And when she came back for the corn distribution Barber Venkata said, ‘And, Mother, what about Moorthappa?’ and Pariah Rachanna took his two measures and said, ‘And, Mother, what have the Red-man’s Government said about Moorthappa?’ and Boatman Sidda said, ‘If this Government’s people were really sons of their father, they would have asked us to stand and bear witness before them!’ and Goldsmith Nanjundia said, ‘Oh, let them do what they like. Our Moorthy is like gold— the more you heat it the purer it comes from the crucible,’ and the women said, ‘Oh, when you strike a cow you will fall into the hell of hells and suffer a million and eight tortures and be born an ass. And if this Government cannot tell the difference between a deer and a panther, well, it will fall into the mouth of the precipice,’ and Rice-pounding Rajamma, who had an evil tongue, said, ‘May this Government be destroyed!’ and she spat three times. And so, from day to day, people said this against the Government and that against the police, and when our Rangè Gowda got dismissed from his patelship, they all cried out, ‘Oh, this is against the ancient laws — a patel is a patel from father to son, from son to grandson, and this Government wants to eat up the food of our ancestors,’ and everybody, as they passed by the Kenchamma grove, cried out, ‘Goddess, when the demon came to eat our babes and rape our daughters, you came down to destroy him and protect us. Oh, Goddess, destroy this Government,’ and when the women went to cut grass for the calves, they made a song, and mowing the grass they sang:
Goddess, Goddess, Goddess Kenchamma,
The mother-in-law has wicked eyes,
And the sister-in-law has a hungry stomach,
Betel-nuts never become stone,
And a virgin will never become pregnant,
Red is the earth around the Goddess,
For thou hast slain the Red-demon.
Goddess, Goddess,
The mother-in-law has wicked eyes,
And betel-nuts will never become stone.
And Kanchi Narasamma, who had a long tongue, added:
Lean is the Brahmin-priest, mother,
And fat is he when he becomes Bhatta, mother,
Fat is he when he becomes Bhatta, mother
And he will take the road to Kashi,
For gold has stuck in his stomach,
And he will take the road to Kashi.
And the sister-in-law has a hungry stomach,
Betel-nuts will never become stone.
To tell you the truth, Bhatta left us after harvest on a pilgrimage to Kashi. But, don’t they say, sister, the sinner may go to the ocean but the water will only touch his knees?
And when Rangamma went back after the corn distributions, she went straight to Sankar instead of staying with cousin Seetharamu, for she had seen much of Sankar and she had liked him and he had liked her, and he had said to her, ‘When you come to Karwar next, come and stay with me, Aunt, and you will help me in my work,’ and Rangamma had said, ‘I am poor of mind and of little learning, what can I do for you, Sankaru?’ and he had answered, ‘That does not matter, Aunt— what we need is force and fervour, and I am living with my little daughter and my aged mother, and you may perhaps arrange my papers and look after the Congress correspondence,’ and though Rangamma was the humblest of women, she liked this, and she said, ‘If the gods choose me, I will not say “Nay,”’ and that’s why she went to stay with Sankaru. And when Waterfall Venkamma heard of this she said, ‘Oh! this widow has now begun to live openly with her men,’ and she spat on the house and said this man had her and that man had her, and she began to say she would go to the courts and have back Rangamma’s property, for land and lust and wifely loyalty go badly together, like oil and soap and hot water. But she said, ‘Let Bhatta come and he will do it for me.’ But our Rangamma was as tame as a cow and she only said, ‘One cannot stitch up the mouths of others. So let them say what they like.’ And as everybody knew, Sankar was an ascetic of a man and had refused marriage after marriage after he had lost his wife, and everybody had said, ‘This is not right, Sankaru. You are only twenty-six and you have just put up the Advocate’s signboard, and you will soon begin to earn, and when you have a nine-pillared house you will need a Lakshmi-like goddess to adorn it,’ but Sankar simply forced a smile and said, ‘I have had a Lakshmi and I, a sinner, could not even keep her, and she has left me a child and that is enough.’ But his old father came and said, ‘But, no, Sankaru, you cannot do that. You are our eldest son, and you have to give us at least a grandson so that when we are dead our manes will be satisfied,’ but Sankar smiled back again and said, ‘If you want the marriage thread to be tied in an ocean of tears, I shall. But otherwise I will not. I have a daughter and I will bring her up. And you will come and stay with me and we shall have a household running,’ and the old mother wept and the old father knit his eyebrows, but Sankar smiled back and said, ‘I shall obey you,’ but they did not press him further, and they said, ‘His wife Usha was such a godlike woman. She would never utter a word loud, and never say “nay” to anything. And when she walked the streets, they always say what a holy wife she was and beaming with her wifehood, and never a mother-in-law had a daughter-in-law like her,’ and they both said, ‘Well, we can understand Sankaru. When one has lost Usha nothing can replace her.’ And they never again gave Sankar’s horoscope to anyone, and they came to stay with him and look after his sanctum and his child.
And the old father, who was a retired taluk office clerk, knew how to write English, and he said he would address envelopes for Congress meetings, and sometimes he went to join Dasappa, who had opened a khadi shop in the town. And when Dasappa was ill or away on Congress duty, it was old Venkataramayya who looked after the shop, measuring out yard after yard of khadi and saying, ‘This is from the Badanaval centre, and that is from the Pariahs of Siddapura, and this upper cloth is almost the work of the Mahatma, for where do you think it comes from? — Sabarmati itself!’ And when a young man came to buy a towel or pair of dhotis he would say, ‘He, have you read the latest Young India?’ and if he should say ‘Nay,’ he would tell them they were a set of buffaloes fit to be driven with kick and knout, and thrusting the paper into the young man’s hands, he would offer him a chair and say, ‘Read this, it is useful,’ or, ‘Skip through this, it is less useful,’ and when children came he gave them pinches and peppermints and told them stories of Tilak and Gandhi and Chittaranjan Das, and such funny stories they were, too, that they called him Gandhi-grandpa. And his wife cooked food for the family and she said, ‘One day Sankar will earn as much as Advocate Ranganna, and he will buy a motor car, too,’ but Sankar laughed and said, ‘Mother, you must forget your dreams. Don’t you see I am not a man to make money?’ At which Satamma said this about what Ramachandra had said about Sankar’s reputation, and that about Professor Patwardhan’s appreciation: ‘Your son, Sankar, he is a saint,’ and when he walked the main bazaar, they used to say, ‘Look there, there goes the ascetic advocate.’ People sometimes looked at his khadi coat and his rough yarn turban and laughed at this ‘walking advocate,’ and others said, ‘No, no, he follows the principles of the Mahatma.’—’And what, pray, are the principles of the Mahatma?’—’Why, don’t you know Sankar does not take a single false case, and before he takes a client he says to him, “Swear before me you are not the criminal!” and the client says this and that, but Sankar always comes back to the point and says, “You know if you do not tell me the whole truth, well, I may be forced to withdraw in the middle of the case,”’ and, indeed, as everyone knows, he withdrew in the middle of the case between Shopkeeper Rama Chetty and Contractor Seenappa over false accounts, between Borèhalli Nanjunda and Tippayya, and you know how he withdrew in the last criminal case they had in Karwar. You see, this is what really happened. One Rahman Khan was supposed to have tried to murder one Subba Chetty, for Subba Chetty had taken away his mistress Dasi. And everybody said, ‘Poor Subba Chetty, poor Subba Chetty!’—and everybody said, ‘He will win the case easily.’ And Subba Chetty was an old client of Sankar and so he goes to Sankar and tells him the story and swears it is all true, and Sankar says, ‘Now this is going to be a criminal case, and if you have hidden a thing small as a hair, you will come to grief, Subba Chetty!’ And Subba Chetty sheds many a tear and says he is a good householder and he would never tell a lie and the lingam in his hand is witness to it. And Sankar takes the case and prepares the papers, and he says he will have to see Dasi, but Subba Chetty says, ‘Dasi is very ill, Father, but her word is my word and my word is hers,’ and Sankar says, ‘Bring her before the sessions,’ and Subba Chetty says, ‘If Siva wills, so it shall be,’ and Sankar says, ‘Then you may go’; and the case is filed and summonses are sent and the day of the hearing arrives, and Subba Chetty is the last to come and says the wheels broke down and the rains, how they poured, and this and that, and when Dasi comes to the bar she is as hale as a first-calved cow, and she turns this way and she turns that way and she does her hair and wipes her eyes and stands up and sits down and bites her sari-fringe, and Subba Chetty gets angry and says, ‘Stop this concubine show!’ And when the cross-examination begins it is Advocate Ramanna who begins to heckle her with questions, and Dasi breaks into a fit of sobs and says something and Subba Chetty cries, ‘Woman! Woman!’ and Dasi runs up to the advocate and falls at his feet and says, ‘I know nothing, Father! Nothing!’ And when Sankar hears that, he asks the judge for permission to speak to his client, and he says to Subba Chetty, ‘On your mother’s honour, tell me if you have not concocted the story to pinch Rahman Khan’s coconut garden?’ And Subba Chetty trembles and says, ‘No, no, Sankarappa!’ But Sankar has seen the game and he turns to the magistrate and says, ‘I beg to ask your Lordship for an adjournment,’ and the magistrate, who knows Sankar’s ways, says, ‘Well, you have it.’ When Sankar gets back home, he asks Subba Chetty to speak the truth, and Subba Chetty tells him how he had employed Dasi to go and live with Rahman Khan and to enrage him against Subba Chetty, ‘with drink and smoke and lust,’ and with drink and smoke and lust Rahman Khan had cried out he would murder that Subba Chetty and had run out with an axe and Subba Chetty had cried out, ‘Murder! Murder!’ in the middle of the street, and Dasi had run out innocently and tried to calm Rahman Khan, who was so weak that he had rolled upon the earth, an opium lump. And when Sankar heard this he said, ‘Go and confess this to the magistrate,’ and the next day the magistrate gave him three years’ rigorous imprisonment, with one year for Dasi. And Sankar asked pardon in public of Rahman Khan, who got six months, too.