Hats and Doctors: Stories Read online

  That evening, perhaps after some trepidation, they will dive into the world of Ashk. They will return to Ashk the next night and the next, and, if the paper begins to crumble, they will lovingly tape it together and read on, avidly now. Later, they might tell certain select friends about this experiment and maybe one of them will attempt it as well, even if the rest of them laugh at their friend’s idiosyncrasy. And so, if all goes well, by the time I have completed my translation of Ashk’s novel Girti Divarein, those few particular readers will see a fresh copy of Falling Walls lying in an English bookshop somewhere and, turning to a companion, or even a stranger, they will say, ‘Ah, Upendranath Ashk! But of course, kya kehna hai bhai, he’s so much better in the original.’

  Who Can Trust a Man?

  Professor Gupta looked hopelessly depressed when he paid us a visit, a month after the death of his wife Shanta.

  In the course of conversation that day, my aunt remarked that, with Shanta gone, he must be feeling very lonely; she then went on to discuss the difficulty of looking after two children; and finally she suggested, in all good faith, a second marriage for the professor.

  He, however, reacted to the idea with passionate disfavour.

  ‘Can I ever get a wife as pretty, as affectionate, as accomplished, as sweet, as intelligent and as considerate as Shanta?’ Professor Gupta protested. ‘Never … Sometimes I don’t know how to mourn my loss. I have lost a treasure—an irreplaceable treasure.’

  Throughout the rest of his visit that day, the professor related several happy anecdotes of his conjugal bliss with a view to impressing upon us the beauty, the sweetness, the intelligence and the many accomplishments of his wife Shanta.

  My aunt repeated most of these anecdotes later on, in envious admiration of the professor’s great love for his deceased wife and his remarkably successful married life. She pitied the poor man for his incalculable loss. And almost every day, once or twice, she made some reference or the other to him or to his beloved Shanta.

  About fifteen days later, the professor came again. I noticed that the pall of depression that day was not as heavy as on the previous visit. My aunt, for lack of any other subject, once again began to emphasize his loneliness and the difficulty of bringing up two children without feminine help.

  I was sitting beside my aunt, knitting. On scanning our visitor’s face, I noticed that the clouds, though still quite heavy, were suffused with the warmth of pale sunshine. He smiled as he said, ‘I agree with you; I have already decided to do what you are suggesting. In fact, a date has been fixed …’

  ‘But to whom? You should have at least told us!’ My aunt was heartily pleased to hear about his engagement.

  ‘With a colleague’s younger sister, Shakuntala. She graduated this year. Of course, she isn’t much compared to Shanta. Shanta was Shanta. But I couldn’t resist the persistent persuasion of this friend of mine. Besides, I thought that, being educated, she would be immune to stepmotherly meanness.’

  ‘A graduate wife will be perfect, I think,’ my aunt happily agreed.

  ‘How can it be perfect?’ Gupta protested. ‘No one could ever fill the vacuum left by Shanta’s death. That is a wound which will never heal. In fact, I have agreed to this proposal to hide this precious wound from the vulgar gaze of others. I consider it my own private treasure …’

  The professor then sighed and recited a couplet from Kabir, in which the poet enjoins the unhappy sufferer to keep the anguish of his soul to himself, for who can ever share another person’s pain?

  The professor left after some time, but my aunt couldn’t sleep properly that night. I should perhaps say that she was rather romantic in her inclinations. So, she began to compare my uncle’s cold indifference with the passionate attachment of Professor Gupta to Shanta and said, ‘No one will even remember me after I die.’

  ‘No one’ meant, of course, my uncle.

  Her sighs that night were very long and very deep.

  After his marriage, however, when Professor Gupta called on us, it was difficult to detect any trace of Shanta in his consciousness. As long as he was with us, Shakuntala was the sole topic of his conversation and praise. Her education, her culture, her sharpness and many other qualities of her personality were enumerated and dwelt upon at length.

  My aunt was so charmed by Professor Gupta’s enthusiasm for Shakuntala that she invited them to dinner the next day.

  As soon as the Professor left, she began to issue elaborate instructions to the servant about the next day’s dinner. She was obviously feeling jealous of Shakuntala’s good luck in having landed such an affectionate husband. My uncle, it seemed, was well versed only in the art of making money; he just didn’t know a thing about the art of making love. Or at least, he could not hold the proverbial candle to Professor Gupta in this latter respect.

  In the evening, my uncle came home and, as usual, got busy with the kids—he played with them, danced to the music on the radio and told them stories of ancient kings and queens. My aunt, meanwhile, kept heaving sighs as my uncle, it seemed, had no time to spare for her.

  The next day, Professor Gupta came for dinner with his newly wedded wife Shakuntala. I saw that his visage looked like a mirror reflecting a brilliant sun. He seemed to be drenched with the light emanating from Shakuntala. Her smiles and words and expressions evoked corresponding smiles, words and expressions from him with an immediacy that indicated a remarkable harmony between the two of them.

  Occasional flashes of envy could be detected on my aunt’s face beneath her veneer of enthusiastic hospitality. Once or twice she even sighed quite audibly. As the guests departed, my aunt looked at Shakuntala with unmistakable envy in her eyes.

  Shakuntala’s position was indeed enviable. On his next visit, Professor Gupta referred for the first time to quite a few defects in his deceased wife Shanta. Shakuntala’s excellent qualities had apparently opened his eyes to these defects. A man riding a camel naturally regards the camel to be the best and most useful animal. But if, by some stroke of luck, he happens to enjoy a ride on an elephant, he comes to recognize his mistake; he cannot help but realize the enormous difference between the awkward seat on the hump of a camel and the comfort of sitting on the vast back of a mountainous elephant. Professor Gupta had had the advantage of both these experiences and was the wiser for them.

  He told us at considerable length of Shakuntala’s solicitude for the education and health of her stepchildren. The older child had been admitted to a hostel and the younger had been sent to a residential nursery school. She paid them visits twice a week and took particular care of all their needs.

  ‘I am afraid your children are too young to be left by themselves in hostels,’ my aunt remarked with genuine surprise.

  This inspired the professor to deliver a homily, a fairly long one, on the advantages of keeping small children away from home right from the beginning. He pointed out that this encouraged the children to cultivate independence and self-confidence; moreover, their latent faculties would get the opportunity to develop freely, uninhibited by the thoughtless excesses of affection from doting parents.

  Unfortunately, however, Shakuntala failed to survive her first confinement, thus depriving Professor Gupta of her self, and his children of the encouragement she was to give to the uninhibited development of their latent faculties.

  The profundity of Professor Gupta’s grief, on his first visit to us after Shakuntala’s death, moved my aunt to copious tears. His face had darkened so completely that I was reminded of a mirror blotted out by black ink. He kept praising Shakuntala for the care she had taken of his children that was so surpassingly maternal. He told us that she had gone to every single residential school before sending the children to the schools where they were at present. He was of the opinion that Shanta herself couldn’t have been more solicitous about their well-being.

  My aunt, at this stage, happened to refer to the future of the poor motherless children now that Shakuntala was no more. Professor
Gupta met her implicit suggestion with so desperate a nod of his unhappy head that it was clear to my aunt that Shakuntala would have no substitute, that such a thing was impossible.

  But hardly one month after the departure of Shakuntala, we heard that Professor Gupta was preparing for the arrival of one Miss Sita. Miss Sita was a schoolmistress; she had convinced Professor Gupta that infinite harm could be done to sensitive children by hostel life. She was of the definite opinion that the teachers and other functionaries at a hostel were inherently incapable of bestowing on children the kind of affection that they always demand, and generally get, from their parents. For a few days, we listened to Professor Gupta’s detailed accounts of the foresight and sagacity of Miss Sita. I was, therefore, not surprised, when, two months later, I heard that Miss Sita had been transformed into Mrs Sita Gupta.

  My aunt had been preparing herself and the household to give a warm reception to the new Mrs Gupta. All these preparations were unfortunately cut short by a sudden collapse of my aunt’s feeble heart. The attack proved fatal, and my uncle couldn’t save her no matter how much he tried.

  My uncle did not marry again. He got numerous offers, of course. His friends also tried to persuade him to marry in view of the children and the other usual considerations. But my uncle just would not countenance any offer. ‘After having lived with Santosh, the question of living with any other woman just doesn’t arise,’ he said with a definitiveness that put a stop to all further arguments.

  Professor Gupta calls on us every now and then. Shakuntala faded into oblivion before Sita, just as Shanta had before Shakuntala. I am sometimes reminded of the sighs of my deceased aunt; the reminder is always accompanied by a sigh of my own that I cannot suppress.

  Brown Sahibs

  Shrivastava came out of the District Magistrate’s office and glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock and the office boy had told him that the District Magistrate would return at nine, which meant he had a whole hour to kill. So, why shouldn’t he go find Gajanan and deliver the good news of his arrival in Allahabad in person? ‘Two jobs on the same street’—that was his motto, and if those two jobs happened to turn into four, he’d be sure to finish them all off along the way. It was because of this attitude that, in just six or seven years, he had moved up from a sixty-rupee-a-month journalist to the post of Deputy Collector. Not only that; he was also such a sharp operator that, once appointed to the post of Deputy Collector, he had managed to bypass assignment to some godforsaken rural district and land this posh appointment in Allahabad. This was his first day in Allahabad and he had immediately gone to his superior officer’s place to pay his respects. But the District Magistrate happened to be out paying his respects to some minister on tour from Lucknow. Shrivastava’s boyhood friend, Gajanan, lived in Allenganj, a nearby locality, and was a lecturer at the university. Since he was sure his friend would be at home, Shrivastava decided to use his free hour for a visit.

  Passing by the court, he stopped in the middle of the street. Someday I’ll be the top man in this court! As the thought struck him, his pride lifted him a little off his heels. He fidgeted over his stiff collar and then straightened his bush shirt, tugging it back and forth by the hem a couple of times. Then, in front of the pillared offices of the court, he noticed two rickshaw-wallahs who seemed to be arguing as they headed his way.

  ‘Rickishiyaw!’ he called, pronouncing the word in a lordly tone, twisting it a little for effect.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ both rickshaw-wallahs shouted as they raced over and stood before him.

  ‘Say, fellows, will you charge by the hour?’

  ‘Where d’you want to go?’ The first rickshaw-wallah asked.

  ‘Wherever I may like,’ Shrivastava snapped.

  ‘So how much would I get for an hour?’

  ‘The usual rate, whatever it is.’

  ‘Sixteen annas.’

  ‘Ten annas.’

  ‘Very well, sir, please come right this way, sir,’ interjected the second rickshaw-wallah, speaking and gesturing with the exaggerated politeness common in Lucknow.

  ‘Okay, okay, bring your rickshaw over.’

  When the second rickshaw pulled up, Shrivastava hopped in and sat down. He fixed his shirt again and lifted his trouser legs a little so as not to mess up the crease. He didn’t dare sit back comfortably for fear of rumpling his bush shirt. After all, he wanted to keep himself looking sharp until he met the District Magistrate. There he sat in the rickshaw, looking alert and upright as if he were sitting on a chair in the presence of his boss.

  This rickshaw-wallah was wearing a relatively clean khaki outfit. By appearance alone he wouldn’t have been mistaken for any common rickshaw puller. Village types predominate among the rickshaw pullers of Allahabad. During the slack season of the agricultural year, the men of the neighbouring villages would dress their lanky bodies in homespun jackets with a length of cloth tied at the waist. Then they’d set out for Allahabad with enough food for one meal tied up in a bundle. They’d arrive in the evening and rent a rickshaw for the night. After collecting fares from passengers, they’d be able to buy fried barley flour for the next meal. In addition to the usual paan preparations, crude bidis and Western-style cigarettes, many paan sellers would cater to these village rickshaw pullers by keeping trays of barley flour decoratively arranged in pyramids with green chilli peppers stuck in for a curiously festive effect. When these rickshaw-wallahs got a little time off from driving, they would buy a handful of the grain mash, knead it into a ball and then swallow the stuff with the help of some chillis, washing it down with a few gulps of water from a nearby faucet.

  They say that when a jackal is about to die, he heads for the city. There is no significant difference between the proverbial jackal and these villagers. They drive their rickshaws all day long, every day, and sometimes all night too. Although they might earn enough to pay the year’s rent, they blow their lungs out in the process.

  There are other rickshaw pullers—Allahabadis—who used to work as labourers in the city, but were laid off after the Second World War. They go on driving their rickshaws, their ribs sticking out and signs of tuberculosis peering from their eyes. In these expensive times they must go on driving just to fill the bellies of their offspring.

  Being a native of Allahabad, Shrivastava was quite familiar with these two types of rickshaw-wallahs, but this driver of his didn’t fit into either category. It seemed that a third type was beginning to pop up here. Sporting thin, sword-like moustaches cut in the style of Ronald Colman and wearing military shorts, or a bush shirt, or only an army cap, these men who had been discharged from the army after the war were now beginning to drive rickshaws. The tilt of their heads, their rigid posture and their way of pedalling with knees and toes turned out, made them immediately identifiable as ex-soldiers driving rickshaws. Clamping a bidi in the right or left corner of their mouths and dreaming of the Third World War, they drove their rickshaws jauntily, entertained by visions of Egypt, Iran, Italy and Germany, and of the free atmosphere and the beautiful fair women they would have there. Independence had made them forget their ingratiating manners and had taught them to hold their heads high with self-esteem. However, the majority, being only half-educated, were ignorant of the thin line that divides self-respect from arrogance. Why should they bargain for fares when they considered every passenger a hostage seized from enemy territory?

  In spite of the fact that this rickshaw puller wore military garb, he lacked the rigid posture of a soldier. What was more, his face had the elastic quality of kneaded dough and was decidedly different from the standard military mug, which was about as pliable as coarse, dried flour.

  Shrivastava had grown tired of sitting straight, so he relaxed a little and asked, ‘Tell me, fellow, were you in the army?’

  The rickshaw-wallah went right on driving as he glanced back to answer, ‘No, Sahib, what would I do in the army?’ His words were accompanied by an ironic and slightly contemptuous smile, beneath which
Shrivastava detected a twinge of pain. It was a smile which seemed to ask, ‘Do you think I would sink so low as to do the menial work of an army lackey?’

  ‘So you have your own small fleet of rickshaws?’ Shrivastava asked.

  ‘Why, certainly, Sahib!’ laughed the rickshaw-wallah with a hint of irony. Then he continued, ‘This rickshaw isn’t even mine. I pay rent to drive it.’

  Sensing a certain degree of civility in the fellow’s tone, Shrivastava felt sympathetic towards him. ‘So what makes you do such backbreaking work? Driving a rickshaw puts a terrible strain on the lungs, you know. Villagers who are used to driving a plough and swinging a mattock may be able to drive all day and all night, but such work is beyond the strength of city people like you.’

  ‘Listen, Sahib, you think I drive this thing for fun? There’s my wife, several kids, my mother and two widowed sisters—and it’s up to me to support them all.’

  ‘Then why don’t you find yourself another job?’

  ‘Because I don’t know how to do anything else, Sahib.’

  ‘You mean you’ve driven a rickshaw all your life?’

  ‘Oh, no, Sahib, just since Independence.’ Still steering with his left hand, he thumped his forehead with his right. ‘It’s only since the English left and the brown sahibs took over that my fortune has exploded in my face. The native officers don’t understand my work, so of course they don’t know its value. I had no use for their business, nor they for mine. I didn’t know how to do anything else, so I asked if I could be sent to England with them. Naturally my request was ignored.’