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Chapter Five
Nikhil's Story
EVERYTHING is rippling and waving with the flood of August. The
young shoots of rice have the sheen of an infant's limbs. The
water has invaded the garden next to our house. The morning
light, like the love of the blue sky, is lavished upon the earth
... Why cannot I sing? The water of the distant river is
shimmering with light; the leaves are glistening; the rice-
fields, with their fitful shivers, break into gleams of gold; and
in this symphony of Autumn, only I remain voiceless. The
sunshine of the world strikes my heart, but is not reflected
back.
When I realize the lack of expressiveness in myself, I know why I
am deprived. Who could bear my company day and night without a
break? Bimala is full of the energy of life, and so she has
never become stale to me for a moment, in all these nine years of
our wedded life.
My life has only its dumb depths; but no murmuring rush. I can
only receive: not impart movement. And therefore my company is
like fasting. I recognize clearly today that Bimala has been
languishing because of a famine of companionship.
Then whom shall I blame? Like Vidyapati I can only lament:
/*
It is August, the sky breaks into a passionate rain;
Alas, empty is my house.
*/
My house, I now see, was built to remain empty, because its doors
cannot open. But I never knew till now that its divinity had
been sitting outside. I had fondly believed that she had
accepted my sacrifice, and granted in return her boon. But,
alas, my house has all along been empty.
Every year, about this time, it was our practice to go in a
house-boat over the broads of Samalda. I used to tell Bimala
that a song must come back to its refrain over and over again.
The original refrain of every song is in Nature, where the rain-
laden wind passes over the rippling stream, where the green
earth, drawing its shadow-veil over its face, keeps its ear close
to the speaking water. There, at the beginning of time, a man
and a woman first met--not within walls. And therefore we two
must come back to Nature, at least once a year, to tune our love
anew to the first pure note of the meeting of hearts.
The first two anniversaries of our married life I spent in
Calcutta, where I went through my examinations. But from the
next year onwards, for seven years without a break, we have
celebrated our union among the blossoming water-lilies. Now
begins the next octave of my life.
It was difficult for me to ignore the fact that the same month of
August had come round again this year. Does Bimala remember it,
I wonder?--she has given me no reminder. Everything is mute
about me.
/*
It is August, the sky breaks into a passionate rain;
Alas, empty is my house.
*/
The house which becomes empty through the parting of lovers,
still has music left in the heart of its emptiness. But the
house that is empty because hearts are asunder, is awful in its
silence. Even the cry of pain is out of place there.
This cry of pain must be silenced in me. So long as I continue
to suffer, Bimala will never have true freedom. I must free her
completely, otherwise I shall never gain my freedom from untruth
...
I think I have come to the verge of understanding one thing. Man
has so fanned the flame of the loves of men and women, as to make
it overpass its rightful domain, and now, even in the name of
humanity itself, he cannot bring it back under control. Man's
worship has idolized his passion. But there must be no more
human sacrifices at its shrine ...
I went into my bedroom this morning, to fetch a book. It is long
since I have been there in the day-time. A pang passed through
me as I looked round it today, in the morning light. On the
clothes rack was hanging a __sari__ of Bimala's, crinkled
ready for wear. On the dressing-table were her perfumes, her
comb, her hair-pins, and with them, still, her vermilion box!
Underneath were her tiny gold-embroidered slippers.
Once, in the old days, when Bimala had not yet overcome her
objections to shoes, I had got these out from Lucknow, to tempt
her. The first time she was ready to drop for very shame, to go
in them even from the room to the verandah. Since then she has
worn out many shoes, but has treasured up this pair. When first
showing her the slippers, I chaffed her over a curious practice
of hers; "I have caught you taking the dust of my feet, thinking
me asleep! These are the offerings of my worship to ward the
dust off the feet of my wakeful divinity." "You must not say
such things," she protested, "or I will never wear your shoes!"
This bedroom of mine--it has a subtle atmosphere which goes
straight to my heart. I was never aware, as I am today, how my
thirsting heart has been sending out its roots to cling round
each and every familiar object. The severing of the main root, I
see, is not enough to set life free. Even these little slippers
serve to hold one back.
My wandering eyes fall on the niche. My portrait there is
looking the same as ever, in spite of the flowers scattered round
it having been withered black! Of all the things in the room
their greeting strikes me as sincere. They are still here simply
because it was not felt worth while even to remove them. Never
mind; let me welcome truth, albeit in such sere and sorry garb,
and look forward to the time when I shall be able to do so
unmoved, as does my photograph.
As I stood there, Bimal came in from behind. I hastily turned my
eyes from the niche to the shelves as I muttered: "I came to get
Amiel's Journal." What need had Ito volunteer an explanation? I
felt like a wrong-doer, a trespasser, prying into a secret not
meant for me. I could not look Bimal in the face, but hurried
away.
V
I had just made the discovery that it was useless to keep up a
pretence of reading in my room outside, and also that it was
equally beyond me to busy myself attending to anything at all--so
that all the days of my future bid fair to congeal into one solid
mass and settle heavily on my breast for good--when Panchu, the
tenant of a neighbouring __zamindar__, came up to me with a
basketful of cocoa-nuts and greeted me with a profound obeisance.
"Well, Panchu," said I. "What is all this for?"
I had got to know Panchu through my master. He was extremely
poor, nor was I in a position to do anything for him; so I
supposed this present was intended to procure a tip to help the
poor fellow to make both ends meet. I took some money from my
purse and held it out towards him, but with folded hands he
protested: "I cannot take that, sir!"
"Why, what is the matter?"
"Let me make a clean breast of it, sir. Once, when I was hard
pressed, I stole some cocoa-nuts from the garden here. I am
getting old, and may die any day, so I have come to pay them
back."
Amiel's Journal could not have done me any good that day. But
these words of Panchu lightened my heart. There are more things
in life than the union or separation of man and woman. The great
world stretches far beyond, and one can truly measure one's joys
and sorrows when standing in its midst.
Panchu was devoted to my master. I know well enough how he
manages to eke out a livelihood. He is up before dawn every day,
and with a basket of __pan__ leaves, twists of tobacco,
coloured cotton yarn, little combs, looking-glasses, and other
trinkets beloved of the village women, he wades through the knee-
deep water of the marsh and goes over to the Namasudra quarters.
There he barters his goods for rice, which fetches him a little
more than their price in money. If he can get back soon enough
he goes out again, after a hurried meal, to the sweetmeat
seller's, where he assists in beating sugar for wafers. As soon
as he comes home he sits at his shell-bangle making, plodding on
often till midnight. All this cruel toil does not earn, for
himself and his family, a bare two meals a day during much more
than half the year. His method of eating is to begin with a good
filling draught of water, and his staple food is the cheapest
kind of seedy banana. And yet the family has to go with only one
meal a day for the rest of the year.
At one time I had an idea of making him a charity allowance,
"But," said my master, "your gift may destroy the man, it cannot
destroy the hardship of his lot. Mother Bengal has not only this
one Panchu. If the milk in her breasts has run dry, that cannot
be supplied from the outside."
These are thoughts which give one pause, and I decided to devote
myself to working it out. That very day I said to Bimal: "Let us
dedicate our lives to removing the root of this sorrow in our
country."
"You are my Prince Siddharta, [17] I see," she replied with a
smile. "But do not let the torrent of your feelings end by
sweeping me away also!"
"Siddharta took his vows alone. I want ours to be a joint
arrangement."
The idea passed away in talk. The fact is, Bimala is at heart
what is called a "lady". Though her own people are not well off,
she was born a Rani. She has no doubts in her mind that there is
a lower unit of measure for the trials and troubles of the "lower
classes". Want is, of course, a permanent feature of their
lives, but does not necessarily mean "want" to them. Their very
smallness protects them, as the banks protect the pool; by
widening bounds only the slime is exposed.
The real fact is that Bimala has only come into my home, not into
my life. I had magnified her so, leaving her such a large place,
that when I lost her, my whole way of life became narrow and
confined. I had thrust aside all other objects into a corner to
make room for Bimala--taken up as I was with decorating her and
dressing her and educating her and moving round her day and
night; forgetting how great is humanity and how nobly precious is
man's life. When the actualities of everyday things get the
better of the man, then is Truth lost sight of and freedom
missed. So painfully important did Bimala make the mere
actualities, that the truth remained concealed from me. That is
why I find no gap in my misery, and spread this minute point of
my emptiness over all the world. And so, for hours on this
Autumn morning, the refrain has been humming in my ears:
/*
It is the month of August, and the sky breaks into a passionate
rain;
Alas, my house is empty.
*/
------
17. The name by which Buddha was known when a Prince, before
renouncing the world.
Bimala's Story
XI
The change which had, in a moment, come over the mind of Bengal
was tremendous. It was as if the Ganges had touched the ashes of
the sixty thousand sons of Sagar [18] which no fire could
enkindle, no other water knead again into living clay. The ashes
of lifeless Bengal suddenly spoke up: "Here am I."
I have read somewhere that in ancient Greece a sculptor had the
good fortune to impart life to the image made by his own hand.
Even in that miracle, however, there was the process of form
preceding life. But where was the unity in this heap of barren
ashes? Had they been hard like stone, we might have had hopes of
some form emerging, even as Ahalya, though turned to stone, at
last won back her humanity. But these scattered ashes must have
dropped to the dust through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be
blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up,
but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to
Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and
proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very door: "Here I am."
How could we help thinking that it was all supernatural? This
moment of our history seemed to have dropped into our hand like a
jewel from the crown of some drunken god. It had no resemblance
to our past; and so we were led to hope that all our wants and
miseries would disappear by the spell of some magic charm, that
for us there was no longer any boundary line between the possible
and the impossible. Everything seemed to be saying to us: "It is
coming; it has come!"
Thus we came to cherish the belief that our history needed no
steed, but that like heaven's chariot it would move with its own
inherent power--At least no wages would have to be paid to the
charioteer; only his wine cup would have to be filled again and
again. And then in some impossible paradise the goal of our
hopes would be reached.
My husband was not altogether unmoved, but through all our
excitement it was the strain of sadness in him which deepened and
deepened. He seemed to have a vision of something beyond the
surging present.
I remember one day, in the course of the arguments he continually
had with Sandip, he said: "Good fortune comes to our gate and
announces itself, only to prove that we have not the power to
receive it--that we have not kept things ready to be able to
invite it into our house."
"No," was Sandip's answer. "You talk like an atheist because you
do not believe in our gods. To us it has been made quite visible
that the Goddess has come with her boon, yet you distrust the
obvious signs of her presence."
"It is because I strongly believe in my God," said my husband,
"that I feel so certain that our preparations for his worship are
lacking. God has power to give the boon, but we must have power
to accept it."
This kind of talk from my husband would only annoy me. I could
not keep from joining in: "You think this excitement is only a
fire of drunkenness, but does not drunkenness, up to a point,
give strength?"
"Yes," my husband replied. "It may give strength, but not
weapons."
"But strength is the gift of God," I went on. "Weapons can be
supplied by mere mechanics."
My husband smiled. "The mechanics will claim their wages before
they deliver their supplies," he said.
Sandip swelled his chest as he retorted: "Don't you trouble about
that. Their wages shall be paid."
"I shall bespeak the festive music when the payment has been
made, not before," my husband answered.
"You needn't imagine that we are depending on your bounty for the
music," said Sandip scornfully. "Our festival is above all money
payments."
And in his thick voice he began to sing:
/*
"My lover of the unpriced love, spurning payments,
Plays upon the simple pipe, bought for nothing,
Drawing my heart away."
*/
Then with a smile he turned to me and said: "If I sing, Queen
Bee, it is only to prove that when music comes into one's life,
the lack of a good voice is no matter. When we sing merely on
the strength of our tunefulness, the song is belittled. Now that
a full flood of music has swept over our country, let Nikhil
practise his scales, while we rouse the land with our cracked
voices:
/*
"My house cries to me: Why go out to lose your all?
My life says: All that you have, fling to the winds!
If we must lose our all, let us lose it: what is it worth after
all?
If I must court ruin, let me do it smilingly;
For my quest is the death-draught of immortality.
*/
"The truth is, Nikhil, that we have all lost our hearts. None
can hold us any longer within the bounds of the easily possible,
in our forward rush to the hopelessly impossible.
/*
"Those who would draw us back,
They know not the fearful joy of recklessness.
They know not that we have had our call
From the end of the crooked path.
All that is good and straight and trim--
Let it topple over in the dust."
*/
I thought that my husband was going to continue the discussion,
but he rose silently from his seat and left us.
The thing that was agitating me within was merely a variation of
the stormy passion outside, which swept the country from one end
to the other. The car of the wielder of my destiny was fast
approaching, and the sound of its wheels reverberated in my
being. I had a constant feeling that something extraordinary
might happen any moment, for which, however, the responsibility
would not be mine. Was I not removed from the plane in which
right and wrong, and the feelings of others, have to be
considered? Had I ever wanted this--had I ever been waiting or
hoping for any such thing? Look at my whole life and tell me
then, if I was in any way accountable.
Through all my past I had been consistent in my devotion--but
when at length it came to receiving the boon, a different god
appeared! And just as the awakened country, with its __Bande
Mataram__, thrills in salutation to the unrealized future
before it, so do all my veins and nerves send forth shocks of
welcome to the unthought-of, the unknown, the importunate
Stranger.
One night I left my bed and slipped out of my room on to the open
terrace. Beyond our garden wall are fields of ripening rice.
Through the gaps in the village groves to the North, glimpses of
the river are seen. The whole scene slept in the darkness like
the vague embryo of some future creation.
In that future I saw my country, a woman like myself, standing
expectant. She has been drawn forth from her home corner by the
sudden call of some Unknown. She has had no time to pause or
ponder, or to light herself a torch, as she rushes forward into
the darkness ahead. I know well how her very soul responds to
the distant flute-strains which call her; how her breast rises
and falls; how she feels she nears it, nay it is already hers, so
that it matters not even if she run blindfold. She is no mother.
There is no call to her of children in their hunger, no home to
be lighted of an evening, no household work to be done. So; she
hies to her tryst, for this is the land of the Vaishnava Poets.
She has left home, forgotten domestic duties; she has nothing but
an unfathomable yearning which hurries her on--by what road, to
what goal, she recks not.
I, also, am possessed of just such a yearning. I likewise have
lost my home and also lost my way. Both the end and the means
have become equally shadowy to me. There remain only the
yearning and the hurrying on. Ah! wretched wanderer through the
night, when the dawn reddens you will see no trace of a way to
return. But why return? Death will serve as well. If the Dark
which sounded the flute should lead to destruction, why trouble
about the hereafter? When I am merged in its blackness, neither
I, nor good and bad, nor laughter, nor tears, shall be any more!
------
18. The condition of the curse which had reduced them to ashes
was such that they could only be restored to life if the stream
of the Ganges was brought down to them. [Trans.].
XII
In Bengal the machinery of time being thus suddenly run at full
pressure, things which were difficult became easy, one following
soon after another. Nothing could be held back any more, even in
our corner of the country. In the beginning our district was
backward, for my husband was unwilling to put any compulsion on
the villagers. "Those who make sacrifices for their country's
sake are indeed her servants," he would say, "but those who
compel others to make them in her name are her enemies. They
would cut freedom at the root, to gain it at the top."
But when Sandip came and settled here, and his followers began to
move about the country, speaking in towns and market-places,
waves of excitement came rolling up to us as well. A band of
young fellows of the locality attached themselves to him, some
even who had been known as a disgrace to the village. But the
glow of their genuine enthusiasm lighted them up, within as well
as without. It became quite clear that when the pure breezes of
a great joy and hope sweep through the land, all dirt and decay
are cleansed away. It is hard, indeed, for men to be frank and
straight and healthy, when their country is in the throes of
dejection.
Then were all eyes turned on my husband, from whose estates alone
foreign sugar and salt and cloths had not been banished. Even
the estate officers began to feel awkward and ashamed over it.
And yet, some time ago, when my husband began to import country-
made articles into our village, he had been secretly and openly
twitted for his folly, by old and young alike. When
__Swadeshi__ had not yet become a boast, we had despised it
with all our hearts.
My husband still sharpens his Indian-made pencils with his
Indian-made knife, does his writing with reed pens, drinks his
water out of a bell-metal vessel, and works at night in the light
of an old-fashioned castor-oil lamp. But this dull, milk-and-
water __Swadeshi__ of his never appealed to us. Rather, we
had always felt ashamed of the inelegant, unfashionable furniture
of his reception-rooms, especially when he had the magistrate, or
any other European, as his guest.
My husband used to make light of my protests. "Why allow such
trifles to upset you?" he would say with a smile.
"They will think us barbarians, or at all events wanting in
refinement."
"If they do, I will pay them back by thinking that their
refinement does not go deeper than their white skins."
My husband had an ordinary brass pot on his writing-table which
he used as a flower-vase. It has often happened that, when I had
news of some European guest, I would steal into his room and put
in its place a crystal vase of European make. "Look here,
Bimala," he objected at length, "that brass pot is as unconscious
of itself as those blossoms are; but this thing protests its
purpose so loudly, it is only fit for artificial flowers."
The Bara Rani, alone, pandered to my husband's whims. Once she
comes panting to say: "Oh, brother, have you heard? Such lovely
Indian soaps have come out! My days of luxury are gone by;
still, if they contain no animal fat, I should like to try some."
This sort of thing makes my husband beam all over, and the house
is deluged with Indian scents and soaps. Soaps indeed! They are
more like lumps of caustic soda. And do I not know that what my
sister-in-law uses on herself are the European soaps of old,
while these are made over to the maids for washing clothes?
Another time it is: "Oh, brother dear, do get me some of these
new Indian pen-holders."
Her "brother" bubbles up as usual, and the Bara Rani's room
becomes littered with all kinds of awful sticks that go by the
name of __Swadeshi__ pen-holders. Not that it makes any
difference to her, for reading and writing are out of her line.
Still, in her writing-case, lies the selfsame ivory pen-holder,
the only one ever handled.
The fact is, all this was intended as a hit at me, because I
would not keep my husband company in his vagaries. It was no
good trying to show up my sister-in-law's insincerity; my
husband's face would set so hard, if I barely touched on it. One
only gets into trouble, trying to save such people from being
imposed upon!
The Bara Rani loves sewing. One day I could not help blurting
out: "What a humbug you are, sister! When your 'brother' is
present, your mouth waters at the very mention of __Swadeshi__
scissors, but it is the English-made article every time when you
work."
"What harm?" she replied. "Do you not see what pleasure it
gives him? We have grown up together in this house, since he was
a boy. I simply cannot bear, as you can, the sight of the smile
leaving his face. Poor dear, he has no amusement except this
playing at shop-keeping. You are his only dissipation, and you
will yet be his ruin!"
"Whatever you may say, it is not right to be double-faced," I
retorted.
My sister-in-law laughed out in my face. "Oh, our artless little
Chota Rani!--straight as a schoolmaster's rod, eh? But a woman
is not built that way. She is soft and supple, so that she may
bend without being crooked."
I could not forget those words: "You are his dissipation, and
will be his ruin!" Today I feel--if a man needs must have some
intoxicant, let it not be a woman.
XIII
Suksar, within our estates, is one of the biggest trade centres
in the district. On one side of a stretch of water there is held
a daily bazar; on the other, a weekly market. During the rains
when this piece of water gets connected with the river, and boats
can come through, great quantities of cotton yarns, and woollen
stuffs for the coming winter, are brought in for sale.
At the height of our enthusiasm, Sandip laid it down that all
foreign articles, together with the demon of foreign influence,
must be driven out of our territory.
"Of course!" said I, girding myself up for a fight.
"I have had words with Nikhil about it," said Sandip. "He tells
me, he does not mind speechifying, but he will not have
coercion."
"I will see to that," I said, with a proud sense of power. I
knew how deep was my husband's love for me. Had I been in my
senses I should have allowed myself to be torn to pieces rather
than assert my claim to that, at such a time. But Sandip had to
be impressed with the full strength of my __Shakti__.
Sandip had brought home to me, in his irresistible way, how the
cosmic Energy was revealed for each individual in the shape of
some special affinity. Vaishnava Philosophy, he said, speaks of
the __Shakti__ of Delight that dwells in the heart of
creation, ever attracting the heart of her Eternal Lover. Men
have a perpetual longing to bring out this __Shakti__ from the
hidden depths of their own nature, and those of us who succeed in
doing so at once clearly understand the meaning of the music
coming to us from the Dark. He broke out singing:
/*
"My flute, that was busy with its song,
Is silent now when we stand face to face.
My call went seeking you from sky to sky
When you lay hidden;
But now all my cry finds its smile
In the face of my beloved."
*/
Listening to his allegories, I had forgotten that I was plain and
simple Bimala. I was __Shakti__; also an embodiment of
Universal joy. Nothing could fetter me, nothing was impossible
for me; whatever I touched would gain new life. The world around
me was a fresh creation of mine; for behold, before my heart's
response had touched it, there had not been this wealth of gold
in the Autumn sky! And this hero, this true servant of the
country, this devotee of mine--this flaming intelligence, this
burning energy, this shining genius--him also was I creating from
moment to moment. Have I not seen how my presence pours fresh
life into him time after time?
The other day Sandip begged me to receive a young lad, Amulya, an
ardent disciple of his. In a moment I could see a new light
flash out from the boy's eyes, and knew that he, too, had a
vision of __Shakti__ manifest, that my creative force had
begun its work in his blood. "What sorcery is this of yours!"
exclaimed Sandip next day. "Amulya is a boy no longer, the wick
of his life is all ablaze. Who can hide your fire under your
home-roof? Every one of them must be touched up by it, sooner or
later, and when every lamp is alight what a grand carnival of a
__Dewali__ we shall have in the country!"
Blinded with the brilliance of my own glory I had decided to
grant my devotee this boon. I was overweeningly confident that
none could baulk me of what I really wanted. When I returned to
my room after my talk with Sandip, I loosed my hair and tied it
up over again. Miss Gilby had taught me a way of brushing it up
from the neck and piling it in a knot over my head. This style
was a favourite one with my husband. "It is a pity," he once
said, "that Providence should have chosen poor me, instead of
poet Kalidas, for revealing all the wonders of a woman's neck.
The poet would probably have likened it to a flower-stem; but I
feel it to be a torch, holding aloft the black flame of your
hair." With which he ... but why, oh why, do I go back to all
that?
I sent for my husband. In the old days I could contrive a
hundred and one excuses, good or bad, to get him to come to me.
Now that all this had stopped for days I had lost the art of
contriving.
Nikhil's Story
VI
Panchu's wife has just died of a lingering consumption. Panchu
must undergo a purification ceremony to cleanse himself of sin
and to propitiate his community. The community has calculated
and informed him that it will cost one hundred and twenty-three
rupees.
"How absurd!" I cried, highly indignant. "Don't submit to this,
Panchu. What can they do to you?"
Raising to me his patient eyes like those of a tired-out beast of
burden, he said: "There is my eldest girl, sir, she will have to
be married. And my poor wife's last rites have to be put
through."
"Even if the sin were yours, Panchu," I mused aloud, "you have
surely suffered enough for it already."
"That is so, sir," he naively assented. "I had to sell part of
my land and mortgage the rest to meet the doctor's bills. But
there is no escape from the offerings I have to make the
Brahmins."
What was the use of arguing? When will come the time, I
wondered, for the purification of the Brahmins themselves who can
accept such offerings?
After his wife's illness and funeral, Panchu, who had been
tottering on the brink of starvation, went altogether beyond his
depth. In a desperate attempt to gain consolation of some sort
he took to sitting at the feet of a wandering ascetic, and
succeeded in acquiring philosophy enough to forget that his
children went hungry. He kept himself steeped for a time in the
idea that the world is vanity, and if of pleasure it has none,
pain also is a delusion. Then, at last, one night he left his
little ones in their tumble-down hovel, and started off wandering
on his own account.
I knew nothing of this at the time, for just then a veritable
ocean-churning by gods and demons was going on in my mind. Nor
did my master tell me that he had taken Panchu's deserted
children under his own roof and was caring for them, though alone
in the house, with his school to attend to the whole day.
After a month Panchu came back, his ascetic fervour considerably
worn off. His eldest boy and girl nestled up to him, crying:
"Where have you been all this time, father?" His youngest boy
filled his lap; his second girl leant over his back with her arms
around his neck; and they all wept together. "O sir!" sobbed
Panchu, at length, to my master. "I have not the power to give
these little ones enough to eat--I am not free to run away from
them. What has been my sin that I should be scourged so, bound
hand and foot?"
In the meantime the thread of Panchu's little trade connections
had snapped and he found he could not resume them. He clung on
to the shelter of my master's roof, which had first received him
on his return, and said not a word of going back home. "Look
here, Panchu," my master was at last driven to say. "If you
don't take care of your cottage, it will tumble down altogether.
I will lend you some money with which you can do a bit of
peddling and return it me little by little."
Panchu was not excessively pleased--was there then no such thing
as charity on earth? And when my master asked him to write out a
receipt for the money, he felt that this favour, demanding a
return, was hardly worth having. My master, however, did not
care to make an outward gift which would leave an inward
obligation. To destroy self-respect is to destroy caste, was his
idea.
After signing the note, Panchu's obeisance to my master fell off
considerably in its reverence--the dust-taking was left out. It
made my master smile; he asked nothing better than that courtesy
should stoop less low. "Respect given and taken truly balances
the account between man and man," was the way he put it, "but
veneration is overpayment."
Panchu began to buy cloth at the market and peddle it about the
village. He did not get much of cash payment, it is true, but
what he could realize in kind, in the way of rice, jute, and
other field produce, went towards settlement of his account. In
two month's time he was able to pay back an instalment of my
master's debt, and with it there was a corresponding reduction in
the depth of his bow. He must have begun to feel that he had
been revering as a saint a mere man, who had not even risen
superior to the lure of lucre.
While Panchu was thus engaged, the full shock of the
__Swadeshi__ flood fell on him.
VII
It was vacation time, and many youths of our village and its
neighbourhood had come home from their schools and colleges.
They attached themselves to Sandip's leadership with enthusiasm,
and some, in their excess of zeal, gave up their studies
altogether. Many of the boys had been free pupils of my school
here, and some held college scholarships from me in Calcutta.
They came up in a body, and demanded that I should banish foreign
goods from my Suksar market.
I told them I could not do it.
They were sarcastic: "Why, Maharaja, will the loss be too much
for you?"
I took no notice of the insult in their tone, and was about to
reply that the loss would fall on the poor traders and their
customers, not on me, when my master, who was present,
interposed.
"Yes, the loss will be his--not yours, that is clear enough," he
said.
"But for one's country . ."
"The country does not mean the soil, but the men on it,"
interrupted my master again. "Have you yet wasted so much as a
glance on what was happening to them? But now you would dictate
what salt they shall eat, what clothes they shall wear. Why
should they put up with such tyranny, and why should we let
them?"
"But we have taken to Indian salt and sugar and cloth ourselves."
"You may do as you please to work off your irritation, to keep up
your fanaticism. You are well off, you need not mind the cost.
The poor do not want to stand in your way, but you insist on
their submitting to your compulsion. As it is, every moment of
theirs is a life-and-death struggle for a bare living; you cannot
even imagine the difference a few pice means to them--so little
have you in common. You have spent your whole past in a superior
compartment, and now you come down to use them as tools for the
wreaking of your wrath. I call it cowardly."
They were all old pupils of my master, so they did not venture to
be disrespectful, though they were quivering with indignation.
They turned to me. "Will you then be the only one, Maharaja, to
put obstacles in the way of what the country would achieve?"
"Who am I, that I should dare do such a thing? Would I not
rather lay down my life to help it?"
The M.A. student smiled a crooked smile, as he asked: "May we
enquire what you are actually doing to help?"
"I have imported Indian mill-made yarn and kept it for sale in my
Suksar market, and also sent bales of it to markets belonging to
neighbouring __zamindars__."
"But we have been to your market, Maharaja," the same student
exclaimed, "and found nobody buying this yarn."
"That is neither my fault nor the fault of my market. It only
shows the whole country has not taken your vow."
"That is not all," my master went on. "It shows that what you
have pledged yourselves to do is only to pester others. You want
dealers, who have not taken your vow, to buy that yarn; weavers,
who have not taken your vow, to make it up; then their wares
eventually to be foisted on to consumers who, also, have not
taken your vow. The method? Your clamour, and the
__zamindars'__ oppression. The result: all righteousness
yours, all privations theirs!"
"And may we venture to ask, further, what your share of the
privation has been?" pursued a science student.
"You want to know, do you?" replied my master. "It is Nikhil
himself who has to buy up that Indian mill yarn; he has had to
start a weaving school to get it woven; and to judge by his past
brilliant business exploits, by the time his cotton fabrics leave
the loom their cost will be that of cloth-of-gold; so they will
only find a use, perhaps, as curtains for his drawing-room, even
though their flimsiness may fail to screen him. When you get
tired of your vow, you will laugh the loudest at their artistic
effect. And if their workmanship is ever truly appreciated at
all, it will be by foreigners."
I have known my master all my life, but have never seen him so
agitated. I could see that the pain had been silently
accumulating in his heart for some time, because of his
surpassing love for me, and that his habitual self-possession had
become secretly undermined to the breaking point.
"You are our elders," said the medical student. "It is unseemly
that we should bandy words with you. But tell us, pray, finally,
are you determined not to oust foreign articles from your
market?"
"I will not," I said, "because they are not mine."
"Because that will cause you a loss!" smiled the M.A. student.
"Because he, whose is the loss, is the best judge," retorted my
master.
With a shout of __Bande Mataram__ they left us.
Content of Chapter Five [Rabindranath Tagore's novel: The Home and the World]
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