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CHAPTER II
(A STUDY OF ANAND'S THEMATIC CONCERNS IN HIS SHORT STORIES)
The short stories of Anand form an integral part of his novels thematically.
They display the same kind of themes and treatment as his navels do but with a
difference. Anand has said, "What I.left for the novel was the epic theme; the story
expressed the lyric awareness and a compassionate sense of humour." (P. 9) "Like
his novels, his short stories also deal with the theme of hunger, poverty, human
degradation and social injustice to which the underdogs of society are subject. Some
of his stories are concerned with children, animals, love and the particular plight of
women,"' says Fisher speaking of his themes.
In Anand's stories the two qualities
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(the lyric awareness and a
compassionate sense of humour) are supplemented by a deep awareness of both the
strength and the limitations of the traditional Indian way of life and a rich
understanding of the impact of modernity on it. As already pointed out, the locale
for all his stories is India, with the exception of three stories in The Tractor and The
Corn Goddess and Other Stories (Professor Cheeta, Little Flower and The Lady and
the Pedlar) in which the setting is England and as in his novels, Anand is acutely
conscious of these twin forces at work in modem Indian Life.
In exposing the limitations of tradition, Anand's mood is in turn
compassionate, indignant, ironic and satirical, as the subject and the situation
demand, In The Priest and The Pigeons, Pandit Parmanand, the temple priest, is so
much irritated by the cooing of mating pigeons inside the temple that he even tries to
shoot them, only hitting in the process "The mirror behind the god, fixed on the
wall, amid the paintings showing the love of Krishna and Radha" (p.35). The irony
in the worshipper of Krishna and Radha trying to kill love-birds reaches a welldeveloped crescendo as the mirror breaks.
The priest in the story, Mahadev and Pawati fleeces a Tamil couple from
Ceylon who have come all the way to offer oblations at the holy city of Prayag, and
the fleecing is so complete that even the victim's wallet is stolen.
In At What Price, My Brothers, Sardar Tara Singh a crook masquerading as
a sage who has renounced the world, promises his (non-existent) widowed daughter
in marriage to a widower, and induces the latter to part with 500 rupees as the price
of a bride, whose former husband never died, as she herself never lived.
The Maharaja and The Tortoise, is an uproariously h
y story ridiculing
blind faith. His highness Maharajadhiraj Sir Ganga Singh Bahadw, Knight
Commander of the Star of India (2ndClass) etc., spends a hundred and eighty lakhs
to bring holy Ganga water by means of a pipe-line to his palace situated a hundred
and fifty miles away; and his subjects willingly work "day and night, sweating and
straining, with the thousand names of god on their thirsty lips and the roots of wild
plants in their bellies, to complete the work". p.37) When the Maharaja brings to
offer oblations to the Sun god on the edge of the holy tank, a tortoise bits off his big
toe. This is interpreted as a highly auspicious omen, since the tortoise is the second
avatar of Lord Vishnu, and thus, the god is now supposed to have become incarnate
in the Maharaja! In Mother, one finds how an old, skinny cow is worshipped but not
fed properly. When the woman of the house finds it nibbling away at the thatch of
the roof, she belabours the poor creature, which collapses and dies. The woman is
horrified at the "most grievous sin" she has committed, but her husband is relieved
that now at least he can "give her hide to the tanneryy.
Two stories-DarkNight and the Parrot in the Cage are pathetic narratives of
two women who become innocent victims of religious bigotry. The first shows a
young wife waiting, with a meal ready and the child put to bed, for her husband who
is caught up in a communal riot and whose dead body is brought home by his
friends; the second presents Rukmani, an old woman who has lost all her
possessions in the holocaust of the partition of India and whose sole companion
during the migration from Lahore to Amritsar is a pet parrot.
No less strong than the hold of institutionalized on the Indian mind is that of
age old political and social practices and attitudes which, having lost all their
rationale in the modern world, now prove a source of both tragedy and comedy to an
observer. A Kashmir Idyll and A Pair ofMustachios provide two glimpses of feudal
society, There is savage irony in the title of the first story. What starts as a pleasure
trip ends as a tragedy of feudal exploitation and retribution. Nawab Zaffarullah,
well-entrenched in his feudal rights, compels a young tenant to row hi pleasureboat, ignoring the poor man's pitiful plea that he is footsore and weary after a
twenty-mile march in the mountains to attend to the funeral of his mother, who is
just dead. The young man protests for a second, but is himself shocked at having
annoyed his lord and master by so gross an act of disobedience.
The story ends on a macabre note, as the Nawab, driven to hysterical glea at
this conclusive demonstration of his feudal power, is choked to death by his fit of
laughter.
A Pair of Mustachios is a story in a lighter vein. It represents Khan Azam
Khan, who claims descent from an ancient Afghan family, the heads of which were
noble-men and councilors in the court of the Great Moghuls. He has lost most of his
possessions but still retains all his feudal stance, of which his upturned "tiger
mustache" is a concrete symbol. When he finds the village shopkeeper Ramanand
turning the tip of his moustaches upward until they resemble the aristocratic "tiger
mustache", he is so profoundly disturbed that he enters into a strange deal with the
low-born shopkeeper, according to which, the Khan will transfer all his household
goods and chattels to the banya on condition thatbth the tips of the moustaches of
the upstart come down permanently and are kept glued in the "goat style"
appropriate to his station in life. For the feudal "down start", the world indeed is
well lost for a bunch of hair on the upper lip of an upstart.
Feudalism is a source of some farcical humour in the story The Signature.
The India and Commonwealth Bank specially sends its Assistant Manager,
C. Subramaniam to Nawab Luqman Ali Bahadur, a nobleman and dignitary of
Aliabad state and a Director of the Bank, to get his signature on some important
documents. When Subramaniam arrives, a piece of business which would have
normally taken less than five minutes is dragged on over days together, since feudal
courtesy demands that a guest be properly and elaborately entertained before any
business is transacted. It is diEcult to decide which is the more comic of the twoSubramaniam's plight in this feudal world in which he finds himself "a stranger and
afraid", or the Nawab's refusal to recognize the inconvenience caused to others by
his obstinate clinging to his traditional feudal ways.
The caste system is the target of attack in the stories, A Cock and Bull Story,
The Silver Bangles and Torrents of Wrath.
In The Silver Bangles, Sajani, an untouchable sweeper girl who wears silver
bangles presented to her on the occasion of her betrothal by her mother, is accused
of having stolen them by the lady of the house. As the ending of the story makes
clear, the high caste lady of the house, who is sexually frigid, is actually jealous of
the attraction her husband feels towards the young sweeper girl, and is only s e e k i i
refuge in her caste-superiority to hide her inferiority vis-A-vis young Sajani.
Torrents of Wrath shows Sukhi, a half crazy old cobbler woman, threatening to
pollute by her touch the shop of a merchant who refuses to give her few grains for
her pets and paying for her temerity the ultimate penalty of death.
The position of woman in traditional Hindu society is a recurring theme in
\
Anand's fiction, and quite a few of his short stories are devoted to it bringing out
both the tears and the laughter latent in the subject. Among these Lajwanti is
perhaps the most memorable. Here, a motherless young rustic girl whose husband is
away at college, finds herself a target of the attentions of her lascivious, pockmarked
brother-in-law; discovers to her horror that her mother-in-law connives at his doings;
runs away to her father's house but is sent back; and, in the end, tries unsuccessfully
to drown herself in a well. As she is fished out, her plaintive cry is:
'There is no way for me.. . I am ... condemned to live' (Lajwanti, p. 100).
There are other innocents too, some condemned to die and some victims of
callousness, cruelty and custom. In The Hiccup, young Arati, who is allergic to fried
parathas, is compelled by her unfeeling mother-in-law to her death. The real
tragedy, according to the mother-in-law is not the death of the young bride, but the
loss of family prestige:
'Hai! The cursed one, she had to bring disgrace to our household. What will
people say ...that she died of a hiccup!' (Lajwanti, p. 30).
The story Naina presents with deep compassion the psychological torture
undergone by a young wife as she comes to realize her true position in the house as
merely a lust-satisfying machine for her over-sexed husband, who insists on having
his full conjugal rights at the very moment when she is shocked by the death, in an
accident, of a workman outside.
In The Tamarind Tree, a young wife who is an expectant mother cannot
satisfy her longing to eat tamarind h i t , but a greater disappointment to her is the
realization that' the fear of the elders and the weight of convention have made it
impossible for her to communicate satisfactorily with her husband. Sukeshi in the
story, A Village Wedding, finds her marriage to Arjun suddenly broken, even as the
\,
ceremony has begun, because her would be father-in-law insists upon a dowry, to
which her father has a conscientious objection. The upshot of it all is that she is
forced to marry a youth of an inferior caste (he is "of a darker he than most boys in
the village" too) on the spot, in order that family prestige is kept up. Her own
feelings in the matter are obviously not of the slightest importance.
In Lottery, Shankar, the washeman, mortgages his wife Shobha to
Kanahiya, the money-lender, for ten rupees, with which the husband is to buy a
lottery ticket. All her protests are of no avail. Fortunately for her, however, the
lottery ticket wins a prize and the money-lender loses both his money and the
mortgaged woman, who now runs away to join her husband.
The lighter side of the picture as revealed here is also seen in Two Lady
Rams. Here Lalla Jhinda Ram,a contractor receives a knighthood, the glory and the
joy of which are, however, clouded over by the fact that the Lalla has two wives (the
fvst is fifty years old and the second is exactly half her age), and each of them
insists on being designated Lady Ram. He cuts the Gordian knot by taking both of
them with him to the investiture ceremony, where the appearance of the Two L a 4
Rams creates a comic situation.
A Rumour sets forth the plight of Dhandu, a village carpenter who has lost
his "home and implements through the working of fate". He comes to a city, drawn
by a rumour of possible employment in a mill which is, at the moment, actually
convulsed with a workers' strike. Too simple to understand the implications of this,
he is puzzled and frustrated, and is, in the end, run over by a speeding lorry.
In The Cobbler and The Machine, Saudagar, an old rustic cobbler who has
passion for the machine, incurs a heavy debt in importing a shoe-stitching machine
from abroad, though he is half afraid that god "would curse my fmgers and those of
my pupils, and make them incapable of sewing at all, it I began to use this
machineV.(P.35) When the machine arrives, instead of saving his time and energy,
as he had hoped it would, it only brings in retribution: Worn out by the fatigue of
producing many more shoes than he had ever sewn to pay off his debt, drained of his
life-blood by the sweat that was always pouring off his body, he fell stone-&ad one
evening (The Barber's Trade and Other Stories, p.94).
There is almost uproarious comedy in The Man Whose Name did not Appear
in the Census, but the fun is perhaps tinged, at least for the sensitive reader, with a
touch of sadness at the appalling ignorance displayed by the colonical Indian rustic,
faced with a modem phenomenon.
The stories, The Barber's Trade Union and The Man Who Loved Monkeys
More Than Human Beings illustrate two contrasting reactions to modernity.
Chandu, the enterprising, rustic barber boy who is bitten by the bug of modernity
dares wear the clothes of a doctor and is threatened with dire consequences for this
act of impudence by the village elders. In the end, it is Chandu who wins, when he
goes on a strike, organizes a barber's trade union and is successfid in breaking the
age-old custom of the barber's dancing attendance on the village elders. Unlike
Chandu's, the modernism of Raja Rajeshwar Rao, the protagonist in the second
story, is hardly constructive. In fact, this scion of an ancient noble family manages
to combine the worst in both (what he understands of) tradition and (what he
considers to be) modernity. According to tradition, he is a direct descendent of the
monkey god Hanuman, while his scientific education generates in him an
enthusiasm for Darwinism; and this combines in his mind with Hinduism in a very
peculiar manner.
If farce is the key-note of The Chronicle of Raja Rajeshwar Rao; irony
dominates the portrait of Shrimati Sarojini Sharrna, in Lady Bountiful. An
emancipated modem woman, Mrs. Sharma is an active social worker; but she seems
to be more active in securing self-publicity and self-advancement than in really
doing social good.
Another aspect of the modernity theme is the relationship between the
colonial Indian and the white man, which is seen earlier, actually a recurrent motif in
all Anand's work. In the short stories, this relationship is portrayed both against the
background of England and India. In the three stories set in England (Professor
Cheeta, Little Flower and The Lady and the Pedlar) Anand seems to suggest the
unsurmountable difficulty of establishing perfect communication between the two
races. Professor Cheeta, who has been long in the west and has an English wife
(with whom, however, he has never got on) is still afraid that all the Englishmen in
the British Museum are going to lynch him, which creates a scene there. When old
Arjun Singh tries to befriend little Jeannie, whom he calls his little Flower, he is
suspected of being a child-napper and a thief. Topsy, the British firm and Shiv
Singh the pedlar find themselves alone in a railway compartment and unconsciously
enact a drama of prejudice and fear.
The drama becomes almost melodrama when the scene shifts to India, where
both the white man's burden and the Indian's inferiority complex take on far larger
proportions. In The Gold Watch Srijut Sudatshan Shanna, a clerk working in a
British firm in India receives a gold watch from his boss, as a gift on his retirement.
He fiunbles, drops the watch and breaks it, while receiving it at the hands of Mr.
Acton Babu Bulaki Ram in the story by the same name has a similar experience with
his white Sahib. He is, in fact, so scared of the imcomprehensibility of the ways of
his master that he keeps his resignation in the drawer, ready to deliver.
A different facet of this theme is revealed in stories like The Terrorist, The
Informer, The Interview and On Z'he Border. All these narratives portray the Indian
struggle for freedom from the British rule.
The Elixir of Life perhaps overstates its case, but it is a highly diverting
account of how huge sums of money are sanctioned and reportedly spent on the
construction of water tank in a village, it being discovered in the end that the whole
amount has actually gone into the pockets of the engineers which are apparently far
deeper than any tank. The engineer protagonist in the man, who was too honest for
his job, is the exact opposite of this type. An incorruptible army man, he discovers
that he cannot survive in a job which accepts corruption as a basic principle of
administration. In The Agronomist, the scene shifts from India to Pakistan, but
bureaucracy being the same whether on this side of the Indus or that, Mir Muhmmad
Mustapha, who returns from England with a specialization in botany, finds himself
appointed as agronomist to the ministry of agriculture in Pakistan --- a job about
which his ignorance is as colossal as that of his superiors.
Birth is one of his most memorable stories. Parvati, a poor peasant woman
in an advanced state of pregnancy, is compelled to work at breaking stones, owing to
the straitened circumstances of the family. The birth-pangs start, as she is
proceeding to her place of work alone. In this hour of trial, she refuses to panic.
Her native rustic ruggedness is reinforced by an inner strength derived from her
simple peasant faith. As she lies writing on the ground, she sees a vision of Goddess
Kali in the clouds above. This gives her courage and when thethild arrives, she is
even able to manage the necessary mid-wifery, and at the end one finds her putting
the baby in her basket and going to break stones again. Like Gauri in Old Woman
and the Cow, Parvati is sustained by her traditional faith in her hour of need.
When traditional faith is harnessed to constructive modernistic purposes, the
result is a happy blending of the old and the new and a revitalizaing of tradition
itself. The Power of Darkness illustrates this effectively. A variation on theme is
handled with a deft touch of comedy in The Tractor and the Corn Goddess. The
arrival of a tractor brought by a progressive minded young landlord creates panic in
a village. The giant machine is accused of having desecrated mother Earth, and of
violating the corn Goddess. The clever landlord has the tractor dismantled in the
presence of the villagers, who are ultimately convinced that the thing is after all only
so much of "iron and steel, so tempered as to plough the land quickly". The
peasant's down-to-earth commonsense ultimately triumphs over superstition.
Another theme which recurs in many of the short stories of Anand is that of
the exploitation of the poor and the helpless, the down-trodden and the oppressed
1
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a theme with which so much of Anand's longer fiction is pre-occupied. That aspect
of the theme where the agents of exploitation are either traditional forces like
casteism, communalism, feudalism, the suppression of woman etc., or modern
phenomena like urbanization and industrialization has already been illustrated.
Other stories reveal many different facets of this larger theme. Things have a way of
working out, which describes the plight of two street urchins in Bombay trying to
seek a night's shelter on some door-step, recalls Anand's larger chronicles of
coolies.
A Confession, The Price of Bananas, and A Promoter of Quarrels show
coolie, a fruit vendor and a pair of cowherd women respectively, underpaid and
cheated by the "haves". In Boots, the young widow of a dead soldier is not allowed
even to keep his boots as a momento, when the house is auctioned. The plantain tree
presents an old peasant.. .Sukha...who is drowned, during a flood, when, he tries to
swim to his landlord's house with a bunch of bananas in his mouth. There is pity for
the loss of the bananas, while the dead Sukha is only worth a curse! Duty is an
I
I
interesting psychological study, showing how the oppressed can become an
oppressor with a little touch of power. Mangal Singh, the policeman, is caned by his
superior for negligence of duty; he has it out on a donkey-driver, who in turn, is
himself a tyrant to his asses. Another form of tyranny is parental cruelty to children.
It makes little Mohan in the story of an Anna prefer jumping into the river to facing
his angry, miserly father from whose pocket the boy has stolen one Ana; and in
Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts, parental high-handedness coupled with
other factors make life a hell for young Nur.
One more equally characteristic group of short stories comprises stories with
a strong 'lyric awareness'. Here again, there is ample variety. The Lost Child,
included under three prose poems in The Barber's Trade Union and other stories is
actually a delightful fable in which the experience of a child symbolizes the eternal
verities of the human condition.
Apart from the fables, other stories imbued with a distinct poetic spirit
include pictures of the child-mind, like The Eternal Why, The Conqueror, and The
Road. The first is an evocative picture of the boundless curiosity of a precocious
child asking endless number of questions such as, "where was the river born,
father?" Both the other stories recall the childhood exploits of young Krishnan in
Seven Summers,
There is also a strong poetic vein in romantic stories of youthful love like A
True Story, where a lover meets a playful challenge by his girl by jumping to his
death, inspiring her to emulate him; and "A Village Idyll presents the youthhl
lovers, Govind and ~ a u r i . "Lullaby,
~
sh~winga rare delicacy of touch, is a fine
evocation of a young mother's state of mind as she sits rocking her dying child in
her lap and remembering her lover, while she feeds the machine with handfuls of
jute, in a factory.
In The Liar there is unalloyed laughter. The Liar is a highly diverting
account of Labhu, an old village Shikari whose tell tales of shikar are garnished with
monsters, magicians and damsels. Old Bapu is a story of an aged outcaste. Bapu, a
weakling with a shriveled leg has been deprived of his land by his uncle; he comes
to a city in search of a livelihood, but since he looks as old as seventy (while he is
only fifty), he cannot find work and is condemned to starve. The storyline may
strike a sympathetic chord in many hearts. The blatant yet devious villainy of a
brother to eliminate the other for property and his audacity in trying to make the
doctor an accomplice is eccentric, to say the least. That the doctors can be angels in
disguise is a heartening thought.
Anjali hmta is perhaps the most sensuous of these stories. The passion,
physical and philosophical, aroused in Sunderlal (who is at that 'romantic' stage in
his life) on seeing the Mohini Attam dancer is given erotic expression. Lacking
courage as he does, to, question the ghastly prospect of an arranged marriage, he
may well earn the sympathy as well as the contempt of the readers. The insensitivity
of the mother bent on arranging his marriage and disarranging his life and the
awkward stirrings of desire in the son portray the strange hold mothers have on
meek sons,
Anand takes recourse to suspense too for effect. Perhaps the best example of
his use of it is to be found in The Prodigal Son. ..the illiterate old Gobindi moves
about in search of some one who can read to her the good news in the two letters she
has received, apparently from her son in the army. The first one is read by Ganesh
Das, the father of Trilok Chand, her son's friend, and indeed contains happy news
that her son has risen to the rank of a Havildar, but then the son has something
unpalatable to say about Ganesh Das at which he throws the letter away at her, and
she meets Trilok Chand himself and eagerly asks him to read the second letter to her
from her son who, she says, is an angel, and one look at the letter and he gives her
the news.
'Whether he was an angel or not, he has become an angel now'.
The Dreamer presents the story of a mysterious, but impressive boy at Bodh
Gaya. The boy says his m e is Devaki Nandan Pandey. He says without any sense
of shame or guilt or pride that he is an illegitimate child and a Harijan. He wishes to
earn his living but abhors favours or begging. His early ambition was to become a
motor engineer but wishes to belong to Bodh Muth when he grows up. He dreams
of becoming Gautam and wander l i e him. But the rival boys in Bodh Gaya say that
his name is Kania, he is a liar and has no mother or father and is a dreamer. This is a
symbolic story.
The Sinful LLife and Death of Tinbri is a poignant tale of a condemned boy
by name T i o n son of Ekkori. He is brutally beaten to death when he is caught
stealing the carrots in the Ashram garden to suppress his hunger, He is also accused
of other crimes and when he points out the crimes of accusers he is violently killed
for showing "audacity".
pension for.^ Prostitute is an allegory, an attack on the present day political
parties, working of our parliament and government schemes. This story brilliantly
exposes the personal interests of the politicians in their public schemes... ("public
policy is a private profit". .. T.S. Eliot).
Between Tears and Laughter is all about tears and not laughter. It narrates a
touching tale of a forsaken wife who starves, begs to feed her little children at a
rehabilitation camp in a drought hit village. Cruelties of her mother-in-law make
life hell for Savitri.. .the suffering woman.
Finally, there are stories which elude the procrustean bed of critical
classification "Immortality, the uproariously funny chronical of Sir Charnan Lal's
quest for immortality, which results in his insisting on washing every day his own
statue put up in a public place and on putting a pair of spectacles on it, as soon as he
himself starts wearing glasses --- though the spectacles get stolen as fast as they are
replaced; reflections on the golden bed, a bizarre account of a millionaire, who has
all his money put in a bed made of gold and precious stones; Death of Lady, a
psychological study of a miserly lady on her death-bed; The Thief,a fine probe into
the mind of a man who feels irresistibly attracted towards a dirty beggar woman: the
unusual story of a hangman's strike (The Hangman's Strike) and many
other^."^
As a short story writer, Anand's forte is his versatility and range. His more
than three score stories exhibit an astonishing variety of theme and setting, mood
and tone, character and personality. He knows his Indian city and understands the
villages as well. He sketches the village belle and other rustic characters with as
much sureness' of touch as he can depict to perfection a society lady and other urban
types. He is at home both with the aristocrat and the beggar. He dips in his pen in a
multitude of colours, and can gives in turn, pathos and tragedy, satire and irony,
farce and pure fun, lyricism and description, social criticism and the eternal verities.
He handles with equal ease reality and fmtasy, romance and naturalism. He can
both tell a racy tale and probe into human psychology. There are few things in the
field of the short story which Anand cannot do; but his h e s t stories are those in
which his reading of life and character is imbued with depth and complexity, with
sincerity and conviction, in depicting individuals in a traditional society.
The story The Barber S Trade Union is dedicated to John Lehmann Which is
the tale of a dynamic barber boy and is a satisfying diversion from the serious novels
that preceded it, namely Coolie, Untouchable and The Lalu Trilogy. The
exploitation of the poor, the downtrodden and oppressed - a recurring theme in
Anand's major fiction - is handled here with a deft touch of comedy. As a
proletarian humanist, Anand has full faith in the dignity and potentiality of a man.
In this story, he retrieves, this "dignity" denied to the protagonist by the high-caste
Hindus. The problem of caste distinctions is not merely lime-lighted, but a happy
solution is indicated at the end. Anand's aim here, as Johnson and Dickens say, is
not merely to instruct but to 'mix profit with pleasure.'
The events in the story are an outgrowth of its central character named
Chandu. He is introduced by the story writer, as if in a mock heroic fashion, lending
him heroic heights: "Among the makers of modern India, Chandu, the barber boy of
our village, has a place which will be denied him unless I press for the recognition of
his contribution to history." b.7).This humorous description in the opening lines
promises the readers an interesting narrative.
Chandu is both an individual and a type. Unconsciously though, he embarks
on an exploit which ultimately brings about his emancipation. Chandu, it is told, is
natively egotistical like most great men of India, but unlike them he nourishes no
exaggerated opinion of himself. Here, Anand's good-humoured dig at the "selfprofessed" leaders of the nation is more than obvious.
Chandu's portraiture as the underprivileged lad of the village is highly
realistic. While at school he is weak in Mathematics because, at the instance of his
father, he has to seek apprenticeship to the hereditary profession of the barber's
caste, He is sent out hair-cutting in the village and this keeps the young boy too
occupied to devote time to his studies. Like Anand's other heroes, he is a victim of
society. The narrator's mother constantly dissuades him h m playing with C M u
saying that he is a low-caste barber's son and that he (the nmtor) ought to keep up
the status of his caste and class. After his father's death, Chandu has but to quit
studies. At this tender age, he embraces his profession wholeheartedly and, as a
routine, makes the rounds of the high-caste notables every morning for shaving and
hair-cutting.
All goes well until, one day, Chandu decides impishly to dress up like the
city doctor Kalan Khan-in a white turban, a white rubber coat, with a leather bag in
hand. The doctor's dress represents a happy change h m the ossified order and the
stagnant condition of life to which Chandu was bom. His fascination for medical
profession is, after all, justifiable for historical reasons. Is the ancient time barber
not the forerunner of modem surgery! Chandu is conscious of this heritage for, as
he says, he ''learnt how to treat pimples, boils and cuts on people's bodies h m my
father, who learnt them from his father before him."(P.65)
Chandu's appearance in the new garb causes unprecedented disorders in the
village. The stratified society that believes in hierarchy pooh-poohs him. The burly
landlord threatens to have him flogged if he does not revert to wearing clothes are
filling "his low status" as a barber: "The son of a pig!
...Get out! Get out! ... You
will defile my religions". Chandu is made aware of the fact that being what he is, his
cann't
wear these clothes. The village Sahukar goes a step ahead and hurls the
vilest abuses on him: "you little swine, you go disguising yourself as a clown when
you ought to be bearing your responsibilities &d looking after your mother." (p.8).
Pandit Paramanand, the keeper of the village shrine is no less vehement in his outburst: "he is a low-caste devil! He is a rogue!". This is the last straw on the camel's
back and leaves Chandu crestfallen. The events move on recklessly gathering
momentum to lead the hero on to a final confrontation with reality. The tone,
depressingly sober during the earlier scene, undergoes a marked change in the
succeeding part of the story, giving sudden relief to the reader.
Chandu, insulted and humiliated by the village superiors, takes to a path of
action. He revolts against his lot to find a way out of his predicament. Though he
belongs to lower stratum of society, Chandu is not dull-wilted. With the intent of
leaching the orthodox "idiots a lesson, he abandons his practice in the village.
Instead he frequents the town to earn his livelihood. The ingenious scheme works
out successfully. The lack of barber's services unleashes a spate of problems. The
landlord's face is dirtied by the white scum of his unshaved b e d , the Sahukar looks
l i e a leper with the brown tinge of tobacco on his walrus moistache. The village
elders become ludicrous figures and the town urchins drive malicious pleasure,
shouting loose remarks at them. The jokes about the unkempt beards of the elders of
the village become current in every home.
"While Chandu flourishes in the town, the village elders smart under the new
situation. They fail to get a barber from the neighbouring village of Verka even on a
double
Chandu summons his cousin and other barbers within a range of
seven miles from his village to a special congregation of his craR and convinces
them to be shaved rather than their dancing attendance upon these so-called
landlords. Seeing reason in his argument, the fellow-barbers organize themselves
and launch "Rajkot District Barber's Hairdressing and Shaving Saloon, thus
heralding the birth of a new era,"4
The story The,Barber's Trade Union is in the frrst person narration. As
Marlene Fisher says, "The first person narrator of The Barber's Trade Union is
young, and he tells a triumphant tale, that of the success of his hero, Chandu, the
barber boy."5 Humour is indeed the redeeming feature in Anand's short-stories.
There are several comic situations in this story. "There are peals of laughter from
the shop of the Sahukar when Chandu falls down with a thud, along with the
bicycle!"
Again, Chandu points the landlord with his long-jawed face dirtied by the
white scum of his unshaved beard to the narrator. The narrator sees the landlord,
laughs hilariously and compares him to a sick lion.
Chandu is dressed up in the clothes of a doctor, comes to the narrator and
shows how grand he looks in his new rig-out. The narrator admires him
marvelously. Chandu expects the same thing from the villagers. It is the irony that
Chandu is abused by the villagers instead of being appreciated.
The images of the caste mark which the narrator's mother puts on his
forehead every moming and of the formalized pattern of the uchkii, the tight cotton
trousers, the gold-worked shoes and the silk turban in which the n m t o r is dressed
symbolizes the status of the high-caste in those days. Chandu encourages the
narrator to run fast the shop indicating 'Beavers, beavers!', where the landlord,
Sahukar and other villagemen are assembled. Here, the beavers are used to
symbolize the village elders with their unkempt beards.
In this story The Barber's Trade Union, Anand exposes the caste distinctions
in the traditional Hindu-Society. The ill-treating of the low-caste people in the
hands of the high-caste people is clearly shown in the way which Chandu is abused
by the high-caste notables of the village. In the writing of the story, Anand has both
a literary and moral aim. In the portrayal of Chandu, he draws attention to the social
problems which in the thirties and forties were accentuated by the glaring contrast
between the material comforts of the rich and the destitution of thousands of poor
people. AS a skilled story-teller, Anand gives a clarion call to the nation to rouse
from the slumber of dead habits and age-old traditions. A strain for social awareness
is indeed central to the story. But the rendering of it by Anand casts such a spell on
the reader that he is least conscious of it. R. K. Dhawan says, "The highly absorbing
narrative constantly arouses the reader's curiosity and imagination and the reading
of it proves to be an illuminating experience for him."' The story cleverly reveals
the subtle change that is coming about in the status of the low-caste ones,
Anand's humanism makes him use his art for the service of humanity. Caste
and national barriers have no significance for him, and he regards all mankind as
one. If there is any division, it is that of the rich and the poor, of the haves and the
have-nots, and his purpose is to focus attention on the plight of the have-nots, arouse
sympathy for them, and thus pave the way of their betterment.
The story The Cobbler and The Machine is dedicated to Aruthur and Ara
Calder Marshall. The story opens with these lines, "Apart from the innocence of old
age and youth, Saudagar, the cobbler of my village, and I shared in common a
passion for the ma~hine."~Saudagar is interested in only one machine, the small
sewing machine which the village tailor wields very ostentatiously, The narrator
likes all kinds of machines which he sees in the town when he goes to school every
morning, He has passion for the big railway engine, the phonograph, the motor car,
the push-bike, the machines in the power house, cotton mills etc.
During one of the young boy's visits to the cobbler's hut, he tells his friend
about a wonderful machine he had seen in town that could stitch together whole
boots. 'Is there a machine lie that, son?' says Saudagar incredulously. Later, when
the child finds picture of the machine for uncle Saudagar, the old man's fancy is
caught, and though an outcaste and poor, he eventually manages to obtain one.
Saudagu, the cobbler gets the sewing machine witb the help of Lalla Sain Das, the
notary and cotton dealer, who has gone to vilayat on business. Since, the cobbler is
very poor he buys the machine at his own expense and allows the cobbler to use it
and pay for it, exactly as if it were a loan with a small interest attached to it. When
the machine comes he celebrates the occasion auspiciously by distributing
sugarplums among this brotherhood.
Best of all, as far as the child (the narrator) is concerned, his fiiend (the
cobbler) had said to him, "I will make you a pair of Angrezi boots, since it was
really you who told me about it @. 76). The uncontained joy of the youth is easily
understandable. Not only would that pair of boots confer upon him a unique status
among his, peers, but the old man's recognition of his role in the whole project gives
the child almost adult status in his own eyes.
However, the end has already begun. To pay for the machine, once thought
of as a toy by the narrator, the cobbler must spend all his waking hours at work with
never enough time to spare to complete the promised boots. The boy's intuition that
something is wrong comes with his feeling "constrained not to trouble [the cobbler]
with [his] demands".
"And the mixture of resentment and pity I felt for the old man become
transformed into feelings of hate for the machine, for, as it stood hard, hard and
unbending, it seemed to have become a barrier between Saudagar and me and the
thing which had emphasized his self-interest so that he never seemed to put a stitch
on anyone's shoes without insisting on being paid for it" (p. 79).
Finally, the old man dies from over-work, and with that death the child
passes from the state of innocence into that of experience.... I felt the pain of a silent
guilt, as I knew that I had to some extent been the cause of his death. If only I had
known then that it was not enough for Saudagar ... to love the machine and work if
but to own it ...(p. 80).
Something from another world had taken its toll on uncle Saudagar,
childhood is lost, and the adult, looking back at that moment, recognizes it for what
it was ... an initiation into knowledge and pain.
The story The Cobbler and The Machine deals with the impact of modernism
on traditional Indian life. Saudagar, an old rustic cobbler who has a passion for the
machine, incurs a heavy debt in importing a shoe-stitching machine fiam abroad,
though he is half afrslid that God %odd curse my fingers and those of my pupils,
and make them incapable of sewing at all, if I began to use, this machine".(P.80)
"When the machine arrives, instead of saving his time and energy, as he had hoped it
would, it only brings in ret~ibution."~
Worn out by the fatigue of producing &any more shoes than he had ever
sewn to pay off his debt, drained of his life-blood by the sweat that was always
pouring off his body, he fell stone-dead one [email protected]).
This story The Cobbler and The Machine is in first person narration. Anand
employs this technique with skill. His use of the first person in the story is similar to
the use he was to make of it in the revised confessional novels, Seven Summers,
Morning Face, and Confession of Lover that is, there are really two narrators
combined in the single first person character of the young boy, the "I". One is the
adult man who is recalling an experience from his childhood and who interprets the
meaning and significance of that experience in a way that no child could. The other
is the adult's imaginatively recreated young self, the boy who lives through and tells
the tale. Anand handles this complex technique well. As M. K. Naik says, "The tone
of the story is initially smiling but finally poignant."'0
The story The Cobbler and The Machine is in a simple language. Anand
employs Hindustani words such as "Sahib", "Vilayat", "Jungly", etc., Anand uses
proverbs too in this story. As the cobbler is very poor to buy a leather sewingmachine he makes use of this proverb in the words of Saudagar "Though I don't
know what use it is to show a man the likeness of a bunch of grapes when he will
never be able to eat the fruit." (p073).
Secondly Anand makes use of a proverb in the words of his mother when the
cobbler hasn't yet completed the work of mending a good pair of English shoes
which he promises to the'narrator, his mother quotes the proverb: "Never trust a
washeman's promise nor a goldsmith nor a cobbler's." (p.79).
The characters in the story go into imagination in one or two instances. The
narrator imagines if the leather sewing-machine comes to his village, the atmosphere
of his village will become splendid, gorgeous wonder-house, in which great big iron
frames, with a thousand screws and knobs assembled through the ingenuity of a
man.0.73).
The pathos in the story is that Sadagar dies a slow miserable death trying to
repy the loan he has made to b y i t Here is the pictun of the waning Saudagar:
"And as he sat tied to the chariot wheels of doom, he also began to be more and
more reticent as if he were turning in upon himself to drink his own blood in the
silent places of his heart, and the illumination of his natural manner disappeared
behind a pale, shadowy face that was always dirty and grimy with a layer of scum of
the sweat-covered beard." (p.79).
Anand employs only one image in this story The Cobbler and The Machine.
That is the leather sewing-machine which stands an example for industrialization of
the world. In the view of the narrator the use of the machine symbolizes the
superiority of modernity over the old ways of the countryside. In this story also
Anand exposes the caste distinction in the traditional Hindu-Society. The organized
Hindu religion has the concept of untouchability deep-rooted in its caste system.
Manu, a codifier of the laws of organized Hindu religion has said that the
untouchables should live outside the village. As an outcaste Saudagar, the cobbler
lives in a dark straw hut outside the narrator's village.
Anand exposes superstitious beliefs of the age-old people in the traditional
society. Saudagar superstitiously believes that if he begins to use the machine, god
will curse his fingers and those of his pupils and makes them incapable of sewing at
all. After Saudagar's death, the villagers believe that he is killed by the devil
disguised in the image of the sewing-machine. Again, this story deals with the
impact of mechanization which makes to suffer in the lives of the poor people.
However, Anand is not against the industrialization of the world. It is the sewingmachine which causes the ultimate death of Saudagar, the cobbler that makes the
story a tragedy.
His love of the cobbler and love of the machine are in conflict and the
response is mixed. He rises to the heights of great art when he shows the cobbler
dying.. .killed by the machine.. .withthe following words on his lips.
"The days of your life are ending
And you have not made your accounts with God." (p.80).
Strange that Anand, whose own predilections are for the machine and against
religion, should let himself be swayed by the overwhelming human impulse
rts
against the machine which seeks to stifle it and let the story proceed on traditiod
lines.. .such is his fidelity to the life around him that he lets the character seek his
fulfillment in the only way known to his sate of life, class, and the milieu to which
he belongs.
In this story The Cobbler and The Machine, Anand suggests that it is not
enough if thc machine is accepted, but it is necessary to see that man masters it and
does not become its slave.
The story Mahadev and Parvati is dedicated to Dr. H.K. Handoo. The story
opens with the description of Kumbh Fair which is held every twelve years. The
Kumbh Fair is celebrated in the sandy beaches were the Milk white Ganga meets the
dusky Jamuna. It is one of the most spectacular and enormous congregations in
India, attracting to the devout and the undevout from every corner of the land.
Though the city of Prayag, where the confluence on the Ganga and the
Jamuna takes place, is a far cry from Colombo in Ceylon. In the mind of Parvati, the
wife of the engineer Mahadev, it had assumed a significance more subtle than that
which she could associate with the nearer shrine of Rameshwaram on the Cape
Comorin, or even with historic temple of Madura near Madras.
So off they go to a suburban railway station by Colombo and board a train
for the North. Originally Tamils from Coconada, they sighed with nostalgia at the
first glimpse of India from the small ship which crosses the short channel from
Ceylon to be mainland.
They have to travel along the straight and narrow tracks of the Madras
railway. They travel freely upto Nagpur. Afier that the throng of pilgrims begins to
increase and they have to suffer a lot of the remaining journey. By the time they are
a few hours journey from Prayag there is no room in the caniage to throw a till seed
It is with great difficulty that they secure accommodation in Messrs.
Dinshaw's English-style guest-house, for other professional men, too, from all parts
of India seems to have been led by their devoted wives, or the pull of their inherited
faith, to the Kumbh Fairs.
Pmati, who was born in the house of a rich Tamil merchant in Malaya, and
married to Mahadev because he has found the dowry of two lakhs of rupees
accompanying her a sufficient compensation for her lack of physical c h m , is more
compromising and docile. For she feels that she is nearing the moment when she
will realize that union with her husband through the influence of the vision of the
two rivers meeting which has built up like a myth in her mind.
Mahadev has to look for a taxi to reach Prayag before the sun rises too high,
to have a dip in the waters of the sangham; but the taxis are not available because
they have already been requisitioned by the grandees and princes. They stand by the
road side and wait for a horse-driven yekka. But these are chock full of people fiom
the civil lines on the way to Prayag and the pilgrims from Ceylon wait in vain.
Some ones advises them to trudge it by a short cut. They take the advice and set off.
At last, a yekka driver picks them upon to his overloaded carriage.
Soon they are in the sight of the River Ganga. He drags Parvati forward with
great gusto through the crowd, shouting encouragement to her so as to be heard
above the babble of men and women praying, talking, above the persistent calls of
the hawkers, the obstreperous wailing of the beggars, the ear-splitting of the toysellers.
The couples are invited by the priest who presides over the ritual of the dip in
the confluence of the Ganga and the Jamuna. When Mahadev and his wife hardly
sitdown, the head priest takes them completely in his charge and begins to weave a
fantastic web of mumbo-jumbo verses around the couple's heads, breaking the
sacred word into their cars, touching their noses, their chins, and sprinkling the ash
of thup on their bodies.
After a lot of spell:binding, the tout ties the end of the loin-cloth, Mahadev
has assumed with the dhoti of Parvati, and he leads them to the river. Mahadev and
Pmati soak themselves thoroughly in the water on the spot where the Ganga and
the Jamuna become one.
The tout leads them back to the platform, where the high priest greets them
with more hymns and verses even as he scatters nice over their heads and makes
them smell the smoke of sandal wood.
Mahadev and Parvati are now on the way to being hypnotized into the
feeling of togetherness which they have come to realize. They wait for the union of
their minds which they feel sure is approaching steadily as the ceremonial becomes
more and more intricate. Parvati is praying in Tamil that she hopes that as Ganga is
united with Jamuna her lord and master remains united with her and that they will
return hear in twenty years.
Suddenly the high priest makes a sign for the money, but Mahadev does not
take any notice. The high priest repeats the sign when Mahadev stands with his
head upright like a lord of the earth, the tout ducks his head forward before
Mahadev's gaze and says to give them one thousand rupees. Mahadev opens his
eyes wide with astonishment and incomprehension. Mahadev r e h s to give the
money. Mahadev joins his hands meekly to both the priests and says to give 'Fifty
rupees'.
The priest and the tout pray the God to come and see the dirty, beef-eating
southerners who come and want to expiate their sins by offering a few pieces to the
servants of God. Mahadev offers generously one hundred rupees to avoid the h s .
The tout begins to sever the knot on the dhotis of the couple. Parvati weeps that her
togetherness with her husband is being destroyed. A crowd begins to gather
muttering all kinds of malicious and unfriendly settlements about southerners.
Mahadev kneels before the high priest begging to be excused and offering two
hundred rupees. The high priest dismisses his abject apology with the most
perfhctory of godly gestures. And the tout, demands for thousand rupees. A
kindly pilgrim comes to Mahadev's help and asks the priest and the tout not to be so
cruel because Mahadev is a stranger to these pouts. The tout asks the pilgrim to go
away and leave their rotary.
Mahadev weeps huge tears taking Parvati near him. Mahadev explores for
his wallet in the pocket of the shirt. He has searched all his pockets of his shirt and
trousers. He doesn't find the wallet anywhere. The tout again demands for thousand
rupees! Mahadev shouts that the tout has stolen his money. Mahadev asks him to
give his wallet if not he will call the police. The tout feels angry and says that the
thief is threatening the sheriff. He raises his hand to strike Mahadcv. Parvati weeps
hysterically that her innocent desire has been drowned in this wlgar brawl,
Mahadem surveys for the police but he finds none within reach. A well spokenpilgrim suggests Mahadev and Parvati to leave the place immediately, if not they
will spare more trouble in the hands of the priest and the tout.
The story Mahadev and Parvati ends with Mahadev picking up his clothes
and putting his arm round Parvati and moves away. He has never felt so near her
before.
As ,M.K.Naik says, "Religious bigotry, hypocrisy and formalism and the
degeneration of institutionalized religion into an instrument of exploitation is the
chief theme in this story."" Anand employs the third person narration in this story
Mahadev and Parvati. Anand himself narrates the story of the couple's pilgrimage
to Prayag, where the Kurnbh Fair is held for every twelve years. It is from his pointof-view that one sees all the incidents that happen. The main action of the story
takes place, and is written in simple style. Here are certain references to Hindu
Gods (i.e., Lord Siva, Kali), Indian Rivers (i.e., Ganga, Jamuna) and famous Hindu
temple (i.e., shrine of Rameshwaram on the Cape Cornorin, the historic temple of
Madhura near Madras, temple of Konark at Jagan-nath-Puri) in this story,"I2
M.K.Naik rightly says, "Anand employs Hindi and Indian words. There is no use of
proverbs in this story Mahadev and ~arvati."'~
The irony in this story Mahadev and Parvati is that the innocent desire of
Parvati (her pilgrimage to Prayag) has been drowned in a vulgar brawl.
There is only one chief image in this story. That is the knot which ties the
couple with their clothes. It stands for the togetherness of the couple. In those days
people believe that the knot which is tied by the priest and having a dip in the
confluence of the Ganga and Jamuna is a symbol for the life-long togetherness of the
couple, how Ganga and Jamuna are united. This is clearly shown in the words of
Parvati, the wife of the engineer Mahadev, who prays the God in this way; "She
hoped that as Ganga is united with Jamuna, her lord and master would remain united
with her and that they would return here together in twenty years." (p.147).
Anand makes use of several minor images and poetic expression too. The
narrator compares the feelings of Parvati in the sight of River Ganga after she feels
the impact of the cool breeze which rises from its snow fed water to *her soul
bursting with hope like a lotus," Again the narrator compares the sight of the
congregation on the river banks to "scattered like shhng white blossoms among the
groves." And the last one is, when Mahadev is addressed as Huzoor by the high
priest to give him the money for the ceremony. Mahadev stands with bis head
upright like "a lord of the earth." (pp. 145-147).
In this story Mahadev and Parvati Anand exposes the fleecing pandas of our
pilgrim centres. The Panda, in league with the high priest, robs the couple
everything they have. It is a satire on the conditions of institutionalized religion.
Anand exposes the religious hypocrisy of priests. It also shows the melty, and the
treachery of the pandas of our pilgrim centres. The story reflects the real nature of
the priest. They demand for a thousand rupees for the ceremony and when Mahadev
rehses to give them the amount, the tout even raises his hand to strike Mahadev.
Again he exposes the religious beliefs of the people in the traditional Hindusociety. He makes the regders aware of the immorality and corruption, how they are
rooted in the Indian religious institutions.
The story The Road is dedicated to Keidrych Rhy and Lynette Roberts. It
opens with the colourful description of the &wn- "And, as the eyes open there are
Zigzags of fme rays dazzling and diaphanous. The rays of the Sun spread over the
house and there is no dark corner in the house where one can rest. The grove around
the well and the trees which line both sides of the road afford some shelter." (P.149)
The child in the story feels the change in the tempo of the morning as vividly
as he knows the feel of his mother's body. The child has evolved life of his own, a
life of adventure under the shades of the grove and on the road. Only one person,
the old gardener shares the secret with him. Sharing the secret among the young and
the old, a great friendship has sprung up between the old gardener and the child. So
the old man lifts the child and puts him on his seat on the bracket behind the
bullocks. The old man asks the child to keep the animals aware of their duty.
"While riding the bullock-cart the child imagines himself that he is riding the
chariot like the heroes of the Mahabharata. As the child's name is Krishna, he
imagines that he is Lord Krishm who leads Ajuna to the bottle of Mahabharata.
The bullocks go round and round as it does not seem to reach an open field the child
feels h t m t e d , the illusion breaks, he calls to the Gardener : 'Ram Din,how fiu is
the baffle field?'. Ram Din replies, if he goes he will be there by and by. As the
pace of the bullocks quicken he feels he is getting. Places and jumps in his scat,
eager, impetuous, whizzing past the greenery around as though the path to the battle
lies through enhanted gardens. But,as the animals slow down the child realizes that
he is only the namesake of Krishna and not the God he fancies himself to be. He
gets off the seat at the end of the shaft and runs towards the gardener with tear
dimmed eyes. The gardener sees the overtones of disappointment on the child's
sagging face and, with a deliberate intent to sustain the illusion says: 'Ah! Lord
Krishna, so you have come after all! And where have you left the chariot? On, there
I can see. I, Arjuna, have sharp eyes ... And tell me, pray, is the hour auspicious for
battle?'I4
And he begins to hack the tall weeds with the sickle in his hand. The child
looks at the gardener and says that the gardener should look at the opposing hosts
and say that he should not fight with the opposing hosts. The gardener is in the role
of Arjuna. Then, the child who is in the role of Lord Krishna has to give a discourse
on the battle, what his mother has said. The gardener asks the child that he has to
assume, the discourse has been given and the battle has begun. The gardener
becomes busy with his job of destroying the weeds in the field.
The child refuses to play like that and runs away towards the road. Again he
imagines himself that he is a king. Immediately he stretches his neck upright,
adjusts the mukat on his head as King Vikramadittya is said to be in ancient days,
and benignly smiles at the trees and the saplings which are arrayed on both sides of
the road. He orders the whole nature to obey him, At that time young Rahmat
comes there, a herd of donkeys with empty sacks on their backs. So, the child is
disturbed with that scene.. He orders the donkeys not to kick up so much dust.
Then, Rahmat shouts at Krishna, to go and rest in his mother's. Rahmat races away
with the herd of donkeys. The child feels that he is insulted, acting as his own
policeman and calling the courtier wind to arrest the culprit and put him on the
gallows.
A Tonga driver shouts at him to get away. Krishna is half frightened by the
perverse d e of the heavy-voiced carriage driver. Krishna retreats to his charpai.
And the colom of the morning changes from a dull Sun-soakedwhite to a golden
hue and the tense particles of the air which has carried the smell of dust in them
became redolent of a sense of excitement, the greenery of the trees and garden
hedges seem to be levitating and rising in a rosy glow towards the sky and becoming
fixed in the shimmering colours of a thirsty rainbow.
Krishna asks Ghulam, the watchman to give him water to drink. The
watchman refuses to give him water to drink. The watchman replies that he should
not give him because he is a Muhammadan. The child drops the role of the king and
takes the water to drink. The watchman m t e s the child the story of Kerbala,
where a whole army dies of thirst. The army of Hassan and Hussain die of thirst as
the Brahmin, the owner of the well r e h e s to give them water to drink because they
are Muhammadans at Kerbala. On hearing his tale, the child is frightened. He tries
to quieter him by signing a song.
There is a man unyoking his bullock cart with ears of corn. The watchman
asks the child to come with him to the bullock cart to try for getting ears of corn to
roast. The promise of the gift of an ear of corn makes the world a fragrant green
again. He struggles out of the watchman's hands and runs eagerly to the side of the
road where the bullock cart is drawn up. After sometime, the carriage driver starts
to go away. The child asks the carriage driver to let him get on it and drive the cart.
When the bullocks object to move, the peasant beckons the bullocks towards the
harness. The child edges away with a shudder. The child asks the peasant where he
is going. The peasant replies that he is going on the road. Again, the child questions
the peasant, where the road leads to? The peasant replies that it leads to many
strange places.
The child enquires whether the road goes to Kurukshetra where the Pandavas
fought the Kurus. The peasant replies that now it is not Kurukshetra, now it is
named as Dilli, The child again questions the peasant whether this road leads to
where Raja Rasalu went ...the f a y tale forests and the kingdom of monkeys. The
peasant replies positively#
The child wants to go to those cities along with him, The carriage driver
replies that he is not going to those cities but he is goingly only to the market. The
child runs dangerously alongside the bullockcart. The gardener rushes up and
m h e s hold of him in his arms and haads over to his mother.
The child cries himself to sleep because he could not go to the secret
kingdom that lay at the end of the road. The child burbles that he will go all to these
places when he grows up to be a man.
The story The Road ends with the child merely showing his mother the ear of
corn he has clutched tight in his hands saying what he has got in his hands.
The story The Road imbued with a distinct poetic spirit includes pictures of
the child's mind. As Rizada says, "The story depicts the intentions, inner desires and
the psyche of an innocent child. The story deals with the psychology of children.
The story recalls the childhood exploits of young Krishna in seven ~ummers."'~
The story The Road is .in the third person narration. It is from the narrator's
point-of-view that we know the details of the story and enters into the imaginary
world of Krishna, the child in the story. The action for the story takes place under
the grove which is around the well, in the field and on the road. All the incidents in
the story happen within a short span of four or five hours.
The story is written in a simple language. There are certain references to the
Indian epics (i.e., Mahabharata) and some ancient kings.
Anand employs Hindi and Indian words. There is no use of proverbs in this
story. The story The Road is written in a serious and somber vein. The mood of the
story is lyrical. The story is highly imaginative. He imagines himself to be the great
heroes of Mahabharata and the ancient kings of India.
The first image in the story The Road is the bullock-cart which the child
rides with the help of the old gardener. While riding, the bullock-cart, the child goes
into imagination and imagines himself that he is riding the chariot like the heroes of
Mahabharata. As the child's own name is Krishna he imagines that he is Lord
Krishna, the legendary Charioteer, who leads Ajuna to the battle field of
Mahabharata. And the child takes the old gardener to act a Arjuna, the Pandu
prince. Here, the bullock-cart stands for the chariot which is used in the ancient
days for battle. Secondly the hoopes which stands on the telegraph pole becomes
the Phoenix. The belief is that if the Phoenix passes over anyone's head that person
becomes a king. The child imagines himself as king Vikramadittya and benignly
smiles at the trees and the saplings which are arrayed on both sides of the road. The
stick with which he has goaded the bullocks, becomes the sword in his imagination,
Hm,as Rizada says, 'Yhe image of the hoopoes stands for the phoenix and
the stick stands for the sword. A h that the child goes into imagination and
behaves like the Commander-in-Chief at the New Year's march past on the parade,
and stands watching erect, his eyes like two balls of fire. The image of the Persian
wheel well becomes a witness for the tragedy of the martyrdom of Hasan and
~ussain."'~Finally "the image of the road which leads to Kurukshetra, the hiry tale
forests and the seven kingdoms of monkeys that lay at the end of the mad in the
mind of the child stand for the intentions of the child.""
In this story The Road Anand exposes the intentions, inner desires,
psychology of an innocent child. The child in the story wants to go the fantasy
worlds. Anand shows the picture of child-mind though the child's imagination.
There is no limit to the child's imaginary world, as it is boundless. Perhaps, no
other story-teller has captured the child's world fired with the tales of Arjuna,
Krishna and Virkrarnadittya as has been done here. It is an art indeed to portray the
naivetd of childhood,
The story The Tractor and the Corn Goddess is dedicated to Sharokh
Sabavala. The story opens with an introduction to the character of uncle Chajju, who
is one of the main characters in the story. It is uncle Chajju who really causes most
of the trouble about the tractor. Of course, not being a devout person he is not the
person who raises the slogans 'Religion in Danger' 'The invention of the Devil', and
so forth. In fact, as soon as the affair begins to assume the form of a Hindu-Muslim
issue, he literally puts his foot down on the machine and very proudly has himself
photographed as a Sahib with his foot upon the back of a tiger which a Shikari has
actually shot. Nevertheless, it is a phrase of his which is responsible for the whole
rumpus, or rather a great deal of it.
The facts of the case, which has assumed the significance of the legenday
happening in the narrator's parts, are these. "When the big landlord of the narrator's
village, the Nawab Sahib of Bhagira, dies, his only son, Nawab Zada Mumtaz Ali
Khan, who is reported to be a worthless, irresponsible fool, addicts to many
European habits as bad company and drink, comes home h m abroad and starts to
behave in a manner which most people think is quite mad, or to say the least, some
what strange. For, in the old days when a Z a m ' i dies, his son and heir generally
levy a tax for the funeral expenses on the peasant and follow it up by levying
another tax still for the motors and the horses he has brought and generally make the
peasants aware of the advent of a new order."I8
M u m u Ali Khan, the new Nawab who has succeeded to the estate, is a
radical young landlord. His radical reforms shock the villagers rather than delight
them. He remits taxes; he would not accept nazarana; he wants to renounce all the
right to his land and form a co-peroration in which all the tenants have equal shares.
To the villagers these progressive reforms are unbelievable. And they are M e r
shocked when the Nawab suddenly brings a tractor to the village, which causes a big
crisis. Seeing this "monster engine" before Mumtaz's house,. .. the peasants
gathered from all sides, chased the tractor, some shouting, some just staring, some
whispering to each other all aghast with wonder or fear at this new monstrosity
which had appeared in their lives and which threatened to do something to them,
they knew not what (p. 187).
"There is a torrent of accusations against the tractor n ~ w , " ' ~ ~ . ~ , ~says.
ajan
Chajju takes the lead in the crisis. By one expletive he crystallizes the feelings of all
the villagers. 'Rape-mother', he says caustically, even as he sits smoking the
hubble-bubble under the banyan tree. "According to P.K.Rajan, the Brahmin priest,
'the earth has been desecrated!'. 'The Corn Goddess, the giver of all food, has bee
raped' says, his devote Dhunori Bhagat. In the words of Jodha, the oldest peasant of
the village, the giant machine contains Shiv-Shakti in a new form! Others say that
'the machine contains Jinns and bhutts'. 'It is probably an electric machine, with
power stored in its belly', says another."20
At last, the clever landlord solves the problem by getting the tractor
dismantled in the presence of the villagers. He tells them that "it is a machine which
can do the work of a hundred bullocks in one hour" (p. 191) and that is "only iron
and steel, so tempered as to plough the land quickly" (p, 191). The villagem now
realize that their fears are out of place. And the Nawab gets them photographed,
with the tractor in their midst. The story thus ends with the suggestion that the
tractor has become acceptable to the villagers.
The break-up of India's self-sufficient village economy, which started and
gathered momentum during the British rule, saw the tradition-bound h d b villagas
stand aghast at the advent of the monstrous machines and their incursions on the old
way of life. This process of a new myth replacing the old myth, in terms of the
conflict between tradition and modernity is a major theme in Anand's entire fiction.
The Tractor and the Corn Goddess, too, centres on the same theme. Anand presents
the theme with great skill in the form of the short story, which is personalized
through a synthesis of the native story telling tradition and the elements of the
European short story tradition.
This story The Tractor and the Corn Goddess is a first-person narrative. The
narrator in this story is one of the villagers, and it is from his point-of-view that one
sees the whole event. The conflict in the story is the conflict between Modernity
and Tradition. The setting of the story is a north Indian village, named Bhagira.
The form of the story is typical of the art of short story Anand has mastered over the
years, that is; in his own words, "a new kind of fable which extends the old Indian
story form into a new age, without the moral lessons of the Indian story but
embodying its verse and vitality and including the psychological understanding of
the contemporary period." The Tractor and the Corn Goddess is precisely this "new
kind of fab~e."~'The story is written in simple style. Anand employs Hindi and
Indian words. Anand use of the phrase 'Son of a gun" in this story is a jarring
exception. Anand stoops to downright propaganda in this story.
Comedy and irony are employed in this story. The comic mode is a natural
choice for the artist because of the intrinsic character of the event he describes. At
the centre of the story is the conversion of the villagers but the ~6nvertedhas not had
nay creative participation in the process of conversion. The element of comedy
involved in this 'conversion' naturally asks for a comic mode.
The central images are the tractor and the corn goddess. The tractor
symbolizes the onset of capitalist modernization which began to change the face of
Indian villages during the British times. Anand professedly is a spokesman of
modernization and he uses quite often the medium of his art to advocate the cause of
the machine.. .the machine as the rosy emblem of a new em The Corn Goddess, on
the other hand, represents the whole legacy of the Indian peasant, a symbol of his
age-old tradition.
The story reveals the evils resulting h m the ignorance, illiteracy and
superstitions of the Indian villagers. Anand consciously sa&s
the traditional
modes of village life, but indirectly, the story reasserts the power of tradition. He
wants to bring a change in the attitudes of the village peasantry, their age-old
traditional methods in agriculture. In this story, Anand turns them towards
modernity. The story also reflects the gradwl change which has come in the
attitudes of the feudal lords. Thus the land lord, Mum- Ali Khan m
t
sto form a
co-op in which all tenants have equal shares. There is the element of socialism or
Marxism in this aspect.
M.K.Naik's view that the Nawab's "down-to-earth commonsense ultimately
triumphs over superstition'" is acceptable only in the limited sense that the clever
landlord manages to win the villagers over to his side. But the fact remains that
there is no real triumph over their superstitions because such a triumph is possible
only though bringing about a basic change in their attitude. The story is also a satire
on the weight of convention in a feudalistic society. When the radical young
landlord, who has newly succeeded to the estate, remits taxes and r e h e s to accept
nazarana, his tenants, instead of being delighted are shocked at this lapse hrn
feudalistic propriety.
The story Hangman's Strike is dedicated to Peter Johnson. The story
Hangman's Strike opens with a reference tq the biggest strike-wave which has
happened in our country. It is the most gigantic in our history, affecting all kinds of
workers, the textile workers, the municipal workers, the press workers, the railway
workers, the engineering workers, the jute workers, the beedi workers, the taxi-cab
drivers, the rickshaw pallers, the black-coated workers and even policemen and
naval ratings and soldiers of the foot.
But no strike causes such a furore in our country as that of Buta, the
hangman of the narrator's mofusill Madhopur jail, who refuses to go to work
suddenly one day and, battling against the toughest opposition, oppression end
illtreatment from the authorities, atleast wins a great moral victory if he does not
quite succeed in winning his demands.
Actually, Buta goes on strike because of his great sympathy for the larlngmon
in America who, he hears have been out of employment aRer the elect& chair Is
b m ~ a tbto desl with s ~ ~ c t comunis~r
sd
~d CM.
HC matcts tho
resentma of all members of his profession, mn only a m a mrr m m n e , o,e
electric chair, but against all the amatem who have k n qualify'mg for thc
hangman's job d b g the u~urseof the two world wus. What mays Buta
particularly in this context is that almost all the potential and actual hangmen who
are engaged in killing in these wars have got medals for merely being in on it, and
the more skilll of them have been rewarded with money and land, while he, a
professional hangman,has not been given a raise in pay for thirty years and not one
word has ever been mentioned to him by the Head jailor, Sheik Siraj-ud-Din, about
the dearness allowance. Besides, Buta has sensed that he has always been looked
down upon because he is a hangman and because he is originally a sweeper by caste.
The rudeness of jailors and warders apart, the insults and humiliation he has the
shops, and even from the tongues of little children, has increasingly oppressed him
and made him sore.
Buta has been developing an incipient sense of democracy and fieedom.
Naturally, therefore, when he feels that he has about enough of the old order, the old
status and the old scales of pay etcetera, he strikes work. Equally, naturally, this
strike comes as a great surprise to all and sundry. 'How dare this pig', hangman
Buta, go on strike? Says Sheikh Siraj-ud-Din, the Head jailor, 'But, why shouldn't I
go no strike?' Says Buta. The strong can drown the voices of the weak.
And Buta finds himself opposed not only by the Head jailor, but by all the
decent members of society who consider it to be the most outrageous, absurd
phenomena that a mere sweeper should 'raise his head to the skies', that a mere
messenger of the angel of death should assume the airs and graces of a decent citizen
and set himself on the same pedestal as other human beings. And at the best the
whole thing comes to be a kind of joke. 'Ha Ha1, people say, 'A hangman gone on
strike! The fellow must be mad!'.
For days the news of Bhuta's strike figured in the world press, first as a news
item, then as a comment by columnists and again as a 'Twilight Twitter' or as a
'Crackling Thorn'. And, then, it becomes part of the gossip of the bazaars and lanes
where the goondas gathered, because those budmashes think it may be a fairly good
strategy to commit all the murdas they want to commit at the time when But. is on
strike, for sutely there will be no one to hand them in case they an found guilty and
condemned to be hung.
Actually there is ample cause for the Head jailor, Sheik Siraj-ud-Din to be
disturbed. For, Buta has struck in the middle of the execution of Jhanda Sigh,the
murderer. After the prisoner has been led to the platform of the well and made to
stand there, But% who is at that instant to move the lever, does not move the lever.
Buta refuses to do anythhg. Then, at last Buta declares his intentions and puts
forward his demands. Upon this Havildar Sher Juang, the Gurkha Head Warder,
misunderstanding the whole thing as a trick played by the condemned man, orders to
open fire. The murderer is shot dead instead of being executed. Now the jail staff,
from the Superintendent to the warders, know that there has been an infringement of
the law in shooting the condemned man when has really ordered to be hung. And,
of course Buta knows this too.
In a panic of fear, lest the Government authorities should get to know wbat
has happened, the jail staff approaches Buta, one by one. At first Col. A,K. Kaul,
I.M.S., the Superintendent of the Jail, speaks to him, but as Buta has contempt for
the Angrezi tongue, the Colonel fails to convince him. Then the Head jailor, Sheikh
Siraj-ud-Din tries his polished Hindustani speech; accompanied by a few quotations
from Ghalib, with a due performance of all flourishes and elegant courtesies. But
Buta is a tough Punjabi, who has often heard his own language being insulted by the
southerners, and he seems blind to all the Sheikh's blandishments. Later, the two
Assistant Jailors have tried the rough stuff with him. Even this has failed. And,
when the rumour of Buta's sit-down strike spread, there is no going back on the
irrevocable fight on which the hangman has entered.
The Head jailor locks up Buta in a cell and puts him on bread and butter,
The hangman is hard put to it to know what to do next. For the jail staff fearing the
consequences of any partiality they may show to their colleague, are loyal to the
authorities and will not take any message of Buta to the outside world, And not
knowing how the campaign on behalf of his sensational strike is going in the world
press, Buta languishes and grows thin. After a few days, with the deprivations he
suffers in not receiving the special relations of rump steak which is generally
allowed him, he decides to compromise.
But a Sheikh Siraj-ud-Din sense in Buta's weakening and adds strength in
his own sinews, And he demands complete s m d e r . And wbat is mote, he
succeeds in having Buta tried for his sit-down strike by a friendly Magistrate and has
sentenced to six months rigorous imprisonment Buta is silently btought back
to the very jail, where he has wielded power over life and death, and kept in solitary
confinement.
The cell in which Buta is confined is in an obscure part of the jail where
some nationalist prisoners are kept. As they say a great deal to each other and Buta
hears all, his head becomes chockfull of all the subtleties and intricacies of the
doctrine of non-violence. The doctrine of non-violence begins to appeal to him.
But one day, he hears an old congressite narrate the history of the various
non-co-operation movements which Gandhi has launched against the Ferungies.
And some young man says that there is no difference between non-co-operation and
a sit-down strike. This makes Buta open his eyes and apply the doctrine of ahimsa
to his own action in refusing to pull the lever, and it percolated into his thick
wisdom that he himself has only recently been acting in the great Gandhian
tradition. He waits patiently for the days when his solitary confinement will be over
and he will be released from jail.
The day of Buta's release coincided with the date on which the bunches of
nationalist prisoners are set free. The jail authorities realize this only when Buta is
brought up into the hall and given his old clothes back. And all their designs to
rearrest him are foiled by the fact that the hundreds of people who crowd outside the
hall to receive the congressites see Buta there.
And, as the door opened, and the eager crowd greets their emerging friends
and garlands them, they spontaneously and unknowingly, include Buta also in the
joy and warmth of their cordiality and garland him. And, before Buta knows where
he is, he is on the shoulders of the crowd, being acclaimed a hero of the Gandhian
revolution. "the people speak about Buta, the hangman, in Wive whispers,
explaining his origin and character. But there is a fervent Gandhian who seizes upon
Buta's abjuration of his post as a hangman, as one of the greatest victories for the
doctrine of ahim~a.'~
The story simultaneously parodies the doctrine of ahimsa and makes a
profound tribute to it.
The story Hangman b Strib is in omniscient narration. The author nmtes
the story in the third person, although he may sjmek now and then in his own firstperson voice. The language of the story is simple, Anand employs Hindi and Indian
words. He uses swear-words like "budmashes", phrases l i e 'raise his head to
skies'. There is no comedy or irony in this story. The story is written in a serious
vein.
There is only one image in this story. That is the image of the Congressites,
who fight for the fkeedom of country under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi
through non-violence. Buta, the hangman applies this doctrine of ahimsa to his own
action, and wins a great moral victory if he does not quite succeed in winning his
demands.
In this story Hangman's Strike the focus is laid on both, the problem of caste
distinctions and the living conditions of the low-caste employees in some
departments. The here of the story, Buta, suffers from the above two. Being a
hangman and originally a sweeper by caste he is always looked down upon by
others. The low-cadre employees are very much ill-treated by the authorities in
some departments especially in police and jails. The authorities treat them as their
slaves. But receives the same oppression and ill-treatment from the Head jailor,
Sheik Sirajdun-Din. For example, the Head Jailor says, 'How dare this pig,
hangman Buta, go on strike?'
As a hangman Buta gets a little wages. He has not been given a raise in pay
for thirty years. Through the character of Buta, Anand exposes the miserable
conditions of such type of employees. In the story, Buta, longs for the right to lead a
better life like the Head jailor, Sheikh Siraj-ud-Din. The following lines clearly
show this:
"After all, I too can claim the appellation of Sheikh before my name for,
though I am considered an Untouchables, I too left the fold of Hinduism and was
...
converted to Islam exactly as Sheikh Siraj-ud-Din was converted Besides while
the meats broil in the pots on the chulas of the Head Jailor house and the sauces
Brew on the anguishes and the delicate smoke of brianis and pilao's goes up to high
heaven, and he dyes his beard with henna and goes inspecting the jail with a diginity
which bespeaks violence, wiles and the radiianceOf authority, I go about wearing a
crown studded with. The jewels of my own sweat and can only sniff at the o d o m
of meats cooked in other people's houses.. .It is not fair, either in the eyes of God or
man! ..." @. 3).
By exposing such personalities, like Buta, Anand calls on to improve the
living conditions such people. The story also stands for the victory to the doctrine on
non-violence.
K.R. Srinivas Iyengar rightly says, "The qualities of acute observation and
vivid delineation that mark Anand as a novelist are seen equally-often mixed with
a strain of poetry-in
his short stories also. In 'The Barber's Trade Union", Anand
immortalizes Chandu the barber as he has immortalized Bakha the untouchable and
Munoo the ~oolie.''~
A Rumour is the story of Dhandu the carpenter who goes in search of a job
and is run over on the way by a lorry: here the sting of irony is in the title itself.
There are stories of the ineffectual terrorist, Singh, and wretched informer, Gopal;
there are three 'prose poems' that explore the consciousness of children; there is 'A
Kashrnir Idyll", in which a Nawab dies of a fit of laughter and there is the 'crime' in
'The Maharaha and The Tortoise' which ultimately ushers in Rarnrajya! A muting,
Satirical, ironic, tragic, pathetic or farcical.
"Anand can play any note he wants, and he can present human weakness
with understanding and sympathy. Anand sees life sometimes as a comedy,
sometimes as a tragedy, and sometimes the two modes fuse disbtingly; and at his
best his work challenges comparison with that of the great masters of the art of the
short
REFERENCES
1.
Marlene Fisher, The Shape of Lostness: MulkRaj Anand's Short Stories, (The
Journal of Indian Writing in English, Editor: G.S.Balanuna Gupta, Vo1.2.
January Gulbarga, Karnataks,l974, No. I), pp. 1-2.
M.K. Naik, The Plough and the Tractor: The Short Stories, Mulk Raj Anand,
(Arnold- ~einemann,New Delhi, 1973), P.148.
I bid,, P.149.
R. K, Dhawan, The Barber's Trade Union: An Appraisal, The Novels of
MulkRaj Anand, Ed. by R. K. Dhawan (Prestige Books, New Delhi, 1991),
P. 121.
Marlene Fisher, The Wisdom of the Heart: A Study of the Works of MulkRd
Anand (Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1985), P.84.
MulkRaj Anand, The Barber's Trade Union, The Barber's Trade Union and
Other Stories, Kutub-Popular, Bombay, 1959, P.7.
M U j Anand, The Cobbler and the Machine, 0p.cit. 4, pp.70-71.
M.K.Naik, The Plough and the Tractor: The Short Stories, MulkRaj Anand
Arnold Heinemann, New Delhi, 1973, P. 140.
0p.cit. 7., pp. 133-134.
0p.cit. 4., pp. 143-144.
M.K.Naik, Infinite Variety: A St@ of the Short Stories of MulkRaj Anand,
Vimal Prakashan, Ghaziabad, 1978. P. 24
MulkRaj Anand, The Road, The Tractor and the Corn Goddeus and Other
Stories MullrRqS Anand, Arnold Heinemann, New Delhi,1987, P. 9.
Harish Rizada, "Indo-Anglian Fiction in the Period of Political Turmoil: 19371947", The Low and the Rose: Indian Fiction in English: 1850-1947,(The
Arts Faculty, Amq Aligarh, 1978),P. 172.
Ibid., P. 8.
MulkRaj Anand.The Tractor and the Corn Goddess, Selected Stories of
MulkRaj Anand, Edited with an introduction by M.K.Naik (ArnoldHeinemann, New Delhi, First Published 1977; First published in India 1984),
P. 185.
P.K.Rajan, Conflict and Resolution in "The Tractor and the Corn Goddess",
Studies in MulkRaj Anand (Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1986),P.33.
Op. cit. l., pp. 187-188.
MulkRaj Anand, P. 185.
MulkRaj Anand, The Hangman's Strike, Reflection on the Golden Bed and
Other Stories,(Amold publishers,New Delhi, 1988),P. 10.
K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, Sterling Publishers Pvt.,
Ltd., New Delhi. 1962. P. 353.
Ibid., P. 354.