'You don't know who you're speaking to,' Badè Khan grunted between his teeth as he rose.
'I know I have the honour of speaking to a police- man,' the Patel answered in a singsong way. Mean- while his grandson, the little Puttu, came out, and he took the child in his arms and laid him on his lap and tickled him between the armpits to make him laugh. Badè Khan went down one step, two steps, three steps, and standing on the gutter-slab, growled at the Patel, The first time I corner you, I shall squash you like a bug'. 'Enough! Enough of that,' answered the Patel in- differently. You'd better take care not to warm your hands with other's money. straight to the pipal-tree. For that would take you 'Oh, you !' spat Badè Khan, trying not to swear, and once he was by Sampanna's courtyard he began to grumble and growl, and he marched on, thumping over the heavy boulders of the street. At the Temple Square he gave such a reeling kick to the one-eared cur that it went groaning through the Potters' Street, groan- ing and barking through the Potters' Street and the Pariah Street, till all the dogs began to bark, and all the cocks began to crow, and a donkey somewhere raised a fine welcoming bray. So Badè Khan went straight to the Skeffington Coffee Estate and he said, 'Your Excellency, a house to live in?' And Mr Skeffington turned to his butler and said, 'Give him a hut,' and the butler went to the maistris' quarters and opened a tin shed and Badè Khan went in and looked at the plastered floor and the barred windows and the well near by, and he said, 'This will do, and going this way and that, he chose a .pariah woman among the lonely ones, and she brought along her clay-pots and her mats and her brooms, and he gave her a very warmful bed. The next day, and the day after and the day after that, we saw nothing more of Badè Khan. Some said he went to bring the Police Inspector. Others said he was only a passing policeman who had come to squeeze money out of people. But on the fourth or fifth day, Postman Surappa went up the Front-House steps, and seating himself by grandfather Ramanna, asked for a pinch of snuff and told him, just in passing, that there was a policeman of some sort in the Skeffington Estate. And they all cried out and said: 'Oh, Surappa, you had better tell those tales to whitewashed walls. Nobody who has eyes to see and ears to hear will be- lieve in such a crow-and-sparrow story. It was a passing policeman. And he wanted to make money by terror- izing the ignorant. One has seen so many of these fellows. And once they have a rupee in their hand or a dozen coconuts or a measure of rice, they walk away and are never heard of again.' But Waterfall Venkamma would have none of this. 'Policemen do not come along like this in these civilized days,' she mocked. 'I know why they've come. They've come because of this Moorthy and all this Gandhi affair. He with his kitchen she-friends and all this bragging city-talk!' and she spat into the street. And, as everybody knew, she had no particular love for Moorthy. He had refused her second daughter, for whom bridegroom after bridegroom was being sought -and she was nearing the age. And then there was that other affair. Moorthy was so often at the next-house- woman's kitchen,' as she used to say. Since that Sankara-jayanthi Moorthy was always to be seen going up the Kannayya-House steps and then he would come out sometimes in one hour, sometimes in two hours, and sometimes in three hours, and he even took others of his gang with him too. They said Rangamma's house was now becoming something of a Congress House, and there they were always piling books and books, and they had even brought spinning-wheels from the city. The expulsion of Jayaramachar from Kanthapura had made a big noise in the city, and the Karwar Congress Committee had written to Moorthy to go and see them. And when he had gone to see them, they had given him books and papers and spinning-wheels, and all this for nothing, it was said! And that was why our boys were so busy now. They went to the Sudra quarters and the Potters' quarters and the Weavers' quarters and they cried, 'Free spinning-wheels in the name of the Mahatma!' And it was Moorthy who came to the Brahmin Street. Sister,' says he to Nose- scratching Nanjamma, sister, the Congress is giving away free spinning-wheels. Will you spin, sister? You see, you have nothing to do in the afternoons after the vessels are washed and the water drawn, and if you spin just one hour a day, you can have a bodice-cloth of any colour or breadth you like, one bodice-cloth per month, and a sari every six months. And, during the first month, the cotton is given free.' 'May I ask one thing, Moorthy? How much has one to pay?' 'Nothing, sister. I tell you the Congress gives it free.' And why should the Congress give it free?' 'Because millions and millions of yards of foreign cloth come to this country, and everything foreign makes us poor and pollutes us. To wear cloth spun and woven with your own God-given hands is sacred, says the Mahatma. And it gives work to the workless, and work to the lazy. And if you don't need the cloth, sister-well, you can say, "Give it away to the poor," and we will give it to the poor. Our country is being "bled to death by foreigners. We have to protect our Mother.'
Nanjamma does not know what all this is about. Brahmins do not spin, do they? My son, we have weavers in the village. There is Chennayya and Rangayya.
'Yes, sister. But they buy foreign yarn, and foreign yarn is bought with our money, and all this money goes across the oceans. Our gold should be in our country. And our cotton should be in our country. Imagine, sister,' says he, seating himself, you grow rice in the fields. Then you have mill agents that come from Sholapur and Bombay and offer you very tempt- ing rates. They pay you nineteen rupees a khanda of paddy instead of eighteen rupees eight annas, as Gold- Bangle Somanna or Mota Madanna would pay. They will even pay you nineteen rupees and two annas, if you will sell more than twenty khandas. Then they take it away and put it into huge mills brought from their own country and run by their own men-and when the rice is husked and washed and is nothing but pulp, they sell it to Banya Ramanlal or Chotalal, who send it by train to Banya Bapanlal and Motilal and Bapanlal and Motilal sent it to the Tippur Fair, and Subba Chetty and Rama Chetty will cart twenty. sacks of it home. And then you have no rice before harvests, and there's your granddaughter's marriage, for example, or your second daughter is pregnant and the whole village is to be invited for the Seventh-month ceremony. You go to Subba Chetty and say, "Hè Chetty, have you fine rice?"-" Why, I have fine white rice," says he, and shows you rice white and small as pearls, all husked and washed in the city. And you say, "This looks beautiful rice," and you pay one rupee for every three and a half seers. Now tell me, Nanjamma, how much does Husking-Rangi ask from you for every twenty measures of paddy?'
'Why, it all depends. Sometimes it is six and a half and sometimes it is seven, with seven measures of fod- der-husk.'
'Now, sister, calculate and you will see. You get six seers to the rupee, not to speak of the fodder-husk, in- stead of seven, and your rice does not go into the stomach of Rangi or Madi, but goes to fatten some dissipated Red-man in his own country. Now, do you understand, sister?'
'Well, if I say "Yes," what then?'
'And then-you sow, and your harvest is grand this year. And more people come from Bombay and Sholapur. And they bring bigger carts and larger money-sacks. Then you say, "They pay twenty rupees a khanda this year. If I keep my rice it is all such a bother measuring it out to Rangi and measuring it back from her and quarrelling over her measures." And there are the rats and the worms and the cattle, and then you have to pay revenue, and Bhatta's interest. And, who knows, the rice may go down in price, as it did two years ago. So you go to the agent and say, All right. I can give you forty-four khandas." And, as he opens his bag and counts out rupee after rupee, in the backyard they are already saying, "Three. Hm -Four. Hm-Five, and the God's extra. Hm," their gaping sacks before them. Night comes and our granary is empty as a mourning-house. Then, the next morn- ing, Husking Rangi meets you on your way to the river, and says, "And when shall I come for the paddy, mother?"-" Let Dasara come, Rangi. We've still last year's rice. We haven't swallowed it all," you say. But Rangi knows the truth, and when the rainy season comes and there's little rice to cat, she will pass by your door and spit three times at you in the name of her children. Then she too will go to work on the fields with her husband. And so two work on a field that hardly needed one, and the children will go foodless. And the next harvest's agents will come and bring veritable motor lorries, such as they have in the Skeffington Coffee Estate, and they will take away all your rice and you will have to go to Subba Chetty and buy perhaps the very rice that grew in your field, and at four seers a rupee too. The city people bring with them clothes and sugar and bangles that they manu- facture in their own country, and you will buy clothes and sugar and bangles. You will give away this money and that money and you will even go to Bhatta for a loan, for the peacock-blue sari they bring just goes with Lakshmi, and Lakshmi is to be married soon. They bring soaps and perfumes and thus they buy your rice and sell their wares. You get poorer and poorer, and the pariahs begin to starve, and one day all but Bhatta and Subba Chetty will have nothing else to eat but the pebbles of the Himavathy, and drink her waters saying, "Rama-Krishna, Rama-Krishna!" Sister, that is how it is....
'Oh, I am no learned person,' explains Nanjamma. 'You have been to the city and you should know more than me. spin?' But tell me, my son, does the Mahatma
The Mahatma, sister? Why, every morning he spins for two hours immediately after his prayers. He says spinning is as purifying as praying.'
'Then, my son, I'll have a charka. But I can pay nothing for it.'
'You need pay nothing, sister. I tell you the Con- gress gives it free.'
'Really, you mean it will cost me nothing. For, you see, I'm so occupied at home, and maybe I'd never find time to spin..
'It is yours, sister. And every month I shall come to ask you how many yards you have spun. And every month I shall gather your yarn and send it to the city. And the city people will reduce you for the cotton charges, and for the rest you have your cloth.'
'You are a clever fellow to know all these tricks!' says Nanjamma, beaming. Have a cup of coffee, Moorthy.' And she goes in and brings out a warm cup of coffee, and in a silver cup too, and when he has finished drinking, he goes down the street to see Post- Office Suryanarayana.
Post-Office Suryanarayana is already a Gandhist. He asks for two charkas. Then he goes, Moorthy, to Pandit Venkateshia and Snuff Sastri and Rangamma's widowed sister Seethamma, and her daughter Ratna, and Cardamom-field Ramachandra, and they all say, 'Oh yes, my son. Oh yes!' And so he leaves the Brahmin quarter and goes to the. Pariah quarters, and the pariahs are so happy to see a Brahmin among them that they say, 'Yes, yes, learned one'; and Left-handed Madanna's son Chenna, and Beadle Timmayya's son Bhima, and old Mota and One-eyed Linga and Jack- tree Tippa, all of them follow him home, and to each one of them he gives a spinning-wheel and a seer of cotton-hemp, and they go back with their spinning- wheels upon their shoulders, their mouths touching the ears with delight. Not a pie for this! . . . They would spin and spin and spin, and if that Brahmin boy was to be believed they would have clothes to wear, blankets and shirts and loin-cloths. They said it was all of the Mahatma!
When they were just by the village gate, they saw a hefty, bearded man, sitting on the village platform, distractedly smoking a cigarette.
'The policeman,' whispered Mota to Bhima. 'The same who was seen the other day.'
But he has no uniform.'
They sometimes prowl about like this.'
They grew silent as they neared the platform. And when they had passed into the Pariah Street they looked back and saw him jump down from the platform, and thump past the Temple Corner on to the Brahmin Street. Oh, the rogue!
