Chapter 5

As he was thus engaged, a blast of steam oozed from the boiling water which Tulsi had emptied into the ditch, and dimmed his eyes. His gaze retreating to himself, he suddenly felt small and insignificant in this underworld of cauldrons and barrels, long, black caverns and crumbling yet solid walls. As he rubbed his eyes to ease them he felt that the three other workers in the yard were looking at him askance: 'Who are you? Where have you come from?" He felt an intruder in the place. And a tense irritation possessed him. The heat of the cauldron alternated with a stale, smelly draught that came from the caverns, rusting the iron and mixing with the sweat on the flesh to produce a sticky dirt on which the flies buzzed insidiously. He would have flown away out of there if he had had wings. But just then Seth Prabh Dayal came in and the atmos- phere became charged with a comfortable presence. "Where are you, oh Munoo?' asked Prabha, searching for the boy, as he strained to accustom his sun-soaked eyes to the gloom of the factory. "There he is,' said Ganpat, pointing from the cavern with his finger. The brute almost got burnt, messing about near the ovens when Tulsi was emptying boiling water out of the cauldron. Munoo got up and came near Prabha. 91 'Come,' said the Master, smiling. I will take you round to the shops and show you to the clients to whom you will be delivering goods. Also, you might like to see a few sights and come to the temple with me.' 'Yes, go and spoil him as you have spoilt every one of these servants,' remarked Ganpat icily. Prabha smiled, took an ochre-coloured account book, and walked cut. Munoo followed eagerly behind him. If the town of Sham Nagar, at the foot of the hills, had far exceeded in complexity anything conceived by the im- agination of Munoo the hillboy from Bilaspur, the feudal city of Daulatpur was an even more staggering confusion of thing. In the face of it he had only one feeling, that of holding himself together and in close connection with Prabha, so that he might not get lost. As he emerged from 'Cat Killers Lane' into the Misri bazaar behind Prabha, and faced an adjacent turning into the Bazaar Jhatkian, another into the Bazaar Sabunian, and another into the Bazaar Chabuksawaran, he did not know which turning he had taken the right or the left. It was all a maze. He certainly knew he could neither go forward nor find his way back alone. So with one cye on his master, another more cager on the shops, he capered ahead, through the narrow, irregular street, past swarthy faces with gleaming eyes and white teeth, past pale faces and pale brown faces, all mixed to- gether and distinguished only by the varied colours and shapes of their clothes. 'Come, Seth Prabh Dayal, have you come back?' called someone, and Prabha stopped. Munoo stopped too, sweeping his eyes across the shops that lined the way, grottoes, lighter than those inside the factory and more visibly packed, with sweets of a hundred different kinds, or iron locks of every conceivable variety, cloth of different patterns, leather goods, saddles, collars, straps and horn fittings, all shaded by awnings and sup 92 ported by carved posts, resting on the lowest storey, raised from the street by low platforms which served both as counters and working benches for the merchants, who squatted upon them and combined the functions of manu- facturer and salesman. After a momentary confusion, Mungo discovered that Prabha stood five yards away by a shop full of bottles, oils, perfumes and essences, the shop of a Hakim, apparently, because a crowd of all ages and sexes thronged around it with pale iaces, covered with glittering ornaments and man-coloured silks. "This is a new boy who will come to deliver essences,' said Prabha, dragging Munoe up to face a pot-bellied Lalla who squatted complacently but alertly on the platform with a greasy cow-tailed ershior behind him. 'Acha' assented the Lalla. Prabha joined his hands meekly, howed and moved on. Munoo followed like a dog behind his master. He fell to reading the signbeards of the various shops. Each shop had invariably two, three and sometimes four boards. And, whether it was on that account or because the street abounded in doctors, he read the names of at least fifteen, written out in huge letters in both Hindustani and English, with all their degrees and titles. Dr. Hira Lal Soni, M.B.B.S. (Funjab), L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. (Eng.) D.T.M. (Liverpool) D.O.M.S. (Bristol). So read a signboard outside. one of the shops, a shop different from the rest in that there were tables and chairs arranged in it. He read the names and titles aloud to himself eagerly, wondering what they meárt. A shop where small many-coloured bulbs burned along a magic wire, without being fed by oil or wax, disconcerted Munoo. But he had learnt in Sham Nagar to label every- thing he could not understand as English. So he did not pause to inquire. but moved on to contemplate, with dilated. eyes, a row of antique buildings of which the second storey was supported over the shops by intricately carved columns and painted in floral designs such as he had seen in the picture of the Diwan-i-kkas, the Emperor Shah Jehan's 93 Council Chamber, in his urdu history book. Beyond this Munoo's eyes were caught by a shop in which a group of tailors sat stitching away at garments, while one of them worked a Singer sewing machine; again, by a shop where jewellers sat studding little bright stones into brown wax; again by a cookshop; and next by a fruit shop, where Orange and melons and bananas and mangos spread their riot of colour and perfume to feast the senses. An ascetic with an ash-smeared body and shaggy hair, naked except for a rag suspended across a brass chain round the waist to cover his fore and aft, glided by Munoo, striking a long pair of tongs and swaying his garlands of thick beads. The crowd became thicker and more varied, as baggy trousered Muhammadans alternated with loin-clothed Hindus and trousered Babus. Prabha caught hold of Munoo's finger, and, pressing by the big wheels of a bullock cart which had got stuck against a phaton, brought him into a narrow street where the effigies of the various gods were displayed behind small sanctuaries in red and black paint overflowing with the grease of oily offerings. They skirted the domed shrine or mausoleum of a Sikh saint and entered the courtyard of the vast Medieval Lotus temple of Vishnu, before which was a holy tank. Prabha bought a string of marigold and jasmine flowers. Just then a drum began to beat in the courtyard below the steps. People hurried round to take a place at the tank Munoo had never before formed part of so vast a congregation of humanity as now murmured prayers to the solar disc which seemed to set fire to the water as it reflected its last flames across the edge of the sky before going under for the night. They moved away at last, bending their steps towards the temple lights that adorned the blue black of the parting hour. Prabha offered the garland in the shrine to an image which stood swathed in all the magnificence that gold- embroidered clothes and silks and jewels could lend. Munoo looked dumbly at the ritual of tinkling bells and chantings of hymns and loud hysterical' shouts of 'Long live the Gods.' And he followed his master sheepishly into a thady square 94 punctuated by beds of flowers and garden bowers, where naked ascetics sat growing lean by pyres of burning wood, surrounded by devotees with offerings of food, fruit and flowers; and yellow-robed, clean shaven mystics, with clouded eyes intent on something which people called God, but which for the life of him Munoo did not know and could not understand. On the way home Munoo thought of the varied succession of the day's events. He felt he was in a strange world. "The house of the master is nice,' he felt. 'I shall be comfortable there and free to wander where I like, and the factory is dirty enough not to be spoilt by sitting round. I don't know what work I shall have to do, but I shall be well looked after.' The prospect of visits to the bazaars was exciting. There were so many things to look at, strange things, stranger than those he had seen at Sham Nagar. All kinds of things. It was truly a wonder city. He remembered what . he had thought of for a moment during the concluding part of the journey in the morning, that the city of Daulat- pur occurred in his geography book as one of the two oldest and most important in Northern India. He recalled that it was said to have been founded by Maharaja Daulat Singh, the Rajput king who ruled here in the days when Rama, the hero of the Ramayama, ruled in Oudh. And that it had been the scene of various battles in history, having been conquered by Mahmud Ghaznawi, the idol-breaker and looter of the buried treasures of the temple of Somnath. He wondered whether Mahmud had plundered any gold or jewels from the temple he had just visited. But he remem- bered that Akbar, the great Moghal, had given money to the priests of this city and encouraged their religion. The Sikhs had defeated the Moghals outside the town and Ranjit Singh had given away its old houses to his beloved coun- cillors. But the Angrezi Sarkar had conquered it before the Mutiny.