THE REFUGEE
(A
Story)
(Rendered
from Marathi)
It
was twenty minutes past ten. The electric clock at the railway station had
lifted its short thickset hand in a gesture of angry remonstrance. The pleasant
warmth of the early morning was giving place to intense heat as though the sun,
guiltily conscious of his drowsy sluggishness, had bestirred himself and
decided to make good.
A
local train noisily approached the station. Grumbling like a wild beast being
driven into a cage, it crawled in and halted with angry, reluctant grunts. An
army of white-collared men with the morning papers tucked under their arms
immediately scrambled out and started marching. Near the gate a queue was
automatically formed. The little revolving gate pushed them out, one by one,
with the mechanical regularity of a conveyor belt.
A
little bustling man, who appeared strangely out of place in this stream of
grave, silent figures, suddenly shouted out, “Baburao, ah, Baburao! Why don’t
you wait a bit? How about your daughter’s marriage? When is it to come off?”
The
unexpected outburst shot across the crowd like a ray of sunlight on a dark,
windless, rainy day. The tense, expressionless faces relaxed. Amused and
curious, they turned to look at that fussy little man.
The
sight moved Raghunath strangely. It began to dawn upon him that these neat,
well trimmed figures were not robots but men, each akin to himself and yet
unique, each an assorted bundle of mysterious, complex impulses and inhibitions
and yet on the surface so much like others. As this realization entered his
consciousness, there was a momentary panic in his heart, a panic reminiscent of
the terror that had gripped him so long and had only lately released its hold
on him–the terror of man! He felt the earth sagging under his feet and wanted
to clutch at something for support.
He
was carried along with the crowd, out of the railway station into the busy
street. In the midst of the bewildering, complicated pattern of
the traffic stood a neat, little policeman, like a king on a chess board. In an
instant, he lifted up an arm, no bigger than a match stick. The hurrying,
hooting automobiles abruptly halted. The stream of men, so long banked up,
rushed and overflowed into the street. Everybody now quickened his pace. They
had to sign the muster at their offices at ten-thirty sharp. Not a minute could
be wasted.
Raghunath
watched the scene with amazement. The world of men around him was set in a
perfect pattern. Law and order reigned unquestioned everywhere. A
policeman’s little finger could control the movements of thousands. The ugly
little hand of a clock could goad them all to hurry Up. A
woman could easily pass through the thickest crowd of these men. Their bodies
automatically withdrew to give her passage. They talked casually of prices, of
vegetables, of love, of promotions and leave-rules and of the possibilities of
war. In the glass show-case of a big shop was exhibited jewellery worth
thousands of rupees. People were looking at it with their noses pressed against
the glass, without greed or fear.
How
different was all this, thought Raghunath, from the wild chaos that he had left
behind and that was still within him! Mau appeared here a very simple and tame
creature. The eyes of these men did not speak the language of madness and
terror. Their faces were not contorted with agony or hatred, Their voices were
not hoarse with lust. None of them would have dreamed of piercing flashing
steel in his neighbour’s flesh and grinning at his convulsive death.
The
low, innocent talk of these simple, rather timid, men seemed to pour balm on
his overwrought nerves. It was like the hum of a machine in perfect order. His
mind felt suddenly relieved of tension and an overwhelming flood of weariness
seemed to overpower his entire being. He wanted to lay his head on the ground
and drown the tortures of his mutilated consciousness in one long sleep.
For,
the unexampled horror of his experiences during the last two months had
uprooted the very foundations of his being. The world of which he was a part,
and which he had taken for granted had been suddenly shattered to pieces. He
had not imagined hitherto that men could undergo such an experience and survive
it. The eruption of a volcano brings home to us what tremendous furies
lie concealed in the interior of our planet and how frail and insecure is the
lid of solid crust that conceals them. Likewise, Raghunath’s experience of that
explosive emergence of the dark passions that lie embedded in the depths of the
human personality had shown to him how shallow and unstable are the foundations
on which the pattern of civilized existence rest. With that experience still
fresh in his mind, he could not adjust himself to the routine of civilized
life. The values of that life had lost their meaning for him and he could not
discover any others to take their place. Thus bereft of its bearings, his soul
was hurtling in an endless void.
Now
that he was out of his ordeal, he wanted to forget it once and for all. He was
so weary and tired. But tired or not, he had to go through the same terrible
anguish again and again. The ghastly pageant passed and repassed before him
endlessly and in every painful detail. In the empty ruins of the vast
amphi-theatre of his consciousness, the tragedy was enacted repeatedly by
monstrous, shadowy figures for the benefit of himself, its lonely reluctant
spectator.
……….After
prolonged travel he had reached Bombay. For many days his mind was a tremendous
emptiness, haunted by unknown terrors. Like a ship without rudder, it turned
and twisted meaninglessly. He had a feeling that he had been flung into a
bottomless pit and was hurtling through space at incredible speed. He hoped and
prayed that he should dash against some rock and be destroyed and no trace
should be left of his existence on this earth.
When
he found that even this prayer was not granted by the merciful God who was
supposed to exist, he experienced a mad and overwhelming desire to destroy
everything around him and to stand on the ruins, growling defiance at he knew
not what.
He
had not imagined that man could stand and survive such intense emotional
tension. He did not expect that he would survive it. But even at the time when
he was in the profoundest depths of misery and despair, those mysterious healing
processes of the soul which cure all wounds and heal mortal injuries had been
unobtrusively operating in his being. In time, he began to feel their soothing
influence. The tension on his mind relaxed gradually, imperceptibly. His
emotions began to swing into focus and one day, to his surprise, he found
himself lifted clean from the morass in which he was stuck so long. He no
longer felt like being on the brink of insanity. His normal desires and
appetites reappeared and began to blossom forth with remarkable
speed and strength. Life once more seemed to acquire meaning and value.
He
started wandering about in the great city to find his place in the complex
structure of its life. He wanted a job, a home, where he could take root and
feel secure and develop a life of his own.
But
even while he was thus engaged, one part of his mind seemed, as it were,
functioning independently of him, watching the world of men from
an unwonted angle and with a new curiosity. When he saw men and women pass
across the street, he would wonder if they were really as innocent as they
seemed or, in truth, wolves in sheep’s clothing. When his children hung round
his neck or when his wife kissed him, he was incontinently stabbed by strange
misgivings about the reality of the bonds of kinship and domestic attachment.
Incessantly
haunted by such growing doubts, he would sometimes desperately ask himself:
“Whither after all is Man going? The God that he created, the songs that he
sung, the monuments that he built and the civilizations that he reared–were all
these to end in some terrific cataclysm such as that he had witnessed? Was the
accumulated wisdom of the ages incapable of controlling the diabolical urges
that man inherited from his primitive ancestry? Was man’s life ultimately
nothing more than a meaningless repetition of life and death?” These indeed had
been the only truths in respect of man’s existence that had emerged un-
challenged from the great holocaust.
It
was no academic passion for knowledge that impelled him to set these questions
to himself. He was no philosopher devoted to the disinterested quest of
Reality. He was asking them with the curiosity of a child who naively inquires
of its mother what exists beyond the blue canopy of the sky. He could, however,
find no answers to his questions. None indeed had yet found them, though,
paradoxically enough, one’s life is barren and in-complete unless one struggles
to find them.
Perplexed
as he was with these questions, the sight of the natural restraint and
discipline of that white-collared crowd gave him a strange relief. He was
thrilled with a new hope. “Enough of this brooding and these doubts,” he said
to himself as he bestirred himself and began to walk faster. “It was a world
temporarily gone mad. It is now all over and done with. I must now forget it
all and turn to the future.”
Walking
close to him were a young man and a girl. As Raghunath turned to look at them
the young man was speaking. “What have you got in that bag? Sweets? Then why
not give some to me?”
The
girl made a coquettish gesture but did not reply.
“You
are very stingy. If not sweets, can I not at least have a few sweet words from
you?” continued the young man now a little bolder.
The
girl now turned towards him. “Do you mean to say that so long my speech has
been bitter?” she asked, continuing the joke.
“Not
at all,” replied the young man, “but the sweet speech I
wish is of a different kind.”
The
girl blushed at this and the young man laughed. The men walking close by looked
at them with amused interest.
How
simple was all this! How human and how sweet!
On
one side of the street, a Victoriawalla stood by his carriage. He had a cup of
tea in his hand and he was beckoning to another Victoriawalla on the opposite
side of the street. In response to this invitation, the second Victoriawalla
brought his carriage right across the street, close to his friend’s, thus
holding up for a couple of minutes the entire traffic on the crowded street.
The first Victoriawalla then poured some portion of the tea in the saucer and
gave it to his friend. They drank their share of that single cup of tea,
cutting, meanwhile, crude practical jokes at each other’s expense. At the end
the second Victoriawalla tried to run away with his friend’s new whip. When
Raghunath saw the friendly strife that ensued between them, his heart melted
and tears welled up in his eyes. On the vast, benighted desert-sands of his
consciousness there seemed to appear suddenly a golden-haired child, smiling
and playing.
Proceeding
further, he saw at a corner of the street, a group of coolies intently
listening to an indelicate song by one of them. On their greasy perspiring
faces bloomed the wild flower of merriment. When the song was over, there was
an appreciative furore from the crowd, and one or two more enthusiastic members
of the gang actually threw their arms round the neck of the singer and kissed
him.
Boarding
a tram, Raghunath saw a Parsi boy arguing with the conductor that since he was
less than twelve years old, he was entitled to a half-ticket. The conductor
asked him irately how he could grow a moustache if he was less than twelve. The
boy explained, with the appearance of the utmost gravity, that he belonged to a
very manly family in which boys grew moustaches right sine their birth. The
boy’s friend laughed at this explanation, but the conductor was scandalized and
furious. They talked at each other and ultimately the joke threatened to
develop into a quarrel. But an old Parsi gentleman intervened and pacified the
conductor by paying the fare on behalf of the boy. Meanwhile, however, a fat
Gujarati merchant accidentally trod upon the toe of a Maharashtrian clerk. The
pained, wry-faced clerk gave vent to his resentment by muttering that Gujaratis
had grown very insolent because of the money they had made in the
black-markets. The Gujarati retorted that all the money the Gujaratis made in
black-markets had to be spent in giving bribes to Maharashtrians in Government
service, who had an insatiable appetite for bribes. The clerk’s rejoinder was
that if at all his people accepted bribes, it was simply in order to make both
ends meet in these inflationary times, but that the Gujaratis were hoarding
more and more wealth and ruining the country. So the controversy continued and
many of the passengers in the tram contributed their own arguments to it. It
was ultimately concluded that Maharashtrian clerks and officers were corrupt
because they could not otherwise maintain themselves and the Gujaratis had to
indulge in black-marketing just because of the perversity of Government in
imposing controls!
Taking
advantage of the crowding at the gates when the tram stopped,
one fellow gave a rude push to a lady. The lady angrily looked back and
immediately three or four persons caught hold of the offender and began to
thrash him. Thus overpowered, the man cringed and whined and tried to justify
himself by pleading that he had not insulted the lady deliberately. At length,
a kind-hearted man got him released from the hands of the crowd and pushed him
away.
Raghunath
witnessed all these scenes with the interest of a detached observer. Those
barbaric impulses whose naked fury he bad experienced at Lahore were manifest
here as well. But how mild and inoffensive did they appear here, and how
curiously diluted and softened were they by man’s more humane impulses! If only
they could always remain thus softened within a secure social pattern
Raghunath’s
fears seemed to dwindle and fade. He was prepared to accept this way of life
and merge the stream of his own individual existence
in this mighty river. For what he had longed for was precisely this,–that life
should be simple and straight-forward as it here appeared to be. The magical
beauty of the evening twilight seemed to enter his heart and irradiate his entire
being with a warm translucent glow. What had hitherto seemed
ugly, fearful and disfigured appeared to assume a wonderful charm and
attractiveness. He would, he thought, start at once to rebuild his wrecked
life. Every day, he would go out for work; on his way
back home he would purchase some eatables for his children and flowers for his
wife, and they would all live in perfect happiness. He was
going to ask no questions and entertain no misgivings. He was not going to
allow the bitter memories of the past to spoil the promise of present
happiness. The horrible pageant in his heart would be sealed off from this, his
new life.
Making
his way in the thick crowd, he began to walk home. But even at that very
instant, the crowd suddenly divided and terrific screams began to rend the air.
Men and women began to run helter-skelter and boys and girls walking hand in
hand quickly deserted each other.
And,
right in the middle of the road, a mad Gurkha ran amok, piercing with his kukri
every one on whom he could lay his hands.