Masumatti

(A Short Story)

MASTI VENKATESA IYENGAR

(Translated from Kannada by Navaratna Rama Rao)

[My grandfather was Mr. Courtenay's Judicial clerk–or ‘Jodi shawl Sheristedar,’ as we call that official, substituting words we know for unfamiliar ones. Quite recently, while rummaging among old daftarsin my house to sort out useless papers for destruction, I happened upon a file of documents relating to my grandfather’s days, and found among them part of a diary kept by Mr. Courtenay. I had seen Mr. Courtenay, and have dim recollections of a gift or two of sweetmeats from him. He was good and kindly man. I opened his diary at random, and glanced over a few pages. What I saw there made me read the whole of it. I did so forthwith, for it was short and I could finish it at a sitting. It interested me, and I give it in the hope it may interest you.]

There is a beautiful story current among Hindus. After slaying Ravana, Sri Rama, it is said, meant to go to Lanka to place Vibhishana on the throne, but at the gate of the conquered city he saw a lovely sapphire, which awakened in him such strong desire that his mind misgave him as to the temptations that awaited within. This made him forbear to enter, and send Lakshmana instead, to attend to the business of installation.

This country is as Lanka to us–but, alas! we are not as Rama. It is as though the call, ‘Give up all and follow me’, has been really the lure of wealth, for, from the very outset, our intercourse with this country has led to the gradual transfer of its substance to us. We never see a beautiful object here, but we wish to take it home.

This is what set me thinking of this. My sister Emily and her husband have come on a visit and are spending a few days with me. John Farquhar loves this land–I know none other of our people who loves it So well. He knows the people, their speech, and their ways. He knows all that is best in this hoary civilisation; he understands and loves the sculptured perfection of these temples. To name him is to recall his services in interpreting this country to ours,–in giving to our people an idea of the beauty of this age-long culture, and the wonderful way in which it endures and permeates the everyday lives of this people. He has visited all places where there is anything to see,–ancient temples and monasteries, remains of palaces and royal dynasties; and everywhere he has sought and seen old pictures, antique statues, ancient works of art. His heart has gone out to all he saw, and whoso reads his glowing pages must understand and appreciate, even as he did. The people of India must feel grateful to him; and in all he has done, Emily has been with him and has learnt to love this country.

Farquhar has got together a fairly large number of pictures and statues from wherever he could beg or buy them, and it is his hope to form a museum of his own when his collection is complete. On their way to me, they visited the Ajanta caves, and Farquhar could talk of nothing else; but Emily was so silent that I asked her why. She was quite delighted, she said; yet there was a thing that made her sad. What thing? I asked.

‘Oh, hardly a thing,’ she said, ‘a mere thought, perhaps no more than a fancy. I said to myself–these excellent men who painted–couldn’t they have painted on paper or canvas? For so, we could have bought the pictures, at whatever price, and called them ours, and taken them home. Whatever made them paint on rocks to awaken but mock our wishes?’

I smiled, for what Emily said seemed quite natural and proper, coming as it did from a laudable enthusiasm for Indian art. To desire the beautiful is, I suppose, human nature.

The talk came round to the temples and places of historical interest in my division.

‘I have heard there’s a place called Masumatti in your division,’ said Farquhar, ‘and I am told there’s a man there that has some splendid old pictures. (He proceeded to give the man’s name and other details.) I should like to get a picture or two from him if I can. Do you think you can help me?’

I consented, for I was only too glad to help in anything which could make the world see the true greatness of this country. And so we went to Masumatti yesterday.

Masumatti is now a mere hamlet–it has decayed as far as the village can decay without becoming bechirakh(lightless), the word by which these people denote the night desolation of an uninhabited village. Besides the few straggling houses in the outskirts, there are but four or five in the village itself. The inhabitants are all cultivators. When I had gone there a few days earlier, I had met an old man sunning himself on the verandah of his house. I asked him why the village had come to this pass. I don’t know how it happens–but these people, even the humblest, have a grasp of basic truths, and there is philosophy in their ordinary talk. Their peasants have the manners of princes, and there is a deep inward peace in their everyday lives. Well, when I asked the old man why his village was decayed,

‘All towns have to decay,’ he answered.

‘But,’ said I, ‘there are some that grow?’

‘They grow in growing time, and that over, they decay.’

‘Had your town ever a growing time?’ I asked. It was a foolish question, but I wanted to get the old man to talk of his village. He smiled as he made answer:

‘Can age come unless youth have gone before?’

And then he went on to say that this crumbling village had been the far-famed Mahishmati-nagaraof the Puranas where Kartavirya Arjuna had once reigned in his glory, and where hundreds of royal houses had succeeded him and flourished and fallen in their turn; till finally it had been overwhelmed fighting against Mussalman invaders and dwindled into a hamlet. It had continued on its downward way till, as I could see, there were but four houses left. It seemed strahge to identify this all but bechirakhvillage with the Mahishmati of ancient story, but the old man had no doubt whatever on the subject. He showed me a stone mantapwhere Arjuna of the thousand arms had been wont to take his exercise. He showed me likewise the pond where the hero used to perform his daily ablutions, and the temple where he rendered daily worship. He told me of a mantapwhere Ravana had been held prisoner, and made to dance for the amusement of the Mahishmati people, as a great glittering ten-headed monster. The captive had at first refused to perform, but Arjuna had struck him so, that he started up in rage and pain striking ten dents, with his ten heads, into the stone ceiling of the prison. The dents–the old man said–could be seen to this day. That is the way with these people. No village is too small or insignificant to be worthy of association with gods and heroes, and the days are not past when divine beings trod the earth. This old man was only talking as is usual with him and his sort; but, no doubt, this village had been a mighty town in its day. Look at the mantap, for instance, which had been the many-armed hero’s gymnasium, and at the multi-pillared prison of the Rakshasa. They were low-roofed to be sure; but what immense stones, what solidity and cleanness of build! This surely was the work of no feeble men. The pond, which had been Arjuna’s bathing place, was a hundred and fifty yards square, with broad steps of dressed stone, so well planed and so truly jointed that the thousands of years which had desolated countries and destroyed dynasties had wrought hardly a change in the structure. This was without a doubt the work of builders who had gloried in their skill, and known the joy of creating beautiful structures. There is yet a little water in that pond, and it laps the foot of the same tier of steps all round, so justly have they been built, and so little has time touched them. And then that temple. To eyes accustomed to the exquisite lines of Greek art, and the massive majesty of our own architecture, there is at first a disappointing sense of something crude and inconsequential in Indian building and sculpture; but take a temple as a whole; and the effect is far from unsatisfying. This temple I am speaking of is of the usual type–carefully built and finished; the slabs and stones fitted with workman-like neatness and precision. It is still in a fair state of preservation. There is an image in the temple, but no worship has taken place for years.

And in the village itself, there are long lines of crumbling foundations of what must have been palatial houses, laid out in streets, in the goodly order of a well-planned town. My old friend pointed out wh at had been the Brahmana street; another row of ruins had been the jeweller’s street, and so on……………….

Now, mere emptiness and silence; even the imagination can hardly people that wilderness of crumbling walls.

When yesterday I made enquiries about the pictures my brother-in-law wished to see, I found that my old friend was the owner of them. We sent for him. He came out, and saluting us with old world courtesy, begged us to enter. This man had a lofty graciousness which seemed to spring from an innate nobility of soul.

‘Are you Mr. Krishnayya?’ asked Farquhar.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I have some business with you; that’s why we came.’

‘I am at your service.’

‘I have heard that you have some beautiful old pictures. I have come to see them if I may.’

‘I haven’t many, but such as I have you are welcome to see. Pray come in and be seated.’

We took our seats in the hazara-hall. The old gentleman went in and brought a few pictures. They were painted with very ordinary colours on indifferent canvas made by laying some waxy paste on cloth. The lines were flowing and graceful. Some pictures looked as though parts had been erased and re-drawn, while others remained as they had come from the inspired mind of the artist. His touch must have been wonderfully light and sure. One of them was a picture of Gopalakrishna. A look at it sufficed to tell you how real Gopalakrishna must have been to the artist.

That words can express the beauty of the pose, the daintiness of the fingers which held the flute to the wooing lips, the infinite tenderness of the eyes! The body was gracefully poised on one foot, so that the garland hung a little aslant on the bosom. All this is easy to describe, but who can describe the atmosphere of rapt and silent absorption–as though all sound, all sense, all nature, had been merged and lost in an infinite harmony,–the listening stillness of the trees, the various pose of cow and calf surprised and spell-bound in the act of grazing or gambol, the ecstatic groups of gods and rishis and gopikas? This man, surely, saw his God as he painted Him! Emily and Farquhar were in raptures.

‘Whose work is this?’

‘My grandfather’s.’

‘He had genius!’

‘My family has not produced such another.’

‘Did he paint other pictures?’

‘Oh, he painted a good many; but they were most of them like this one, pictures of Gopalakrishna. He delighted in making pictures of the god. Well, he painted, and painted……. and this is what remains of it all.’

The old man went in and brought out a daftarwhich we found to contain a number of pictures of the god, differing but little from one another. Some were almost replicas of one another, while others differed only in general effect. There were sixteen of them altogether.

‘He made them–and he put each by sadly, as not quite the Vision that had been vouchsafed to him. Then he began another. Finally he had this,–the one you have already seen.’

Farquhar looked up with interest.

‘Did he say he was satisfied that this picture expressed his vision?’ he asked.

‘No. A few days later, he started painting another. I heard that, before he put his hand to it, he was for ten or twelve days wrapped up in worship and meditation. It was a strange life, sir, my grandfather’s. At the end of that time he started up from meditation crying, “My God is come!” and bade his wife bring cocoanuts, and flowers, and fruit for worship. Then he sat down to paint. The day was far stepped into the afternoon, and he was still at his picture. Later, his elder brother who had finished his daily worship, came and sat silently near him. All the children–and my grandmother who being big with my father was not allowed to remain fasting–had long since finished their meal. My grandfather and his brother were the only people who hadn’t dined. It was almost evening, and my grandfather continued working at his picture. Then came a cry that the marauders were upon us. The gates were closed, and the whole town swarmed to the ramparts. My grandfather was a man of great courage. He rose up saying, “Perhaps it is not God’s pleasure that this picture should be finished today”, and with a lingering look at it, he seized his bow and quiver, and went out. Our women, it seems, begged my grandfather to dine before going out; but he only laughed and said that the meal might wait, but the fight would not, and so went out. His brother also said, “Never mind, he’ll be coming presently”, and waited for him. I have heard that my grandfather so far yielded to the importunities of the women as to eat one of the plantains used for worship, and that was all. The raiders were in great force, and we were but few; the wiser part would have been to bribe them to leave us alone, to which they would have been nothing loath, and some there were that counseled this course; but my grandfather was a man of spirit, and with a few men of like heart, he ran up and down the ramparts seeking to organise defence. Some robber marked him, and shot him down with a matchlock. Presently help came to us from our men who hastened from their fields to defend their home, and we beat off the marauders. When it was all over, they brought my grandfather home. The bullet had entered his breast, and there was no more than a faint spark of life when they brought him in. They say he opened his eyes once and said, “Oh, yes, I’ll come presently, for I must finish my picture”, and his spirit passed. I think his mind had gone to his leaving the picture to go to the fight. My granduncle, who was so much the elder that he had been a father to my grandfather, beat his breast and cried, “Oh my boy, Oh my boy, could I not give you a mouthful of food before sending you to your death!” and he was broken-hearted. To make a sad story short, they cremated him and performed his obsequies, but my granduncle was never the same man again. He spent most of his time at the door as though in expectation of somebody; and as he oldened, he took to muttering strange things such as, “No, he won’t come”, “Who knows what was in his mind?”, “Oh, but he will!” and so he too passed away.’

The old man ceased, and we respected his silence. After a while, Farquhar said in a low voice:

‘Where’s the picture he painted that day?’

‘It is inside.’

‘Won’t you kindly show it to us?’

‘I have heard my elders say it should not be shown.’

‘Why?’

‘It is unfinished, and there may be faults in it. People might, say it is not a good piece of work, and that would vex a workman. It might lower the artist in the estimation of people.’

‘My dear sir, your artist was a hero and a genius, and has nothing to fear from detractors,–and we are not detractors. Do let us see the picture.’

‘Very well then, so be it. I doubt whether I should have shown it if you had come by yourselves, but I cannot disoblige a lady, and she is eager to see. There was yet another reason–a very fanciful reason it may seem to you–why my granduncle was unwilling to let this picture be seen. His brother’s last words had been that he would come again and finish the picture, and my granduncle believed he would do so.’

‘Did your grandfather say he would come ?’

‘Well, so at least they understood him. And it grew into a feeling in our house that our grandfather, would be reborn in our midst to complete his picture. We did not wish to show it to others till he had come and completed it. When my father was born, it is said my grand-uncle anxiously watched him for evidences of his father’s genius, as a token that he had come again in his son to take up the unfinished work. But no. When I came, he looked for them in me. But again, no. He said, “My brother was a boy of his word; he is sure to come some day; take good care of the picture”, and so he died. My father showed it once to our guru, and now I show it again as something in the lady’s face makes me feel I might show it to her.’

He went inside the house again and brought two pictures of which he placed one before us.

I was spell-bound by the picture. There was magic in each line,–and I despair to convey it in words. It was as though the artist had caught and fixed the air, all tremulous and undulating with the music of the flute. Though the details were as in the other pictures we had seen, there was yet some indefinable difference which made it instinct with life and unearthly beauty. Emily gazed on it in breathless rapture.

‘Is this the unfinished picture?’ she asked at last.

‘No. This other–’ and he spread out the second picture before us.

‘My God!’ said Emily with a gasp.

We looked at it in silence for a while. It was a supreme picture.

‘What did the artist intend painting below this cow, I wonder?’ said Farquhar when he found his voice. There was a faint wavy line or two as of an outline commenced and broken off.

‘I don’t know. It was just as he was about to fill the canvas there that the alarm came, and he went out to die.’

I looked again, and it seemed to me that the artist had meant to put in another cow there; but one couldn’t be sure. Emily was still regarding the picture in silence. I asked the old man if no one had hazarded a guess as to what the artist’s intention might have been.

‘There is my daughter’s little boy,’ said the old man; ‘he said something. Nobody else could make anything of it.’

‘Sir,’ said Farquhar, ‘if you could sell me that picture, I would take it home with me and make your grandfather’s name famous in my country. Will you give it to me?’

‘Sir, how can I? My granduncle forbade us even to show it!’

‘It is not for my own use or pleasure that I ask it,–it is to secure to your grandfather the recognition that is his due. It is for the glory of your village and your country.’

‘But what if he returns as he promised?’

‘Who? Your grandfather? Venerable sir, can you for a moment believe it? Just think!

‘What matters our thinking?’ rejoined the old man. ‘He knows best who promised. It is clearly our duty to keep the picture here waiting for him–and that was the wish of our elders also. The rest is as God wills.’

Farquhar merely said, ‘All right, but please think about it again. We aren’t in a hurry. We shall come again, in four or five days, and shall be very pleased to hear your decision.’

Emily did not seem to have heard this talk. She suddenly looked up from the picture.

‘Shall I tell you what was in the artist’s mind to paint here?’

‘Do,’ I said.

‘It seems to me,’ said Emily, with a flush on her cheeks, ‘it seems to me there should have been here a calf on its eager way to the mother’s milk, held in mid-career, and fed with the Divine melody. Whoso is fed with milk-even mother’s milk–hungers again; but the nectar from the flute fills for evermore. Look, how all things in the picture show that the melody has just begun. The other picture is conventional; this one has seized the moment when the music
began.’

‘Then what my grandchild said was true!’ exclaimed the old man.

‘What did he say?’ we cried.

‘He said, “Look how the Lord has even now conceived a thought, and raised the flute to his lips to give it expression. See how the first notes have enchanted the air, and look at this calf surprised on its way to the mother, and fed with music sweeter than milk!” That was what the boy said. And that is what Madam here says now.’

We marveled at the boy’s justness of perception; for really, the air seemed thrilling with music, and there was dawning inspiration on the brow of the Divine flutist.

Farquhar said:

‘Bring up this boy of yours to be a painter,–believe me he will make a great one. Tell us when we come again four days hence whether you will give us the picture.’

Emily said nothing. Presently we rose to go, and the old gentleman saw us off with the usual parting gift of betel leaves and nut.

But we have no thought now of going there again for the picture. We still want it as keenly as ever; and it is also possible the old man may not resist the temptation of a high price,–but we shall not go, and this is why.

On our way , Emily sat for a while on the stone steps of Kartavirya’s pond. Farquhar fetched out our tiffin basket and we had tea.

‘What a beautiful pond!’ said Emily.

‘Beautiful enough,’ I replied, ‘but there isn’t much water in it now; and look, some fellow has prised off a few stones over there, to build an ugly little house with, very probably.’

‘Oh brother,’ she said, does it not occur to you that we are doing very much the same kind of thing? There isn’t much water in the pond, it is true; but the pond itself is here nevertheless; and if only some one cared for it, and saw that weeds did not spring up and loosen the joints, some day–perhaps years hence-when water came, the pond would be there to hold it. I can almost hear the tinkling anklets and toe-rings of the generations of sweet joyous girls who must have passed up and down these beautiful steps. They may come again–as water may come again–if but the pond continued whole and good; but once pullout the stones, deface and desecrate the pond, and lo! it is but an ugly ditch which all will shun, and which can only become noisome with the return of water!’

‘Quite true, Emily, but what are you driving at?’

‘What? Do you ask? Why, this: We take away this picture because it is good, that statue because it is beautiful, and that other thing because it is desirable, and then what remains to this unfortunate country when she comes to herself, I should like to know? What shall we have done for her?’

‘But don’t you see we take these things only to proclaim the greatness of this country to the world, and not through mere lust of possession?’

‘Much good will that kind of fame be to her! You tell this man to make his little boy a painter, and you take away his picture. Is that doing him a great lot of good?’

We got on our horses, and rode slowly homewards. After we had gone some little way Emily said to me:

‘Have you heard, brother, of a belief among these people that sometimes the soul goes wandering forth from its body, leaving it temporarily untenanted, but intending to return to it. It may happen that, in the interval, some other spirit usurps that body to the deprivation of its proper owner.’

I said I had heard of such a belief.

They call it entry into another’s body. Now supposing a soul leaves its body for a while purposing to return, if this body should be hidden away or disfigured beyond recognition so that the soul returning cannot find or know it, how forlornly that homeless soul must wander in space!’

‘True, but what a fancy!’

‘Brother, it seems to me that the lovely body they call Bharata Mata (Mother India) is now in a trance, and that her children are seated weeping about her. But even now, her brow is flushing with the return of the soul. Shall we now deface her frame, deprive her of the things she holds sacred and beautiful, her necklace and rings and bracelets, with the result that title returning soul cannot recognise its own tenement? Is it not just as though we had rapt the body away? The mother’s soul may return wishing to wipe her children’s tears, but what if the body be not there? Shall we orphan her children? I don’t think we ought to do this!’

And Emily’s eyes filled with tears. Farquhar looked away; his thoughts had probably gone to little George, and he pictured Emily in a trance and George waiting beside her. We rode home in silence, and decided this morning that we should not try to acquire that picture.
This occurrence has confirmed to me another thought I have had for some time. It may be that we can substitute our civilisation for the one these people have lost, but this would be really the usurpation by an alien soul of a body which is waiting for the return of its own.”