12

One day, Raju Pande sent word to the estate office that a herd of wild boars was creating havoc in his fields of china grain every night. Among them were several large, tusked boars, and in his fear, he could do nothing but beat on a canister. If the estate office did not provide a remedy, his entire harvest stood to be ruined.

Upon hearing this, I took my gun and went myself that afternoon. Raju’s hut and his land lay within the dense jungle of Narha Baihar. That area was as yet unsettled, and few fields had been cleared for cultivation; consequently, the menace of wild animals was all the greater.

I found Raju at work in his field. On seeing me, he dropped what he was doing and came running. He took the reins from my hand and tethered the horse to a nearby haritaki tree.

“Well, Raju,” I said, “I haven’t seen you around. Why don’t you ever come by the estate office?”

Around Raju’s hovel stretched a jungle of tall kash grass, interspersed with the occasional kend and haritaki tree. How he managed to live alone in this desolate forest! In this jungle, there was no one with whom to exchange a single word at the end of the day—a strange man indeed!

Raju said, “When do I get the time to go anywhere, Huzoor? I’m worn out just keeping watch over the crops in the field. And on top of that, there are the buffaloes.”

I was about to ask what could possibly keep him so busy—grazing three buffaloes and cultivating ten to twelve bighas of land—that he had no time to visit the village, but Raju, of his own accord, gave me a list of his daily tasks that made it clear he had no time to even catch his breath. Farming, grazing the buffaloes, milking them, churning butter, performing his puja and devotions, reading the Ramayana, cooking, eating—just hearing it all made me feel winded. Raju was a truly industrious man! And on top of all this, he apparently had to stay up all night beating his canister.

“When do the boars come out?” I asked.

“There’s no fixed time for that, Huzoor. But they do come out once night falls. If you’ll sit for a while, you’ll see how many there are.”

But the question that intrigued me most was how Raju lived by himself in this desolate place. I asked him as much.

“I’ve grown used to it, Babuji,” Raju said. “I’ve been living like this for a long time—not only is it no hardship, I’m actually quite happy in my own company. I work hard all day, and in the evening I sing devotional songs and take the name of God. The days pass quite nicely.”

Raju, or Ganu Mahato, or Jaypal—there were many men of this type scattered throughout the jungle. In them, I discovered a new world, a world with which I was unacquainted.

I knew that Raju had one great worldly weakness: he was extremely fond of tea. Wondering where he could possibly find the ingredients for it in this jungle, I had brought some tea and sugar with me. “Raju,” I said, “why don’t you make some tea? I have everything with me.”

Overjoyed, Raju put a three-seer pot of water on to boil. The tea was prepared, but there was no vessel to drink from other than a single small bronze bowl. He served me my tea in that, and then, taking up the large pot himself, he sat down to drink his.

Raju could read and write Hindi, it was true, but he had no knowledge whatsoever of the outside world. He had heard the name Calcutta but had no idea in which direction it lay. His notion of Bombay or Delhi was as completely unreal and hazy as his notion of the moon. The only city he had ever seen was Purnea, and that was many years ago, when he had gone there for just a few days.

I asked, “Have you ever seen a motorcar, Raju?”

“No, Huzoor. I’ve heard they run without bullocks or horses and that smoke comes out of them. I hear there are many in Purnea town these days. It’s been a long time since I was there—we’re poor folk, and the moment you go to the city you need money.”

I asked Raju if he wanted to go to Calcutta. If he did, I would take him for a visit, and it wouldn’t cost him a paisa.

Raju said, “The city is a very bad place, I’ve heard it’s a den of thieves, scoundrels, and gamblers. They say you lose your caste if you go there. All the people there are villains. A man from our parts went to a hospital in some city because of something wrong with his leg. The doctor cuts his leg with a knife and says, ‘How much money will you give me?’ The man says, ‘I’ll give you ten rupees.’ So the doctor cuts some more. Then he says again, ‘Tell me now, how much will you give me?’ The man says, ‘I’ll give you another five rupees, Doctor-sahib, please don’t cut any more.’ The doctor says, ‘That won’t do,’ and starts cutting his leg again. He was a poor man, and the more he cried, the more the doctor cut with his knife—he kept cutting and cutting until he’d cut off the whole leg. Uff, can you imagine such a thing, Huzoor!”

It was difficult to keep from laughing at Raju’s story. I was reminded of the time Raju, seeing a rainbow in the sky, had told me, “That rainbow you see, Babuji, it rises from an anthill. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

In the yard in front of Raju’s hovel stood a very large and tall asan tree, and it was under this tree that we sat drinking our tea. Everywhere I looked, there was dense forest—kend trees, amlaki, flowering bahera vines—and a faint, sweet scent of bahera blossoms perfumed the evening breeze. It seemed to me that to sit in such a place and drink tea in this way was one of life’s beautiful experiences. Where else could one find such a wild expanse, such a jungle-hemmed cottage of kash grass, or for that matter, a man like Raju? The experience was as strange as it was rare.

“Tell me, Raju,” I said, “why don’t you bring your wife here? Then you wouldn’t have the trouble of cooking for yourself.”

“She is no longer living, Huzoor,” Raju said. “She passed away seventeen or eighteen years ago. After that, I could never again set my heart on being at home.”

That there had been romance in Raju’s life was difficult to even imagine, but the story he then told could not be described by any other name.

Raju’s wife’s name had been Sarju (that is, Sarayu). When Raju was eighteen and Sarju was fourteen, he had gone to study grammar for a time at her father’s tol in Uttar-Dharampur, in Shyamal-tola.

I said to Raju, “How long did you study there?”

“Not long, Babuji. I was there for about a year, but I never sat for the examinations. That’s where we first met, and gradually—”

Out of deference to me, Raju coughed lightly and fell silent.

“Go on,” I said in an encouraging tone.

“But Huzoor, her father was my professor. How could I say such a thing to him? One day, during the month of Kartik, on the day of the Chhath festival, Sarju, wearing a sari dyed yellow, was going with a group of girls to bathe in the Koshi river. I—”

Raju coughed again and fell silent.

“Go on, go on,” I urged him again. “What of it?”

“I hid behind a tree to watch for her. The reason was that I hadn’t been able to see her much lately—and there were even talks of her marriage being arranged somewhere. When the group came singing toward me—you know, sir, how during the Chhath festival the girls sing as they go to float their offerings in the river!—then, as they came singing right in front of me, she saw me behind the tree. She smiled, and I smiled back. I gestured with my hand, telling her to fall back a little. She gestured back, saying, ‘Not now, on the way back.’”

As he said this, the face of the fifty-two-year-old Raju took on the shyness of a twenty-year-old lover, and a dreamy, distant look appeared in his eyes. It was as if his lonely, middle-aged soul had set out in search of that blessed fourteen-year-old girl from the sacred days of his first youth, far back in his past. Living alone in this dense jungle had worn him out. The one he now loved to think about, the one for whose companionship his heart yearned, was that girl Sarju from so long ago, who was now nowhere on this earth.

I was thoroughly enjoying his story. “And then?” I asked eagerly.

“And then we met on the way back. She fell a little behind the group. I said, ‘Sarju, I’m in great pain. I can’t even see you anymore, and I know I won’t get any studying done. Why should I suffer for nothing? I’m thinking of leaving the tol at the end of this month.’ Sarju started to cry. She said, ‘Why don’t you speak to my father?’ Seeing Sarju’s tears, I grew desperate. And so one day, I found myself saying something I might otherwise never have been able to say to my professor.”

There was no obstacle to the marriage; they were of the same caste, the same clan. And so they were married.

Perhaps it was a very simple and ordinary romance—perhaps if I had heard it amidst the clamor of the city, I would have dismissed it as a thoroughly domestic, rustic affair, a bit of sentimental puppy love. But there, its novelty and beauty captivated my mind. How profoundly mysterious, I understood that day, is the history of how two human beings find each other in their lives.

By the time we finished our tea, evening had passed and a thin moonlight had spread across the sky. It was the sixth or seventh day of the lunar cycle.

Taking up my gun, I said, “Come on, Raju, let’s see where these boars are in your field!”

A large mulberry tree stood at one side of the field. Raju said, “We’ll have to climb this tree, Huzoor. This morning I built a platform on one of its forked branches.”

I saw I was in a terrible fix. It had been many years since I had practiced climbing trees, and to do so now, at night, was another matter entirely. But Raju encouraged me, saying, “It’s no trouble at all, Huzoor. There’s a bamboo pole, and the branches are low down. It’s a very easy climb.”

I handed my gun to Raju, climbed onto a branch, and settled myself on the platform. Raju followed me up with effortless grace. We sat side by side on the platform, keeping our eyes on the field.

The moonlight grew brighter. From the forked branch of the mulberry tree, the sight of the treetops, some distinct and some indistinct in the moonlight, stirred a strange feeling in my mind. This too was a new experience in life.

A little later, a pack of jackals began to howl in the surrounding jungle. At the same time, some sort of blackish animal emerged from the dense woods to the south and entered Raju’s field.

“There, look, Huzoor,” Raju said.

I raised my gun, but as it drew closer, the moonlight revealed that it was not a boar but a nilgai.

I had no desire to shoot a nilgai. Raju shooed it away with a cry of “Dur, dur,” and it bounded off toward the jungle. I fired a shot into the air.

Two hours passed. A junglefowl called out from the woods to the south. I had hoped to shoot a big, tusked boar, but not so much as a hair of a single piglet was to be seen. Firing that blank shot after the nilgai had been a great mistake.

“Let’s get down, Huzoor,” Raju said. “I have to arrange for your dinner.”

I said, “What dinner? I have to get back to the estate office—it’s not even ten o’clock yet. I can’t stay. I have to go out tomorrow morning to inspect the survey camp.”

“Have something to eat before you go, Huzoor.”

“It won’t be safe to go alone through the Narha Baihar jungle any later than this. I’ll leave now. Please don’t take it amiss.”

As I was mounting my horse, I said, “If I come by for tea at your place from time to time, you won’t be annoyed, will you?”

Raju said, “What are you saying! I live alone in this jungle, a poor man. It’s out of affection that you bring tea and sugar and have it made so we can drink it together. Don’t embarrass me by saying such things, Babuji.”

Looking at Raju then, it occurred to me that he was quite handsome even at this age; in his youth, he must have been very good-looking indeed. The professor’s daughter, Sarju, in being drawn to her father’s handsome young student, had only shown proof of her own fine taste.

The night was deep. I was crossing a vast plain. The moon had set. There was no light to be seen in any direction, only a strange silence—it was as if I had been exiled from the earth to some unknown, uninhabited planet. On the horizon, the constellation of the Scorpion was rising, glittering; overhead, in the dark sky, were countless worlds of light; below lay the silent forest of Labtulia Baihar, the tops of the tamarisks visible in the thin darkness of the faint starlight. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of jackals announced the hour. Farther still, the boundary of the Mohanpura Reserve Forest looked like a long, dark mountain range in the blackness. There was no other sound, save for the monotonous, incessant kir-r-r-r of a certain kind of insect; if one listened carefully, one could hear the sounds of two or three other insects mixed in with that one. What a strange romance there was in this free life, what joy in this close and intimate acquaintance with nature! And over it all was cast an indefinable, ineffable mystery. What that mystery was, I do not know—but I know very well that after I left that place, the feeling of that mystery has never again come to my mind, anywhere.

It was as if, in this still and solitary night, the gods were lost among the constellations in visions of creation—visions in which lay, as seeds, the emergence of new universes in the distant future, the birth of new forms of beauty, the unfolding of countless new lives. Only that soul which, in its relentless leisure, thirsts for knowledge, whose spirit exults in the awareness of the universe’s vastness and its minuteness—that soul for whom the sorrows and griefs of this petty, trivial present have dissolved into a single drop in the hope of a long journey down the path of births and rebirths—only such a soul can perceive their mysterious form. Nāyamātmā balahīnena labhyaḥ…

Those who climbed to the peak of Everest and gave their lives in the blizzards and snows, they perceived this cosmic form of the world-divinity… or Columbus, when day after day off the coast of the Azores he sought news of the unknown continent across the great ocean in pieces of driftwood—it was then that this playful power of the universe revealed itself to him. Those who sit at home smoking their hookahs and arranging their neighbors’ daughters’ weddings and boycotting their washermen and barbers—it is not for them to grasp its true nature.

The survey was taking place north of the Michhi River, among the jungles and hills. I had been camped here for eight or ten days now. I would probably have to stay for another ten or twelve.

The place was a long way from our estate, close to the domain of Raja Dobru Panna. I say domain, but Raja Dobru is a king without a kingdom—it would be more accurate to say it was somewhat near his place of residence.

It was a most wonderful place. A valley, wide at its mouth and narrow at the back—flanked by ranges of hills to the east and west, with this horseshoe-shaped valley in between. It was rugged and overgrown with jungle, scattered everywhere with rocks large and small, with thickets of thorny bamboo and a jungle of various other trees and plants. A number of mountain streams descended from the north and flowed out through the open end of the valley. Along the banks of these streams, the forest was especially dense, and I knew from long experience that these were the places where one had to fear tigers. There were deer, and I had heard junglefowl crowing in the second watch of the night. I had heard the cry of the pheal, it was true, but I had neither seen a tiger nor heard its roar.

In the face of the eastern hills was a huge cave. At the mouth of the cave stood an ancient, spreading banyan tree, its leaves whispering day and night. Under the midday sun, beneath the blue sky, this deserted, wild valley and its cave brought to mind images of a very ancient age, an age when this cave might have been the royal palace of primitive kings, just as it was the ancestral cave-dwelling of Raja Dobru Panna’s forefathers. On one of the cave walls, something had been carved, probably a picture of some kind—it was now extremely faint and impossible to make out clearly. The unwritten history of how many peals of laughter from primitive men and women, how much joy and sorrow, how many tears shed under the tyranny of a savage society, was inscribed in the soil, the air, the stone walls of this cave—it was a pleasant thing to contemplate.

About two hundred yards from the mouth of the cave, in a clearing in the forest by a stream, lived a Goad family. They had two huts, one small, one a little larger, with walls of forest branches and roofs of thatch. They had built a hearth in the open space in front of the huts by gathering stones. Their cottage stood in the shade of a large wild almond tree. The ripe almond leaves had fallen and almost completely covered the yard.

The Goad family had two daughters, one sixteen or seventeen years old, the other about fourteen. Their complexions were as black as soot, but their faces were imbued with a simple beauty—and with flawless health. Every morning, I would see the two girls take three or four buffaloes up into the hills to graze, and then return just before evening. As I sat in my tent drinking my tea, I would see the girls pass in front of my camp, leading their buffaloes home.

One day, the elder girl stopped on the path and sent her younger sister to my tent. The girl came and said, “Babuji, salaam. Do you have a bidi? My sister wants one.”

“You smoke bidis?”

“I don’t, but my sister does. Please give me one, Babuji, do you have one?”

“I don’t have any bidis. I have cigars—but I won’t give you those. They’re too strong, you wouldn’t be able to smoke them.”

The girl went away.

A little later, I went to their home. The head of the household was very surprised to see me, and he welcomed me and offered me a seat. The two girls had just sat down to eat their ghato—boiled maize—with salt, served on sal leaves. It was boiled maize and nothing more. Their mother was heating something on the fire. Two small children, a boy and a girl, were playing.

The head of the household was over fifty. He had a healthy, strong build. In answer to my questions, he told me that their home was in the Seoni district. They had been here for about a year because there was plenty of grass for grazing their buffaloes and ample drinking water in these hills. Besides, the thorny bamboo in the local jungle was very good for making baskets, hampers, and the conical hats called tokas. They could earn a few paisas by selling them at the fair in Akhil-kucha during Shivaratri.

I asked, “How long will you stay here?”

“As long as we feel like it, Babuji. But we’ve grown very fond of this place, otherwise we don’t usually stay in one spot for a whole year. There’s a big advantage here—so many custard apples grow in the jungle on the hills. During the month of Ashwin, my daughters would come back from grazing the buffaloes with two baskets full of tree-ripened custard apples. We lived on nothing but custard apples for two months. It’s the lure of the custard apples that keeps us here. Just ask them!”

The elder girl, still eating, said with a bright face, “Uff, there’s a place, over toward the corner of the eastern hills, so many wild custard apple trees. So many ripe fruits burst open and fall to the ground, and no one eats them. We used to bring them back by the basketful.”

Just then, someone emerged from the dense forest, stood before the hut, and said, “Sitaram, Sitaram, Jai Sitaram—could you spare a little fire?”

The head of the household said, “Come, Babaji, please sit.”

I saw that it was an old sadhu with matted locks. The sadhu, meanwhile, had caught sight of me and, with a look of surprise and perhaps some fear, had shrunk back and was standing to one side.

“My respects, Sadhu Babaji,” I said.

The sadhu offered a blessing, but it seemed his fear had not yet subsided.

To give him courage, I asked, “Where do you live, Babaji?”

It was the master of the house who answered. “He lives deep in the great Gajar Forest, in that corner where the two hills meet,” he said. “He’s been here a long time.”

The old sadhu had meanwhile sat down. I looked at him and asked, “How long have you been here?”

The sadhu’s fear had now subsided. “Fifteen or sixteen years now, Babusahib,” he replied.

“You live all alone, then? I’ve heard there are tigers here. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Who else would there be, Babusahib? I take the name of the Supreme Being—what good would it do to be fearful? And how old do you think I am, Babusahib?”

I looked at him closely. “Seventy, perhaps.”

The sadhu laughed. “No, Babusahib, I am past ninety. I lived for ten years in a forest near Gaya. Then the leaseholder began felling trees there, and people gradually started to settle. I fled from that place. I cannot bear to live among people.”

“Babaji, there is a cave here, why don’t you live in it?”

“One cave, Babusahib? There are countless caves in these hills. The place where I live, over on that side, is not exactly a cave, but it is like one. That is to say, it has a roof overhead and walls on two sides—only the front is open.”

“What do you eat? Do you beg for alms?”

“I never go anywhere, Babusahib. The Supreme Being provides my sustenance. I eat boiled bamboo shoots, and there is a kind of tuber that grows in the forest, very sweet, it tastes like red potato—I eat that. Ripe amlaki and custard apples are plentiful in this forest. I eat a great many amlaki; if a man eats amlaki every day, he does not age suddenly, he can hold on to his youth for a long time. The village people sometimes come to see me and leave milk, chhatu, and coarse sugar. Things carry on, one way or another.”

“Have you ever come face to face with a tiger or a bear?”

“Never. But I have seen a fearsome species of python in this forest—it was lying motionless in one spot—as thick as a palm tree trunk, jet black, with green and red markings on its skin. Its eyes burned like glowing embers. It is still in this forest. At that time, it was lying by the water’s edge, probably hoping to catch a deer. It must be hiding in some cavern now. Well, I must be going, Babusahib, it has grown late.”

The sadhu took some fire and left. I learned that he would occasionally come here for fire and stay for a while to chat.

It had already grown dark; now a faint, earthy moonlight was rising. A strange silence had filled the woodlands of the valley. My ears could hear no sound but the murmuring of the nearby mountain stream and the occasional cry of a wild fowl or two.

I returned to the tent. On the way, a great shimul tree was ablaze with swarms of fireflies, whirling in circles, down from above and up from below—etching various geometric figures against a backdrop of light and shadow.

It was here, one day, that the poet Venkateshwar Prasad arrived. Tall and thin, he wore a black serge coat over a grimy dhoti; his hair was unkempt and dishevelled, and he was over forty.

I took him for a job-seeker. “What is it you want?” I asked.

He said, “I have come seeking an audience with Babuji” (he did not address me as ‘Huzoor’). “My name is Venkateshwar Prasad. My home is in Bihar Sharif, in Patna district. I live in Chakmakitola, three miles from here.”

“Oh. And what brings you here?”

“If Babuji would kindly grant me permission, I will explain. I am not wasting your time, am I?”

I was still thinking the man had come for a job. But his not saying ‘Huzoor’ had won my respect. I said, “Please sit down. You have walked a long way in this heat.”

I noticed something else—the man’s Hindi was very polished. I myself could not speak Hindi like that. My dealings were with sepoys, peons, and village folk; the Hindi I spoke was a hodgepodge learned from their lips, a rustic patois mixed with Bengali idioms. I had never heard such refined and polite Hindi—how could I possibly speak it? So, with a certain caution, I asked, “Tell me, what is the purpose of your visit?”

He replied, “I have come to recite a few poems for you.”

I was quite astonished. What could be so urgent that this man, poet or not, had come to recite poetry for me in this jungle?

“You are a poet?” I said. “I am delighted. I shall listen to your poems with great pleasure. But how did you find me?”

“My home is about three miles from here. Just on the other side of the hills. Everyone in our village was saying that a Bengali Babu had come from Calcutta. You people hold learning in high esteem, for you yourselves are learned. The poet has said—

A good poet’s words find their light among the wise, Like budding blossoms to students, and as grass to the witless.”

Venkateshwar Prasad recited his poetry for me. One was a very long poem, weaving together the names of a railway line’s ticket checker, booking clerk, stationmaster, guard, and so on. The poem did not seem to be of a very high order. But I do not wish to be unjust to Venkateshwar Prasad. I did not understand his language well—to tell the truth, I understood very little of it. Still, I went on uttering words of encouragement and approval from time to time.

A long while passed. Venkateshwar Prasad showed no sign of stopping his recitation, let alone of taking his leave.

After a couple of hours, he fell silent for a moment and, with a smiling face, asked, “How did Babuji like it?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I have seldom heard such poetry. Why don’t you send your poems to a magazine?”

Venkateshwar replied sorrowfully, “Babuji, everyone in this region thinks I am mad. Do you imagine there are people in places like this who understand poetry? Reciting for you today has brought me satisfaction. One must recite such things for a connoisseur. That is why, as soon as I heard of you, I thought I must find an opportunity to catch you.”

He took his leave that day, but the next afternoon he returned and began to insist that I visit his home in his village. Unable to refuse his request, I set off with him on foot for Chakmakitola.

The day was drawing to a close. The shadow of the northern hills stretched far across the fields of wheat and barley before us. A certain peace was all around. Flocks of silli birds were flying in to alight on the thorny bamboo groves; in one spot, village boys and girls were trying to catch some small fish in a stream.

The village was densely packed. Houses stood roof to roof, and many had no courtyard to speak of. Venkateshwar Prasad led me to a middling-sized thatched-roof house. His outer room was right on the street; I sat there on a wooden cot. A little later, I also saw the poet’s wife—with her own hands she brought dahi-vada and roasted corn for me, placing them at one end of the very cot I was sitting on, but she did not speak, though her head was not veiled. She was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five; her complexion, while not fair, was not bad, and her face had a tranquil loveliness. If not a beauty, the poet’s wife was certainly not plain. There was a simple, effortless grace and charm in her bearing.

I noticed another thing—the health of the poet’s wife. For some reason, wherever I have gone in this region, the health of the women has seemed to me many times better than that of the women of Bengal. Not stout, but tall, shapely, and well-built—I have seen more women of this kind here than I have in Bengal. The poet’s wife was also of this type.

A little later, she placed a bowl of buffalo-milk yogurt at one side of the cot and stepped back behind the door. Hearing the jingle of the chain, Venkateshwar Prasad got up and went to his wife. He returned immediately with a smile and said, “My wife says you have become our friend, and a friend must be cooled down, so a great deal of dried pippali and chili powder has been mixed into the yogurt.”

I laughed and said, “If that is the case, then why should I suffer alone? So that tears may spring from all our eyes, I propose that the three of us eat this yogurt. Come!” The poet’s wife laughed from behind the door. I was not one to give up; I made her eat the yogurt as well.

A little while later, the poet’s wife went inside the house and returned with a plate in her hand, which she placed at the end of the cot. This time, right in front of me, in a low, amused tone, she said for me to hear, “Tell Babuji to soothe the burning in his mouth now with some homemade peda.”

What beautiful, sweet, feminine, rustic Hindi!

I am very fond of the accent of the Hindi spoken by the women of this region. Being unable to speak good Hindi myself, I have a great attraction to the spoken language. Not the Hindi of books—but the language of these village outskirts, these foothills, these forested lands, beside vast green fields of barley and wheat, where the turning leather raath, powered by buffaloes, irrigates field after field, where in the shadow-filled afternoons, flocks of bar-headed geese or silli birds or herons flying towards the distant bluish mountain ranges carry a hint of a far-stretching landscape—that particular sort of language, with its abruptly ending, somewhat childlike, broken verb forms, heard especially from the mouths of women, holds a great pull for me.

Suddenly, I said to the poet, “Won’t you please recite a poem or two of yours?”

Venkateshwar Prasad’s face lit up with enthusiasm. He had written a poem about a village love story, and he read it aloud. A young man sat on this side of a small canal, guarding a cornfield; a girl came to the ghat on the other side every day, a pitcher on her hip, to fetch water. The boy thought the girl was very beautiful. He would turn his face away, whistle a tune, shoo away goats and cows, and from time to time, glance at the girl. How many times their eyes had met! And at once, blushing scarlet, the young girl would lower her gaze. Every day, the boy would think, tomorrow he will call to her and speak. Returning home, he would think of her. So many ‘tomorrows’ came and went—the words of his heart were never spoken. Then one day, the girl did not come, nor the next; days, weeks, months passed—where was that familiar young girl of every day? The boy would return from the field, disappointed, day after day—the timid lover could not summon the courage to ask anyone about her… In time, the boy had to leave his village and take a job elsewhere. Many years had passed. But to this day, the boy had not forgotten the beautiful girl at the river ghat.

Gazing at the distant blue hills and the horizon-spanning fields of grain, listening to this poem in the near-darkness of the evening, I wondered again and again: was this not Venkateshwar Prasad’s own life experience? The name of the poet’s beloved was Ruma, for he had written a poem in that name, which he had previously recited to me. I wondered, even after winning such a virtuous and lovely Ruma, had the poet’s childhood sorrow still not faded?

As he was escorting me back to my tent, Venkateshwar Prasad pointed to a large banyan tree and said, “That tree you see there, Babuji, a gathering was held under it once, many poets came together and recited their poems. They call it a mushaira here. I was invited too. After hearing my poem, Ishwari Prasad Dubey of Patna—do you know Ishwari Prasad? A man of great learning, editor of the magazine ‘Doot’, and a fine poet himself—he showed me great respect.”

Hearing this, it seemed to me that this was the one and only time in his life that Venkateshwar had been invited to stand and recite his own poetry at a public gathering, and that day had been a very great and memorable one in his life. He had never received such a great honour again.