Stories from Tagore
_chaddar_. She would call his teacher before her and warn him never to
spare her boy, if he was the least neglectful with his lessons. This
treatment of his own son was the hardest blow that Bhavani Charan
suffered since the days of his destitution. But as he had always
acknowledged defeat at the hands of the powerful, he had not the spirit
to stand up against his wife in her method of dealing with the boy.
The dress which Rashmani provided for her son, during the Puja
festivities, was made of such poor material that in former days the very
servants of the house would have rebelled if it had been offered to
them. But Rashmani more than once tried her best to explain to her
husband that Kalipada, being the most recent addition to the Chowdhuri
family, had never known their former splendour and so was quite glad to
get what was given to him. But this pathetic innocence of the boy about
his own destiny hurt Bhavani more than anything else, and he could not
forgive himself for deceiving the child. When Kalipada would dance for
joy and rush to him to show him some present from his mother, which was
ridiculously trivial, Bhavani's heart would suffer torture.
Bagala, the _guru's_ son, was now in an affluent condition owing to his
agency in the law suit which had brought about the ruin of Bhavani. With
the money which he had in hand he used to buy cheap tinsel wares from
Calcutta before the Puja holidays. Invisible ink,--absurd combinations
of stick, fishing-rod and umbrella,--letter-paper with pictures in the
corner,--silk fabrics bought at auctions, and other things of this kind,
attractive to the simple villagers,--these were his stock in trade. All
the forward young men of the village vied with one another in rising
above their rusticity by purchasing these sweepings of the Calcutta
market which, they were told, were absolutely necessary for the city
gentry.
Once Bagala had bought a wonderful toy,--a doll in the form of a foreign
woman,--which, when wound up, would rise from her chair and begin to fan
herself with sudden alacrity. Kalipada was fascinated by it. He had a
very good reason to avoid asking his mother about the toy; so he went
straight to his father and begged him to purchase it for him. Bhavani
answered "yes" at once, but when he heard the price his face fell.
Rashmani kept all the money and he went to her as a timid beggar. He
began with all sorts of irrelevant remarks and then took a desperate
plunge into the subject with startling incoherence.
Rashmani briefly remarked: "Are you mad?" Bhavani Charan sat silent
revolving in his mind what to say next.
"Look here," he exclaimed, "I don't think I need milk pudding daily with
my dinner."
"Who told you?" said Rashmani sharply.
"The doctor says it's very bad for biliousness."
"The doctor's a fool!"
"But I'm sure that rice agrees with me better than your _luchis_. They
are too indigestible."
"I've never seen the least sign of indigestion in you. You have been
accustomed to them all your life!"
Bhavani Charan was ready enough to make sacrifices, but there his
passage was barred. Butter might rise in price, but the number of his
_luchis_ never diminished. Milk was quite enough for him at his midday
meal, but curds also had to be supplied because that was the family
tradition. Rashmani could not have borne seeing him sit down to his
meal, if curds were not supplied. Therefore all his attempts to make a
breach in his daily provisions, through which the fanning foreign woman
might enter, were an utter failure.
Then Bhavani paid a visit to Bagala for no reason whatever, and after a
great deal of round about talk asked concerning the foreign doll. Of
course his straightened circumstances had long been known to Bagala, yet
it was a perfect misery to Bhavani to have to hesitate to buy this doll
for his son owing to want of ready money. Swallowing his pride, he
brought out from under his arm an expensive old Kashmir shawl, and said
in a husky voice: "My circumstances are bad just at present and I
haven't got much cash. So I have determined to mortgage this shawl and
buy that doll for Kalipada."
If the object offered had been less expensive than this Kashmir shawl,
Bagala would at once have closed the bargain. But knowing that it would
not be possible for him to take possession of this shawl in face of the
village opinion, and still more in face of Rashmani's watchfulness, he
refused to accept it; and Bhavani had to go back home disappointed with
the Kashmir shawl hidden under his arm.
Kalipada asked every day for that foreign fanning toy, and Bhavani
smiled every day and said,--"Wait, a bit, my boy, till the seventh day
of the moon comes round." But every new day it became more and more
difficult to keep up that smile.
On the fourth day of the moon Bhavani made a sudden inroad upon his wife
and said:
"I've noticed that there's something wrong with Kalipada,--something the
matter with his health."
"Nonsense," said Rashmani, "he's in the best of health."
"Haven't you noticed him sitting silent for hours together?"
"I should be very greatly relieved if he could sit still for as many
minutes."
When all his arrows had missed their mark, and no impression had been
made, Bhavani Charan heaved a deep sigh and passing his fingers through
his hair went away and sat down on the verandah and began to smoke with
fearful assiduity.
On the fifth day, at his morning meal, Bhavani passed by the curds and
the milk pudding without touching them. In the evening he simply took
one single piece of _sandesh_. The _luchis_ were left unheeded. He
complained of want of appetite. This time a considerable breach was made
in the fortifications.
On the sixth day, Rashmani took Kalipada into the room and sweetly
calling him by his pet name said, "Betu, you are old enough to know that
it is the halfway house to stealing to desire that which you can't
have."
Kalipada whimpered and said, "What do I know about it? Father promised
to give me that doll."
Rashmani sat down to explain to him how much lay behind his father's
promise,--how much pain, how much affection, how much loss and
privation. Rashmani had never in her life before talked thus to
Kalipada, because it was her habit to give short and sharp commands. It
filled the boy with amazement when he found his mother coaxing him and
explaining things at such a length, and mere child though he was, he
could fathom something of the deep suffering of his mother's heart. Yet
at the same time it will be easily understood, that it was hard for this
boy to turn his mind away altogether from that captivating foreign
fanning woman. He pulled a long face and began to scratch the ground.
This made Rashmani's heart at once hard, and she said in her severe
tone: "Yes, you may weep and cry, or become angry, but you shall never
get that which is not for you to have." And she hastened away without
another word.
Kalipada went out. Bhavani Charan was still smoking his hookah. Noticing
Kalipada from a distance he got up and walked in the opposite direction
as if he had some urgent business. Kalipada ran to him and said,--"But
that doll?" Bhavani could not raise a smile that day. He put his arm
round Kalipada's neck and said:
"Baba, wait a little. I have some pressing business to get through. Let
me finish it first, and then we will talk about it." Saying this, he
went out of his house.
Kalipada saw him brush a tear from his eyes. He stood at the door and
watched his father, and it was quite evident, even to this boy, that he
was going nowhere in particular, and that he was dragging the weight of
a despair which could not be relieved.
Kalipada at once went back to his mother and said:
"Mother, I don't want that foreign doll."
That morning Bhavani Charan returned late. When he sat down to his meal,
after his bath, it was quite evident, by the look on his face, that the
curds and the milk pudding would fare no better with him than on the day
before, and that the best part of the fish would go to the cat.
Just at this critical juncture Rashmani brought in a card-board box,
bound round with twine, and set it before her husband. Her intention had
been to reveal the mystery of this packet to her husband when he went to
take his nap after his meal. But in order to remove the undeserved
neglect of the curds and the milk and the fish, she had to disclose its
contents before the time. So the foreign doll came out of the box and
without more ado began to fan itself vigorously.
After this, the cat had to go away disappointed. Bhavani remarked to his
wife that the cooking was the best he had ever tasted. The fish soup was
incomparable: the curds had set themselves with an exactness that was
rarely attained, and the milk pudding was superb.
On the seventh day of the moon, Kalipada got the toy for which he had
been pining. During the whole of that day he allowed the foreigner to go
on fanning herself and thereby made his boy companions jealous. In any
other case this performance would have seemed to him monotonously
tiresome, but knowing that on the following day he would have to give
the toy back, his constancy to it on that single occasion remained
unabated. At the rental of two rupees per diem Rashmani had hired it
from Bagala.
On the eighth day of the moon, Kalipada heaved a deep sigh and returned
the toy, along with the box and twine, to Bagala with his own hands.
From that day forward Kalipada began to share the confidences of his
mother, and it became so absurdly easy for Bhavani to give expensive
presents every year, that it surprised even himself.
When, with the help of his mother, Kalipada came to know that nothing
in this world could be gained without paying for it with the inevitable
price of suffering, he rapidly grew up in his mind and became a valued
assistant to his mother in her daily tasks. It come to be a natural rule
of life with him that no one should add to the burden of the world, but
that each should try to lighten it.
When Kalipada won a scholarship at the Vernacular examination, Bhavani
proposed that he should give up his studies and take in hand the
supervision of the estate. Kalipada went to his mother and said,--"I
shall never be a man, if I do not complete my education."
The mother said,--"You are right, Baba, you must go to Calcutta."
Kalipada explained to her that it would not be necessary to spend a
single pice on him; his scholarship would be sufficient, and he would
try to get some work to supplement it.
But it was necessary to convince Bhavani of the wisdom of the course.
Rashmani did not wish to employ the argument that there was very little
of the estate remaining to require supervision; for she knew how it
would hurt him. She said that Kalipada must become a man whom everyone
could respect. But all the members of the Chowdhuri family had attained
their respectability without ever going a step outside the limits of
Saniari. The outer world was as unknown to them as the world beyond the
grave. Bhavani, therefore, could not conceive how anybody could think of
a boy like Kalipada going to Calcutta. But the cleverest man in the
village, Bagala, fortunately agreed with Rashmani.
"It is perfectly clear," he said, "that, one day, Kalipada will become a
lawyer; and then he will set matters right concerning the property of
which the family has been deprived."
This was a great consolation to Bhavani Charan and he brought out the
file of records about the theft of the will and tried to explain the
whole thing to Kalipada by dint of daily discussion. But his son was
lacking in proper enthusiasm and merely echoed his father's sentiment
about this solemn wrong.
The day before Kalipada's departure for Calcutta Rashmani hung round his