My first consciousness, my very first idea or remembrance of anything
that I can recall, was on a hot sultry night in the city of Lucknow, in
the year 18––, but no matter as to the exact date, for I do not know how
old I was then, and do not now know the year in which I was born. I was
awakened by the clinking sound of something that caught my ear; then
turning my eyes I saw a number of beautiful round glittering things fall
into my mother’s lap as she sat upon a charpoy. As I recall the scene, I
think there must have been several hundred of these shining pieces. It
is strange what an attraction there is in children for metal money,
though they know nothing of its value. Is there not a latent love for it
in them from a former birth as an inheritance?—but let that rest for the
present.
My eyes then went to a man, as I now can designate him, for then it did
not seem to me that I was conscious of him any more than that he was a
thing of life, a being or something very indefinite, beyond my
comprehension. I years after, recalled him as an Englishman, rather
tall, of blonde complexion, with a cleanly-shaved face, except a heavy
well-trimmed moustache. What struck me was the whiteness of his face and
hands, so that I took him for a bhut or ghost, and quaking with fear
gazed at him.
He was standing close to the charpoy looking down upon my mother, into
whose lap he had thrown the shining things that I afterward learned were
rupees and new, just brought from the treasury. After the clinking of
the rupees I heard him say in Hindustani: “I must leave you, pyari. I am
going to Wilayat, home, and may never see you again?”
“Jaoge! mujh ko chordoge?” said my mother, with trembling lips and a
heart-breaking tone. “You are going and will leave me?” she repeated
again, so plaintively. “Yes,” he said, “I have got leave and I must go.
I have brought you five hundred rupees and hope you will be happy and
take good care of the children. I have come to bid you good-bye.” Upon
this my mother clasped her hands over her head and bent forward with a
wail of anguish that was heart-rending. Amid her tears she exclaimed:
“You always told me that I was your bibi, your own dear wife, that you
would never leave me, and now you are going and will throw me away as
the skin of the mango you have eaten, or as an old coat that you have
worn out. You will leave me and go to Wilayat, where you will marry a
young mem sahib as all the sahibs do, and she will never know that I am
your wife. O Allah! Why did I ever listen to your soft words and become
your pyari? Pyari, I have been and true to you in all things. Will you
go away and leave me to be called a kusbi by all these people? O Allah!
ya Shaitan! why am I thus to be accursed?”
Then she swayed back and forth, wailing as if her heart was breaking.
She piteously asked, “Why not take me with you, as you often said you
would?”
“That would be impossible,” he replied. “You would not be happy among my
people in a strange land; you are of another caste or race, and it would
only make you unhappy to go there.”
“I have been your beloved wife, your pyari bibi here, why could I not be
there also? I have lived here all these years, discarded and despised by
my people because I was a sahib’s aurat, woman, but I loved you, I lived
upon the thought of you. The very sound of your footsteps thrilled me
with delight. I have been good enough for you as your wife through all
these years, for you have called me your pyari bibi, your darling wife,
a thousand times, and now you will cast me off and get an English mem
sahib. Allah! Allah! have mercy upon me! O my children, my children!
They are your children. You were my God. I worshiped you when they were
conceived. My love and adoration of you impressed your features upon
them. They are more yours than mine, for I gave them no thought of
myself but all of you. They are yours, of your own flesh and blood. How
can you forsake them? How can you be so cruel to them and me?”
She ceased, bitterly weeping. He stood speechless, somewhat moved by her
piteous appeals, yet as I remember him, he regarded her with a look of
hardened contempt. A moment after uttering the last words she quickly
threw the rupees from her lap, scattering them all over the floor and
leaping from the charpoy, flung herself at his feet and putting her arms
around his legs placed her face upon his boots, wailing piteously and
praying him not to desert his children.
“Throw me aside forever,” she said, “but, oh! the children, your own
children, do not forsake them! For Allah’s sake, take care of them.”
Her long abundant black hair fell over her shoulders. Her face showed
the intense agony of her soul and her large eyes filled with tears that
dropped from her face as if each one was a drop of hot blood from her
heart. He remained silent, as I remember him, with a cold brutal
indifference, without saying a word until she seemed nearly exhausted in
her anguish. He then lifted her up and placed her upon the charpoy, and
taking her hand saying, “I cannot help it, pyari, it is my kismet, I
must go,” and kissing her, said: “Salaam, good-bye, God bless you,” and
rushed from the room.
Is it strange that I should remember such a scene? This was my first
consciousness of life. I remember nothing previous to that night, and
what I saw and heard then was burned into my very being to remain a part
of it as long as I continue to be. She was my mother, my own, my darling
mama. I am now an old man and the sands in my hour-glass are nearly run
out. I have had trials enough to have hardened all my feelings into
iron, yet as I think of my dear little mama, in her agony and despair on
that memorable night, great tears run down my furrowed cheeks. I cannot
help their coming, and I would not if I could. Blessed tears! that
relieve us in our sorrows and moisten our hearts with tenderness. It was
a strange scene to me. I was frightened into silence and could not stir,
and dared not cry. I could understand that my mama was in great trouble,
though I knew not why it was, nothing of the cause of it. I sat in a
corner partly concealed by a cloth hung on a rope that was stretched
across the room. I now see every little thing as it was then, my
mother’s eyes, the big tear drops on her cheeks are now in my sight,
after all these years, just as I saw them then. I hear my mama’s voice,
its wailing tones of entreaty, of despair. I see her body quivering in
her agony as she was clinging to the feet of the sahib, just as vividly
as if she was before me now.
As I learned afterward, he used to come late at night, so that I was
asleep in a little side room when he came. At the front of the court was
a large gate, but I was told the sahib never came in by that way. At the
back end of the court there was a little narrow door, through which the
rubbish and sweepings were carried and thrown, into a gully that wound
its way to the old canal beyond the city. It was by the gully where the
rubbish lay and through the door by which the sweepings went out that
the sahib came in, never by daylight, but always near dead of night.
Shall I now express my opinion of that very brave _Christian English
gentleman_? coming up through that stinking gully, through that little
back door at the hour of midnight? A man who would do that would not
only destroy the woman he had called his wife, make outcasts of his own
children, but would barter his own soul and betray his God to gratify
his lust. But I must not let my feelings overcome me. Yet I cannot help
saying that often since then, when I have thought of that night scene, I
have felt like tearing a passion to tatters, aye more than that, to be
really truthful, to murder somebody; _even that man_, my own father, for
the infamous wrong done my darling mother.
As I have said, when this sahib so suddenly appeared I was terribly
frightened. He seemed to me a giant, so tall and big. Then the ghastly
pale face; the reddish hair; the strange clothes, he might be one of the
bhuts or jins that carry away little boys and eat them, one each day,
for his dinner. Was it strange then, that I sat crouching in my corner,
scarcely daring to breathe, lest he might hear me and seize me for his
next day’s meal?
The clinking of the rupees is written on the first page of my memory.
The sound and sight of them gave me a thrill of pleasure, but a moment
after came the fright at the sight of the strange being. Scared as I
was, I saw everything, heard all that was said and felt a thousand times
more than I now can find words to describe. All was so sudden, strange
and incomprehensible, that I was dumb with fear at the great thing
standing so high up in the room, and when my mother began her piteous
wailings, I was hushed to silence with my intense feelings of sorrow for
her.
As the sahib rushed from the place, my mama threw herself upon the bare
earthen floor with a shriek, and there lay moaning and crying out in
heart-piercing tones, “My Sahib! my Sahib!” I sprang from my corner, and
sat down by her, and placing her head upon my lap stroked her hair back
from her face and begged of her “mama, pyari mama! why do you cry so?”
There was no answer, but “my Sahib! my Sahib!” O! the agony of that
hour! It has never left me, it became a part of my life and is with me
now, for I feel it. What could I do, a little tot that had never been
out of the court? I do not know how long I sat there; I must have become
exhausted and gone to sleep, for in the morning I found myself lying on
the charpoy where I suppose my mama placed me.
As I awoke, my first thought was of her. I glanced around the room and
saw her sitting on a low stool facing the court. Her eyes were turned
towards the western sky, but evidently she was not looking at anything.
I awakened as from a horrible dream and could not at once realize what
had happened, but when I saw that haggard, pallid face, those wide open
eyes, that looked and saw nothing, all the night scene flashed upon me
and I cried out, “Mama, mama!” She turned her head, without a word,
toward me and began again to look far away as if for something beyond
mortal ken. I was told years after, that before that night she was the
most happy woman of all in the court, always so pleasant to her
neighbors, always smiling, laughing and romping with her children; but
after that awful night, the light of her life had gone out into utter
darkness, for she never smiled again.
The rupees were gathered up and put in the rough wooden box, fastened
with a big padlock. They were taken out one by one to pay the rent and
to buy a little flour, rice and bread and a few vegetables for our daily
food. There was a little sister, too young, thank God, to know anything
of the trouble in the house. An old woman went to the bazar to purchase
our food and did the cooking. At first a few of the neighboring women
looked in at the door and tried to be friendly, but the little mother
took no notice of them and they ceased coming. One day I overheard one
of them say to the other as an excuse for her silence, “Her Sahib has
gone.”
The little sister and I passed our time as best we could with the few
cheap playthings we had, eating our cheap food, occasionally delighted
with some native sweets that the old woman bought for us. The dear mama
would sit on her little stool with her hands clasped over her knees, her
face turned toward the west, her large eyes strained wide open as if to
see something in the far away distance.
At early morning I would find her sitting thus. Nearly all the day she
would sit looking in utter silence. Sometimes the little sister and I
would fall upon her knees and chatter to her. She would turn her head
toward us for a moment and perhaps say a word or two and then take up
her looking again. There was never a ripple of laughter, such as used to
cheer everybody around her, as they told me years after, not even a
smile for us, her children. She seemed to be alone, and as I remember
her and am now able to think about her condition and actions, it appears
to me her heart was dying, gradually, to be sure, but dying.
I could not understand anything about it then for I was too young to
realize what had occurred. I had scarcely ever been outside our rooms
and never outside the little court or muhalla. I had no companion but
the little sister. I knew nothing of the great world or little world
outside, and had only seen a few native people in the court as I looked
down from our veranda. As to the names, father or papa, I had not heard
them, and if spoken to me I would not have understood what they meant. I
was not aware that I had a father or ever had one. It was better perhaps
as it was, for had I been told that the sahib I saw was my father; that
it was he who had treated my mama with such infamous cruelty; that for
him she was breaking her heart, dying day by day, as she kept looking
toward him in the west, as he was going home to enjoy life and get a new
wife, forsaking our dear mama and casting off us, his own children, for
whose being he alone was responsible; had I known this, my life would
have undoubtedly been altogether different and not for the better
either. Knowledge is power, but it is often best not to have too much of
it, nor to have it before we are capable of using it.