Shining Hero (26 page)

When he was well enough she decided to take him back with her to the Hatibari where, she hoped, with gentler children to play with he too would gradually learn to exhibit sweetness. ‘It will be fun for Arjuna to have a boy almost his own age to play with,’ she told Bhima. ‘He is often lonely in the holidays when the cousins are away.’

Gadhari was furious. ‘Over my dead body will this filthy street urchin and bastard of Koonty come to defile our home.’

Even DR Uncle was doubtful. ‘Don’t you think, Shivarani, that the child will be better left among his own kind of people? Because he has always lived on the pavements he will find it very difficult to adjust to a civilised existence, I am sure.’

‘He has nowhere else to go and the police will pick him up again if he is left in Cal,’ pleaded Shivarani. ‘Also he is the son of Pandu’s wife. He is family in spite of his background.’

In the end even Gadhari had to agree that there was no alternative. ‘Though he will have to eat among the servants and when I see him I will turn my back,’ she said.

Before they left Calcutta for Hatipur, Karna insisted on returning to the goonda’s room to retrieve his shirt.

‘But you have a fine new one on already,’ protested Shivarani.

‘But all the same I must get back the one my mother gave me,’ insisted Karna.

Later Shivarani would describe the scene in Raki’s room. Blood everywhere, two filthy, half-starved crippled goondas creeping in their own excrement. The only reason the shirt was still there was because it was so ragged that even the desperate goondas had been unable to find a use for it. At the sight of Bhima and Shivarani with Karna, the two goondas cringed away and holding their hands to their heads, began to plead, ‘Please, Sahib, Memsahib, we did not want to hurt him. We were only taking a little pleasure. There is so little pleasure in this life, that you cannot blame us for taking it where we can.’

Bhima stared at them with contempt, then said, ‘These bits of filth are not even worthy of being punished.’ To Karna he said, ‘Get your shirt, little brother, and then let us leave these dreadful people to their sin and dirt.’

It was the morning that they were leaving for the Hatibari that the police came round.

‘It has been brought to our attention that you have a boy called Karna on your premises.’

‘Please leave the room. I need to speak to this officer in private,’ said Shivarani to Parvathi.

And the holy rite concluded, Karna ranged his men in war
.

To the dreaded front of battle Karna drove his conquering car
.

Morn to noon and noon to evening raged the battle on the plain
.

Countless warriors fought and perished, car-borne chiefs were pierced and slain
.

Arjuna went down to the stables where he expected, as usual, to find his groom waiting with his pony already saddled. But Janci was still in her stable, the groom was nowhere to be seen and the pony had no water. He filled the pony’s water bucket himself and as he was putting it into Janci’s box, the groom and Bika, Laxshmi’s daughter, emerged out of the straw. The groom looked flustered, Bika was laughing. Both of them had straw in their hair and stuck to their clothes.

Arjuna had not seen Bika for several months and the change in her made him draw in his breath. ‘Bika, what are you doing here?’ She was beautiful.

‘You gave poor Prodosh too much work so I have come to help him,’ Bika said in a tone that made Arjuna know it was not true. Her eyes were sparkling.

‘But Sahib, please don’t tell my mother that you have seen me here for she does not like me to be near … horses and will beat me if she knows.’ Bika let out a scream of laughter and the groom tried to stifle a giggle.

Riding his pony was the only thing that made Arjuna happy these days. When he cantered through the Hatibari gardens, for a short
while he would stop remembering how his mother had wrapped a chain of iron round her body and drowned herself and forget the day a man called Ravi had killed his father. But all his joy vanished when Shivarani told him that Karna had been found and was coming to live at the Hatibari.

‘I won’t have that dirty creature in my house,’ he yelled, his fists clenched, his face red. ‘It’s my house. I won’t let him in.’

‘It’s not properly yours till you come of age,’ said Shivarani. She tried not to let him see her anxiety and her doubt. ‘Till then you have to do what your guardians say.’

‘Then I will tell DR Uncle not to let him come,’ screamed Arjuna.

‘Perhaps Arjuna is right,’ said DR Uncle. ‘I think it is a bad idea to have this boy living here as well.’

Shivarani pleaded with the uncle. ‘What will people say if they hear that the zamindar threw the child of Koonty onto the streets? And also this child is wanted for murder. What kind of reputation will this family get if they catch him and he is convicted?’

‘Can he not go somewhere else?’

‘Where?’

When it became clear that there was no avoiding the arrival of Karna, Gadhari retired to her bed of richly carved, hard, black jungle wood and stayed there saying, ‘The very thought of Koonty’s bastard makes me feel ill. I shall not get up again as long as the creature is in our house.’ And she reached out and took yet another pill from one of the bottles that massed on her bedside table.

On the journey back from Calcutta, bringing Karna to live at the Hatibari, Shivarani tried to imagine the boy was her own, but could not. The thought, though, caused a dull ache to rise inside her heart.

The little boy sat stiffly upright and stared ahead as though wanting to pretend he was not here.

Cautiously Shivarani put her arm round Karna, hoping to comfort
him, but her embrace felt inept and the child’s body was stiff and unyielding.

During the three hour journey, for the whole of that time, Karna wished he had Laika at his side instead of the big black memsahib with the enormous teeth and the voice of a man. He tried to keep as big a physical distance as possible from Shivarani, but often when the car did a sudden turn, or stopped to avoid hitting a buffalo on the road, he would be flung against her body.

When she put her bony arm round him, Karna sat frozen with awkwardness and did not know how to respond. She reached out her hand, stroked his head and, trying not to notice his wince, asked, ‘Are you happy to be coming home at last, Karna? Your troubles are over now. You will never have to sleep on the pavement again, or go hungry. From now on you will be happy and cared for.’

‘When my mother was alive I slept on the pavement and often felt hungry but I was always happy and cared for when she was there,’ said Karna stiffly.

‘Yes. I am sorry,’ said Shivarani and did not know what to say next.

As they reached the Hatibari gates, Karna remembered being here with his mother and had to squeeze his mouth tight to stop a sob coming out. Today, though, the durwan did not try to drive him away but put down his paper, sprang to his feet and did a smart salaam.

As the car moved along the drive, Karna saw where the malis had chased him across the lawn. And when they came in sight of the bend in the river where he and Arjuna had raced each other and Arjuna had refused to believe that Karna was his brother, Karna felt a flush of triumph.

The moment the car stopped before the house, Karna flung open the door and scrambled out without waiting for Shivarani.

Arjuna was standing at the top of the marble steps, his expression scowling, his fists clenched.

Karna recognised him at once. Scowling too and clenching his fists
even tighter, Karna began to climb the steps. Trying to walk like a maharaja in a Bollywood film, pretending he had a crown on and that a cloak flowed from his shoulders, Karna marched up to where his furious half-brother waited. He felt regretful that he had only red rubber chuppals on his feet and that his New Market shirt was made of crimplene and not silk but after all, he told himself, grandeur comes from inside.

‘This is your new brother, Arjuna,’ said Shivarani hopefully.

‘He is not my brother, and I am not letting him in,’ roared Arjuna flinging out his arms, ready to block off the entrance.

Karna reached the top and standing in front of Arjuna so that their noses were almost touching, commanded, ‘Get out of my way.’

‘It it my house and I won’t have you here, you dirty beggar,’ yelled Arjuna.

‘How dare you be so rude to me,’ said Karna sternly. ‘I am your older brother and you must call me Dada.’

Arjuna reached out and hit him in the face.

Shivarani shouted, ‘Stop that.’

Karna caught Arjuna’s leg and jerked it, cracking him to the floor, then he stepped over Arjuna’s prostrate body and entered his home.

Shivarani tried to build some kind of relationship between Arjuna and Karna in the days that followed. ‘You must try to understand Karna,’ she begged Arjuna. ‘He is your half-brother and you and he should be liking each other.’

‘I hate him,’ said Arjuna. ‘I wish he had died in the river.’ Arjuna could not bear to look at Karna. The constant reminder of what his mother had done sent waves of nausea through him. And now he thought about it, he could see his mother’s face in Karna’s.

The two half-brothers were unable to encounter each other without fighting. The Kaurava boys were delighted and would shout, ‘Hit him, Arjuna.’ ‘Stick your fingers in his eyeballs.’ ‘Squeeze his neck until he strangles.’ ‘Let’s see some blood,’ as Karna and Arjuna punched each other.

Boys were trouble in every way, thought Shivarani. They were having dinner in the great dining hall. Arjuna was scowling at
Karna. Karna, as usual, was slurping and slopping his way through the food, eating like a pig from a trough. Red-eyed Parvathi was dashing breathlessly in and out, snorting like a gloomy pony through a blocked nose, bringing fresh chupatties blown up like beige balloons. Shivarani was reflecting on how much easier it was to deal with a thousand women than two young boys, when Karna asked, ‘Why does Parvathi have to do all the work?’

Shivarani frowned and said, ‘It’s her job.’

‘She is only a young girl,’ said Karna. ‘You should be sending her to school.’

Parvathi, fascinated, forgot her misery for a moment and stood, the dish pressed to her bosom, gasping with interest.

‘Thank you, Parvathi. That’s enough. You may go,’ said Shivarani sternly.

‘You keep saying all children should get education so why isn’t Parvathi getting it?’ persisted Karna.

‘You shut up, you beggar. What do you know?’ cried Arjuna.

Shivarani took a deep breath. ‘Parvathi is a servant and you do not know what you are talking about.’

‘And you keep saying that women must have equal rights with men,’ pursued Karna.

‘Like all boys should have equal rights with other boys,’ sneered Arjuna.

‘Shut up,’ said Karna.

The Kaurava boys began to giggle.

DR Uncle said, ‘Have some more chicken, Arjuna.’

‘She is lucky to have this job,’ said Shivarani. ‘Without me she would have starved on the streets.’ She paused, turned her attention to her mogali murghi for a while as though the roast spiced chicken might provide inspiration and tried to push out of her mind Basu’s request for a dowry. She added, ‘You are right in a lot of ways, Karna. But you will have to become older before you can understand everything. Life is just more complicated than you realise. Get out, Parvathi. What are you hanging around for?’ and she slapped her bare palm on the table.

‘Sorry, Memsahib,’ said Parvathi, putting on an air of humble dismay and as Shivarani turned away, made a banana finger at Karna, whose support humiliated her, and made it seem as though he, a pavement child, and she who was forced to wait on him, were from the same group.

Shivarani caught the insulting gesture. ‘Get out,’ she roared and grabbing a chupatti from the plate she flung it at the girl who scuttled, laughing, out of the room.

At first Karna would wake in the morning just before the sun rose, and for a moment forget where he was. Then, when he remembered, he would feel hemmed in with walls and oppressed by the ceiling, which was where his sky should be. He would get up from the great carved Hatibari bed and sneak downstairs with bare feet, wearing only his pyjamas and go out to explore these village mornings which were something new for him. Each time he stepped into the Hatibari gardens he became amazed all over again at the silence. On the Calcutta pavements you could not sleep for a moment after the sun was up unless you were ill or dead. Calcutta was always noisy, but early morning was the worst. That is the time beggars hurry to their posts, rickshaw wallahs crawl from under the wheels of their vehicles, clear their throats of phlegm and ring their bunch of metal bells, mothers throw jugs of water over their screaming children’s heads to ready them for school, crows hoarsely reclaim yesterday’s territory, lorries and cars choke and cough into action, barbers shout invitations to shave or cut hair, little boys loudly beg to be allowed to polish shoes or catch taxis, women shrilly hold out fruit, ballpoint pens or shoelaces to workers rushing to the office, shopkeepers open up their stalls with rowdy clangs and clatters and fortune-tellers warn the rushing businessmen that they need to know what the coming day held for them.

Karna stood in the Hatibari garden and breathed in the heavy scent of flowers and waited for the first rosy, pearly flush of the rising sun and first experimental sound of birdsong. He would become almost
breathless with pleasure as the rays began to pierce the branches of the orchard trees and turn the surface of the river scarlet. Once the gardener found him there, standing with his head a little on one side, listening to the sound of the river, smelling it. The old man laughed at Karna and told him, ‘If you are going to be a zamindar, little boy, you will have to learn to lie in bed till midday.’ He knew this was the boy who had jumped on the zinnias, but had been warned by DR Uncle not to talk about it. As the sun rose higher there would come the sounds of labourers’ voices as they prepared themselves for work in their fields or on the zamindar’s property. The milking cows in the village would summon their calves as they were driven to their grazing. Karna would go to where the carting bulls were being harnessed for mowing the Hatibari lawns and, stroking their sticky noses, watch as the men went over the bulls’ humps for pressure sores, before putting the yokes on. Once, not knowing about Karna’s background, the little boy who helped the gardeners came running up and began walking before Karna and whipping the dew drops off the grass with a long bamboo.

‘You needn’t do that,’ said Karna, to whom no such thing had ever happened before. The gardener’s boy was shocked. ‘But, Sir, it is my holy dharma to ensure that your shoes do not get wet.’

Karna’s good spirits would be a little spoilt when Arjuna cantered haughtily by on his pony, but when the rest of the family rose his happiness came to an end completely and he would be filled with an almost unbearable temptation to return to Calcutta though Shivarani had told him he could not do that yet for she was still sorting things out with the police. Karna felt uncomfortable when he was with the family – they always made him feel he was doing something wrong. At meals, though no one said anything, he would catch a sudden raising of eyebrows as though he had broken some unknown rule and the feeling made him want to splatter food, let the gravy dribble his wrists, let water spill as he drank from the glass. Even the way they all tried to talk to him kindly made him feel they were patronising, and making an effort to see good in him. Who cares about their princely ways? He came from real people who ate food to keep alive and walked
because they were going somewhere. These people, thought Karna, made everything into some kind of puja, as though they thought they were gods. Even the evening walk was called a constitutional and then DR Uncle and Gadhari Aunty, if she was well enough, would dress up in outdoor shoes and wrap scarves round their heads as though they were about to climb the Himalayas, then walk very, very slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, hers holding her sari hem away from the ground, across the lawn and back.