When pressed to state his age, Ranga would generally reply, ‘Fifty, sixty or eighty.’ You might change your tactics and inquire, ‘How long have you been at this job?’
‘Which job?’
‘Carrying that grinding wheel around and sharpening knives.’
‘Not only knives, but also scythes, clippers and every kind of peeler and cutter in your kitchen, also bread knives, even butcher’s hatchets in those days when I carried the big grindstone; in those days I could even sharpen a maharaja’s sword’ (a favourite fantasy of his was that if armies employed swords he could become a millionaire). You might interrupt his loquaciousness and repeat your question: ‘How long have you been a sharpener of knives and other things?’ ‘Ever since a line of moustache began to appear here,’ he would say, drawing a finger over his lip. You would not get any further by studying his chin now overlaid with patchy tufts of discoloured hair. Apparently he never looked at a calendar, watch, almanac or even a mirror. In such a blissful state, clad in a dhoti, khaki shirt and turban, his was a familiar figure in the streets of Malgudi as he slowly passed in front of homes, offering his service in a high-pitched, sonorous cry, ‘Knives and scissors sharpened.’
He stuck his arm through the frame of a portable grinding apparatus; an uncomplicated contraption operated by an old cycle wheel connected to a foot-pedal. At the Market Road he dodged the traffic and paused in front of tailor’s and barber’s shops, offering his services. But those were an erratic and unreliable lot, encouraging him by word but always suggesting another time for business. If they were not busy cutting hair or clothes (tailors, particularly, never seemed to have a free moment, always stitching away on overdue orders), they locked up and sneaked away, and Ranga had to be watchful and adopt all kinds of strategies in order to catch them. Getting people to see the importance of keeping their edges sharp was indeed a tiresome mission. People’s reluctance and lethargy had, initially, to be overcome. At first sight everyone dismissed him with, ‘Go away, we have nothing to grind,’ but if he persisted and dallied, some member of the family was bound to produce a rusty knife, and others would follow, vying with one another, presently, to ferret out long-forgotten junk and clamour for immediate attention. But it generally involved much canvassing, coaxing and even aggressiveness on Ranga’s part; occasionally he would warn, ‘If you do not sharpen your articles now, you may not have another chance, since I am going away on a pilgrimage.’
‘Makes no difference, we will call in the other fellow,’ someone would say, referring to a competitor, a miserable fellow who operated a hand grinder, collected his cash and disappeared, never giving a second look to his handiwork. He was a fellow without a social standing, and no one knew his name, no spark ever came out of his wheel, while Ranga created a regular pyrotechnic display and passing children stood transfixed by the spectacle. ‘All right,’ Ranga would retort, ‘I do not grudge the poor fellow his luck, but he will impart to your knife the sharpness of an egg; after that I won’t be able to do anything for you. You must not think that anyone and everyone could handle steel. Most of these fellows don’t know the difference between a knife blade and a hammerhead.’
Ranga’s customers loved his banter and appreciated his work, which he always guaranteed for sixty days. ‘If it gets dull before then, you may call me son of a . . . Oh, forgive my letting slip such words . . .’ If he were to be assailed for defective execution, he could always turn round and retort that so much depended upon the quality of metal, and the action of sun and rain, and above all the care in handling, but he never argued with his customers; he just resharpened the knives free of cost on his next round. Customers always liked to feel that they had won a point, and Ranga would say to himself, ‘After all, it costs nothing, only a few more turns of the wheel and a couple of sparks off the stone to please the eye.’ On such occasions he invariably asked for compensation in kind: a little rice and buttermilk or some snack—anything that could be found in the pantry (especially if they had children in the house)—not exactly to fill one’s belly but just to mitigate the hunger of the moment and keep one on the move. Hunger was, after all, a passing phase which you got over if you ignored it. He saw no need to be preoccupied with food. The utmost that he was prepared to spend on food was perhaps one rupee a day. For a rupee he could get a heap of rice in an aluminium bowl, with unexpected delicacies thrown in, such as bits of cabbage or potato, pieces of chicken, meat, lime-pickle, or even sweet rasagulla if he was lucky. A man of his acquaintance had some arrangement with the nearby restaurants to collect remnants and leftovers in a bucket; he came over at about ten in the night, installed himself on a culvert and imperiously ladled out his hotchpotch—two liberal scoops for a rupee. Unless one looked sharp, one would miss it, for he was mobbed when the evening show ended at Pearl Cinema across the street. Ranga, however, was always ahead of others in the line. He swallowed his share, washed it down at the street tap and retired to his corner at Krishna Hall, an abandoned building (with no tangible owner) which had been tied up in civil litigations for over three generations, with no end in sight. Ranga discovered this hospitable retreat through sheer luck on the very first day he had arrived from his village in search of shelter. He occupied a cosy corner of the hall through the goodwill of the old man, its caretaker from time immemorial, who allotted living space to those whom he favoured.
Ranga physically dwelt in the town no doubt, but his thoughts were always centred round his home in the village where his daughter was growing up under the care of his rather difficult wife. He managed to send home some money every month for their maintenance, particularly to meet the expenses of his daughter’s schooling. He was proud that his daughter went to a school, the very first member of his family to take a step in that direction. His wife, however, did not favour the idea, being convinced that a girl was meant to make herself useful at home, marry and bear children. But Ranga rejected this philosophy outright, especially after the village schoolmaster, who gathered and taught the children on the pyol of his house, had told him once, ‘Your child is very intelligent. You must see that she studies well, and send her later to the Mission School at Paamban’ (a nearby town reached by bus).
Originally Ranga had set up his grinding wheel as an adjunct to the village blacksmith under the big tamarind tree, where congregated at all hours of the day peasants from the surrounding country, bringing in their tools and implements for mending. One or the other in the crowd would get an idea to hone his scythe, shears or weeding blade when he noticed Ranga and his grinding wheel. But the blacksmith was avaricious, claimed twenty paise in every rupee Ranga earned, kept watch on the number of customers Ranga got each day, invariably quarrelled when the time came to settle accounts and frequently also demanded a drink at the tavern across the road; which meant that Ranga would have to drink, too, and face his wife’s tantrums when he went home. She would shout, rave and refuse to serve him food. Ranga could never understand why she should behave so wildly—after all, a swill of toddy did no one any harm; on the contrary, it mitigated the weariness of the body at the end of a day’s labour, but how could one educate a wife and improve her understanding? Once, on an inspiration, he took home a bottle for her and coaxed her to taste the drink, but she retched at the smell of it and knocked the bottle out of his hand, spilling its precious contents on the mud floor. Normally he would have accepted her action without any visible protest, but that day, having had company and drunk more than normal, he felt spirited enough to strike her, whereupon she brought out the broom from its corner and lashed him with it. She then pushed him out and shut the door on him. Even in that inebriate state he felt relieved that their child, fast asleep on her mat, was not watching. He picked himself up at dawn from the lawn and sat ruminating. His wife came over and asked, ‘Have you come to your senses?’ standing over him menacingly.
After this crisis Ranga decided to avoid the blacksmith and try his luck as a peripatetic sharpener. Carrying his grinding gear, he left home early morning after swallowing a ball of ragi with a bite of raw onion and chillies. After he gave up his association with the blacksmith, he noticed an improvement in his wife’s temper. She got up at dawn and set the ragi on the boil over their mud oven and stirred the gruel tirelessly till it hardened and could be rolled into a ball, and had it ready by the time Ranga had had his wash at the well. He started on his rounds, avoiding the blacksmith under the tamarind tree, criss-crossed the dozen streets of his village, pausing at every door to announce, ‘Knives and cutters sharpened.’ When he returned home at night and emptied his day’s collection on his wife’s lap, she would cry greedily, ‘Only two rupees! Did you not visit the weekly market at . . . ?’
‘Yes, I did, but there were ten others before me!’
His income proved inadequate, although eked out with the wages earned by his wife for performing odd jobs at the Big House of the village. Now she began to wear a perpetual look of anxiety. He sounded her once if he should not cultivate the blacksmith’s company again, since those who had anything to do with iron gathered there. She snarled back, ‘You are longing for that tipsy company again, I suppose!’ She accused him of lack of push. ‘I suppose you don’t cry loud enough, you perhaps just saunter along the streets mumbling to yourself your greatness as a grinder!’ At this Ranga felt upset and let out such a deafening yell that she jumped and cried, ‘Are you crazy? What has come over you?’ He explained, ‘Just to demonstrate how I call out to my patrons when I go on my rounds, a fellow told me that he could hear me beyond the slaughteryard . . .’
‘Then I suppose people scamper away and hide their knives on hearing your voice!’ And they both laughed at the grim joke.
The daughter was now old enough to be sent to the Mission School at Paamban. Ranga had to find the money for her books, uniform, school fee and, above all, the daily busfare. His wife insisted that the girl’s schooling be stopped, since she was old enough to work; the rich landlords needed hands at their farms, and it was time to train the girl to make herself useful all round. Ranga rejected her philosophy outright. However meek and obedient he might have proved in other matters, over the question of his daughter’s education he stood firm. He was convinced that she should have a different life from theirs. What a rebel he was turning out to be, his wife thought, and remained speechless with amazement. To assuage her fears he asked, ‘You only want more money, don’t you?’
‘Yes, let me see what black magic you will perform to produce more money.’
‘You leave the girl alone, and I will find a way . . .’
‘Between you two . . . well, you are bent upon making her a worthless flirt wearing ribbons in her hair, imitating the rich folk . . . If she develops into a termagant, don’t blame me, please. She is already self-willed and talks back.’
Presently he undertook an exploratory trip to Malgudi, only twenty-five miles away. He came back to report: ‘Oh, what a place, it is like the world of God Indra that our pundits describe. You find everything there. Thousands and thousands of people live in thousands of homes, and so many buses and motorcars in the streets, and so many barbers and tailors flourishing hundreds of scissors and razors night and day; in addition, countless numbers of peeling and slicing knives and other instruments in every home, enough work there for two hundred grinders like me; and the wages are liberal, they are noble and generous who live there, unlike the petty ones we have around us here.’
‘Ah, already you feel so superior and talk as if they have adopted you.’
He ignored her cynicism and continued his dream. ‘As soon as our schoolmaster finds me an auspicious date, I will leave for the town to try my luck; if it turns out well, I will find a home for us so that we may all move there; they have many schools and our child will easily find a place.’ His wife cut short his plans with, ‘You may go where you like, but we don’t move out of here. I won’t agree to lock up this house, which is our own; also, I won’t allow a growing girl to pick up the style and fashions of the city. We are not coming. Do what you like with yourself, but don’t try to drag us along.’ Ranga was crestfallen and remained brooding for a little while, but realized: ‘After all, it is a good thing that’s happening to me. God is kind, and wants me to be free and independent in the town . . . If she wants to be left behind, so much the better.’
‘What are you muttering to yourself?’ she asked pugnaciously. ‘Say it aloud.’
‘There is wisdom in what you say; you think ahead,’ he replied, and she felt pleased at the compliment.
In the course of time a system evolved whereby he came home to visit his family every other month for three or four days. Leaving his grinding apparatus carefully wrapped up in a piece of jute cloth at Krishna Hall, he would take the bus at the Market Gate. He always anticipated his homecoming with joy, although during his stay he would have to bear the barbed comments of his wife or assuage her fears and anxieties—she had a habit of hopping from one anxiety to another; if it was not money, it was health, hers or the daughter’s, or some hostile acts of a neighbour, or the late hours his daughter kept at school. After three days, when she came to the point of remarking, ‘How are we to face next month if you sit and enjoy life here?’ he would leave, happy to go back to his independent life, but heavy at heart at parting from his daughter. For three days he would have derived the utmost enjoyment out of watching his daughter while she bustled about getting ready for school every morning in her uniform—green skirt and yellow jacket—and in the evening when she returned home full of reports of her doings at school. He would follow her about while she went to wash her uniform at the well and put it out to dry; she had two sets of school dress and took good care of them, so that she could leave for school each day spick-and-span, which annoyed her mother, who commented that the girl was self-centred, always fussing about her clothes or books. It saddened Ranga to hear such comments, but he felt reassured that the girl seemed capable of defending herself and putting her mother in her place.
At the end of one of his visits to the family he stood, clutching his little bundle of clothes, on the highway beyond the coconut grove. If he watched and gesticulated, any lorry or bus would stop and carry him towards the city. He waited patiently under a tree. It might be hours but he did not mind, never having known the habit of counting time. A couple of lorries fully laden passed and then a bus driven so rashly that his attempt to stop it passed unnoticed.
‘Glad I didn’t get into it. God has saved me, that bus will lift off the ground and fly to the moon before long,’ he reflected as it churned up a cloud of sunlit dust and vanished beyond it. Some days, if the time was propitious, he would be picked up and deposited right at the door of Krishna Hall; some days he had to wait indefinitely. His daughter, he reflected with admiration, somehow caught a bus every day. ‘Very clever for her age.’ He prayed that his wife would leave her alone. ‘But that girl is too smart,’ he said to himself with a chuckle, ‘and can put her mother in her place.’ He brooded for a moment on this pleasant picture of the girl brushing off her mother, rudely sometimes, gently sometimes, but always with success, so that sometimes her mother herself admired the girl’s independent spirit. That was the way to handle that woman. He wished he had learnt the technique, he had let her go on her own way too long. But God was kind and took him away to the retreat of Krishna Hall; but for the daughter he would not be visiting his home even once in three years. The girl must study and become a doctor—a lady doctor was like an empress, as he remembered the occasions when he had to visit a hospital for his wife’s sake and wait in the corridor, and noticed how voices were hushed when the ‘lady’ strode down that way.
He noticed a coming vehicle at the bend of the road. It was painted yellow, a peculiar-looking one, probably belonging to some big persons, and he did not dare to stop it. As it flashed past, he noticed that the car also had some picture painted on its side. But it stopped at a distance and went into reverse. He noticed now that the picture on the car was of a man and a woman and two ugly children with some message. Though he could not read, he knew that the message on it was TWO WILL DO, a propaganda for birth control. His friend the butcher at the Market Road read a newspaper every day and kept him well-informed. The man in the car, who was wearing a blue bush-shirt, put his head out to ask, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Town,’ Ranga said.
The man opened the door and said, ‘Get in, we will drop you there.’ Seated, Ranga took out one rupee from his pocket, but the man said, ‘Keep it.’ They drove on. Ranga felt happy to be seated in the front; he always had to stand holding on to the rail or squat on the floor in the back row of a bus. Now he occupied a cushioned seat, and wished that his wife could see and realize how people respected him. He enjoyed the cool breeze blowing on his face as the car sped through an avenue of coconut trees and came to a halt at some kind of a camp consisting of little shacks built of bamboo and coconut thatch. It seemed to be far away from his route, on the outskirts of a cluster of hamlets. He asked his benefactor, ‘Where are we?’
The man replied breezily, ‘You don’t have to worry, you will be taken care of. Let us have coffee.’ He got off and hailed someone inside a hut. Some appetizing eatable on a banana leaf and coffee in a little brass cup were brought out and served. Ranga felt revived, having had nothing to eat since his morning ragi. He inquired, ‘Why all this, sir?’
The man said benignly, ‘Go on, you must be hungry, enjoy.’
Ranga had never known such kindness from anyone. This man was conducting himself like a benign god. Ranga expected that after the repast they would resume their journey. But the benign god suddenly got up and said, ‘Come with me.’ He took him aside and said in a whisper, ‘Do not worry about anything. We will take care of you. Do you want to earn thirty rupees?’
‘Thirty rupees!’ Ranga cried, ‘What should I do for it? I have not brought my machine.’
‘You know me well enough now, trust me, do as I say. Don’t question and you will get thirty rupees if you obey our instruction; we will give you any quantity of food, and I’ll take you to the town . . . only you must stay here tonight. You can sleep here comfortably. I’ll take you to the town tomorrow morning. Don’t talk to others, or tell them anything. They will be jealous and spoil your chance of getting thirty rupees . . . You will also get a transistor radio. Do you like to have one?’
‘Oh, I don’t know how to operate it. I’m not educated.’
‘It is simple, you just push a key and you will hear music.’
He then took Ranga to a secluded part of the camp, spoke to him at length (though much of what he said was obscure) and went away. Ranga stretched himself on the ground under a tree, feeling comfortable, contented and well-fed. The prospect of getting thirty rupees was pleasant enough, though he felt slightly suspicious and confused. But he had to trust that man in the blue shirt. He seemed godlike. Thirty rupees! Wages for ten days’ hard work. He could give the money to his daughter to keep or spend as she liked, without any interference from her mother. He could also give her the radio. She was educated and would know how to operate it. He wondered how to get the money through to her without her mother’s knowledge. Perhaps send it to her school—the writer of petitions and addresses at the post office in the city would write down the money-order for him and charge only twenty-five paise for the labour. He was a good friend, who also wrote a postcard for him free of charge whenever he had to order a new grinding wheel from Bangalore. Ranga became wary when he saw people passing; he shut his eyes and fell into a drowse.
The blue bush-shirt woke him up and took him along to another part of the camp, where inside a large tent a man was seated at a desk. ‘He is our chief,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t speak until he speaks to you. Answer when he questions. Be respectful. He is our officer.’ After saying this, he edged away and was not to be seen again.
Ranga felt overawed in the presence of the officer. That man had a sheet of paper in front of him and demanded, ‘Your name?’ He wrote it down. ‘Your age?’
Ranga took time to comprehend, and when he did he began to ramble in his usual manner, ‘Must be fifty or seventy, because I . . .’ He mentioned inevitably how a thin line of moustache began to appear when he first sharpened a knife as a professional. The officer cut him short. ‘I don’t want all that! Shall I say you are fifty-five?’ ‘By all means, sir. You are learned and you know best.’
Then the officer asked, ‘Are you married?’
Ranga attempted to explain his domestic complications: the temper of his present wife, who was actually his second one; how he had to marry this woman under pressure from his relatives. He explained, ‘My uncle and other elders used to say, “Who will be there to bring you a sip of gruel or hot water when you are on your death bed?” It’s all God’s wish, sir. How can one know what He wills?’ The officer was annoyed but tried to cover it up by going on to the next question: ‘How many children?’
‘My first wife would have borne ten if God had given her long life, but she fell ill and the lady doctor said . . .’ He went into details of her sickness and death. He then went on to some more personal tragedies and suddenly asked, ‘Why do you want to know about all this sorrowful business, sir?’ The officer waved away his query with a frown. Ranga recollected that he had been advised not to be talkative, not to ask, but only to answer questions. Probably all this formality was a prelude to their parting with cash and a radio. The officer repeated, ‘How many children?’
‘Six died before they were a year old. Do you want their names? So long ago, I don’t remember, but I can try if you want. Before the seventh I vowed to the Goddess on the hill to shave my head and roll bare-bodied around the temple corridor, and the seventh survived by the Goddess’s grace and is the only one left, but my wife does not understand how precious this daughter is, does not like her to study but wants her to become a drudge like herself. But the girl is wonderful. She goes to a school every day and wants to be a lady doctor. She is a match for her mother.’
The officer noted down against the number of children ‘Seven’ and then said commandingly, ‘You must have no more children. Is that understood?’ Ranga looked abashed and grinned. The officer began a lecture on population, food production and so forth, and how the government had decreed that no one should have more than two children. He then thrust forward the sheet of paper and ordered, ‘Sign here.’ Ranga was nonplussed. ‘Oh! if I had learnt to read and write . . . !’
The officer said curtly, ‘Hold up your left thumb’ and smeared it on an inking pad and pressed it on the sheet of paper. After these exertions, Ranga continued to stand there, hoping that the stage had arrived to collect his reward and depart. He could cross the field, go up to the highway and pay for a bus ride, he would have money for it. But the officer merely handed him a slip of paper and cried, ‘Next.’ An orderly entered, pushing before him a middle-aged peasant, while another orderly propelled Ranga out of the presence of the officer to another part of the camp, snatched the slip of paper from his hand and went away, ignoring the several questions that Ranga had put to him. Presently Ranga found himself seized by the arm and led into a room where a doctor and his assistants were waiting at a table. On the table Ranga noticed a white tray with shining knives neatly arrayed. His professional eye noted how perfectly the instruments had been honed. The doctor asked, ‘How many more?’ Someone answered, ‘Only four, sir.’ Ranga felt scared when they said, ‘Come here and lie down,’ indicating a raised bed. They gently pushed him onto it. One man held his head down and two others held his feet. At some stage they had taken off his clothes and wrapped him in a white sheet. He felt ashamed to be stripped thus, but bore it as perhaps an inevitable stage in his progress towards affluence. The blue bush-shirt had advised him to be submissive. As he was lying on his back with the hospital staff standing guard over him, his understanding improved and his earlier suspicions began to crystallize. He recollected his butcher friend reading from a newspaper how the government was opening camps all over the country where men and women were gathered and operated upon so that they could have no children. So this was it! He was seized with panic at the prospect of being sliced up. ‘Don’t shake, be calm,’ someone whispered softly, and he felt better, hoping that they would let him off at the last minute after looking him over thoroughly. The blue-shirt had assured him that they would never hurt or harm an old man like him. While these thoughts were flitting across his mind, he noticed a hand reaching for him with a swab of cotton. When the wrap around him was parted and fingers probed his genitals, he lost his head and screamed, ‘Hands off! Leave me alone!’ He shook himself free when they tried to hold him down, butted with his head the man nearest to him, rolled over, toppling the white tray with its knives. Drawing the hospital wrap around, he stormed out, driven by a desperate energy. He ran across the fields screaming, ‘No, I won’t be cut up . . .’ which echoed far and wide, issuing from vocal cords cultivated over a lifetime to overwhelm other noises in a city street with the cry, ‘Knives sharpened!’
