'Outside Madan Lal's Theatre By the Hall Gate MISS TARA BAI! THE FEMALE HERCULES! Most Magnificent! Most Spectacular Show on Earth!' There, fifty yards away, was the Hall Gate, its red bricks shining cruelly against the glare of the sun. And there, a hundred yards away, shadowed by the imposing architec- ture of Madan Lal's Theatre, was the vast circus tent. 'Bombay, Bom-Bom-Bombay,' the word seemed to strike like the pendulum of the Town Hall in his brain. And, as if the reverberations of the note had conjured up all the elements of his life in a deep echo, the pendulum gathered up in its swing the distant menories of all that he had heard about Bombay. A coolie in the vegetable market, whose brother had gone to work in Bombay, had said that one could carn anything from fifteen to thirty rupees a month in a factory there. And that it was truly a wonder city one should visit before one died. The coolie said his brother had exhorted him to save money from that very moment for the fare, and work day and night to get there. Because once you were there, there was plenty of work. The ships sailed across the black waters, too, from Bombay, the coolie had said, and, there were palm trees and coconut trees in plenty on the ambro- sial isle, among which lived rich Southerners and Parsis. 'It is an island, of course, it is an island,' Munoo recol- lected having read in his geography book that Bombay was an island on the coast of Malabar. 'Bombay, Bom-Bom- Bombay. I shall go to Bombay,' he decided. He crossed a dirty ditch by a smai! garden beyond which the big top of Miss Tara Bai's circus stood. He had looked at the handbill and read that the price of the cheapest seat was eight annas. And he had decided that he was going to see the circus without paying the price of a ticket. 'I wouldn't waste the rupee Prabha gave me on useless enjoy- ment like this,' he said to himself, eeling the edge of his loin cloth, in which the silver coin lay knotted. 174 His habitual recklessness had suddenly turned to un- scrupulousness, because his good conscience sought to defend the kindliness of his master. So he avoided the regular entrance. A bay horse, a white mare and a snub-nosed pony stood snorting, as they grazed on a bundle of grass, by a few pie- bald nags. Mundo detected the form of a smart man with a turned up moustache, looking somewhat like Sorabji, the Parsi chemist, except that he wore breeches, whereas the compounder of medicines always had cotton trousers and au alpaca jacket on. He crept under cover of a small, filthy tent and waited tensely for a while. Then he looked towards the right and sighted an elephant coming soundlessly out of the entrance of the tent, followed by a crowd of city urchins, while a black driver sat on its head with his legs hidden under the ears of the beast. Do you know it dances, climbs on a ladder, and plays a mouth organ.' one of the urchins was saying to his friend. Munoo ran and joined the throng of boys. One, of the leaders of the throng mistook his caper for an invasion. He lifted his strip of a turban and threw it at the elephant's trunk. Jumbo swallowed it up after a grace- ful salute, as if it were a piece of straw.
Munoo returned the compliment by snatching the cap off the boy's head and throwing it to the elephant. Before he knew where he was he had been caught by the neck by the youth. He swerved, and planting his leg against his opponent, flung him lightly into the ditch. As the young man struggled out, covered all over with slime, the urchins behind roared and screamed with laughter. The elephant shied for a moment and the driver punched the beast with an iron Handle, cursing Munoo the while. 'He started it first,' Mnoo apologised. The driver jumped own and, catching Munoo by the 175 ear, led him towards the trunk of the elephant to frighten him. All the boys shied off screaming. Munoo thought his last moment had come. But Jumbo only blew a heavy breath at his head and went on. 'I am not afraid,' Munoo said brazenly. The driver smiled. 'All right,' the driver said, 'Go and call that grass cutter who is going on the road with the bundle of grass on his, head.' Munoo was only too willing to oblige, for he knew that if he came back with the grass cutter he would get free access to the circus ground where people were not admitted without a pass. He ran for the grass cutter. He caught him at the en- trance of the Theatre stables and. brought him back. 'I want to see the tamasha,' he said to the elephant driver, currying favour with a humble smile, when the man had brought the grass. 'Go away! Go away!' the driver said casually. 'Look,' Munoo insisted, 'I did that work for you.' The man was walking away towards the back of the tent. Munoo followed lightly behind. 'Look, I did that work for you!' he repeated as they got well behind the tent. 'Don't pester ine,' snapped the elephant driver. 'Sit down there, anywhere, and see through the hole in the canopy.' And he walked away. Munoo looked for a hole in the canopy. There did not seem to be one at first glance. He tried to lift it from a side. 'Don't do that, the elephant driver's voice came sharp into his ear. 'You will bring the whole tent down. Here!" Munoo jumped towards a rent in the canvas in which the elephant driver had dug the forefinger of his left hand. The performance was well uncer way. The arena was packed in a crescent of layer upon layer of chairs. On the near side a band played European music, while 176 under the top of the tent a troupe of trapeze dancers had just brought off a miraculous swing, flying from one end of space to another, till their supple bodies came to a stand- still and they walked out of the arena. Munoo's heart beat wildly at the cheering which fol- lowed. Then its violent activity died down in the applause with which the audience greeted Miss Tara Bai, who came swaying, almost like the elephant, Munoo thought, who had swallowed his turban. He could not see the details of I er face through the rent in the tent, but she acted like lightning, as she lay down to accept a huge stone on her stomach and rested calmly as two men beat the stone with sledge hammers, in the way in which Munoo had seen the coolies break huge boulders to make small stones for new roads. There was applause as she flung the weight off her body and stood bowing to the audience. Munoo was spellbound. But a noise of shuffling fect at a side entrance to the tent about twenty yards away on Munoo's left made him with- draw his eyes. It was only a white horse galloping into the arena. He applied his eyes and saw the horse enter the ring, followed by a young man who wore what seemed to Munoo curiously tight angrezi trousers and a long cloak of silver sequins. The man might have been a rubber doll the way he leapt from the ground on to the back of the fast moving horse, stood balanced on its back for a moment, somer- saulted, then balanced himself on his head with his legs stretched in the air, and slipped off lightly over the tail of his mount, as easily as if he were walking down marble stairs. Munoo watched enraptured, his eyes wide open, his brain in a whirl at what seemed to be a miracle. 'I should like to do that,' he said to himself, wildly ex- cited. But then the sight of the accomplished artist jumping from a very precariou's position clean on to the back of his mount and galloping away, seemed an impossible feat for him to imitate. 'He will be going to Vilayat beyond the M-C 177 seas to where the Sahib logs come from,' Munoo thought. 'I cannot go there, anyway. I am only a coolie. But I will go to Bombay. Probably I might earn enough there to go beyond the black waters.' From the midst of resounding cheers a couple of clowns seemed to have been born, dressed in conic hats and loose, spotted clothes, their faces painted white, red and black. They first played with a coloured ball, balancing it on the tips of their extended noses, then aped the trapeze dancers with hesitant movements which somehow became perfect towards the end and created in Munoo just the effect they were intended to create. 'The lion cages were coming in. But Munoo was disturbed by the elephant driver who was passing. 'Come, oh boy, do some work, help me to carry these buckets of water, you have seen enough of the circus now.' It was hard for Munoo to tear himself away, but he felt that he owed the whole treat to the elephant driver and could not refuse to help. He rose limply from where he had crouched and followed the man. 'Surely an elephant drinks more than a bucketful of water,' Munoo said, shirking from the prospect of having to carry too many buckets. 'Yes but I am only washing his buttocks clean' replied 'Yes, but I am only washing his buttocks clean,' replied the driver. Munoo lifted a bucket in each hand from the pump at a corner of the compound and carried it to where Jumbo still stood eating the grass that the driver had bought for it. 'Everyone can see that I am a coolie,' Munoo felt as he sped along. And he was slightly crestfallen at the prospect of never being able to go beyond the seas as the horse rider would. 'Perhaps I shall go to Bombay,' he said to console himself. But the sheer strain of carrying buckets of water brought about a feeling of exhilaration in his bones. He felt light and buoyant after having done three turns at the pipe. 'I shall ask this man if he will take me to Bombay,' he 178 said to himself, as he stood by the elephant driver, wiping the sweat off his brow. 'Can't you employ me as your assistant and take me to Bombay with you?" he asked, his voice reverberating through his body, tense and hard for a moment. 'I can't give you a job, because elephant training is learnt through long experience and we go beyond the black waters soon, said the driver. But there is no reason why you shouldn't stow yourself away somewhere in the train in which we go to Bombay. I stole ride. in goods trains across the whole Southern peninsula when I was your age.' 'Are you talking true talk?" asked Munoo to keep up the vague promise. "Yes,' said the driver. 'You stay here and help us to pack. I shall get you wages for the coolie work you do. And at night I shall sinuggle you somewhere into the train!' 'Oh, you are a kind man,' said Munoo, his blood quick- ening. 'How shall I thank you?' 'Don't,' said the driver, stiffening, 'Somebody will be listening. Come, get some more grass for Jumbo.'