Free The Cat and Shakespeare by Raja Rao Page B

pertinent question and Govindan Nair, who is pertinence itself, asked it. He was interested in children, in houses for children, in medicines for spleen that bloats, etc. When one is curious one can know anything. It’s like the kitten seeking the cat, etc. (I use etc. because that is exactly Govindan Nair’s language. It comes from working in offices disinterestedly, he says, does Govindan Nair.)
    So, to use his phrase, the cat came out of the bag. It was a big cat and the bag was a gunnysack. It smelled peculiarly of rice. There’s a saying of Kabir they often quoted in the ration shop: On each grain of rice is writ the name of he who’ll eat it. The ration card is the proof. Medicine for spleen is proof of the ration card. The child is proof of his father, said Velayudhan Nair, showing his child to Govindan Nair. ‘My son has no spleen. He has malaria or filaria, I don’t know what it is,’ said Govindan Nair. ‘You must take him to a decent doctor,’ said Velayudhan Nair. ‘Who is your doctor? ‘ asked Govindan Nair. ‘Why, Doctor Velu Pillai, MBBS, MRCP from Edinburgh. Specialist in children’s diseases.’ ‘My son is seven years old. He is neither a child nor a man. So where shall we take him?’ laughed Govindan Nair. ‘Why,’ replied Velayudhan Nair, ‘I have just the fellow for that. You come here tomorrow at five. And we’ll settle it.’
    ‘Ah, sir, the cat is out of the bag,’ he said, coming to see me that evening. Hitler was winning his wars. The prices went up. The British army poured into India. India sent rice to Persia. Russia attacked the German left flank. Von Boch was hurtling towards Moscow. Von Rundstedt’s armies rushed towards Kiev. The Dnieper Dam was blasted. Paris decreed against Jews. Roosevelt was wiping his spectacles—that was one of the pictures stuck against the wall in our office. We liked Roosevelt because we hated Churchill. We love what we cannot have. When we have it, we have it not, because what it is not, is what we want, and thus on to the wall. The mother cat alone knows. It takes you by the skin of your neck, and takes you to the loft. It alone loves. Sir, do you know love? O Lord, I want to love. I want to love all mankind. Why should there be spleen when in fact there is no malaria? Why don’t children sit in scales and play the game of ration cards? Who plays, Lord, who plays? ‘Give unto me love that I love,’ such was the prayer that went up from across my garden wall to the nowhere.
    ‘How is Shantha?’ asked Govindan Nair abruptly, as if suddenly he had seen the mother cat with the kitten, and I said: ‘She was asking your wife about a good maternity doctor. Dr Krishna Veni Amma is no good. She is too young. Do you know of one?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am seeing a child’s doctor tomorrow. I think he will do.’
    What is a doctor? One who knows diseases is the simplest definition. One who knows a wound and heals a pain is a doctor.
    Five o’clock on any watch (including the clock on the Secretariat) is the same moment all over the world. But not the same hour, for the world is regulated by the watch. Pray, what is a watch? A thing that turns on itself and shows the moon. What is the moon? The thing that turns on itself and (elliptically) goes around the sun. And what is the sun? The sun is a luminary that made the earth—the grasses rise green on the sward; the clouds form; the dawn comes; the cattle go home; man puts manhood into woman and the child is born; the tree shoots into the air, and birds sit on it; houses rise, houses, and our children, when they are born, are well looked after . . . Eagles circle. That is all due to the sun. And the moon. And the clock on the Secretariat. (If the government did not run, then who would pay whose debt?) So, at five-fifteen, Velayudhan Nair went over to the table of Govindan Nair (and what an ocean of ration cards was there, with cigarette butts, shirt buttons, broom grass for cleaning the ears,