Greatest Short Stories (20 page)

‘Don’t tell Bibiji about the bag of grain’ he said when the boy returned. ‘And where are the blades?’

Biju showed him both the blades and the change on the palm of his hands.

‘Keep the change,’ Ganesh said. And he proceeded upstairs.

Like all people who try to be cleaver and hatch plots to carry out a design, he forgot to do one or two things which were essential to bluff his sister-in-law. For instance, he did lot tell the servant boy the details of his plan about the bag of grain. Nor did he ask him to pretend that he, Biju, had taken the keys from the mistress’s table to open the storeroom door and get some condiments out. And when his sister-in-law arrived downstairs and asked for the keys, the servant boy innocently said he knew nothing about hem.

Of course, on sensing the real nature of the situation, he began to invent a lie to the effect that he had taken the keys from Ganeshji to fetch an empty bag out.

The lady of the house, was nothing if not a shrewd, knowing housewife, instinctively aware of the subterfuges, lies and innuendos of all the members of the household. She caught the servant boy in the trap of prevarications that he had begun to make. And, when, on top of incriminating evidence which Biju gave against himself Ganesh said he had seen him carry a bag of grain out of the house, the lady got her husband to beat the servant boy and throw him out, so that he could be free to join the beggars outside, whom he loved so dearly. In spite of the many more lies he told, the servant boy was, however, throughout, as stubborn in refusing to tell upon Ganesh as this gentleman was in concealing the truth which might have cleared up the matter.

The imperturbable calm of Ganesh’s behaviour after this incident was only broken when he saw the beggar woman again the next morning. His neck twitched more furiously, and his heavy-lidded eyes blinked, as if someone were digging pins into them, especially because he saw the servant boy, Biju, seated by her almost as though he had taken complete charge of her.

^*
From
The Tractor and the Corn Goddess and Other Stories.

Selected Bibliography

SHORT STORIES BY MULK RAJ ANAND

The Lost Child and Other Stories
(London, 1934).

The Barber s Trade Union and Other Stories
(Bombay, 1944).

The Tractor and the Corn Goddess and Other Stories
(Bombay, 1947).

Reflections on the Golden Bed and Other Stories
(Bombay, 1953).

The Power of Darkness and Other Stories
(Bombay, 1959).

Lajwanti and Other Stories
(Bombay, 1966).

Between Tears and Laughter
(New Delhi, 1973).
Selected Stories

(Moscow, 1955).

STORIES RETOLD

Indian Fairy Tales
(Bombay, 1946).
Aesop’s Fables
(Bombay,

1960).

More Indian Fairy Tales
(Bombay, 1961).

CRITICAL STUDIES OF THE SHORT STORIES OF MULK RAJ ANAND

Chapters in Books

Gupta, G.S.B., Mulk Raj Anand,
A Study of his fiction in Humanist

Perspective
(Bareilly, 1974).

Naik, M.K.,
Mulk Raj Anand
(New Delhi, 1973).

Sinha, K.N.,
Mulk Raj Anand
(New York, 1974).

Venugopal, C.V.
The Indian Short Story in English:
A Survey

(Bareilly, 1975).

Articles

Fisher, M.,
“The shape of Lostness:
Mulk Raj Anand’s Short

Stories’, Journal of Indian Writing in English, II, i. 1974.

Gupta, G.S.B.,
“Woman in Anand’s Shorter Fiction”
Karnataka

University Journal, Humanities, XIII, 1969.

Naik, M.K.,
“The Plough and the Tractor :
The Short Stories of Mulk Raj Anand”, Karnataka University Journal, Humanities, XVI, 1972.

Venugopal, C.V:,
“The Short Stories of
Mulk Raj Anand”,