East, West Read Free

see this her face would have fallen off from shame.
    Sometimes in those days Ramani came into this street in the evenings to meet some friends, and they thought they were very smart because they would go into the back room of the Irani’s canteen and drink illegal liquor, only of course everybody knew, but who would do anything, if boys ruin their lives let their relations worry.
    I was sad to see Ramani fall into this bad company. His parents were known to me when alive. But when Itold Ramani to keep away from those hot-shots he grinned like a sheep and said I was wrong, nothing bad was taking place.
    Let it go, I thought.
    I knew those cronies of his. They all wore the armbands of the new Youth Movement. This was the time of the State of Emergency, and these friends were not peaceful persons, there were stories of beatings-up, so I sat quiet under my tree. Ramani wore no armband but he went with them because they impressed him, the fool.
    These armband youths were always flattering Ramani. Such a handsome chap, they told him, compared to you Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh are like lepers only, you should go to Bombay and be put in the motion pictures.
    They flattered him with dreams because they knew they could take money from him at cards and he would buy them drink while they did it, though he was no richer than they. So now Ramani’s head became filled with these movie dreams, because there was nothing else inside to take up any space, and this is another reason why I blame the widow woman, because she had more years and should have had more sense. In two ticks she could have made him forget all about it, butno, I heard her telling him one day for all to hear, ‘Truly you have the looks of Lord Krishna himself, except you are not blue all over.’ In the street! So all would know they were lovers! From that day on I was sure a disaster would happen.
    The next time the thief’s widow came into the street to visit the bania shop I decided to act. Not for my own sake but for the boy’s dead parents I risked being shamed by a … no, I will not call her the name, she is elsewhere now and they will know what she is like.
    ‘Thief’s widow!’ I called out.
    She stopped dead, jerking her face in an ugly way, as if I had hit her with a whip.
    ‘Come here and speak,’ I told her.
    Now she could not refuse because I am not without importance in the town and maybe she calculated that if people saw us talking they would stop ignoring her when she passed, so she came as I knew she would.
    ‘I have to say this thing only,’ I told her with dignity. ‘Ramani the rickshaw boy is dear to me, and you must find some person of your own age, or, better still, go to the widows’ ashrams in Benares and spend the rest of your life there in holy prayer, thanking God that widow-burning is now illegal.’
    So at this point she tried to shame me by screamingout and calling me curses and saying that I was a poisonous old man who should have died years ago, and then she said, ‘Let me tell you, mister teacher sahib retired , that your Ramani has asked to marry me and I have said no, because I wish no more children, and he is a young man and should have his own. So tell that to the whole world and stop your cobra poison.’
    For a time after that I closed my eyes to this affair of Ramani and the thief’s widow, because I had done all I could and there were many other things in the town to interest a person like myself. For instance, the local health officer had brought a big white caravan into the street and was given permission to park it out of the way under the banyan tree; and every night men were taken into this van for a while and things were done to them.
    I did not care to be in the vicinity at these times, because the youths with armbands were always in attendance, so I took my hookah and sat in another place. I heard rumours of what was happening in the caravan but I closed my ears.
    But it was while this caravan, which smelled