The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur.
Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near
by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office
established.
Our postmaster belonged to Calcutta. He felt like a fish out of water
in this remote village. His office and living-room were in a dark
thatched shed, not far from a green, slimy pond, surrounded on all
sides by a dense growth.
The men employed in the indigo factory had no leisure; moreover, they
were hardly desirable companions for decent folk. Nor is a Calcutta
boy an adept in the art of associating with others. Among strangers
he appears either proud or ill at ease. At any rate, the postmaster
had but little company; nor had he much to do.
At times he tried his hand at writing a verse or two. That the movement
of the leaves and the clouds of the sky were enough to fill life with
joy--such were the sentiments to which he sought to give expression.
But God knows that the poor fellow would have felt it as the gift of a
new life, if some genie of the _Arabian Nights_ had in one night swept
away the trees, leaves and all, and replaced them with a macadamised
road, hiding the clouds from view with rows of tall houses.
The postmaster's salary was small. He had to cook his own meals, which
he used to share with Ratan, an orphan girl of the village, who did
odd jobs for him.
When in the evening the smoke began to curl up from the village
cow-sheds,[38] and the cicalas chirped in every bush; when the faquirs
of the Baül sect sang their shrill songs in their daily meeting-place,
when any poet, who had attempted to watch the movement of the leaves in
the dense bamboo thickets, would have felt a ghostly shiver run
down his back, the postmaster would light his little lamp, and call
out 'Ratan.'
[38] Smoky fires are lit in the cow-sheds to drive off mosquitoes.
Ratan would sit outside waiting for this call, and, instead of coming
in at once, would reply: 'Did you call me, sir?'
'What are you doing?' the postmaster would ask.
'I must be going to light the kitchen fire,' would be the answer.
And the postmaster would say: 'Oh, let the kitchen fire be for awhile;
light me my pipe first.'
At last Ratan would enter, with puffed-out cheeks, vigorously blowing
into a flame a live coal to light the tobacco. This would give the
postmaster an opportunity of conversing. 'Well, Ratan,' perhaps
he would begin, 'do you remember anything of your mother?' That was a
fertile subject. Ratan partly remembered, and partly didn't. Her
father had been fonder of her than her mother; him she recollected more
vividly. He used to come home in the evening after his work, and
one or two evenings stood out more clearly than others, like pictures
in her memory. Ratan would squat on the floor near the postmaster's
feet, as memories crowded in upon her. She called to mind a little
brother that she had--and how on some bygone cloudy day she had
played at fishing with him on the edge of the pond, with a twig for a
make-believe fishing-rod. Such little incidents would drive out
greater events from her mind. Thus, as they talked, it would often
get very late, and the postmaster would feel too lazy to do any
cooking at all. Ratan would then hastily light the fire, and toast
some unleavened bread, which, with the cold remnants of the morning
meal, was enough for their supper.
On some evenings, seated at his desk in the corner of the big empty
shed, the postmaster too would call up memories of his own home, of
his mother and his sister, of those for whom in his exile his heart
was sad,--memories which were always haunting him, but which he could
not talk about with the men of the factory, though he found himself
naturally recalling them aloud in the presence of the simple little
girl. And so it came about that the girl would allude to his people
as mother, brother, and sister,[39] as if she had known them all her
life. In fact, she had a complete picture of each one of them painted
in her little heart.
[39] Family servants call the master and mistress father and mother
and the children elder brothers and sisters.
One noon, during a break in the rains, there was a cool soft breeze
blowing; the smell of the damp grass and leaves in the hot sun felt
like the warm breathing of the tired earth on one's body. A persistent
bird went on all the afternoon repeating the burden of its one
complaint in Nature's audience chamber.
The postmaster had nothing to do. The shimmer of the freshly washed
leaves, and the banked-up remnants of the retreating rain-clouds were
sights to see; and the postmaster was watching them, and thinking
to himself: 'Oh, if only some kindred soul were near--just one loving
human being whom I could hold near my heart!' This was exactly, he
went on to think, what that bird was trying to say, and it was the
same feeling which the murmuring leaves were striving to express. But
no one knows, or would believe, that such an idea might also take
possession of an ill-paid village postmaster in the deep, silent
mid-day interval of his work.
The postmaster sighed, and called out 'Ratan.' Ratan was then
sprawling beneath the guava-tree, busily engaged in eating unripe
guavas. At the voice of her master, she ran up breathlessly, saying:
'Were you calling me, Dada?'[40] 'I was thinking,' said the
postmaster, 'of teaching you to read,' and then for the rest of
the afternoon he taught her the alphabet.
[40] Dada = elder brother.
Thus, in a very short time, Ratan had got as far as the double
consonants.
It seemed as though the showers of the season would never end. Canals,
ditches, and hollows were all overflowing with water. Day and night
the patter of rain was heard, and the croaking of frogs. The village
roads became impassable, and marketing had to be done in punts.
One heavily clouded morning, the postmaster's little pupil had been
long waiting outside the door for her call, but, not hearing it as
usual, she took up her dog-eared book, and slowly entered the room.
She found her master stretched out on his pallet, and, thinking he
was resting, she was about to retire on tip-toe, when she suddenly
heard her name--'Ratan!' She turned at once and asked: 'Were you
sleeping, Dada?' The postmaster in a plaintive voice said: 'I am not
well. Feel my head; is it very hot?'
In the loneliness of his exile, and in the gloom of the rains, his
ailing body needed a little tender nursing. He longed to remember
the touch on the forehead of soft hands with tinkling bracelets,
to imagine the presence of loving womanhood, the nearness of mother
and sister. And the exile was not disappointed. Ratan ceased to be a
little girl. She at once stepped into the post of mother, called in the
village doctor, gave the patient his pills at the proper intervals,
sat up all night by his pillow, cooked his gruel for him, and every
now and then asked: 'Are you feeling a little better, Dada?'
It was some time before the postmaster, with weakened body, was able to
leave his sick-bed. 'No more of this,' said he with decision. 'I
must get a transfer.' He at once wrote off to Calcutta an application
for a transfer, on the ground of the unhealthiness of the place.
Relieved from her duties as nurse, Ratan again took up her old place
outside the door. But she no longer heard the same old call. She would
sometimes peep inside furtively to find the postmaster sitting on
his chair, or stretched on his pallet, and staring absent-mindedly
into the air. While Ratan was awaiting her call, the postmaster was
awaiting a reply to his application. The girl read her old lessons over
and over again--her great fear was lest, when the call came, she might
be found wanting in the double consonants. At last, after a week, the
call did come one evening. With an overflowing heart Ratan rushed
into the room with her--'Were you calling me, Dada?'