she asked.

I am sixty-five years old, he said and asked : Did your step-mother trouble you ?

No, there you are wrong, the girl said.

She is very kind to me. She has been looking after me ever since my father died a few years ago. She has just a little money on hand left by my father, and she spends it on us.

THE WATCHMAN 63.

The watchman looked at the stars, sighed for the dinner that he was missing.

Its very late, madam, go home.

I tell you Ive no home she retorted angrily.

Your step-mothers house is all right from what you say. She is good to you.

But why should I be a burden to her ? Who am I ?

You are her husbands daughter

the watchman said, and added,

that is enough claim.

No no. I wont live on anybodys charity.

Then you will have to wait till they find you a husband She glared at him in the dark.

Thats what I do not want to do. I want to study and become a doctor and earn my livelihood. I dont want to marry. I often catch my mother talking far into the night to her eldest son, worrying about my future, about my marriage. I know they cannot afford to keep me in college very long now ; it costs about twenty rupees a month.

Twenty rupees !

The watchman exclaimed.

It was his months salary.

How can anybody spend so much for books !

Till today, she said,

I was hoping that I would get a scholarship. That would have saved me. But this evening they announced ; others have got it, not I. My name is not there and she broke down again. The watchman looked at her in surprise. He comprehended very little of all this situation. She added : And when they come to know of this, they will try to arrange my marriage. Someone is coming to have a look at me tomorrow

64 THE WATCHMAN.

Marry him and may G.o.d bless you with ten children.

No, no, she cried hysterically.

I dont want to marry. I want to study.

The silent night was stabbed by her sobbing and some night bird rustled the water, and wavelets beat upon the sh.o.r.e. Seeing her suffer, he found his own sorrows in life came to his mind ; how in those far-off times, in his little village home an epidemic of cholera laid out his father and mother and brothers on the same day, and he was the sole survivor ; how he was turned out of his ancestral home through the trickery of his fathers kinsmen, and he wandered as an orphan, suffering indescribable hunger and privation.

Everyone has his own miseries, he said.

If people tried to kill themselves for each one of them, I dont know how often they would have to drown.

He remembered further incidents and his voice shook with sorrow.

You are young and you dont know what sorrow is He remained silent and a sob broke out of him as he said :

I prayed to all the G.o.ds in the world for a son. My wife bore me eight children. Only one daughter lives now, and none of the others saw the eleventh year , , . The girl looked at him in bewilderment.

The Taluk office gong struck again.

It is late, you had better get up and go home he said.

She replied :

I have no home.

He felt irritated.

You are making too much of nothing. You should not be obstinate You dont know my trouble, she said.

He picked up his lantern and staff and got up. He put her letter down where he found it.

If you are going to be so obstinate Ill leave you THE WATCHMAN 65 alone. No one can blame me. He paused for a moment, looked at her, and went up the steps ; not a word pa.s.sed between them again.

The moment he came back to duty next morning, he hurried down the stone steps. The letter lay where he had dropped it on the previous night. He picked it up and gazed on it, helplessly, wishing that it could tell him about the fate of the girl after he had left her.

He tore it up and flung it on the water. As he watched the bits float off on ripples, he blamed himself for leaving her and going away on the previous night.

I am responsible for at least one suicide in this tank, he often remarked to himself. He could never look at the blue expanse of water again with an easy mind.

Even many months later he could not be certain that the remains of a body would not come up all of a sudden.

Who knows, it sometimes happens that the body gets stuck deep down, he reflected.

Years later, one evening as he stood on the bund and took a final survey before going home, he saw a car draw up on the road below. A man, a woman, and three children emerged from the car and climbed the bund. When they approached, the watchman felt a start at his heart ; the figure and face of the woman seemed familiar to him. Though altered by years, and ornaments, and dress, he thought that he had now recognized the face he had once seen by the lantern light. He felt excited at this discovery. He had numerous questions to ask. He brought together his palms and saluted her respectfully. He expected she would stop and speak to him. But she merely threw 66 THE WATCHMAN at him an indifferent glance and pa.s.sed on. He stood staring after her for a moment, baffled.

Probably this is someone else/ he muttered and turned to go home, resolving to dismiss the whole episode from his mind.

9.

THE TIGERS CLAW THE man-eaters dark career was ended. The men who had laid it low were the heroes of the day. They were garlanded with chrysanthemum flowers and seated on the arch of the highest bullock cart and were paraded in the streets, immediately followed by another bullock-drawn open cart, on which their trophy lay with glazed eyes overflowing the cart on every side, his tail trailing the dust. The village suspended all the normal activity for the day : men, women, and children thronged the highways, pressing on with the procession, excitedly talking about the tiger. The tiger had held a reign of terror for nearly five years, in the villages that girt Mempi forests.

We watched fascinated this scene, drifting along with the crowd till the Talkative Man patted us from behind and cried :

Lost in wonder ! IfyouVe had your eyefull of that carca.s.s, come aside and listen to me After the crowd surged past us, he sat us on a rock mount, under a margosa tree and began his tale

I was once camping in Koppal, the most obscure of all the villages that lie scattered about the Mempi region. You might wonder what I was doing in that desolate corner of the Earth. Ill tell you.

You remember Ive often spoken to you about my work as agent of a soil fertilizer company. It was the 67

68 THE TIGERS CLAW

most miserable period of my life. Twentyfive days in the month, I had to be on the road, visiting nooks and corners of the country and popularizing the stuff . One such journey brought me on to the village Koppal. It was not really a village but just a clearing with about forty houses and two streets, hemmed in by the jungle on all sides. The place was dingy and depressing. Why our company should have sought to reach a place like this for their stuff, I cant understand. They would not have known of its existence but for the fact that it was on the railway.

Yes, actually on the railway, some obscure branch-line pa.s.sed through this village, though most trains did not stop there. Its centre of civilization was its railway station presided over by a porter in blue, and an old station-master, a wizened man wearing a green turban, and with red and green flags always tucked under his arms. Let me tell you about the station. It was not a building, but an old railway carriage, which, having served its term of life, was deprived of its wheels and planted beside the railway lines. It had one or two windows through which the station-master issued tickets, and spoke to those occasional pa.s.sengers who turned up in this wilderness. A convolvulus creeper was trained over its entrance : no better use could be found for an ex-carriage.

One November morning a mixed train put me down at this station and puffed away into the forest. The station-master, with the flags under his arm, became excited on seeing me. He had seen so few travellers arriving that it gave him no end of pleasure to see a new face. He appointed himselfmy host immediately, and took me into the ex-compartment and seated me on a stool. He said : Excuse me. Ill get off these THE TIGERS CLAW 69 papers in a minute He scrawled over some brown sheets, put them away and rose. He locked up the station, and took me to his home a very tiny stone building consisting of just one room, a kitchen, and a backyard. The station-master lived here with his wife and seven children. He fed me. I changed.

He sent the porter along with me to the village, which was nearly a mile off in the interior. I gathered about me the peasants of those forty houses and lectured to them from the pyol of the headmans house. They listened to me patiently, received the samples and my elaborate directions for their use, and went away to their respective occupations, with cynical comments among themselves regarding my ideas of manuring. I packed up and started back for the station-masters house at dusk, my throat smarting and my own words ringing in my ears.

Though a couple of trains were now pa.s.sing, the only stopping train would be at 5.30 on the following morning. After dinner at the station-masters house, I felt the time had come for me to leave : it would be indelicate to stay on, when the entire family was waiting to spread their beds in the hall. I said I would sleep on the platform till my train arrived .