Hats and Doctors: Stories Page 3

  ‘What was it, anyway—the work you used to do?’

  ‘I worked at Commissioner Duck’s place. I got fifty rupees a month, two rooms to live in, and the clothes the Sahib gave me. If you’ll pardon my saying so …’ Then out of embarrassment he cut his words short.

  ‘No, no, go ahead and say it,’ Shrivastava urged, sitting up straight again.

  ‘Take this bush shirt you’re wearing,’ the rickshaw-wallah said, turning around and speaking very respectfully, ‘I used to wear one just like it when I worked at the Sahib’s place.’

  Shrivastava slumped back in the seat again, not even noticing that his shirt was getting rumpled.

  ‘Nowadays, where’s the good life we knew under the British? On holidays there would be a bonus; and not just for me either. There would be clothes made up for my wife and kids. Now tell me, these days where could I find all that? How am I supposed to keep up with the money my family spends? All I can do is drive a rickshaw, even though the blood’s drying up in my veins, until one of these days I’ll just vanish into nothing.’

  ‘But really now, what’s the problem? Why couldn’t you work for some native sahib? We still have commissioners and collectors, just as in the British days.’

  ‘What native sahib could afford my services?’ And the same derisive smile spread across the rickshaw-wallah’s lips.

  ‘What were you at Commissioner Duck’s place?’ Shrivastava asked with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity. ‘A cook?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t do cooking.’

  ‘Well, were you a bearer, or what?’

  ‘Yes, I was a bearer.’

  Shrivastava sat up again. ‘So what’s the problem? You could find another servant’s position. I have a bearer at my place.’

  ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t that kind of bearer. I never did any of that food-carrying business. I looked after the Sahib’s clothes.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You took care of his clothes and cleaned his boots.’

  ‘No, Sahib, the sweeper did the boots. I only had to see to his clothes.’

  ‘You mean all day long all you ever did was look after his clothes?’

  ‘What can I tell you, Sahib? You wouldn’t understand,’ he said with a grin. ‘Those English had class. They’d wear a special suit for each occasion. A different one for the night, for the office, for daytime lounging, for outings. Then there were dinner suits, golf suits, polo suits, dance suits and hunting suits. It was my job to keep them all in order, give them to the washerman and get them back, and to dress the Sahib. Now, how could any native sahib understand or appreciate my work? Day and night, month in and month out, year after year, they go on wearing the same one suit right down to threads. See that red house we just passed? The sahib who lives there is an important man, but sometimes he wears a suit which must have been salvaged from his college days. Where you find an office today, the English used to have a bathroom. And Saturday nights were so splendid. And that garden—you saw how they’ve let it go to pot. Well, did you ever get to see how beautiful it was under the British? It’s not just that garden either; the very mention of the British sahibs sends the whole of Civil Lines into tears. It’s like having to look at the shaved head of a widow.’

  Shrivastava found this rickshaw-wallah’s contempt and disdain for the Indian way of life disturbing. He had a predilection for the good life himself, but at this point, each and every manifestation of the British culture angered him. Thinking he might help this blind fellow see the light, he said, ‘There’s a big difference between their habits of dining, dressing and high living compared to ours. They don’t see anything wrong with eating meat and fish or drinking alcohol. They eat the meat of the cow and the pig, while in our houses it’s a sin even to touch either one. Their women dance, but in our houses—’

  ‘Not at all, sahib,’ the rickshaw-wallah interrupted, pedalling harder to emphasize his point. ‘Our country is a country of slaves. We’ve closed ourselves up like snails and talked about poverty as though it were heaven. Even when we’re rich, it’s our habit to live as though we’re poor. We put our money in banks and subsist on humble chapatis and dal. My Sahib told me that in ancient times when India was free and the Aryans had just arrived, they too used to eat and drink well, dance and sing and live gaily. They never used to veil their women or put restrictions on what people could eat and drink. The Sahib used to say that money was only good for spending, not for putting in banks. When rupees are spent, they bring money to craftsmen, labourers and shopkeepers; and when they’re not, unemployment rises. Every year my Sahib would have the furniture, doors and window refinished; and every six months he’d have the whitewashing done. There were two gardeners, two bearers, a cook and a sweeper, all kept as servants in his house. Because of him, the bread man, the egg man, the cabinetmaker and God knows how many others, all had regular wages.’

  A spark caught fire in Shrivastava’s heart. He wanted to get up and give this foreigner’s dog a good punch in the neck, but the rickshaw was going too fast. Instead, he vented his anger on his former white officers.

  ‘Who cares about those bastards? They had a hell of a good time while they robbed the people blind.’

  ‘You mean to say our current masters rob people any less?’ the rickshaw-wallah asked with a humble yet sarcastic grin. ‘All public servants, from the lowest to the highest, steal from the people, but in those days, a distinguished officer was capable of feeling some shame—now it’s just one big free-for-all. These officers know well enough how to take, but not how to give. Where you found an Englishman taking, you would find that at the same time he was supporting ten men. These people here hoard the money they steal. There’s no need to speak of elegant living, it’s not their style. They wear the same dhoti and kurta all the time, indoors and out. Every two or three weeks—no, more like every month or two—they’ll get themselves shaved. Now, what do the barber, the washerman, the bearer, or the cook get out of these people?’

  Shrivastava had begun to squirm inwardly, but he kept quiet so as not to be drawn into a row with such a lowly person.

  ‘Why go so far afield?’ The rickshaw-wallah asked, continuing his stream of conversation. ‘Take the rickshaw- and the tonga-wallahs. When a wealthy man hires a rickshaw, you can be sure he’ll haggle over the fare. There’s an honorary magistrate here in Allenganj, an important man who also runs a printing press in Chowk. He’s always waiting here at the stand, looking out for a chance to split the fare. If another passenger doesn’t come along, he might go on standing for half an hour. Even an ordinary English soldier wouldn’t haggle over the fare. If he had a rupee in his pocket, he’d give a rupee. If he had two rupees, he’d give two. One day, my Sahib’s car broke down, so he gave a rickshaw-wallah a five-rupee note to go from Allenganj to the court.’

  They arrived at Gajanan’s house and Shrivastava hopped out, only to find that his friend wasn’t there. So he left his card, returned to the rickshaw and told the driver to get going quickly. Just as they arrived in front of the court and Shrivastava was getting out, he glanced at his watch and saw that an hour and ten minutes had passed.

  If it had been any other occasion, and the agreed rate had been ten annas an hour, he would not have given more than twelve annas. But he was hesitant to give this rickshaw-wallah just twelve annas. Giving the graves of the British sahibs a mental kick, he said, ‘It’s been a few minutes more than an hour. Even if it had been two hours the fare would only have come to one rupee four annas. But here, take two rupees. The fourteen annas extra you can keep as a tip from me.’

  The rickshaw-wallah salaamed in his modified military fashion. Shrivastava rose on his toes and headed for the District Magistrate’s office.

  ‘So, how much did you get?’ The first rickshaw-wallah called loudly from the stand where he was waiting.

  ‘Two rupees!’

  ‘Phew—two rupees!’

  ‘Yup, two rupees. Have I ever got less from a native officer? Only I know how to handle these m
iserable brown sahibs.’

  Shrivastava overheard this last sentence. He sagged down on his heels and even his strut was gone, as he entered the District Magistrate’s office walking as though he were just an ordinary man.

  Translated by Edith Irwin

  Hats and Doctors

  Mr Goyal was the local representative of the Bharat Times (Delhi/Calcutta) in Lucknow. His friends generally considered him a dapper man. In their schooldays, they had seen him attired in a turban decorated with a plume. In college, he had dressed the dandy, wandering about bareheaded, a light splash of water on his long curly hair. During the Congress movement, he had preferred milky-white homespun kurtas and dhotis, topped with a Gandhi cap at a rakish angle. In later years, he had appeared decked out in a black achkan coat and a black cap, or, on occasion, resplendent in an English suit and hat. A number of years ago he had gone to Russia with a delegation of journalists. He brought back a large beautiful velvet cap. For a couple of years, the dignity of that expensive Russian cap—worth one hundred and fifty roubles—reigned triumphant, but in 1954, he went to Kabul, and from Kabul he had returned with a Qaraqul hat. For almost a year, his costly Afghani hat had been the subject of constant praise among his friends. But two years later, he went to Kashmir and returned with three or four boat-shaped caps—which, at some point, were called ‘Jinnah caps’ and nowadays are called ‘bakshi caps’ … It was because of his hats, a new one every day, that he was famous for his dapperness, and also because he was constantly changing hat styles. But no one knew the secret weakness that lay at the root of his penchant for hats.

  The secret was that his head was extremely sensitive to cold. If he could have found any way around it, he wouldn’t have worn hats: his hair was so beautiful, black and curly; wearing any hat on top of it was singularly unpleasant to him; but his sensitivity to cold gave him no other option. If there was just the slightest chill in the air and he left his head bare, he would catch a cold. He had hidden his weakness behind a veil of dapperness; maybe he had gone about bareheaded for a few years in college, but as the years went by he had made hats his constant guardians. He liked the hat he had brought back from Russia so much that if it had been in his power, he would have worn it every day for the rest of his life. The only problem with that hat was that he could not wear it to meetings or social gatherings.

  Whenever he sat around bareheaded he ended up battling a cold for weeks. The Qaraqul hat was useful in the extreme cold, but it became uncomfortable when there was only a slight chill in the air. It was a very warm hat. His head always became drenched with sweat even when it was cold outside, but if he took the hat off he started sneezing. The trip to Kashmir had eased that problem. The boat-shaped hats there cost between five and fifty rupees. They were the kind of hats that could be worn in the middle of the summer, not only when it was a bit chilly, and he had bought all kinds of hats in this style: less warm, medium, very warm; white, black, brown, speckled.

  He always wore a hat that matched his suit; if his friends praised his suit or his hat, Mr Goyal always smiled and accepted their praise with thanks: but sometimes, deep down inside, he felt terribly sad. The realization that he couldn’t live without a hat dampened his enthusiasm. Whenever he went for a walk in the evening in Hazratganj and noticed people walking around with their heads bare, even when it was very cold, or tearing around on bicycles and motorcycles bareheaded, he wished he could take off his hat and fling it into the street. He would not let anyone pick it up; he would just watch it get crushed and torn to ribbons beneath the wheels of cars and bicycles and tongas, and so become a happier man. And now that he had passed his fortieth year, he was beginning to have to wrap a scarf around his neck as well, just below his hat. If he felt a cold breeze on his ears when he was driving his motorcycle, his nose started dripping. He had to stop the motorcycle, wrap the scarf that was around his neck over his head and ears, tie it under his chin, put his hat back on and continue on his way.

  And now a new factor had come into being which made his problem even more upsetting. Since last year, in Lucknow’s annual exhibition, a Kashmiri shopkeeper had started stocking piles and piles of boat-shaped hats. And so, right before Mr Goyal’s very eyes, practically all his friends started wearing exactly the same boat-shaped hats he wore—maybe not quite as expensive; maybe they were actually less expensive, but still, his feeling of originality had been completely done in. No one praised his hats anymore.

  Then the Basant holiday came. Mr Goyal was Punjabi and, although everyone else in his household had already said the last rites for the turban and turned their backs on it forever, his father still wore one. Though he was seventy now, he always had it dyed yellow for the day of Basant. This year, when he saw his father dyeing his turban, something got into Mr Goyal. He ordered a terrific-looking muslin turban, had it dyed yellow, wrapped it around his head with the greatest of care and, on the day of Basant, he roamed around all day long on his motorcycle, his turban flapping about in the cool breeze.

  When his friends praised his turban to the skies and said that, in comparison to all other hats, a turban looked the very best on him, and when they asked him with curiosity why he had never worn one before, all Mr Goyal’s listlessness turned to dust, and he decided that from now on he would always wear a turban. He went to see a friend of his in the market, and on the way he dropped in to speak with a hand-dyer. He told the dyer he would bring him three or four turbans if he could dye them for him in one day. In his boundless enthusiasm he even chose the colours: fawn, dark gray, pearl and light ochre.

  But right around four o’clock he started to get a terrible headache. He hadn’t worn a turban in a long time. His long hair had gotten badly squeezed from being tied up in that suffocating knot. He was sitting in the coffee house with his friends, when suddenly he felt he wouldn’t be able to bear sitting there any longer if he didn’t take some medicine. So he called for an Irgapyrene tablet and took it with his coffee. But instead of getting better, his headache got worse, and, to top it all, he started feeling nauseous. So he left his friends and went home.

  From outside his house he could tell that his wife had gone to the Gomati River to celebrate Basant with the neighbouring ladies. He rushed noisily into the bedroom. He took off the turban and flung it on to the bed as hard as he could. When he looked at his face in the mirror, he saw that the coils of his constricted hair had formed a sort of a bun on the top of his head because of the twists of the turban; his eyes were squinty, the veins of his forehead were taut and he looked extremely exhausted. He went to the bathroom; he splashed his face with water; he smoothed his wet hand over his hair and combed it; he folded his handkerchief and tied it like a bandage around his temples; he pushed the bedclothes and the turban on to his wife’s bed, next to his. Without changing out of his trousers, he crept under the quilt.

  Even though he had tied the handkerchief tightly over his temples, he did not feel any better. Bang-bang, bang-bang—someone was ceaselessly hitting his temples with a hammer. He felt incredibly suffocated. He got up and drank a glass of water and then stretched out across the bed again.

  After a little while he began to feel extremely hot. Still lying in bed, he took off his pants and threw them on top of the Basant turban and the bedding on the bed next to his. He felt like putting on his pajamas, but instead he just lay there in his underwear.

  He still did not feel any better. The rays of the setting sun fell on his eyes through a gap in the curtain that hung in the door across from his bed. He felt as if the sun’s rays were operating the hammer banging against his temples. He no longer had the strength to get up and fix the curtain. He turned over and began to moan softly with his face to the wall.

  ‘Oh my goodness! What’s wrong?’ shrieked his wife from the doorway when she saw him lying there, moaning.

  Mr Goyal didn’t turn over. He moaned.

  Mrs Goyal was wearing a gorgeous spring-yellow silk sari and a silk blouse of the same colour. She had wrapped
a beautifully embroidered yellow Aurangabadi shawl around her shoulders. There was a garland of yellow marigold flowers wound around her bun. Her face, which always looked yellow because she was sick all the time, was pink and glowing from holiday cheer—or else from walking outside in the sun. This was so even though she was wearing a spring-yellow sari, the colour of which usually reflected on to her yellow face, making it look even yellower. She threw her shawl to one side and sat down at the head of his bed. Smoothing her hand over her husband’s head, she asked him again:

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Mr Goyal turned over. ‘I have a terrible headache, my temples are bursting.’

  ‘You should take four Belladonna 30 tablets.’

  Mr Goyal wished he could guffaw loudly, but because of his headache, all he could do was smile. He said, ‘What’s your Belladonna going to do? I have already taken some Irgapyrene.’

  ‘Now how can I explain this to you?’ Mrs Goyal said, rubbing his forehead with her right hand. ‘I’ve seen Dr Avasthi cure the most extreme headaches with those pills.’

  ‘Oh my God, what does your Avasthi know about anything?’ asked Mr Goyal, pushing his wife’s hand away and pressing both his temples at once with his thumb and middle finger. ‘That clerk, who treats patients by examining their astrological charts …’

  ‘But I’ve been feeling better …’

  ‘But you start feeling better every time you change to a new doctor.’

  ‘Why do you always have to make fun of everything? Dr Avasthi is famous all over the city; are all his patients fools?’

  Mr Goyal fell silent. He considered it pointless to argue with her.

  His wife had an old intestinal complaint. She had already tried out almost all the doctors in the city and she had put her faith in every single one of them. Nowadays, she sang the praises of Dr Avasthi.