5

IN the days that followed, Ravi thought about her a lot— this girl with the bright eyes and thick glossy hair who could 

transform a man's life. He would have liked to meet her— 

properly, not as a laboring coolie in her father's house; to talk to her as an equal, to get to know her, as other young 

men came to know young girls, within the approving, care- 

fully conducted circle of mutual friends and family relation- ships. 

But how? He took painful stock of himself. He had no fam- ily,andwithout them who would arrange it? He had left his 

family, a long time ago — three years was it?— as his brothers had done, as all the young men he knew had done or wanted 

to do, joining the exodus to the cities because their villages had nothing to offer them. The city had nothing either, although they did not discover this until they arrived: but it held out before them like an incandescent carrot the hope that one day, some day, there would be something. 

His own father had half believed in it,in this shining legend 

of riches in the city— and not only because he had to, there being nothing in the village for the sons of a small rack-rent tenant farmer like himself — but because the vision had burned 

so long in his brain during years of fear and exhaustion that it had become enshrined there as a relic of truth. 

And his mother? She had watched, powerless, unable even to comment, as bereft of knowledge as her husband but un- 

wilingtosubstitute visions and legends for it. One after an- othertheyhad been forced out, and had gone: three sons, her 

daughter, her son-in-law, all in turn had boarded the train that bore them away to the city. 

In fact, thought Ravi, she had always known they would go, had always accepted that there was no counterweight she or the village could apply to thwart the drawing power of the vast magnet dangled by the city, for he could remember her, even when they were quite small children, withdrawing into a closed misery of her own each time the steam-engine and its three coaches came clanking in. It came once a day, barely 

paused — for the village was not even a station but only a Halt 

— and in a few minutes was gone, vanished beyond the hori- zonforanother whole cycle of night and day. But the lines 

remained, double lines of steel bolted on to sleepers that moved 

both ways into the distance like an articulated animal; re- mained,andbecame a presence in their lives. 

They brooded on it: his mother with a land of paralyzed fear that to the day of her death never expressed itself; he and his brothers with an increasing, heightening excitement that almost threatened to consume them before the actual day of departure. And what had happened to that excitement? At any other time he would have spat his disgust, rid his mouth of the 

taste of it and turned to dicing, drinking — anything that would disable his mind. Now he examined it carefully, minutely. 

What had happened? Somewhere between that bright be- giningandnow the vital fluid had drained away, leaving a sludge that sometimes made it difficult for him to shift his feet 

in the morning. 

If there had been a job, he thought, it might have been dif- ferent:butthere was no job. The city was full of graduates 

— the colleges turned them out in their thousands each year — looking for employment, so what chance had he, with his 

meager elementary school learning? His father had been proud of this learning, had insisted on it as a key to the power of earn- 

ing which was the broad base of a man's pride, had taken his whip to his whimpering sons to drive them to it. But he had 

been wrong. The key opened no doors: it closed them, for his education did not allow Ravi to compete against the gaunt, 

shabby-genteel young graduates who hung around the streets, while it had taken from him the ability to work with his hands 

except in an amateur capacity.

So what did that leave him with? The analysis was hurting 

now, probing regions so raw that he usually kept them well 

shielded. He could read, he could write — not only the vernac- lar but English — English because that had been the language of the overlords when he was a boy, and if you aimed any- 

where higher than the rut you were in, learning it was one of 

the routes. He was young, able-bodied, healthy. He had a cer- tain quickness of hand and eye and mind which gave him a 

fractional advantage in his dealings with men. With these 

assets then, which added up sizably, was it still true to say that 

in this city of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, each with 

a hundred needs, there was no job for him between coolie and clerk? 

Ravi wanted to stop thinking, but he could not. He laid his 

throbbing head in his arms while the inquiry went on. Some- where, certainly, there was such a job. It was the drag round the streets, and the searching, and the wait and the frustration 

and bearing the pinpricks that the haughty rich always had in 

plenty for the poor, wThich he had not been able to endure.

Then Damodar had come along, with his introductions to a 

whole gang of young men like himself, and his passport to a world shot with glitter and excitement: a world that revived 

the incandescent glow the city had once kindled; and suddenly the terror and the loneliness were gone, lifted from the load whose other components were hunger, the lassitude of hunger, and the terror of losing his identity in an indifferent city which was akin to death. Of course much of this world, this dazzling world, lay in the future: but eyery kind of fear and privation became bearable in the light of its bright promise. 

Yes. Damodar had helped; but would Damodar be able to 

help him in his relations with this girl: Would any of his friends? He almost smiled. Produce any of that set, 

he thought grimly, and he might as well write finis to this chapter of his dreams. 

"Ai, Ravi! What's the matter, girl trouble:" 

It wasn't only that of course: but he could not 20 into all the details of his discontent. He nodded silently. 

'"No need to fret, man!" Damodar banged him encourag- inglyonthe back. "Shell come around in the end. They all 

do."

"Not this one." Ravi spoke out of his depression. ''She's— 

different.*'

"When we're smitten we all think that." Damodar laughed. 

"Believe me, my dear Ravi, sirIs are all the same. I know 

them."

Ravi knew. too. the sort of girls Damodar knew: bazaar 

girls who were two a penny, who joked with you with un- seemly camaraderie, who scarcely bothered to draw the cloth 

of their saris over their breasts; or who were to be seen riding 

in rickshaws at night on the Marina between Mylapore and 

the Fort, hidden behind grimy white drapes in perverted sem- blanceofthe habit of a nun. That sort of girl was not for him 

— never, never! He almost trembled, contrasting them with the chaste young beauty who had crossed his path. 

"Come on, man," Damodar urged, "out with it." 

"Well," said Ravi weakly, "there's not much to tell," and then a little to his surprise he found himself recounting what 

had happened, leaving out only the address, the actual locale, from a deeply grounded nervousness of Damodar. 

"And then what happened," asked Damodar, listening care- fuly,"aftershe took your side, I mean? Finish the story." 

"But that's it," said Ravi, feeling he had welshed on his friend. "She giggled, Icame away, that's all." 

Damodar let out a long low whistle of amazement. "You mean you actually had her on your side, and you simply let it 

go at that?" 

"What else could I do?" Ravi spoke resentfully. It was all very well for Damodar, who kept different company, who 

had forgotten the difficulties of getting to know a respectable 

girl without the solid background of family — and especially after you had quarreled with her mother! But even Damodar 

was silent, and Ravi went on, boldly: "What would you have 

done?"

There was another silence. "You'll have to propitiate her," 

saidDamodar atlast."The mother, Imean." 

"Oh yes," said Ravi sarcastically. "I'll take her some gar- lands,andperhaps a sari or two. What does it matter if I don't 

eat for some months?" 

Damodar pondered. "Has she any brothers?" "I don't know." 

"Making friends with them would help." "Idon't know, Itellyou." 

"Or you could help her father." "To do what?" 

"Whatever he does." "He's atailor." 

"Oh well." Damodar splayed his hands in defeat; and then suddenly, in between horseplay and genuine concern, he grew still. 

Ravi looked up, surprised. "What isit?" 

"There's the warehouse," said Damodar thoughtfully. His eyes had narrowed, giving him the look of a wary cat. Ravi 

knew the look and shivered: it meant business, and although he partnered Damodar, followed where he led, seldom had 

misgivings, yet he never escaped this preliminary spurt of 

panic.

He never showed it,never risked the blistering scorn that 

he knew underlay Damodar's easy jovialities. And Damodar for his part trod carefully, never forcing the pace, allowing 

novices to step gingerly over a borderline at which they had 

earlier balked, willing to sacrifice a plum or two rather than lose a recruit. 

The warehouse was more than a plum, it was a whole or- chard. Damodar, Ravi knew, had been itching to have a crack 

at it, had desisted only because he knew he could never do it on his own. A large tin shed, it lay within sight and hailing distance of the docks and, indeed, was periodically floodlit by a powerful beam from the lighthouse beyond; but few took notice of what semed a dump for empty sacks and battered 

petrol tins, or looked beyond the untidy squatters' shacks that further disfigured it. Fewer still knew that it was in effect 

a bonded warehouse although the goods in bond had never come under Customs scrutiny, or suspected that the complex 

system of rate-fixing and exaction of dues was operated by a 

ring at least as efficient and well-organized as any of the more respectable commercial houses. 

Ravi had been inside once, in the early days, had come away 

bemused by what he was shown, the vast collection of silks and satins, bolts of brocade and velvet that lined the shelves 

from floor to ceiling. Later there were other visits, after he 

had proved he could keep his mouth shut — visits during which his suspicions hardened that what he saw concealed a good deal of what he was not meant to see. But even this visible 

truth seemed rich enough to him, as gradually he came to ap- preciatethewealth that was locked up here in this finery, in 

these French chiffons, Genoese velvets, Honiton lace, im- portedtosatisfy the whims of conditioned women who could 

have been served as well by Benares or Bangalore, but who be- lievedthata foreign label conferred a certain cachet, a little 

indefinable something that set them above the common herd. Commercial interests would have obliged them: but in these 

post-British days there were bans, quotas, import restric- 

tions, imposed by a government more interested in fostering 

national industry than in pandering to the rich. So the black marketeers took over. 

Even here, Ravi discovered, there were circles within cir- cles,thefull ramifications of which he did not yet know fully. 

He knew, however, Damodar's ring: the small operators who lived off the backs of the large operators, although the repris- als against those caught were so ferocious that Damodar had 

great difficulty in gathering henchmen for his bolder schemes. 

As he himself savagely said, he was limited by the timidity of his followers. 

"There's the warehouse," Damodar Ravi, coldly willing him to acquiesce. 

repeated. He watched 

"Yes." Ravi shrugged, throwing off the pressure he could feel being exerted on him. "I don't see the connection." 

"Don't you?" Damodar leered. "Or don't you want to? 

What I'm saying is take him a bolt or two, brocade, what you 

will, and you'll have the old man eating out of your hand."

It was true enough, Ravi knew. With material like that to 

offer, a tailor could choose his memsahib and fix his price, in- 

stead of the other way around. No questions would be asked, for fear of cutting off the supply; and there was little risk, for it was entirely beyond official scope to crack down on every petty trader hawking forbidden goods. On the point of accept- 

ance,Ravihesitated, felt tempted, then hung back again. He himself had no particular scruple about lifting goods from the warehouse. After all, as he told himself, it was not exactly stealing, for they should not have been there in the first place; 

and taking it further back, why shouldn't people bring in to the country what they wanted? Ifitwas wrong, itwas apaper 

thing, nothing to do with morals as he now practiced them; 

but it was pertinent in the context of those respectable con- nectionsforwhich he intended making a determined bid. 

Furthermore, the proposal frightened him. Tweaking the 

nose of the law was one thing, operating against one's kind entirely another: unsavory, and frightening. 

He said, "We couldn't do it."

"Why not?" Damodar's voice was edged.

"There's the watchman." He forced himself to go on. "Two 

of them, night and day."

"Easy." Damodar rubbed thumb and finger together in the 

universal gesture betokening bribery. "Grease their palms." "With what?" 

"With the proceeds." 

"It's dangerous." "Isn't life?" 

Ravi was suddenly very weary. He would do it for her, he told himself sullenly: for her sake, not his. Anyhow, what did itmatter? What mattered now, atthismoment oftime through which he was living, was not to have to hold out against Damodar any longer. And Damodar was right, he saw that: life was hazardous in all its aspects, and was it to be reckoned more so here because the danger was blatant and obvious^ 

than in a village where it was hidden in duller, more insidious forms? There were, after all,man-traps everywhere. 

"All right?" "Yes." 

"Good man! Now listen. The nightwatchman comes on 

at—"

Damodar's voice had lost its serrated edge, he was brisk and 

friendly again as he detailed plans which, Ravi realized fleet- 

ingly before he was borne away on the other's enthusiasm, must have been worked out months before on the certainty of 

his cooperation.