Raja Rao: Collected Stories

Hé, hé, make way make way

There’s no road like the Benares road,

No virtue like truth,

There’s no wonder that’s not Shiva’s gift,

No beauty but chastity.

Hé, hé, here comes Rani Rasomani

Make way, make way, passerby.

The road back to your district is always easier, it would seem as if the gods had given wings to the palanquin bearers — they run, and do not care, and when beggars rush to the palanquin or an ekka swishes past you, there’s always the running whisk-bearer, he shouts like Bhima, and his voice could be heard till the city clock-tower. Even cars go slowly past the palanquin as if a queen were passing by, and laughing, the shopkeepers decided and said: ‘That’s the Rani of Kashi.’ And when Rasomani heard it — she was pleased. She was born in Benares or was she not? — did she not marry in Benares, say? and she will have her body burnt there too in good sandalwood — and as for the rest, the monies were already allotted to holy charities. Of course Hima has a rich husband, but one does not bring a pot of water to the flowing river, does one? The fact is for Rani Rasomani there was nothing real. All was Benares. And the only living being she recognized was Ma Ananda Mayee. 3When Ma came to Benares, Rasomani Rani would go, palanquin and whisk-bearers, to the ashram of the saint, and she would sit and sing kirtans. The Ma always blessed her the same way — gave her flower and fruit and spoke to her in clear Bengali. Ma had even given her a mantra, and had touched her beads.

Rani Rasomani was eighty-five years old, people said, hundred, said others, yet actually the astrologer would easily have told you she was only seventy-six. But she was so alone with herself, eating little (except some fresh fruit and this not too often) and saying her beads, having her bath, and going to the temple, and returning to her palace for the Mahabharata readings which had been read backwards and forwards within these last fifty years by the Brahmins, while she dozes off in her chair, the peacocks keening on the lawns. The sacred reading room lies just to the left of the veranda, so that she could stretch on her long rattan armchair by the entrance and hear the great ancient texts. Nobody comes to see her. Nobody does she go and see. The charities are looked after by the accountant Manna Lal. Life is simple. Even the drummers at the gates have been sent away since the Congress Raj. This was done by Manna Lal one day, and the Rani Sahiba did not even notice it. (‘Now,’ says Manna Lal, ‘you’ve to pay heavy income tax. The heaviest in the world, that’s what newspapers say.’) What?

So parrots live now in the drum-chambers, above the gate. What is Rani Rasomani then? Just somebody that was and is what was and so will be what is. One complicates existence with playing cards at Government House or being lost without the Edward VII cufflinks (these the Rani Sahiba still remembers). She has now developed a passion for sandalwood. Huge sandalwood logs are bought — and they cost their weight in pure gold — so that when she will be burnt Benares will all smell holy. She felt no evil against anyone. She felt no love either. She waited for death as a baby-bird awaits its mother’s beak, a gnat or caterpillar for food.

In Benares they say: Oh, she will live a hundred years. And I tell you she will. Just see her and you will know. To live a hundred years you must be a widow, wear white, visit Shiva’s temple, and know of neither war nor of government.

‘Shambho Shankara,’ cried Shivlal as he woke on his thin, bankrupt bed. Bed was hardly the name one could give to his wattlemat, his much-holed mattress of sorts, and his tattered blankets three in all. The fact about the blankets, however, was just this — they were not all torn at the same place, thus you could move about in comfort almost anywhere on the bed without the Ganga ghat chill eat into your capillary system — for the Benares chill is like a carpenter’s winch, it spins on itself, and pierces straight to the white of bone. There is nothing you can do about it, but just pray that warmth somehow come up the legs, and warmth does come up: ‘Shambho Shankara.’ And you seek out your beads; and with the flower-covered Shiva’s head framed in your eyes, you start taking the great god’s name. ‘Hé Shambho.’ And soon it will be time for you to go to your shouting Sadhu.

It’s just the time the whole of Benares is waking up, for example that Shankar Shastri whose window you can see from your bed. He is always reading — for he sits at the window, and he has electric lights. You hear his door creak, and by now the light has disappeared — so it’s going soon to be morning. The creaking of Shankar Shastri’s door is dawn for Shivlal. It has a peculiar sandy self-confident crunch — as it if were a wall-lizard prognosticating, or, a forest mahua tree rubbing against an acacia, with the low morning breezes. For Shivlal came from the forests, and to him the forest was always home. Shivlal in fact knew little of man— that is of city man.

He came, did Shivlal, from Madhya Pradesh, somewhere near Chanda, and there you knew more about leopards, tigers and hyenas than you knew of city people. The only city man Shivlal had ever seen as a boy (and that was some fifteen or more years ago and, when they still had that big Eight-pillared House and the cattle in the yard, and the women at the querns — and this was long before the case had gone even to the district court, leave alone the sessions court) — yes, the only city man Shivlal had ever seen was a peddler selling golden bangles, safety pins, kumkum, turmeric powder, saintly literature, astrological almanacs, photographs of King George V and Queen Mary and of the Maharaja of Gwalior, with his full tiara and durbar regalia, and finally photographs of the Singer Sewing Machine—’And this, brother,’ he would say as if whirling the handle of the machine, with one hand, and pressing the cloth with the other, and making the cluck-cluck noise of the needle with his tongue, ‘and this brother can stitch your shirt in an hour, a bodice in half an hour, and a child’s nightwear, and in any colour you like, before you’ve winked your eyes once, twice and thrice.’ The gentleman in the photograph, Mr Singer, would agree, as though nodding his high, lean mechanical head but fifty-five round rupees is for the majestic Grandfather, with his grave metallic voice, almost a month’s tax payment to the treasury, and there are always the festivals, and the sending of choli-piece to the daughters, the bringing back in of the pregnant girls, not to speak of the ways of adoring and adorning the son-in-law, so that when you begin to think of it all, a joint-family household is more expensive than a single one, so said Father, even if you were rich and round in the first case, and poor and in your bed, by the Ganga, shivering as in the second. And then there is your uncle — but this came later. The city-man had, alas, to be sent away — his mouth cluck-clucking was such amusement for the children, yet if the Eight-pillared House people did not buy your machine, tell me, who else in this miserable village would?

Oh, yes, the village had a grand name: Vallabhpur it was called, and everybody knew there was a great Kakotia king called Vallabh, so Grandfather said, shaking the silver bangle on his arm, yes, Vallabh, the king — the same who built Saraswathi dam across the Narbada, and large canals and many temples (you can see these in ruins everywhere) and he built them when he had defeated the Muslims at some far-off and forgotten battle. He also gave lands to Brahmins in commemoration of his victory (victory cometh where Brahmin feedeth, so the saying goes among kings), thus the Eight-pillared House came into existence, while another king conquered some other foe, and since Mangal Bahadur was a brave soldier, though a Brahmin, and had killed a hundred foes with one scimitar, he was given this village in perpetuity (‘till the moon stood high in the sky and the sun rose red and big every auspicious morn,’ read the stone inscriptions that still stood beside the courtyard well). Life you know is very simple. You kill one hundred people in battle, and you’re given a village in perpetuity. That the village is tiger-haunted, a den of the hyena, the porcupine, and the teaser leopard, makes no difference whatsoever. When you say you have slain a hundred enemy-men you can kill a tiger or two as well. Sometimes the tiger cubs would go puling like puppies on the main street during moonlit nights — and you could see these through the barred windows — and I tell you they terrified you less than a visiting policeman. The visiting policeman needed a nice meal, an inner courtyard bed to sleep in (unless there was a willing woman somewhere down the village) and at least a piece of silver. But the tiger, he came — or she came as she went, and sometimes growled when she smelt a cow or a horse in the backyard. No tiger ever touched a man in Vallabhpur in all its history — unless you talked of that mad tiger of Bahadurabad or the old cronie of the Pusli hills — they of course took away babies or old women in the fields. Yet that is another matter. Tigers are good, you know, that is if you are good. And how many Gond 1boys did not ride a tiger and he does nothing to them. For example there was Kishmish Singh, the Gond, who looked after the cattle in the Eight-pillared House. He one day, sang a tiger to the water tank and made it go to the Shiva temple (he had such magic in his voice) and did not the tiger wave its tail and give a roar on looking at the god? The truth is: the tiger perhaps knows his Shiva better than you know yours, so said Grandfather, in explanation. The world is becoming so evil, he said again and again — in future all that will remain of Vallabhpur will be a few old men tottering in their forest coughs, a few aged widows, and the tigers of the forest coming to offer puja to Vallabheshwara, our temple god. Man is evil, today he loves his copper so much. He would rather his daughter married a tiger or your son a hyena than a proper human being, as long as tiger or hyena brought forth money, so to say.