BHATTA was the only one who would have nothing to do with thesc Gandhi-bhajans. 'What is all this city-chatter about?' he would say; we've had enough trouble in the city. And we do not want any such annoyances here. . . . To tell you the truth, Bhatta began all this after his last visit to the city. Before that he used to sit with us and sing with us, and sometimes, when Moorthy was late in coming, he would go and get the white khadi-bound My Experiments with Truth and ask Seenu to read it and explain it himself. Then suddenly he went to the city. Business took him there, he said. You see, he had always papers to get registered -a mortgage bond, a sales sheet, a promissory bond- and for this reason and that reason he was always going to the city. After all, when it was the other party that paid the cart fare, what did it matter to him to go to the city? A day in the city is always a pleasant thing. And nowadays, they even said, he had begun to lend out money there. Advocate Seenappa, you know, had appointed him manager of the Haunted-Tamarind- Tree field, and we all knew in what straits that de- bauchee was now. So Bhatta began to loan out one hundred and two hundred and three hundred rupees. Then came the District Elections, and Chandra- sekharayya said 'Two thousand for it' and so he had it, and that is how Chandrasekharayya is now President of the Tamlapur Taluk. And then there was the Kotyahalli widow, who lived with her widowed
mother. It was Bhatta that managed her lands, and she was involved with her husband's brother. That meant money. Money meant Bhatta--always smiling, always ready, always friendly. Bhatta was a fine fellow for all that. With his smiles and his holy ashes, we said he would one day own the whole village. I swear he would have done had not the stream run the way it did.
So for many a year he was always going to the city. That was why it was so difficult to get him for an obsequial dinner or a marriage ceremony. He would say, Why not ask Temple Rangappa or Post-Office- House Suryanarayana?' And yet Bhatta began life with a loin-cloth at his waist, and a copper pot in his hand. You should have heard young Bhatta say, 'Today is the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of Sravan. Tomorrow, twenty seconds after the sixteenth hour, Mercury enters the seventh House, and Ekadashi- day begins. When is the Dasara, Bhattarè?' you would ask, and he would open his oily calendar and lay it carefully on his bulging lap, and deeply thought- ful, and with many learned calculations on his agile fingers, he would say, 'In one month and four days, aunt. In just one month and four days.' And then you asked him for an obsequial dinner for the ninth day of the next moon-month, and he would smile and say, 'Of course, aunt. Of course.' After that he would take his coconut and money-offerings and hurry down to Pandit Venkateshia's house, for the anniversary of his father's death. Bhatta is the First Brahmin. He would be there before it is hardly eleven-his fresh clothes, his magnificent ashes and all-and seated on
the veranda he would begin to make the obsequial grass-rings. Such grass-rings and such leaf-cups too! Never has anything better been seen. And it was so pleasant to hear him hum away the Gita. The very walls could have repeated it all.
Ramanna is the Second Brahmin. He would come along before noon. The ceremony would begin. Bhatta is very learned in his art. It would be all over within the winking of. an eye. Then the real obse- quial dinner begins, with fresh honey and solid curds, and Bhatta's beloved Bengal-gram khir. 'Take it, Bhattare, only one cup more, just one? Let us not dissatisfy our manes.' The children are playing in the shadow, by the byre, and the elderly people are all in the side room, waiting for the holy brahmins to finish their meal. But Bhatta goes on munching and belching, drinking water and then munching again. 'Rama- Rama. Rama-Rama.' One does not have an obsequial dinner every day. And then, once the holy meal is over, there is the coconut and the two rupees, and if it is the That-House people it is five, and the Post- Office-House people two-cight. That is the rule.
Bhatta comes home. Savithri has eaten only a dal- soup and rice. When the master of the house is out, better not bother about the meal. He will bring some odès in his glass, and for the evening meal a good coconut chutney and soup will do. On the nights of obsequial dinners he eats so little. The child will get a morsel of rice.
'Did they pay you the two rupees?' asks Savith- ramma, waking up on her mat.
'What else will they do?' Bhatta goes straight into his room, opens his casket and the two rupees have gone in.
He knows how much there is in it. Something around three hundred and fifty rupees. Already a little had gone; just ten rupees for Rampur Mada. Nuptial ceremony of some sort. Six per cent interest, and pay- able in two months. Fine thing. Then Mada sends Lingayya. Lingayya's revenue is not fully paid. The Revenue Inspector is brandishing a search-warrant. It has to be paid out before the coming week. Just twenty-one rupees and eight annas. Payable soon after harvest. For six months it shall be 10 per cent interest Learned Maharaja, anything you deem just!'- 'All right, you are a father of many children, let it be nine and a half.' Your slave, Maharaja. You are like a great father.'-Lingayya gets the money. And Lingayya and Mada send Kanthamma, our Potters' Street Kanthamma. This time it is her son's marriage. She will not die without her son having a wife. And it shall be grand. One hundred and twenty rupees, she needs. Her two and a half acres of wet land to be mortgaged for three years. It means bond, a Kanthamma?' Learned Bhattarè, whatever you like. Do I know how to decipher your books or your papers? You will say "This is the paper, Kanthamma." And I shall put my thumb-mark on it.'-In a week's time the papers are ready. Kanthamma gets the money. Just 7 per cent interest.
Meanwhile, alas! Savithramma dies. An accident. She went to fetch water from the Champak Well, slipped, fell, and died. Offers for marriage came to Bhatta from here and there. From Kuppur Surya- narayana, from Four-beamed-House Chandrasekha- rayya, and from Alur Purnayya. Purnayya has a grown-up daughter, who will come home soon'.
She is twelve and a half years old, and in a year's time Bhatta can have someone to light his bath fire at least. A thousand rupees cash, and five acres of wet land beneath the Settur Canal. And a real seven-days marriage. Horoscopes agree marvellously. Well, if the heavens will it, and the elders bless it, let our family creepers link each other!' Laced bodice cloth for each visitor, and a regular sari for the heads of the family. Carts after carts went to Alur, carts after carts with the Front-House people, and the Temple people and the Post-Office-House people, and when they returned eight days later they looked as though much ghee had gone into them and much laughter. Only the other day Puttur Satamma was saying, 'Never have we seen a marriage like Bhatta's. Such pheni. After all, a Zamindar's house, my sister!'
Bhatta became richer and richer. He could lend out more money. And now he was no more a pontifical brahmin. He was a land-owner. To crown it all, the girl came of age in two month's time, and so the house was bright as ever. But life around him had changed. Temple Rangappa and Front-House Suranna did not go to the river as they did before. Every early morn- ing they stood before Bhatta's house and said, 'Hè, Bhattarè, are you up? Time to go to the river, hè!' And if Bhatta was asleep, they knocked at the door and woke him up and took him along with them. Then this man came for a hundred rupees, and that other for three hundred, and Patwari and Patel, pariahs and plantation coolies were at the door for loans. 'Just for a month, learned one? The rains have played foul with us.' Or That rogue has gone to get the best lawyer in Karwar. And I am no son of a prostitute that I cannot get a better one than he. Oh, just three hundred for the moment, Maharaja. My coconut-field in mortgage.' Five hundred becomes four hundred and fifty, the four hundred and fifty becomes four hundred, then three eighty and three seventy-five-but Bhatta will have the last word. That field is not worth more than two hundred and fifty rupces. Let us say two hundred and seventy-five. Two hundred and seventy-five it shall be. Stamp charges three rupees, registration bribes two-eight, and eight annas for the head peon and four annas for the door- keeper.
'And what advocate are you having, Timma?'
'Why? What do I know, learned one?'
'Why not have Advocate Seenappa? He's the best criminal lawyer in the district.'
'As you like, says the licker of your feet.'
Advocate Seenappa alone will be chosen. The next day when the registration is going on, Timma and Bhatta go to see Seenappa.
'Ah, come along, Bhattarè. How are the rains in your parts?'
'Oh! fine, fine! I've come to bring you Timma, a man with a family and children, and I said to him, I'll drop a word in your ear. He and his ancestors have cultivated our fields for generations. . .
'Your Bhatta is like a brother to me,' said Advocate Seenappa. Timma, we'll win the case.' And he won the case.
Then there was Chennayya's civil case about the field boundaries; Pariah Sidda's canal-water case, and this case and that case, and Bhatta would say 'I'll take you to Advocate Seenappa' or I'll take you to Advocate Ramachandrayya,' and we all said, 'Now Bhatta himself is becoming a lawyer.' For, when concubine Chowdy and her neighbour Madanna quarrelled over the jasmine plant, Bhatta said, 'Let them come and we'll settle it.' And he did settle it- and for ten rupees too. Then there was the case between Sampanna and Siddayya, and Chenna and her daughter-in-law Sati over the adoption, and Siddi and Venki about the poisoning of little Bora, and Seetharam and Subbayya over the night-grazings-he settled them all. And we said, 'There's no use going to the city for a lawyer. We've one in Kanthapura.' But Bhatta always said, 'Your humble servant. I lick your feet.' And when it was not he that settled a dispute, he took it to Seenappa or Ramanna, or when it was a small case of giving a notice or making an appeal, he went sometimes to Advocate Ramaswamy, 'The Three- Pice Advocate' as they used to call him, and he was as good as any other. The notice would go, or the appeal would be drafted, and Bhatta would get just two rupees for his troubles. Just two rupees, you know. Three if it was an appeal!
Bhatta now owned thirty-seven acres of wet land and ninety acres of dry land in all the villages-in Kantha- pura and Santur and Puttur and Honnalli. And there was not a pariah or a brahmin that did not owe him something. But nobody would say anything against him. He was so smiling and so good. Never had he charged us more interest than Subba Chetty or Rama Chetty. These two brothers were the ruin of our village.
They said, too, that it was Bhatta who had sent our Fig-tree-House Ramu to the city for studies. Why should he have done that? Ramu was not his son or nephew, but just a distant relation. If you will bring a name to Kanthapura-that is my only recompense. And if by Kenchamma's grace you get rich and be- come a Collector, you will think of this poor Bhatta and send him the money-with no interest, of course, my son, for I have given it in the name of God. If not, may the gods keep you safe and fit. . . ?
I tell you, he was not a bad man, was Bhatta. But this dislike of the Gandhi-bhajan surprised us. After all there was no money in it, sister! But don't they say, 'Less strange are the ways of the gods than are the ways of men'.
One day, when Bhatta was returning from the river after his evening ablutions, he did not turn round the Mari-Temple Corner, but went straight along the Lantana Lane and hurried up the steps of the Kan- nayya House. Old Ramakrishnayya was sitting on the veranda, his hand upon his nose, deep-breathful in meditation. Satamma was lying by the door, her head upon her arms, resting. And from the byre came the sound of milking-Rangamma was there.
As soon as Satamma saw Bhatta, she rose up quickly and asked why he had deigned to honour them so, and what happy news brought him there and how his wife and children were; and Bhatta answered it all by saying how very busy he had been, what with the bad rains and the sick cattle, and the manuring work and the hocing work and the weeding work, and to top it all, these bonds and bonds and bonds to sign -really, if the very devils wanted to take his place, he would say, Take it! and bless those generous souls. 'Really, aunt, this business is terrible. One cannot even go and see if one's relations are dead or alive. How are you all, aunt?'
'Like this. As usual.'
Then the byre-door creaked and Rangamma came out with a sobbing lantern in one hand and the bright frothing milk-pot in the other, and when she hears a stranger's voice, she says, 'Is it Bhattarè? What an honour!' And Bhatta speaks again of the rains and the cattle and the peasants, and Rangamma goes in and comes out again and sits with the others. Rama- krishnayya has finished his meditation, and leaning against the wall he sits quietly in the dark. silent, soft-voiced, few-worded krishnayya. man, He was a our Rama-
'Has your son found a good horoscope to go with his daughter's?' Bhatta begins again. It is so difficult to find bridegrooms these days. When I was in town the other day, I went to see old Subrama Pandita. And he was telling me how he could find no one for his last granddaughter. No one. Every fellow with Matric or Inter asks, "What dowry do you offer? How far will you finance my studies?-I want to have this degree and that degree." Degrees. Degrees. Nothing but degrees or this Gandhi vagabondage. When there are boys like Moorthy, who should safely get married and settle down, they begin this Gandhi business. What is this Gandhi business? Nothing but weaving coarse hand-made cloth, nct fit for a mop, and bellow- ing out bhajans and bhajans, and mixing with the pariahs. Pariahs now come to the temple door and tomorrow they would like to be in the heart of it. They will one day put themselves in the place of the brahmins and begin to teach the Vedas. I heard only the other day that in the Mysore Sanscrit College some pariahs sought admission. Why, our Beadle Timmayya will come one of these days to ask my daughter in marriage! Why shouldn't he?'
