Free Greatest Short Stories by Mulk Raj Anand Page A

confectioner’s shop.

    ‘Why did you run away?’ he asked. ‘Have you no shame?… Look, folks…’
    The straggling peasants looked nonchalantly at the scene, without coming any nearer. And three school boys came and stared.
    ‘Let me go — I want to go to my father ’s house,’ Lajwanti said, without lifting her gaze to Jaswant.
    The Maina bird fluttered in the cage.
    ‘No, you are returning to your husband’s home!’ Jaswant ground the words. And he twisted her wrist as she tried to get out of his grasp.
    ‘Brute!’ she cried. And, without shedding any tears, she began to sob. ‘Leave me alone!… Let me give the Maina some water to drink…’
    The throttling growth of Jaswant’s bestiality gripped her young body and he shouted hoarsely:
    ‘Prostitute! Bad woman! Running away!…
    What will our brotherhood think? — you disgracing us like this!…’
    Lajwanti collapsed in a huddle at his feet.
    The brother-in-law hit her with his right foot.
    At this the confectioner half got up from his greasy cushion and appealed:
    ‘Ohe, do not hit her. Persuade her to go back with you…’ But as the woman sat mutely like a bundle, the tangled undergrowth of Jaswant’s emotions became concentrated into the fury of his stubborn, frustrated will. He slapped her on the head with his loose right hand.
    Lajwanti gave herself to the torment and sat dumbly, suppressing even her sobs.
    And now a crowd of passers-by gathered to see the fun, but no one intervened.
    The grip of frightfulness lingered in the crevices of light before Lajwanti’s hooded eyes.

    Grating of brakes and the dragging of wheels brought Engineer Din Dayal’s jeep to a sudden halt, twenty yards ahead of the confectioner’s shop.
    ‘Go quickly ’, Shrimati Sushila Dayal ordered her husband. ‘I saw him slapping the woman.’
    ‘Let us find out what’s what before getting excited,’ said the dour, taciturn engineer. And he turned to the confectioner: ‘What has happened? Who are they?’
    ‘Sir, it seems the girl has run away from her father-in-law’s house and wants to go to her father’s house… But her brother-in-law came and caught her…’
    Shrimati Dayal jumped out of the jeep and ran ahead of her husband.
    ‘Cowards! Get aside! Looking on! As though this is a fun fair!’
    The crowd scattered and revealed Jaswant holding Lajwanti by the head cloth, which he had twisted into his hand with the plait of her hair.
    ‘Leave her alone!’ Shrimati Dayal ordered.
    ‘Sister, she has ran away from her husband’s house,’ appealed Jaswant. ‘And our good name is at stake!’
    ‘She must have come away for a good reason,’ Shrimati Dayal said.
    ‘Where has she come from?’
    ‘From near Hauz Khas,’ Jaswant said.
    ‘Hai-on foot?.. Ten miles? She has walked.’ Jaswant nodded his head.
    ‘Poor child!’ Shrimati Dayal said turning to her husband.
    ‘I will not allow the girl to die of a heat stroke. Put her in the jeep and let us take her home.’
    ‘I will not let her go now that I have caught her’ Jaswant said timid but frontal.
    ‘I will call the police and hand you over!’ threatened Shrimati Dayal.
    ‘Anyhow,’ Engineer Din Dayal counselled Jaswant, ‘Come and talk things over at my house… Persuade her to go back with you. Don’t force her…’
    ‘Come along,’ said Shrimati Dayal lifting Lajwanti even as she brusquely extricated the twisted plait of the girl’s hair our of Jaswant’s grip.
    ‘Give me the Maina to hold,’ Jaswant bullied his sister-in-law.
    Lajwanti merely nodded her head in negation and proceeded.

    In the cool shade of the verandah of Engineer Dayal’s bungalow, Lajwanti removed the hood of her headcloth and revealed her tender, tear-striken eyes and said:
    ‘Give me some water for the Maina, mother.’ ‘Gurkha,’ Shrimati Dayal called her servant. ‘Give some cool water to all of us… make it lime and water… Simple water for the bird…’
    The servile Gurkha, more taciturn than