Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan
One November morning a mixed train put me down at this station and puffed away into the forest. The station-master, with the flags under his arm, became excited on seeing me. He had seen so few travellers arriving that it gave him no end of pleasure to see a new face. He appointed himself my host immediately, and took me into the ex-compartment and seated me on a stool. He said, ‘Excuse me. I’ll get off these papers in a minute . . .’ He scrawled over some brown sheets, put them away and rose. He locked up the station and took me to his home—a very tiny stone building consisting of just one room, a kitchen and a back yard. The station-master lived here with his wife and seven children. He fed me. I changed. He sent the porter along with me to the village, which was nearly a mile off in the interior. I gathered about me the peasants of those forty houses and lectured to them from the pyol of the headman’s house. They listened to me patiently, received the samples and my elaborate directions for their use, and went away to their respective occupations, with cynical comments among themselves regarding my ideas of manuring. I packed up and started back for the station-master’s house at dusk, my throat smarting and my own words ringing in my ears. Though a couple of trains were now passing, the only stopping train would be at 5:30 on the following morning. After dinner at the station-master’s house, I felt the time had come for me to leave: it would be indelicate to stay on when the entire family was waiting to spread their beds in the hall. I said I would sleep on the platform till my train arrived . . . ‘No, no, these are very bad parts. Not like your town. Full of tigers . . .’ the station-master said. He let me, as a special concession, sleep in the station. A heavy table, a chair and a stool occupied most of the space in the compartment. I pushed them aside and made a little space for myself in a corner. I’d at least eight hours before me. I laid myself down: all kinds of humming and rustling sounds came through the still night, and telegraph poles and night insects hummed, and bamboo bushes creaked. I got up, bolted the little station door and lay down, feeling forlorn. It became very warm, and I couldn’t sleep. I got up again, opened the door slightly to let in a little air, placed the chair across the door and went back to my bed.
I fell asleep and dreamt. I was standing on the crest of a hill and watching the valley below, under a pale moonlight. Far off a line of catlike creatures was moving across the slope, half-shadows, and I stood looking at them admiringly, for they marched on with great elegance. I was so much lost in this vision that I hadn’t noticed that they had moved up and come by a winding path right behind me. I turned and saw that they were not catlike in size but full-grown tigers. I made a dash to the only available shelter—the station room.
At this point the dream ended as the chair barricading the door came hurtling through and fell on me. I opened my eyes and saw at the door a tiger pushing himself in. It was a muddled moment for me: not being sure whether the dream was continuing or whether I was awake. I at first thought it was my friend the station-master who was coming in, but my dream had fully prepared my mind—I saw the thing clearly against the starlit sky, tail wagging, growling, and, above all, his terrible eyes gleaming through the dark. I understood that the fertilizer company would have to manage without my lectures from the following day. The tiger himself was rather startled by the noise of the chair and stood hesitating. He saw me quite clearly in my corner, and he seemed to be telling himself, ‘My dinner is there ready, but let me first know what this clattering noise is about.’ Somehow wild animals are less afraid of human beings than they are of pieces of furniture like chairs and tables. I have seen circus men managing a whole menagerie with nothing more than a chair. God gives us such recollections in order to save us at critical moments; and as the tiger stood observing me and watching the chair, I put out my hands and with desperate strength drew the table towards me, and also the stool. I sat with my back to the corner, the table wedged in nicely with the corner. I sat under it, and the stool walled up another side. While I dragged the table down, a lot of things fell off it, a table lamp, a long knife and pins. From my shelter I peeped at the tiger, who was also watching me with interest. Evidently he didn’t like his meal to be so completely shut out of sight. So he cautiously advanced a step or two, making a sort of rumbling noise in his throat which seemed to shake up the little station house. My end was nearing. I really pitied the woman whose lot it was to have become my wife.
I held up the chair like a shield and flourished it, and the tiger hesitated and fell back a step or two. Now once again we spent some time watching for each other’s movements. I held my breath and waited. The tiger stood there fiercely waving its tail, which sometimes struck the side walls and sent forth a thud. He suddenly crouched down without taking his eyes off me, and scratched the floor with his claws. ‘He is sharpening them for me,’ I told myself. The little shack had already acquired the smell of a zoo. It made me sick. The tiger kept scratching the floor with his forepaws. It was the most hideous sound you could think of.
All of a sudden he sprang up and flung his entire weight on this lot of furniture. I thought it’d be reduced to matchwood, but fortunately our railways have a lot of foresight and choose the heaviest timber for their furniture. That saved me. The tiger could do nothing more than perch himself on the roof of the table and hang down his paws: he tried to strike me down, but I parried with the chair and stool. The table rocked under him. I felt smothered: I could feel his breath on me. He sat completely covering the top, and went on shooting his paws in my direction. He would have scooped portions of me out for his use, but fortunately I sat right in the centre, a hair’s-breadth out of his reach on any side. He made vicious sounds and wriggled over my head. He could have knocked the chair to one side and dragged me out if he had come down, but somehow the sight of the chair seemed to worry him for a time. He preferred to be out of its reach. This battle went on for a while, I cannot say how long: time had come to a dead stop in my world. He jumped down and walked about the table, looking for a gap; I rattled the chair a couple of times, but very soon it lost all its terror for him; he patted the chair and found that it was inoffensive. At this discovery he tried to hurl it aside. But I was too quick for him. I swiftly drew it towards me and wedged it tight into the arch of the table, and the stool protected me on another side. I was more or less in a stockade made of the legs of furniture. He sat up on his haunches in front of me, wondering how best to get at me. Now the chair, table and stool had formed a solid block, with me at their heart, and they could withstand all his tricks. He scrutinized my arrangement with great interest, espied a gap and thrust his paw in. It dangled in my eyes with the curved claws opening out towards me. I felt very angry at the sight of it. Why should I allow the offensive to be developed all in his own way? I felt very indignant. The long knife from the station-master’s table was lying nearby. I picked it up and drove it in. He withdrew his paw, maddened by pain. He jumped up and nearly brought down the room, and then tried to crack to bits the entire stockade. He did not succeed. He once again thrust his paw in. I employed the long knife to good purpose and cut off a digit with the claw on it. It was a fight to the finish between him and me. He returned again and again to the charge. And I cut out, let me confess, three claws, before I had done with him. I had become as bloodthirsty as he. (Those claws, mounted on gold, are hanging around the necks of my three daughters. You can come and see them if you like sometime.)
At about five in the morning the station-master and the porter arrived, and innocently walked in. The moment they stepped in the tiger left me and turned on them. They both ran at top speed. The station-master flew back to his house and shut the door. The porter on fleet foot went up a tree, with the tiger halfway up behind him. Thus they stopped, staring at each other till the goods train lumbered in after 5:30. It hissed and whistled and belched fire, till the tiger took himself down and bolted across the tracks into the jungle.
He did not visit these parts again, though one was constantly hearing of his ravages. I did not meet him again—till a few mom
When the Talkative Man left us, we moved on to the square, where they were keeping the trophy in view and hero-worshipping and fêting the hunters, who were awaiting a lorry from the town. We pushed through the crowd, and begged to be shown the right forepaw of the tiger. Somebody lowered a gas lamp. Yes, three toes were missing, and a deep black scar marked the spot. The man who cut it off must have driven his knife with the power of a hammer. To a question, the hunters replied, ‘Can’t say how it happens. We’ve met a few instances like this. It’s said that some forest tribes, if they catch a tiger cub, cut off its claws for some talisman and let it go. They do not usually kill cubs.’
ISWARAN
When the whole of the student world in Malgudi was convulsed with excitement, on a certain evening in June when the Intermediate Examination results were expected, Iswaran went about his business, looking very unconcerned and detached.
He had earned the reputation of having aged in the Intermediate Class. He entered the Intermediate Class in Albert Mission College as a youngster, with faint down on his upper lip. Now he was still there; his figure had grown brawny and athletic, and his chin had become tanned and leathery. Some people even said that you could see grey hairs on his head. The first time he failed, his parents sympathized with him, the second time also he managed to get their sympathies, but subsequently they grew more critical and unsparing, and after repeated failures they lost all interest in his examination. He was often told by his parents, ‘Why don’t you discontinue your studies and try to do something useful?’ He always pleaded, ‘Let me have this one last chance.’ He clung to university education with a ferocious devotion. And now the whole town was agog with the expectation of the results in the evening. Boys moved about the street in groups; and on the sands of Sarayu they sat in clusters, nervously smiling and biting their fingernails. Others hung about the gates of the Senate House staring anxiously at the walls behind which a meeting was going on.
As much as the boys, if not more, the parents were agitated, except Iswaran’s, who, when they heard their neighbours discussing their son’s possible future results, remarked with a sigh, ‘No such worry for Iswaran. His results are famous and known to everyone in advance.’ Iswaran said facetiously, ‘I have perhaps passed this time, Father, who knows? I did study quite hard.’
‘You are the greatest optimist in India at the moment; but for this obstinate hope you would never have appeared for the same examination every year.’
‘I failed only in Logic, very narrowly, last year,’ he defended himself. At which the whole family laughed. ‘In any case, why don’t you go and wait along with the other boys, and look up your results?’ his mother asked. ‘Not at all necessary,’ Iswaran replied. ‘If I pass they will bring home the news. Do you think I saw my results last year? I spent my time in a cinema. I sat through two shows consecutively.’
He hummed as he went in for a wash before dressing to go out. He combed his hair with deliberate care, the more so because he knew everybody looked on him as a sort of an outcast for failing so often. He knew that behind him the whole family and the town were laughing. He felt that they remarked among themselves that washing, combing his hair and putting on a well-ironed coat were luxuries too far above his state. He was a failure and had no right to such luxuries. He was treated as a sort of thick-skinned idiot. But he did not care. He answered their attitude by behaving like a desperado. He swung his arms, strode up and down, bragged and shouted, and went to a cinema. But all this was only a mask. Under it was a creature hopelessly seared by failure, desperately longing and praying for success. On the day of the results he was, inwardly, in a trembling suspense. ‘Mother,’ he said as he went out, ‘don’t expect me for dinner tonight. I will eat something in a hotel and sit through both the shows at the Palace Talkies.’
Emerging from Vinayak Street, he saw a group of boys moving up the Market Road towards the college. Someone asked: ‘Iswaran, coming up to see the results?’
‘Yes, yes, presently. But now I have to be going on an urgent business.’
‘Where?’
‘Palace Talkies.’ At this all the boys laughed. ‘You seem to know your results already. Do you?’
‘I do. Otherwise do you think I would be celebrating it with a picture?’
‘What is your number?’
‘Seven-eight-five,’ he said, giving the first set of numbers that came to his head. The group passed on, joking, ‘We know you are going to get a first-class this time.’
He sat in a far-off corner in the four-anna class. He looked about: not a single student in the whole theatre. All the students of the town were near the Senate House, waiting for their results. Iswaran felt very unhappy to be the only student in the whole theatre. Somehow fate seemed to have isolated him from his fellow-beings in every respect. He felt very depressed and unhappy. He felt an utter distaste for himself.
Soon the lights went out and the show started—a Tamil film with all the known gods in it. He soon lost himself in the politics and struggles of gods and goddesses; he sat rapt in the vision of a heavenly world which some film director had chosen to present. This felicity of forgetfulness lasted but half an hour. Soon the heroine of the story sat on a low branch of a tree in paradise and wouldn’t move out of the place. She sat there singing a song for over half an hour. This portion tired Iswaran, and now there returned all the old pains and gloom. ‘Oh, lady,’ Iswaran appealed, ‘don’t add to my troubles, please move on.’ As if she heard this appeal the lady moved off, and brighter things followed. A battle, a deluge, somebody dropping headlong from cloud-land, and somebody coming up from the bed of an ocean, a rain of fire, a rain of flowers, people dying, people rising from graves and so on. All kinds of thrills occurred on that white screen beyond the pall of tobacco smoke. The continuous babble on and off the screen, music and shouting, the cry of pedlars selling soda, the unrestrained comments of the spectators—all this din and commotion helped Iswaran to forget the Senate House and student life for a few hours.
The show ended at ten o’clock in the night. A crowd was waiting at the gate for the night show. Iswaran walked across to Ananda Bhavan—a restaurant opposite the Palace Talkies. The proprietor, a genial Bombay man, was a friend of his and cried, ‘Ishwar Sab, the results were announced today. What about yours?’
‘I did not write any examination this year,’ Iswaran said.
‘Why, why, I thought you paid your examination fees!’
Iswaran laughed. ‘You are right. I have passed my Intermediate just this evening.’
‘Ah, how very good. How clever you must be! If you pray to Hanuman he will always bring you success. What are you going to do next?’
‘I will go to a higher class, that is all,’ Iswaran said. He ordered a few tidbits and coffee and rose to go. As he paid his bill and walked out, the hotel proprietor said, ‘Don’t leave me out when you are giving a dinner to celebrate your success.’
Iswaran again purchased a ticket and went back to the picture. Once more all strifes and struggles and intrigues of gods were repeated before him. He was once again lost in it. When he saw on the screen some young men of his age singing as they sported in the waters of some distant heaven, he said, ‘Well might you do it, boys. I suppose you have no examination where you are . . .’ And he was seized with a longing to belong to that world.
Now the leading lady sat on the low branch of a tree and started singing, and Iswaran lost interest in the picture. He looked about for the first time. He noticed, in the semi-darkness, several groups of boys in the hall—happy groups. He knew that they must all have seen their results, and come now to cele
He moved on to a more obscure corner of the hall. He looked at the screen, nothing there to cheer him: the leading lady was still there, and he knew she would certainly stay there for the next twenty minutes singing her masterpiece . . . He was overcome with dejection. He rose, silently edged towards the exit and was out of the theatre in a moment. He felt a loathing for himself after seeing those successful boys. ‘I am not fit to live. A fellow who cannot pass an examination . . .’ This idea developed in his mind—a glorious solution to all difficulties. Die and go to a world where there were young men free from examination who sported in lotus pools in paradise. No bothers, no disgusting Senate House wall to gaze on hopelessly, year after year. This solution suddenly brought him a feeling of relief. He felt lighter. He walked across to the hotel. The hotel man was about to rise and go to bed. ‘Saitji,’ Iswaran said, ‘please forgive my troubling you now. Give me a piece of paper and pencil. I have to note down something urgently.’ ‘So late as this,’ said the hotel man, and gave him a slip of paper and a pencil stub. Iswaran wrote down a message for his father, folded the slip and placed it carefully in the inner pocket of his coat.