‘And what advocate are you having, Timma?’
‘Why? What do I know, learned one?’
‘Why not have Advocate Seenappa? He’s the best criminal lawyer in the district.’
‘As you like, says the licker of your feet.’
Advocate Seenappa alone will be chosen. The next day when the registration is going on, Timma and Bhatta go to see Seenappa.
‘Ah, come in, Bhattarè. How are the rains in your parts?’
‘Oh! fine, fine! I’ve come to bring you Timma, a man with a family and children, and I said to him, I’ll drop a word in your ear. He and his ancestors have cultivated our fields for generations. ’
‘Your Bhatta is like a brother to me,’ said Advocate Seenappa. ‘Timma, we’ll win the case.’ And he won the case.
Then there was Chennayya’s civil case about the field boundaries; Pariah Sidda’s canal-water case, and this case and that case, and Bhatta would say ‘I’ll take you to Advocate Seenappa’ or ‘I’ll take you to Advocate Ramachandrayya,’ and we all said, ‘Now Bhatta himself is becoming a lawyer.’ For, when concubine Chowdy and her neighbour Madanna quarrelled over the jasmine plant, Bhatta said, ‘Let them come and we’ll settle it.’ And he did settle it — and for ten rupees too. Then there was the case between Sampanna and Siddayya, and Chenna and her daughter-in-law, Sati, over the adoption, and Siddi and Venki about the poisoning of little Bora, and Seetharam and Subbayya over the night-grazings — he settled them all. And we said, ‘There’s no use going to the city for a lawyer. We’ve got one in Kanthapura.’ But Bhatta always said, ‘Your humble servant. I lick your feet.’ And when it was not he that settled a dispute, he took it to Seenappa or Ramanna, or when it was a small case of giving a notice or making an appeal, he went sometimes to Advocate Ramaswamy, ‘the three-pice advocate’ as they used to call him, and he was as good as any other. The notice would go, or the appeal would be drafted, and Bhatta would get just two rupees for his trouble. Just two rupees, you know. Three if it was an appeal!
Bhatta now owned thirty-seven acres of wet land and ninety acres of dry land in all the villages — in Kanthapura and Santur and Puttur and Honnalli. And there was not a Pariah or a Brahmin that did not owe him something. He was so smiling and so good. Never had he charged us more interest than Subba Chetty or Rama Chetty. Those two brothers were the ruin of our village.
They said, too, that it was Bhatta who had sent our Fig-tree-house Ramu to the city for studies. Why should he have done that? Ramu was not his son or nephew, but just a distant relation. ‘If you will bring a name to Kanthapura — that is my only recompense. And if by Kenchamma’s grace you get rich and become a collector, you will think of this poor Bhatta and send him the money — with no interest, of course, my son, for I have given it in the name of God. If not, may the gods keep you safe and fit. ’
I tell you, he was not a bad man, was Bhatta. But this dislike of the Gandhi-bhajan surprised us. After all there was no money in it, sister! But don’t they say, ‘Less strange are the ways of the gods than are the ways of men.’
One day, when Bhatta was returning from the river after his evening ablutions, he did not turn at the Mari-temple corner, but went straight along the Lantana lane and hurried up the steps of the Kannayya house. Old Ramakrishnayya was sitting on the veranda, his hand upon his nose, deep-breathful in meditation. Satamma was lying by the door, her head upon her arms, resting. And from the byre came the sound of milking — Rangamma was there.
As soon as Satamma saw Bhatta, she rose up quickly and asked why he had deigned to honour them so, and what happy news brought him there and how his wife and children were; and Bhatta answered it all by saying how very busy he had been, what with the bad rains and the sick cattle, and the manuring work and the hoeing work and the weeding work, and to top it all, those bonds and bonds and bonds to sign — really, if the very devils wanted to take his place, he would say, Take it! and bless those generous souls. ‘Really, Aunt, this business is terrible. One cannot even go and see if one’s relations are dead or alive. How are you all, Aunt?’
‘Like this. As usual.’
Then the byre door creaked and Rangamma came out with a sobbing lantern in one hand and the bright frothing milk pot in the other, and when she hears a stranger’s voice, she says, ‘Is it Bhattarè? What an honour!’ And Bhatta speaks again of the rains and the cattle and the peasants, and Rangamma goes in and comes out again and sits with the others. Ramakrishnayya has finished his meditation, and leaning against the wall he sits quietly in the dark. He was a silent, soft-voiced, few-worded man, our Ramakrishnayya.
‘Has your son found a good horoscope to go with his daughter’s?’ Bhatta begins again. ‘It is so difficult to find bridegrooms these days. When I was in town the other day, I went to see old Subrama Pandita. And he was telling me how he could find no one for his last granddaughter. No one. Every fellow with a Matric or an Inter asks, “What dowry do you offer? How far will you finance my studies? — I want to have this degree and that degree.” Degrees. Degrees. Nothing but degrees or this Gandhi vagabondage. When there are boys like Moorthy, who should get safely married and settle down, they begin this Gandhi business. What is this Gandhi business? Nothing but weaving coarse handmade cloth, not fit for a mop, and bellowing out bhajans and bhajans, and mixing with the Pariahs. Pariahs now come to the temple door and tomorrow they would like to be in the heart of it. They will one day put themselves in the place of the Brahmins and begin to teach the Vedas. I heard only the other day that in the Mysore Sanscrit College some Pariahs sought admission. Why, our Beadle Timmayya will come one of these days to ask my daughter in marriage! Why shouldn’t he?’
Rangamma lifts her head a little and whispers respectfully, ‘I don’t think we need fear that, Bhattarè. The Pariahs could always come as far as the temple door, couldn’t they? And across the Mysore border, in Belur, they can even enter the temple once a year. ’
‘That is what you think, Rangamma. But I, who so often go to the city, I see it more clearly. Listen! Do you know Advocate Rama Sastri, the son of the old, orthodox Ranga Sastri, has now been talking of throwing open his temple to the Pariahs? “The public temples are under the Government,” he says, “but this one was built by my ancestors and I shall let the Pariahs in, and which bastard of his father will say no?” I hope, however, the father will have croaked before that. But really, Aunt, we live in a strange age. What with their modern education and their modern women. Do you know, in the city they already have grown up girls, fit enough to be mothers of two or three children, going to the universities? And they talk to this boy and that boy; and what they do amongst themselves, heaven alone knows. And one, too, I heard, went and married a Mohammedan. Really, Aunt, that is horrible!’
‘That is horrible,’ repeats Satamma. ‘After all, my son, it is the Kaliyuga floods, and as the sastras say, there will be the confusion of castes and the pollution of progeny. We can’t help it, perhaps. ’
But Rangamma whispers again from the corner: ‘Has the Mahatma approved it? I don’t think so. He always says let the castes exist, let the separate eating exist, let not one community marry with the other — no, no, Bhattarè, the Mahatma is not for all this pollution.’