The Motherless Child

(Translated by Mrs. Rajee Subrahmaniam from the original story in Tamil)

The pial of my house was the largest and the most convenient in the street. Perhaps that was why it was crowded all hours of the day with children of every sort and description. All the boys and girls of the street used to patronise my pial. There was a constant din, as they dashed in and out, in all the manner of children playing their mad pranks which look so silly to the grown-ups but which are really the only serious business of the children. School is just an infliction, but play is play and serious to them.

I disliked the din at my front door at first but grew in time to like it. The first two days I tried to warn the children that they should not make such a noise, as mama would come and be angry with them. But they did not seem to mind me or my threat of mama. They carried on as if I had not spoken. A few of them however stopped in the midst of their play to express their displeasure at me by putting out their tongues and talking at me. I was none too displeased with their efforts and kept quiet.

I was new to the place and lonely. My husband left home for office at nine o’clock in the morning and returned only after dark. All through the weary hours of the day, I had none to keep me company. Under these circumstances, no wonder that I grew speedily accustomed to the noise and the din on my pial. In fact, I came to look forward to it to dispel the tedium of the long hours of the day. I would sit on the inside sill of my front window, the same book open at the same page almost every day, and watch the children playing.

The children too in the course of the days forgot to look upon me as a stranger and a grown-up intruding in their games. Later on they occasionally called upon me to umpire, and tried to abide by my decisions. If there were any differences of opinion about the play-technique or the outcome of a game, they asked me to decide and arbitrate. And I did it all with pleasure, willingly and justly, remembering the not-very-far-off days when I too had been one like them.

As I have already said, I was a newcomer to that place. I knew none of my neighbours. And I did not intend making friends voluntarily, of my own accord. I do like gossip occasionally, but I am usually scared, and am shy of new faces. But because of these children, I knew in the course of a few days all about all the people living in that street. The children, glad that they had made a new and kind friend, told me freely all about themselves and what they knew of their families. I knew before long which child belonged to which house in the street, how many brothers and sisters he or she had, how his or her brother’s wife was treated by the old folk at home, and many such details. I did not open the front door and allow them in, only as I was afraid of their taking advantage of such hospitality and carrying their din and troublesomeness into my house also.

One child among the children constantly playing on my pial attracted my attention and my love in a measure far exceeding the others. Her name I learnt was Kamu. She was a child of about five or six. She had winning manners and a more than winning smile. She was always clad in rags, and dirty at that, but you could feel all the same that she was somehow different from and better than the others. She was fair as a pomegranate blossom. Her forehead always carried a blood-red kumkum mark which caught your attention and held it. Her hair was most often unkempt and untidy. For ornaments she had some silver screws in her ears and nose, and some glass bangles on her fore-arms. I fancied she was a Cinderella awaiting her Prince.

As if she had become aware of the interest she had awakened in me, she took more liberties with me than all the other children. One day I made the unfruitful threat of mama coming and chastising them; and Kamu turned her black eyes on me, smiled at me and asked me with a charming lisp: "Where is this mama whom you try to threaten us with? We have never yet seen him. But you won’t be angry with us at all, will you ever be?" She said it with such naivete that I had not the heart to get angry with her. I made no reply.

I came to know in the course of a few days that Kamu was a motherless child. Her mother had died the previous year. Her father had not yet married again. He was a poor clerk in a local office. Kamu had been attending school the previous term, but had been forced to stay away owing to poverty. She had no brother or sister. After she had lost her mother she was not even living with her father. Her mother’s parents were both alive, and had taken kind charge, though poor, of the motherless child. Her father, it seemed, was not even interested in her; he did not care to see her even once in a month, the other children told me with unquiet hearts.

It was the second week of my stay in the place. I was talking freely to Kamu about the affairs of the people in the street, my neighbours. Kamu could talk scandal with ever so much naivete and innocence and charm, and, what is often rare with grown-ups talking scandal, with real sympathy and a sort of wondering childish understanding. She just stopped that day in the middle of a sentence and looked up at me with eager eyes, silent.

"What is it, Kamu?"

"I should like to come in and sit beside you," she said.

I opened the door and let her in. She came in and sat beside me on the window-sill. She nestled close and lovingly to tile. The other children, seeing Kamu thus ensconced with me in the window-sill, clamoured that they too should be let in. I could not stand the clamour, and threw open my door. From that day onwards the street’s children made free use not only of my pial but of the inside of my house also, and strange to say, I, who had chided the children but lately for the din they made on the pial, admitted them into my house of my own free will. They duly carried their play and pranks and noise and joy into my house and into my life as well.

That first evening I combed Kamu’s hair, made her wash her face and decked her out as my fancy directed. What a difference these simple attentions made to her looks! She looked glorious. She looked one of God’s own angels. She looked so different that I wondered whether even her own mother would recognise the daughter in that simple transformation. And I suddenly remembered that she had no mother, and almost wept at her misfortune.

As soon as it was dusk, she left me and went home. After she had left I sat still for quite a time thinking of the poor motherless child. I knew what it was to be motherless: I had lost my own mother when I was quite a child: in fact, when I had been younger than Kamu herself. There was not even a memory of my mother left to me as a solace then. . . .My husband returned late that evening from his office as sometimes it happened; and I had been sitting so long thinking of Kamu that I could not keep my thoughts to myself about Kamu, and I told him in a hurry all that had transpired that day. Kamu said this, I told him; Kamu said that. She stood like this; she talked like that. . . .I do not remember whether I had ever before mentioned Kamu to him. But that day, tired and worn out as he was with his office-work, he was bored at my insistence that he should hear all that I thought of Kamu. He was unresponsive, and blurted out in the end: "What is all this about Kamu? Kamu, Kamu and yet again Kamu! She belongs to someone else and won’t remember you a day longer than possible. Then, why at all this fuss about Kamu?"

I was hurt at his way of putting it. But I thought that he too was correct. I collected myself and thought that I would talk of her no more, at least for that day. He felt that he had hurt me. He was sorry that he had been the cause of the hurt, and tried to make amends for it by being overkind on the sly.

The next day too Kamu came. She came and went and moved with more freedom and as if she had known me for ever so many years. I did not cut her; nor was I too cold; but I remembered the words of my husband and tried to keep a bit aboof. And that was an attitude which I found impossible to take with Kamu. She was visibly so full of affection and love that it was impossible for me to be cold or unloving. It was a pleasure to which I yielded all the more readily as I was myself, my heart told me, inclined towards her. I told her stories. I played with her. She was charming company for a lonely girl like me. Her friends,–and all the children of the street were her friends–because of my kindness to her, were more considerate and loving to me, and felt me their friend and responded to my least wish obediently. I gave Kamu tiffin and coffee. She took it and said: "We don’t have coffee at our house these days."

She told me all that she knew of her mother, in a childish, incoherent, innocent way. There was nothing very unusual or strange in what she told me. It is a tale common enough in this land of ours. A none-too-happy family life; an early child bearing ordeal which the wife, almost a child herself, could just outlast; a prolonged illness; a second child-bearing, and merciful death. That was what had happened in the case of Kamu’s mother, I was able to gather from her incoherent talk.

In the earlier days of our intimacy, she avoided my house when my husband was at home. One Sunday, however, unaware that he was at home, she came, and was surprised. She was at first very shy and would not talk with me even in his presence. He mocked at her, saying: "Kamu is shy of me because she is going to marry me. Or is she dumb?"

He too was taken up with the expression of the poor child and tried his best to make her feel easy with him. And her shyness wore off soon enough, and she began to be as free with mama as she was with me. In course of time, he too began to take an interest in her lovingly, and she reciprocated his affection gratefully. If any day after that he was very busy and she troubled him, as was her nature to do, he would call me and say smilingly: "Andalu, please take your daughter away."

Most days Kamu would stay away from her house. She would take her meal with me and spend the night with me after informing her grandmother. She brought unconsciously a joy and a light into our home. I would take her with me to the films, to the bazaar for shopping, to the local Ladies’ Club–in fact, wherever I went.

Three months passed like this. We, Kamu and I, grew happily in our affection. It was in the fourth month of my stay in the town that the incident I am about to relate happened.

I was making coffee in the kitchen. Kamu came quietly and sat beside me silent. I thought that she looked as though she had been weeping. And it was not natural for Kamu to be so quiet. I thought that something out of the ordinary had happened.

"What is it, Kamu?" I asked her, tenderly.

She just heaved a big sigh. She made no reply.

I drew her closer in my arms and again asked what the matter was.

Still sighing, she replied: "I an motherless!"

I did not know what to say to this.

After half a minute’s silence and many sighs, Kamu said "Will you be my mother?" She said this with a strange lisp and a strange expression, halting, a yearning look in her eyes.

I pressed her more closely to my heart and comforted her. I kissed her several times, signifying my consent to her prosposition. It took me some time to convince her that she was not left so uncared for in this world, that I would stand in the place of a real mother to her as long as it was in my power to do so. She was satisfied only after a full hour of my company, comforting and caressing. She did not leave me the whole of that day. She slept away the night with me.

It was only the next day that I learnt what had inspired Kamu’s despair. Her grandmother came to see me and told me what had happened to cause anguish to the childish heart. She told me that Kamu’s father had fixed up a second marriage for himself and was leaving for Madura that morning to get married at his own expense. Kamu also had wanted to go, but her father had refused to take her with him. She had left her home, it seems, swearing nevermore to return.

Kamu’s grandmother was a venerable old woman and exceedingly kind. It was the first time I had met her. She said: "Kamu tells me that you and your husband are kinder to her than even her mother had been. And may God bless you for that" (I saw there were tears in her eyes as she said this.) She continued: "Kamu calls you her new mother. If you are her mother you should be my daughter, and I thought that I would look up my daughter-that-should-have-been today."

I stayed after this incident only a year in that town. I was known not only throughout the street but also throughout the town as Kamu’s mother; and I can not say I was not proud of that name. At the end of that year my husband was transferred to a distant place. And Kamu and I had to part, with unworded anguish in our hearts.

It all happened nearly thirteen or fourteen years ago. Last week I met Kamu by chance on the Tanjore Station platform. I was able to identify Kamu by the child that stood beside her. That child was an exact replica of my Kamu of those days.

I asked her whether she recognised me. I dared not expect it, but she did recognise me. She said: "You are my mother." My eyes filled with tears.

My six-year old girl was standing beside me with eyes wide open. I had previously told her the tale of Kamu. And when Kamu asked her kindly what her name was, my girl replied: "The same as yours," and the elder Kamu rejoiced.

Kamu was accompanied by her husband who was a decently paid traveling representative of a Chemist’s at Madras. They were going to Madras.

Happily so was I. We could talk in the train; and, believe me, there was a lot to talk!