Raja Rao - Collected Stories

Now I am in retirement. I have grown, and short, with years. My uniform has many holes, but I wear it for the pension day. I lie by the gate, however, singing songs and sometimes wishing I could fly and be inside the House, and always: or a parrot in the cage and hung there. The rose too from her bush does the same. ‘Wish I were a washerwoman or lamp-lighter, I would be washing inside or massaging. I dare not think of cooking — I am not pure enough.’ Such is our talk across the wall in Travancore and the One who understands knows. The rose, I forgot to tell you, has lost its tear, and I my medals. The rose knew its perfume was of the rose, its petals, its colour of rose was of the rose, and so there was no rose but the rose — if you understand what I mean. So it smelt of the Lotus. I was very happy. I became a man, that is, free and all that. Where is the prisoner, I ask, where? In the kingdom of Travancore there are no prisons, according to the Travancore Code, that is the Truth, and that is the beautiful Truth, said the white rose to me.

And the trouble, brother, all the trouble is that we mistake the Lotus for the Rose.

These stories are so structured that the whole book should be read as one single novel.

All persons and places are not true — but real.

Raja Rao

Austin, Texas

12 October 1988

‘Palanquin, Palanquin, leave the way, ho, for His Honour, the Palanquin’—this is how we should have been received at Mughal Sarai station, but we’re met by self-selling, highturban-adjusting taxi drivers, their chariots betoken of a forgotten dignity. ‘Saab, paisa, money,’ said the coolies, trying to get rid of us before the customary hagglings began, thus again that they’d not have to bear their burdens too long. ‘Saab, the Gaya Express is coming soon.’ Here however two curs introduced themselves, noses up and ears straight, to watch the argument — they also were going to get something from these new customers. One, with long hanging pips, was trying to edge the other, a leansome male, lest there should be the possibility of a gift. ‘Even a cur in Benares is blessed,’ said the great Sri Sankara, and who can say what these curs were, what ancient souls reborn for their ultimate salvation on the Ganga banks. The bullocks too, from a neighbouring cart, waved their ears. They heard this haggle as if they again would profit from some ultimate benefit. In Benares everything— bullock carts, rags, human excreta (in cones or flat), fallen wayside hay, treetops, burnt charcoals, abandoned bus horns, beggars, ugly names on worn walls (maybe of politicians)— everything, everything benefits from all acts — for no act here has any consequence. An action must have cause and effect. In Benares there seems no reason for a cause, thus the result is, no effect. No act breeds an act. And so eternity, the bent meaning of the river.

But night, the all-pervading immemoriality that the earth gives herself for her cogitations, it too was an observant of this haggle. In the silence of the trees a monkey or two woke up. They breathed heavily and went back to slumber. This simian heavy breath created a cry from the hanging bats, and these again thought the Calcutta Mail, which they knew day after day from its raucous, diesel whistle, and from the harsh Punjabi accents of its travellers or the rich Bengali ones — they knew that the haggle would go on. The whole night was there for the chase and the hang-to, and, by dawn sweet sleep would come. The midnight hagglers come by the Calcutta Mail and so they are rich. (Even the monkeys by now knew of the air-conditioned coaches.) And where the rich are, the cur and the bullocks — maybe even the motor engines of mathematically conditioned reflexes — had known there’s always a fight.

‘Fifteen rupees to Benares, Saab, and look at my brand new taxi.’ Paul to whom this was addressed looked wistfully at the much-torn top and the flabby tyres of the noble vehicle arrayed before us.

‘Fourteen rupees and eight annas, sir,’ said the young Sikh driver who spoke some English. ‘You want to go to the Metropolitan Hotel.’

‘Go you,’ said an elderly, round-faced and beturbaned colleague. ‘They’re going to the university. With all your learning, can’t you see they’re students?’

‘Shut up, old fellow. My uncle has gone to Canada and he was there twenty years before you were born. I know what books are. I have studied up to the matric.’

‘Yes, yes, you study up to the Matric,’ took up the elder, ‘and you drive those rotten taxis, those newcomers that go phut every second twist you give to the wheel. Look, sir, look at my old model. I take marriage processions in it, often. And you students, with all your books and luggage, you always take me.’

‘No doubt, no doubt You have a regular nuptial palanquin,’ said the youngster with his uncle gone to Canada, and that decided us.

‘Paul,’ I said, ‘let us take this palanquin.’ And Paul laughed. The old 1939 model Ford was exactly like a large bullock cart. Its sides (being a larger, and so, older a car) indeed were more torn than those of the smaller Indian ones, made, so to say, but the other day.

‘You won’t take that palanquin, sir,’ said the young man in English almost belligerently. ‘The old man does not even have a car licence.’

‘We take that palanquin,’ I declared, and when we asked the coolies to pile in our luggage, the coolies were pleased. They always liked this Moti Ram, the driver. ‘He’s a good man, sir,’ they assured us, tying up the luggage on the top and back. ‘A father of many children. And he’s also such a good drummer. You must hear him at Holi.’

‘Drummer,’ said the young man with Canadian connections, ‘his children beat their stomachs for a drum. That’s how hungry they are. Poor kids,’ he said and turned, tired, to some new customers. This time they were Punjabis, and they could speak the same lingo. And there was a lovely child with the father and the mother. There would be no haggling with them. Five rupees, the traveller said, and eight they agreed upon, and thus they entered the car and drove away, before our car had taken its breath to make its august first move.

‘How much for your palanquin?’ I asked, smiling.

‘Oh, the Sahib has travelled much, one can see. The other Sahib is a European. Thus you know what to give a poor man.’

Remembering our Indian companion’s friendly advice earlier in the train, Paul said, ‘Make sure, Raja, what he wants.’ I liked our palanquin and its owner. I felt the night had heard enough hagglings. There was even now a large crowd on the platform, the Calcutta Mail was still watering. The vendors were busy, and there was something altogether unconvincing about the high overbridge, the lit train, and the night-alive crowd. The world is indeed the city seen in a mirror, and, upside down.

Strange to say the coolies did not haggle. They just took their wages, and a modest tip, and walked away, their red turbans on their head as if they were going back to dream. The train truly was the dream that ran through their nights. The multiple languages, shapes, and colours of the pilgrims, from the guttural Tamil speakers to the nasal Bengalis — it all seemed too variegated to be concrete. The Mughal Sarai coolies must be among the wisest men in the world. They see more humanity than at any other railway station on this globe. Five hundred million Hindus are their clients, and not just that: their ancestors have come too, to this same Benares, life after life, and thus have established a pilgrim link between man and man. Why should one be born near Mughal Sarai, and be a coolie? In what past life was there a desire to serve pilgrims who go to the Ganga? Mother Ganga always knows. ‘I tell you, brother, if Mother Ganga did not decide, there would be no Sita Ram or this Bhaiya Ram carrying luggages on Mughal Sarai railway platform. We carry beddings, nightjars, tiffin carriers, punkahs, canes, cradles, vessels, silver tumblers, coconuts, and gold on our shoulders — sometimes we even carry the ashes of the dead that the mourners bring in red-cloth baskets, we carry the trousseau of the newly-wed, we also carry the last possession of those who come to the Ganga to die, old men who know that time is come to give their last breath away, by the Ganges. Such our trade. We revere it. Our fathers have done it. Some say our ancestors were thugs: they worshipped Bhavani, and betimes strangulated travellers for the pleasure of the Goddess. Others say, before the rails came, we were the palanquin bearers of the rich. We have always had to do with travellers. Brother, our job is service to the pilgrim. The great God who sits on the other side of the Ganges, he alone knows what we are, where we go. O, that donkeyson Punjab Express is already there. Run,’ they say, as they rush up the gangway.