Raja Rao - Kanthapura

Then when Ratna is up and washed and could speak, she says, ‘Now, sisters, this is no safe place; let us find a refuge,’ and somehow we said there’s the voice of Rangamma in her speech, the voice of Moorthy, and she was no more the child we had known, nor the slip of a widow we had cursed, and Timmamma turns to her and says, ‘Oh, where shall we go, daughter, with this new mother and child?’ and Kamalamma says, ‘Why, to the temple,’ and Ratna says, ‘Wait, I shall go and see if the path is safe,’ and when she is at the bathroom door, she comes running back shouting, ‘Fire, fire, Bhatta’s house is on fire! Surely it is the Pariah women,’ and we all rush to the bathroom door and we see the eaves taking fire and the white flame rising silk-like in the sun, and the pillars creak and the byre spits out jets and jets of stifled smoke that curls over the ripening fields and the ruddy canal, and moves up the Bebbur mound, and we hear the mahout’s cry ‘Ahè, ahè,’ and the heavy, hurried thumps of the elephant moving up the street, and from over the promontory still comes the shriek of the Pariah women and the Pariah children.

And the shouting grows shriller, and we say, ‘Surely there’s a new attack,’ and we say, ‘Now we must run to the temple,’ and Timmamma gives her hand to Radhamma, and Ratna takes the new child in her sari-fringe, and Vedamma and Satamma and Ningamma and Kanakamma and I walk through Seetharam’s backyard, by the well and round the tulsi platform, and we slip beneath the lantana growth, and we say, ‘Now we are safe,’ and we crawl towards the back of the temple. And there is a sudden crash and one of Bhatta’s veranda roofs smashes to the earth and the air is filled with hissing sparks, and there is a loud cry, and even from the temple we could hear the swish of water being thrown, and the banging of the police lathis on the rising fire, and Satamma says, ‘And my house too may catch fire,’ and she says she would like to go and see, but Timmamma says, ‘Stay, Satamma, the police are there, and what will you do but hold your head and weep?’ but she speaks of the hay and the rice and the beds and the only roof she has over her head, and Ratna says, ‘You are a Satyagrahi, sister, be patient,’ and then she goes skirting the temple, while Timmamma carries the child, and holding to the wall she enters the temple veranda and she says there’s no one in the temple and she rushes back and says, ‘Come!’ and we run behind her, and Timmamma with the child in her arms and Vedamma and the new mother beside her, and we all stand trembling before the unadorned god, and we all beat our cheeks and say, ‘Siva, Siva, protect us! Siva, Siva, protect us!’ and each one made a vow of banana libation or butterlamps or clothes or jewels for the goddess, and each one said may her husband or brother or son be safe in the prisons.

And as we turned towards the god and goddess in prayer, there is heard another crash from Bhatta’s burning house, and the lathis still beat upon it and the water still swishes over it, and now that the elephant has arrived, they put buckets full of water into its trunk, and the mahout cries, ‘Ahè, ahè,’ and groaning and grunting the elephant struggles forward. But halfway it swings round and runs for the gate, while the fire rises as high as the coconut trees, and the rice granary catches alight and the popped rice splashes out flower-like into the air, and the fire flows down the cattle shed and the hayrick and we all say, ‘Well done, well done; it is not for nothing Bhatta lent us money at 18 per cent and 20 per cent interest, and made us bleed,’ and Ratna says, ‘Say not such things, sisters, we are all Satyagrahis,’ and Satamma says, ‘Satyagrahis or not, he has starved our stomachs and killed our children,’ and we all say again, ‘Well done, well done.’

And from the foot of the Bear’s hill there is a long cry again, for the coolies of the Skeffington Coffee Estate, who had not been able to join us, have raised a clamour to receive the coolies that were being dragged in, and white dhotis are squashed by khaki clothes, and shouts and cries come, and from the Tippur stream rises the sound of the horn; and we turn towards Tippur and we say, ‘They are coming to our rescue, they are coming to help us,’ and there are white figures moving forward, and from the Santur grove comes the noise of drums, and we say, ‘They’re coming,’ and we look once to the god and once to the east, and once to the god and once to the north-east, and we look once to the god and once to the north-west, and we say all these men, all these men and women and children of the Himavathy are with us, and they’ll all come with drum and trumpet and horn to free us. And then suddenly Vedamma says she has the fever and she trembles and moans, and Ratna says she will go back to Seetharamu’s house to fetch blankets, and when we say, ‘No, no,’ Ratna says, ‘Oh, don’t be a woman,’ but hardly is she beyond the threshold than a policeman has seen her and begins to run up the promontory, and Ratna rushes in and bangs the sanctum door and the bar is drawn and the latch slipped, and he beats and beats against the door and we all stand shoulder to breast, and breast to arm, and arm to back, pressing against the door, and he gets so tired that he puts on the outside lock and turns the key, and another policeman comes along and says something about sealing, and we cry out hoarse behind the door, and we cry and moan and beg and weep and bang and kick and lament, but there’s no answer — and at last as the afternoon drew on, and our stomachs began to beat like drums and our tongues became dry, at every sound we said, ‘The people of Tippur are coming to free us, the people of Rampur are coming to free us.’ But as we put our ears to the door we hear only the crunch of military boots, the mooing of a calf, or the rasping creak of a palm tree, or suddenly there would rise from the village gate the tired, hoarse sobbings of the Pariah women, and the last crashing crackle of Bhatta’s fire. And Ratna said, ‘Now, we will never know when they will rescue us from here. Let us light the sacred flame and make bhajan, so that someone may know we are here,’ and we searched for the matches and the oil lamp, and we lighted the sacred flame, and our mouths bitter, we clapped our hands and we sang:

Siva, Siva of the Meru mount,

Siva, Siva of the Ganges-head,

Siva, Siva of the crescent moon,

Siva, Siva of the crematorium dance,

Siva, Siva of the unillusioned heart,

Siva, Siva, Siva.

And when our breath was gone and our tongues dry, Ratna would say, ‘Now, I’ll tell you stories like Rangamma,’ and she told us of the women of Bombay who were beaten and beaten, and yet would not move till their brothers were freed, and the flag that they hoisted and the carts and the cars and the trains they stopped, and the wires that the white men sent to the Queen to free them, and the women of Sholapur who, hand in hand, had marched through the streets, for twenty-five of their men had been shot, and the policemen would not work and the soldiers guarded the streets, but the women said, ‘We are behind our men,’ and they cried, ‘Vandè Mataram!’ and they said, ‘Give us back our men!’ and not a tear they shed, for they worked for the Mahatma and the Mother. And so story after story she told us, of Chittagong and Lahore, of Dandi and Benares, and we each put our head against another’s shoulder and some snored, too, and dozed away, and Radhamma’s chill went down and the fever rose and we pressed closer and closer around her, and we put our sari-fringes and our bodice-cloths upon her, and the child lay upon Timmamma’s lap, white and quiet.

And we would be roused again and again with the champak-like light shining and wavering on the dark around Siva, and with the holiness of the sanctum within our hearts we lifted our voices and sang, and we forgot the Pariahs and the policemen and Moorthy and the Mahatma, and we felt as though we were some secret brotherhood in some Himalayan cave. And one by one we put our heads against a neighbour’s shoulder and tired and hungry we yawned back to sleep. But someone would be chanting away, and clapping away, and through half-wakened eyes Siva would be seen, staring and weird, and such terror would come over us that we would rub our eyes and sing again. Then the light went down and the sanctum’s hooded darkness thrust itself over us, and we woke each other up, and we banged the door, we kicked and screamed and moaned and we banged the solid door. And yet no voice ever came in reply, but only the squeaks of the bats and the swish of the twisting river. We slept and we banged and we slept and we kicked, and at last with the cawing of crows came a hurried step, and we woke each other up, and when the door opened we saw Pariah Rachanna’s wife Rachi at the threshold. She had heard the screamings and moanings through the sleepless night, and with dawn she had slipped to the patel’s house and the women gave her a key and she had jumped over Satamma’s wall and Temple Rangappa’s fence, and falling on the main street, she had rushed up to the temple and unlocked it. We slowly rose up on our clayey legs, and when the morning light threw itself upon us we felt as though a corpse had smiled upon a burning pyre.