The Lost Child — Mulk Raj Anand (Summary)

The Lost Child — Mulk Raj Anand

The short story “The Lost Child” by Mulk Raj Anand describes how a little child was lost in the crowd of a village fair. One day, on the day of the spring festival a large crowd of brightly dressed people came out of the lanes and alleys of a town and headed towards the village fair. Among them a happy little boy was following his parents. The little boy lagged behind his parents as he was attracted by the toys displayed in the shops of the fair. He wanted to have a toy but he received an angry look from his father and his kind-hearted mother asked him tenderly to see what was before him. Then he began to sob as his desire was not fulfilled by his parents. Soon, they came into a vast stretch of mustered fields filled with yellow flowers stretching into miles like a rippling yellow river. The little boy’s eyes were filled with delight and amusement looking at the beautiful natural scenery. 

The child’s joy knew no bounds. He left the footpath and entered into the mustard-field and began to chase butterflies and dragon flies and tried to catch them if possible. His mother warned him not to go far away and asked him to be with them. He joined his parents and walked along them with side be side but again left them being attracted by a number of little worms and insects. He was once again called back by his parents who were sitting on the edge of a well in a grove. They were seated under a huge banyan tree which stretched its branches over smaller trees such as the jack, champak and gulmohur. When the child moving towards his parents with capers under the banyan tree where he lost his way and found himself in the fair again. 

Once again he came back to the fair unexpectedly. In the fair the child was attracted by the cries of a sweetmeat seller. His mouth watered for the burfi which was favourite to him. He knew very well that his desire would not be fulfilled, yet he spoke of it in a whisper then moved on without waiting for an answer. Then he came across flower seller, a balloon seller and a snake charmer who was playing on a flute before a snake. But the child had to pass on knowing that his parents were not ready to satisfy his desires. At last he came to a place which gave him the greatest attraction. It was a roundabout. He watched it going round and round with merry band of men, women and children on it. As soon as it stopped he boldly asked his parents for the pleasure of a ride on the roundabout. There was no answer from his parents. He turned round to see his parents but his parents were nowhere. 

Upon finding himself  alone and bereft of his parents, he ran here and there with no respite in sobbing. His turban came off and clothes became shabby with sweat and dust. He tries to find his parents in the people who are busy in laughing, jesting and moving all round. Tired from running the little boy stood sobbing for some time and then started running again. He ran desperately through people’s legs, crying ‘mother, father’. At the door of the temple the crowd was so thick that he was knocked down and was about to be trampled when he was picked up by a man in the crowd. The man came out of the crowd with the boy and asked him whose boy he was. The child only cried bitterly, saying that he wanted his father and mother. The kind hearted man tried to console the child by offering him a ride on the roundabout, but the child repeated his cry for his parents. Next The man took him to the snake-charmer but he refused to listen to his flute; then he offered to buy him the bright coloured balloons. Finally, the man tried to console him with some sweets, but all his efforts failed. The child only sobbed ‘I want my mother, I want my father.’  

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Obituary - A. K. Ramanujan (Summary)

Obituary - A. K. Ramanujan

A. K. Ramanujan’s poem “Obituary” is a reminiscence of his father’s life and death in a brahmin ghetto. The opening lines of the poem enumerate the list of things that his father had left behind as legacy. He left an old table heaped with old, dusty newspaper along with debts, daughters and a bedwetting grandson. The poets carps that his father had left them behind despite his trials and tribulations of his entire life. In India daughters are considered to be a burden, not greater than debts. They are being entrusted to their surviving  sons with responsibility of ‘marrying them off’ with adequate dowry to suit to their status. Then the poet talks about the grandson whose name was chosen with a toss of a coin and who had incorrigible habit of bedwetting. All these highlight that the poet’s father had left behind nothing but memories in the form of debris.   

Added to the legacy a dilapidated house that leant on a coconut tree through their growing years was also left. This nondescript old house symbolises the deterioration in their quality of life. Further, it may also signify that the family had to live a life of depending on others as the way the house leant on the coconut tree. The poet utters that his father being ‘the burning type’ burnt properly on the pyre of cremation. He burned….

                                         at the cremation

                                         as before, easily

                                         and at both ends,

His eyes appeared as coins in his funeral pyre. They appear as coin-like in their metallic stare. The poet indicated that perhaps his father’s eyes were greedy for money. After the cremation he left some half-burnt spinal discs. The priest advised the poet to pick them ‘gingerly’ to immerse them at Triveni, where three holy rivers confluence as per the Hindu rites. No head stone was erected at his tomb bearing the dates of his birth and death. He is doomed to be incapable that even his birth was a caesarean reveals that he even put any effort for his own birth. His death also came easily to him in the form of heart failure at the fruit market. 

All he gained in his life is worth mentioning that he managed to get two lines of obituary printed somewhere in the columns of a newspaper published from Madras. The poet hoped to come across these lines of obituary of his late father in the process where the old newspaper might have sold to street hawker, who  in turn sold it to a grocer from whom the poet occasionally bought provisions. The poet states earlier that he used to read for his fancy from those pices of newspaper in which groceries like salt and jaggery are wrapped in cones. Thus, the poet attempts to discover some meaning of his father’s life in his poem ‘Obituary’.   

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The Heritage of India — A. L. Basham (II Sem Additional English)

The Heritage of India — A. L. Basham

Ram Mohan Roy had sounded the theme with his passionate advocacy of social reform; Vivekananda repeated in with a more nationalist timbre, when he declared that the highest for of service of the Great Mother was social service. Other great Indians, chief of whom was Mahatma Gandhi, developed the theme of social service as a religious duty, and the development continues under Gandhi’s successors.  

Mahatma Gandhi was looked on by many, both Indian and European, as the epitome of Hindu tradition, but this is a false judgement for he was much influenced by Western ideas. Gandhi believed in the fundamentals of his Ancient culture, but his passionate of the underdog and his antipathy to caste though not unprecedented in ancient India, were unorthodox in the extreme, and owed more to European 19th century liberalism than to anything Indian. His faith in non-violence was, as we have seen, by no means typical of Hinduism — his predecessor in revolt, the able Maratha Brahman B. G. Tilak (Bala Gangadhar Tilak), and Gandhi’s impatient lieutenant Subhash Chandra Bose, were for more orthodox in this respect. For Gandhi’s pacifism we must look to the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and to Tolstoy. His championing of women’s right is also the result of Western influence. In his social context, he was always rather an innovator  than a conservative. Though some of his colleagues thought his programme of limited social reform too slow, he succeeded in shifting the whole emphasis of Hindu though towards a popular and equalitarian social order, in place of the hierarchy of class and caste. Following up the work of many less well-known 19th century reformer, Gandhi and his followers of the Indian National Congress have given new orientation and new life to Hindu culture, after centuries of stagnation.

Today, there are few Indians, whatever this creed, who do not look back with pride on their ancient culture, and there are few intelligent Indians who are not willing to sacrifice some of its effete Clements so that India may develop and progress. Politically and economically, India faces many problems of great difficulty, and no one can forecast her future  with any certainty. But is is safe to predict that, what the future may be, the Indians of coming generations will not be unconvincing and self-conscious copies of Europeans, but will be men rooted in their traditions, and aware of the continuity of their culture. Already, after only seven years of Independence, the extremes of national self-denigration and fanatical  cultural chauvinism are disappearing. We believe that Hindu civilisation is in the act of performing its most spectacular feat of synthesis. In the past, it has received, adapted and digested elements of many different cultures— Indo-European, Mesopotamian, Iranian, Greek, Roman, Scythian, Turkish, Persian and Arab. With each new influence, it has somewhat changed. Now it is well on the way to assimilating the culture of the West. 

Hindu civilisation will, we believe, retain its continuity. The Bhagwad Gita will not cease to inspire men of action, and the Upanishads, men of thought. The change and graciousness of  of the Indian way of life will continue, never mush affected it may be by the labour-saving devices of the West. People will still love the tales of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and of the loves of Dushyanta and Shakuntala and Pururava and Urvasi. The quite and gentle happiness which has at all-times pervaded Indian life where oppression, disease and poverty have not overclouded it will surely not vanish beefier the more hectic ways of the West.

Much that was useless in ancient Indian culture has already perished. The extravagant and barbarous hecatombs of the Vedic age have long since been forgotten, though animal sacrifice continues in some sects. Widows have long ceased to be burnt on their husband’s pyres. Girls may not by law be married in childhood. In see and trains all over India, Brahmans, rub shoulders with the lowest castes without consciousness of grave pollution, and the temples are open to all by law. Caste is vanishing; the process began long ago, but its pace is now so rapid that the more objectionable features of caste may have disappeared within a generation or so. The old family system is adapting itself to present-day conditions. In fact, the whole face of India is altering, but the cultural tradition continues, and it will never be lost.

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Louis Braille (Summary) B. Com. II sem Basic English

Louis Braille

Louis Braille was a son of farmer as well as a leather worker who lost his both eyes by an accident at his early age. Braille had mastered his disability while still a boy. He  attended Hauy’s school in 1819 and excelled in his education and won scholarship from France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth. Later he taught there. While still a student there, he began developing a system of tactile code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and efficiently. He soon became determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the critical gap in communication between the sighted and the blind.

In 1821, Braille learned of a communication system devised by captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. Barbier’s “Night Writing”, was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper. These impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting soldiers share information on the battle field without having light or needing to speak.

The captain’s code turned out to be too complex to use in its original military form, but it inspired Braille to develop a system of his own. Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was just fifteen years of age. From Barbier’s “Night Writing”, he innovated by simplifying its form and maximising  its efficiency. He made uniform column for each letter, and he reduced the twelve raised dots to six. He published his system in 1829, and by the second edition in 1837 had discarded the dashes because they are too difficulty to read. Crucially, Braille’s smaller cells were capable of being recognised as letters with a simple touch of a finger. This unique discovery of script for the blind filled happiness in the lives of millions. 

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A Ghost Story — Mark Twain (Summary)

A Ghost Story — Mark Twain

Samuel Longhorn Clemens better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and Lecturer. He began his career writing light, humorous verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind.  At his mid-career, he combined rich humour and social criticism and master of rendering colloquial speech that help to create and popularise a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.

The short story “A Ghost Story” is based on the infamous 19th century hoax of the Cardiff Giant, in which a petrified giant was carved out of stone and buried in the ground for others to discover. As news spread about the discovery of the Cardiff Giant, people came in droves to pay money to see the giant. 

The short story begins when the narrator rents a room in New York City, in “a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years”. He sits by the fire awhile and then goes to bed. He wakes in terror to discover that the bed covers are being slowly pulled toward his feet. After an unnerving tug-of-war with the sheets, he finally hears footsteps retreat.

He convinces himself the experience was nothing more than a dream, but when he gets up and lights a lamp, he sees an enormous giant’s like footprint in the ashes near the hearth. He goes back to bed, terrified, and the haunting continues throughout the night with voices, footsteps, rattling chains, and other ghostly demonstrations.

Eventually, he sees that he is being haunted by the Cardiff Giant, whom he considers harmless, and all his fear dissipates. The giant proves himself to be clumsy, breaking furniture every time he sits down, and the narrator chastises him for it.

The giant explains that he has been haunting the building, hoping to convince someone to bury his body — currently in the museum across the street — so he can get some rest. But the ghost has been duped into haunting the wrong body. The body across the street is Barnum's fake, and the ghost leaves, deeply embarrassed.

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Philosophy for Laymen – Bertrand Russell

Philosophy for Laymen – Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell achieved an international reputation as a philosopher, mathematician, thinker, social critic, pacifist and a fighter for freedom. Born in a family of English aristocrats, he consistently advocated democracy and was an inveterate opponent and enemy of colonialism, racism and totalitarianism. He waged a relentless war against massive armament, especially nuclear arms, in which the major countries of the world are now involved. As a rationalist, he tried to expose every kind of irrational humbug prevalent in a contemporary society. He was a prolific writer and expressed his ideas with great power and precision on a variety of subjects, but he was essentially a philosopher.

In the essay ‘Philosophy for Laymen’ Russell explains very briefly the uses of philosophy. Philosophy, he says, means a love of wisdom. Philosophy, in this sense, is what people must acquire if new technical powers achieved by man are not to plunge mankind into the greatest that the ordinary people should be taught is not the same thing as the philosophy of specialists.

The theoretical function of philosophy:

Philosophy has always had two different objects: to arrive at a theoretical understanding of the structure of the world; and to discover and propagate the best possible way a life. Philosophy has thus been closely related to science on the one hand and to religion on the on the other. On its theoretical side philosophy partly consists in the framing of large general hypotheses they become part of science, and no longer belong to philosophy. There are a number of purely theoretical questions, of everlasting interest, which science is unable to answer at present. Do we survive after death? Can mind dominate matter? or does matter completely dominate mind?  Does this universe has a purpose, or is it driven by blind necessity? To keep alive the interest in such questions is one of the functions of philosophy.

The practical aspect of philosophy:

On its practical side, philosophy can greatly increase a man’s value as a human being and as a citizen. It can give a habit of exact and careful thought. It can give an impressive breadth and scope to the conception of the aims of life. It can give to the individual a correct estimate of himself in relation to society and of man in the present to man in the past and in the future. It can offer a cure, or at least a palliative, for the anxieties and the anguish which afflict mankind at present. 

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A Ghost Story - Mark Twain (II Sem Additional English VSKUB Bly)

 A Ghost Story — Mark Twain 

I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years; until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and Silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its lazy woof in my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. 

I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance 

and left no sound behind. 

The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep. I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart — I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The rug strengthened to a steady strain — it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room — the step of an elephant it seemed to me — it was not like anything human. But it was moving from me — there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door — pass out without moving bolt or lock — and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed — and then silence reigned once more. 

When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream — simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when — down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp ! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison, mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained. 

I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time, peering into the darkness, and listening. Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer — while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences, half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments and the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded — that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped — two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell — I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air — floating a moment and then disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment — it seemed to pass to the door and go out. When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused — the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me were in a spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape — an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapour. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me! 

All my misery vanished — for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas turned up brightly again. Never a lone outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said: "Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair — Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing!" But it was too late. He was in before I could stop him, and down he went — I never saw a chair shivered so in my life. "Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev — " 

Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements. "Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool — " But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin. 

"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then, when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theatre, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hands till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself — you are big enough to know better." "Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes. 

"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here — nothing else can stand your weight — and, besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." 

So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. "What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?" 

"Infernal chilblains — I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Newell' s farm. But I love the place; I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there." We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and I spoke of it. 

"Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! — haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I got the other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that tradition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night, I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am tired out — entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope!" 

I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: "This transcends everything! Everything that ever did occur — why, you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing — you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself — the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany! "Confound it, don't you know your own remains?" 

I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before.The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said: "Honestly, is that true?" "As true as I am sitting here." 

He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantle, then stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloon pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said: 

"Well — I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everything else and now the mean fraud has ended by selling his own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself." 

I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he had gone, poor fellow — and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bathtub. 

——

The open window – Saki

The open window – Saki (H. H. Munro)

“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said self-possessed young lady of 15. “In the meantime you must put up with me.”

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something to flatter the nice without unduly discounting the aunt. Privately he doubted whether these formal visits on total strangers would help the nerve cure which he supposed to be undergoing in the rural retreat.

“I’ll give you letters to everyone I know there.” His sister had said.

“Or else you’ll bury yourself and not speak to a soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping.”

“Do you know many people around here?” asked the niece when she judged they had had sufficient communion.

“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister visited here four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction.”

“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the young lady.

“Only her name and address.”

“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child.

“That would be since your sister’s time.”

“Her tragedy?” asked Framton. Somehow in this restful spot tragedies seemed out of place.

“You may wonder why we keep that window open so late in the year,” said the niece, indicating a large french window that opened on the lawn. “Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two brothers went off for their day’s shooting. In crossing the moor, they were engulfed in a treacherous bog. Their bodies were never recovered.”

Here the child’s voice faltered. “Poor Aunt always thinks that they’ll come back someday, they and little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at the window. That is why it is kept open every evening till dusk. She has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm. You know, sometimes on still evenings like this, I get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that widow….”

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late.

“I hope you don’t mind the open window,” she said. “My husband and brothers will be home from shooting, and they always come in this way.”

She rattled on cheerful about the prospects for duck in the winter. Framton made a desperate effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and that her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window.

“The doctors order me a complete rest from mental excitement and physical exercise,” announced Framton, who labored under the widespread delusion that total strangers are hungry for the last detail of one’s infirmities.

“Oh?” responded Mrs. Sappleton, vaguely. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention — but not what was saying.

“Here they are at last!” she cried. “In time for tea.”

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look of sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. Framton swung round and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight, three figures were walking noiselessly across the lawn, a tired brown spaniel close at their heels. They all carried guns and one had a white coat over his shoulders.

 Framton grabbed his waking stick; the hall door and the gravel drive were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat.

“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window. “Who was that who bolted out as we came up?”

“A Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton, “who dashed off without a word of apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”

“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly. “He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and foaming above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.”

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

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The Accompanist – Anita Desai (B.Com. II Sem Basic English)

The Accompanist – Anita Desai   

                    

It was only on the night of the concert, when we assembled on stage behind drawn curtains, that he gave me the notes to be played. I always hoped he would bring himself to do this earlier and I hovered around him all evening, tuning his sitar and preparing his betel leaves, but he would not speak to me at all. There were always many others around him — his hosts and the organizers of the concert, his friends and well-wishers and disciples — and he spoke and laughed with all of them, but always turned his head away when I came near. I was not hurt: this was his way with me, I was used to it. Only I wished he would tell me what he planned to play before the concert began so that I could prepare myself.  I found it difficult to plunge immediately, like lightning, without pause or preparation, into the music, as he did. But I had to learn how to make myself do this, and did. In everything, he led me, I followed.

For fifteen years now, this has been our way of life. It began the day when I was fifteen years old and took a new tanpura, made by my father who was a maker of musical instruments and also played several of them with talent and distinction, to a concert hall where Ustad Rahim Khan was to play that night. He had ordered a new tanpura from father who was known to all musicians for the quality of the instrument she made for them, with love as well as a deep knowledge of music. When I arrived at the hall, I looked around for someone to give the tanpura to, but the hall was in darkness as the management would not allow the musicians to use the lights before the show and only on stage was a single bulb lit, lighting up the little knot of  musicians and surrounding them with elongated, restless and, somehow, ominous shadows. The Ustad was tuning his sitar, pausing to laugh and talk to his companions every now and then. They were all talking and no one saw me. I stood for a long time in the doorway, gazing at the famous Ustad of whom my father had spoken with such reverence. ‘Do not mention the matter of payment,’ he had warned me. ‘He is doing us an honour by ordering a tanpura from us.’ This had impressed me and, as I gazed at him, I knew my father had been right in what he had said about him. He was only tuning his sitar, casually and haphazardly, but his fingers were the fingers of the god, absolutely in control of his instrument and I knew nothing but perfection could come of such a relationship between a musician and his instrument.

So I slowly walked up the aisle, bearing the new tanpura in my arms and all the time gazing at the man in the centre of that restless, chattering group, himself absolutely in repose, controlled and purposeful. As I came closer to the stage, I could see his face beneath the long locks of hair, and the face, too, was that of a god: it was large, perhaps heavy about the jaws, but balanced by a wide forehead and with blazing black eyes that were widely spaced. His nostrils and his mouth, too, were large, royal, but intelligent, controlled. And as I looked into his face, telling myself of all the impressive points it contained, he looked down at me. I do not know what he saw, what he could see in the darkness and shadows of the unlit hall, but he smiled with sweet gentleness and beckoned to me. ‘What do you have there?’ he called.

Then I had the courage to run up the steps at the side of the stage and straight to him. I did not look at anyone else. I did not even notice the others or care for their reaction to me. I went straight to him who was the centre of the gathering, of the stage and thereafter of my entire life, and presented the tanpura to him.

‘Ah, the new tanpura. From Mishraji in the music lane? You have come from Misharaji?’

‘He is my father,’ I whispered, kneeling before him and still looking into his face, unable to look away from it, it drew me so to him, close to him.

‘Mishraji’s son?’ he said, with a deep, friendly laugh. After running his fingers over the tanpura strings, he put it down on the carpet and suddenly stretched out his hand so that the fine white muslin sleeve of his kurta fell back and bared his arm, strong and muscular as an athlete has, with veins finely marked upon the taut skin, and fondled my chin. ‘Do you play?’ he asked. ‘My tanpura player has not arrived. Where is he?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Why isn’t he here?’ 

All his friends and followers began to babble. Some said he was ill, in the hotel, some that he had met friends and gone with them. No one really knew. The Ustad shook his head thoughtfully, then said. ‘He is probably in his cups again, the old drunkard, I won’t have him play for me anymore, let the child play,’ and immediately he picked up his sitar and began to play, bowing his head over the instrument, a kind of veil of  thoughtfulness and concentration falling across his face so that I knew I could not interrupt with the questions I wished to ask. He glanced at me, once, briefly, and beckoned to me to pick up the tanpura and play. ‘Raga Dipak,’ he said, and told me the notes to be played in such a quick undertone that I would not have heard him had I not been so acutely attentive to him.  And I sat down behind him, on the bare floor, picked up the new tanpura my father had made, and began to play the three notes he gave me — the central one, its octave and quintet — over and over again, creating the discreet background web of sound upon which would be improvised and embroidered his raga.

And so I became the tanpura player for Ustad Rahim Khan’s group. I have played for him since then, for no one else. I have done nothing else. It is my entire life. I am thirty years old now and Ustad has begun to turn grey, and often he interrupts a concert with that hacking cough that troubles him, and he takes more opium than he should to quieten it — I give it to him myself for he always asks me to prepare it. We have travelled all over India and played in every city, at every season. It is his life, and mine. We share this life, this music, this following. What else can there possible be for me in this world? Some have tried to tempt me from his side, but I have stayed with him, not wishing for anything else, anything more.

Ours is a world formed and defined and enclosed not so much by music, however, as by a human relationship on solid ground level — the relationship of love. Not an abstract quality, like music, or an intellectual one, like art, but a common human quality lived on an everyday level of reality — the quality of love. So I believe. What else is in it that weaves us together as we play, so that I know every movement he will make before he himself does, and then can count on me to be always where he wants me? We never diverge: we leave and we arrive together. Is this not love? No marriage was closer.  

When I was a boy many other things existed on earth for me. Of course music was always important, the chief household deity of a family musical by tradition. The central hall of our house was given over to the making of musical instruments for which my father, and his father before him, were famous. From it rose sounds not only of the craft involved — the knocking, tapping, planning and tuning — but also of music. Music vibrated there constantly, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes discordantly, a quality of the very air of our house: dense, shaped and infinite variation and never still. I was only a child, perhaps four years old, when father began waking me at four o’clock every morning to do down to the hall with him and take lessons from him on the tanpura, the harmonium, the sitar and even the tabala. He could play them all and wished to see which one I had an aptitude for. Music being literally the air we breathed in that tall, narrow house in the lane that had belonged for generations to the makers of musical instruments in that city, that I would display an aptitude was never in question. I sat cross-lagged on the mat before him and played gradually stirring to life as I did so, and finally sleep would lift from me like a covering, a smothering that had belonged to the night, till the inner core of my being stood forth and my father could see it clearly — I was a musician, not a maker, but a performer of music, that is what he saw. He taught me all the ragas, and raginis, and tested my knowledge with rapid, persistent questioning in his unmusical, grating voice. He was unlike my Ustad in every way, for he spat betel juice all down his ragged white beard, he seemed to be aware of everything I did and frequently his hand shot out to grab my ears and pull till I yelped.  From such lessons I had a need to escape and, being a small, wily boy, managed this several times a day, slipping through my elders’ fingers and hurtling down the steep stairs into the lane where I playd qulli-danda and kho and  marbles with the luckier, more idle and less supervised boys of the mohalla.

There was a time when I cared more passionately for marbles than for music, particularly a dark crimson, almost black one in which white lines writhed like weeds, or roots, that helped me to win every match I played till the pockets of my kurta bulged and tore with the weight of the marbles I won.

How I loved my mother’s sweetmeats, too — rather more, I’m sure, than I did the nondescript, mumbling, bald woman who made them. She never came to life for me, she lived some obscure, indoor life, unhealthy and curtained, undemanding and uninviting. But what halwa she made, what jalebis! I ate them so hot that I burnt the skin off my tongue. I stole my brothers’ and sisters’ share and was beaten and cursed by the whole family.

Then, when I was older, there was a time when only the cinema mattered. I saw four, five, as many as six cinema shows a week, creeping out of room at night barefoot, for silence, with money stolen from my father or mother, or anyone, clutched in my hand, then racing through the night-wild bazaar in time for the last show. Meena Kumari and Nargis were to me the queens of heaven. I put myself in the place of their screen lovers and felt myself grow great, hirsute, active and aggressive as I sat on the straw-stuffed seat, my feet tucked up under me, a cone of salted gram in my hand, uneaten, as I stared at these glistening sequinned queens with my mouth open. Their attractions, their graces filled up the empty spaces of my life and gave it new colours, new rhythms. So then I became aware of the women of our mohalla as women: ripe matrons who stood in their doorways, hands on hips, in that hour of the afternoon when life paused and presented possibilities before evening duties chocked them off, and the younger girls, always moving, never still, eluding touch. They were like reeds in dirty water for however shabby they were, however unlike the screen heroines, they never quite lacked the enticements of subtle smiles, sly glances and bits of gold braid and lace. Some answered the look in my eyes, promised me what I wanted, later perhaps, after late show, not now.

But all fell away from me, all disappeared in the shadows, on the other side, when I met my Ustad and began to play for him. He took the place of my mother’s sweet halwa, the cinema heroines, the street beauties, marbles and stolen money, all the pleasures and riches I had so far contrived to extract from the hard stones of existence in my father’s house in the music lane. I did not need such toys and more, such toys any more, such toys and dreams. I had found my purpose in life and, by following it without hesitation and without holding back any part of myself, I found such satisfaction that I no longer wished for anything else.

It is true I made a little money on these concert tours of ours, enough to take care of my father during his last years and his illness. I even married. That is, my mother managed to marry me off to some neighbours’s daughter of whom she was fond. The girl lived with her. I seldom visited her. I can barely remember her name, her face. She is safe with my mother and does not bother me. I remain free to follow my Ustad and play for him.

I believe he has the same attitude to his family and the rest of the world. At all events I have not seen him show the faintest interest in anything but our music, our concerts. Perhaps he is married. I have heard something of the sort but not seen his wife or known him to visit her. Perhaps he has children and one day a son will appear on stage and be taught to accompany his father. So far it has not happened. It is true that in between tours we do occasionally go home for a few days of rest. Inevitably the Ustad and I both cut short these ‘holidays’ and return to his house in the city for practice. When I return, he does not question or even talk to me. But when he hears my step, he recognizes it. I Know, for the smiles a half smile, as if mocking himself and me, then he rolls back his muslin sleeve, lifts his sitar and nods in my direction. ‘The Raga Desh’, he may announce, or ‘Malhar’ or ‘Megha’ and sit down behind him, on the bare floor, and play for him the notes he needs for the construction of the raga.

You may think I exaggerate our relationship, his need of me, his reliance on my tanpura. You may point out that there are other members of his band who play more important roles. And I confess you may be right, but only in a very superficial way.  I is quite obvious that the tabala player who accompanies him plays an ‘important’ role — a very loud and aggressive, at times thunderous one. But what is this ‘importance’ of his? It is not indispensable. As even the foremost critics agree, my Ustad is at his best when he is playing the introductory passage, the unaccompanied alap.  This he plays slowly, thoughtfully, with such purity and sensibility that I can never hear it without tears coming to my eyes.But once Ram Nath has joined in with a tap and a run if his fingers on the tablas, the music becomes quick, bold and competitive and, not only in my opinion but also in that of many critics, of diminished value. The audience certainly enjoys the gat more that the quiet alap, and it pays more attention to Ram Nath than to me. At times, he even draws applause for his performance, during a particularly brilliant passage when he manages to match or even outshine my Ustad. Then my Ustad will turn to him and smile, faintly, in approval, or even nod silently for he is so great-hearted and generous, my Ustad. He never does this to me. I sit at the back, almost concealed behind my master and his accompanist. I have no solo passage to play. I neither follow my Ustad’s raga nor enter into any kind of competition. Throughout the playing of the raga I run my fingers over the three strings of my tanpura, again and again, merely producing a kind of drone to fill up any interval in sound, to form a kind of road, or track, for my Ustad to keep to so that he may not stray from the basic notes of the raga by which I hold him. Since I never compete, never ask for attention to be diverted from him to me, never try to rival him in his play, I maintain I am his true accompanist, certainly his truer friend. He may never smile and nod in approval of me. But he cannot do without me. This is all the regard I need to keep me with him like a shadow. It does not bother me at all when Ram Nath, who is coarse and hairy and scratches his big stomach under his shirt and wears gold rings in his ears like a washerman, puts out his foot and trips me as I am getting on to the stage, or when I see him helping himself to all pulao on the table and leave me only some cold, unleavened bread. I know his true worth, or lack of it, and merely give him a look that will convey this to him.

Only once was I shaken out of my contentment, my complacency. I am ashamed to reveal it to you, it was so foolish of me. It only lasted a very little while but I still feel embarrassed and stupid when I think of it.  It was of course those empty-headed, marble-playing friends of my childhood, who led me into it. Once I had put them behind me, I should never have looked back. But they came up to me, after a rehearsal in our home city, a few hours before the concert. They had stolen into the dark hall and sat in the back row, smoking and cracking jokes and laughing in a secret, muffled way, which nevertheless drifted up to the stage, distracting those who were not sufficiently immersed in the music to be unaware of the outside world. Of course the Ustad and I never allowed our attention to stray and continued to attend to the music. Our ability to simply shut out all distraction from our minds when we play is a similarity between us of which I am very proud.

As I was leaving the hall I saw they were still standing in the doorway, a jumbled stack of coloured shirts and oiled locks and garish shoes. They clustered around me and it was only because of the things they said, referring to our boyhood games in the alley, that I recognized them. In every other matter they differed totally from me, it was plain to see we had travelled in opposite directions. The colours of their cheap bush-shirts and their loud voices immediately gave me a headache and I found it hard to keep smiling although I knew I ought to be modest and affectionate to them as my art and my position called for such behaviour from me. I let them take me to the tea-shop adjoining the concert hall and order tea for me. For a while we spoke of home, of games, of our families and friends. Then one of them — Ajit, I think —said, ‘Bhai, you to play so well. Your father was proud of you. He thought you would be a great Ustad. He used to tell us what a great musician you would be one day. What are you doing, sitting at the back of the stage, and playing the tanpura for Rahim Khan?’  

                                                                    

No one had ever spoken to me in this manner, in this voice, since my father died. I split tea down my lap. My head gave an uncontrolled jerk, I was so shocked. I half-stood up and thought I would catch him by his throat and press it till all those ugly words and ugly thoughts of his were choked, bled white, and incapable of moving again. Only I am not that sort of a man. I know myself to be weak, very weak. I only brushed the tea from my clothes and stood there starting at my feet. I stared at my broken old sandals, streaked with tea, at my loose clothes of white homespun. I told myself I lived so differently from them, my aim and purpose in life were so different from anything those gaudy street vagabonds could comprehend that I should not be surprised or take it ill if there were such a lack of understanding between us.

‘What sort of instrument is the tanpura?’ Ajit was saying still loudly. ‘Not even accompaniment. It is nothing. Anyone could play it. Just three notes, over and over again. Even I could play it,’ he ended with a shout making the others clap his back and lean forward in laughter at his wit.

Then Bhola leaned towards me. He was the quietest of them, although he wore a shirt of purple and white flowers and had dyed his mustache ginger, I knew he had been to jail twice already for house-breaking and theft. Yet he dared to lean close to me, almost touching me, and to say ‘Bhai, go back to the sitar. You even know how to play the sarod and the veena. You could be great Ustad yourself, with some practice. We are telling you this for your own good. When you become famous and go to America, you will thank us for this advice. Why do you spend your life sitting at the back of the stage and playing that idiotic tanpura while someone else takes all the fame and all the money from you?’     

It was as if they had decided to assault me. I felt as if they were climbing on top of me, choking me, grabbing me by my hair and dragging me down. Their words were blows, the idea they were throwing at me an assault. I felt beaten, destroyed, and with my last bit of strength shook them off, threw them off and, pushing aside the table and cups and plates ran out of the teashop. I think they followed me because I could hear voices calling me as I went running down the street, pushing against people and only just escaping from coming under the rickshaws, tongas and buses. It was afternoon, there were crowds on the street, dust and smoke blotted out the natural light of day. I saw everything as vile, as debased, as something amoral and ugly, and pushed it aside, pushed through as I ran.

And all the time I thought, Are they right? Could I have I played the sitar myself? Or the sarod, or the veena? And become an Ustad myself? This had never before occurred to me. My father had taught me to play all these instruments and disciplined me severely, but he had never praised me or suggested I could become a front-rank musician. I had learnt to play instruments, as the son of carpenter would naturally have learnt to make beds and tables and shelves, or the son of a shopkeeper learnt to weigh grain and sell and make money. But I had practised on these instruments and played the ragas he taught me to play without thinking of it as an art or of myself as an artist. Perhaps I was a stupid, backward boy. My father always said so. Now these boys who had heard me play in the dark hall of our house in the music lane, told me I could have been an Ustad myself, sat in the centre of the stage, played for great audiences and been applauded for my performance. Were they right? Was this true? Had I wasted my life?

As I ran pushed, half-crying, I thought of these things for the first time in my life, and they were frightening thoughts — large, heavy, dark ones that threatened to crush and destroy me. I found myself pushed up against an iron railing. Holding on to its bars, looking through tears at the beds of flowering cannas and rows of imperial palms of a dusty city park,  I hung against those railings, sobbing, till I heard someone address me — possibly a policeman, or a beggar, or perhaps just a kindly passerby. ‘In trouble?’ he asked me. ‘Go into trouble, boy?’ I did not want to speak to anyone and shook him off without looking at him and found the gate and went into the park, trying to control myself and order my thoughts.

I found a path between some tall bushes, and walked up and down here, alone, trying to think. Having cried, I felt calmer now. I had a bad headache but I was calmer. I talked to myself.

When I first met my Ustad, I was a boy of fifteen— a stupid, backward boy as my father had often told me I was. When I walked up to the stage to give him the tanpura he had ordered from my father, I saw greatness in his face, the calm and wisdom and kindness of a true leader. Immediately I wished to deliver not only my tanpura but my whole life into his hands. Take me, I wanted to say, take me and lead me. Show me how to live. Let me live with you, by you, and help me, be kind to me. Of course, I did not say these words. He took the tanpura from me and asked me to play if for him. This was his answer to the words I had not spoken but which he nevertheless heard. ‘Play for me,’ and with these words he created me, created my life, gave it form and distinction and purpose. It was the moment of my birth and he was both my father and my mother to me. He gave birth to me — Bhaiyya, the tanpura player.

Before that I had no life. I was nothing: a dirty, hungry street urchin, knocking about in the lane with other idlers and vagrants. I had played music only because my father made me, teaching me by striking me across the knuckles and pulling my ears for every mistake I made. I had stolen money and sweets from my mother. I was nothing. And no one cared that I was nothing. It was Ustad Rahim Khan who saw me, hiding awkwardly in the shadows of an empty hall with a tanpura in my hands and called me to come to him and showed me what to do with my life. I owe everything to him, my very life to him.

Yes, it was destiny to play the tanpura for a great Ustad, to sit behind him where he cannot even see me, and play the notes he needs so that he may not stray from the bounds of his composition when gripped by inspiration. I give him, quietly and unobtrusively, the materials upon which he works, with which he constructs the great music for which the whole world loves him. Yes, anyone could play the tanpura for him, do what I do. But he did not take anyone else, he chose me. He gave me my destiny, my life. Could I have refused him? Does a mortal refuse God?   It made me smile to think anyone could be such a fool. Even I, Bhaiyya, had known when the hour of my destiny had struck. Even a backward, feckless boy from the streets had recognized his god when he met him. I could not have refused. I took up the tanpura and played for my Ustad, and I have played for him since. I could not have wished for a finer destiny.

Leaving the park, I hailed a tonga and ordered the driver to take me to my Ustad. Never in my life had I spoken so loudly, as surely as I did then. You should have heard me. I wish my Ustad had heard me.  

Glossary:

Concert: a musical performance

Ominous: an evil omen, threatening

Haphazard: characterized by mere chance

Aisle: passage between two rows of seats

Repose: relaxed, calm

Octave: a note coming after eight tones in music

Quintet: a group of five musicians or instruments

Obscure: not clear

Sequined: covered with small shining spangles

Complacency: a feeling of satisfaction

Vagrant: wanderer or tramp

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courtesy: Contemporary Indian-English Stories