Chandra

(A SHORT STORY)

(Translated from Marathi by the Author)

When the sun dipped down the horizon, they laid down their tools, picked up their weary limbs and left the quarry in knots of twos and fours. They were all inmates of the Criminal Tribes Settlement, two miles away. There was nothing about them to suggest that they were criminals. Their faces, their words, their movements were those of people whom one may safely meet. They carried no arms, and to look at their lean emaciated bodies was enough to convince one that even if they were armed they would be incapable of any violence. They had spent all their physical strength in breaking stones at the quarry, and all their mental zest and patience had been wasted on their endeavour to keep on the dim borderland which separates starvation from actual death. They were paid a few annas as wages for their daily labour. They went about hungry, unclad and dirty, moving like dumb tired cattle. Their voices were weak, their faces haggard and pathetic! They reminded one of mute helpless animals–not criminals!

But the laws of the land are made by a government, not by men. And one such law had, years ago, described these people as ‘criminal tribes,’ and vested in the rulers the authority to round them, to pen them up like wild beasts in an enclosure guarded by barbed wires, to refuse their right to earn an honest independent living, to recruit them for hard labour, to pay them only a few annas as wages, to have them supervised by warders and inspectors and all the paraphernalia of a common prison of felons, and if any of them proved recalcitrant to make them understand the great benevolence of it all by fines, floggings and ‘separates’!

Such was the life of these men and women who hurried from the Settlement to the quarry every morning, and at sun-set dispersed and went home. Home! Queer that these people should talk of going home, when it was to a virtual prison behind the barbed wire that they actually turned. But the human heart is a queer thing. It clings to mere ideas when the actualities do not offer any solace. And so even the lowest of men, whatever the misery of his lot, however crushing the load of labour under which he has to pant and sweat during the day, and however dirty and filthy the cramped hole to which he must retire, is filled with a strange elation at the thought of going home. It is this sentimental affection, perhaps, that sustains unjust institutions, and makes peaceful slaves of men!

The hundreds of workers pouring out of the mills in the evening make their way through the streets with the same eagerness with which the rich and the middle class people return home from their jobs in the courts and the banks and the offices and the schools. And the same eagerness can be noticed on the faces of these inmates of the Settlement, moving away from the quarry.

Look, if you like, at this woman walking alone, a little away and behind the crowd. perhaps because she is lost in her own thoughts.

They call her Chandra. She is only twenty-five. But she has lost all the vigour of youth owing to hard work, and her thin face is clouded with a weariness that makes her look aged. The narrow and short strip of cloth which she wears is soiled, and torn in several places. It would be hard to guess when her patched bodice was new and whole.

She lost her son four months . Typhoid. Now she has only a daughter–Kashi–six years old. A fortnight ago her husband had been suddenly marched off from the Settlement under police escort. No one knew what his offence was, or where he was being removed. No one dared ask. Such summary removals were not uncommon in the Settlement. Official displeasure often expressed itself in this manner. Husband and wife, parents and children, were ruthlessly separated and removed to distant Settlements if the authorities wanted to break their spirit. People in the Settlement were so used to such bolts from the blue that they neither wondered nor protested. That was part of their life behind the barbed wires, they believed. Chandra therefore accepted the sudden loss of her husband with the same resignation with which she had borne the death of her son.

In fact she had clean forgotten these sad blows, and there was a mild flutter of gladness in her heart as she now left the quarry and turned her steps homewards. It was happiness to know that her Kashi would be waiting for her, playing with other children in the dust heap in front of the row of smirky cottages.

But then she suddenly remembered. She had promised the child to bring an anna’s worth of balls of sweetened fried rice.

She unfolded the short sleeve of her bodice on the left arm. She had placed an anna there in the morning when she left her cottage and her child.

But the coin was not there now!

Chandra halted and wondered. What could have happened to the nickel coin?

Maybe, she thought, it had dropped somewhere near the spot where she had been breaking stones during the day. And then she ran to the quarry, as if to retrieve a treasure.

She made a frantic search for the coin on the spot where she had hammered stones into bits, all around it, under the ‘Babul’ tree, a little away where she had gulped a few dry crumbs of bread at noon, and even in the roadside dust, combing it madly with her fingers. But there was no trace of the coin anywhere. It was lost!

All her enthusiasm to go home suddenly drained out of her, leaving her aching and weak. She sank ‘down on a big slab of stone by the side of the road. And she wept.

Light was fast fading, and the moon which had already moved high up in the eastern sky looked like a silver piece needing a little polish. The dust on the road, raised by the traffic, which had shown itself in clear, big slanting columns of the evening light, was now becoming invisible. In the quiet of the hour the droning hum of the city’s noise seemed to be drawing near. A cluster of little black birds, floating from the city towards the aerodrome, almost touched Chandra’s head.

But Chandra had no eyes for any of these things. When she suddenly remembered that she must return to the Settlement in time, she dried her cheeks and got up. She could see only one thing clearly, and that was the figure of her child crying and sobbing when she would be disappointed about the balls of sweet rice. Every day, during the last week, Kashi had clung to her in the morning as she prepared to leave for the quarry, and asked her if she would bring something for her to eat in the evening. And every day she had said, "Not today, child, but tomorrow certainly, believe me," since she did not have a nickel coin. At last Chandra had borrowed a coin from Bihari and joyfully said to Kashi, "Now look here, child. I have money today. You’ll positively get the balls of sweetened fried rice in the evening. Wait for me, child."

And now, after all this, the coin was lost! How was she going to console Kashi when she would start crying?…….

Chandra walked like a mad woman, reeling.

She heard a voice, and thought someone had called her. Turning, she noticed a car, parked a little away from the road. There were ladies in the car, talking and laughing. They must be some rich, big ladies, thought Chandra, come for a drive, and she was a fool to imagine that they had called her. She resumed her walk.

But she again heard the voice, and when she halted and looked at the car one of the ladies shouted,

"Come here, why don’t you? We aren’t going to eat you up……"

Chandra could not guess why those ladies wanted her. But she thought she must go. When she went near the car, the lady who had shouted offered her something in her hands, saying, "Would you like to have this?"

She held a big quantity of sweets and hot spicy things wrapped in a newspaper. Seeing Chandra hesitate a little, she added, "You mustn’t doubt. It’s all quite good and clean. We had brought this here to eat. But it’s too much for us, and we wouldn’t like to throw it in the dust. It’s really not spoilt. Do take it. You must."

Chandra took the packet from the lady’s hands and returned to the road. She was a simple soul. God had been merciful, she thought, and had sent these sweets for her child. She felt rather happy now, and her steps were light and eager.

But the next instant there came into her mind doubts that almost killed her joy.

No doubt luck had suddenly smiled and thrust into her hands rich, tasteful food, which she could not have purchased in her wildest dream; but how was she going to succeed in giving it to her child? Begging was forbidden by the regulations of the Settlement as severely as independent work, and these regulations were very strictly enforced. The guard at the gate searched the inmates if his suspicions were roused. And if anyone was caught carrying something that suggested begging or theft, one was instantly punished. Chandra had herself never been searched. But she had witnessed these searches, and knew what followed them. And their recollection made her feel helpless. There seemed to be no hope of putting this nice rich food into Kashi’s hands.

She tried to think very hard. Her steps lingered.

Then an idea occurred to her, and she stood, half delighted, half incredulous.

She unwrapped the folds of her saree that covered her stomach, and rearranged the folds so that the bundle of food was cleverly hid in them. She cast a nervous glance around to make sure that she had not been watched in the daring act. No. No one was about. That was good. She was once again happy, and her steps were light and quick.

As she left the main road and turned into the uneven sandy way leading to the Settlement, she noticed a crowd gathered in the dry dirty bed of the stream a few yards away. There were about two hundred people–men and women. On closer view she found that they were all inmates of the Settlement. Somebody held a flag that fluttered in the wind–a red flag, the like of which Chandra had never before seen. A well dressed man, rather thin, obviously belonging to the educated classes from the city, was addressing the crowd in a loud and hoarse voice.

He seemed to have put a question to his audience once, and the whole crowd replied as one man, "Yes, sir. We will!" Then he went on speaking, but he asked some question again, and the crowd this time yelled, "No, we shall never do that." Chandra could not guess what the speaker asked, why the audience answered with different shouts in fact she could not understand why these people had gathered in the ditch instead of returning in time to the Settlement.

Nor did she feel curious enough to go down the road and mix with the people just to ascertain what it was all about. She might have done so at another time. But not now. She was now confident that she would succeed in smuggling the food and giving it to her child, and so she was impatient to do the trick–to defy the law which had always defied her. She felt no interest in the crowd. She walked on.

But a voice called her, "Chandra! Chandra!"

She knew the voice. Her friend Parvati must be calling her. But she paid no attention to her call. She hurried on.

But then somebody came running up to her, and almost pulled her up with the words, "Chandra, wait. Why don’t you?"

Chandra turned and looked. Bihari stood before her.

He was a big fellow, and even the hard life at the Settlement had not much clouded the glamour of his fine body. They said he belonged to a fighting race, and that his forefathers had served in the Maratha armies. He was dark. But he looked so handsome with his broad forehead, straight nose, big searching eyes, and above all the black thick curls of his hair. He valued his own honour above everything else, and had a sharp temper. The Settlement officers knew that he was a troublesome fellow to deal with and there was always something going on between them and Bihari. Chandra had once warned him, "You mustn’t be so reckless, Bihari. They will march you off one day." But Bihari had only laughed, as if to say, "Hang them." He had jerked his head, and his curls had danced beautifully. Chandra always wanted to look at his lovely black curls. Even now, as he stood before her, slightly breathless from running, she was watchful not of his words but of those thick waving curls of his. She kept gazing at them.

Bihari had to repeat his words. "Why don’t you wait, Chandra? Come."

She left staring at his hair. "No, I must return to the Settlement. Kashi would be waiting for me."

"Yes, I know. But she can wait for another half hour. Come, Chandra, we want you. Don’t you think you must join us?"

"But what are you about?"

"We are holding a meeting."

"Meeting? What’s a meeting?"

"How stupid you are, Chandra. Yes, a meeting. That is we all gather together and decide upon something we must do to end our agony. That good gentleman there says he knows the way…."

"Way? Way to what?"

"To our freedom. He says we must first have a Union of our own, and properly submit our demands to the Government. Until we do this and unite, and stand on our legs, they will go on crushing us, he says. It’s fine to hear that gentleman, and to know that there is yet hope for the like of us. Come, Chandra. Come to the meeting."

And he invited her with his eyes.

But they held no magic for Chandra at the moment. She curtly said, "You will have to excuse me, Bihari. Kashi would be waiting for me." And she turned to go.

Bihari caught her hand. "Are you a fool, Chandra? Don’t you know how dreadful our lot is?–How we are all caught in a jail more horrid than the regular prison? Don’t you remember the times when you had almost lost your honour? Don’t you remember how your own husband was all of a sudden marched off only because he answered ? We must all wake up now, don’t you see. Don’t be stupid, come…….

But she freed her hand. "Let me go, Bihari. Kashi is waiting…." And she walked away without another glance at him.

She knew that her own honour had always been in danger in the Settlement, that everybody around her was harassed and hungry, that her husband had been persecuted and hounded out. But at the moment nothing mattered. Nothing at all, if she was going to feed her child tonight as she had never done. She was going to crush her Kashi in an embrace and kiss her. She was going to take the child on her lap and feed her with such wonderful food. The child would look into her eyes as if to say, "Thank you, mother. I am not now ashamed to own you." And she would kiss the child’s grateful, contented eyes. Her motherly yearnings were at this moment quivering on the edge of promise and fulfillment, and all the blows which life at the Settlement had dealt her were suddenly wiped from her memory.

‘No, Chandra, You mustn’t go like this," cried Bihari.

But Chandra did not hear him. She glided briskly–on the wings of impatient hope.

But the hopes of people like this woman ripen only to be frustrated.

And so frustration was waiting for Chandra at the gates of the Settlement, in the shape of the guard. She was suspected and ordered to halt. And in the search, which took no account of her modesty, the bundle of food fell out. The guard showered on her filthy abuse, kicked the food in the dust, and shoved her inside the gates, swearing.

As Chandra hammered the stones at the quarry the next day, grief and resentment kept hammering at her heart. Rage filled her at the thought of the boundlessness of the tyranny that held her and held thousands like her captives, and at the recollection how her right to feed her child had been kicked and crushed in the dust…..

A little away from her she noticed a bitch lying in the dust. She was very lean and bony, and her breasts were flat and sunken. And yet she was feeding her pups–little brutes that pulled at her dry breasts. A little yonder on the bough of a ‘Babul’ tree a bird was offering from her beak bits of hay to her little ones twittering sweetly from their tender throats. The world was so full of motherly love. It made things so beautiful. The stream of life would not flow on without it. And yet the laws of the Settlement, instead of respecting it, violated it, brutally crushed it. A woman did not have the freedom there to be a woman. A mother did not have the liberty to be a mother……

Again and again she felt a mad desire filling her……the desire to dash down to the Settlement, hammer in hand, to go up to the guard who had last night snatched the food from her, and to hit him hard on the head…….her first blow to smash and wreck the inhuman power which could insult the tender feelings of a mother’s heart…...

But she did not move. When the bitterness of her thoughts became unbearable, she cried. After each tearful pause she would blot her eyes with the end of her saree and resume breaking stones.

In the noon when the workers rested a little, she went up to Bihari. She called out, "Bihari."

But he pretended not to have noticed her.

She knew why. "You have every right to be angry with me, Bihari. But I’ll now appease you. I’m coming to the meeting today with you. Is there one?"

Bihari nodded. But obviously he was not thinking of the meeting. What had impelled Chandra, he wondered, to offer to go to the meeting today when only yesterday she had obstinately walked away. What had brought about this amazing change in her?

"Chandra, you didn’t listen to me yesterday, and today you come to me and tell me that you would go to the meeting. This is good. But so strange. What has changed you?"

"I can’t tell you." Chandra looked at him, and then at the vast glistening dome of the sky, and into her eyes came a strange restlessness, the hint of a new consciousness of awakening and of Power.

With her eyes she seemed to cry. "Can’t you understand, Bihari? Nobody preached to me. None exhorted me. It was the officers of the Settlement who with their heartless deeds taught me a lesson....."

Bihari did not catch this meaning in her mute gaze. But he was glad. In the evening, as soon as the workers laid down their tools, he sought Chandra and said, "Come,"

"Let us go." She too was eager.

And thus Chandra joined that small band of inmates of the Criminal Tribes Settlement, agitating for their liberty and for the vindication of their human rights. A fresh recruit stepped into the revolutionary ranks, fearless and thirsting for justice.