Исповедь рай-сахиба

Semari and Belari are both villages in the province of Oudh; there is no need to name the district. Hori lives in Belari, and Rai Sahib Amarpal Singh in Semari. The two villages are only five miles apart. In the last satyagraha campaign Rai Sahib had made a great name for himself: he had given up his seat on the Council and gone to jail. Ever since, the tenants on his estate had held him in great reverence. Not that the tenants on his estate were treated with any special consideration, or that fines and forced labour were any less harsh there; but all the blame for that fell on his agents. Nothing could tarnish Rai Sahib's good name. The poor man was a slave to the same system as everyone else. The system would go on working as it always had, and Rai Sahib's decency could make no difference to it. So although his income and his powers had not been reduced by a hair, his reputation had grown by maunds. He spoke to his tenants with a smile; was that a small thing? A lion's business is hunting. If, instead of roaring and snarling, he could speak sweetly, his prey would come to him at home, and he would never have to wander the jungle looking for it.

Though a nationalist, Rai Sahib kept up good relations with the officials. His presents and his baskets of fruit went to them exactly as before. He took an interest in learning, literature and music. He loved the theatre, was a good speaker, a good essayist and a fine shot. His wife had been dead ten years. He had not married again, and he passed his solitary life pleasantly enough with talk and laughter. When Hori reached the gate he found the preparations for the Dhanush Yagya, the festival of the breaking of the bow, held at Dussehra in the month of Jeth, in full swing. Here a stage was going up, there a pavilion, there a guest house, there a row of stalls. The sun had grown fierce, but Rai Sahib was at work himself. With his father's wealth he had also inherited a devotion to Ram, and by turning the Dhanush Yagya into a play he had made it a cultivated entertainment. On this occasion his friends and the officials were all invited, and for two or three days the whole district was full of bustle. Rai Sahib's family was very large; some hundred and fifty of its gentlemen sat down to eat together. There were several uncles, dozens of cousins, several brothers and scores of more distant kinsmen. One uncle was a great devotee of Radha and lived permanently in Brindaban. He had composed any number of devotional songs and from time to time had them printed and handed them out to his friends. Another uncle was deeply devoted to Ram and was translating the Ramayana into Persian. All of them had allowances fixed from the estate, and none of them needed to do any work.

Hori was standing outside wondering how to announce himself when Rai Sahib suddenly came that way and, as soon as he saw him, said, "So you've come, Hori. I was just going to send for you. Look here, this time you'll have to play King Janak's gardener. Understand? When Shri Janaki goes to the temple to worship, you'll stand there with a bouquet and present it to her. Don't get it wrong. And listen: make it clear to the tenants that every one of them must come with an offering. Come with me into the house; I want to talk to you."

He walked ahead towards the house and Hori followed. There, in the shade of a thick tree, Rai Sahib sat down on a chair, motioned Hori to sit on the ground, and said, "Did you understand what I said? The agent will do whatever he has to do, but a tenant listens to another tenant with his heart, and he doesn't listen to the agent that way. In these five or seven days I have to raise twenty thousand. How it's to be done, I can't see. You must be wondering why the master should sit down and pour out his troubles to a nobody like you. Whom else can I tell what is in my heart? I don't know why, but I trust you. This much I know: you won't laugh at me in your heart, and even if you do, I can bear your laughter. What I cannot bear is the laughter of my equals, because their laughter is full of envy, malice and spite. And why shouldn't they laugh? I laugh too at their troubles and misfortunes and decline, laugh heartily and clap my hands. Wealth and sympathy are enemies. We too give alms and do pious works, but do you know why? Only to put our equals in the shade. Our charity and our piety are pride, pure pride. Let one of us have a decree passed against him, or his property attached, or be locked up for arrears of revenue; let one lose a grown son, or have a widowed daughter-in-law run off, or his house catch fire; let one be made a fool of by a courtesan or be beaten up by his own tenants: all his brothers will laugh at him and rejoice as if they had been given all the wealth in the world. And when they meet him they will be so affectionate that you'd think they were ready to shed blood where we shed sweat! Why, even my own cousins on every side, who live in luxury on this very estate, writing verses and gambling, even they are jealous of me, and if I died today they'd light lamps of ghee. There is no one who takes my sorrow for sorrow. In their eyes I have no right to be unhappy at all. If I weep, I am making a mockery of grief! If I fall ill, I must be enjoying it. If I don't marry again and bring more quarrels into my house, that is my selfishness; and if I did marry, it would be self-indulgence. If I don't drink, I'm a miser; if I took to drink, it would be the blood of my tenants. If I don't keep women, I'm a dry stick; and if I did, there'd be no end to the talk. These people have laid any number of traps to sink me in pleasure, and they are still laying them. Their one wish is that I should go blind so that they can rob me, and my duty is to see everything and see nothing, to know everything and go on playing the donkey."

To keep the conversation going Rai Sahib put two rolls of betel in his mouth and looked hard into Hori's face, as if he wanted to read his inmost thoughts.

Hori plucked up his courage. "We used to think such things happened only among people like us, but it seems there's no shortage of them among the great either."

His mouth full of betel, Rai Sahib said, "You think we're great men? Our names are big, but there's little to see! If the poor are envious or hostile, it is for their own interest, for their stomachs. That kind of envy and enmity I think forgivable. If someone snatches the morsel from our mouth, it becomes our duty to put a finger down his throat and get it back. If we didn't, we would be gods. The envy and enmity of great men are purely for pleasure. We have become such great men that we find our whole enjoyment in cunning and meanness. We have risen to that godlike level where other people's tears make us laugh. Don't think that was easy to achieve. When a family is as big as ours, someone is always ill, and great men have great ailments. What sort of great man has a small complaint? Let one of us run an ordinary fever and he is given medicine for brain fever. Let a little pimple come up and it turns into a deadly abscess. Then the junior surgeon, the middling surgeon and the senior surgeon are all summoned by telegram. A man is sent to Delhi to fetch the Masih-ul-Mulk and to Calcutta for the royal physician. Meanwhile prayers to Durga are being read in the temple, the astrologer is studying the horoscope, and the gurus of charms and spells are busy at their work. There's a race on to snatch the Raja Sahib from the jaws of the god of death. Doctors and hakims lie in wait for the day his head aches and gold rains down on their houses. And this money is squeezed out of you and your brothers at the point of a spear. What amazes me is that the fire of your sighs doesn't burn us to ashes. But no, there's nothing amazing in it. Burning to ashes doesn't take long, and the pain lasts only a moment. We are being burned grain by grain, inch by inch. To escape this torment we take shelter with the police, the officials, the courts and the lawyers, and like a beautiful woman we become everybody's plaything. The world thinks we are very happy. We have estates, palaces, carriages, servants, debts, courtesans; what don't we have? But a man with no strength in his heart and no self-respect may be anything else, but he is not a human being. A man who can't sleep at night for fear of his enemies, whose sorrow everyone laughs at and nobody weeps over, whose topknot is pinned under other men's feet, who is so drunk on pleasure that he has completely forgotten himself, who licks the soles of officials and sucks the blood of those beneath him, I don't call such a man happy. He is the most wretched creature in the world. When a sahib comes to shoot or to tour the district, it is my duty to follow at his tail. Let a frown appear on his brow and our life goes out of us. What don't we do to please them? If I told you everything, you might not believe it. Presents and bribes are the least of it; we're ready to prostrate ourselves too. Living on unearned income has left us without hands or feet. We have no faith at all in our own manhood. Our only business is to wag our tails before the officers, to keep them in a good mood somehow, and with their help to lord it over our tenants. The flattery of toadies has made us so proud and so touchy that decency, humility and service have all left us. Sometimes I think that if the government took away our estates and made us learn to work for our living, it would be doing us a great kindness. And it is certain now that the government won't protect us either; we're no more use to it. The signs are clear that our class is soon to disappear. I am sitting ready to welcome that day. May God bring it soon! It will be the day of our deliverance. We are the victims of things as they are. It is they that are ruining us, and until these fetters of capital are struck from our feet, this curse will go on hovering over our heads. We shall never reach that level of humanity which it is the final purpose of life to attain."

Rai Sahib took out his betel box again and put several more rolls in his mouth. He was about to say something more when an orderly came up and said, "Sir! The forced labourers have refused to work. They say they won't work until they're given food. When we threatened them, they all downed tools and stood aside."

Rai Sahib's forehead creased, and his eyes blazed. "Come on, I'll sort those scoundrels out. They've never been given food before, so why this new demand today? They've always been paid an anna a day, and for that same wage they'll work, whether they like it or not."

Then he looked at Hori. "You go now, Hori, and get ready. Remember what I told you. I expect at least five hundred from your village."

Rai Sahib stormed off. Hori thought to himself: a moment ago he was talking such fine talk of righteousness, and all of a sudden he's boiling over.

The sun had climbed overhead. The trees had shrunk their shade under its heat. The sky was hazy with dust, and the ground ahead seemed to quiver.

Hori picked up his stick and set off home. Where was the money for the offering to come from? That worry rode on his head.