THE NEXT MORNING, when the thresholds were T" adorned and the cows worshipped and we went to sweep the street-fronts, what should we see by the Temple Corner but the slow-moving procession of coolies-the blue, pot-bellied, half-naked coolies, tied hand to hand and arm to arm-boys, old men, fathers, brothers, bridegrooms, coolics of the Skeffing- ton Coffee Estate who had come to live with us and to work with us and to fight with us they marched over the bouldered streets, their blue bodies violet in the glittering sun, and with one policeman to every two men and one armed soldier at the back and one armed soldier at the front, they marched through the Brahmin Street and the Weavers' Street, and the Potters' Street, and children ran shrieking into the houses and women who were drawing water went empty-handed, and now and again one could hear the flip-flap of the whip and a cry and a yelp-the coolies of the Skeffington Coffee Estate were marched bent-headed through our streets to show who our true masters were, and we knew they would be driven over the Bebbur Mound and the Bear's Hill and the Tippur Stream, and two by two they would be pushed behind the gates, for the white master wanted them. And our hearts curdled. and we cried 'Oh, what shall we do? What?' and the sanctum bell did not ring, nor the conch blow, and something in us said, 'Moorthy, where is Moorthy?' and our hearts beat like the wings of bats, and we clenched our hands, and we rushed in, swirled round, and fell prostrate before the sanctum gods, and yet no call came. But out of the flapping silence suddenly there came from over the Promontory a shout and a cry and shriekings and weepings and bellowings, and we rose and slipped by the cactus fence and the lantana growths, and through the plantain plantation of Nan- jamma, to the temple, and from the top we saw below the pariah women and the pariah girls and the pariah kids and the pariah grandmothers, beating their mouths and shouting, tight squatting on the path to stop the march of the coolies, shouting and swaying and clap- ping hands and lamenting, He'll never come again, He'll never come again, He'll never come again, Moorthappa.
The God of death has sent for him, Buffalo and rope and all, They stole him from us, they lassord him at night, He's gone, He's gone, He's gone, Moorthappa, and Rachanna's wife, indignant and dishevelled, cried out,
Hè, leave us our men, Hè, leave us our souls, Hè, leave us our King of the veranda seat, But say, sisters, He's gone, He's gone, Moorthappa, He's gone, He's gone, He's gone, Moorthappa, and they clapped hands again, and they wiped the tears out of their eyes, and more and more women flowed out of the Pariah Street and the Potters' Street and the Weavers' Street, and they beat the mouths the louder, and the children ran behind the fences and slipped into the gutters and threw stones at the Police, and a soldier got a stone on his face and the Police rushed this side and that and caught this girl and that. And the women stopped sobbing and when Rachanna's grandson called out, Catch me if you can,'-they caught him and held him leg up and head down and-flap-flap- flap they beat him on the buttocks and head and spine and knee, and they threw him on the grass edge. And the women stopped their sobbing, and one here and one there they rushed towards the child and they laid him on their laps and wiped the blood from his mouth and they said, 'Rangappa, Rangappa, wake up Rangappa!', but only slobber flowed from his mouth, and all of a sudden a tearing, gasping yell came from the women again, while the coolies marched blinking and blank before them and even the voice of God seemed to have died out of their tongues.
But we who were on the Promontory could bear the sight no more, what with Rachanna gone and Rach- anna's grandson gone and Moorthy gone, too, and we shouted out, Butchers, butchers, dung-eating curs!' ་ And the Police rushed at us, and we slipped away by the temple yard and the cactus growth, but they saw us, and stones flew at us and sticks, and the swing of the whip, and they whipped us and kicked us and spat on us, and when Puttamma shouted 'Cur! Cur!' a policeman flings his lathi at her legs and down she falls and, smacking his lips and holding her breasts, he says, 'Take care, my dove, you know what I would do with you,' and we who are trying to run away, slip round and say, 'No, no, we must not run away,' and we run round and round the mango-tree and the lantana bushes, and we think of Puttamma and her husband and her child and her mother-in-law, and we think of God, and the yell of the pariah women still comes rolling across the Promontory, and we feel like mad elephants and we do not know where to go. And then there is a loud cry, Ayoo-Ayoo,' and it's · Puttamma's, and we rush towards her creeping and crawling beneath the lantana bushes, and then, when we are on the path again, we see a policeman upon her, and we feel our limbs earth-like and we want to pull him up, and Puttamma is all black in her cheek and her mouth gagged, and we cry out 'Help! Help!', but from the Main Street and the Pariah Street we hear nothing but shouts and lamentations, and we rush away to get help, and we see street after street filled with policemen--policemen on the veranda and by the granary and on the threshold and over the byre; and when we enter there's nothing to be seen but uniformed policemen. The shrieks of the pariah women are still shrill in the air, and where shall we find someone, where? And we run to the back yard and the Police are behind us. And Puttamma?
Seethamma goes to her neighbour Lingamma, for Lingamma is an old woman and she has done nothing, but the Police are already there, and when they see Seethamma they say, 'Ah, you've come, my bitch, and your husband is in prison and you need some cooling down,' and she shrieks out and she rushes to find refuge somewhere and Kanthamma and Nanjamma and Vedamma and I are there, and as we ask, 'What is it, daughter?' a lathi bangs on her head and she falls down as flat as a sack, and from the byre-wall comes the voice of a policeman, 'Ah, you're out for a moon- light party, are you?' We rush towards the temple, and shrieks come from the Brahmin Street and the Weavers' Street and the cattle began to moo and moan, and the flap-flap of the whips is still heard from the mango grove beyond the Promontory, for the coolies were still being marched on-and we think neither of Puttamma nor Seethamma nor Moorthy nor the Mahatma, but the whole world seems a jungle in battle, trees rumbling, lions roaring, jackals wailing, parrots piping, panthers screeching, monkeys jabbering, jeer- ing, chatter-chattering, black monkeys and white monkeys and the long-tailed ones, and the flame of forest angry around us, and if Mother Earth had opened herself and said, 'Come in, children,' we should have walked down the steps and the great rock would have closed itself upon us and yet the sun frying-hot. was And we ran here and we ran there to seek refuge, and in Satamma's house and Post-Office-House and Nine-pillared House, man after man had been taken away during the night, while we had slept the sleep of asses, and the women who had their husbands taken away were tied to the pillars and their mouths gagged, and those who said 'No, no,' were asked not to leave their houses till midday, and that was why there were so few women at the Promontory and no Rangamma either.
And then we said, stopping, 'Oh, what has become of Puttamma and Seethamma?' and we rushed from back yard to back yard; and zinc sheets were removed and sanctum gods and pickle-pots and bell-metal vessels were thrown across the streets, and the byres were empty, and bulls and buffaloes and cows and calves had rushed into the kitchen gardens and the granaries; and our hearts were burning with anger, as we turned to this side and that and we said there is but one safe place and that is the temple sanctum, and as we skirted Rajamma's house, what should we see on Rangamma's veranda a crouching elephant, and a crowd around it, and the mahout poking its ears and kicking it, and it roared and it rose, and it wailed, and it dashed against the door, the crowd of policemen cheering it on and on, and we heard the door creak and crash, and a loud shout of Well done!' arose. But a police- man had seen us, and we had seen him, and we cried 'Ayoo-Ayoo' and jumped across the broken wall, and the sparrows rose like a tree from their booty of rice, and we asked ourselves, Which way shall we go- which way?' And we hurried through the central hall, and we rushed to the veranda to sec Seethamma's court- yard, where beds and bells and broomsticks lay strewn everywhere, and across the byre-walls children were heard weeping; and we said, 'Let's slip past Ratn- amma's vegetable garden,' and we jumped across the fence and from behind the jack-fruit tree, where we stand to take breath, we see the barricades of the Kar- war Road, with one man and two men and three men and four men around and a white officer beside them. And from the Pariah quarter there comes a yell, and we look to this side and that and we see noth- ing, and then suddenly on the Bebbur Mound we see the coolies still marching, bent-headed coolies still marching up, and the 'pariah women, tired, still yelp but with broken breath, and we say, 'Oh, what about Radhamma, Ramayya's Radhamma, who is ill,' and Kanakamma, who was with us, says she passed by Radhamma's door and she heard the second child crying, and a bundle of hay lay at her door, and we say we should one of us go there, and Timmamma says she would go and she was old and nobody would notice her. But suddenly we see ten or twelve women hurrying round the Temple Corner, and the Police whips swishing, and children following them screaming, and there's Radhamma among them and Radhamma is trying to run, too, and we say, 'Shout to her to come up to this garden,' but Timmamma says, 'No shouting,' and slips down the lantana growth and she sees Radhamma and Radhamma sees her and they all rush towards us, and we say 'This is not safe, let us run to Nanjamma's back yard,' and Radhamma is behind us and Timmamma is leading her by the hand, and suddenly Radhamma gives a cry and falls and she twists her body about and screams and we gather round her, and we say, 'Perhaps the moment is come,' but Timmamma says, 'It's only seven months, no, no, it's not that,' but it was that indeed, and the child comes yelling out and Timmamma tears the navel-string with her sari fringe and the dirt is thrown into the earth, but the mother is still moaning and shrieking and crying. Ard then there's a cry in the Post-Office-House, and we ask, 'Oh, what? Oh, what?', and Timmamma says, 'Go and see, sisters,' and we duck down and run, and the nearer we are the surer is the voice and it is the voice of Ratna, and we enter by the bathroom, where the fire is still burn- ing and the calf still munching the straw, and we rush to the kitchen to see Ratna fallen on the floor, her legs tied ankle to ankle and her bodice torn, and the police- man, when he sees us, slips away over the wall, and Ratna, sobbing and hugging us, told us how she had fallen on her stomach again and again and had spat and had screamed and had beat him with her hands, and we were so happy we had come in time, and we bent down and loosened the strings, and as no police- man was near us, we said, 'Now we shall stay here for a breath,' and little Vedamma went to bring Radhamma and her child, and we all sat in the kitchen, our eyes groping. Then when Ratna is up and washed and could speak, she says, 'Now, sisters, this is no safe place; let us find a refuge,' and somehow we said there's the voice of Rangamma in her speech, the voice of Moorthy, and she was no more the child we had known, nor the slip of a widow we had cursed, and Timmamma turns to her and says, 'Oh, where shall we go, daughter, with this new mother and child?' and Kamalamma says, Why, to the temple,' and Ratna says, 'Wait, I shall go and see if the path is safe,' and when she is at the bathroom door, she comes running back shout- ing, Fire, fire, Bhatta's house is on fire! Surely it is the pariah women,' and we all rush to the bathroom door and we see the eaves taking fire and the white flame rising silk-like in the sun, and the pillars creak and the byre spits out jets and jets of stifled smoke that curls over the ripening fields and the ruddy canal, and moves up the Bebbur Mound, and we hear the mahouts cry' Ahè, Ahè,' and the heavy hurried thumps of the elephant moving up the street, and from over the Promontory still comes the shriek of the pariah women and the pariah children. And the shouting grows shriller, and we say, 'Surely there's a new attack,' and we say, 'Now we must run to the temple,' and Timmamma gives her hand to Radhamma, and Ratna takes the new child in her sari- fringe, and Vedamma and Satamma and Ningamma and Kanakamma and I walk through Seetharam's back yard, by the well and round the tulsi platform, and we slip beneath the lantana growth, and we say, 'Now we are safe,' and we crawl towards the back of the temple. And there is a sudden crash and one of Bhatta's veranda roofs smashes to the earth and the air is filled with hissing sparks, and there is a loud cry, and even from the temple we could hear the swish of water being thrown, and the banging of the Police lathis on the rising fire, and Satamma says, 'And my house too may catch fire,' and she says she would like to go and see, but Timmamma says, 'Stay, Satamma, the Police are there, and what will you do but hold your head and weep?' but she speaks of the hay and the rice and the beds and the only roof she had over her head,, and Ratna says, 'You are a Satyagrahi, sister, be patient,' and then she goes skirting the temple, while Timmamma carries the child, and holding to the wall she enters the temple veranda and she says there's no one in the temple and she rushes back and says, 'Come!' and we run behind her, and Timmamma and the child in her arms and Vedamma and the new mother beside her, and we all stand trembling before the unadorned god, and we all beat our cheeks and say, Siva, Siva, protect us! Siva, Siva, protect us!' and each one made a vow of banana libation or butter- lamps or clothes or jewels for the goddess, and each one said may her husband or brother or son be safe in the prisons.
And as we turned towards the god and goddess in prayer, there is heard another crash from Bhatta's burning house, and the lathis still beat upon it and the water still swishes over it, and now that the elephant has arrived, they give buckets and buckets full of water into its trunk, and the mahout says, 'Ahè, Ahè,' and groaning and grunting the elephant struggles forward. But half-way it swings round and runs for the gate, while the fire rises as high as the coconut-trees, and the rice granary catches alight and the popped rice splashes out flower-like into the air, and the fire flows down the cattle-shed and the hayrick and we all say, 'Well done, well done; it is not for nothing Bhatta lent us money at 18 per cent and 20 per cent interest, and made us bleed,' and Ratna says, 'Say not such things, sisters, we are all Satyagrahis,' and Satamma says Satyagrahis or not, he has starved our stomachs and killed our children,' and we all say again, 'Well done, well done'
And from the foot of the Bear's Hill there is a long cry again, for the coolies of the Skeffington Coffee Estate, who had not been able to join us, have raised a clamour to receive the coolies that were being dragged in, and white dhotis are squashed by khaki clothes, and shouts and cries come, and from the Tippur stream rises the sound of the horn; and we turn towards Tip- pur and we say, 'They are coming to our rescue, they are coming to help us,' and there are white figures moving forward, and from the Santur grove comes the noise of drums, and we say 'They're coming,' and we look once to the god and once to the east, and once to the god and once to the north-east, and we look once to the god and once to the north-west, and we say all these men, all these men and women and children of the Himavathy are with us, and they'll all come with drum and trumpet and horn to free us. And then suddenly Vedamma says she has the fever and she trembles and moans, and Ratna says she will go back to Seetharamu's house to fetch blankets, and when we say, 'No, no,' Ratna says, 'Oh, don't be a woman,' but hardly is she beyond the threshold than a policeman has seen her and begins to run up the Promontory, and Ratna rushes in and bangs the sanctum door and the bar is drawn and the latch slipped, and he beats and beats against the door and we all stand shoulder to breast, and breast to arm, and arm to back, pressing against the door, and he gets so tired that he puts the lock and turns the key, and another policeman comes along and says something about sealing, and we cry out hoarse behind the door, and we cry and moan and beg and weep and bang and kick and lament, but there's no answer-and at last as the afternoon drew on, and our stomachs began to beat like drums and our tongues became dry, at every sound we said, 'The people of Tippur are coming to free us, the people of Rampur are coming to free us'. But as we put our ears to the door we hear but the crunch of military boots, the mooing of a calf, or the rasping creak of a palm-tree, or suddenly there would rise from the village gate the tired, hoarse sob- bings of the pariah women, and the last crashing crackle of Bhatta's fire. And Ratna said, 'Now, we will never know when they will rescue us from here. Let us light the sacred flame and make bhajan, so that someone may know we are here,' and we searched for the matches and the oil-lamp, and we lighted the sacred flame, and our mouths bitter, we clapped our hands and we sang, Siva, Siva of the Meru Mount, Siva, Siva of the Ganges-head, Siva, Siva of the Crescent-moon, Siva, Siva of the Crematorium-dance, Siva, Siva of the unillusioned heart, Siva, Siva, Siva. . . .
And when our breath was gone and our tongues dry, Ratna would say, 'Now, I'll tell you stories like Rangamma,' and she told us of the women of Bombay who were beaten and beaten, and yet would, not move till their brothers were freed, and the flag that they hoisted and the carts and the cars and the trains they stopped, and the wires that the white men sent to the Queen to free them, and the women of Sholapur who, hand in hand, had marched through the streets, for twenty-five of their men had been shot, and the police- men would not work and the soldiers guarded the streets, but the women said, We are behind our men,' and they cried 'Vande Mataram!' and they said, 'Give us back our men!' and not a tear they shed, for they worked for the Mahatma and the Mother. And so story after story she told us, of Chittagong and Lahore, of Dandi and Benares, and we each put our heads against another's shoulder and some snored, too, and dozed away, and Radhamma's chill went down and the fever rose and we pressed closer and closer around her, and we put our sari-fringes and our bodice-clothes upon her, and the child lay upor Timmamma's lap, white and quiet.
And we would be roused again and again with the champak-like light shining and wavering on the dark round Siva, and with the holiness of the sanctum with- in our hearts we lifted our voices and sang, and we forgot the pariahs and the policemen and Moorthy and the Mahatma, and we felt as though we were some secret brotherhood in some Himalayan cave. And one by one we put our heads against a neighbour's shoulder and tired and hungry we yawned back to sleep. But someone would be chanting away, and clapping away, and through half-wakened eyes Siva would be seen, staring and weird, and such terror would come over us that we would rub our eyes and sing again. Then the light went down and the sanctum's hooded darkness thrust itself over us, and we woke cach other up, and we banged the door, we kicked and screamed and moaned and we banged the solid door. And yet no voice ever came in reply, but only the squeaks of the bats and the swish of the twisting river. We slept and we banged and we slept and we kicked, and at last with the cawing of crows came a hurried step, and we woke each other up, and when the door opened we saw Pariah Rachanna's wife Rachi at the threshold. She had heard the screamings and moanings through the sleepless night, and with dawn she had slipped to the Patel's house and the women gave her a key and she had jumped over Satamma's wall and Temple Rangappa's fence, and falling on the Main Street, she had rushed up to the temple and unlocked it. We slowly rose up on our clayey legs, and when the morn- ing light threw itself upon us we felt as though a corpse had smiled upon a burning pyre.
How empty looked the Karwar Road, Bhatta's house burnt down!
Through the morning we ploughed back home.
That very morning we heard of Puttamma. She was in bed and ill and wailing. She had fits and fears and tearing angers. She asked for her child and pressed it to her heart and threw it over the bed, saying, 'Im not your mother, the earth is your mother, your father is your father-I have sinned'. The father, poor man, was ignorant of this, and in prison. But she said, 'There he is, there, behind the sanctum door, and he will throw me into the well' But we said, No, no, Puttamma, the gods will forgive you,' but she broke into sobs, and her mother-in-law came and threw water over her face, and cooled her down. And when we went to the door and asked, 'What happened, Nanjamma?' Nanjamma told us of Pariah Siddayya who was in the lantana growth, and he had seen Puttamma and the policeman on her, and he had fallen upon the policeman and torn his moustache and banged and banged his head against a tree, and had brought Puttamma back from back yard to back yard, and men helped him in this back yard and that, for many were there that were hid in the lantana growth, and that was what we heard and saw, and that was how, when night came, rice and pickles and pancakes went up into the lantana growths. And when the beds were laid and the eyelids wanted to shut, we said, 'Let them shut,' for we knew our men were not far and their eyelids did not shut.
