The Judgement

THE JUDGEMENT
(Short story)

Kolar Gold Fields is not one city but many rolled into one. Oorgaum merges into Robertsonpet, which touches Marikuppam through Andersonpet. Coromandel connects Oorgaum with Champion reefs and Marikuppam. Thousands of miners are littered all over the place. When workers go inside the mines they forget their past–like miners elsewhere–and do not expect any future. There­fore one can only say that the miners are not individuals but only types. The story of one swarthy miner is nearly enough to reveal the secrets of success and failure of those innumerable inhabitants of that small stretch of land on the globe called Kolar Gold Fields. Some say the yellow metal there has devalued human lives.

Though broad-browed, snub-nosed Linganna–the cynosure of our story–worked to die in Oorgaum mines, he lived in one of a hundred huts which had been constructed by the City Corporation in its drive for slum-clearance. The mud-walled, bamboo-thatched hut–where he lived with lakshmi–was good enough but for the miasma that came out of the gutter and the dung-heaps of the lane.

Linganna looked at Sundays in two ways: it was a paid holiday when he could curl himself up and sit restfully on the stone-­slab in front of the hut. But it was also no good in a sense because it would only make him linger over his problems for a longer time. This Sunday was particularly unbearable because round-faced lakshmi started having pains right at six. Women of the neighbour­hood poured in and out with hoohas unable to witness the pains which Lakshmi heroically bore for over ten hours. When rattle-­boned Sita, the midwife, told Linganna the news of the birth of a male child, he threw both his arms into the air and went into raptures. But he burst into tears on learning that his wife had expired in the struggle. For a middle-aged miner, the birth of a male child was an asset, whereas the death of his Astarte was a loss.

A five-pound baby of delicate features and brown complexion wasn’t expected to survive for more than a week by the prophetesses around. Severe winter had made the atmosphere dismal, which was already dull on account of the absence of the jingling bangles and tinkling trinkets of his wife Lakshmi. Courageous though Linganna was, he was weakened by the surrounding sibyls. “The child’s lips are dry” one crone would say and another would unthinkingly add, “There is hardly any sign of the coming of hair on the head,” Yet another would outdo them both by saying, “Padma’s baby had a similar powdery skin. On the third day I myself buried her.”

The mantle of a nurse fell on his rather unwilling shoulders after Lakshmi. Was a rough-faced miner–worse than a grav­e digger–cut out to rear a dying child? Did he have patience to withstand the nuisance of a baby? For three days after sunset, sitting in the dim light of his abode, he would ask a thousand questions to himself and say” Enough of this life. Oh God! Show me some way.” He would then spread his crackled and crackling mat and lie down and close his eyes.

On the midnight of Wednesday-Thursday a brilliant idea passed through his usually dull head. The Sanitary Inspector of the locality Mr. Narasimha Murty was tremendously popular among the miners as a mild and generous man. Though he had been married for fifteen years, he didn’t have any children. If Linganna managed to pass on the child to Murty, the child was certain to be adopted and well looked after. After all, the welfare of the child was of paramount importance. Instead of allowing, the child to die uncared for – as many opined –should he not take the child and make a gift of him? Or should he leave the child in the vicinity of Murty’s bungalow without telling anything to anybody. When pale Parvati adopted the child – Murty’s wife was sweet to all – she would pamper him with the best food, the best clothes and the most expensive education. Although the distance between his tiny hut and Murty’s big mansion wasn’t less than two kilometres, he would most discerningly supervise the growth of his own darling child – as an onlooker – without being known to anyone as his natural father. He might tell his neighbours – if anyone cared to ask him – that the child died on an unwholesome night when he took and buried him.

After thinking about the problem for three days and nights, he took the momentous decision to carry out his plan on the following gloomy Saturday night. At about midnight – when all the miners were apparently sleeping – he came out with the wrapp­ed up child. A brisk walk of about twenty minutes was enough to reach the Inspector’s mansion.

On arrival at the temple street – where the Inspector resided – there wasn’t even a dim street light. Added to the surrounding darkness, the enveloping silence was killing. Stealthily he approached the gate. Linganna negotiated the distance of about ten yards between the compound gate and the portico care­fully like a veteran thief. Crossing the steps leading to the front door, he turned left and placed the child near the bedroom door. After so doing, he came out of the compound gate and took to his heels.

The moaning of the child during the night was loud enough for a woman of delicate constitution to hear. Parvati became gradually widely awake. A dream-child began to unveil itself to Paru – that was how her husband called her – as she intently heard the cries. How long the lady lolled in those luxuries of a dream-child, it is difficult to say. But as the cries became intense, the dream must have departed. Feeling partly alarmed and partly delighted, she woke up her husband.

“Don’t you hear the cries of a little one?” she drawled in his ears.
“What...? Where...?” obviously the husband was perplexed.
“Get up. Open this door. The cry is from this side” – directed the wife.

Pompadour Murty sprang to his feet like a trained athlete finding the situation quite amusing. Switching on the portico light, he opened the door fearlessly. The lady followed Murty, who went out. To their utter surprise they found an abandoned child gorgeously arrayed in rags. The foundling appeared to have come fresh from the womb of his mother. Paru followed her first instinct of seizing the child and taking him inside. For the first time in her adult life, she applied all her known art of nursing the lately arrived prince of darkness. Not only she forgot her sleep but also her surroundings. Paru became so totally absorbed in fondling, kissing and caressing the prince that even the natural mother would have envied it. Love’s night became noon. There was hardly anything that elegant Murty could do except play second fiddle to his wife. Until day-break they discussed a hundred things about the child as they occurred to them.

The day dawned with the melodious chirping of birds. The winter sun rose effulgently bathing all objects with his comforting light. The canas appeared lustrously green. Chrysanthemums bloomed in white, red and yellow all around inside the compound wall of Murty’s house. Winter had never been so glorious in K. G. F. as it was now.

It being a Sunday, Murty made himself completely free. Paru appeared busier than she was. The Sanitary Inspector managed to get a feeding-bottle though it was a holiday. The baby was washed with warm water. Paru with her deepset eyes took care to apply tilakam to the child’s forehead and eyetex to eye-lashes. The tiniest multi-coloured garments arrived in fresh packages around nine. The child who was completely naked and free was bound hand and foot with luxurious outfit. By nine a thorough transformation had been effected in the appearance of little Rajkumar.

Needless to say Parvati’s entire lifetime’s ambition of having a male child had been fully realized. It appeared as though she had lived all these days for this glorious moment. She was over­whelmed with various emotions. Some made her weep and some made her laugh. She was bewildered by the tragic days she had passed through in the past. The delight of the moment, however, had slighted her former sufferings. The stigma of sterility had gone. The era of woman’s responsibility had arrived. Parvati swore in her delicate heart to make Shiva Prasad – for so they baptised him overnight – the observed of all observers.

The idea that she could claim the child as her own if she lived with her parents at Bangalore for sometime flashed through her mind. She discussed the matter from all angles with her lord. They decided to go to Bangalore together without any further fuss. They left K. G. F. for Bangalore on Monday morning itself.

When Parvati returned to Robertsonpet with one-year-old Shiva Prasad, her friends and relatives couldn’t recognize her at all. She had thoroughly changed. The happiness that came with the acquisition of a child made her somewhat buxsome. Parvati’s unused breasts had considerably swelled with the induction of more flesh. Her heart had become tenderer making her more compassionate and charitable. Every morning she made it a point to wait for the arrival of at least two beggars to feed them. When­ever any beggar passed through her house she made it a habit to invite him to offer at least a handful of rice. As days rolled by her acts of charity assumed many facets and different dimensions.

The Murtys tried all sorts of garments on Shiva. They gave him the best milk they could buy. The child’s pockets were invariably stuffed with chocolates and biscuits. Toys began to pile up in show-cases. The intention of the Inspector was to give him a good convent education. When Shiva grew to be five, he was put in an English medium school – as was the fashion those days – much to the chagrin of Parvati, who incidentally held the view that English education might alienate him from her. Not long before the boy entered the college, he was sixteen. Smart as Shiva Prasad was, his face was tinged with a brown complexion, though his cheeks always had a crimson dye. He had inherited a broad-brow and a snub-nose. When he stood up he was tall, erect and sportive. Paru enjoyed her darling boy’s sight, who she thought was destined to become a doctor.

Lean Linganna doted sentimentally at a distance on the boy as he grew year by year into manhood. No one marked his ambulations or suspected them which were only a few formerly–­when the child grew into a boy – became more frequent near Murty’s bungalow. Linganna’s love for “my lad” – that was how he addressed Shiva within himself – surpassed all expecta­tions as the boy became a colleger. Linganna invited Shiva’s attention on the streets by various monkeyish tricks. Sometimes he even accosted him without any sound reason.

I shouldn’t hesitate to relate here what later on became a one-act drama that Linganna enacted in the presence of his son. Though he wasn’t a trained actor, despair drove him to display histrionics. Once, while Shiva was returning home on a cloudy evening, pretending to suffer from convulsions, Linganna fell right in front of the boy. Shiva lost no time in running up to his father to resuscitate the old man. Murty promptly rushed there and pitied the old man – whom he quickly recognized him to be a miner – and took him home. After sprinkling old water on the man’s face, he gave him cool drinks. The emaciated coolie felt quite soothed and happy.

After recovery – which was enacted with impressive dexterity – Linganna took liberty to embrace and kiss Shiva like a deranged man. The so-called blood-relationship, which was so tenuous when Shiva was a sickly infant of six days, had now grown to be a tower of love. Poor Linganna! Years had told on him. Not only his brow had contracted into a field of furrows but his cheeks had become a pair of hollow cups. The knee-caps had become loose. The joint-tendons had become soft and prickly. He had therefore taken to acting.

Refreshing himself while enjoying the liberal hospitality of Murtys, Linganna returned home rather reluctantly.

Age, loneliness and the fear of future made life unbearable to Linganna. More than ever, he became seized of his helplessness. The fear that if he allowed Shiva to grow further with the Murtys, there wasn’t even a single ray of hope for him in life, grew more and more obsessive with him.

“What shall I do to get him ?” – so he asked himself on a Wednesday morning before going out.

“I can’t bear this torture of childlessness. I want to see my son by my bedside at the time of croaking. Whynot I meet the boy and tell him all facts plainly?” – so he thought within himself while adjusting his cummerbund.

Much as he desired to argue the matter within himself he couldn’t do so because of his mental weakness. The problem before his ramshackle frame was how to persuade Shiva to get . He thought about the pros and cons of the matter. When he thought about himself and his future, he felt like compelling Shiva to come to his hut. But when he thought about the boy’s future, he felt enormously discouraged.

Linganna twisted his towel on his head more firmly and tied it. He twirled his moustache a little bit. He pulled the ends of his dhoti from under his bottom and tied them together to his waist at the . Taking a bamboo stick, he trotted off to Oorgaum.

On his way in the evening, Linganna met one of his old acquaintances by name Krishna Murty, who was a clerk with a lawyer. They together stood on the road near George Park and made enquiries of each other. Knowing him as he did for long, Linganna slowly made a clean breast of his worries to him not imagining that there could be a legal remedy for his problem.

“When the child was yours you didn’t want him but now that you see him blooming like a flower you want him?” – asked Krishna Murty with a sarcastic twist of his mouth.

There came the smell of a dead and decaying rat from a nearby gutter while they were conversing with each other.

“Yes sir, the candle of my life is almost burnt out” conceded the miner.

“Well. Don’t lose hope. Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you. Bring ten rupees this very evening. I give you complete assurance that Shiva will be yours if only you lodged a suit in the local court” said the legal luminary.

After Krishna Murty had explained the whole legal pro­cedure, Linganna lost no time in filing a law-suit in the court.

Linganna hadn’t known the primrose thorns of going to a court. The first-fruits of his visit left a bitter taste in his mouth. Adjournings after adjournings the suit dragged on like a dredge for months without an end. There was a continual depletion of whatever humble savings he had made out of daily wages. The lawyer and his clerk always held out bright promises. When the hearings started Linganna was left with no strength to see it to the end. Becoming tired of the proceedings, he felt that it was wrong on his part to have taken the matter to a court. As the natural father, he sincerely felt like wishing his boy well and not bring him to a hut for selfish purposes. He stretched his imagination to those good old days and remembered his original intention in leaving the child with the Inspector. He cursed his beastly existence that had drained him of that fountain of love and finer feelings he had in earlier days. Now that Shiva knew that he was not the Inspector’s son, Linganna felt it enough: If the boy had any love for his father, he would one day throw himself into his father’s arms. Therefore he determined not to legally force his son to join him in a beggarly hut. Further, he would tell the judge that Shiva wasn’t his son at all.

Demented Linganna went to the court on the great hearing day. Preparations were afoot on all fronts at the court. Many had come to wish the Inspector success but there wasn’t anyone to encourage him. Although the advocates had briefed their clients well in advance, the clients had –it would seem –prepared their own answers to the questions the judge might put them.

Judge Lakkappa, known more for suave manners than for his knowledge of law, came in black –except for his collar – and occupied the high-ed, red-upholstered chair. He thumped the table with a wooden hammer and called the complainant to the witness box. Peremptorily, the judge asked Linganna.
“Say...is Shiva your son?” – there was a sepulchral silence in the main hall of the court.

A fragrant smell of incense wafted across from some unknown source as Linganna supporting himself on the wooden frame looked at the judge in a prayerful attitude and said in feeble tones:

“No, Your honour. Shiva is not at all my son. He is the Inspector’s son. I beg your pardon for telling a lie.”

There was a wave of subdued murmur. Standersby sat down and those who sat stood up. The judge was puzzled to find the complainant arguing against himself. The man who brought the case before the court was taking it . However, the judge used his discretion and asked Murty if Shiva was his son at all.            The incense continued to emanate when Murty came to the witness box and said,

“I beg Your pardon. My lord, Shiva is not my son at all. He is a foundling. Somebody had wrapped the child in torn clothes and left him near my bedroom some eighteen years . I am sorry I told you a lie. Probably the child is Linganna’s.

On hearing the confessional statement of the Sanitary Inspector, Parvati, who sat on a bench in the court hall, swooned and fell on Shiva Prasad who sat next to her. She was ordered to be conducted out of the main hall to the side wings. There was once again general murmur.

Judge Lakkappa thumped the table several times in order to restore order in the hall. He himself was perplexed beyond reckoning. Both the complainant and the defendant were disown­ing the boy. As the boy was more than eighteen, the judge found no harm in calling him to the witness box and finding out from him who happened to be his father. Shiva was asked to swear and he was asked with whom he preferred to stay as son.

Obviously the boy didn’t like to go with the miner, who had neither a house nor a social status. He confessed before the honourable judge that he wanted to be with the Inspector, as he had been known all these days as his son throughout K. G. F. He chose to be with Parvati, who had tended him with meticulous care.

A brief judgement was delivered at five in favour of Mr. Nara­simha Murty, the Sanitary Inspector. Parvati, the happiest of all persons, hugged and kissed Shiva several times. Murty too was happy because his legal right over the boy was established without his being dishonest. Both Parvati and Murty pitied Linganna as he left the court-room casting a side-long glance at Shiva Prasad.

After a few days the Murtys learnt that Linganna died of a heart-attack.