LAL.

Who was Lal? What was he? This was a question I asked many times; and

though it was duly answered, Lal remained, and remains still, an

unknown quantity--an abstraction, a name, and nothing more. L A L. The

same backwards and forwards, self-contained, self-sufficing.

The first time I heard of Lal was on a bright spring morning, one of

those mornings when the plains of Northern India glitter with

dew-drops; when a purple haze of cloud-mountain bounds the pale

wheat-fields to the north, and a golden glow strikes skywards from the

sand-hills in the south. I was in a tamarisk jungle on the banks of the

Indus, engaged in the decorous record of all the thefts and

restitutions made during the year by that most grasping and generous of

rivers. For year after year, armed by the majesty of law and bucklered

by foot-rules and maps, the Government of India, in the person of one

of its officers, came gravely and altered the proportion of land and

water on the surface of the globe, while the river gurgled and dimpled

as if it were laughing in its sleeve.

Strange work, but pleasant too, with a charm of its own wrought by

infinite variety and sudden surprise. Sometimes watching the stream

sapping at a wheat-field, where the tender green spikes fringed the

edges of each crack and fissure in the fast-drying soil. A promise of

harvest,--and then, sheer down, the turbid water gnawing hungrily.

Every now and again a splash, telling that another inch or two of solid

earth had yielded. Sometimes standing on a mud bank where the ever

watchful villagers had sown a trial crop of coarse vetch; thus, as it

were, casting their bread on the water in hopes of finding it again

some day. But when? Would it be there at harvest-time? Grey-bearded

patriarchs from the village would wag their heads sagely over the

problem, and younger voices protest that it was not worth while to

enter such a flotsam-jetsam as a field. But the ruthless iron chain

would come into requisition, and another green spot be daubed on the

revenue map, for Governments ignore chance. And still the river dimpled

and gurgled with inward mirth; for if it gave the vetch, had it not

taken the wheat?

So from one scene of loss or gain to another, while the sun shone in

the cloudless sky overhead. Past pools of shining water where

red-billed cranes stood huddled up on one leg, as if they felt cold in

the crisp morning air. Out on the bare stretches of sand where

glittering streams and flocks of white egrets combined to form a silver

embroidery on the brown expanse. Over the shallow ford where the

bottle-nosed alligators slipped silently into the stream, or lay still

as shadows on the sun-baked sand. Down by the big river, where the

swirling water parted right and left, and where the greybeards set

their earthen pots a-swimming to decide which of the two streams would

prove its strength by bearing away the greater number,--a weighty

question, not lightly to be decided, since the land to the west of the

big stream belonged to one village, and the land eastward to another.

Back again to higher ground through thickets of tamarisk dripping with

dew. The bushes sparse below with their thin brown stems, so thick

above where the feathery pink-spiked branches interlaced. Riding

through it, the hands had to defend the face from the sharp switch of

the rosy flowers as they swung back disentangled; such tiny flowers,

too, no bigger than a mustard seed, and leaving a pink powder of pollen

behind them.

It was after forcing my way through one of these tamarisk jungles that

I came out on an open patch of rudely ploughed land, where a mixed crop

of pulse and barley grew sturdily, outlining an irregular oval with a

pale green carpet glistening with dew. In the centre a shallow pool of

water still testified to past floods, and from it a purple heron winged

its flight, lazily craning its painted neck against the sky.

The whole _posse comitatus_ of the village following me broke by twos

and threes through the jungle, and gathered round me as I paused

watching the bird's flight.

"Take the bridle from his honour's pony," cried a venerable pantaloon

breathlessly. "Let the steed of the Lord of the Universe eat his fill.

Is not this the field of Lal?"

Twenty hands stretched out to do the old headman's bidding; twenty

voices re-echoed the sentiment in varying words. A minute more, and my

pony's nose was well down on the wet, sweet tufts of vetch, and I was

asking for the first time, "Who is Lal?"

Lal, came the answer, why, Lal was--Lal. This was his field. Why should

not the pony of the Protector of the Poor have a bellyful? Was it not

more honourable than the parrot people and the squirrel people, and the

pig people who battened on the field of Lal?

It was early days yet for the flocks of green parrots to frequent the

crops, and the dainty squirrels were, I knew, still snugly a-bed

waiting for the sun to dry the dew; but at my feet sundry furrows and

scratches told that the pig had already been at work.

"Is Lal here?" I asked.

A smile, such as greets a child's innocent ignorance, came to the

good-humoured faces around me.

Lal, they explained, came when the crop was ripe, when the parrot, the

squirrel, and the pig people--and his honour's pony too--had had their

fill. Lal was a good man, one who walked straight, and laboured truly.

"But where is he?" I insisted.

Face looked at face half puzzled, half amused. Who could tell where Lal

was? He might be miles away, or in the next jungle. Some one had seen

him at Sukkhur a week agone, but that was no reason why he should not

be at Bhukkur now, for Lal followed the river, and like it was here

to-day, gone to-morrow.

Baulked in my curiosity, I took refuge in business by inquiring what

revenue Lal paid on his field. This was too much for the polite gravity

of my hearers. The idea of Lal's paying revenue was evidently

irresistibly comic, and the venerable pantaloon actually choked himself

between a cough and a laugh, requiring to be held up and patted on the

back.

"But some one must pay the revenue," I remarked a little testily.

Certainly! the Lord of the Universe was right. The village community

paid it. It was the village which lent Lal the field, and the bullocks,

and the plough. It was the village which gave him the few handfuls of

seed-grain to scatter broadcast over the roughly-tilled soil. So much

they lent to Lal. The sun and the good God gave him the rest. All, that

is to say, that was not wanted for the parrot, the pig, and the

squirrel people, and, of course, for the pony of the Lord of the

Universe.

There are so many mysteries in Indian peasant life, safe hidden from

alien eyes, that I was lazily content to let Lal and his field slip

into the limbo of things not thoroughly understood, and so, ere long, I

forgot all about him. Spring passed ripening the crops; summer came

bringing fresh floods to the river; and autumn watched the earth once

more make way against the water; but Lal was to me as though he had not

been.

It was only when another year found me once more in the strange land

which lies, as the natives say, "in the stomach of the river," that

memory awoke with the words, "This is the field of Lal." There was,

however, no suggestion made about loosening my pony's bridle as on the

former occasion, the reason for such reticence being palpable. Lal had

either been less fortunate in his original choice of a field this year,

or else the sun and the good God had been less diligent care-takers. A

large portion of the land, too, bore marks of an over-recent flood in a

thick deposit of fine glistening white sand. A favourite trick of the

mischievous Indus, by which she disappoints hope raised by previous

gifts of rich alluvial soil--a trick which has given her a bad name,

the worst a woman can bear, because she gives and destroys with one

hand. Here and there, in patches, the sparse crop showed green; but for

the most part the ground lay bare, cracking into large fissures under

the noonday sun, and peeling at the top into shiny brown scales.

"A bad lookout for Lal," I remarked.

Bad, they said, for the squirrel people and the parrot people, no

doubt; but for Lal--that was another matter. L&I did not live by bread

alone. The river gave, the river took away; but to Lal at any rate it

gave more than it stole.

"What does it give?" I asked.

It gave crocodiles. Of all things in the world crocodiles! Not a

welcome gift to many, but Lal, it seemed, was a hunter of crocodiles.

Not a mere slayer of alligators, like the men of the half-savage tribes

who frequent the river land; who array themselves in a plethora of blue

beads, and live by the creeks and _jheels_ on what they can catch or

steal; who track the cumbersome beasts to their nightly lair in some

narrow inlet, and, after barring escape by a stealthy earthwork, fall

on the helpless creature at dawn with spears and arrows. Lal was not of

these; he was of another temper. He hunted the crocodile in its native

element, stalked it through the quicksands, knife in hand, dived with

it into the swift stream, sped like a fish to the soft belly beneath,

and struck upwards with unerring hand, once, twice, thrice, while the

turbid orange water glowed crimson with the spouting blood.

I heard this tale curiously, but incredulously. Why, I asked, should

Lal run such risks? What good were crocodiles to him when they were

slain? There was not so much risk, after all, they replied, for it was

only the bottle-nosed ones that he hunted, and though, of course, the

snub-nosed ones lived in the river also--God destroy the horrid

monsters!--still they did not interfere in the fight. And Lal was

careful, all the more careful, because he had but two possessions to

guard, his skin and his knife. As to what Lal did with the crocodiles,

why, he ate them, of course. Not all; he spared some for his friends,

for those who were good to him, and gave him something in return. Had

the Presence never heard that the poor ate crocodile flesh? They

themselves, of course, did not touch the unclean animal; and their

gifts to Lal were purely disinterested. He was a straight-walking, a

labourful man, and that was the only reason why they lent him a field.

Even the Presence would acknowledge that crocodile flesh without bread

would be uninteresting diet; but as a rule the pig, the parrots, the

squirrels left enough for Lal to eat with his jerked meat. The village

lent him the sickle, of course, and the flail, and the mill, sometimes

even the girdle on which to bake the unleavened bread; but all for

love, only for love. Yet if the Presence desired it they could show him

the jerked meat, some that Lal had left for the poor. It was dry? Oh,

yes! Lal cut the great beasts into strips, and laid them in the sun on

the dry sand, sitting beside them to scare away the carrion birds.

Sometimes there would be a crowd of vultures, and Lal with his knife

sitting in the midst. "He will have to sell some of his jerked

crocodile to pay his revenue this year," I remarked, just to amuse

them. Again the idea was comic; evidently Lal and money were

incompatible, and the very idea of his owning any caused them to

chuckle unrestrainedly amongst themselves. Then, growing grave, they

explained at length how Lal had nothing in the world but his knife. All

the rest--the sun, the river, the crocodiles, the field, the bullocks,

the plough, and the seed-grain--were lent to him by them and the good

God; lent to him and to the other people who ate of the field of Lal.

As I rode away a brace of black partridges rose from one of the green

patches, and close to the tamarisk shelter a brown rat sat balancing a

half-dried stalk of barley. The river gleamed in the distance, a

wedge-shaped flight of _coolin_ cleft the sky. All that day, when the

shadow-like crocodiles slipped into the sliding water, I thought of Lal

and his knife. Was it a crocodile, after all; or was it a man,

stealthy, swift, and silent? Who could tell, when there was nothing but

a shadow, a slip, and then a few air bubbles on the sliding river? Or

was that Lal yonder where the vultures ringed a sand-bank far on the

western side? Why not? None knew whence he came or whither he went,

what he hoped, or what he feared; only his field bare witness to one

human frailty--hunger; and that he shared with the pig, and the parrot,

and the squirrel people. But though my thoughts were full of Lal for a

day or two, the memory of him passed as I left the river land, and once

more spring, summer, and autumn brought forgetfulness.

There were busy times for all the revenue officers next year. The

fitful river had chosen to desert its eastern bank altogether, and

concentrate its force upon the western; so while yard after yard of

ancestral land was giving way before the fierce stream, amidst much

wringing of hands on the one side, there was joy on the other over long

rich stretches ready for the plough and the red tape of measurement. In

the press of work even the sight of the river land failed to awake any

memory of Lal. It was not until I was re-entering the outskirts of the

village at sundown that something jogged my brain, making me turn to

the _posse comitatus_ behind me and ask,--

"And where, this year, is the field of Lal?"

We were passing over an open space baked almost to whiteness by the

constant sun,--a hard resonant place set round with gnarled _jhand_

trees, and dotted over with innumerable little mud mounds.

"There," wheezed the venerable pantaloon, pressing forward and pointing

to one newer than the rest. "That is the field of Lal."

Then I saw that we were in the village burial-ground. I looked up

inquiringly.

"_Huzoor!_" repeated a younger man, "that is Lal's field. It is his own

this time; but for all that the Sirkar will not charge him revenue."

The grim joke, and the idea of Lal's having six feet of earth of his

own at last, once more roused their sense of humour.

"And the other people who ate of the field of Lal?" I asked, half in

earnest, for somehow my heart was sad.

"The good God will look after them, as He has after the crocodiles."

Since then, strangely enough, the memory of Lal has remained with me,

and I often ask myself if he really existed, and if he really died.

Does he still slip silently into the stream, knife in hand? Does he

still come back to his field under the broad harvest moon, to glean his

scanty share after the other people have had their fill? I cannot say;

but whenever I see a particularly fat squirrel I say to myself, "It has

been feeding in the field of Lal."