Oh, yes, the village had a grand name: Vallabhpur it was called, and everybody knew there was a great Kakotia king called Vallabh, so Grandfather said, shaking the silver bangle on his arm, yes, Vallabh, the king — the same who built Saraswathi dam across the Narbada, and large canals and many temples (you can see these in ruins everywhere) and he built them when he had defeated the Muslims at some far-off and forgotten battle. He also gave lands to Brahmins in commemoration of his victory (victory cometh where Brahmin feedeth, so the saying goes among kings), thus the Eight-pillared House came into existence, while another king conquered some other foe, and since Mangal Bahadur was a brave soldier, though a Brahmin, and had killed a hundred foes with one scimitar, he was given this village in perpetuity (‘till the moon stood high in the sky and the sun rose red and big every auspicious morn,’ read the stone inscriptions that still stood beside the courtyard well). Life you know is very simple. You kill one hundred people in battle, and you’re given a village in perpetuity. That the village is tiger-haunted, a den of the hyena, the porcupine, and the teaser leopard, makes no difference whatsoever. When you say you have slain a hundred enemy-men you can kill a tiger or two as well. Sometimes the tiger cubs would go puling like puppies on the main street during moonlit nights — and you could see these through the barred windows — and I tell you they terrified you less than a visiting policeman. The visiting policeman needed a nice meal, an inner courtyard bed to sleep in (unless there was a willing woman somewhere down the village) and at least a piece of silver. But the tiger, he came — or she came as she went, and sometimes growled when she smelt a cow or a horse in the backyard. No tiger ever touched a man in Vallabhpur in all its history — unless you talked of that mad tiger of Bahadurabad or the old cronie of the Pusli hills — they of course took away babies or old women in the fields. Yet that is another matter. Tigers are good, you know, that is if you are good. And how many Gond1 boys did not ride a tiger and he does nothing to them. For example there was Kishmish Singh, the Gond, who looked after the cattle in the Eight-pillared House. He one day, sang a tiger to the water tank and made it go to the Shiva temple (he had such magic in his voice) and did not the tiger wave its tail and give a roar on looking at the god? The truth is: the tiger perhaps knows his Shiva better than you know yours, so said Grandfather, in explanation. The world is becoming so evil, he said again and again — in future all that will remain of Vallabhpur will be a few old men tottering in their forest coughs, a few aged widows, and the tigers of the forest coming to offer puja to Vallabheshwara, our temple god. Man is evil, today he loves his copper so much. He would rather his daughter married a tiger or your son a hyena than a proper human being, as long as tiger or hyena brought forth money, so to say.
Shivlal lying on his Ganga ghat bed had rehearsed again and again the events. First Grandfather’s sudden death— he looked so like a tiger himself, but in death he looked a saint when they went to touch his feet, before they took his body away. Then the father’s death — he died a few years later, returning after watching the workmen on his fields, he had dysentery and the rain had come, and you can’t wait for the sprouts to rise — and no sooner the father was carried away and cremated by the river (amidst those tall flowing acacia trees), the uncle being the younger and having seen more of the city than anyone had (and now he was, as it were, the master of the Household) — he put his nephews and niece, three boys and a girl, all on the streets. ‘There’s much water in the river,’ he said to the weeping widow, ‘and much tamarind on the tree, and the good God has given all the world for a home.’ Now, what had a poor woman done? Nothing except she be the elder brother’s wife, and she ran the household. If she did it not, tell me, who else should? And the younger sister-in-law, of course, came from a house with a horse and carriage and many lamps on the veranda, and one cannot trust her, could you, like one does everybody? Besides they also said, she and her family were great worshippers of talismans and dark-mantras and marsh-creatures and the nail-driving-in-the-courtyard stuff. You had just to see how this Rudrabai pared her nails and put them away under your ears with many a secret saying, thus showing she was not to be trusted with your baby. And she painted strange unguents behind the lobes of her ears and on her pretty, pretty toes. Life is that way. And three days before he died, had she not, that youngsome witch, not gone on that dark night somewhere, and there were all those whisperings, soft steps, silences, and goings-on. Yes, it was not dysentery— it was they that did it, the spirits. He had been frightened several times on the road coming from Sunderpur fair — and he was no coward. He saw shapes, faces, he said. He got fever again and again. And then the dysentery, and now the death. Who did it—she.
You see the uncle had a licence and a gun. He had been to the city and had learnt shooting. And since there were so many tigers hearabouts, and he had probably bribed Abdul Khan, the Sub-inspector of Police (and maybe they even went to the prostitute together), so came the gun. Now the important thing about a gun is just this: you’ve only to polish it every morning (with that evil smelling oil) on the veranda, and the whole village respects you. Not only the village but even the elder brother. Of course you stand up when your elder brother comes in, but at the root of your heart (and especially in the heart of that scorpion called Rukmini) you want the Eight-pillared House all to yourself. Already the Government Revenue Inspector, the Police Sub-inspector (a new one this time), the Cotton Merchant’s agent Shiva Sunder Das, they all came, came to see him, and some even came in taxi-cars. One day they’d all come and be the guests of Maganlal, the uncle. Why should not one be rich, I ask of you? Why, there are so many rich people in Bombay. You could have a car, and have a driver to drive your car, and take your wife on a drive like the rich do on Malabar Hill, Bombay. Why should not civilization come to Vallabhpur. The first thing is to sport a Western jacket, and buy your wife Bata slippers. With jacket and Bata slippers you can drink the best air God ever offered on earth.