That’s how it was that he returned to our village in the middle of the last harvest, and when Narsamma saw him coming down the Karwar road, his bundle in his hand, she cried out, ‘What is it, my son, that brings you here?’ and he told her of the Mahatma he had seen and of the schools that were corrupt, and Narsamma fell upon the floor and began to weep and to cry, saying that she would never look upon his face again. But, after all, she let him stay and she was glad to have him at home. She said, ‘You need not be a sub-collector or an assistant commissioner. You can look after your hereditary lands and have your two meals a day. ’ And the very next week there turned up Santapur Patwari Venkataramayya to offer his third daughter in marriage; but Waterfall Venkamma said that her daughter’s horoscope went incomparably better, and Nose-scratching Nanjamma said her granddaughter Sita was only seven years old but she should be married soon, if Moorthy would only say, ‘Yes, Aunt!’ But Moorthy simply said he did not wish to marry, and when Narsamma said, ‘You are a grown-up boy, Moorthy, and if you don’t marry now, you will take to evil ways,’ Moorthy, deferential as ever, said, ‘No, Mother. I swear upon my holy thread I shall keep pure and noble and will bring no evil to my ancestors.’ But every time there was a horoscope moving about, Narsamma always had it compared with Moorthy’s, for one day he would surely marry. He was the only son and she would have liked to close her eyes with an ever-lit house and sons and grandsons that would offer unfailing oblations to the manes. And when Moorthy began this Gandhi affair she was glad everybody talked to him and came to see him, and she hoped this way Maddur Coffee-planter Venkatanarayana himself would offer his daughter in marriage. After all Moorthy, too, had twenty-seven acres of wet land and fifty-four acres of dry land, and a cardamom garden, and a twenty-five-tree mango grove, and a small coffee plantation. Surely Venkatanarayana would offer his daughter in marriage! And there would be such a grand marriage, with a city band and motor cars and such an army of cooks, and there would be such a royal procession in the very heart of the city, with fire display and all. A real grand marriage, I tell you!
And from the day she saw this, as if in a vision, she would neither sleep nor sit, and she spoke secretly of it to Post-office-house Chinnamma, who was Maddur Coffee-planter Venkatanarayana’s cousin and Post-office Chinnamma said, ‘Of course I shall speak to Venku when he comes here next,’ and she spoke of it to Puttamma whose sister was Coffee-planter Venkatanarayana’s second wife. And the whisper went from house to house that Moorthy was to be married to the second daughter of Venkatanarayana. ‘Why,’ said Temple Lakshamma, ‘why, even the marriage day has been fixed — it will be in the dark half of the Sravan month,’ and they all said that soon the village would begin to prepare vermicelli and rice-cakes and ha-ppalams, and they all said, ‘This will be a fine marriage and we shall feast as we have never done — think of it, a coffee planter!’
But Waterfall Venkamma knew better. This good-for-nothing fellow, who could not even pass an examination and who had now taken to this Pariah business — why, he could beg, cringe and prostrate himself before the coffee planter but he would not even have the dirt out the body of his second daughter.
‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘if you want to know, I shall go straight to Narsamma herself and find it out’; and straight she went, her sari falling down her shaven head, and she walked fast, and when she came to Moorthy’s house she planted herself straight before his mother and cried, ‘Narsamma, I have come to ask you something. You know you said you did not want my daughter for your son. I am glad of it now and I say to myself, thank heaven I didn’t tie my daughter to the neck of a Pariah-mixer. Ah, well! I have horoscopes now from Bangalore and Mysore — with real B.A.s and M.A.s, and you will see a decent assistant commissioner take my daughter in marriage. But what I have come for is this: Tell me, Narsamma, it seems your son wants to marry Coffee-planter Venkatanarayana’s daughter. He will do nothing of the kind. God has not given me a tongue for nothing. And the first time your honoured guests come out after the marriage papers are drawn, here shall I be in this corner, and I shall tumble upon them, I a shaven widow, and I shall offer them a jolly good blessing ceremony in the choicest of words. Do you hear that, Narsamma? Well, let him take care, Moorthy. And our community will not be corrupted by such dirt-gobbling curs. Pariah! Pariah!’ She spat at the door and walked away, to the consternation of Narsamma, and the whole village said Venkamma was not Waterfall Venkamma for nothing, and that Narsamma should not take it to heart. And when Narsamma saw her at the river the next day, Venkamma was as jolly as ever and she said she had a bad tongue and that one day she would ask Carpenter Kenchavya to saw it out, and Narsamma said, ‘Oh, it does not matter, sister,’ and they all talked together happily and they came back home, their baskets on their heads, content.
But on this particular morning Venkamma was beginning to boil again. As Narsamma came forward, and, placing her basket on the sands, began to unroll her bundle, Venkamma plants herself like a banana-trunk in front of her and cries out:
‘Hè, Narsamma. Do you know what your son is bringing to this village?’
‘What?’ trembles Narsamma.
‘What? It’s for nothing you put forth into the world eleven children, if you do not even know what your very beloved son is always doing. I will tell you what he is doing: he is mixing with the Pariahs like a veritable Mohammedan, and the Swami has sent word through Bhatta to say that the whole of Kanthapura will be excommunicated. Do you hear that? A fine thing, too, it is, you with your broad ash-marks and your queer son and his ways. If he does not stop mixing with the Pariahs, this very hand — do you hear? — this very hand will give him two slaps on his cheeks and one on the buttocks and send him screaming to his friends, the Pariahs. Do you hear? And I have daughters to marry, and so has everybody else. If you have none, so much the worse for you. And we shall stand none of this Pariah affair. If he wants to go and sleep with those Pariah whores, he can do so by all means. But let him not call himself a Brahmin, do you hear? And tell him, the next time I see him in the Brahmin street, he will get a jolly fine marriage-welcome with my broomstick.’
‘Oh, calm yourself, Venkamma!’ says Post-office-house Chinnamma, the second daughter-in-law of the house. ‘After all, it is not for a woman to hold out in such speech. And Bhatta has not said the village is to be excommunicated. It shall be only if we mix with the Pariahs. ’
‘Oh, go away! What do you know of the outside world, you kitchen queen? I know. Bhatta met me yesterday and he told me all about it. The Swami has said that if this Pariah business is not stopped immediately the village will be excommunicated.’
‘When, Venkamma, when?’ trembled Narsamma. ‘Ex-communication!’
‘I told you, it was yesterday. I saw Bhatta. And he told me this. If not, how should I know?’
‘Why, Venkamma,’ says Chinnamma, ‘it was I who told it to you this morning!’