Chapter 21-

THE COILS OF SANSAR

THEY left Lahore by the first bus next morning. In the afternoon, they were in Kernal. The first night they spent in a hotel in the city. Basu spent the next morning looking for a house. He found a small, two-roomed cottage near the dairy farm, and by evening they had already moved in. That night, Debi-dayal had high fever.

Ill as he was, Debi-dayal resented her being there, ministering to his needs with pathetic eagerness as his own helplessness increased his irritation. He should have left her in Lahore, he kept admonishing himself. To have put off leaving her, even for a few hours, was a mistake. It was like being kind to some animal in the jungle which could not fend for itself. Once it became attached to you, you could never bring yourself to send it away. And yet even through the distortions of fever, he could see that he had no choice. Indeed they could scarcely have carried on without Mumtaz, for it was she who took care of them and looked after the house, cooking, washing and sweeping. She learned to dress the wounds on his hand and put on Basu's medicine and tie the bandage expertly. Was it already too late to send her away, he wondered? How long would he have to remain tied to her, like one of those leg fetters they put on in the Andamans to prevent you running away?

Even Basu grew more and more dependent on her, almost in spite of himself, getting over his initial violent aversion to the fact of her being born a Muslim. But then, he reminded himself, many of the girls brought up in brothels were Muslims, and most of them were taken on as concubines by Hindu merchants; Marwaris and Banias from highly orthodox backgrounds. That was what he tried to explain to Debi-dayal just before he was due to go back to Calcutta. 

'She is highly capable and intelligent,' he said. 'I don't know what we could have done without her. I could never have left you here, like this, and yet I have to go. Now I can leave without any qualms, even though you still have fever."

She will have to go,' Debi-dayal said, 'as soon as I am able to move about.'

"You must not worry about her being a Muslim,' Basu went on. In a courtesan-school, they are taught to be secular; no religion is practised. Even the most orthodox Marwaris, men who would not sit at a meal with you or me, take them on as concubines.

'I don't want her as a concubine, damn it,' Debi-dayal had retorted. "Whether she's a Muslim or a Hindu makes no differ- ence to me, so long as she goes on doing her work."

That was all she was to him; a servant. Debi-dayal grew used to her. Resentment gave way to listless resignation. It was nearly a week before the fever subsided, leaving him limp and weak, hardly able to walk. It took nearly another month for the swelling to go. And for weeks after that, his hand looked tender and pink and white and grotesquely pitted, while the fingers were pink suppurating stumps, like a leper's.

But it was healing. The weeks passed into months. The hand acquired a semblance of its former shape and colour, and all but the forefinger became straight and supple again. Gradually, he began to train himself to use it, learning to curl his fingers at will, to grip a rolled-up handkerchief in his fist, groping tenderly with his fingers, trying to recapture the sensation of touch, like a blind man learning to use a stick.

He was helpless and vulnerable, wholly dependent on Mumtaz, knowing that Shafi would leave no stone unturned to discover his whereabouts. He began to realize that there was no anonymity like a householder's; a man and wife were the hallmark of responsibility. That was what they were, to all appearances, a man and his wife living unobtrusively in the little cottage by the dairy farm.

'I brought bad luck to you,' Mumtaz would tell him. 'If it had not been for me, you would never have damaged your hand.

Looking at the hand, he could imagine what the acid could have done to her face-just what it had done to Basu's wife. And yet, what she was telling him was true. If it had not been for her, the hand which he had so assiduously hardened by banging it against wood since he was thirteen years old, would never have been maimed and made powerless.

Two months after his arrival in Kernal, it was almost fully healed. Now, only the diagonal pink scar burned by the acid remained, running from the wrist to the middle finger. One day he told her to go and buy a cricket ball, and then began spending hours playing with it, throwing it up and catching it again and again. At first his attempts were clumsy. The ball would drop out of his hands and he would wince with pain. But as the days passed, he began to catch it more easily.

One day he called Mumtaz out to the open ground behind their cottage and told her to throw the ball high in the air. Her throw was misdirected and not very high, but he ran and caught it expertly. Not like that, you fool! he snapped. "Can't you throw it higher-like this?" and he threw it as high as he could and as it came down, caught it without flinching.

'My hand is completely healed,' he told her, and held it out for her to see. "I can do anything with it now. Look!' and he threw up the ball and caught it again.

That evening, when she had washed up after their evening meal, Mumtaz came into the outer room. Usually, in the evenings, she had kept to herself, sleeping in the room where she cooked.

'Now that your hand is all right, am I to go away?" she asked him.

He glanced at her in sudden annoyance. 'Go?" he asked. "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't want to go. It is you who told me to go."

"Where will you go?"

'I told you I have nowhere to go, except possibly back to Akkaji. That is the only home I know.'

Back to a brothel, a roost of crows, to be pecked to death by the rightful inmates, he thought to himself. Why did she have to confront him with this just when he had begun to feel so light, almost jubilant at the way his hand had healed?

He was silent for a long time, gnawed by confusion. Was this how people got involved, he asked himself? Three months earlier, he could never have imagined having anything to do with a girl like Mumtaz, but now the thought of sending her away suddenly seemed callous. Was that how Basu had got his Dipali? Had he tied himself irrevocably down because he could not make a harsh decision?

'Do you wish to go?" he asked.

She shook her head. 'I wish to stay. I want to serve you, be your slave. I shall do anything for you. But if you want me to go, what alternative have I?"

It was just as he had feared. The decision was his responsi- bility alone, and he must harden his mind to whatever self- reproach might follow.

'I don't want you to go,' he told her. 'I want you to stay."

It was touching to see the relief in her face. I shall stay as long as you want me to. When you tell me to go, I shall go."

He felt a quick flutter of relief at her staunchness. He had become so used to having her there, that suddenly it was difficult to think of life without her, despite her background.

And yet he had seen nothing mean or greedy in her. She had worked faithfully and unobtrusively for him, making no demands and asking no questions about his hole-and-corner mode of living; indeed, all she was asking now was to be allowed to continue being with him. Debi-dayal, on the other hand, had not given her a single word of affection but gone on taking everything she did for granted, as though some kind of recognized slave-and-master relationship existed between them.

He looked at his hand, pitted and scarred and tender, and then at her face, smooth, unblemished, pale, unpainted, the eyes bright and eager as though freed of tension, and suddenly the thought of her leaving him was difficult to bear. I am sorry I could not throw the ball high,' she apologized.

'But I can sing. Would you like me to singi

'No, thank you,' he had told her. 'Not tonight.' But he went on staring at her, as though taking strength from her serenity to dispel his own confusion, and something in his stare caused her to blush and turn her head away.

She went back to her room after that, and he lay awake in bed for a long time, haunted by her blush, wild with a sudden desire to take her into his arms. But he was aware that on that night, it would have seemed sordid, even vaguely mercenary, as though he were expecting to be compensated for his kindness.

Gradually he realized he was no longer a free man, and deep inside himself, he was glad, not sorry. Like the beggar in the fable who had acquired a cat to get rid of the mice in his hut, he had now become involved in the coils of what they called sansar-the web of responsibility. You could not keep a cat without providing it with milk: that was the lesson of the fable. You had to keep a cow too, and then a servant to look after the cow, and so on.

He had now become a man with ties. From now on, he would have to live as other men lived, doing humdrum jobs, wrapped up in domesticity, not allowing themselves to be distracted by political iniquities not even nursing the compulsion of unsettled scores.

And then it hit him like a revelation: he had acquired a woman of his own, a wife-yes, a wife, he told himself defiantly. Once the thought had struck his mind, he held and savoured it, like a mango that had tasted sour when he first bit into it, but was delicious once he got used to the flavour. For the first time since he had hurt his hand, he felt wholly relaxed.

Look! he called out to her. As soon as my hand is completely all right, we will go and see my sister. I would like you to meet her. Your sister! he could feel the note of anxiety in her voice, the shadow of fear. "Yes, she lives in Bombay."

She was silent for a while. Then she asked:

'Is that where you are going to leave me?" I am not going to leave you anywhere,' he told her. 'I am going to keep you to myself. It is just that I would like you to meet her."

Is she as nice as you are?'

You will have to find that out for yourself,' he chuckled. 'I think you'll like her."

"I am sure I shall.'

*After that, we ought to go and see my parents."

"Your parents?"

"Yes, in Duriabad. It is not going to be very easy-in fact quite awkward.' 

'Oh!'

It has nothing to do with you. It's because of many things that happened before I met you. That's why I think it would be better to see Sundari-my sister-first. She will prepare the ground for my mother and father to meet you.'

'Will they want to see me?"

"It is customary for parents to wish to see the girl their son has brought home their daughter-in-law.'

She did not say anything after that, but he could tell she was not asleep. After a while, he thought he heard her sobbing, but he knew this was not the time to intrude, that her emotion was too private to be assuaged by words of comfort.

It was odd to have a wife sleeping on a charpoy in the kitchen, away from her husband, he reflected, particularly a wife as lovely as Mumtaz. And then he began to think of his father and mother and sister.