Seven Summers Read online

  ‘Walk quickly, you swine!’ shouted Ganesh, turning back from a mound a hundred yards ahead. ‘Don’t you know that we will be flogged for being late?’

  ‘Leave the sala behind,’ said Ali, indulging in an abuse which, because I had no sister on whose marriage to him I should be placed in the awkward position of being a brother-in-law, did not trouble me except that it was just the abuse that I resented.

  I hurried a little. But I soon subsided into a tortoise speed, my body sagging as the sand, the stones, the railway bridge over which the trains were said to pass from Nowshera station to Peshawar, the thorny berry trees and bushes swept by before my eyes in phantasmal flowings, without troubling my thought.

  As they got near the new brick-built flat-roofed building by the firewood stall, which had been pointed out to me as the school by my father once or twice while I was borne in an orderly’s arms to the Nowshera Sadar Bazaar, they seemed to get into a panic. For the school compound was still and empty, and from this they knew that the bell had struck and they were late.

  I followed, unafraid.

  Ali hurried away as if in fear of his life.

  Ganesh kept turning back to see how far I had lagged behind. He had to wait because he had to get me formally admitted to the school.

  ‘Come, little brother, hurry,’ he called coaxingly.

  I knew that he was kinder now because he had this business of the admission to negotiate on my account, and since he would have to present my father’s note to the Headmaster, that would give him an excuse to put before his own master if he were threatened with a flogging for being late. After all I was no encumbrance but a help.

  ‘Why did you leave me behind?’ I said as I came up to him. And I made as if to go on strike.

  ‘Come, come, are you not my little brother?’ he appealed, offering me his little finger to hold.

  But I was too spoiled and pampered at home and felt independent of him now that I had got to school, especially because I had my father’s note to the Headmaster in my pocket.

  ‘Ohe, forgive me,’ said Ganesh, abjectly joining his hands.

  At that I let him guide me to the chaprasi outside the Headmaster’s office.

  Bude Khan, the old, scarlet-coated chaprasi of the Government Primary School, took the note which my father had written and crept silently on his bare feet into the office where Abdul Gafar Khan, the Headmaster, could be seen seated on a high chair behind a writing table.

  In a while he came back and beckoned us to follow him.

  Ganesh seemed frightened as he saluted the Headmaster in the military fashion which he had learnt from seeing the sepoys salute their officers. I was too interested in the map of Hindustan which hung on the wall to be dutiful.

  ‘Say Salaam to the Headmaster Sahib,’ Ganesh whispered, nudging me with his bony elbow as was his wont.

  ‘Salaam Masterji,’ I blurted out just as the Headmaster became absorbed in the letter which the chaprasi had handed him.

  ‘Salaam,’ he said genially as he twirled his fine moustache. He was a tall, imposing, dignified Pathan, pleasant-looking, though stiff and unapproachable with the pomp of the peacock-crested lungi on his head, his well-starched trousers and shirt and the English style jacket he wore.

  But I was not afraid of him and fearlessly scanned the picture of the Viceroy of India inset in a calendar which hung on the wall behind the Headmaster’s chair.

  ‘Take the little boy to Master Din Gul,’ said the Headmaster to the chaprasi, ‘and tell him to put his name down on the register.’ Then he turned to Ganesh and said, ‘Come here at recess time, Nadé, and take my reply to the Babu Sahib.’

  Ganesh nodded respectfully, salaamed again, military fashion, which irritated me, and turned to follow the chaprasi.

  The Headmaster came to the door and, bending over me, pulled my cheek and said, ‘You are not as respectful to your elders as your brother is, are you? I shall tell your father!’

  I knew that Abdul Gafar Khan knew my father, as they both belonged to the small fraternity of literate men in the town of Nowshera. I felt very proud at this peculiar mark of favour which he had done me and, smiling, ran to catch up the chaprasi.

  Ganesh lingered ostentatiously outside the door of the second primary class and purposely asked me if I would be all right, so that his teacher might see him engaged on an important errand and exonerate him from all blame, not only for being late but for any mistakes which he might commit during the day.

  The chaprasi took me into the room of the first primary class, but the master, Din Gul, was engaged in caning Ali and some other boys for being late.

  Din Gul was a ferocious looking Afridi, shaven-headed except for two curly whiskers, eagle-eyed though not hawk-nosed like most of his tribe, and clad in a tunic of rough homespun cloth and a pair of salwars of the same material. His thick cow-hide shoes, with turned up noses and with crude steel nails on their soles, were lying by the side of a small blue carpet where he sat, wrapped in a blanket of coarse sheep wool, wielding the rough branch of a tree for a cane, and striking the boys before him mercilessly on their palms.

  A sudden terror gripped me as I stood in the tense silence of the room watching the boys being beaten. It was Ali’s turn to be flogged next, and the poor, thin boy with the fox-like face stood, his arms crossed, pressing his hands under his armpits, weeping out of sheer fear, long before the cane approached him.

  ‘Show your hands, son of a dog!’ the master shouted.

  ‘O spare me, spare me, Masterji, forgive me, I will never do it again!’ Ali cried, pressing his hands deep into his sides and trying to contract his body so that by some miracle he might become invisible.

  ‘Show your hands, illegally begotten,’ insisted Din Gul.

  But the boy retreated out of fear.

  Upon this the master jumped out of the folds of his blanket and struck the retreating Ali, right and left, on his biceps, on his triceps, on his hips, shins and shoulders, in fact, wherever he could, shouting the while, ‘Show me your hands, son of an ass!’

  The boy was persuaded to show the tips of his fingers, but the fear of the hard, cruel blows made him withdraw involuntarily. This made Din Gul strike him the harder and the more cruelly. At length he forcibly pulled out the boy’s palms, one by one, and, holding them by the tips of the fingers, he struck sharp, clear blows on them.

  ‘Go now and prepare your lessons!’ he roared.

  The boy turned towards his seat, his hands pressed deeper into his armpits, his face writhing with pain and twisted into an ugly, jackal-like expression, but strangely enough there were no tears in his eyes.

  ‘Prepare to be examined in yesterday’s lesson!’ announced Din Gul to the class which sat lined against the four walls of the room on the bare earth.

  Then he turned round to the chaprasi and me.

  The chaprasi conveyed the Headmaster’s message to the master Din Gul and went away.

  ‘Sit down here!’ shouted the master to me, pointing to a place immediately on his right. Then he took a green register which lay before him and, taking a reed pen from the socket of a grimy papier maché pen box, he turned sharply towards me and asked, ‘What is your name, ohe Nadé?’

  ‘Krishan Chander,’ I answered.

  Din Gul put the name down in the register.

  ‘Where is your satchel?’ he then asked. ‘Your primer? I want to see if you are fit to join the school so late in the session.’

  ‘I haven’t got a primer yet, Masterji,’ I answered. ‘My Babuji said that he would buy me one this week. But I learnt the lesson on my brother’s old primer which is torn.’

  ‘Tell your Babuji to buy you a new primer tomorrow, or I shall thrash you,’ said Din Gul. ‘Now, look into your neighbour’s book and get ready for the examination.’

  The boys had begun to recite yesterday’s lesson at the master’s bidding, but had now languished, their minds wandering into the kindergarten designs, maps, pictures of rabbits, rats, cats, do
gs, horses, cocks and other educational charts which hung on the walls. The master lifted his cane and struck it a rap on the mat beyond his durree, and stirred some dust into the air. Almost automatically the boys began to sway their heads up and down, reciting their lessons to themselves at the top of their voices. This constituted the real test of our attention. Meanwhile, Din Gul began to write something.

  Only a moment had passed since his vigilant eye was withdrawn from the class, however, when the heads of the boys gradually ceased to sway and the noise of the recitation died down into the broken stillness of inattention. Snap went the master’s rod on the mat again, raising a big cloud of dust. The babble of the children’s tongues began anew.

  But the master had not settled down to his writing long, when a sudden shriek arose from the farthest corner of the room.

  I looked up and saw two big boys fighting each other like goats with their heads.

  The master rushed to the corner on bare feet, cane in hand, and, catching hold of the two offenders from the backs of their necks, dragged them out into the open space before him.

  ‘Hold your ears, donkeys!’ he shouted, with bloodshot eyes.

  Stooping, each boy passed his arms from behind his legs and caught his ears with his hands. They had to sit, adjusting themselves like that over feet which would slip if the body were either top-heavy or bottom-heavy. The blood soon rushed to their faces and the strain of the uncomfortable position swelled the veins on their foreheads and brought perspiration trickling down their faces. From their respective places a yard apart, they, who had been enemies in a quarrel a moment ago, now joined in a sort of friendship and sympathy with each other.

  ‘Close your books, all of you misbegotten!’ shouted the master. ‘And, you, Dost Muhammad, get up, you son of a Khan, and recite yesterday’s lesson. Look sharp because your Tehsildar-father won’t help you to escape my rod if you can’t.’

  The boy at the head of the line got up. His face turned suddenly pale and he repeated aloud the first line of the poem. But the second line eluded the grasp of his memory, overshadowed by the impending descent of the rod. And because cramming with swaying heads was a surface operation, there was nothing of the subsequent verses in the layers of his mind which could be evoked through the racking of his brain.

  ‘Come out and hold your ears, seed of a donkey,’ said the master, Din Gul, coolly. And then he vigorously signed to the next boy to begin.

  Dost Muhammad, a tall, well-dressed chap, came like a calf and held his ears near the two stalwarts who were being punished for fighting like goats.

  The next boy got up and stood dumb, open-eyed, struggling to stammer, but incapable even of reciting the first line. He had apparently never attended to the lessons at all. After a few moments’ effort he gave up the attempt and, as if to extenuate his guilt by voluntarily undergoing punishment, he walked up to the open space before Din Gul and held his ears.

  The next boy anticipated the master’s pointer and stood up. Then, as if under the spell of some demon, he recited three lines. But the fourth was not forthcoming. He too came and held his ears.

  And so the next, the next and the next, each boy reciting one or two lines, or at the most three, and then relapsing into silence. A stray boy with a keen memory succeeded in reciting nine lines of the poem, but none of the others ever touched that standard of excellence. Except for the boy who had recited nine lines, all came and held their ears. Those who had come to hold their ears before were, by now, quaking under the weight of their own buttocks and some were sobbing and crying, their tears mingling with their sweat.

  I sat pitying my classmates and almost on the verge of sympathetic tears, not because of sympathy for them so much as my fear of the master.

  ‘Come, you little lentil eater, son of Babuji,’ called the master suddenly and startled me while I contemplated the boy’s suffering in its possible relation to myself. ‘Recite the poem if you say you have done the lessons at home!’

  The words of that poem about mother and child had been constantly on my tongue since I first began to mimic Ganesh. Ever since I had read it in the primer with my father I had dinned it into everyone’s ears in season and out. And yet I was so dazed with terror that I could not utter a word.

  ‘Come and hold your ears, Babuji!’ ordered the master grimly.

  At that, as if inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, I said to the master that I knew it and struggled to start. Once I had got going, my words toppled over each other and I recited the poem in the sentimental lisping sing-song which too much fondness at home had encouraged in me, missing three lines which the master did not notice, and slurring over the pronunciation of words and phrases in my queer, hasty accent of those days.

  Master Din Gul motioned me to sit down. Himself, he got up and, picking up one of his steel-nailed, thick shoes went shouting among the ear-holders: ‘Up, up with your bottoms, up with your behinds, donkeys, seeds of dogs!’ And he went past the lines of boys, striking the backs of those who did not hold them up high enough with the sole of his cow-hide shoes.

  I had sat back with a half-smothered sigh of relief. For a moment I did not notice anything outside myself hypnotized as I was with the thrill of my success and grateful that the master had not noticed the lines which I had missed out in my recitation and which I now remembered. All the troubles, tribulations and sufferings of the morning had been washed clean out of my mind and I felt flooded with waves of enthusiasm and pride.

  ‘Come, little Hindu,’ called the master, interrupting my contemplation of my own importance and rudely dismembering me from the vague and beautiful realms of vainglory into which I had soared.

  I got up rather clumsily, frightened, wondering what new affliction was going to befall me.

  ‘Strike those boys five slaps each,’ came the announcement, accompanied by a general order for the boys: ‘Get up, and go to your seats, donkeys. This little lentil eater will shame you, so that you come better prepared with your lessons tomorrow.’

  I hesitated. I was half thrilled by the prospect of increasing my self-importance by slapping the boys and yet half afraid. I had never slapped anyone before, having instead always been slapped by Ganesh and sometimes by my mother if I was obstinate.

  ‘Go and slap them,’ urged the master.

  I approached Dost Muhammad, but could not screw up courage to slap the boy. I looked this side and that with a tremor on my lips.

  ‘Strike!’ roared Din Gul.

  I struck the first boy’s face, one, two, three, four slaps with my palm and moved hurriedly on.

  ‘Five,’ shouted the master. ‘Don’t you know how to count or must I teach you!’

  I returned and struck Dost Muhammad one more slap. Then I went to the next boy and struck him five slaps, and the next boy, who happened to be Ali, as the boys were ranged in the classroom according to size.

  ‘Strike slowly,’ Ali whispered, looking at me, half appealingly, half challengingly.

  I struck him four easy blows and one which, even against my will, fell on Ali’s eye. Then I went on to the next boy and gave him five slaps. But by this time my hand was tired and I merely brushed the faces of the boys with my palms.

  ‘Let go! Come here!’ called the master suddenly.

  I returned to the master thinking that I was being relieved of this duty.

  But Master Din Gul had other thoughts. ‘Shap, shap,’ he struck me two smart slaps on my cheeks, saying, ‘Let me teach you how to strike hard, hard.’

  I shrieked aloud and fell tottering at the master’s feet. A river of tears flowed down my face, smarting where the five fingers of the master had imprinted themselves on my cheek, my blood boiling with anger and fear and resentment and pain.

  ‘Hai Ma! Hai my mother!’ I shrieked as I lay in a heap, so loudly that even the master, Din Gul, seemed embarrassed. For he picked me up by the ears and pushed me back to my place, saying, ‘All right, your mother has not died!’

  Then he
got up and struck the boys who had not received their share of the slaps. The whole room was soon full of sobs and tears and howls.

  ‘Stop weeping, or I shall give you three stripes each of the cane,’ the master threatened. ‘And get ready to take today’s lesson.’

  When the school bell rang that day, the boys seemed in a hurry to leave the classroom. There was no question, of course, of their leaving before Din Gul was out of sight. But they lost no time in flying to the door as soon as he showed his back.

  I waited for Ganesh to come and fetch me as I came to the door.

  ‘Come, salé, lentil eater, come!’ Ali greeted me from the verandah where he stood with Dost Muhammad and a group of other big boys. ‘You come out of the school compound and I shall show you what it is to slap your classmates.’

  I was frightened out of my wits at this sudden challenge and ran back to wait for my brother. But I could see Ali and his gang and I was in a panic. I felt trapped in the empty classroom by myself and I wished Ganesh would come. The fear of their words gripped me, fear and hatred for them all. What had I done to Ali that he was hovering there so menacingly? I slapped them at the master’s bidding and even got slapped myself for not hitting them hard enough. But I recollected that Ali had been hostile to me ever since my escapade with him in Mian Mir.

  ‘Ganesh will be here soon, though,’ I said to myself. ‘And he will protect me.’

  But it occurred to me that Ganesh was Ali’s friend. He had abused me that morning, as he was afraid of missing Ali’s company on the way to school.

  ‘If only I can get home I will teach him a lesson,’ I vowed. ‘I shall tell Baji that Ganesh abused me and that Ali wanted to beat me and I shall tell Baji about the master too. Han, I shall tell him about them all. And I shall not come to this school any longer if I am to be beaten every day …’

  Two little boys came to sympathize with me.

  ‘Come,’ one of them said, consoling me. ‘You come with us.’

  This, of course, started tears of self-pity in my eyes.