Greatest Short Stories Read online

  The faint disgust of the child’s unfulfilled desire had hardly been quelled in the heavy, pouting sob of a breath, ‘m-o-th-er,’ when the pleasure of what was before him filled his eager eye. They had left the dusty road on which they had walked so far. It wended its weary way circuitously to the north. They had come upon a footpath in a field.

  It was a flowering mustard field, pale like melting gold as it swept across miles and miles of even land — a river of yellow liquid light, ebbing and falling with each fresh eddy of wild wind, and straying in places into broad rich tributary streams, yet running in a constant sunny sweep towards the distant mirage of an ocean of silver light. Where it ended, on one side stood a cluster of low mud-walled houses, thrown into relief by a dense crowd of yellow-robed men and women from which arose a high-pitched sequence of whistling, creaking, squeaking, roaring, humming noises, sweeping across the groves to the blue-throated sky like the weird, strange sound of Siva’s mad laughter.

  The child looked up to his father and mother, saturated with the shrill joy and wonder of this vast glory, and feeling that they, too, wore the evidence of this pure delight in their faces, he left the footpath and plunged headlong into the field, prancing like a young colt, his small feet timing with the fitful gusts of wind that came rich with the fragrance of more distant fields.

  A group of dragon-flies were bustling about on their gaudy purple wings, intercepting the flight of a lone black butterfly in search of sweetness from the flowers. The child followed them in the air with his gaze, till one of the them would fold its wings and rest, and he would try to catch it. But it would go fluttering, flapping, up into the air, when he had almost caught it in his hands. One bold black bee, having evaded capture, sought to tempt him by whining round his ear and nearly settled on his lips, when his mother gave a cautionary call: “Come, child, come, come on to the footpath.”

  He ran towards his parents gaily and walked abreast of them for a while, being, however, soon left behind, attracted by the little insects and worms along the footpath that were teeming out from their hiding-places to enjoy the sunshine.

  “Come, child, come,” his parents called from the shade of a grove where they had seated themselves on the edge of a well. He ran towards them.

  An old banyan tree outstretched its powerful arms over the blossoming jack and jaman and neem and champak and scrisha and cast its shadows across beds of golden cassis and crimson gulmohur as an old grandmother spreads her skirts over her young ones. But the blushing blossoms freely offered their adoration to the Sun in spite of their protecting chaperon, by half covering themselves, and the sweet perfume of their pollen mingled with the soft, cool breeze that came and went in little puffs, only to be wafted aloft by a stronger breeze.

  A shower of young flowers fell upon the child as he entered the grove and, forgetting his parents, he began to gather the raining petals in his hands. But lo! he heard the cooing of the doves and ran towards his parents, shouting: “the dove! The dove!” The raining petals dropped from his forgotten hands. A curious look was in his parents’ faces till a koel struck out a note of love and released their pent-up souls.

  “Come, child come!” they called to the child, who had now gone running in wild capers round the banyan tree, and gathering him up they took the narrow, winding footpath which led to the fair through the mustard fields.

  As they neared the village the child could see many other footpaths full of throngs, converging to the whirlpool of the fair, and felt at once repelled and fascinated by the confusion of the world he was entering.

  A sweetmeat seller hawked: ‘Gulab-jamun, rasgula, burfi, jalebi’, at the corner of the entrance, and a crowd pressed round his counter at the foot of an architecture of many-coloured sweets, decorated with leaves of silver and gold. The child stared open-eyed and his mouth watered for the burfi that was his favourite sweet. “I want that burfi,” he slowly murmured. But he half knew as he begged that his plea would not be heeded because his parents would say he was greedy. So without waiting for an answer he moved on.

  A flower-seller hawked: ‘A garland of gulmohur, a garland of gulmohur.’ The child seemed irresistibly drawn by the implacable sweetness of the scents that came floating on the wings of the languid air. He went towards the basket where the flowers were heaped and half murmured, “I want that garland.” But he well knew his parents would refuse to buy him those flowers because they would say they were cheap. So without waiting for an answer he moved on.

  A man stood holding a pole with yellow, red, green and purple balloons flying from it. The child was simply carried away by the rainbow glory of the silken colours and he was possessed by an overwhelming desire to possess them all. But he well knew his parents would never buy him the balloons because they would say he was too old to play with such toys. So he walked on farther.

  A snake-charmer stood playing a flute to a snake which coiled itself in a basket, its head raised in a graceful bend like the neck of a swan, while the music stole into its invisible ears like the gentle rippling of a miniature waterfall. The child went towards the snake-charmer. But knowing his parents had forbidden him to hear such coarse music as the snake-charmer played, he proceeded farther.

  There was a roundabout in full swing. Men, women and children, carried away in a whirling motion, shrieked and cried with his dizzy laughter. The child watched them intently going round and round, a pink blush of a smile on his face, his eyes rippling with the same movement, his lips parted in amazement, till he felt that he himself was being carried round. The ring seemed to go fiercely at first, then gradually it began to move less fast. Presently the child, rapt, finger in his mouth beheld it stop. This time, before his overpowering lover for the anticipated sensation of movement had been chilled by the thought of his parents’ eternal denial, he made a bold request: ‘I want to go on the roundabout, please, father, mother.’

  There was no reply. He turned to look at his parents. They were not there ahead of him. He turned to look on either side. They were not there. He looked behind. There was no sign of them.

  A full deep cry rose within his dry throat and with a sudden jerk of his body he ran from where he stood, crying in real fear, ‘Mother father!’ Tears rolled down from his eyes, hot and fierce; his flushed face was convulsed with fear. Panic-stricken, he ran to one side first, then to the other, hither and thither in all directions, knowing not where to go. “Mother, father!” he wailed with a moist, shrill breath now, his throat being wet with swallowing the spittle. His yellow turban untied and his clothes, wet with perspiration, became muddy where the dust had mixed with the sweat the dust had mixed with the sweat of his body. His light frame seemed heavy as a mass of lead.

  Having run to and fro in a rage of running for a while he stood defeated, his cries suppressed into sobs. At little distances on the green grass he could see, through his filmy eyes, men-and women talking. He tried to look intently among the patches of bright yellow clothes, but there was no sign of his father and mother among these people, who seemed to laugh and talk just for the sake of laughing and talking.

  He ran quickly again, this time to a shrine to which people seemed to be crowding. Every little inch of space here was congested with men but he ran through people’s legs, his little sob lingering “Mother, father!” Near the entrance to the temple, however, the crowd became very thick men jostled each other, heavy men, with flashing, murderous eyes and hefty shoulders. The poor child struggled to thrust a way between their feet but, knocked to and fro by their brutal movements, he might have been trampled underfoot had he not shrieked at the highest pitch of this voice: “Father, mother!” A man in the surging crowd heard his cry and, stooping with very great difficulty, lifted him up in his arms.

  “How did you get here, child? whose baby are you?” the man asked as he steered clear of the mass. The child wept more bitterly then ever now and only cried: “I want my mother, I want my father!”

  The man tried to soothe him by taking him to the ro
undabout. “Will you have a ride on the horse?” he gently asked as he approached the ring. The child’s throat tore into a thousand shrill sobs and he only shouted: “I want my mother, I want my father!”

  The man headed towards the place where the snake-charmer still played on the flute to the swaying cobra. “Listen to that nice music, child” he pleaded. But the child shut his ears with his fingers and shouted his double-pitched strain: “I want my mother, I want my father!” The man took him near the balloons, thinking the bright colours of the balloons would distract the child’s attention and quieten him. “Would you like a rainbow-coloured balloon?” he persuasively asked. The child turned his eyes from the flying balloons and just sobbed: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

  The man, still importunate in his kindly desire to make the child happy, bore him to the gate where the flower-seller sat. “Look! can you smell those nice flowers, child? Would you like a garland to put round your neck?” The child turned his nose away from the basket and reiterated his sob: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

  Thinking to humour his disconsolate charge by a gift of sweets, the man took him to the counter of sweet shop. “What sweets would you like, child?” he asked. The child turned his face from the sweet shop and only sobbed: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

  * From The Lost Child and Other Stories.

  2

  Lullaby*

  ‘SLEEP

  Oh sleep

  My baby, sleep,

  Oh, do not weep,

  sleep

  Like a fairy…’

  sang Phalini as she rocked her little one-year old Suraj Mukhi in her lap while she fed the machine with handfuls of jute.

  Would he ever get to sleep?

  ‘sleep

  Oh, sleep

  My baby, sleep…’

  His flesh was so warm. She could feel the heat of his little limbs on her thighs, a burning heat which was mixed with a sour smell. He must be ill. All day he had not shut his eyes, all day he had sobbed and cried.

  The engine chuk-chuked; the leather belt khupp-khupped; the bolts jig-jigged; the plugs tik-tikked; the whole floor shook like the hard wooden seat of a railway train.

  And she had to go on feeding the gaping mouth of the machine. ‘Bap re bap, why is this bitch barking?’ the sharp-tongued women who sang folk-songs, and could brook no one else singing, called to the other women.

  ‘sleep,

  Oh, sleep…’

  Phalini felt her throat growing hoarse with the jute fluff she had been swallowing since she had let the fold of the apron rag, with which she ordinarily padded her mouth and nose in the factory, fall loose. The fluff seemed to be everywhere — on the walls, over the machine, on her face. She could feel it streaming down her nose, her cheeks, to the silver ring round her neck which was green with sweat. She cast her eyes over her nose and felt how ugly it was as it stood out from her hollow cheeks. That is why she had pawned her big silver nose-ring which her mother-in-law had given her in the dowry, and refused to adorn her nostrils even though it was a bad omen to take off your jewellery.

  ‘Ooon…ooon…ooon,…’ Suraj Mukhi cried. The sharp, feeble cry stirred the black night of Phalini’s soul as the air stirs the water but the child’s voice was drowned in the dithyrambic hum of the preparing-shed in the factory.

  ‘sleep

  Oh, sleep

  My baby, sleep,

  Oh, do not weep,

  Sleep,’

  she sang, bending over the child’s head till she almost touched the feverish brow and kissed the close-fisted hands which Suraj Mukhi was rubbing on his eyes even as he cried. And then she threw another handful of jute into the jaws of the monster.

  Her own voice sounded to her like the whisper of a broken reed, completely out of tune today, as it had seldom been out of tune when she sang the work song:

  ‘Roller Roll

  Spread jute

  Open mouth,

  Rise jute

  Fall seeds,

  Work into cloth.’

  Her big troubled eyes roved away from the child to the gaping mouth of the machine, beyond the black, greasy bolts and knobs and pistons, above the fumes of the thick, sickly, tasteless air in the shed.

  The engine chuk-chuked; the leather belt khupp-khupped; the bolts jig-jigged; the plugs tik-tikked; the whole floor shook like the hard wooden seat of a railway train.

  She felt giddy.

  She had felt like that five months before she had given birth to a child: and oily taste in the mouth with a bile under the tongue that seemed to go quivering into the swollen pitcher of her belly and bring the entrails up to her throat. But the quickening under her navel and the memory of her lover’s face seemed to offset the nausea. She tried to think of him now, as he had looked when he first came down from the Northern hills.

  The wild, waspish boy with large brown eyes which had flashed when he had talked to her husband, Kirodhar, but which were so shy when he looked at her. Suraj Mukhi’s eyes were like his. Also Suraj Mukhi’s limbs smelt like his. But he would never know that he was the father of her child. Why, he was a child himself. He had come like lightening and gone like the thunder of the Northern hills…

  Where had he gone, she wondered. Had he only come to give her the pang of parting? Where had he gone? It was now summer again and he was here last summer. For days she had scanned the horizon of the sky above the city, towards the north in the direction where he had gone. But he didn’t seem to be any where” in the large breathless space. Only Suraj Mukhi lay in her arms. And the sun, after which she had named the child, stood high. And the tears rolled down her scalded face to her chin, across her cheeks, before she realised that she was weeping… Oh, where was he, the gay child, her lover, her baby, so simple, so stubborn, so strong?

  ‘And I shall grow old and grief, not Kirodhar, shall be my Lord…’

  ‘Oom…Ooom…’ the child moaned.

  The engine chuk-chuked; the leather belt khupp-khupped; the bolts jig-jigged; the plugs tik-tikked; the whole floor shook like the hard wooden seat of a railway train. And ‘she had to go on feeding the mouth of the machine.

  ‘Bap, re bap, what is the matter with the brat?

  Can’t you keep him quiet? said the women next to her.

  Phalini saw him as she had seen him in a dream one day, standing by her side, smiling to her so that she had wanted to clasp him close to her breast. But she had stretched her arms towards him, she had suddenly wakened and found herself groping in the dark towards Kirodhar, who had thought she wanted him and had taken her. He must be somewhere in the far-off-hills, doing what? Wandering perhaps, happy and free, while she was caged here with her child.

  She bent down to look at the child. His eyes were open, his face was still, he cried no more. That was good, she could feed the machine with more jute.

  ‘Sleep

  Oh, sleep

  My baby, sleep…’

  she sang, and she smiled at him and rocked him again. Suraj Mukhi’s eyes just stared at her; rigid and hard his little hand lay on the side.

  She swayed on her haunches and left the jute. The effigy lay still.

  Dead.

  She gave a long, piercing shriek which tore through the ceiling.

  She slapped her cheeks and beat her palms on her breast, crying in a weird, hollow voice: ‘Hai, hai.’

  ‘Bap re bap, why is she crying, this bitch? What is the matter with her? Said the woman next to her.

  ‘My child, my child, my child…’ Phalini cried, crazed and agonized as she tore her hair.

  The women crowded round her.

  ‘What is the matter?’ the forewoman called. ‘Why are you bitches running amok?’

  The engine chuk-chucked; the leather belt khupp-khupped; the bolts jig-jigged; the plugs tik-tikked; the whole floor shook like the hard wooden seat of a railway train…

  * From The Barber's Trade Union and Other Stories.

  3

  Birth*r />
  The Earth seemed to groan as Parvati heaved away from the busti in the hollow of the hills and her throat tightened in the breathless dark. The kikar trees on the road loomed like Jinns before her eyes, while the tremors in her belly drugged her with a dull pain as sweet as the scent of the Queen-of-the Night. Her father-in-law, who had been keeping at a respectable distance from her, was almost lost to view, except that she could hear his short, angry voice, now and then, beckoning her to hurry. And, in order to assure him that she was following, as also to assure herself against the frightening trees, she answered that she was following. But her feet were getting heavier and heavier this morning while her torso, in spite of the bundle on her head, pushed forward like the prow of a stately ship.

  As she had started off in the early hours of the morning from the cluster of huts near Karole Bagh towards Ridge Road, where her husband had already gone to work, road mending, she had felt the child stirring in her belly. Perhaps it was turning over to take another, more comfortable position as he had seemed to be doing all night. And she had put her hand on her belly ever so tenderly, as though to reassure the babe. And she had smiled the slightest wisp of a smile to think of what Ramu had done during the night and throughout the middle months of her pregnancy whenever she told him that the baby was stirring in her: he had put his ears on her stomach and listened and, then playfully tapping with his fingers, he would intone a crazy, humorous sing-song:

  Patience, son, patience,

  You must learn to be patient,

  You must learn to cultivate the long-breasted-sense of your ancestors.

  Now as she felt another stirring in her belly she superstitiously thought that it was probably Ramu’s tricks which were responsible for the disturbance in her womb. For, not only had her husband been teasing her all the way form Ambala in the train, but he had had her until only a month ago in spurts of wild desire while her father-in-law was asleep in the hut.