AMID THE WALLS

(A Short-story)

RAJENDRA SINH RAIJADA

(Translated from the original in Gujarati by Jagdish V. Dave)

I got into a carriage of the train and found that it was not unusually crowded or squeezed. Two youths were sitting near the windows, and beside and opposite them were seated a shopkeeper, a woman with an infant laid in her lap, her husband, and some four or five other passengers. Throwing a casual glance at them, I managed to secure space enough somehow to sit beside one of the passengers opposite the youths. The youths were engrossed in listening to the film-songs from their transistor. Their hair blew in the wind. Perhaps they liked it that it should thus keep blowing and playing with the wind. They were sitting with the airs of care-free pride about them, almost light and unconcerned to the world of busy affairs. This was the intoxication of the season of youth in them. But like all things green and glorious is sure to prove filmsy and evanascent as the weeds that cover the surface of some pond. Their eyes were bright but empty. Perhaps, that was why they were trying unconsciously to fill up the inner void by whistling in film-hero fashion and listening to shallow songs of love. But this in the long run only intensifies the sense of emptiness.

I sat immersed in thought on stray themes of current affairs and problems–education, student energy being recklessly dissipated without direction, the probable future of India, etc. But it was useless. Or even if it could serve any useful purpose, I had neither position nor power to help. My thoughts got lost in the smoke that blew over my face from the biri lighted by that shopkeeper. I looked at him. He expressed sorrow, looked into other direction, inhaled two three deep breaths of smoke, and then threw away the biri. By deep breaths of smoke, it seemed as if he had filled up some essential want or vacuum within him.

This again stirred the thoughts to ramble on. It appeared, the whole world experiences loneliness, the lack of any meaning or purpose in life, and that it labours hard to fill up the inner emptiness by some action or idea. Yet the deep cracks of absence–emptiness–with in man are never filled up with any superimposed meaning or purpose, and in the end man struggling to fill up the crack or emptiness becomes himself emptiness.

Nothing in particular was talked in the carriage. At last the merchant broke the fluid silence of the carriage asking me where I was going, where I was coming from, etc. Others also engaged themselves in stray talks. It seemed, the walls within the carriage were broken, and it spread the feeling of relief. I started, quite formally to talk with the merchant. Touching the present political and commercial currents he asked: “What do you think of this war?”

“Even if we put aside everything else, the fact remains that we have been maintaining one crore of refugees; and then there is this expenditure of war,” I said.

“The Government is talking of family planning on the one hand, and on the other catering food to all who come!” said a middleclass man with some grievance from a corner of the compartment.

“That is because we have been following humanitarian principles and policy,” said the husband of that woman.

The discussion flitted on from topic to topic: war with Pakistan, 7th Fleet of America, possible Chinese intervention, price-rise, poverty, etc. I was a party in the discussion, yet somehow I was watching all in aloof and uninvolved spirit. Man builds up around him so many walls, breaks them, builds up new ones, and lives on amid them. Some have small circle to move in, some have comparatively larger, but all feel suffocated within self-created walls. Often they themselves become like walls-insensible.

The child started crying, and the discussion for a while went out through the window. The woman caressed the child to silence its crying. “See trees...there goes a cart...and see, there a buffalo...see, there they go...see...see...see...take this rattle...Ha...va...va...” Thus she tried in various ways to silence it. Yet the child was crying. The signs of tiredness and annoyance appeared on her face. The train was speeding on. Again the walls were erected in the compartment, and all got seated silently within them.

The train whistled, and its steam went up with force as if to hang somewhere in the sky, and vanished in slow diffusion as it rose higher in the air. The train slowed down. The station came. People from it ran to the carriages. Some rose to get down, others got in. In this small station voices sprang up that made a noise. A middle-aged woman with a child in her arms entered our carriage. She sat down by me finding there space sufficient to sit. The train

whistled and started.

All threw their glances one after the other to this new entrant in the carriage. It seemed that the woman belonged to some village low caste. Obviously she was a widow since she had worn nothing in her hands and nose, and had no kumkum mark on her forehead. The beautiful child of about a year in her lap attracted affectionate notice from all eyes that set on it. The woman was sitting composed and calm. The passengers’ stare of curiosity on her did not make her self-conscious or affect her steady expression of contentment and inner peace. Such physical and mental innocence and composure added a rare grace to her personality.

The compartment was slowly being stirred to stray chit-chats. The townswoman’s child was crying again, and she was getting more and more annoyed. Seeing this the newly-entered woman said in rustic accents and tone, “Sister, suckle it, it is hungry and so it cries.”

The townswoman, laying the child in her lap, covered it with her sari end, upturned the blouse and gave in its mouth her breast to suckle. The child became silent. Motherly affection appeared shining upon the surface of the village woman’s eyes.

The merchant lighted a bird. He smoked with so much zest that it seemed he could live only by filling his lungs up with smoke. At the time of inhaling the biri smoke his eyes contracted as if they sank into some immeasurable depth.

“Where are you to go?” asked the townswoman.

“Sister, I am to go to Muktapur,” answered the village woman.

Now they took up the thread of conversation in a way natural to women.

“What’s our name?”

“My name, Kadvi (literally meaning ‘bitter’).”

The youths chuckled at each other amused at hearing this strange name.

“Will you take this (baby) for a while?” So saying the towns-woman gave the child to her husband.

“Where are you to go, sister?” asked the village woman.”

“Ramgarh.”

“What are you by caste?” asked the townswoman getting deeper into the conversation.

“We are butcher caste.”

I looked at Kadvi.

“Is this your son?”

“Yes, mine own.”

“Your husband...?” the townswoman left the sentence incomplete in such a natural manner that it meant a question without being offensive to Kadvi. For otherwise such straight asking might only offend a stranger.

“Sister, I became a widow fifteen years ago”, she said laying her son into her lap.

“Now everybody looked at Kadvi with surprise and suspicion.

“Four years after my marriage I fell into the grief of widow-hood. I bore two sons who have already grown men by now.” Kadvi was talking as naturally as sun rises daily.

But suspicion was creeping deep into the eyes of all the passengers. The merchant turned away his face from her. The townswoman also winced a little and took her child from her husband. The merchant again lighted a bird. It seemed, his contempt was emanating from his mouth in the form of smoke. One of the youths winked at the other.

Kadvi now became an enigma. If she has been a widow for the last fifteen years, how does she have so young a baby? Who is his father? Walls were being built up in the carriage. But Kadvi was still indulgently caressing her child with the same unruffled calm and composure. Her love for the child was flowing constant even like the cool, clear waters of stream. All were staring at Kadvi, but when she would look at anyone of them, he would turn away his eyes. In the minds of all was brewing black, icy scorn and suspicion.

Now again chit-chatting started in low tone, and the atmosphere of cold contempt in the carriage melted. Yet it was quite clear that Kadvi’s enigma, heavy like lead, was at the bottom of every talk.

After a short while came the station of Muktapur. Kadvi was getting down from the carriage when she saw a man and said:

“How, Tapubhai, going to bring sister home?”

“Yes, Kadviben.” So saying the man entered the carriage.

“I see,” said Kadvi and taking her son into her arms followed the way to Muktapur. All eyes in the carriage gazed at Kadvi till she appeased.

Coming into the compartment Tapu sat down where Kadvi was sitting previously. All looked inquisitively at Tapu. But who would ask him? At last the merchant asked:

“Do you belong to Muktapur itself?”

“Yes.”

“You seem to be knowing that woman who got down here.”

“Why not! She is from our own village. Her name is Kadvi (bitter), but sweetness knows no limits in her.”

“What does her husband do?”

“Kadvi’s husband died fifteen years ago.”

“Then whose is the child she had in arms?”

It seemed Tapu understood by this question what exactly the merchant wanted to know. The eager attention of all the passengers in the carriage was centered precisely upon this question.

“He is her own son,” said Tapu.

“But she has no husband!”

Tapu paused for a while before answering. There was frozen silence in the carriage.

“Now what shall I say in the presence of this sister here,” he said hesitating a little.

“Never mind,” said the merchant.

“Then take it; hear. That boy is not her own son. About a year back once early in the morning Kadvi was out as usual for privy purpose. There this infant was found laid on the river bank; originally the sin of some high caste man and woman. Kadvi brought the infant home, and it lived. Kadvi used to say, ‘I have born two sons; I will think I have born this third one as well. Should this flower be allowed to die?’ Now she tells everyone that he is her own son. Take this; this in substance is the whole story.”

The petrified atmosphere of the carriage melted down. All felt as if they had become light as flower. Yet none spoke a word. The walls that they had built were all shattered. People loosen the walls, break them, build them again and go on living amid them. But only if walls could break for good..........!

Noise of the train’s wheels rolling on the tracts is heard: khat kharrrrr khat khat kharrrrr khat! All are sitting. They are filling the noise within them as if they feel emptied. Noise continues to be heard; kharrrr khat! Kharrrrr.......!

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