THE HOMECOMING
THE train wound through the familiar hills, chuffing asthmati- cally over the climb, clanking and jolting at the turns. The rhythm of the engine changed. Now there would be the whistle for the Konshet level crossing. Pachwad station could not be more than five miles away.
The whistle came, two notes of remembered music. Gian had been saving the last cigarette in the pack; now he took it out and lit it, drawing in the smoke and filling his chest before letting it roll away slowly in the breeze.
This was to be his last cigarette for nearly three months. During the vacation, he would have to give up smoking. Aji would be quite shocked if she were to find out that he smoked. But he wasn't really worried about that; it was so easy to shock one's grandmother. She would have been still more shocked had she known that he had quite given up wearing the janwa at college.
A frown shadowed his face as he thought of that day by the river nearly a year before, when he discarded his sacred thread. Now the janwa was back, because of his grandmother; and he must give up cigarettes during the holidays because of his brother, Hari.
Not that Hari would have minded; he was quite certain of that; Hari never seemed to mind what Gian did. He would only have laughed indulgently and tried to plead with Aji that any college boy in his senior year was bound to take to smoking because it helped concentration. He would even have suggested increasing his pocket-money to enable him to buy cigarettes without cutting down on something else. Somehow he would have found the money too.
Oddly enough, that was why it was so important that Hari should never find out, Hari who had had to give up schooling when their father died and whose respect for learning was so exaggerated. Hari had made do with three dhotis a year, wore patched chaplis and had not bought a warm coat for himself as long as he could remember so that Gian should be able to go to college and live there as the other boys did.
Not that Hari could ever have any idea of how some of the other boys did live at college-at least not those who really mattered. They played tennis, they spoke familiarly of dance bands and of expensive restaurants, and of shopping at Whiteways and the Army and Navy Stores; they wore flannels and silk and sharkskin, they went out with girls; they were rich, flashy, self- assured, some even had their own cars, like Debi-dayal.
Being at college was not just a matter of studying for your degree; learning was only part of what college had to offer, and not a very important part at that. Somehow, to absorb all that college had to offer, it was important to be a part of that glittering inner circle, the rich, sporting set. Most of the time, you looked at the circle only from outside, like gazing into the windows of Whiteways.
And yet, under the surface, they were all rather nice people, not at all unfriendly or snooty. If they kept themselves to them- selves, it was because they were self-sufficient, conscious that they constituted the higher order; when they spoke to you, they did so with a heartwarming lightness and lack of condescension. They were brittle, gay, impulsive; and if, once in a while, they asked you to join them, it was with unaffected casualness, as though speaking to one of their own set. Like that afternoon when Debi-dayal had invited him to come and see the flood. They even took you to their homes and introduced you to their sisters.
And then you did something silly, like being discovered wearing the sacred thread, brown with use, and not being able to join in the laughter of the others because in your shame you did not realize that it was just their way of putting you at your ease. So you went and did something even more childish, like diving into the flooded river and striking out, fighting against the current, showing off your fast, flashy, fisherman's glide against their clumsy paddling in the shallow channel that had been discarded by the river and shaming them in return.
In return for what? Their hospitality and kindness?
No, not shaming them, really, but somehow accentuating your own sense of not belonging. He would never behave like that if they ever asked him again.
If.
And yet, deep within oneself, one knew perfectly well that it was wrong to hanker to belong to Debi-dayal and his sister's set-with their enormous radiograms, carpeted staircases and servants gorging on the remains of elaborate teas. They did not have to spend their Sundays in the dim, hostel rooms, waiting for the dal and rice and vegetables of the evening meals which only filled your stomach but did not assuage your hunger. And they did not have to 'sign out' once every week from even those meals to be able to save money for cigarettes, and for yet another meal whenever they went to see a film, queuing up for the cheapest seats.
And they did not have to wear the cheapest khaddar clothes, to be thankful that khaddar had now become synonymous with nationalism.
The frown on Gian's face deepened. The gap between the world he secretly longed for and the world he fitted into was wide enough, but, by the standards of his particular background, it was a rare achievement for him to be at college at all. For the likes of him, it was enough that they were at college-it cost every bit of a hundred rupees a month to keep him there; and it would have been impossible unless his brother Hari had given up the most elementary comforts of middle-class life. All these years, he had taken everything that was done for him for granted. Now the thought of his brother's sacrifices was vaguely uncomfortable. Somewhere under the surface, there was an insult in it too, that one should have to owe so much in life to the kindness and self-denial of another. The train was already slowing down. Just before it took the last turn into the platform, Gian flicked away his cigarette and leaned out of the window to see if the bullock-cart had arrived.
It was there, as he knew it would be, in the usual place under the jack-fruit tree at the back of the station yard; the two matched, rust-coloured bullocks, Raja and Sarja, unyoked but not sitting down. As always, they looked well-fed and sleek, their coats glistening, the rows of brass bells on their collars gleaming dully. And there was Tukaram, the cartman, in his faded red turban, perched on his seat and screwing his body to peer at the train, his hands shading his eyes against the sun, his brown legs dangling, shining like molasses.
Tukaram had been with the family ever since Gian could remember. As a young man, he had dandled Gian on his knees and carried him on his shoulders to school when it rained and taught him all that he knew about swimming and climbing the coconut palms and had dosed him with bitter chiraita juice every Sunday morning 'to keep your stomach from going sour."
Now he was grown up and gnarled and grey, the trusted family servant; simple, unlettered, devoted, domineering and quite indispensable. He still addressed Gian with the familiar 'tu' of equality instead of the 'aap' that was customary from a servant, and generally acted as if Gian were still a small boy who must be made to drink his chiraita juice every now and then for his own good. At times it was difficult not to be annoyed by Tukaram's familiarity, even his air of condescension. But of course there was no question of telling the old man where he got off.
On the platform, Gian could see his brother, standing close to the wall, holding himself back, the picture of rusticity; like a farmer in his going-to-town clothes, thought Gian, or like the man in the 'Grow More Food' poster: brown and sturdy, his face hard, handsome, weathered but not wrinkled, earthy, anxious, wholly out of place in the bustle of a railway station platform.
There was still time for one last, lingering moment of objec- tivity, the pause before going over a barrier, of making last minute adjustments for the transformation from college to home: from lectures and cinemas and professors in long black coats and tasselled pugris, to bullock-carts and rice fields; from the honk of American-made cars and neon lights to the coo-ces of the cattlemen and the sombre loneliness of the forest, from the giggles and glances of willowy girls to the withered grandmother in the prayer room.
He took another look at his brother who was still craning to locate him: the man in the short, homespun jacket done up with laces, the cheap white turban, the home-washed dhoti reaching just below the knees, the sturdy, farm-hand's legs, the heavy, studded chaplis caked with dust, the gnarled, horny feet. Hari looked so much more like the cartman perched on the yoke-seat than the home-coming college boy in the milk-white clothes and the sun glasses. Was that how other people saw him?
The thought, fleeting as it was, left its own smear of guilt. That was no way in which to think of Hari. Gian waved his hand to him and answered his quick smile of recognition. He pushed open the door and jumped out of the still-running train. He ran forward to meet his brother.
Hari carried the bed-roll; Gian carried the fabric suitcase and the reed bag containing his college books. By the time they came to the cart, Tukaram was already holding up the yoke and trying to coax the bullocks to come under it. He turned his head and gave Gian a sharp, searching look.
"What's the matter with your eyes, Chote-baba?' he asked. Gian did not like being addressed as Chote-baba, the little boy.
"Why, nothing,' he told him.
"Then why the glasses?"
"They are for the sun,' Hari explained.
'Glasses at your age... not even married yet! Your grand- mother can still thread a needle.'
'Oh you leave Chote-baba alone,' Hari told him. 'You don't have to study in college... read all the books he has to read- look at all those books, a whole bag-full!
"And the white clothes,' Tukaram went on. 'Have you become a congress-wallah ?-joined the cranks who want to send away the sahibs? What will we do without the sahibs; they don't take bribes, like our people.' He clucked his tongue in mock-disgust and turned to his bullocks. 'Come on you fatted tiger-baits!" he shouted. 'Can't you see I am waiting? Or do you too need black glasses to see? Ho, ho, Sarja, hoa-hup that's better. Still, still now. Why are you holding back, Raja, son of a black shaitan-hoa-hup!"
There were no milestones along the road, but their village,
Konshet, could not have been more than ten miles away from the station. Normally, Raja and Sarja covered the distance in well under three hours, cantering most of the way at their going-home clip, their bells jangling merrily, and once they had accomplished it in exactly two hours. But today they were being held in check. Hari explained that the bullocks were overdue for a re-shoeing and he did not want to risk injuring their feet. He sat at the back of the cart, his legs folded under him, having given Gian the more comfortable seat near the cartman. After fidgeting for a time, he jumped out and began to walk behind the cart.
I was sitting all the time, on the way to the station," he told Gian. Just want to stretch my legs. I don't seem to get much exercise these days,' and he slapped his belly hard with his right hand.
His stomach was flat and hard and all muscle, and the slap made a sound like a mallet on wood. Gian laughed. He knew that Hari had got out of the cart only because he wanted to make the going a little easier for the bullocks. Without a word, he too jumped out and joined his brother.
The road was striped with shade, the thick jungle on both sides was like a wall; the ribbon of sky overhead lost itself into the curve just ahead of them, the culverts arched over the rock- strewn nullahs. Occasionally, there was a minute clearing, a patch where man had pushed the wilderness back and made a rice-field. But the fields were now brown and bare because of the summer. The jungle reigned supreme.
That was what one always came back to: the emptiness and the brooding silence of the jungle, just as one always remembered it, unfriendly and ominous. It was home, even though one had begun to feel an outsider in it.
And this silent, thick-set man lost in his own thoughts, walking with the easy, swinging gait of a man used to long distances, was your brother; now bareheaded and coatless because he had put away his turban and coat in the cart, the coat carefully folded for future use, walking because he did not want to risk injuring his bullocks' feet, walking as he must have walked all the way to the station that morning, otherwise there would not have been all that dust on his feet. Your brother, and also your father and mother and uncle and aunt all kinds of relatives except, of course, your grandmother who was very much there...
Gian shot a quick glance at his brother; at the man who had given him everything he ever had. He looked older than his twenty-five years, more serious and sullen too. Why didn't he say something, anything at all? Was there something on his mind?
-something worrying him?
Once again he was conscious of the new feeling within himself, the hard seed of resentment digging beneath the surface, so unaccountable, for how could one bear any sort of grievance towards someone who had only done you good; someone so basically incapable of unkindness-viceless, god-fearing, self- denying; the man who had vowed to remain unmarried until he had put his younger brother through college, the man who wore his janwa all the time, took no food without first doing his pooja and who fasted every Saturday and did not smoke.
The awareness of what Hari had done for him, given up for him, was curiously humbling, but did not lessen his bitterness. What right had anyone to burden another with so much that could not be repaid, making him powerless, breaking down his defences with unwavering kindness, saddling him with life-long self-denial?
He was so lost in thought that he gave a start when his brother turned and spoke to him.
"We won the case,' Hari was saying. For a moment, it did not make sense. "The case' was something they never talked about. It carried the rancid smell of a family feud, recalled past humiliations, defeat, privation. It was always there, a rock in the path to be carefully skirted around. It had gone on for years, like some malignant disease, eating into their resources voraciously, imposing its own hardships. Gian had always thought it so hopeless; he had implored his brother not to appeal when they had lost it in the lower court. But Hari had not listened: with him it was a matter of family honour, almost of life and death.
"Won the Oh, not really! Oh God, how wonderful!" He was thrilled. 'How wonderful for you! When did it happen?'
"The judgment was given two days ago... in our favour, by the grace of Shiva. We're having a pooja next week. Both of us will have to sit down for the pooja."
"Everyone in the Big House must be furious."
Drowned in shame. They cannot show their faces in the streets.
"What about Vishnu-dutt?"
Hari threw his head back and laughed. "Vishnu-dutt, oh, Vishnu-dutt! Like a bull after castration... wild! All sound and fury." They both laughed again. The cloud had passed away. Gian felt close to his brother now, sharing his triumph. 'Remember how he taunted me when we lost in the magistrate's court and you decided to appeal? Vishnu-dutt standing on the banyan- tree platform, twirling his moustache and shouting at me so that everyone could hear: "Go and tell your brother that your bones will be coals but we will not let Piploda go out of our hands!"""
Gian remembered how he had slunk past with his head lowered, gulping down the taste of defeat, conscious that the whole village was witnessing his humiliation. The taunting, mocking words, the sound of arrogant laughter followed him long after he had turned the corner.
You should have seen his face when the judgment was given ...at the things the judge said about the lower court decision,' Hari said chortling. Black as in mourning... both father and son, humbled before everyone; they were certainly not twirling their moustaches."
And to think I had begged you not to appeal,' Gian said.
"We were lucky there was a British judge no question of bribing him, though the Big House must have done their best. Remember that. We in India can get justice only at British hands -never from our own people. They are clean-clean as grains of washed rice.'
Was this a reproach to his white garb, Gian wondered.
'How many acres is it?' he asked.
'Ninety-six and a bit, thirty-three under rice. Irrigated land too; oh, yes, plenty of water. Good for two crops a year. The rest is jungle." How much... how much would it be worth in money?" Even as he asked the question, he felt he had struck the wrong note. To Hari it had always been a matter of prestige rather than money, of family pride; his was the sort of emotional involvement that could not be reduced to terms of profit and loss.
'Money!' Hari said. 'Oh, anything from seven hundred to a thousand a year.
Impulsively, Gian grabbed his brother by the hand and thumped his shoulder. "What a wonderful feeling it must be for you, after all you have gone through. Now it won't seem so much of a burden, keeping me at college."
"The new field alone will pay for your studies... I mean, the income from it. We don't have to penny-pinch any more. Besides, there is a good deal of timber too, always good for three thousand rupees, at least.'
The scene of the picnic at Birchi-bagh flashed through his mind: a copper-haired girl in a white sari, her hair blowing in the breeze; the same girl in a flowered swim-suit with drops of water trailing down from her golden limbs. All at once, he felt more akin to the others at the picnic, not the last man in the group. A new world was opening at his feet, and it was all made possible by winning the legendary case. Three thousand just for the timber?' he asked.
At least, but that will have to be set aside for paying off the old debts..."
You mean for my college?"
Hari smiled indulgently. 'No, not your college. It was the case; the lawyers' fees and other expenses. But we need not worry about that any longer. I can pay it off just as soon as I have sold the timber."
I am dying to see Vishnu-dutt's face,' Gian said.
That is not going to be easy. No one has seen him for the last two days. They say his old man has taken to his bed. They cannot be feeling very big in the Big House just now.'
The bells of the bullocks must have brought Aji to the doorstep. There she stood, in her skimpy cooking sari, tiny, wrinkled, rigid, one hand gripping the jamb of the door but not for support, the other holding up the heavy brass tray containing the sandalwood paste with which to 'purify' her grandson before he entered the house and the popped rice to be showered over his head in fistfuls to propitiate all the evil spirits that might be lurking around.
She looked thinner than ever, Gian thought, as he bent low to let her put a daub of the paste on his forehead. Her skin, clean as if scrubbed with a stone, was almost transparent, like parch- ment. The two thick gold bangles she always wore looked more out of place than ever on her frail wrists, oddly like a pair of handcuffs. They were smooth with the erosion of life-long use, as though they had never borne a pattern, and dull from fifty years of bodily contact. She was a wonderful woman, Aji, who had never stepped out of the premises since her husband had died, a remnant from a world which had already perished before he was born, and who seemed to keep going by sheer hard work. How old could she be ?-sixty-sixty-five?
She smeared her finger with the pink paste and made a precise horizontal line on his forehead with it. She showered the popped rice in the four directions, muttering a prayer, beseeching the house gods to keep away the evil spirits. Then she handed the tray to Gian and solemnly cracked the fingers of both hands against her temples.
But it was not easy to laugh at the superstitions of a person like Aji. This was home, and somehow she was the spirit of home, having lived in it from the day it was built, this house that was called the Little House.
Remove your shoes and wash your feet,' Aji reminded him, her voice, as always, strong and resonant, like some stringed instrument. 'And then go and do your namaskar to Shiva.'
Gian took the tray indoors. He removed his shoes and washed his feet on the stone slab at the back of the house. Then, wearing the wooden khadays on his feet, he entered the small prayer room to seek the blessings of the family deity: Shiva.
Shiva stood behind a bank of flowers and a burning oil lamp, the nanda-deep or eternal lamp which was always kept lit. He stood in his own circle of flames, his face calm in celestial repose, his pose, caught up in a moment of the tanday dance, angry, threatening, malevolent: the god of destruction dancing the dance of destruction-destruction of what? Of evil, they said. Did that mean the world itself, the human race?
It was foolish, primitive, almost a relic of some barbaric ritual, something like wearing a piece of string round your neck as a badge of purity of caste, this going into a dark prayer room to seek the blessings of Shiva: Shiva, the grotesque image of a
dancing devil with four arms sprouting fanwise from his naked shoulders, parading an abnormality like the Siamese twins in a circus, and yet dancing the dance of destruction with such exquisite, quite celestial detachment. Shiva, whom you had to approach with bowed head and folded hands even though you knew that he was nothing but a statue fashioned of an alloy of five metals by some craftsman who had died centuries ago, and sold for money; immune, they said, to corrosion, and indestructible, because of the secret mixture of metals; encrusted with sandal- wood paste and red ochre from many generations of prayer, and, on his back, bearing the nick of grandfather Dada's pick-axe. Not that he, Gian, had ever seen Shiva's back.
And yet, here in Konshet, in the depths of the dark, solid family house, it was easy enough to think of him as a god, to endow the five-metal creation of some mercenary craftsman of long ago with divinity, the power to do good and evil; for had he not brought prosperity to grandfather Dada, seen them through the years of endurance since his father and mother had died in the plague epidemic; had he not, above all, done the impossible and wrested the Piploda field from the stranglehold of the Big House after all these years, triumphed over all the money and the influence and the cunning of Vishnu-dutt and his father?
And yet, if he were a god, might he not have prevented his mother and father from dying so young instead of saving his blessings for their sons; could he not have arranged for the Big House to have surrendered Piploda from a sense of fairness rather than as the result of a bitterly fought out court action-they who already possessed so much?
But this was not the time to entertain doubts about the godliness of the family god, Shiva who had worked the miracle and brought them triumph, Shiva who, in his wrath, could burn down the whole world and the worlds above and below it. Gian bowed his head and folded his hands. He lit a piece of camphor from the eternal lamp and with it, lit a small bunch of joss-sticks. He stuck the joss-sticks, now exuding their smothering, perfumed smoke, into a bowl of rice. He daubed the sandalwood paste on the pedestal, conscious that he had not had a bath and thus was not pure enough to anoint Shiva's forehead. He gazed directly into Shiva's eyes and folded his hands again.
"O-om, namah-Shivay, he began, mouthing the words of the Sanskrit prayer. 'God Shiva, I bow to thee..
The dissimilar, almost opposite qualities of the face and the pose troubled him: the face was calm, serene, lost in the enjoy- ment of the dance; the pose, caught up in the throes of anger, frozen in a particularly violent gesture of the death-dance.
Then he found Shiva's face replaced by another, a bearded face equally capable of composure while pronouncing words charged with malevolence: 'A million shall die, a million!"
THE LITTLE HOUSE
THE pandit had a clean, luminous face, the colour of a polished lime, a short, beaky nose, a razor-slit for a mouth, and pale, rounded eyes. He sat cross-legged on a wooden board, prim and erect and slightly condescending, exuding the importance of a specialist at a consultation. He was reading out from a list. His head and shoulders were draped in a brown shawl, but his legs were bare to the knees.
Aji stood by the door, leaning against the wall. Hari was making the list with Gian looking over his shoulder; Gian, wholly at home now, caught up in the excitement of preparing for a religious orgy, this thanksgiving pooja to Shiva. semolina, fifteen seers-medium grain, don't buy the fine variety. Butter, fifteen seers. Sugar, now sugar; you always have to put in more than they say-make it twenty seers. Milk: I don't know where you are going to get all the milk that will be needed... at least fifteen seers... better to have twenty,' the pandit paused and shook his head doubtfully. 'We will find the milk,' Aji told him confidently.
Twenty seers, then. Bananas, twenty-five. Saffron, a rupee's weight; get the Spanish saffron. Cardamoms, double that weight -two rupees. Almonds, one seer, shelled, the Kabuli variety
The priest droned on. The list grew longer. Poor Hari, Gian thought; this pooja is going to cost at least a hundred rupees. But Hari could afford it now; what was a hundred rupees?
The pandit pecked away, an owl in his dark-brown hood, dignified, elderly, sanctified; his voice low-pitched, sonorous, unctuous: betelnuts, coconuts, betel-leaves, red ochre, camphor, joss-sticks, cuts of doob grass, tulsi leaves, spinning cotton, til oil all the requirements of a full-scale pooja, ending with a gold-bordered dhoti for himself and a silk choli-piece for his wife.
"What date?" Aji inquired.
The priest aimed his nose at Hari and removed his glasses. About when do you want it?"
'Any time after Tuesday. On Monday, we will go over and take possession-get the men to start the ploughing. After that, any day that is auspicious."
The priest took out his religious calendar and put on his glasses. He ran his finger up and down a column of writing, his thin, dry lips moving noiselessly. Dramatically, his finger stopped. He stabbed at the page.
"Thursday is best, he pronounced. After that, Saturday too is good. But Thursday is all gold."
Then let's have it on Thursday, Aji said. 'Are you free?' He cleared his throat and blinked at her. 'I actually had a naming ceremony in Kodli, but I can manage. Finish it off in the morning. ...oh, yes, Thursday will be all right."
He snapped his book shut and stood up. He flapped his shawl and pulled it more tightly around him-the brood-owl fluffing out her wings and drawing them in and sallied forth on his thin, bare, stork legs.
Now he will go to the Big House and tell them all about it,' Gian said. 'After all, they are his biggest clients.'
Do them good to know,' Hari said. 'Do them good to know that we are having a pooja on this scale to celebrate-celebrate their rout. The crooks!'
Hari had every reason to feel bitter towards the inmates of the Big House,
Until their grandfather was a young man, there had been only one house, the Big House-even in those days it was called the Big House. The Talwars of Konshet had always lived as a joint family, all under one roof, a banyan tree taking its strength from the subsidiary roots; and every day, so they said, as many as sixty people would sit down to the afternoon meal in the long, central room of the house, glistening rows of friends, relatives, hangers-on and visitors. The Talwars were hereditary landlords, established, influential, solid, orthodox and full of prestige.
It was their grandfather, Dada Talwar, who had quarrelled with his father and had separated from the familly. He was the younger of two brothers. The cause of the quarrel had been Aji.
He had fallen in love with Aji, who came from the Koshti caste, and had refused to marry the girl they had chosen for him. The fact that the girl he loved was not even a Brahmin made his lapse really serious. And when his father, Tulsidas, had rebuked him and, in spite of his protests, had gone on with the marriage preparations, he had shocked everyone by running away with the girl he loved.
It was difficult to think of Aji, now in her sixties, as the girl who had made her husband renounce his family; of Aji, steeped in religious ritual, her fine, sharp-featured face shining with character, as the girl who had lived with a man out of wedlock.
As soon as they had got over the initial shock, the family rallied to smother the scandal. The fabric of a united Hindu family had to be preserved at all cost. The erring son was pardoned and received back into the Big House; after a decent interval, his marriage to Aji was solemnized at a quiet ceremony and Aji too came to live in the Big House. She was even given the customary bridal ornaments. The two heavy bracelets of gold that she still wore were a relic of her bridal jewellery.
But the crack had been mended only on the surface. Inside the house, behind the darkness of the mardaan or male portion of the house, the rift went on widening. The women of the house had their own methods of ostracism, subtle but effective, and Dada found that his wife was not permitted to enter the family prayer room.
For nearly a year they had lived with the humiliation; Aji smouldering at the sniggers and whispers of the numerous women of the household flaunting their acceptability in the shrine. And
when one day Aji found that even the cotton wicks she had pre- pared for the oil-flame lamp in the prayer room had been rejected by her sister-in-law, there had been an explosion in the dark, all-female world behind the central room; she had rebelled.
Angrily, Dada had faced his father. If his wife was not per- mitted to use the prayer room, he was not willing to remain in the house any longer, he told Tulsidas.
"If you break up the family, you will cause its ruin,' his father had pleaded. And yet there was no question of his overruling the women; the family shrine could not be desecrated by a girl from the weavers' caste, a girl who had left her home to live with his son in sin.
It was Brahmin orthodoxy against a woman's vanity; stone against stone. There was no room for compromise. Dada's father agreed to his leaving the Big House.
Dada had hoped for at least three hundred acres of the family land, but all they gave him as his share was a hundred and fifty acres and twenty thousand rupees in cash. The Big House, his brother Damodar told him, had numerous dependents, whereas Dada had only himself to think of.
Only himself, as though his wife did not count as a member of the family. Dada had been shocked by their meanness. 'It is not fair,' he argued. "I must have at least another hundred acres. Do you want me to live as a pauper?" Let him have Piploda, then,' Damodar jeered. 'Give him Piploda, Father, that will give him his extra hundred acres.
Dada's eyes smouldered. It was a challenge, that laughter, for Piploda had been a barren tract, almost a liability, and they had been on the point of surrendering it to the Government to save paying taxes on it. 'Is that the measure of your generosity?' he asked, very quietly. His brother and father avoided his eyes, but they did not increase their offer.
All right, I will take Piploda,' Dada said. "I will take it, and I will make it pay, if it is the last thing I do."
And with that, Dada Talwar, the stormy petrel, turned his back on the Big House. He went off with his bride, and with the twenty thousand rupees, he built on his property what came to be called the Little House.
Almost perversely, he even built in his new house an exact replica of the prayer room in the Big House; perversely because a division of assets in a Hindu family certainly did not involve sharing out the household gods, perversely because only the main branch of the family had a right to its own shrine. The younger sons could offer their prayers only in the temple of the head of the family.
Piploda was only a piece of scrub and jungle and marsh in those days, untidy as a bearskin, with a sluggish, weed-choked nullah running uselessly through one corner. It was so far from the village that no farm-hands could be persuaded to live there, out in the wilderness, pestered by wild dogs and pigs and an occasional panther.
Dada accepted the challenge. He dug up and burned down all the soapnut and lantana bushes that infested the land, and levelled it for paddy cultivation, doing his full share of work with the three farm-hands he had taken out with him, all living together in a tiny straw and bamboo hut he had built there. One of the men who went out with him was Tukaram, but of course he was hardly a man then, more like a boy.
After the first rice had been harvested, they set about putting a bund against the nullah to form a tank and divert its water through the field. It was when they were digging up the earth for the foundation of the dam that they unearthed the statue of Shiva.
Dada's four-seer pick-axe made a hard, ringing sound against the metal, something between a sudden cry of pain and the sound of a temple bell, they said, and Tukaram and the two other farm-hands came running up to see what he had discovered.
Dada cleared the earth with his bare hands. There lay Shiva, covered with the sludge of unknown decades, lying on his face, the mark of the pick gleaming on his back like a diamond.
Dada lifted the image tenderly and washed it in the brook. And then and there he knelt down and folded his hands to the god he had discovered. They had stopped work and gone back in triumph to the new house on the far side of the village, Dada strong as an ox, carrying the image on his shoulder. The very next morning, he sent for the priest and installed Shiva in the prayer room with due ceremony. The Little House had been given its own god. Without a single qualm, Dada who all his life had been a staunch worshipper of Vishnu, now defected to his new-found god, Shiva, and began to wear his caste-mark in a horizontal line. His family had always worn it as a perpendicular line. But it was more than a question of wearing a different caste-mark. Vishnu was the god of creation, Shiva of destruction. The difference was as wide as that.
After that, Dada went back to Piploda, and resumed work with renewed zeal. He built a small brick hut on the land and began to spend most of his time there.
Shiva with the mark of the pick on his shoulder brought prosperity to the Little House, even though Dada's own deter- mination and relentless labour must have helped. In no time at all, the dam was complete. Its water was guided into a three-foot deep channel that ran all along one side of the field. The entire field was soon under cultivation with the rice paddies clean and square and level, and the slopes thick with coconut and betelnut palms. This was the hour of the Little House. His new-found god blessed Dada with everything he wanted. Shiva even gave him a son to carry on the line of the Little House. The break with the past was complete.
The Big House had gone on its own way, ponderous, elephan- tine, earthbound; its stride unaffected by the emergence of the Little House, its wealth not visibly diminished by the portion made over to the younger son, its prestige enhanced by the grant of a British-Indian title to the head of the house. At the time of King Edward's coronation, Dada's father, Tulsidas, was created a Raisahib.
In one respect, however, the Big House had lagged behind. Dada's elder brother, Damodar, had fathered a succession of daughters, one after the other, but he had no son. After five girls had been born in twelve years, his wife, the one who had rejected Aji's cotton wicks for the lamp in the prayer room, acquired some wasting disease. The British doctor from the civil hospital at Sonarwadi was called in to examine her and gave a warning that it would be inadvisable for her to bear another child.
This was a crisis indeed. Lack of a son is a major catastrophe for any Hindu household, regarded as a retribution for the sins of an earlier incarnation. Without a son to light his funeral pyre, no Hindu can go to heaven. Above all, without a son, there would be no one to carry on the line of the Big House-unless it was to be Dada's son Shankar.
Almost inevitably, the Raisahib had turned to the family god. He had ordered a mahapooja, a ceaseless chanting of the prayer of Vishnu for ten days and nights, with ten brahmins working in relays, and at the end, he had given away ten blemishless cows, one to each priest.
The gods had relented. Damodar's sixth child was a boy. They named him Vishnu-dutt, the gift of Vishnu.
The boy's mother died on the day of the naming ceremony, but they had almost expected this to happen and no one particu- larly minded. After all, she must have died a happy woman, everyone said, for had she not been forgiven by the gods and redeemed herself by giving birth to a son?
Even though he was brought up as what they called a "boonchild' Vishnu-dutt grew up into a fine, strapping boy. They sent him to school at Sonarwadi, the first among the Talwars to be educated outside the house. He had passed his matriculation before the old Raisahib, his grandfather, died. He, too, must have died happy, his affairs all neatly arranged according to the best tenets of Brahminism. And on his deathbed he sent for Dada and made his peace with his erring son, a good brahmin preparing himself for the dark journey ahead. Dada took his own son Shankar to the cremation, both bearing flowers and sandalwood faggots for the pyre, repentant, humble, the long years of feuding momentarily forgotten in the presence of death.
But the new master of the Big House was not in a forgiving mood. He did not permit either Dada or his son to approach the bier. A staunch devotee of Vishnu, he did not want his father's funeral pyre to be polluted by the offerings of those who had defected to other gods. Dada and his son hung back in the outer circle of mourners, well behind the hordes of in-laws and dependents and hangers-on with false tears and red noses, watching the priests pour clarified butter into the raging fire. When they returned to the Little House, they were still carrying their offerings.
For five years more, the feud lay dormant, an indestructible spore burrowed in the soil, a hooded cobra coiled in the depths of its hole, while both sides went their ways, through lean years and fat, carefully skirting the hole, marrying, begetting, dying.
So long as grandfather Dada was living, it had not come into the open. But the Big House had been planning, jealous of Dada's success, smarting at the rise of the Little House, waiting to prod the snake when the time came.
Dada died in 1926. No one from the Big House came to his funeral. Instead, when his body was taken to the burning ground, they quietly went to Piploda and took possession of the property.
The snake had uncoiled and struck; the evil spore had multi- plied underground and erupted; the feud was out in the open, the talk of the village: the Big House against the Little House, the Big House represented by Damodar, Dada's brother, himself now made a Raisahib as a reward for the help rendered to the Government during the world war, and assisted by his son Vishnu-dutt, educated, cunning, daring; the Little House repre- sented by Gian and Hari's father, Shankar, unlettered, hot-headed ineffectual.
The quarrel had raged as only a family quarrel in a remote, isolated village can rage, sweeping the landscape. From then on it was the most dominant topic of conversation in the village, transcending Mahatma Gandhi's movement for the oppressed cultivators of Champaran, and later, the salt march to Dandi, and even the activities of the terrorists in the Punjab and Bengal.
Shankar Talwar, the new master of the Little House, had not much time for farming. He spent the rest of his days in grappling with the Big House. Even before the period of mourning was over, he dashed off to Sonarwadi, the district headquarters, to consult a lawyer. He found he had to engage two. On their advice, he filed a police complaint against the Big House, charging conspiracy, trespass and wrongful possession. The case dragged on for nearly two years, being subjected to endless adjournments, a boon to the lawyers of both sides who came accompanied by their articled clerks and juniors. Although everyone knew that the property at Piploda had been Dada's share, there were no papers to prove his title, only the fact of actual possession. But facts, it turned out, were pitiful substitutes against the resources of the Big House, the prestige of a title, the wiles of Vishnu-dutt. It was not easy to find witnesses to testify against the Raisahib and his son. In fact, the other side were able to produce an impressive array of witnesses to swear that the land had never been sequestered from the family estate and that Dada had tilled it only as a member of the family,
The case failed for want of evidence, but the lawyers were hopeful of winning it in a higher court and advised Shankar to appeal. The litigation went on, first in one court and then in another, branching off into intricate legal quibbles, over the question of jurisdiction, of what was called 'adverse possession', of what constituted an agent, of the rights of inheritance according to Hindu law, all involving staggering consultation fees to the lawyers of Lahore and Allahabad. Shankar Talwar's resources dwindled, his expenses rose steeply. He had to mortgage a whole hundred acres of his remaining land, and then, in a desperate effort to raise money for removing an injunction, to sell it. It was only after the deed of sale was completed that Shankar discovered that the buyer of the land was none other than Vishnu-dutt, astutely acting through a third party.
At this time, came the great plague epidemic, sweeping the country like a great prairie fire. Shankar and his wife died within three days of each other.
But Shankar Talwar had really died long before the disease took him away, a broken and disillusioned man, leaving his two sons a bare fifty acres of land and the Little House, to say nothing of a great mound of legal papers.
Automatically, the litigation had come to a halt. The lawyers ceased their visits, wrote letters of encouragement to Hari and waited expectantly. Then they sent what they called their final bills, and when these remained unpaid, letters threatening litigation of their own. Then came terse telegrams beginning 'unless'.
Aji surrendered her ornaments, keeping only the bangles which she had never removed from her wrists since they were first put on by Dada. The debts of the dead had to be paid. They were paid.
One thing of which Hari was convinced was that if only their father had received the sort of education that the Big House had given to Vishnu-dutt, he would not have made such a hash of his life. Hari himself had had to give up school when he was fifteen, his father's strained finances making it impossible for him to go on. Gian was the privileged one and was permitted to continue his studies. He was in the High School at Sonarwadi when their father died. Hari was determined that nothing should be allowed to interfere with his brother's schooling. He had made up his mind, whatever the cost, to give him the best education in India.
The cost had been high, but Hari did not waver. He had now become the Karta, the head-man of the family, and he was not the sort of man who would shirk the responsibilities of a Karta. He sent Gian back to school and set about putting their neglected land in order. Within two years, Gian had matriculated. By then, what remained of the family land was producing as much as it ever had in grandfather Dada's days, and at that point Hari turned his mind to Piploda. He took time off to go to Sonarwadi. The old lawyers who had conducted his father's cases approached him, smiling, slavering, scenting meat, guaranteeing success. But Hari paid no heed to them. He went to the law courts every day for a whole week, listening carefully while the business of the court went on, looking over the practising lawyers as though he were choosing cattle at a fair; for their looks, performance and zeal; trusting to his own judgement. And on the last day he had approached a dark south Indian with cold hooded eyes who argued his cases in a soft, confidential voice, The lawyer's name was Ramunni Sarma, but Hari had not even bothered to ascertain it.
Sarma did not jump at the offer. He asked Hari to leave the papers with him and to see him three days later. Who had been paying the land revenue on the field?" he had asked
Hari at the next meeting. "My grandfather,' Hari told him.
"Are you quite sure of that?"
Every November, as long as Dada was alive, he personally went to the Taluka office to remit the money." "I will take your case, Sarma said. "We have a very good chance."
They agreed about fees, and once again litigation began. But this time there was none of the old confusion and panic. Sarma had told Hari that the only conclusive proof would be the entries in the official records. 'If it is true that your grandfather paid the Government assessment on the land, it is clear that he owned it.'
"It was he who paid, not the Big House,' Hari assured him.
"Then we have nothing to fear." But when, after the usual number of objections and adjournments put in their way by the Big House lawyers, the records were finally produced in court, Hari was in for a shock; the entries clearly stipulated that while Dada had been paying the Government dues, he had only been acting as an agent for and on behalf of the owner. They lost their case.
That was the time when Vishnu-dutt stood in the village square and hurled insults at Gian who happened to be passing: 'Go and tell your brother that your bones will be coals before we let Piploda out of our hands!"
Gian implored his brother to refrain from further litigation. The Big House was too powerful for them. They had money, influence, cunning. Even Sarma, the new lawyer, had advised against an appeal.
Hari turned to the family god. Humbly he went into the prayer room, a single marigold flower in his hand, to seek the verdict of Shiva. He would only appeal if Shiva gave his kaul.
Reverently, Hari placed the flower on Shiva's head. 'If the flower falls to the right, we should appeal, if it falls to the left, we should give up,' he told himself.
The yellow flower lay poised on Shiva's head for a second or two, a crown of gold on the upraised, serene face of Shiva. Then it fell. It fell to the right.
Hari came out, his eyes bright with gratitude. We will go ahead with the case,' he announced. 'Shiva has given an un- mistakable kaul: the flower fell on the right side.'
Whose right side? Gian could not help asking himself: Shiva's or the worshipper's? Could it not have an opposite meaning? But Hari's eager exultant face restrained him from giving expres- sion to his doubts.
The lawyer had no faith in the god's kaul, in the chance dropping of a flower. He hummed and hawed and held back, until, only one day before the time for lodging an appeal had lapsed, he went and filed it. Three days before the hearing, he sent for Hari.
'How long do your revenue collectors at Konshet stay there?' be asked Hari. 'I mean, how frequently are they transferred?'
"Usually they are there for only two years, never more than three. Sometimes the transfers are much quicker...one or two have gone away within a few months." Sarma gave him a sly, meaningful smile, and his drooping lids fell lower and lower till they covered his eyes completely. 'It just occurred to me,' he said with his eyes still closed, "that all those entries to the effect that the taxes were paid on behalf of the Big House were made in the same handwriting in the same hand- writing and in the same ink."
"What does it mean?"
'It means they were written afterwards. Forgeries! We could .we could get whoever was responsible sent to jail. When we demanded that the records should be produced, they must have realized the case was lost. So they bribed some clerk in the records office...it could even have happened here, in the court itself. Such things are not unknown in our sub-divisional offices."
"But how will that affect our case?"
The judge is an Englishman, Mr. Stewart-a real fire-eater, but just. If forgery is established, I would hate to be in the defendants' shoes," And can forgery be established?' Hari asked.
Sarma opened his eyes and gave him a long look. 'I think we can take it that we have won our case,' he said.
'Shiva's kaul was right,' said Hari, and reverently folded his hands.
So, with Shiva's blessings, they won the case and the fire-eating Mr. Stewart passed strictures against the revenue officials and ordered an investigation into who had tampered with the records. Jubilantly, they prepared for the pooja to Shiva. The prayer room was littered with bundles of groceries and the whole house bore an air of festivity. As he lay in bed on his first night back from college, Gian heard his brother singing in his room at the other end of the house, singing in his hard, resonant voice, a bhajan to the greatness of Shiva.
Gian turned on his side and raised his head. He had not heard his brother sing for a long time. It was spontaneous, like a bird bursting into song at a moment of inner peace.. When Gian fell asleep, his brother was still singing.
