then you will be safe for a while.’ Then he would thrash the victim with a margosa twig, crying, ‘Be gone at once, you evil spirit.’
On this night the shopman in his desperation pushed his door, calling, ‘Come out, I want your help . . . Strange things are going on; come on.’
The exorcist hurriedly slipped on his rosary and, picking up his bag, came out. Arriving at the trouble-spot he asked, ‘Now, tell me what is happening!’
‘A jug seems to have come to life and bobs up and down, hitting everything around it bang-bang.’
‘Oh, it’s the jug-spirit, is it! It always enters and animates an empty jug. That’s why our ancients have decreed that no empty vessel should be kept with its mouth open to the sky but always only upside down. These spirits try to panic you with frightening sounds. If you are afraid, it might hit your skull. But I can deal with it.’
The shopman wailed, ‘I have lived a clean and honest life, never harmed a soul, why should this happen to me?’
‘Very common, don’t worry about it. It’s karma, your past life . . . In your past life you must have done something.’
‘What sort of thing?’ asked the shopman with concern.
The exorcist was not prepared to elaborate his thesis. He hated his landlord as all the other tenants did, but needed more time to frame a charge and go into details. Now he said gently, ‘This is just a mischievous spirit, nothing more, but weak-minded persons are prone to get scared and may even vomit blood.’ All this conversation was carried on to the accompaniment of the clanging metal inside the shop. Someone in the crowd cried, ‘This is why you must have electricity. Every corner of this town has electric lights. We alone have to suffer in darkness.’
‘Why don’t you bring in a lantern?’
‘No kerosene for three days, and we have been eating by starlight.’
‘Be patient, be patient,’ said the house-owner, ‘I have applied for power. We will get it soon.’
‘If we had electric lights we could at least have switched them on and seen that creature, at least to know what it is.’
‘All in good time, all in good time, sir, this is no occasion for complaints.’ He led the exorcist to the shop entrance. Someone flourished a flashlight, but its battery was weak and the bulb glowed like embers, revealing nothing. Meanwhile, the cat, sensing the presence of a crowd, paused, but soon revived its activity with redoubled vigour and went bouncing against every wall and window bar. Every time the clanging sound came the shopman trembled and let out a wail, and the onlookers jumped back nervously. The exorcist was also visibly shaken. He peered into the dark shop at the door and sprang back adroitly every time the metallic noise approached. He whispered, ‘At least light a candle; what a man to have provided such darkness for yourself and your tenants, while the whole city is blazing w
ith lights. What sort of a man are you!’
Someone in the crowd added, ‘Only a single well for twenty families, a single lavatory!’
A wag added, ‘When I lie in bed with my wife, the littlest whisper between us is heard on all sides.’
Another retorted, ‘But you are not married.’
‘What if? There are others with families.’
‘None of your business to become a champion for others. They can look after themselves.’
Bang! Bang!
‘It’s his sinfulness that has brought this haunting,’ someone said, pointing at the shopman.
‘Why don’t you all clear out if you are so unhappy?’ said the shopman. There could be no answer to that, as the town like all towns in the world suffered from a shortage of housing. The exorcist now assumed command. He gestured to others to keep quiet. ‘This is no time for complaints or demands. You must all go back to bed. This evil spirit inside has to be driven out. When it emerges there must be no one in its way, otherwise it’ll get under your skin.’
‘Never mind, it won’t be worse than our landlord. I’d love to take the devil under my skin if I can kick these walls and bring down this miserable ramshackle on the head of whoever owns it,’ said the wag. The exorcist said, ‘No, no, no harsh words, please . . . I’m also a tenant and suffer like others, but I won’t make my demands now. All in proper time. Get me a candle—’ He turned to the shopman, ‘Don’t you sell candles? What sort of a shopman are you without candles in your shop!’ No one lost his chance to crucify the shopman.
He said, ‘Candles are in a box on the right-hand side on a shelf as you step in—you can reach it if you just stretch your arm . . .’
‘You want me to go in and try? All right, but I charge a fee for approaching a spirit—otherwise I always work from a distance.’ The shopman agreed to the special fee and the exorcist cleared his throat, adjusted his coiffure and stood before the door of the shop proclaiming loudly, ‘Hey, spirit, I’m not afraid, I know your kind too well, you know me well, so . . .’ He slid open the shutter, stepped in gingerly; when he had advanced a few steps, the jug hit the ventilator glass and shattered it, which aggravated the cat’s panic, and it somersaulted in confusion and caused a variety of metallic pandemonium in the dark chamber; the exorcist’s legs faltered, and he did not know for a moment what his next step should be or what he had come in for. In this state he bumped into the piled-up kerosene tins and sent them clattering down, which further aggravated the cat’s hysteria. The exorcist rushed out unceremoniously. ‘Oh, oh, this is no ordinary affair. It seizes me like a tornado . . . it’ll tear down the walls soon.’