Shivlal’s father was too simple. He wanted to be (like his own father), a just and a true landowner. His younger brother, however, now dreamt of a cotton-ginning mill. Koo kooo koooo, the whistle would go and the machine would chug, and bullock carts waited at your door to get paid. The world is no more made for the plough and pounding pestle. Get up, brother, and come to the city. A mill in town is the city in your pocket. And money would flow into the safes. Big people will come to visit you. And your daughter, now four years old, would one day go to the Hunter College, Nagpur (CP).
It’s not so easy to buy ginning mill equipment. You have to sell the land, and buy this tremble mumble machine. If your elders protest what do you do? You go on dreaming and scheming with your friends, in town. Friends indeed whom you meet at the drink shop or at Shanta Bai, the dancing girl. And big schemes were made. (The licence came, and the gun played its part.) There was not a man, fifty miles around, who could twirl a moustache, a gun between his legs. Everybody is not lucky. But does the gun always bring luck? What if it brought murder. Also when you have a gun you are with the British. When you are with the British alone can you win. Wars come and you go up. The picture of Gandhi on your wall is a disgrace for so important a landowning family. There was that big story of a murder in Bilaspur. A young widow was found murdered — she was found with a Muslim lover. Communal riots were feared. You could patrol the streets now, gun in hand (the Government allowed you to), and the whole district fell into your palm. Everybody feared you, feared anybody who’d a gun. From then on to the sale of the land (the brother gave in, he was so silent and good) and within a few months city cars came to stand at your door. Money came from everywhere. Who would not trust you now that you’d so many rich at your door. Meanwhile the rusty old brother died. So much less sneeze and cough in the world. An old fogey who lived as if the train had not been invented by man, or the aeroplane. The wife’s makings must certainly have worked, too.
Maganlal (the uncle) occupied the whole house, and there was not a soul in the entire district who would save a widow and her four children from despoliation. After this the story is simple. The widow threw herself into the temple tank, thus she could haunt that sister-in-law (with Bata slippers and all, like a cinema star) forever. Ramlal, the elder of the boys, got engaged as a cook by the Dholpur Stationmaster and looked after the family, from afar, as well as he could.
One day (after long years of honourable service) Ramlal took the train (when his master was away visiting his family) — Ramlal, so one heard, became a cook on Malabar Hill, Bombay. (So much had Malabar Hill become a part of the Vallabhpur imaginationings.) Sankerlal the second son grew wise, and used to be a bicycle shop assistant, then married his boss’s niece (the boss had no children of his own) and now dreamt of revenge, and motor cars. He is the only one who will not leave the district. Either that Gunman (that’s what he called his uncle) is dead and cremated, or I. The father’s death will be avenged. Now and again when the gay aunt comes to town, he stands at his shop door and shouts: ‘Hé prostitute, with which officer are you sleeping today?’ For such things do happen, you know, and now that the mill is prosperous and the Gunman is all-powerful, who can know where the money came from? But our Sankerlal too had made some money (in wartime the bicycle-taxi is good trade, you know, and the poor Gandhi-men need bicycles for the wide propagation of the Gandhi faith). And now the case will soon go up before Sessions Court. The lawyer Jagath Ram is hopeful. The British would anyway go soon. And under the Gandhi Government there will be no place for a wicked creature like the Gunman. The British will go, and we will have a just and non-violent Raj.
The British have now gone, and it’s so long ago. The Gunman became in the course of a single, single moon, a Gandhi-man, and is now president of the Chanda District Congress Committee. His mills run better than ever — in fact he has three of them now. His wife wears high-heeled slippers, and even speaks titter-mitter English, so they say. Their children go to convent schools, of course.
Shivlal, the last boy, was interested neither in the English language nor in the ginning mills. While living with his brother — the same who was a cook to the Dholpur Stationmaster — a Sadhu came in unobserved and sat on the railway station bench. ‘Fetch me some water, I’m thirsty,’ he said. The boy ran to the stationmaster’s quarters (a squat house under the neem tree, there) and brought the Sadhu a glass of water. Meanwhile the stationmaster had warned the Sadhu: ‘Please leave the premises of the station, you hear. You cannot take the train. But if you do — I’ll have you arrested.’ The Sadhu laughed: ‘Oho,’ he said, ‘try, and we’ll see.’ The stationmaster meant what he said. Those were Government rules, and the trains belong to the Government. But there was no policeman in eight miles circle. Anyway there was no need for a policeman either. The Sadhu just disappeared. The train came, stopped, emptied somewhat, and filled in with a few new passengers, and whistled — it was the Itarsi Express — but there was no Sadhu. At the time the train was just getting into motion, suddenly from the other side of the track, the Sadhu jumped on the running footboard. The guard showed the red flag. The train stopped and the Sadhu ran Kamandala and topknot, across the fields, before they could find him. Shivlal was in tears. He loved the Sadhu. He loved the Sadhu’s matted hair, and the marvels he told of his travels. Shivlal had even fed the Sadhu, at home, when the stationmaster was on duty and tied up at the station. The stationmaster was a young widower. His wife had just died. He had not married again.
The next morning something extraordinary was seen at Dholpur railway station. And people there remember it to our own day. When the Nagpur Express dragged in, one saw a Sadhu stretched on the farther track, with nails struck through his two feet and left hand, dead-down to the earth. Laughing, he was caressing his long beard, with the other hand. There was such a commotion, passengers rushed down, and some even fell at the Sadhu’s feet, women fainted. But he was laughing away at the crowd, at the train, and at young Shivlal who was in tears. ‘And now,’ said the Sadhu, ‘make your train move. That wretched thing is nailed to this station as I’m nailed to this earth. Isn’t that so, child?’ he asked, looking at Shivlal. Shivlal would say nothing. He was sobbing. The passengers prayed: ‘Let me pay you the fare, Swamiji.’ ‘O come with me Swamiji, and be my guest?’ ‘O Swamiji bless me, I’m an unhappy man. I have lost all my family in the recent Mahanadi floods.’ The Sadhu heard no one. The guard blew the whistle. The crowd ran to the train. The train whistled, and despite the Sadhu it started to move. The Sadhu swore. ‘You bitch,’ he shouted, ‘you move. I ask you: stop!’ And Shivlal will still tell you at Dholpur station, the train stopped just after a few puffs like a kickedin-the-shins cur. The driver, an Anglo-Indian, furnished and refurnished the engine with coal, pulled this plug and that: Chuk, chuk, chuk, it would puff, but it would not budge. And the whole valley could hear the Sadhu’s laughter. Even more people jumped out of the train, and fell at his feet, ‘O great man may you bless us!’ ‘O great man let me have a child.’ ‘O great man,’ said Ramlal, the stationmaster’s cook running from the stationmaster’s quarters. ‘May my brother win the high court case against that wretch, my uncle.’ This was before Ramlal had left for Bombay. The stationmaster himself came down with the guard. The guard said: ‘Sadhuji you could go to the end of the world as far as the Western Railways are concerned. But please allow us to go.’ The Sadhu laughing, pulled off his nails as you would the firewood from the burning oven. The driver now whistled. And the Sadhu, his clothes, his trident, and his kamandala, slowly went as if in a saunter, towards the train. Many doors opened. Shivlal followed him. ‘Jump in, child,’ said the Sadhu. Shivlal jumped in, like his dog. And the Sadhu entered the compartment and all the passengers gave way and made a place for him, to sit. Some brought out a pillow, and others carpets, and a few lit incense sticks. Some offered him bananas. Shivlal was so proud. The Sadhu took the fruits and gave them to Shivlal.