THIS DASARA will make it a year and two months THIS since all this happened and yet things here are as in Kanthapura. Seethamma and her daughter Nanja now live in Malur Shanbhog Chikkanna's house, and they eat with them, and grind with them, and Chikkanna, who has no children, is already searching for a bridegroom for Nanja. 'I'll find her a Mysore B.A.,' he says, and day after day horoscopes come, and he says, 'This one is better, but the other one I have heard about is better still'. But Nanjamma, Pandit Venkateshia's wife Nanjamma, is alone in Temple Vishveshvarayya's house, and she says, 'I'm no cook, and yet that's all I do for the Mahatma!' That one was never born to follow the Mahatma, I tell you, she and her tongue and her arms, and her ever-falling sari. And Pariah Rachanna's wife, Rachi, has found a place in Kanthenahalli Patel Chandrayya's house, and she comes now and again to the brahmin quarters with her pounded rice or her dung-cakes. Her granddaughter Mari is working in Chenna's house, and they say she's already asked for in marriage by Kotwal Kirita's son, the second one, who works with the elephant merchants from the north. And the marriage is to take place as soon as the father is out of prison. And Timmamma and I, we live in Jodidar Seetharamiah's house, and they say always, 'Are your prayers finished, aunt? Are your ablutions finished, aunt?' before every meal. Aunt, aunt, aunt, they always call us for this and that, and the children say, 'The Mahatma has sent us his relations. There is the aunt who tells such nice stories,' and that is me, and the aunt of the pancakes,' and that's Timmamma, and they all laugh. Aunt, aunt, aunt, they always call us for this and that, and the children say, 'The Mahatma has sent us his relations. There is the aunt who tells such nice stories,' and that is me, and the aunt of the pancakes,' and that's Timmamma, and they all laugh.
In the afternoons we all gather on the veranda pressing cotton wicks and hearing the Upanishads-it's Temple Vishwanath's son Shamu, who's at the Mysore Sanscrit College, that does us the readings. Of course, it can never be like Ramakrishnayya's. They say Rangamma is to be released soon. And maybe my poor Seenu too, though they have sent him to a Northern jail, for what with his hunger-strikes and Vande Matarams, he had set fire to the hearts of all around him, and they gave him another six months. But Ratna had only one year, and the other day she came to spend a month with us, and she told us of the beatings and the tortures and the 'Salute the Union Jack' in the prison. That was not for long though, for the Mahatma has made a truce with the Viceroy and the peasants will pay back the revenues, the young men will not boycott the toddy shops, and everything they say, will be as before. No, sister, no, nothing can ever be the same again. You will say we have lost this, you will say we have lost that. Kenchamma forgive us, but there is something that has entered our hearts, an abundance like the Himavathy on Gauri's night, when lights come floating down the Rampur Corner, lights come floating down from Rampur and Maddur and Tippur, lights lit on the betel leaves, and with flower and kumkum and song we let them go, and they will go down the Ghats to the morning of the sea, the lights on the betel leaves, and the Mahatma will gather it all, he will gather it by the sea, and he will bless us.
They have burnt our dead, too, by the Himavathy, and their ashes too have gone out to the sea.
You know, sister, Moorthy is no more with us. The other day, when Ratna was here, we asked, 'When is Moorthy to be released?' and she says, 'Why, aunt,' -and how deferential Ratna has become!-' he's already freed.'-'Freed!' we exclaimed, 'Yes, since the pact with the Viceroy many a prisoner has been released.'' And when is he coming here, Ratna?'- 'I don't know, aunt, for he says-well, I'll read to you his letter.' And she read the letter. It said: 'Since I am out of prison, I met this Satyagrahi and that, and we discussed many a problem, and they all say the Mahatma is a noble person, a saint, but the English will know how to cheat him, and he will let himself be cheated. Have faith in your enemy, he says, have faith in him and convert him. But the world of men is hard to move, and once in motion it is wrong to stop till the goal is reached. And yet, what is the goal? Independence? Swaraj? Is there not Swaraj in our States, and is there not misery and corruption and cruelty there? Oh no, Ratna, it is the way of the masters that is wrong. And I have come to realize bit by bit, and bit by bit, when I was in prison, that as long as there will be iron gates and barbed wires round the Skeffington Coffee Estate, and city cars that can roll up the Bebbur Mound, and gas-lights and coolie cars, there will always be pariahs and poverty. Ratna, things must change. The youths here say they will change it. Jawaharlal will change it. You know Jawaharlal is like a Bharatha to the Mahatma, and he, too, is for non-violence and he, too, is a Satyagrahi, but he says in Swaraj there shall be neither the rich nor the poor. And he calls himself an equal-distri- butionist, and I am with him and his men. We shall speak of it when you are here.'
Ratna left us for Bombay the week after. But Ran- gamma will come out of prison soon. They say Ran- gamma is all for the Mahatma. We are all for the Mahatma. Pariah Rachanna's wife, Rachi, and Seeth- amma and Timimamma are all for the Mahatma. They say there are men in Bombay and men in Punjab, and men and women in Bombay and Bengal and Punjab, who are all for the Mahatma. They say the Mahatma will go to the Red-man's country and he will get us Swaraj. He will bring us Swaraj, the Mahatma. And we shall all be happy. And Rama will come back from exile, and Sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain and Sita freed, and he will come back with Sita on his right in a chariot of the air, and brother Bharatha will go to meet them with the worshipped sandal of the Master on his head. And as they enter Ayodhya there will be a rain of flowers.
Like Bharatha we worship the sandals of the Brother saint.
There was only Range Gowda that ever went back to Kanthapura. She was here, with us, his Lakshmi, and Lakshmi's second daughter the first one was in prison, and her three grandchildren of the one, and the seven of the other. She was in Patel Chennè Gowda's house, for they had heard of Patel Rangè Gowda, and they had said, 'You are one of our com- munity, come in and stay with us all this life and all the lives to come, sister!' And she waited for Rangè Gowda. And one day he came back-and we had gon to light the evening light of the sanctum, and the children came running and said, 'There's a tall man at the door, and he's frightening to look at,' and when we went to see him, it was Rangè Gowda, and he was now lean as an areca-nut tree, and he said he had just. come back from Kanthapura. 'Couldn't leave,' he said, 'till I had drunk three handfuls of Himavathy water,' but he had gone, to tell you the truth, to dig out his jewels, and he said the Corner-House was all but fallen, except for the byre, and Rangamma's house was tile-less over the veranda, and Nanjamma's house doorless and roofless and the hearthstones in every corner. 'All said in a knot,' he concluded, 'there's neither man nor mosquito in Kanthapura, for the men from Bombay have built houses on the Bebbur Mound, houses like in the city, for coolies, and they own this land and that, and even Bhatta has sold all his lands, said Maddur Chennayya, has sold it all to the Bombay men, and the Bombay men paid him well, and he's now gone back to Kashi. "In Kashi, for every hymn and hiccup you get a rupee," he said it seems, and he and his money have gone to Kashi. Waterfall Venkamma, it appears, has gone to stay with her new son-in-law, and Concubine Chinna still remains in Kanthapura to lift her leg to her new customers. I drank three handfuls of Himavathy water, and I said, "Protect us, Mother!" to Kenchamma and I said, "Protect us, Father" to the Siva of the Promontory, and I spat three times to the west and three times to the south, and I threw a palmful of dust at the sunken wretch, and I turned away. But to tell you the truth, Mother, my heart it beat like a drum.'
