BROKEN PANES

ON THE 15th of August 1930, about two thousand citizens of Malgudi assembled
on the right bank of Sarayu to protest against the arrest of Gauri Sankar, a
prominent political worker of Bombay. An earnest-looking man clad in khaddar
stood on a wooden platform and addressed the gathering. In a high, piercing voice,
he sketched the life and achievements of Gauri Sankar; and after that passed on to
generalities: 'We are slaves to-day,' he shrieked, 'worse slaves than we have ever
been before. Let us remember our heritage. Have we forgotten the glorious periods
of Ramayana and Mahabharata? This is the country that has given the world a
Kalidasa, a Buddha, a Sankara. Our ships sailed the high seas and we had
reached the height of civilisation when the Englishman ate raw flesh and wandered
in the jungles, nude.
But now what are we?' He paused and said on the inspiration of the
moment, without troubling to verify the meaning: 'We are slaves of slaves.' To
Swaminathan, as to Mani, this part of the speech was incomprehensible. But five
minutes later the speaker said something that seemed practicable: 'Just think for a
while. We are three hundred and thirty-six millions, and our land is as big as
Europe minus Russia. England is no bigger than our Madras Presidency and is
inhabited by a handful of white rogues and is thousands of miles away. Yet we bow
in homage before the Englishman!
Why are we become, through no fault of our own, docile and timid? It is the
bureaucracy that has made us so, by intimidation and starvation. You need not do
more. Let every Indian 'Gandhi ki Jai!' shouted Swaminathan involuntarily, deeply stirred by the
speaker's eloquence at this point. He received a fierce dig from Mani, who
whispered: Tool! Why can't you hold your tongue?'
Swaminathan asked: 'Is it true?'
Which?'
'Spitting and drowning the Europeans.'
'Must be, otherwise, do you think that fellow would suggest it?'
'Then why not do it? It is easy.'
'Europeans will shoot us, they have no heart,' said Mani.
This seemed a satisfactory answer, and Swaminathan was about to clear
up another doubt, when one or two persons sitting around frowned at him.
For the rest of the evening Swaminathan was caught in the lecturer's
eloquence; so was Mani. With the lecturer they wept over the plight of the Indian
peasant; resolved to boycott English goods, especially Lancashire and Manchester
cloth, as the owners of those mills had cut off the thumbs of the weavers of Dacca
muslin, for which India was famous at one time. What muslin it was, a whole piece
of forty yards could be folded and kept in a snuff box! The persons who cut off the
thumbs of such weavers deserved the worst punishment possible. And
Swaminathan was going to mete it out by wearing only khaddar, the rough
homespun. He looked at the dress he was just then wearing, in chagrin. 'Mani,' he
said in a low voice, 'have you any idea what I am wearing?'
Mani examined Swaminathan's coat and declared: 'It is Lancashire cloth.'
'How do you know it?'
Mani glared at him in answer.
'What are you wearing?' asked Swaminathan.
'Of course khaddar. Do you think I will pay a pie to those Lancashire
devils? No. They won't get it out of me.'
Swaminathan had his own doubts over this statement. But he preferred to
keep quiet, and wished that he had come out nude rather than in what he believed
to be Lancashire cloth.
A great cry burst from the crowd: 'Bharat Matha ki Jai!' And then there were
cries of 'Gandhi ki Jai!' After that came a kind of mournful 'national' song. The
evening's programme closed with a bonfire of foreign cloth. It was already dark.
Suddenly the darkness was lit up by a red glare. A fire was lighted. A couple of
boys wearing Gandhi caps went round begging people to bum their foreign cloth.
Coats and caps and upper cloth came whizzing through the air and fell with a thud
into the fire, which purred and crackled and rose high, thickening the air with
smoke and a burnt smell. People moved about like dim shadows in the red glare.
Swaminathan was watching the scene with little shivers of joy going down his
spine. Somebody asked him: 'Young man, do you want our country to remain in
eternal slavery?'
'No, no,' Swaminathan replied.
'But you are wearing a foreign cap.'
Swaminathan quailed with shame. 'Oh, I didn't notice he said and removing
his cap flung it into the fire with a feeling that he was saving the country.
Early next morning as Swaminathan lay in bed watching a dusty beam of
sunlight falling a few yards off his bed, his mind, which was just emerging from
sleep, became conscious of a vague worry. Swaminathan asked himself what that
worry was. It must be something connected with school. Homework? No. Matters
were all right in that direction. It was something connected with dress. Bonfire,
bonfire of clothes. Yes. It now dawned upon him with an oppressive clearness that
he had thrown his cap into the patriotic bonfire of the previous evening; and of
course his father knew nothing about it.
What was he going to wear for school to-day? Telling his father and asking
for a new cap was not practicable. He could not go to school bareheaded.
He started for the school in a mood of fatalistic abandon, with only a coat
and no cap on. And the fates were certainly kind to him. At least Swaminathan
believed that he saw the hand of God in it when he reached the school and found
the boys gathered in the road in front of the school in a noisy irregular mob.
Swaminathan passed through the crowd unnoticed till he reached the
school gate. A perfect stranger belonging to the Third Form stopped him and
asked: 'Where are you going?'
Swaminathan hesitated for a moment to discover if there was any trap in
this question and said: Why--er.... Of course....'
'No school to-day,' declared the stranger with emphasis, and added
passionately, 'one of the greatest sons of the Mother and has been sent to god.'
'I won't go to school,' Swaminathan said, greatly relieved at this
unexpected solution to his cap problem.
The Head Master and the teachers were standing in the front veranda of
the school. The Head Master looked careworn. Ebenezar was swinging his cane
and pacing up and down. For once, the boys saw D. Pillai, the History Teacher,
serious, and gnawing his close-clipped moustache in great agitation. The crowd in
the road had become brisker and noisier, and the school looked forlorn. At five
minutes to ten the first bell rang, hardly heard by anyone except those standing
near the gate. A conference was going on between the teachers and the Head
Master. The Head Master's hand trembled as he pulled out his watch and gave
orders for the second bell. The bell that at other times gave out a clear rich note
now sounded weak and inarticulate. The Head Master and the teacher were seen
coming toward the gate, and a lull came upon the mob.
The Head Master appealed to the boys to behave and get back to their
classes quietly. The boys stood firm. The teachers, including D. Pillai, tried and
failed. After uttering a warning that the punishment to follow would be severe, the
Head Master withdrew. Thundering shouts of 'Bharat Matha ki Jai!'
'Gandhi ki Jai!' and 'Gaura Sankar ki Jai!' followed him.
There were gradual unnoticed additions of all sorts of people to the original
student mob. Now zestful adult voices could be detected in the frequent cries of
'Gandhi ki Jai!' Half a dozen persons appointed themselves leaders, and ran about
crying: 'Remember, this is a hartal. This is a day of mourning. Observe it in the
proper spirit of sorrow and silence.'
Swaminathan was an unobserved atom in the crowd. Another unobserved
atom was busily piling up small stones before him, and flinging them with admirable
aim at the panes in the front part of the school building. Swaminathan could hardly
help following his example. He picked up a handful of stones and searched the
building with his eyes. He was disappointed to find at least seventy per cent of the
panes already attended to.
He uttered a sharp cry of joy as he discovered a whole ventilator,
consisting of small square glasses, in the Head Master's room, intact! He sent a
stone at it and waited with cocked-up ears for the splintering noise as the stone hit
the glass, and the final shivering noise, a fraction of a second later, as the piece
crashed on the floor. It was thrilling.
A puny man came running into the crowd announcing excitedly, 'Work is
going on in the Board High School.'
This horrible piece of news set the crowd in motion. A movement began
towards the Board High School, which was situated at the tail-end of Market Road.
When it reached the Board High School, the self-appointed leaders held up
their hands and requested the crowd to remain outside and be peaceful, and
entered the school. Within fifteen minutes, trickling in by twos and threes, the
crowd was in the school hall.
A spokesman of the crowd said to the Head Master, 'Sir, we are not here to
create a disturbance. We only want you to close the school. It is imperative. Our
leader is in gaol. Our Motherland is in the throes of war.'
The Head Master, a wizened owl-like man, screamed, "With whose
permission did you enter the building? Kindly go out. Or I shall send for the police.'
This was received with howling, jeering, and hooting. And following it,
tables and benches were overturned and broken, and window-panes were
smashed. Most of the Board School boys merged with the crowd. A few, however,
stood apart. They were first invited to come out; but when they showed reluctance,
they were dragged out.
Swaminathan's part in all this was by no means negligible. It was he who
shouted 'We will spit on the police' (though it was drowned in the din), when the
Head Master mentioned the police. The mention of the police had sent his blood
boiling. What brazenness, what shamelessness, to talk of police--the nefarious
agents of the Lancashire thumb cutters! When the pandemonium started, he was
behind no one in destroying the school furniture. With tremendous joy he
discovered that there were many glass panes untouched yet. His craving to break
them could not be fully satisfied in his own school. He ran round collecting ink-
bottles and flung them one by one at every pane that caught his eye. When the
Board School boys were dragged out, he felt that he could not do much in that line,
most of the boys being as big as himself. On the flash of a bright idea, he wriggled
through the crowd and looked for the Infant Standards. There he found little
children huddled together and shivering with fright. He charged into this crowd with
such ferocity that the children scattered about, stumbling and falling. One
unfortunate child who shuffled and moved awkwardly received individual attention.
Swaminathan pounced upon him, pulled out his cap, threw it down and stamped on
it, swearing at him all the time. He pushed him and dragged him this way and that
and then gave him a blow on the head and left him to his fate.
Having successfully paralysed work in the Board School, the crowd moved
on in a procession along Market Road. The air vibrated with the songs and slogans
uttered in a hundred keys by a hundred voices. Swaminathan found himself wedged in among a lot of unknown people, in one of the last ranks. The glare from
the blanched treeless Market Road was blinding. The white dust stirred up by the
procession hung like thin mist in the air and choked him. He could see before him
nothing but moving backs and shoulders and occasionally odd parts of some
building. His throat was dry with shouting, and he was beginning to feel hungry. He
was just pondering whether he could just slip out and go home, when the
procession came to a sudden halt. In a minute the rear ranks surged forward to see
what the matter was.
The crowd was now in the centre of Market Road, before the fountain in
the square. On the other side of the fountain were drawn up about fifty constables
armed with lathis. About a dozen of them held up the procession. A big man, with a
cane in his hand and a revolver slung from his belt, advanced towards the
procession. His leather straps and belts and the highly-polished boots and hose
made him imposing in Swaminathan's eyes. When he turned his head
Swaminathan saw to his horror that it was Rajam's father! Swaminathan could not
help feeling sorry that it should be Rajam's father. Rajam's father! Rajam's father to
be at the head of those traitors! The Deputy Superintendent of Police fixed his eyes
on his wrist- watch and said, 'I declare this assembly unlawful. I give it five minutes
to disperse.' At the end of five minutes he looked up and uttered in a hollow voice
the word, 'Charge.'
In the confusion that followed Swaminathan was very nearly trampled upon
and killed. The policemen rushed into the crowd, pushing and beating everybody.
Swaminathan had joined a small group of panic-stricken runners. The policemen
came towards them with upraised lathis. Swaminathan shrieked to them, 'Don't kill
me. I know nothing.'
He then heard a series of dull noises as the lathis descended on the bodies
of his neighbours. Swaminathan saw blood streaming from the forehead of one.
Down came the lathis again. Another runner fell down with a groan. On the back of
a third the lathis fell again and again.
Swaminathan felt giddy with fear. He was running as fast as his legs could
carry him. But the policemen kept pace with him; one of them held him up by his
hair and asked, What business have you here?'
'I don't know anything, leave me, sirs,' Swaminathan pleaded.
'Doing nothing! Mischievous monkey!' said the grim, hideous policeman--
how hideous policemen were at close quarters!--and delivering him a light tap on
the head with the lathi, ordered him to run before he was kicked.
Swaminathan's original intention had been to avoid that day's topic before
his father. But as soon as father came home, even before taking off his coat, he
called mother and gave her a summary of the day's events. He spoke with a good
deal of warmth. The Deputy Superintendent is a butcher,' he said as he went in to
change. Swaminathan was disposed to agree that the Deputy Superintendent was
a butcher, as he recollected the picture of Rajam's father looking at his watch,
grimly ticking off seconds before giving orders for massacre. Father came out of
the dressing-room be fore undoing his tie, to declare, 'Fifty persons have been
taken to the hospital with dangerous contusions. One or two are also believed to be
killed.' Turning to Swaminathan he said, 'I heard, that schoolboys have given a lot
of trouble, what did you do?
There was a strike... replied Swaminathan and discovered here an
opportunity to get his cap problem solved. He added, 'Oh, the confusion! You
know, somebody pulled off the cap that I was wearing and tore it to bits.... I want a
cap before I start for school to-morrow.'
Who was he?' rather asked.
'I don't know, some bully in the crowd.'
'Why did he do it?'
'Because it was foreign....'
Who said so? I paid two rupees and got it from the Khaddar Stores. It is a
black khaddar cap. Why do you presume that you know what is what?'
'I didn't do anything. I was very nearly assaulted when I resisted.'
'You should have knocked him down. I bought the cap and the cloth for
your coat on the same day in the Khaddar Stores. If any man says that they are not
khaddar, he must be blind.'
'People say that it was made in Lancashire.'
'Nonsense. You can ask them to mind their business. And if you allow your
clothes to be torn by people who think this and that, you will have to go about
naked, that is all. And you may also tell them that I won't have a pie of mine sent to
foreign countries. I know my duty. Whatever it is, why do not you urchins leave
politics alone and mind your business?
'We have enough troubles in our country without you brats messing up
things...'
Swaminathan lay wide awake in bed for a long time. As the hours
advanced, and one by one as the lights in the house disappeared, his body
compelled him to take stock of the various injuries done to it during the day. His
elbows and muscles had their own tales to tell: they brought back to his mind the
three or four falls that he had had that day. One was--when--yes, when Rajam got
down from his car and came to the school, and Swaminathan had wanted to hide
himself, and in the hurry stumbled on a heap of stones, and there the knees were
badly skinned. And again when the policemen charged, he ran and fell flat before a
shop, and some monster ran over him, pinning him with one foot to the ground.
Now as he turned there was a pang about his hips. And then he felt as if a
load had been hung from his thighs. And again as he thought of it, he felt a heavy
monotonous pain in the head--the merciless rascals! The policeman's lathi was
none too gentle. And he had been called a monkey! He would--He would see--To call him a monkey! He was no monkey. Only they--the policemen--looked like
monkeys, and they behaved like monkeys too.
The Head Master entered the class with a slightly flushed face and a hard
ominous look in his eyes. Swaminathan wished that he had been anywhere but
there at that moment. The Head Master surveyed the class for a few minutes and
asked, 'Are you not ashamed to come and sit there after what you did yesterday?'
Just as a special honour to them, he read out the names of a dozen or so that had
attended the class. After that he read out the names of those that had kept away,
and asked them to stand on their benches. He felt that that punishment was not
enough and asked them to stand on their desks. Swaminathan was among them
and felt humiliated at that eminence. Then they were lectured. When it was over,
they were asked to offer explanations one by one. One said that he had had an
attack of headache and there fore could not come to the school. He was asked to
bring a medical certificate. The second said that while he had been coming to the
school on the previous day, someone had told him that there would be no school,
and he had gone back home. The Head Master replied that if he was going to listen
to every loafer who said there would be no school, he deserved to be flogged.
Anyway, why did he not come to the school and verify? No answer. The
punishment was pronounced: ten days' attendance cancelled, two rupees fine, and
the whole day to be spent on the desk. The third said that he had had an attack of
headache. The fourth said that he had had stomach-ache. The fifth said that his
grandmother died suddenly just as he was starting for the school. The Head Master
asked him if he could bring a letter from his father. No. He had no father. Then,
who was his guardian? His grandmother. But the grandmother was dead, was she
not? No. It was another grandmother. The Head Master asked how many
grandmothers a person could have. No answer. Could he bring a letter from his
neighbours?
No, he could not. None of his neighbours could read or write, because he
lived in the more illiterate parts of Ellaman Street. Then the Head Master offered to
send a teacher to this illiterate locality to ascertain from the boy's neighbours if the
death of the grandmother was a fact. A pause, some perspiration, and then the
answer that the neighbours could not possibly know anything about it, since the
grandmother died in the village. The Head Master hit him on the knuckles with his
cane, called him a street dog, and pronounced the punishment: fifteen days'
suspension.
When Swaminathan's turn came, he looked around helplessly. Rajam sat
on the third bench in front, and resolutely looked away. He was gazing at the black-
board intently.
But yet the back of his head and the pink ears were visible to
Swaminathan. It was an intolerable sight. Swaminathan was in acute suspense lest
that head should turn and fix its eyes on his; he felt that he would drop from the
desk to the floor, if that happened. The pink ears three benches off made him
incapable of speech. If only somebody would put a black-board between his eyes
and those pink ears!
He was deaf to the question that the Head Master was putting to him. A rap
on his body from the Head Master's cane brought him to himself.
'Why did you keep away yesterday?' asked the Head Master, looking up.
Swaminathan's first impulse was to protest that he had never been absent. But the
attendance register was there. 'No--No--I was stoned. I tried to come, but they took
away my cap and burnt it. Many strong men held me down when I tried to come....
When a great man is sent to gaol.... I am surprised to see you a slave of the
Englishmen.... Didn't they cut off--Dacca Muslin--Slaves of slaves....' These were
some of the disjointed explanations which streamed into his head, and, which,
even at that moment, he was discreet enough not to express. He had wanted to
mention a headache, but he found to his distress that others beside him had had one. The Head Master shouted, Won't you open your mouth?' He brought the cane
sharply down on Swaminathan's right shoulder. Swaminathan kept staring at the
Head Master with tearful eyes, massaging with his left hand the spot where the
cane was laid. 'I will kill you if you keep on staring without answering my question,'
cried the Head Master.
I--I--couldn't come,' stammered Swaminathan.
"Is that so?' asked the Head Master, and turning to a boy said, 'Bring the
peon.'
Swaminathan thought: 'What, is he going to ask the peon to thrash me? If
he does any such thing, I will bite everybody dead.' The peon came. The Head
Master said to him, 'Now say what you know about this rascal on the desk.'
The peon eyed Swaminathan with a sinister look, grunted, and demanded,
'Didn't I see you break the panes?...'
'Of the ventilators in my room?' added the Head Master with zest.
Here there was no chance of escape. Swaminathan kept staring foolishly
till he received another whack on the back.
The Head Master demanded what the young brigand had to say about it.
The brigand had nothing to say. It was a fact that he had broken the panes. They
had seen it. There was nothing more to it. He had unconsciously become defiant
and did not care to deny the charge. When another whack came on his back, he
ejaculated, 'Don't beat me, sir. It pains.' This was an invitation to the Head Master
to bring down the cane four times again. He said, 'Keep standing here, on this
desk, staring like an idiot, till I announce your dismissal.'
Every pore in Swaminathan's body burnt with the touch of the cane. He
had a sudden flood of courage, the courage that comes of desperation. He
restrained the tears that were threatening to rush out, jumped down, and, grasping
his books, rushed out muttering, 'I don't care for your dirty school.'