Raja Rao - Collected Stories

It was the next day he sent his younger brother Ramu who lived at the university campus to Madhobha. Madhobha always lent him money whenever Shankar needed any. ‘It’s God’s money and anybody can return it as long as he returns it to God,’ remarked Madhobha. As everybody knew Madhobha would one day retire to his village and build a temple to Shiva, and with marble steps going down to the deep transparent temple tank, and four big marble lions at the four entrances to the waters. There would be a large Sadhu’s quarters, a pilgrim house, and maybe even food for the travellers. It all depends on how much silver there would be in the box, and he just does not know. And then lying on the steps of the temple he would hear his Mohini sing. It should be the full moon and the waves of the tank would gently caress the marble steps. Hé Shambo.

‘My wife,’ shouted Shankar, as if it was a truth so big all Benares should know: ‘My wife is going to have a son, and I need money for the third-month ceremony, the seventh-month ceremony, and the delivery, and where will I find it till the university students return after the holidays and I have a worthy pupil? Next year I’ll take two,’ he said, ‘for my wife must have all her pregnancy-desires fulfilled.’ Whenever it concerned women, Madhobha had a generous heart. ‘Come tonight, not now,’ said Madhobha, ‘and if I’m not here, wait for me. I will have the hundred rupees ready. You give it back to me before the child is born. Understood. That is by November or December. Latest. Before the Shiva festival. Understood. That gives you enough time.’

Shankar shouted: ‘You are a saintly fellow, meant to be looking at your nose and navel and not be selling firewood for the dead. The world, brother, is all upside down.’

‘Somebody has to sell firewood for the dead,’ said Madhobha. ‘I or another Madhobha, it’s just the same. As long as you have Shiva in your heart, all’s well.’

‘When is your next bout?’

‘Next Wednesday.’

‘Grand show?’ asked Shankar.

‘Perhaps. I face Manilal of Rampur.’

‘That rascal. He deserves to be in prison. The way he does all the wrong slips and hits. He’s no boxer, he’s a butcher.’

‘The good have to be going on being good. The rest God takes care of,’ said Madhobna and that’s when the boss called, so Madhobha said: ‘We’ll meet tonight,’ and disappeared. Then Shankar went to all the shops of the city. He wanted to buy a ruby nose-ring for his wife. She had one in diamond, people had given her at the wedding. But for the gift of the child, a husband should give at least a ruby nose-ring. He wandered all afternoon as if he were the richest man in Benares. He was going to be a businessman, of this there could be no doubt now, and the sound of factories would send him to sleep. Hé, what do you say to that, brother? Speak! He now consulted jeweller after jeweller, and one shop had it. Just it , the right ruby for Padma. You know a ruby must say, ‘I belong to Padma,’ just as a horse says, ‘I belong to Moti Ram.’ Despite physics and all that Shankar believed in the personality of precious stones. The true ones brought good luck, and the evil ones calamities. So this ruby nose-ring, and for thirty-five rupees, he would take it this evening, place it before Annapuma Devi at the temple, have a thousand-and-eightnamings-of-the-name done. And with the prasadam and the jewel you go home as if you have drunk the milk of the white cows of Vrindavan.

‘Mother,’ he said, coming in after he had washed his feet and placed the prasadam and the jewel (in its neat little carboard box) before the family deity. The lamps burned cherub bright, and all seemed such true peace. ‘Mother, your daughter-in-law is going to have a baby.’ And Padma hearing this came and fell at the Mother-in- law’s feet.

‘May you bear a hundred sons,’ she blessed and she blessed again touching the back of the daughter-in-law’s head. Then Padma went in and fell before the family deity.

‘Open the box,’ shouted Shankar.

‘Why? There’s no hurry,’ whispered Padma.

‘There is hurry. I am a 3B but I know how to recognize the worth of my firstborn. Open and see, Padu.’

‘Open, daughter,’ cried the Mother-in-law. The daughters of the house — Shankar had two sisters, one five and another nine years of ago — they were chanting their studies. They were studying geography in Hindi, and an English poem.

‘Open and see,’ repeated the Mother-in-law.

Padma opened the box, fell before the gods and coming to her husband in pride, fell at his feet again.

‘May our son be pure,’ he said as if it was the language of his ancestors. Yes, what more could man need? And going before his family deity he fell prostrate and sobbed, ‘Mother Annapurna, take away my sins, my million, million sins. O mother!’ Then he rose and fell prostrate before his own mother. ‘Where is father?’ he shouted, rising. ‘Coming back from Rai Singha Singh Bahadur!’ No sooner the father came he fell, did Shankar, at his father’s feet and said: ‘My wife is pregnant.’

‘May she bear a hundred sons,’ blessed the father. Padma now came and fell at his feet. He repeated: ‘Daughter, may you live a hundred years and bring prosperity to your husband.’

The truth of life is just this. After the meal Shankar went back to his room and started reading his big book on chemistry. Strong in physics, he was weak in chemistry. He blamed his professor, but the fact was he liked numbers better. You could work magic with numbers, but chemistry was so much fireworks. All this messy test-tube business was too dirty and dangerous. Poisonous fumes and coloured gases, they looked like breathings of the very devil. After the show is over you have only the empty shells left. In mathematics you climb mountains. Mathematics is therefore like the Himalayas. The higher you go the holier it becomes. And near Kailas, on the snowy heights, and from Gangotri does the Mother Ganga emerge. ‘Zero is Ganga, Ganga is zero,’ he shouted as if he’d discovered a Vedic mantra. I tell you, you could grind castor pods at the hell-mill, the Ganga beside you. The Ganga purifies all. She gives song to the songstress, limbs to the brave, paddle-push to the boat, and child to the wife. ‘O giver of gifts Ganga Mata,’ says Shankar to himself, and in prayer, closes firm his eyes.

Padu came in late tonight, the Mother-in-law had rheumatism and so Padu cleaned up the kitchen all alone. Padu brings the glass of milk for the night. A pregnant wife and silver tumbler of milk, Lord, what more does a man want? ‘And the ruby is so right,’ he says as he looks gratefully at her. And the milk smelt of almonds and of saffron and of fine good camphor. ‘A civilized wife civilizes a barbarian,’ he said and laughed. The walls seemed warmed and quiet. His son would have no name. No, he will have a name: ‘E=MC 2.’ 3

‘How do you like that, Padu?’ he shouted, and hearing no answer listened to the flow of the River, and deeply fell into sleep.

Bholanath was from Rajgarh, district Ghazipur. He was one of eleven children — ten boys and one precious girl. She was born some years before Bhola, and, Shiva-Shivah, was Sati not arrayed in red, mirror-worked cholis and skirts, with a nose-ring of ruby, and earrings of corrugated silver? They bought her a sari when she was but seven years old — such her natural felicity.

Father Goraknath was a wheelwright by profession, and on the Benares — Ayodhya road, in those days, were there not, tell me, many, many bullock carts? And he also helped in the shoeing of bulls. The stars were good, the roads were active and all went well, and soon good Sati was married off to the son of a neighbouring peasant, Rajnath. But Sati was not meant for living. She died giving birth to a puling little boy that later grew up to be a stalwart of the village; he could fight every pugilist in town and down the adversary in the beat of an eye. They called him Bhim because he was so valourous, and soon everyone forgot his real name — for he was in truth called, on birth, Banarasidas. 1And Bhim was in every party that went on marketing expeditions up to the elephant-fair at Sonapur, in Bihar — one took twelve days of the bullock cart to reach there, but it was so gay, and Rai Krishnadas of Rampur village, the elderly zamindar next door, sometimes bought an elephant, and Bhim was the zamindar’s faithful hero and guard. Thus Bhim drove the bullock-cart, and Rai Krishnadas went in this huge, noisy, creaking vehicle, with two white bulls, and a merry procession it was that went, past Ghazipur and Ballia and then on to Sonapur. You drank a lot, and you meddled with a woman or two, here and there, and you brought back an elephant and a horse or even two elephants and many horses, according to your purse or your phantasy— and this was always much fun. Bholanath too (some three or four years younger than Bhim — for Bhola, the uncle, was born after many miscarriages of his ailing mother, and that’s why they called him Bhola, the brave) — accompanied his nephew, but one day while the two stalwarts who looked so like the Pandava brothers, Nakula and Sahadeva, well then, when they were returning from the Sonapur fair (but, this time, Rai Krishnadas bought no elephant), some uniformed men overtook them a few miles out of Gauripur, drafted them, giving them big shoes, uniform and gun, and sent them soon, very soon, across the darkling waters. And how Rati sobbed when she heard this, for they had been married but for three thin months. Bhim, however, died somewhere on the sand dunes near Bizerte, and Bholanath became expert in fixing car wheels (and remember, he was a wheelwright’s son, and some good company commander discovered this caste-craft of Bholanath), and when the company was sent to Italy first and then on to Flanders (a small company of machine men), he went with them, and being far in the farthest camp, and not in the trenches, he escaped death. After all death had taken his dues with the three stillborn before him, and with Bhim, his twin as it were dead, Bholanath would live a hundred years. And there would always be Rati for him.