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By Rabindranath Tagore
Translated by William Radice
My five-year-old daughter Mini can't stop talking for a minute.
It only took
her a year to learn to speak, after coming into the
world, and ever since she
has not wasted a minute of her waking
hours by keeping silent. Her mother often
scolds her and makes her
shut up, but I can't do that. When Mini is quiet, it
is so unnatural
that I cannot bear it. So she's rather keen on chatting to me.
One morning, as I was starting the seventeenth chapter of my
novel, Mini came
up to me and said, 'Father, Ramdoyal the
gatekeeper calls a crow a kauya instead
of a kaak. He doesn't
know anything, does he!'
Before I had a chance to enlighten
her about the multiplicity of
languages in the world, she brought up another
subject. 'Guess
what, Father, Bhola says it rains when an elephant in the sky
squirts water through its trunk. What nonsense he talks! On and
on, all day.'
Without waiting for. my opinion on this matter either, she
suddenly asked,
'Father, what relation is Mother to you?'
'Good question,'' I said to myself,
but to Mini I said, 'Run off
and play with Bhola. I've got work to do.
'But
she then sat down near my feet beside my writing-table,
and, slapping her knees,
began to recite 'agdum bagdum' at top
speed. Meanwhile, in my seventeenth chapter,
Pratap Singh was
leaping under cover of night from his high prison-window into
the river below, with Kanchanmala in his arms.
My study looks out on to the
road. Mini suddenly abandoned
the 'agdum bagdum' game, ran over to the window
and shouted,
'Kabuliwallah, Kabuliwallah!'
Dressed in dirty baggy clothes,
pugree on his head, bag hanging
from his shoulder, and with three or four boxes
of grapes in his
hands, a tall Kabuliwallah was ambling along the road. It was
hard to say exactly what thoughts the sight of him had put into
my beloved
daughter's mind, but she began to shout and shriek
at him. That swinging bag spells
trouble, I thought: my seven-
teenth chapter won't get finished today. But just
as the Kabuliwal-
lah, attracted by Mini's yells, looked towards us with a smile
and
started to approach our house, Mini gasped and ran into the
inner rooms,
disappearing from view. She had a blind conviction
that if one looked inside that
swinging bag one would find three
or four live children like her.
Meanwhile
the Kabuliwallah came up to the window and
smilingly salaamed. I decided that
although the plight of Pratap
Singh and Kanchanmala was extremely critical, it
would be
churlish not to invite the fellow inside and buy something from
him.
I bought something. Then I chatted to him for a bit. We talked
about Abdur Rahman's
efforts to preserve the integrity of Afghan-
istan against the Russians and the
British. When he got up to
leave, he asked, 'Babu, where did your little girl
go?'
To dispel her groundless fears, I called Mini to come out. She
clung
to me and looked suspiciously at the Kabuliwallah and his
bag. The Kabuliwallab
took some raisins and apricots out and
offered them to her, but she would not
take them, and clung to
my knees with doubled suspicion. Thus passed her first
meeting
with the Kabuliwallah.
A few days later when for some reason I was
on my way out of
the house one morning, I saw my daughter sitting on a bench in
front
of the door, nattering unrestrainedly; and the Kabuliwallah
was sitting at her
feet listening - grinning broadly, and from time
to time making comments in his
hybrid sort of Bengali. In all her
five years of life, Mini had never found so
patient a listener, apart
from her father. I also saw that the fold of her little
sari was
crammed with raisins and nuts. I said to the Kabujiwallah, 'Why
have
you given all these? Don't give her any more.' I then took a
half-rupee out of
my pocket and gave it to him. Re unhesitatingly
took the coin and put it in his
bag.
When I returned home, I found that this half-rupee had caused
a full-scale
row. Mini's mother was holding up a round shining
object and saying crossly to
Mini, 'Where did you get this half-
rupee from?'
'The Kabuliwallah gave it
to me,' said Mini.
'Why did you take it from the Kabuliwallah?'
'I didn't
ask for it,' said Mini tearfully. 'He gave it to me
himself.'
I rescued Mini
from her mother's wrath, and took her outside.
I learnt that this was not just
the second time that Mini and the
Kabuliwallah had met: he had been coming nearly
every day and,
by bribing her eager little heart with pistachio-nuts, had quite
won
her over. I found that they now had certain fixed jokes and
routines: for example
as soon as Mini saw Rahamat, she giggled
and asked, 'Kabuliwallah, 0 Kabuliwallah,
what have you got in
your bag?' Rahamat would laugh back and say - giving the
word
a peculiar nasal twang - 'An elephant.' The notion of an elephant
in his
bag was the source of immense hilarity; it might not be a
very subtle joke, but
they both seemed to find it very funny, and
it gave me pleasure to see, on an
autumn morning, a young child
and a grown man laughing so heartily.
They had
a couple of other jokes. Rahamat would say to Mini,
'Little one, don't ever go
off to your svas'ur-bari.' Most Bengali
girls grow up hearing frequent references
to their swasur-bari,
but my wife and I are rather progressive people and we don't
keep
talking to our young daughter about her future marriage.
She therefore couldn't
clearly understand what Rahamat meant;
yet to remain silent and give no reply
was wholly against her
nature, so she would turn the idea round and say, 'Are
you going
to your swasur-bari?' Shaking his huge fist at an imaginary
father-in-law
Rahamat said, 'I'll settle him!' Mini laughed merrily
as she imagined the fate
awaiting this unknown creature called a
swasur.
It was perfect autumn
weather. In ancient times, kings used to
set out on their world-conquests in autumn.
I have never been
away from Calcutta; precisely because of that, my mind roves
all
over the world. I seem to be condemned to my house, but I
constantly yearn
for the world outside. If I hear the name of a
foreign land, at once my heart
races towards it; and if I see a
foreigner, at once an image of a cottage on some
far bank or
wooded mountainside forms in mv mind. and I think of the free
and
pleasent life I would lead there. At the same time, I am such
a rooted sort of
individual that whenever I have to leave my
familiar spot I practically collapse.
So a morning spent sitting at
my table in my little study, chatting with this
Kabuliwallah, was
quite enough wandering for me. High, scorched, blood-coloured,
forbidding
mountains on either side of a narrow desert path;
laden camels passing; turbaned
merchants and wayfarers, some
on camels, some walking, some with spears in their
hands, some
with old-fashioned flintlock guns: my friend would talk of his
native
land in his booming, broken Bengali, and a mental picture
of it would pass before
my eyes.
Mini's mother is very easily alarmed. The slightest noise in the
street
makes her think that all the world's drunkards are charging
straight at our house.
She cannot dispel from her mind - despite
her experience of life (which isn't
great) - the apprehension that
the world is overrun with thieves, bandits, drunkards,
snakes,
tigers, malaria, caterpillars, cockroaches and white-skinned ma-
rauders.
She was not too happy about Rahamat the Kabuliwallah.
She repeatedly told me to
keep a close eye on him. If I tried to
laugh off her suspicions, she would launch
into a succession of
questions: 'So do people's children never go missing? And
is
there no slavery in Afghanistan? Is it completely impossible for a
huge
Afghan to kidnap a little child?' I had to admit that it was
not impossible, but
I found it hard to believe. People are suggest-
ible to varying degrees; this
was why my wife remained so edgy.
But I still saw nothing wrong in letting Rahamat
come to our
house.
Every year, about the middle of the month of Magh,
Rahamat
went home. He was always very busy before he left, collecting
money
owed to him. He had to go from house to house; but he
still made time to visit
Mini. To see them together, one might
well suppose that they were plotting something.
If he couldn't
come in the morning he would come in the evening; to see his
lanky
figure in a corner of the darkened house, with his baggy
pyjamas hanging loosely
around him, was indeed a little frighten-
ing. But my heart would light up as
Mini ran to meet him)
smiling and calling, '0 Kabuliwallah, Kabuliwallah,' and
the
usual innocent jokes passed between the two friends, unequal in
age though
they were.
One morning I was sitting in my little study correcting proof-
sheets.
The last days of winter had been very cold, shiveringly so.
The morning sun was
shining through the window on to my feet
below my table, and this touch of warmth
was very pleasant. It
must have been about eight o'clock - early morning walkers,
swathed
in scarves, had mostly finished their dawn stroll and had
returned to their homes.
It was then that there was a sudden
commotion in the street.
I looked out
and saw our Rahamat in handcuffs, being marched
along by two policemen, and behind
him a crowd of curious boys.
Rahamat's clothes were blood-stained, and one of
the policemen
was holding a blood-soaked knife. T went outside and stopped
him,
asking what was up. I heard partly from him and partly
from Rahamat himself that
a neighbour of ours had owed Raha-
mat something for a Rampuri chadar; he had
tried to lie his way
out of the debt, and in the ensuing brawl Rahamat had stabbed
him.
Rahamat was mouthing various unrepeatable curses against the
lying debtor, when
Mini ran out of the house calling, 'Kabuliwal-
lah, 0 Kabuliwallah.' For a moment
Rahamat's face lit up with
pleasure. Re had no bag over his shoulder today, so
they couldn't
have their usual discussion about it. Mini came straight out with
her
'Are you going to your swasur-bari?'
'Yes, I'm going there now,' said Rahamat
with a smile. But
when he saw that his reply had failed to amuse Mini, he bran-
dished
his handcuffed fists and said, 'I would have killed my
swasur, but how can I with
these on?'
Rahamat was convicted of assault, and sent to prison for several
years.
He virtually faded from our minds. Living at home, carry-
ing on day by day with
our routine tasks, we gave no thought to
how a free-spirited mountain-dweller
was passing his.years behind
prison-walls. As for the fickle Mini, even her father
woul4 have
to admit that her behaviour was not very praiseworthy. She
swiftly
forgot her old friend. At first Nabi the groom replaced
him in her affections;
later, as she grew up, girls rather than little
boys became her favourite companions.
She even stopped comirig
to her father's study. And I, in a sense, dropped her.
Several years went by. It was autumn again. Mini's marriage had
been decided,
and the wedding was fixed for the pu)a~-holiday.
Our pride and joy would soon,
like Durga going to Mount
Kailas, darken her parents' house by moving to her husband's.
It was a most beautiful morning. Sunlight, washed clean by
monsoon rains, seemed
to shine with the purity of smelted gold.
Its radiance lent an extraordinary grace
to Calcutta's back-streets,
with their squalid, tumbledown, cheek-by-jowl dwellings.
The
sanai started to play in our hou~e when night was scarcely over.
Its wailing
vibrations seemed to rise from deep within my rib-
cage. Its sad Bhairavi ra~ga
joined forces with the autumn sun-
shine, in spreading through the world the grief
of my imminent
separation. Today my Mini would be married.
From dawn on there
was uproar, endless coming and going. A
canopy was being erected in the yard of
the house, by binding
bamboo-poles together; chandeliers tinkled as they were
hung in
the rooms and verandahs; there was constant loud talk.
I was sitting
in my study doing accounts, when Rahamat
suddenly appeared and salaamed before
me. At first I didn't
recognize him. He had no bag; he had lost his long hair;
his
former vigour had gone. But when he smiled, I recognized him.
'How are
you, Rahamat?' I said. 'When did you come?'
'I was let out of prison yesterday
evening,' he replied.
His words startled me. I had never confronted a would-be
murderer
before; I shrank back at the sight of him. I began to feel
that on this auspicious
morning it would be better to have the
man out of the way. 'We've got something
on in our house today,'
I said. 'I'm tather busy. Please go now.'
He was ready
to go at once, but just as he reached the door he
hesitated a little and said,
'Can't I see your little girl for a moment?'
It seemed he thought that Mini was
still just as she was when
he had known her: that she would come running as before,
calling
'Kabuliwallah, 0 Kabuliwallah!'; that their old merry banter
would
resume. He had even brought (remembering their old
friendship) a box of grapes
and a few nuts and raisins wrapped in
paper - extracted, no doubt, from some Afghan
friend of his,
having no bag of his own now.
'There's something on in the
house today,' I said. 'You can't
see anyone.'
He looked rather crestfallen.
He stood silently for a moment
longer, casting a solemn glance at me; then, saying
'Babu salaam',
he walked towards the door. I felt a sudden pang. I thought of
calling
him back, but then I saw that he himself was returning.
'I brought this box of
grapes and these nuts and raisins for the
little one,' he said. 'Please give them
to her.' Taking them from
him, I was about to pay him for them when he suddenly
clasped
my arm and said, 'Please, don't give me any money I shall
always be
grateful, Babu. Just as you have a daughter, so do I
have one, in my own country.
It is with her in mind that I came
with a few raisins for your daughter: I didn't
come to trade with
you.
Then he put a hand inside his big loose shirt and
took out from
somewhere close to his heart a crumpled piece of paper. Unfolding
it
very carefully, he spread it out on my table. There was a small
handprint on the
paper: not a photograph, not a painting - the
hand had been rubbed with some soot
and pressed down on to
the paper. Every year Rahamat carried this memento of his
daughter
in his breast-pocket when he came to sell raisins in
Calcutta's streets: as if
the touch of that soft, small, childish hand
brought solace to his huge, homesick
breast. My eyes swam at
the sight of it. I forgot then that he was an Afghan raisin-seller
and
I was a Bengali Babu. I understood then that he was as I
am, that he was a father
just as I am a father. The handprint of
his little mountain-dwelling Parvati reminded
me of my own
Mini.
At once I sent for her from the inner part of the house.
Objections
came back: I refused to listen to them. Mini, dressed
as a bride - sandal-paste
pattern on her brow, red silk sari - came
timidly into the room and stood close
by me.
The Kabuliw allah was confused at first when he saw her: he
couldn't
bring himself to utter his old greeting.
ut at last he
smiled and said, 'Little one, are you going to your swasur-bari?'
Mini now knew the meaning of swasur-bari; she couldn't reply
as bekre - she blushed
at Rahamat's question and looked away. I
recalled the day when Mini and the Kabuliwallah
had first met.
My heart ached.
Mini left the room, and Rahamat, sighing deeply,
sat down on
the floor. He suddenly understood clearly that his own daughter
would
have grown up too since he last saw her, and with her too
he would have to become
re~acquainted: he would not find her ex-
actly as she was before. Who knew what
had happened to her these
eight years? In the cool autumn morning sunshine the
sanai went
on playing, and Rahamat sat in a Calcutta lane and pictured to
himself
the barren mountains of Afghanistan.
I took out a banknote and gave it to him.
'Rahamat,' I said, 'go
back to your homeland and your daughter; by your blessed
reunion,
Mini will be blessed.'
By giving him this money, I had to trim certain items
from the
wedding festivities. I wasn't able to afford the electric illumina-
tions
I had planned, nor did the trumpet-and-drum band
come. The womenfolk were very
displeased at this; but for me,
the ceremony was lit by a kinder, more gracious
light.
Kabuliwalla by Rabindranath Tagore, Translated by William Radice