|
APPENDIX
A Later Version of Chapters I and II
CHAPTER I
It was the summer of the Bengali year 1176. The village of Podchinha lay oppressed under a tyrannous heat of the mid summer sun. The village was packed with houses, but people were nowhere to be seen. Rows of shops in the bazaar, rows of booths in the market place, hundreds of clay houses in every quarter with here and there high and low terraced mansions; but today all was silent. In the bazaar the shops were shut; the shopkeepers had fled, one knows not where. It was market-day, but the market was not in swing, — begging-day, but the beggars were not out. The weaver had stopped his loom and lay weeping to one side of his cottage; the trader had ceased to ply his trade and sat weeping with his infant child in his lap; the giver had ceased to give; the teacher had shut up his school; even the little children had no force or courage left to cry. No passers-by were to be seen in the highway, no bathers in the lake, no human figures at the house-doors; there was not a bird in the trees, not a cow in the pasture; only in the burning-ground the dog and the jackal were abroad. One huge building whose great fluted pillars could be seen from far off bore a brave appearance as of a mountain peak arising out of this wilderness of houses. But today its splendour was a void thing, its doors shut, its rooms empty of human concourse, all its voices hushed, entry difficult even to the breezes. In a room within this building there was darkness at midday and in the darkness like twin flowers blooming in the night a young couple, husband and wife, were sitting plunged in thought. And in front of them sat the spectre of Famine. The harvest of 1174 had not been good; so in 1175 rice was dear and the people suffered, but the Government exacted the taxes to the last fraction of a farthing. The poor paid and
Page – 519 ate only once a day. But in 1175 there was good rain and the people thought that Heaven had taken pity on them. The herds man began again to sing in his gladness in the meadow, and the peasant’s wife to tease her husband for a silver armlet. But suddenly in the month of Aswin Heaven turned away its face. Not a drop of rain fell through all Aswin and Kartik. In the fields the stalks dried up and became mere straw and wherever a field or two had borne its crop the officials bought it up for the troops. The people had nothing to eat. At first they fasted at one of their two meal-times, then they began to eat one half meal a day, then to fast both morning & evening. Whatever little crop there was in the month of Chaitra never reached their mouths. But Mahomed Reza Khan, who controlled the collection of the Revenues and thought that he could now show himself a very Sarafraz, increased at one leap the taxes by ten percent. Throughout Bengal a great noise of weeping arose. People first took to begging, but soon there was no one to give alms. They began to fast; disease attacked them. They sold their cows, they sold plough and tool, they sold their seed, sold their houses, sold their plots of land. Then they began to sell their girls, then their boys, then their wives. In the end there was no one to buy wife, boy or girl. All were sellers; buyer there was none. For want of other food, men began to eat the leaves of trees, to eat grass, to eat weeds. The low classes & the wild people devoured dogs, rats and cats. Many fled the country. Those who fled perished of starvation in other lands; those who remained living upon uneatable things or not eating at all, began to fall ill and die of various maladies. Disease had its high day; fever, cholera, consumption, small pox raged. Small-pox was especially prevalent; there were deaths in almost every house. No one would give water to the sick, no one would touch, no one would treat the disease or tend the sufferer; when he died there was no one to dispose of the corpse; the bodies of the beautiful lay rotting uncared-for in their terraced mansions. For into whatever house the small-pox made its entry the inhabitants fled from it in terror abandoning the sick to their fate.
Page – 520 Mahendra Singh was one of the richest men in the village of Podchinha, but today rich and poor were on one & the same level. In this time of misery and disease his relatives and dependants, his serving-men, his serving-women, all were gone. Some had perished, others had fled. In all that populous household there was now left only his wife and himself and an infant daughter. It was they who were sitting in the darkened chamber. The wife Kalyani rose from her reflections, went into the cowshed and herself milked the cow. Then she warmed the milk, gave her child to drink and went again to give grass & water to the cow. When she came back, Mahendra said, “How long can this go on?” She answered “Not long, but let us continue as long as we can. Till then I will manage to keep things going; afterwards do you take the child to the town.” “If we must go in the end, why should I put you through all this trouble? Let us rather go now.” The two debated the question for a long time. Kalyani asked, “Is there anything really to be gained by going?” “Who knows? Perhaps the town is as solitary as this village and as empty of all means of subsistence.” “If we go to Murshidabad, Cassimbazaar or Calcutta, we may live. No, there is every reason why we should leave this place.” Mahendra replied, “This house has long been full of the stored up wealth of generations. All will be plundered by thieves.” “If they came to plunder now, could we two prevent them? Unless we live, who will there be to make use of this wealth? Come, let us at once shut up everything and go. If we live, then we can return and again enjoy life and riches.” Mahendra asked her, “Will you be able to walk all that way? The palanquin bearers are dead; where there are bullocks, there is no cartman; where there is a cartman, bullocks are not to be had.” “That need not trouble you; I shall walk.”
Page – 521 In her heart she had resolved that if need be, she would fall down and die by the wayside, but these two must live. Next day at dawn they took some money with them, locked all the doors, loosed the cows, took their child in their arms and started for the capital. At the time of starting Mahendra said “It is a difficult road and at every step of it robbers are wandering in search of their prey; it is well to go armed.” He returned into the house and came back with gun, powder and bullets. Kalyani, when she saw the gun, said to her husband, “Since you have thought of it, take Sukumari for a moment. I too will have a weapon with me.” With this she put her daughter into Mahendra’s arms and entered the house, Mahendra calling after her in surprise, “Why, what weapon can you carry?” It was a little box of poison that Kalyani hid in her dress as she came. She had been provided for some time with this arm against any ill fate that might befall her in these days of adversity. It was the month of Jyestha, and the heat was fierce & pitiless; the earth burned as with fire, the wind scattered its flaming breath, the sky was like a canopy of heated bronze, the dust of the road like sparks of flame. Kalyani began to perspire and walked on with difficulty and suffering; she sat down some times under a babul tree, sometimes in the shade of a date palm, sometimes she drank the muddy water of a dried-up pond. Mahendra carried the child in his arms and fanned it from time to time. Once they rested in the shade of a creeper-hung tree richly coloured with dark green leaves and fragrant with sweet-scented flowers. Mahendra wondered at Kalyani’s power of endurance. He wet his robe and sprinkled water from a neighbouring pool on his own & Kalyani’s face, feet and forehead. Kalyani was a little refreshed, but both husband & wife were tortured with hunger. Their own hunger could be borne, but not the hunger & thirst of their child, so they began again to travel forward and making their way through the waves of fire arrived before evening at a hamlet. Mahendra was full of hope, for he expected that here he would find cool water to unparch the throats of his wife and daughter and food to sustain their
Page – 522 lives. But no, there was not a man in the place. Large houses lay empty; all the inhabitants had fled. After searching here & there for a while Mahendra made his wife and child lie down in a room while he himself went out and began to call loudly. There was no answer. Then he said to Kalyani, “Be brave and remain here alone by yourself, I will go and if there is a cow in the place, if Srikrishna takes compassion on us, bring some milk for us to drink.” So saying, he took up an earthen water-pot in his hand, — there were a great many lying there, — and sallied out.
CHAPTER II
When Mahendra had gone, Kalyani, left alone with her little girl, in that solitary place, in that gloomy cottage, began to gaze around her and a growing terror took hold of her mind. No one anywhere, no human sound, only the cry of the dog & the jackal. She began to think, “Why did I let him go, we might have well borne the pangs of hunger and thirst a little longer.” Then she thought to rise & shut all the doors, but not a single doorway had shutter or bar. As she was thus gazing fearfully around her, she saw something like a shadow in the doorway opposite. It looked like a man’s form but hardly seemed to be human. Yet it was something like a man, withered, wasted, black, terrible that had come & stood in the doorway. A little while and the shadow seemed to raise an arm; a very long withered arm, all skin and bone, appeared to be beckoning to someone with its long withered fingers. Kalyani’s heart in her dried up with fear. Then another such shadow, withered, black, tall, naked came and stood beside the first. Then another and another joined them, how many others. Slowly, silently they began to enter the room, the gloom-haunted cottage grew terrible as a midnight burning-ground. Those corpse-like phantom-like figures entered & stood in a circle round Kalyani and she half-swooned with her terror. Then the black emaciated men seized & lifted up the woman and her child and took them up out of the house, across the open fields into the thickness of a wood.
Page – 523 A few moments afterwards Mahendra returned carrying milk in the water-pot. He saw no one in the cottage; he searched here & there, he called first his daughter, & at last his wife by name, but he received no answer, found no trace.
Page – 524 |