He: (Shey) (Modern Classics (Penguin)) (10 page)

My head’s in a whirl with your scolding.

My brain’s all a-clatter

With your foolish chatter,

But meanwhile, my meal you’re withholding!

‘Your hairless pate

Will meet a grim fate

Unless you come out and drop guard.

To save your skin

You must give in,

And show me the goats in your yard.’

Then Baturam swore

To fall at the four

Huge feet of the stripy old glutton,

But said, ‘It’s a sin

To do someone in,

And worse to steal all his mutton!’

The tiger said,

‘What if I die instead?

That’ll rouse the Creator’s ire!

And then my missus

Deprived of my kisses

Will die on my funeral pyre.

‘So out with my meat,

Or it’s you that I’ll eat.’—

He raised his paw for a clout.

Batu said in a flap,

‘Don’t be hasty, old chap:

Let’s see if my goats are about.’

The tiger was led

By his host to a shed.

Batu said, ‘Here endeth your quest!’

He did not hesitate

To fasten the gate

And bar it upon his guest.

Then wondered the beast,

‘I don’t see my feast—

Can it be that Batu is cheating?

There’s nor hide nor hair

Of my promised fare,

Nor sound of its agonized bleating.

‘Batu seems bent

With savage intent

On having a fellow-beast die.

I’ll collar the hound,

Pin him to the ground

And suck out his blood till he’s dry.

This filthy shed—’

‘It’s for coal,’ Batu said.

‘It was once the dairyman’s nest.

The God of the Dead

Now sleeps here instead,

And he’ll guide your soul unto rest.’

The tiger puffed out his whiskers:

‘What’s become of the bleating friskers?’

Said Batu in glee,

‘They’re all within me!

Go search the whole town if you must,

You won’t find a trace

Of them in the place—

I’ve crunched all their bones into dust!’

'Did you like it?'

'Whatever you might say, Dadamashai, I think He writes
beautiful tiger-poems.'

I replied, 'Well, that's as it may be. But wait another ten
years before you venture to judge whether he writes better
than I do.'

Pupu changed the subject. ‘But my tiger doesn’t come to eat me.’

‘Since I can see you right before me, I should say he doesn’t. What
does
your tiger do?’

‘At night, when I’m in bed, he comes and scratches at the windowpane. When I open it, he giggles.’

‘That’s perfectly possible. Tigers are great ones for laughing— what they call “humorous” in English. They bare their gums at the slightest provocation.’

⁴¹
Chowringhee
: an area in central Calcutta, the chief thoroughfare of the old ‘white town’.

⁴²
alta
: a red dye used by women to paint their feet.

⁴³
Baitarani
: the river dead souls cross to enter the underworld.

⁴⁴
Magh
: the tenth month in the Bengali calendar (mid-January to mid-February).

⁴⁵
Lord Vishwakarma
: the craftsman among the Hindu gods. The Vedas say Vishwakarma created the universe.

⁴⁶
Mahatma Gandhi protested against caste-based social injustice and worked for the uplift of the so-called lower castes and untouchables.

⁴⁷
Lord Shiva’s passion
: destructive frenzy. Shiva is the god of destruction.

PUPU CAME TO ME AND ASKED, ‘DADAMASHAI, DIDN’T YOU SAY YOU’D invited He here on Saturday? What happened?’

‘It went off very well. Haji Mian had made some of his sheekh kebabs—delicious!’

‘And then?’

‘And then I ate three-quarters of them, and gave that urchin Kalu the rest. Kalu said, “Dada, this tastes better than our plantain dumplings!” ’

‘Didn’t He eat anything?’

‘He didn’t have a chance.’

‘Didn’t he even come?’

‘How could he?’

‘Well then, where is he?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘At home?’

‘No.’

‘Gone back to his village?’

‘No.’

‘Abroad, then?’

‘No.’

‘You told me it was almost arranged that He should go to the Andaman Islands. Is that where he’s gone?’

‘He didn’t need to go.’

‘Then why aren’t you telling me what’s actually happened?’

‘Because you’ll be either frightened or grieved.’

‘I don’t care. You’ll have to tell me what’s happened.’

‘Very well then, listen—’

The other day, having a class to teach, I was supposed to read the learned text
Bidagdhamukhamandan
.
⁴⁸
After a while, I suddenly discovered that
The History of Panchu Pakrashi’s Aunt-in-Law
had found its way into my hands. I must have dozed off as I read; it was then half past two in the morning. I dreamt that our cook Kini had had her face badly burnt when some boiling oil blazed into flame. Having performed penance for seven days and seven nights, she was granted two tins of Lahiri’s Moonlight Snow. She scoured her face with it, but I told her, ‘That won’t do any good; go get some skin from the cheek of a buffalo-calf and have it sewn on your face—nothing else will match your complexion.’ The words were scarcely out of my mouth when she borrowed three and a quarter rupees from me and rushed off to Dharmatala market to buy a calf. At this point, I heard a strange whooshing noise in the room. It sounded as if someone was dragging his feet, clad in shoes of wind, all over the floor. I started up and hurriedly turned up the flame of my lantern. It was clear there was someone in the room, but I couldn’t make out who or what it was, or even what it looked like. My heart was thudding, but I called out as sternly as I could, ‘Who are you? Shall I call the police?’

The intruder replied in strange hoarse tones, ‘Now then, Dada, don't you recognize me? I'm your Pupu-didi's He! Don't
you remember inviting me here?'

'Don't talk nonsense,' I retorted. 'You look like nothing on
earth!'

'That's just it, you see,' he answered. 'I've lost my body.'

'Lost it? What do you mean?'

‘I’ll tell you what I mean. Knowing I was invited to a feast at Pupu-didi’s, I went off to bathe bright and early. It was just half past one in the afternoon. Sitting on the steps of Telenipara Ghat, I was scrubbing vigorously at my face with a pumice stone. It was so soothing that, before I knew it, I was lost to the world in a comfortable drowse. I slumped right over and fell headlong into the water. I don’t know what happened after that. I couldn’t tell if I was on dry land, or still in the water. All I knew was that I wasn’t there any more.’

‘Not there!’

‘I swear on your life—’

‘You needn’t bother about my life, just go on.’

‘I was itching and tried to scratch myself, but couldn’t find the itchy place nor the fingernails to scratch it with. I felt so miserable that I began to blubber. But even the blubbering that I had enjoyed freely since childhood failed me now. The louder I howled, the less it sounded as if I were howling: you couldn’t hear a single wail. I wanted to knock my head against the old banyan tree, but I couldn’t even find my holy hair-tuft. But my most painful experience was wandering about by the poolside, even as the clock struck twelve, crying, “Where’s my hunger? Where’s my hunger?” But that monkey of an appetite evaded me entirely.’

‘I can’t make head or tail of your story. Stop a minute.’

‘I beg of you, Dada, don’t ask me to stop. An unstopped being like you can never imagine the agony of being stopped. I won’t stop, I won’t stop, I’ll go on for as long as I possibly can!’

So saying, he began to caper around the room, making a series of loud thuds and winding up with a display of the most astonishing gymnastics on my carpet. His antics reminded me of the gambols of a happy porpoise.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Dada, after that royal finale of mine, you’ll never find me stopping again. I’ll be pleased if you resort to violence. When I discovered the absence of a back worthy of a few sound blows, I remembered my old teacher Satkari and felt as if my heart would burst with agony—only I didn’t have a heart either. If such a fate were to befall a carp, it would implore the cook to toss it into a cauldron of boiling oil and fry it to a crisp. Ah me, that back I’ve now lost—the number of cuffs my old teacher showered on it! I swallowed them like sweetmeats made of brick. Today, it seems as if—oh, Dada, do pummel my back just once, as hard as you can—’

He came over and presented his back to me.

‘Go away!’ I shrieked.

‘Let me finish,’ said He. ‘I traipsed from village to village, searching high and low for a body. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. The hotter the sun grew, the less it bothered me. My misery was almost complete, when I came upon old Uncle Patu, who had been smoking ganja in the shade of a banyan tree, and had fallen fast asleep. I seemed to see the life within him gather itself into a single, vital point and rise pulsing to the very crown of his head. I saw a golden opportunity before me. Without the slightest hesitation, I squeezed my invisible spirit through the nostrils of his inert form, just as one might thrust one’s feet into a new pair of nagra shoes. Patu’s inner man wheezed to life.

‘“Now, who might you be, son? There’s no room for you in here.”

‘By then, I had seized his voice. “It’s you there isn’t any room for,” I retorted. “Out you go!”

'He gasped, "I'm on my way; there's just a little bit of me
left inside. Push."

'I gave him a hefty shove, and he disappeared with a whoosh.

'Meanwhile, Patu's missus had arrived on the scene. "There
you are, you old good-far-nothing!"

‘Her scolding was music to my ears. “Do say that once more,” I pleaded. “I never thought I’d hear such a yell again.”