From this time onward the old interminable discussions about the theft
of the will became less frequent on the part of Bhavani. His one topic
of conversation was the marvellous adventure of Kalipada in search of
his education. Kalipada was actually engaged in his studies in the city
of Calcutta! Kalipada knew Calcutta as well as the palm of his hand!
Kalipada had been the first to hear the great news that another bridge
was going to be built over the Ganges near Hughli! The day on which the
father received his son's letter, he would go to every house in the
village to read it to his neighbours and he would hardly find time even
to take his spectacles from his nose. On arriving at a fresh house he
would remove them from their case with the utmost deliberation; then he
would wipe them carefully with the end of his _dhoti_; then, word by
word, he would slowly read the letter through to one neighbour after
another, with something like the following comment:--
"Brother, just listen! What _is_ the world coming to? Even the dogs and
the jackals are to cross the holy Ganges without washing the dust from
their feet! Who could imagine such a sacrilege?"
No doubt it was very deplorable; but all the same it gave Bhavani
Charan a peculiar pleasure to communicate at first hand such important
news from his own son's letter, and this more than compensated for the
spiritual disaster which must surely overtake the numberless creatures
of this present age. To everyone he met he solemnly nodded his head and
prophesied that the days were soon coming when Mother Ganges would
disappear altogether; all the while cherishing the hope that the news of
such a momentous event would come to him by letter from his own son in
the proper time.
Kalipada, with very great difficulty, scraped together just enough money
to pay his expenses till he passed his Matriculation and again won a
scholarship. Bhavani at once made up his mind to invite all the village
to a feast, for he imagined that his son's good ship of fortune had now
reached its haven and there would be no more occasion for economy. But
he received no encouragement from Rashmani.
Kalipada was fortunate enough to secure a place of study in a students'
lodging house near his college. The proprietor allowed him to occupy a
small room on the ground floor which was absolutely useless for other
lodgers. In exchange for this and his board, he had to coach the son of
the owner of the house. The one great advantage was that there would be
no chance of any fellow lodger ever sharing his quarters. So, although
ventilation was lacking, his studies were uninterrupted.
Those of the students who paid their rent and lived in the upper story
had no concern with Kalipada; but soon it became painfully evident that
those who are up above have the power to hurl missiles at those below
with all the more deadly force because of their distance. The leader of
those above was Sailen.
Sailen was the scion of a rich family. It was unnecessary for him to
live in a students' mess, but he successfully convinced his guardians
that this would be best for his studies. The real reason was that Sailen
was naturally fond of company, and the students' lodging house was an
ideal place where he could have all the pleasure of companionship
without any of its responsibilities. It was the firm conviction of
Sailen that he was a good fellow and a man of feeling. The advantage of
harbouring such a conviction was that it needed no proof in practice.
Vanity is not like a horse or an elephant requiring expensive fodder.
Nevertheless, as Sailen had plenty of money he did not allow his vanity
merely to graze at large; he took special pride in keeping it stall-fed.
It must be said to his credit that he had a genuine desire to help
people in their need, but the desire in him was of such a character,
that if a man in difficulty refused to come to him for help, he would
turn round on him and do his best to add to his trouble. His mess mates
had their tickets for the theatre bought for them by Sailen, and it cost
them nothing to have occasional feasts. They could borrow money from him
without meaning to pay it back. When a newly married youth was in doubt
about the choice of some gift for his wife, he could fully rely on
Sailen's good taste in the matter. On these occasions the love-lorn
youth would take Sailen to the shop and pretend to select the cheapest
and least suitable presents: then Sailen, with a contemptuous laugh
would intervene and select the right thing. At the mention of the price
the young husband would pull a long face, but Sailen would always be
ready to abide by his own superior choice and to pay the cost.
In this manner Sailen became the acknowledged patron of the students
upstairs. It made him intolerant of the insolence of any one who refused
to accept his help. Indeed, to help others in this way had become his
hobby.
Kalipada, in his tattered jersey, used to sit on a dirty mat in his damp
room below and recite his lessons, swinging himself from side to side to
the rhythm of the sentence. It was a sheer necessity for him to get
that scholarship next year.
Kalipada's mother had made him promise, before he left home for Calcutta
that he would avoid the company of rich young men. Therefore he bore the
burden of his indigence alone, strictly keeping himself from those who
had been more favoured by fortune. But to Sailen, it seemed a sheer
impertinence that a student as poor as Kalipada should yet have the
pride to keep away from his patronage. Besides this, in his food and
dress and everything, Kalipada's poverty was so blatantly exposed, it
hurt Sailen's sense of decency. Every time he looked down into
Kalipada's room, he was offended by the sight of the cheap clothing, the
dingy mosquito net and the tattered bedding. Whenever he passed on his
way to his own room in the upper story the sight of these things was
unavoidable. To crown it all there was that absurd amulet which Kalipada
always had hanging round his neck, and those daily rites of devotion
which were so ridiculously out of fashion!
One day Sailen and his followers condescended to invite Kalipada to a
feast, thinking that his gratitude would know no bounds. But Kalipada
sent an answer saying that his habits were different and it would not be
wholesome for him to accept the invitation. Sailen was unaccustomed to
such a refusal, and it roused up in him all the ferocity of his insulted
benevolence. For some days after this, the noise on the upper story
became so loudly insistent that it was impossible for Kalipada to go on
with his studies. He was compelled to spend the greater part of his days
studying in the Park, and to get up very early and sit down to his work
long before it was light.
Owing to his half-starved condition, his mental overwork, and
badly-ventilated room, Kalipada began to suffer from continual attacks
of headache. There were times when he was obliged to lie down on his bed
for three or four days together. But he made no mention of his illness
in his letters to his father. Bhavani himself was certain that, just as
vegetation grew rank in his village surroundings, so comforts of all
kinds sprang up of themselves from the soil of Calcutta. Kalipada never
for a moment disabused his mind of that misconception. He did not fail
to write to his father, even when suffering from one of these paroxysms
of pain. The deliberate rowdiness of the students in the upper story
added at such times to his distress.
Kalipada tried to make himself as scarce and small as possible, in order
to avoid notice; but this did not bring him relief. One day, he found
that a cheap shoe of his own had been taken away and replaced by an
expensive foreign one. It was impossible for him to go to college with
such an incongruous pair. He made no complaint, however, but bought some
old second-hand shoes from the cobbler. One day, a student from the
upper story came into his room and asked him:
"Have you, by any mistake, brought away my silver cigarette case with
you?"
Kalipada got annoyed and answered:
"I have never been inside your room in my life."
The student stooped down. "Hullo!" he said, "here it is!" And the
valuable cigarette case was picked up from the corner of the room.
Kalipada determined to leave this lodging house as soon as ever he had
passed his Intermediate Examination, provided only he could get a
scholarship to enable him to do so.
Every year the students of the house used to have their annual Saraswati
Puja. Though the greater part of the expenses fell to the share of
Sailen, every one else contributed according to his means. The year
before, they had contemptuously left out Kalipada from the list of
contributors; but this year, merely to tease him, they came with their
subscription book. Kalipada instantly paid five rupees to the fund,
though he had no intention of participating in the feast. His penury
had long brought on him the contempt of his fellow lodgers, but this
unexpected gift of five rupees became to them insufferable. The
Saraswati Puja was performed with great A(C)clat and the five rupees could
easily have been spared. It had been hard indeed for Kalipada to part
with it. While he took the food given him in his landlord's house he had
no control over the time at which it was served. Besides this, since the
servants brought him the food, he did not like to criticise the dishes.
He preferred to provide himself with some extra things; and after the
forced extravagance of his five-rupee subscription he had to forgo all
this and suffered in consequence. His paroxysms of headache became more
frequent, and though he passed his examination, he failed to obtain the
scholarship that he desired.
The loss of the scholarship drove Kalipada to do extra work as a private
tutor and to stick to the same unhealthy room in the lodging house. The
students overhead had hoped that they would be relieved of his presence.
But punctually to the day the room was unlocked on the lower floor.
Kalipada entered, clad in the same old dirty check Parsee coat. A coolie
from Sealdah Station took down from his head a steel trunk and other
miscellaneous packages and laid them on the floor of the room; and a
long wrangle ensued as to the proper amount of pice that were due.
In the depths of those packages there were mango chutnies and other
condiments which his mother had specially prepared. Kalipada was aware
that, in his absence, the upper-story students, in search of a jest, did
not scruple to come into his room by stealth.
He was especially anxious to keep these home gifts from their cruel
scrutiny. As tokens of home affection they were supremely precious to
him; but to the town students, they denoted merely the boorishness of
poverty-stricken villagers. The vessels were crude and earthen, fastened
up by an earthen lid fixed on with paste of flour. They were neither
glass nor porcelain, and therefore sure to be regarded with insolent
disdain by rich town-bred people.
Formerly Kalipada used to keep these stores hidden under his bed,
covering them up with old newspapers. But this time he took the
precaution of always locking up his door, even if he went out for a few
minutes. This still further roused the spleen of Sailen and his party.
It seemed to them preposterous that the room which was poor enough to
draw tears from the eyes of the most hardened burglar should be as
carefully guarded as if it were a second Bank of Bengal.
"Does he actually believe," they said among themselves, "that the
temptation will be irresistible for us to steal that Parsee coat?"
Sailen had never visited this dark and mildewed room from which the
plaster was dropping. The glimpses that he had taken, while going
up-stairs,--especially when, in the evening, Kalipada, the upper part of
his body bare, would sit poring over his books with a smoky lamp beside
him,--were enough to give him a sense of suffocation. Sailen asked his
boon companions to explore the room below and find out the treasure
which Kalipada had hidden. Everybody felt intensely amused at the
proposal.
The lock on Kalipada's door was a cheap one, which had the magnanimity
to lend itself to any key. One evening when Kalipada had gone out to his
private tuition, two or three of the students with an exuberant sense of
humour took a lantern and unlocked the room and entered. It did not need
a moment to discover the pots of chutney under the bed, but these hardly
seemed valuable enough to demand such watchful care on the part of
Kalipada. A further search disclosed a key on a ring under the pillow.
They opened the steel trunk with the key and found a few soiled clothes,
books and writing material. They were about to shut the box in disgust
when they saw, at the very bottom, a packet covered by a dirty
handkerchief. On uncovering three or four wrappers they found a currency
note of fifty rupees. This made them burst out into peals of laughter.
They felt certain that Kalipada was harbouring suspicion against the
whole world in his mind because of this fifty rupees!
The meanness of this suspicious precaution deepened the intensity of
their contempt for Kalipada. Just then, they heard a foot-step outside.
They hastily shut the box, locked the door, and ran upstairs with the
note in their possession.
Sailen was vastly amused. Though fifty rupees was a mere trifle, he
could never have believed that Kalipada had so much money in his trunk.
They all decided to watch the result of this loss upon that queer
creature downstairs.
When Kalipada came home that night after his tuition was over, he was
too tired to notice any disorder in his room. One of his worst attacks
of nervous headache was coming on and he went straight to bed.
The next day, when he brought out his trunk from under the bed and took
out his clothes, he found it open. He was naturally careful, but it was
not unlikely, he thought, that he had forgotten to lock it on the day
before. But when he lifted the lid he found all the contents
topsy-turvy, and his heart gave a great thud when he discovered that
the note, given to him by his mother, was missing. He searched the box
over and over again in the vain hope of finding it, and when his loss
was made certain, he flung himself upon his bed and lay like one dead.
Just then, he heard footsteps following one another on the stairs, and
every now and then an outburst of laughter from the upper room. It
struck him, all of a sudden, that this was not a theft: Sailen and his
party must have taken the note to amuse themselves and make laughter out
of it. It would have given him less pain if a thief had stolen it. It
seemed to him that these young men had laid their impious hands upon his
mother herself.
This was the first time that Kalipada had ascended those stairs. He ran
to the upper floor,--the old jersey on his shoulders,--his face flushed
with anger and the pain of his illness. As it was Sunday, Sailen and his
company were seated in the verandah, laughing and talking. Without any
warning, Kalipada burst upon them and shouted:
"Give me back my note!"
If he had begged it of them, they would have relented; but the sight of
his anger made them furious. They started up from their chairs and
exclaimed:
"What do you mean, sir? What do you mean? What note?"