15

I found myself having to hold out my hand to the moneylender, Dhaotal Sahu. Collections that season had been low, yet the ten-thousand-rupee revenue payment had to be made. The tahsildar, Banowarilal, advised me, “Borrow the rest from Dhaotal Sahu. He certainly won’t object to giving it to you.” Dhaotal Sahu was not a tenant on my estate; he lived on the government’s khas mahal lands. He had no obligation to us whatsoever, and under the circumstances, I had considerable doubt that he would, on my word alone, personally lend me three thousand rupees.

But need is a terrible master. One day, taking Banowarilal with me, I went secretly to Dhaotal Sahu’s house, for I did not want anyone else at the kachhari to know that the revenue was being paid with borrowed money.

Dhaotal Sahu’s house was in a congested quarter of Pausdiya. In front of a large, tiled-roof shed, several string cots were laid out. Dhaotal Sahu was weeding the tobacco patch at one side of the courtyard with a hoe—seeing us, he came rushing over in a great flurry. He did not know where to seat us or what to do; for a few moments, he seemed utterly flustered.

“What is this! The Huzoor has come to a poor man’s house! Come in, come in. Please sit, Huzoor. Come, Tahsildar Sahib.”

I saw no servants at Dhaotal Sahu’s house. A sturdy grandson of his, named Ramlakhiya, was the one who scurried about on our behalf. Looking at the house and its furnishings, who would have said this was the home of a millionaire moneylender?

Ramlakhiya unstrapped the saddle and harness from my horse’s back and tied it in the shade. He brought water for us to wash our feet. Dhaotal Sahu himself began to fan me with a palm-leaf fan. One of Sahuji’s granddaughters ran to prepare some tobacco. I became quite overwhelmed by their attentions. “There’s no need to trouble yourselves, Sahuji,” I said. “You don’t have to bring tobacco, I have a cigar with me.”

However much he fussed over us, I felt a certain trepidation about broaching the real matter. How should I bring it up?

Dhaotal Sahu said, “Did the Manager Sahib come this way to hunt birds?”

“No, I came to see you, Sahuji.”

“To see me, Huzoor? Pray tell, what is it you require?”

“Our kachhari is short on the head revenue payment. We are in great need of three and a half thousand rupees, which is why I have come to you.”

I had said it, taking the plunge, since it had to be said.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Dhaotal Sahu replied, “Why should that be a worry, Huzoor? It will be taken care of. But what need was there for you to come to all this trouble? If you had just sent a note with the Tahsildar Sahib, your command would have been obeyed.”

Now, I thought, I must tell him the crucial part. I would be taking the money in a personal capacity, as I did not have the power of attorney to borrow in the zamindar’s name. Hearing this, would Dhaotal still give me the money? I was a foreigner here. What property did I have that he would give me such a sum without security? I said the words with some deference.

“Sahuji, the paperwork will have to be in my name, though. It cannot be in the zamindar’s name.”

Dhaotal Sahu replied in a tone of astonishment, “Paperwork? What paperwork? You have come all the way to my house because you are short of a little money, and you have come to take it. There was no need to come at all; if you had simply commanded it, I would have sent the money. And now that you are here—what is this about paperwork? Take it, by all means. When the collections come in at the kachhari, you can send it to me then.”

I said, “I am giving you a hand-note; I’ve brought a stamp with me. Or bring out your ledger, and I’ll sign it.”

Dhaotal Sahu joined his hands in supplication. “Forgive me, Huzoor. Do not even mention such a thing. It would cause me great pain. There is no need for any paperwork. You just take the money.”

Dhaotal paid no heed to my insistence. From inside, he brought out a wad of notes, counted them for me, and said, “Huzoor, there is one request, however.”

“What is it?”

“You cannot leave this afternoon. I will have the provisions brought out; you may only leave after you have cooked and eaten.”

I protested again, but to no avail. I said to the tahsildar, “Banowarilal, you can cook, can’t you? I won’t be much good at it.”

Banowarilal said, “That won’t do, Huzoor, you must cook. If I cook for you, it will give you a bad name in this village. I will show you what to do.”

Dhaotal Sahu’s grandson brought out a huge offering of sidha, raw foodstuffs. As we cooked, grandfather and grandson together plied us with all sorts of advice and suggestions regarding the culinary arts.

In his grandfather’s absence, the grandson said, “Babuji, you see my grandfather there—everything will be lost because of him. He has lent money to so many people without interest, without security, without a single promissory note—and now the money refuses to be collected. He trusts everyone, and yet how people have cheated him. He goes to people’s houses to deliver loans.”

Another man from the village was sitting there. He said, “In times of trouble or crisis, Babuji, I have never seen Sahuji turn away anyone who held out their hand to him. He is an old-fashioned sort of man. Such a great moneylender, yet he has never filed a suit in court. He is afraid to go to court. Terribly timid and a good soul.”

The money I brought from Dhaotal Sahu that day, I was nearly six months late in repaying—and in all those six months, Dhaotal Sahu never once set foot within the bounds of our Ismailpur estate, lest I think he had come to press me for the money. Now that is what you call a gentleman!

It had been nearly a year since I had been to Rakhal Babu’s house; one day after the harvest fair, I went there. Rakhal Babu’s wife was very happy to see me. She said, “Why don’t you come anymore, Dada? You never check in on us—to see a Bengali face in this friendless place is such a thing—and in our condition—”

Saying this, Didi began to weep silently.

I looked around. The state of the house was as humble as before, though this time it seemed not quite so disordered. Rakhal Babu’s eldest son worked from home as a tinsmith—his earnings were meager—but the household was getting by, one way or another.

I said to Rakhal Babu’s wife, “At least send your younger son to his maternal uncle’s house in Kashi to get a little education.”

She said, “Where is a true uncle to be found, Dada? We wrote him two or three letters with news of a great calamity—he sent ten rupees and then fell silent—and for this year and a half, not a word. Better than that, Dada, let them cut maize, harvest millet, and graze buffaloes—but they will not go to the door of an uncle like that.”

I was about to leave then on my horse—but Didi would not let me go. I would have to stay for the afternoon meal. She would not let me leave without first making me some sort of snack and feeding me.

Resigned, I had to wait. She made laddus of a sort by mixing roasted maize flour with ghee and sugar, and also prepared some halwa, and gave them to me to eat. In that poor household, she spared no effort in extending all the hospitality she could.

She said, “Dada, I had saved some maize from the month of Bhadra for you. You are fond of roasted corn, you see.”

I asked, “Where did you get the maize? Did you buy it?”

“No, I go to the fields to glean. The broken, fallen cobs that the farmers leave behind after they’ve taken in the harvest—the village women go, and I go with them—I would gather a basketful every day.”

I said in astonishment, “You would go to the fields to glean?”

“Yes, I would go at night, so no one would know. So many of the village women go. With them, this past Bhadra, I must have gleaned at least ten baskets of corn.”

A great sadness came over me. This was work that poor Gangota women did—the Chhatri or Rajput women of this country, however poor, do not go to glean crops from the fields. And to hear of a Bengali woman doing this was a great blow to the heart. Living in this village of uneducated Gangotas, Didi had learned these lowly practices—and there was no doubt that the poverty of her household was the primary reason. I could not bring myself to say anything, lest I cause her pain. This destitute Bengali family had received none of the culture or learning of Bengal; in a few years, they would be transformed into Gangota peasants—in language, in manner, in bearing. They were already far advanced down that path.

In remote, obscure villages far from any railway station, I have seen one or two other Bengali families. In families like these, marrying off a daughter is an impossibly difficult affair. I knew of another such Bengali Brahmin family—they lived in a remote village in south Bihar. Their circumstances were utterly wretched. They had three daughters at home; the eldest was twenty-one or twenty-two, the middle one twenty, and the youngest seventeen. They were not married, nor was there any prospect of it—finding a suitable match within their own community, a Bengali groom, is extremely difficult in these parts.

The twenty-two-year-old eldest daughter was quite pretty—she did not know a single word of Bengali—in appearance and nature, she was a true rustic Bihari girl. She would carry bundles of kalai pulse home from the fields on her head, and sacks of wheat husks.

This girl’s name was Dhroba. A thoroughly Bihari name.

Her father had first come to this village to practice homeopathy, then acquired some land and began farming as well. After he died, the eldest son—by then completely Hindustani—looked after the farm. He had tried to arrange marriages for his grown sisters, but had failed. I knew, in particular, that they had absolutely no ability to pay a dowry.

Dhroba was a veritable Kapalkundala. She would call me bhaiya, or elder brother. She had immense strength in her limbs; an excellent girl at grinding wheat, pounding flour in the husking-mortar, carrying heavy loads, and tending the cows and buffaloes, she was a dynamo in all the work of the household. Her brother had even made the proposal that if he could find a suitable groom, he would give all three girls in marriage to the same man. Apparently, the three girls had not objected either.

I had once asked the middle daughter, Jaba, “Do you feel any desire to see Bengal?”

Jaba had replied, “Naw, Bhaiya, the water there is too soft—”

I had heard that Dhroba, too, was very eager to be married. She herself had supposedly told someone that whoever married her would have no need to call for a milkmaid or a grain-pounder—she alone could grind five sers of wheat into flour in an hour.

Alas, you ill-fated Bengali maiden! After so many years, she is surely still there today, dressed as a Gangotin woman, pounding barley in her brother’s household, carrying bundles of pulse on her head from the fields. Who, after all, would have come with a palanquin to marry a poor, rustic, aging girl without a dowry, and carried her home amidst the blowing of conch shells and the sound of uludhvani!

When evening falls on the quiet, open plains, a thin path can be seen winding its way up the side of a distant hill, like a parting carved into dense woods. In my mind’s eye, I have so often seen the image of Dhroba, her youth unfulfilled, poor Dhroba, even now after so many years, walking down that path from the hills with a bundle of dry firewood on her head—and just as vividly I have seen my Didi, Rakhal Babu’s wife, perhaps even now, like an old Gangotin woman, stealing out into the fields and farms in the dead of night like a thief, gathering fallen corn from under the stalks into her basket.

On my way back from Bhanumati’s village that year, around the middle of the month of Sravan, the heavy monsoon descended. The rain was incessant, day and night; the sky was blanketed by dense, kajal-black clouds. The horizons of the Nada and Phulkiya boihars were hazy in the smoky rain; the Mahalikharoop hills had vanished—the summit of the Mohanpura Reserve Forest would at times appear faintly indistinct, and at others, not at all. I heard that the Kushi River to the east and the Karo to the south were in flood.

For mile after mile, the kash and jhau forests were drenched in the monsoon rains. I would set a chair on the veranda of my office and watch. In front of me, in the kash-ban, a lonely, mateless dove sat on the branch of a wild jhau tree, getting soaked to the bone. It sat in the same position for hours on end—occasionally it would ruffle its feathers and let them droop, trying to keep the rainwater out; at other times it would just sit.

But on days like these, it became impossible for me to spend my time sitting in the office. I would saddle my horse, don my raincoat, and ride out. What freedom! What a wild joy of life! And what a wondrous sea of green all around—in the monsoon rains, a fresh, vigorous, dense-green forest of kash grass had sprung up. As far as the eye could see, from the edge of the Nada-boihar to the faint blue line of the Mohanpura forest, this sea of green swelled and surged. In the rain-laden wind, under the cloud-darkened sky, waves rippled across the heads of this long, emerald-green grassland—and I was like a lone sailor on this shoreless sea, having set sail for some mysterious dream-harbor!

I would gallop my horse for miles through this vast, cloud-shadowed, verdant, open grassland. Sometimes I would enter the forest of Saraswati Kund and see how this exquisite, secluded realm of nature, adorned with the wild flowers and creepers planted by Jugalprasad’s own hand, had become even more beautiful. I can say this without a doubt: there are very few places in all of India as beautiful as Saraswati Lake and its bordering woodlands. In this rainy season, a fair of red campions had bloomed near the edge of the lake’s waters. The aquatic water-crowfoot was laden with large, bluish-white flowers. I knew Jugalprasad must have come even that day to plant some new wild creeper. He might work as a muhuri at the Azimabad kachhari, but his heart remained here, in the leafy bowers and wildflower groves on the banks of Saraswati Kund.

I would emerge from the forest of Saraswati Kund—and again there was the open plain, again the long grasslands. Over the forest, dense blue monsoon clouds were gathering; even before they could shed their full burden of water, new hosts of clouds came flying in. In one part of the sky, a strange kind of blue had blossomed—within it, a wisp of light cloud, tinged with the colours of the setting sun, appeared like some unknown mountain peak on the far horizon of the world.

Evening was not far off. Within the boundless Phulkiya boihar, the jackals began to call—on top of the darkness of the clouds, the darkness of evening was descending. I turned my horse’s head towards the kachhari.

How many times, in these rain-paused, cloud-heavy evenings, within the immensity of this open plain, have I seen the dream of some god—this cloud, this evening, this forest, the clamoring pack of jackals, the waterlilies of Saraswati Lake, Manchi, Raju Pande, Bhanumati, the Mahalikharoop hills, that poor Gond family, the sky, the ether—all were once latent as seeds in His vast, noble imagination. His blessing, like today’s host of new blue clouds, is drenching the entire universe in the nectar of existence. This monsoon evening is His manifestation, this joy of a free life is His message, the message that awakens a person in the innermost core of their being. There is nothing to fear in that god—His love and His blessings are more boundless, more infinite than this vast Phulkiya boihar, than that vast, cloud-filled sky. The lowlier one is, the smaller one is, the more that great god’s unseen grace and compassion are bestowed upon them.

The god whose dream would awaken in my mind was not merely a hoary judge, a dispenser of justice and punishment, wise and experienced, nor was he a matter shrouded in difficult philosophical concepts like ‘immutable’ or ‘imperishable.’ No—how many times, in the open plains of Nada-boihar or Azimabad, at twilight, gazing at the stacks of crimson clouds, or at the boundless, deserted, moonlit plains, have I felt that He is Love and Romance, Poetry and Beauty, Art and Sentiment. He loves with His whole heart, He creates with refined artistic skill, He gives Himself away completely, without reserve, for the pleasure of His beloveds—and again, with the power and vision of a great scientist, He creates planets, stars, and nebulae.

On just such a rain-swept Sravan day, Dhaturiya appeared at the Ismailpur kachhari.

I was happy to see him after such a long time.

“What’s all this, Dhaturiya? Are you well?”

Setting down the small bundle that held all his worldly possessions, he raised a hand in salutation and said, “Babuji, I’ve come to show my dance. I have fallen on very hard times; for a month now, no one has watched my dance. I thought, I will go to the Babujis at the kachhari; if I go there, they will surely watch. I have learned even better dances, Babuji.”

Dhaturiya seemed to have grown even thinner. It pained me to see him.

“Will you have something to eat, Dhaturiya?”

Dhaturiya nodded his head shyly, indicating that he would.

I called my cook and told him to give Dhaturiya something to eat. There was no rice at that moment, so the cook brought milk and chira. Watching Dhaturiya eat, it seemed to me he hadn’t had a thing for at least two days.

Before evening, Dhaturiya performed his dance. In the courtyard of the kachhari, many people from that wild region had gathered to see Dhaturiya’s dance. Dhaturiya had improved a great deal since I last saw him. Within Dhaturiya there was the feeling and dedication of a true artist. I gave him some money myself, and the men of the kachhari took up a collection and gave him some more. But how many days would that last him?

The next morning, Dhaturiya came to take his leave of me.

“Babuji, when will you be going to Calcutta?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Will you take me to Calcutta with you, Babuji? The thing I told you about?”

“Where will you go now, Dhaturiya? Have something to eat before you leave.”

“No, Babuji, in Jhallutola there is a Bhumihar Brahmin whose daughter is to be married; they might want to see a dance there. I am going to try my luck. It is a journey of eight krosh from here—if I set out now, I will reach by late afternoon.”

My heart would not let him go. I said, “If I give you some land at the kachhari, could you stay here? You could farm. Why don’t you stay?”

I saw that Matuknath Pandit had also taken a great liking to Dhaturiya. He wished to take Dhaturiya on as a student in his tol. He said, “Tell him, Babuji. I will have him finish the Mugdhabodh grammar within two years. Let him stay here.”

At the mention of land, Dhaturiya said, “Babuji, you are like an elder brother to me; your kindness is great. But will I be able to manage farming? My heart is not in it, you see. When I get to perform my dances, my heart is filled with joy. Nothing else feels quite as good.”

“Fine, you can dance from time to time. If you take up farming, no one’s going to chain you to the land, are they?”

Dhaturia was very pleased. He said, ‘I’ll do as you say. I like you a great deal, Babuji. I’m going to Jhollutola, but I’ll come back here—to you.’

Matuknath Pandit said, ‘And when you do, I’ll enrol you in my tol. You can come and study with me at night. There’s no virtue in being a fool; one needs to have a grasp of some grammar, some poetics.’

After that, Dhaturia sat for a while and spoke of all sorts of things about the art of dance, which I did not entirely understand. Things like the difference between the postures of the Ho-ho dance of Purnia and the dance of the same class in the Dharampur region—and how he himself had introduced a new hand gesture—that sort of talk.

‘Babuji, have you ever seen the dance of the women in Ballia district during the Chhath festival? It has a strong resemblance at one point to the chhakkarbaji dance. What are the dances like in your part of the country?’

I told him about the Noni-chor Natua dance I had seen at the harvest fair last year. Dhaturia laughed and said, ‘That’s nothing, Babuji, that’s just a rustic dance from Munger. A dance to please the Gangotas. There’s nothing authentic in it. It’s quite simple.’

‘Do you know it?’ I asked. ‘Let’s see you dance it, then.’

I saw then that Dhaturia was quite an expert in his own shastra. He truly danced the Noni-chor Natua dance magnificently—that whimpering cry, like a petulant child, that gesture of distributing the stolen butter—all of it. It suited him all the more because he was, in truth, just a boy.

Dhaturia took his leave and went away. As he was going, he said, ‘Since you’ve shown me so much kindness, Babuji, why not take me to Calcutta with you? Dance is valued there.’

That was the last time I ever saw Dhaturia.

About two months later, word came that the body of a young boy had been found on the tracks of the B & NW Railway line, not far from Kataria station. Everyone had identified it as the body of the natua boy, Dhaturia. Whether it was suicide or an accident, I cannot say. If it was suicide, what sorrow could have driven him to it?

Of all the men and women I came into contact with during the two years I spent in that wild region, Dhaturia was of a completely different nature. The selfless, ever-restless, ever-joyful, unworldly, pure artist’s soul I had encountered in him is a rare thing to find not just in that wild country, but among the people of civilized regions as well.

Another three years went by.

The entire forest tracts of Narha Baihar and Labtulia have been settled. Nowhere is there a forest like the one before. The bowers that Nature had fashioned in solitude and silence over so many years, so many secluded canopies of keyajhanka creepers, so many dreamlands—labourers have ruthlessly cut down and obliterated everything. What had taken fifty years to grow was gone in a single day. Nowhere now is there that mysterious, far-stretching prairie where, on moonlit nights, fairy-spirits would descend and the benevolent deity of the buffaloes, Tandbaro, would stand with his hand raised to protect the wild herds from destruction.

The name Narha Baihar has faded away; Labtulia is now merely a slum. Wherever one looks, there are only shabby tiled huts, their roofs touching one another, or huts made of kash grass. A dense, congested settlement, divided into neighbourhood blocks—in the open spaces, there is nothing but fields of crops. Around each small plot is a fence of prickly pear. They have hacked the free face of the earth to pieces and destroyed it.

Only one place remains: the forest on the bank of the Saraswati Kund.

For the sake of my job, to protect my employer’s interests, I have indeed leased out all the other lands to tenants, but I could not bring my heart to settle the exquisite forest grove on Saraswati’s bank, cultivated by Jugalprasad’s own hands. How many times have tenants come in droves to take the land by the Kund, offering increased premiums and rents, for the land is not only very fertile but, with water nearby, crops like maize would grow well; yet I have not agreed.

But how much longer can I protect it? Letters arrive from the head office from time to time, asking why I am delaying the settlement of the Saraswati Kund land. I have held on so far by raising various objections and pretexts, but I will not be able to for much longer. Human greed is too great; I know they will not hesitate for a moment to destroy such a dream-bower of Nature for the sake of two cobs of corn and a katha of foxtail millet. The people here, especially, do not understand the beauty of trees and plants; they do not have the eyes to see the majesty of a lovely landscape. All they know is how to fill their bellies like animals and live out their days. In any other country, laws would have been made to protect such places for beauty-loving, nature-adoring men and women, as they have the Yosemite National Park in California, the Kruger National Park in South Africa, and the Parc National Albert in the Belgian Congo. My landlords will not understand landscapes; they will understand the money from the selami, the money from the rent, the aday irshal, the hastbud.

I do not know how a man like Jugalprasad came to be born in this nation of the congenitally blind—it is only out of regard for him that I have kept the forest on the shore of Lake Saraswati intact to this day.

But how long can I keep it?

Well, my own work here is also coming to an end.

I have not been to Bengal for nearly three years—at times, my heart grows restless for Bengal. All of Bengal feels like my home—where a young, gracious bride lights the evening lamp with her own hands; not like this luckless, desolate, empty prairie and dense forest, where there is no touch of a woman’s hand.

I do not know what it was that caused a sudden tide of joy to flood my mind. It was a moonlit night—I immediately saddled my horse and set out for the Saraswati Kund, for by then the forest groves of Narha and Labtulia Baihar were all but gone—whatever sylvan beauty and solitude remained was still to be found on Saraswati’s bank. I understood quite well in my heart that the only backdrop against which to savour this joy was the forest on the shore of Lake Saraswati.

There, the water of the Saraswati glittered in the moonlight—more than glittered, the moonlight was shattering on wave after wave. The silent, still forest encircling three sides of the lake’s water, the calls of wild red ducks, the fragrance of wild shephali blossoms—for though it was the month of Jyaishtha, the shephali blooms here all twelve months of the year.

For a long time, I rode my horse about the lakeshore as I pleased. Lotuses bloomed in the lake’s water; near the shore, the watercress and the spider lilies brought by Jugalprasad had formed thick clumps. I was going home after so long, I would be free from this solitary forest life; there I would eat food cooked by Bengali hands and feel alive again, see a play or a bioscope in Calcutta for a day or two, meet friends again after so many years!

Now, slowly, that unexperienced flood of joy began to swell and rock the banks of my mind. The combination was perhaps extraordinary—this return home after so long, the moonlit expanse of Lake Saraswati and the beauty of the wildflowers, the moon-drenched fragrance of the wild shephali, the calm stillness, the wonderful diagonal canter of a fine horse, the rushing wind—it was all a dream! A dense intoxication of joyous dream! I felt like a young god, drunk on youth, moving with an unbound, free momentum past the limits of time—this very motion felt like the victory decree of my destiny, my good fortune, the highest blessing of some benevolent deity!

Perhaps I would not return—I might even go back home only to die. Farewell, Saraswati Kund; farewell, line of trees on the shore; farewell, moonlit open forest. Standing on a clamorous Calcutta street, I will remember you, like the faint strumming of a vina from a distant day in my life—I will remember the plants Jugalprasad brought, the spider lilies and the lotus grove by the water, the call of the dove in the deep branches of your woods in the still noon, the reddened trunks and branches of the moynakata tree in the shadow of the evening clouds, the flying whistling teals and red ducks in the blue sky above your blue water, the footprints of a deer fawn on the soft mud by the water’s edge—the solitude, the profound solitude… Farewell, Saraswati Kund.

On the way back, I saw that about a mile from the Saraswati forest, people were living in a hut they had built after clearing a patch of woodland. This place had been named Naya Labtulia—like New South Wales or New York. A new family of settlers had arrived and, cutting down branches from the woods (there were no large forests nearby, so the supply must have come from the forest by Saraswati’s bank), had built three or four low hovels of grass. Beneath them, on a still-damp veranda, lay a broken-necked bottle of coconut or mustard oil, a naked, dark-skinned, crawling infant, a few baskets woven from the thin branches of the sihora tree, a woman, built as solid and dark as a Yaksha, wearing a thick silver ananta on her arm, a few brass water pots and plates, and a few sickles, shovels, and spades—this was what almost all of them had to set up a household. Not just in Labtulia, but everywhere in Ismailpur and Narha Baihar, it was the same. I wondered where they had come from; they had no ancestral homestead, no paternal village, no attachment to a community, no affection or care for neighbours—today in the forests of Ismailpur, tomorrow on the alluvial plains of Munger, the day after at the foot of the Jayanti hills in the Terai—their movement was everywhere, their home was everywhere.

Hearing a familiar voice, I saw Raju Pande, sitting at one such homestead, discussing matters of faith. Seeing him, I dismounted from my horse. They all welcomed me with great courtesy and offered me a seat. Asking Raju, I learned he had come here on a kabiraji visit. His fee had been four kathas of barley and eight paise in cash. He was overjoyed with this and, settling in with them, had launched into a discussion of philosophical truths.

He said to me, ‘Please sit, Babuji, and settle a matter for us! Tell me, does the earth have an end? I’ve been telling them, Babu, that just as the sky has no end, the earth too has no end! Isn’t that right, Babuji?’

I had not imagined that a pleasure ride would bring me face to face with such a grave and complex scientific problem.

I knew that Raju Pande’s philosophical mind was always engaged with complex theories, and I also knew that in solving them he had always shown a flair for original thought—for instance, that rainbows were born from termite hills, or that the host of stars were spies of Yama, the god of death, sent by him to conduct on-the-spot investigations into how much the human population was increasing.

I explained what little I knew of the theory of the earth, at which Raju said, ‘But why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Tell me, from which ocean does the sun rise and into which ocean does it descend—has anyone been able to resolve this?’ Raju had studied Sanskrit; his use of the word nirakaran, ‘resolve’, made the Gangota householder and his family gaze at him with impressed and captivated eyes, while also thinking to themselves, ‘Look how our medicine man has dragged the English-educated Bengali Babu into such deep waters! We’re about to see the Bengali Babu thrash about and drown!’

I said, ‘Raju, your eyes are mistaken. The sun doesn’t go anywhere; it is fixed in one place.’

Raju stared at my face in astonishment. The group of Gangotas burst out laughing with scorn. Alas, Galileo, it was on this very atheistic, judgement-impaired earth that you were imprisoned!

When the first shock of surprise had passed, Raju asked me, ‘Surya Narayan doesn’t rise from the Uday-pahar in the east or set in the western sea?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Is this written in English books?’

‘Yes.’

Knowledge truly makes a man bold. The same peaceful, gentle Raju Pande, from whose mouth I had never heard a raised voice, declared forcefully and proudly, ‘That’s a lie, Babuji! A sadhu from Munger recently saw the very cave in the Uday-pahar from which Surya Narayan rises every day. You have to walk a great distance; that mountain is at the absolute eastern limit. At the mouth of the cave is a huge stone door, and inside that cave is his chariot of mica. Not just anyone can see it, Huzoor! Only great saints and holy men can. That sadhu brought back a piece of the mica chariot—a big, shiny piece of mica. My own guru-bhai, Kamtaprasad, saw it with his own eyes.’

Having finished his speech, Raju cast a proud glance around the faces of the assembled Gangotas.

After he had presented such irrefutable and eyewitness proof of the sun’s emergence from a cave in the Sunrise Mountain, I fell completely silent that day.