The return

IT was three-thirty on Sunday afternoon. The match between the M. C. C. and the
Y. M. U. was still in progress. The Y. M. U. had won the toss, and were all out for
eighty-six at two o'clock. The captain's was the top score, thirty-two. The M. C. C.
had none to bowl him out, and he stood there like an automaton, hitting right and
left, tiring out all the bowlers.
He kept on for hours, and the next batsman was as formidable, though not
a scorer. He exhausted the M. C. C. of the little strength that was left, and Rajam
felt keenly the lack of a clever bowler.
After the interval the game started again at two-thirty, and for the hour that
the M. C. C. batted the score stood at the unimpressive figure of eight with three
out in quick succession. Rajam and Mani had not batted. Rajam watched the game
with the blackest heart and cursed heartily everybody concerned. The match would
positively close at five-thirty; just two hours more, and would the remaining eight
make up at least seventy-eight and draw the match? It was a remote possibility. In
his despair he felt that at least six more would follow suit without raising the score
even to twenty.
And then he and Mani would be left. And he had a wild momentary hope
that each might be able to get forty with a few judicious sixers and boundaries.
He was squatting along with his players on the ground in the shade of the
compound wall.
'Raju, a minute, come here,', came a voice from above.
Rajam looked up and saw his father's head over the wall.
'Father, is it very urgent?'
'It is. I won't detain you for more than a minute.'
When he hopped over the wall and was at his father's side, he was given a
letter. He glanced through it, gave it back to his father, and said casually, 'So he is safe and sound. I wonder what he is doing there.' He ruminated for a second and
turned to go.
'I am sending this letter to Swaminathan's father. He is sure to get a car
and rush to the place. I shall have to go with him. Would you like to come?'
Rajam remained silent for a minute and said emphatically, 'No.'
'Don't you want to see your friend and bring him back?'
'I don't care,' Rajam said briefly, and joined his friends. He went back to his
seat in the shade of the wall. The fourth player was promising. Rajam whispered to
Mani, 'I say that boy is not bad. Six runs already! Good, good.'
'If these fellows make at least fifty we can manage the rest.'
Rajam nodded an assent, but an unnoticed corner of his mind began to be
busy with something other than the match. His father's news had stirred in him a
mixture of feelings. He felt an urgent desire to tell Mani what he had just heard.
'Mani, you know Swami--' he said and stopped short because he remembered that
he was not interested in Swaminathan. Mani sprang up and asked, 'What about
Swami? What about him? Tell me, Rajam. Has he been found?'
'I don't know.'
'Oh, Rajam, Rajam, you were about to say something about him.'
'Nothing. I don't care.'
Swaminathan had a sense of supreme well-being and security. He was
flattered by the number of visitors that were coming to see him. His granny and
mother were hovering round him ceaselessly, and it was with a sneaking
satisfaction that he saw his little brother crowing unheeded in the cradle, for once
overlooked and abandoned by everybody.
Many of father's friends came to see him and behaved more or less alike.
They stared at him with amusement and said how relieved they were to have him
back and asked some stereo typed questions and went away after uttering one or
two funny remarks. Father went out with one of his friends. Before going, he said,
'Swami, I hope I shall not have to look for you when I come back.' Swaminathan
was hurt by this remark. He felt it to be cruel and inconsiderate.
After his father left, he felt more free, free to lord over a mixed gathering
consisting of mother's and granny's friends and some old men who were known to
the family long before Swaminathan's father was bom.
Everybody gazed at Swaminathan and uttered loud remarks to his face.
Through all this crowd Swaminathan espied the cook and bestowed a smile on
him. Over the babble the cook uttered some irrelevant, happy remark, which
concluded with the hope that now father, mother and granny might resume the
practice of taking food. Swaminathan was about to shout something in reply when
his attention was diverted by the statement of a widow, who, rolling her eyes and
pointing heavenward, said that He alone had saved the boy, and who could have
foreseen that the Forest Officer would be there to save the boy from die jaws of
wild beasts?
Granny said that she would have to set about fulfilling the great promises
of offerings made to the Lord of the Seven Hills to whom alone she owed the safe
return of the child. Mother had meanwhile disappeared into the kitchen and now
came out with a tumbler of hot coffee with plenty of sugar in it, and some steaming
tiffin in a plate. Swaminathan, quickly and with great relish, disposed of both. A
mixed fragrance, delicate and suggestive, came from the kitchen.
Swaminathan cast his mind back and felt ashamed of himself for his
conduct with the Forest Officer, when that harassed gentleman was waiting for a
reply from the Deputy Superintendent of Police, which took the form of a taxi
drawing up before the Travellers' Bungalow, disgorging father, mother, Rajam's
father, and an inspector of police. What a scene his mother created when she saw
him! He had at first feared that Rajam's father and the inspector were going to
handcuff him. What a fine man Rajam's father was! And how extraordinarily kind
his own father was! So much so that, five minutes after meeting him, Swaminathan
blurted out the whole story, from his evasion of Drill Classes to his disappearance,
without concealing a single detail. What was there so funny in his narration?
Everybody laughed uproariously, and mother covered her face with the end of her
sari and wiped her eyes at the end of every fit of laughter....
This retrospect was spoiled by one memory. He had forgotten to take leave
of the Forest Officer, though that gentleman opened the door of the car and stood
near it. Swaminathan's conscience scorched him at the recollection of it.
A gulp came to his throat at the thought of the kindly District Forest Officer,
looking after the car speeding away from him, thoroughly brokenhearted by the fact
that a person whose life he had saved should be so wicked as to go away without
saying 'Good-bye.'
His further reflections on the subject and the quiet discussion among the
visitors about the possible dangers that might have befallen Swaminathan, were all
disturbed--destroyed, would be more accurate--by a tornado-like personality
sweeping into their midst with the tremendous shout, 'What! Oh! Swami!' The
visitors were only conscious of some mingled shoutings and brisk movements and
after that both Swaminathan and Mani disappeared from the hall. As they came to
a secluded spot in the backyard, Mani said, 'I thought you were dead or some such
thing.'
'I was, nearly.'
'What a fool you were to get frightened of that Head Master and run away
like that!' Rajam told me everything.
I wanted to break your shoulders for not calling me when you had come to
our school and called Rajam....'
'I had no time, Mani. '
'Oh, Swami. I am so glad to see you alive. I was--I was very much troubled
about you. Where were you all along?'
'I--I--I really can't say. I don't know where I was. Some- where--' He
recounted in this style his night of terrors and the subsequent events.
'Have I not always said that you were the worst coward I have ever known?
You would have got safely back home if you had kept your head cool and followed
the straight road.
'You imagined all sorts of things.'
Swaminathan took this submissively and said, 'But I can't believe that I was
picked up by that cart-man. I don't remember it at all.'
Mani advised, 'If he happens to come to your place during Deepavali or
Pongal festival, don't behave like a niggard. He deserves a bag of gold. If he had
not cared to pick you up, you might have been eaten by a tiger.'
'And I have done another nasty thing,' Swaminathan said, 'I didn't thank
and say "Good-bye" to the Forest Officer before I came away. He was standing
near the car all the time.'
'If he was so near why did you seal your mouth'?'
'I didn't think of it till the car had come half-way.'
'You are a--a very careless fellow. You ought to have thanked him.'
'Now what shall I do? Shall I write to him?'
'Do. But do you know his address?'
'My father probably does.'
'What will you write?'
'Just tell him--I don't know. I shall have to ask father about it. Some nice
letter, you know. I owe him so much for bringing me back in time for the match.'
'What are you saying?' Mani asked.
'Are you deaf? I was saying that I must ask father to write a nice letter, that
is all.'
'Not that. I heard something about the match. What is it?'
'Yes?'
'Are you mad to think that you are in time for the match?' asked Mani. He
then related to Swaminathan the day's encounter with the Y. M. U. and the
depressing results, liberally explaining what Swaminathan's share was in the
collapse of the M. C. C.
'Why did you have it to-day?' Swaminathan asked weakly.
'Why not?'
'But this is only Saturday.'
'Who said that?'
'The Forest Officer said that this was only Saturday.'
'You may go and tell him that he is a blockhead,' Mani retorted.
Swaminathan persisted that it could not be Sunday, till Mani threatened to
throw him down, sit on his body, and press his entrails out. Swaminathan remained
in silence, and then said, 'I won't write him that letter. He has deceived me.'
'Who?'
'The Forest Officer.... And what does Rajam say about me?'
'Rajam says a lot, which I don't wish to repeat. But I will tell you one thing.
Never appear before him. He will never speak to you. He may even shoot you on
sight.'
'What have I done?' asked Swaminathan.
'You have ruined the M. C. C. You need not have promised us, if you had
wanted to funk. At least you could have told us you were going away. Why did you
hide it from Rajam when you saw him at our school? That is what Rajam wants to
know.'
Swaminathan quietly wept, and begged Mani to pacify Rajam and convey
to him Swaminathan's love and explanations. Mani refused to interfere, 'You don't
know Rajam. He is a gem. But it is difficult to get on with him.' With a forced
optimism in his tone Swaminathan said, 'He will be all right when he sees me. I
shall see him tomorrow morning.'
Mani wanted to change the topic, and asked: 'Are you going back to
school?'
'Yes, next week. My father has already seen the Head Master, and it
seems things will be all right in the school. He seems to have known everything
about the Board School business.'
'Yes, I and Rajam told him everything.'
'After all, I shall have to go back to the Board High School. Father says I
can't change my school now.'