Cast of Characters
Banyan (Bad) — an old tree, symbol of stability and experience (narrator)
New Road (Sidak) — the road-line, symbol of modern consciousness (narrator)
Indro — an educated schoolteacher, symbol of women's awakening (lead)
Nandu Dhakaliya — Indro's uncle, a creature of the old age (supporting)
Captain — Indro's husband, arrogant and orthodox (antagonist)
Friend — the Captain's friend, a hunter (supporting)
Girl — a village schoolgirl (minor)
Scene 1
Road: Grandfather, how many times have I stopped you from giving me these nicknames. Now Manglo, now Shivdei, now Chenchlo. Now this, now that.
Banyan: Good soul, there's no nickname in these names. They are all names of pearls, no mere wayside thorns. From the deep pool of thought the fairy of imagination has drawn out each of these names, holding her breath, dropping her bucket again and again. You tell me — why do you call me 'grandfather'?
Road: First answer my question. This pool, this imagination, this holding of breath — what is all this? All right, tell me this: how am I 'Manglo,' the auspicious one?
Banyan: How many times you've asked, and how many times I've told — that with your coming-into-being, all these villages settled along the lower banks of the stream have become happy. With your coming, an age of their despair has ended. These villages had sunk into despair, each in its own anguish; taking the form of a new road, you have come as a boon to them, bringing fresh hopes of going. You are the mark of auspiciousness for these villages. That's why I sometimes call you Mangli too.
Road: But it seems, grandfather, that you've heard those sharp barbs of that Nandu Dhakaliya and turned a deaf ear to them. He says this is no road but a lioness — a lioness that will, slowly, one by one, swallow and digest these villages.
Banyan: Nandu Dhakaliya is mad. Why mind his talk?
Road: If he's mad, he's also clear-sighted... Hearing his talk, I truly feel a dread. When sometimes, at noon or evening, he sits alone with you on this platform, hearing his words my heart begins to pound.
Banyan: What's the fault of that poor man? He's a creature of a bygone age. Seeing these changes that come riding on these motors and carts, what all passes through his mind — only he knows.
Road: But grandfather, you too are not of the new age. You too, who knows, have seen how many ages. Seeing this change, does your heart not waver?
Banyan: You are the play-line of this new life — that's why you're Manglo. This creation, in every age, has been the stage of a drama of three kinds of characters, Manglo. One, characters like me, who, having come down onto the stage, merge into the audience; second, those like Nandu, whom the narrator signals to leave the stage; and third, those like you — or like Nandu's niece, the schoolteacher Indro — who come onto the stage with new roles, to keep this ageless, deathless drama going.
Road: Grandfather, do you now count yourself only among the spectators? Even now, how many people honour and revere you, circle round you in reverence. People who have you tie the auspicious thread, who offer rice and flowers to you.
Banyan: This worship, this rice, these flowers, this incense, this auspicious thread — all these signs and marks are not wholesome signs of life, you innocent! They are all symbols of being pushed aside, out of the bustle of life. You truly are very innocent, Shiv-dei.
Road: Shiv-dei?
Banyan: [laughing a little] Those who, honouring that old shrine of Shiva on that hillock, laid your route this way — they made your line by this road; otherwise the straight way runs a furlong above. So I take you to be the gift of that very Shiva.
Road: And this great hump that has come into my body here?
Banyan: For that, lay the blame on that same Nandu Dhakaliya, who cried out that if this banyan were cut, he'd take his own life by plunging a dagger. Otherwise his niece Indro and the other young men of the village were all insistent that, where hundreds of other trees were felled, on this banyan dwells some such deity that, to save it, this dangerous bend was made and a needless obstruction raised in the passage of the motors and lorries.
Road: Grandfather, the real truth is that everyone looks only to the service of his own comfort and ease — who has any care for another's life or death? And then, what do those hasty people know that companionship too has some worth in life? And the company of experienced eyes, which have seen many a turning of the ages.
Scene 2
[ A truck passes, sounding its horn. A little later a motor passes. A thin, sharp horn, and the laughter of the people sitting inside. A flash, as it were. ]
Banyan: Shiv-dei, old experiences become tales and stories. Slowly their state becomes just like that snake-slough lying before me by the embankment. Once it was the snake's own limb, a partner in every movement of the snake's life — companion to its hisses and to the venom-filled sacs. And now, where it lies as it lies, how helpless it is. What kind of snake was it, how venomous? Did it ever bite anyone, or not? Where all did it wander? Was there some she-snake of its kind somewhere? Hundreds of such questions, flying like these birds, now pass over this slough — but who is to answer?
Road: The people joined in that motor are shameless — did you hear their laughter, grandfather? From the motor came the smell of liquor, as it were.
Banyan: The fuel by which these lorries and motors run also has a smell, Manglo.
Road: Yes, it does, but I'm not so green that I can't tell the difference between the smell of motor-fuel and of liquor. These people...
Banyan: [cutting in] People have been people in every age, you innocent. You haven't seen the past ages. I've seen and heard a little more. In every age it's just been the craving for pleasure that's been supreme. The only difference is that sometimes social restraint kept and held that craving in check, and sometimes the craving, overstepping these bounds and lines of the times, went wild and ran free. The forbidding of liquor is present in every religion, but the followers of every religion have been enchanted by these bottles and cups. You leave off this worry.
Road: What will I do with this worry — but when this liquor turns the motors and lorries badly topsy-turvy, I too have to suffer along with them.
Banyan: Shiv-dei, be thankful that we too have come this close to this bustle of life; otherwise a whole age passed in these dense glooms of darkness and shadow. From the wind's blowing and the rays of moon and sun alone could one tell that the season was beginning to change! This stir, this music of noise, this wave-tossed motion — this is life, my dear. Here, motion is everything, [slowly] here, motion is everything.
Road: [drowsy] Is someone coming, grandfather?
Banyan: No, it's Nandu Dhakaliya coming. The poor man's knots aren't to be untangled. Though alone, just look at what thoughts he's fallen into. He takes four steps and stops, looks back, then walks on. Who is it behind him that he keeps seeking?
Scene 3
[ A motor passes... the sound of Nandu's footsteps approaches. He comes and sits on the banyan's platform. ]
Nandu: O Ram! My very life is at my nose, hearing and hearing this girl's talk and bearing and bearing her barbs. I too understand that Bapu, looking only at money and a noble house in making the marriage-tie, did not act with wisdom — but when do all girls get homes of their own choosing? And when do all, like this one, spurn their in-laws so and come and sit at their parents'? But tell me, what was wrong in the match either? The boy held a captaincy. No — don't other people marry too? After all, this one too spent five or seven months there together with him. Then what star sank, that having once come she never even spoke of going back? She's arrived. I knew she'd come — but now if I go back with her, then I'm not Nandu Dhakaliya. Yes, day after day a drama like this goes on here. What must the people think too. Whatever they may think, who has the mother's-milk in him to say a word before her? [Indro comes.]
Indro: Uncle, I'm quite worn out. My, you walk very fast. This descending slope — going up and down, one's joints come apart. But I haven't come today to placate you. Those who must sulk every day — what's the use of placating them? But whenever you, sulking, run from the house with talk of going off to the holy places, you forget two things. One, this rosary, and this packet of cigarettes. Go to the holy places, and the rosary at least must be at hand; and though one may not get a meal to reach the holy places, the support of a cigarette or bidi is needed. Seeing these two things lying about, I felt sure that uncle had again, it seems, made his preparations for the holy places. Here, keep your two things, and I'm off.
Nandu: I'm off! Then why come running, racing here? No — those who go to the holy places, do they not need a rosary there? Who has tied notes into my knot, that at this age I should go to the holy places and beg? You — you? Speak — you?
Indro: Uncle, if you go to the holy places on your niece's money, what merit will there be in it? But those who go to the holy places with true renunciation don't set out tying notes into their knot. Do the renunciants of renunciants set out tying notes, naked ascetics that they are?
Nandu: Enough, enough, say no more, you atheist from somewhere. Do only naked ascetics go to the holy places? Do household people not go?
Indro: Why wouldn't they go, they do... but those who don't find God in their own home, or who have surplus money. For you, the seven shrines are right here in the village. If somewhere you'd found buried, hidden treasure, then on the third day you'd dress up ready — I'm off to the holy places, I'm off to the holy places.
Nandu: Girl, look here, don't make me jeer at you. If there's buried treasure somewhere in these ruins, then you go dig it up and eat it. I told you to look after these ruins of your maternal grandparents. For me, this village is now just what Ravana's Lanka was for Vibhishana.
Indro: You remember that family-traitor Vibhishana very often, uncle! Treason to one's family, one's country, one's caste — all sins get buried and stored away under the name of Rama. If you too must go off from this Lanka to some Ayodhya, tell me — why do you set out at high noon like this? Today was a holiday, so I came running; otherwise all the year's holidays just pass in placating sulkers.
Nandu: But why do you come to placate the sulker? Who tells you to? [in a tearful voice] Why don't you let me go off somewhere? Why not, why not?
Indro: Grandfather left me bawling like a frog and himself vanished. And you too always blamed me — that I left the title of Captain's-wife and came and clung to your neck. I ask: what stain falls on the brow of your family from my becoming a schoolteacher? Was I a sweeper-woman, that you didn't take me here? It was grandfather alone I took for a father — he who had me educated up to college, showed me the light, made me fit to think and understand. Why did he seek out this very prison of reactionary ideas for me? Because I was a sweeper-woman? An orphan girl reared on your scraps? Had I, by your decision, just died in that suffocating prison, would the honour of your jaildari have stayed bright?
Nandu: Our scriptures and shastras call this here a girl's dharma, Indro.
Indro: But I haven't read your scriptures. The writers of the books I've read were no less than your sages and seers. The lesson of the soul's loftiness that they taught me — for me that is the dharma-shastra and that the pure command. Here, take your rosary, and here, your cigarettes. And here, take these rupees to go as far as Haridwar. You don't need the fare back, but if you do, write from there. I'll send that too. And I'm off. [goes off]
Nandu: Did you see? This girl's spirit! Hare Ram, Hare Ram! "You don't need the fare back... if you do, write, I'll send it." She gunpowders her talk with such pepper that wherever it touches, a blister rises. I'm her uncle and she's my niece. I ask — good soul, are you not my own kin? I've become a mad fool, but you're educated, clever and wise. If one person plays the fool, what cleverness is there in shoving him and leaving him to bawl like a frog? You tell me, banyan-deity — is there any cleverness in this? She says grandfather left me to bawl, who married her to that Captain. All right, granted — but, good soul, are you now taking your revenge on me? Shoving me, you keep driving me out of the village. Tell me, am I to go to the holy places and starve? Better than that, that I take my own life right here, plunging a dagger. Eh, banyan-deity? You remember, don't you? To save you too, once, I spoke of plunging a dagger and dying, and saved you from the contractors' axe. Oho-ho. Nandu Dhakaliya. You too were something in your day, but this girl has made you lighter than a straw. Bear it in mind, villagers — I too am a jaildar's son; if I plunge a dagger, it'll be in my own courtyard... yes... [rising, as he walks off] in my own courtyard, yes, in my own courtyard.
(A silence falls for a while.)
Banyan: (with a guffaw) Did you see, Manglo. When people call this Nandu mad, do they speak any falsehood? Bravo, Nandu Dhakaliya. He says he too was something in his day. And he speaks the truth, Manglo. He too rolled his papads on many an occasion, but the thing is, the counterfeit coin never passed anywhere. The poor wretch never in his whole life found the place where his real place was.
Road: Grandfather, this poor man is sorrowful, true, but this schoolteacher girl is really very sharp too. Why, grandfather, what was this Nandu? Some contractor?
Banyan: Not a contractor. But a contractor's clerk he certainly was, for a while — but Manglo, is there any ghat whose water he hasn't drunk? Only it's that kind of 'ghat' that nowhere holds or settles for long. He thought that every art, every craft of the world, dwelt in his fingers.
Road: What sort of art and craft, grandfather? Painting, or singing and playing?
Banyan: Chenchlo, in childhood he once ran off with strolling players. They'd dress him up as a woman and have him dance. He had a voice, but not every note and beat would come to him. When he came out of that prison, on his way back he brought an old harmonium. Then, in the company of sadhus and saints, amid pulls of charas, bhajan-kirtan went on. His father was a jaildar — a man of great authority and dread. Once he bound and tied him up, kept him locked three days and beat him till his limbs went limp.
Road: What bravery is there in this, grandfather? First not to look after a creature, and then, turning butcher, to rain blows — is this any cleverness? Isn't it true, grandfather?
Banyan: When the workmen freed him from that imprisonment, then he ran off to the city. There for a while he wallowed in dirt with some band-players; then, leaving that, he learned painting for a while. Who knows what all else he did and where all he was disgraced.
Road: How do you know all this, grandfather?
Banyan: Is any secret of this region, any matter of this place, hidden from me, after all? Coming to this very platform, people themselves tell all the past and present here. These innocents don't know that the one whom they take for solitude — into which they pour out the boils of their minds — there, someone else is listening too.
Road: Grandfather! We hear and understand all the talk of these men from you — in the same way, can these people too hear and understand our talk?
Banyan: No, Manglo, not all. But some clever, wise one hears and understands. Whether anyone else in this village can hear and understand these things or not, I reckon this niece of that everything's-cure peepul-root Nandu Dhakaliya certainly understands.
Road: How so? How did you tell?
Banyan: Nandu says, doesn't he, that had he not shown the fear of plunging a dagger and dying, the contractor would have felled me and straightened the road; but I know — and people know too — that Nandu is the form of thundering clouds that don't rain. This very girl, that day, looked toward me with a stare; the dread of death spread over my leaves and branches was not hidden from her keen eyes. Smiling and looking toward her uncle, she'd said softly, "Uncle, this talk of plunging a dagger is a very bad thing you've said. Come, let the road be a little humped, but don't give your dagger this trouble."
Road: But grandfather, tell me one thing — why did this girl not settle in her own home?
[ Hearing the sound of a jeep coming on the road ]
Banyan: This jeep comes raising hot ash; let it pass, then I'll tell you.
Scene 5
[ The jeep comes and stops there. ]
[ A male voice ] — Why, Captain sahib, why've you stopped the jeep? You haven't forgotten to bring the cartridges, have you? The forest is still a fair way off.
Captain: No, friend, the cartridges are with me. You asked one day, didn't you, where the new Captain's-wife lives now, having left us? I've stopped to point it out. This descending road goes to that very village.
Friend: Shall we go there some day? Let's bring round your sulking sister-in-law.
Captain: That wanton — even if she ever came putting a cloth round her neck and a blade of grass in her mouth, even then I wouldn't let her set foot inside that threshold of mine.
Friend: So much anger, Captain sahib?
[ The Banyan and the Road whisper. ]
Banyan: [softly] Manglo.
Road: Yes.
Banyan: Did you recognise him?
Road: Yes, I recognised him from his talk. Was it to this hunter that that pretty, sharp Indro was wedded? The two have very, very different natures, grandfather.
Captain: Anger? You speak of anger? The way she has smeared ink on my face, on my family's face — that can now be wiped off in only one way.
Friend: In what way?
Captain: By humiliating her, bringing her low. By making her beg pardon. (changing tone) Could there be no such way that — even if I have to spend a thousand rupees — once she sets foot inside that threshold again, then I'd show her how many twenties make a hundred.
Road: (softly) Grandfather, do you hear? What will he do to her?
Banyan: Man is a very weak creature, Manglo. He fights with his own self, wrestles with himself. Defeated by his own self, he tears his own hair; with his own claws he makes his own self bloody.
Friend: Captain ji, what if she ever turns up here? Then what?
Captain: (taken aback, as it were) Then?... then?... Let's hunt — what need then to go further into the forest?
Banyan: Chenchlo, did you hear? But... who's this coming from the village this way? It seems to be mad Nandu. This is a bad business, Shiv-dei!
Road: Why so, grandfather?
Banyan: Nandu is mad, and this Captain is a fool. This meeting of the two is no good.
Road: But why has Nandu come back?
Banyan: Look there — his rosary, it seems, has stayed here.
Friend: But Captain, we'd heard your sister-in-law is very educated.
Captain: It was just this she was proud of.
Friend: You too must have committed some excess, Captain ji.
Captain: I said just one thing to her — that she should tear up and burn these degree-shmegrees of her schooling, and live demure and quiet, the way the women of this house have always lived before.
Friend: What need was there to say that?
Captain: From the very first day she didn't keep her crowd to herself, and felt no hesitation in talking with Bapu either. There was talk of this all over the locality. The very next day she changed the look of my sitting-room. My first wife's photo — wherever she found it. She cleaned it and put it on the mantelpiece in such a way that anyone coming or going would be sure to glance at it. I thought she'd taken offence at seeing that photo. But she was educated; she did just right.
Friend: She did just right, didn't she? I didn't take it as right. Then, seeing the books lying in the cupboard, she looked at me and asked — this cheap literature, this sex and crime fiction, is this your honour's taste?
Friend: Excellent! What did you answer?
Captain: I said — well, military men don't read sermons on ethics; we like just this sex, crime, hunting and detective fiction.
Friend: What need was there to give such a blunt answer? Courtesy is also a thing.
Captain: But to fire arrows of criticism and sarcasm at one's husband on the very first day — by whose courtesy was that?
Friend: When you'd made an educated girl your life-partner, then to be a little tolerant of her tastes and likings too was necessary. The fact is, you were vexed beforehand at her free and unhesitating ways; otherwise it was nothing for a man to feel insulted by.
Captain: Don't make your guesses. In your mind too there's this bias filled beforehand, that she's innocent and the whole crime is mine. But what need was there, the moment she arrived, to wake the sleeping strife like this? What need to set up her co-wife's photo so pointedly, with so much honour? What need to reason thus over my likes and dislikes?
Friend: Had she treated that photo in another way, even then it would have struck major. And only an educated woman can speak about literature like that. How would she become an illiterate the moment she came into your house? That man comes from that very direction — he must be of that very village.
Captain: He? Ah! Why, this is her very uncle. People say his mind isn't right. Some screw of his is loose. [as he comes near] Uncle ji, greetings?
Nandu: Greetings? Uncle ji? Mockery? With me?
Captain: No, no mockery, uncle-friend. Didn't you recognise me? I'm Captain Shrichand.
Nandu: You may be. Be it in your own home. [pausing a little] What did you say — Shrichand? Captain Shrichand? Bravo, Captain ji? I've seen your captaincy. When the jaildar departed this world, it was as if everyone's life and strength sank away. Is this jeep yours?
Captain: Yes.
Nandu: Who are these?
Captain: My friends.
Nandu: Is this a double-barrel? And what have they got? A muzzle-loader or cartridges? [laughs] Double-barrels and cartridges. Ha ha ha. Fire away — if they've come loaded, fire away. Have you brought them as backup, Captain?
Captain: Backup for whom?
Nandu: For whom? [ha ha ha] Is the contest with the strong? Look at my knot here — three notes, of ten each. Flinging them, she said, this much money is enough to go to Haridwar.
Captain: So now you're going to Haridwar?
Nandu: Will you drop me there on your jeep, then?
Captain: Haridwar? Which Haridwar? The Shuddh Mahadev one near Chenani, or that Rishikesh one?
Nandu: What's your advice? Which should one go to? Which of the two is right? Where is the greater merit?
Captain: The greater merit, uncle ji, is in hunting. The 'beer' is with us — come, today, with us. Come once and see our Haridwar too.
Nandu: Hunting and Haridwar... ha ha ha. All right, I'll come to your Haridwar too some day, but right now I've come to fetch the rosary I forgot here. Earlier, when I came sulking, she came and met me like the electric one. Captain ji, you have a jeep — why put yourself in danger? Go, make merry. Go, vanish on your jeep. This captaincy, these rifles and guns, this whoosh-bang, brother hunter — keep them for partridges, hills and francolins. The village right below — eh, Captain Shrichand ji! The village of jaildar Rasila. That poor jaildar departed, but now the one who's the jaildar of that village is a schoolteacher — ha ha hee hee, God forbid, God forbid, Hare Ram, Hare Ram. [goes off]
Friend: Captain ji.
Captain: [silent.]
Friend: Are we to go hunting, or is your advice to turn straight back from here? Friend, if this is the uncle's form, what must the niece's be? The drama's interesting, my hero, but your own part is a bit weak. Your opening dialogues too were very engaging, but further on it's very limp. [ha ha]
Captain: No, friend, neither is the part weak nor the hero — but the situations have so dominated that the whole 'role' has stayed very passive. Well! Today, in jaildar Rasila's village, the meeting with this new jaildar schoolteacher came off, so it's all right.
Friend: And the hunting programme?
Captain: First the hunt for which we've come will be played; but on the way back the rest of the road will go through the middle of the village.
Scene 6
[ The jeep starts and drives off. ]
Road: Grandfather?
Banyan: Live long.
Road: But you didn't tell me — why did this schoolteacher come away from her in-laws like this, breaking off all kith and kin?
Banyan: Chenchlo! In this world, killing one's own heart and compromising with every kind of bond is also a feat — but ninety-nine out of a hundred do it, while some one person doesn't. This Indro is one such. She too, for six or seven months, made the effort from her side, but every kind of cutting doesn't take root in every kind of place. Come, let me tell you how this happened and how it came about.
Flashback 1
[ Notes of music rise and slowly fade. ]
Indro: Every kind of cutting doesn't take in every place, Captain sahib.
Captain: That depends on the hand that does the grafting, schoolteacher ji. Have you ever heard the name of "Gulami of the gardens"? Gulami was the name of that gardener who, they say, grafted a rose onto a thorn-apple plant and showed it.
Indro: That was a miracle, then? Even Gulami knew that the rose's place is not on a thorn-apple plant.
Captain: It may not be. But the plants that give neither fruit nor flower — what right have they to drink the sap of the earth's breast?
Indro: But in that, what's the fault of the plant either?
Captain: Not its fault, granted — the earth's misfortune, then.
Indro: Only the earth's? And not that tree's, whose whole life became meaningless?
Captain: What do you mean? What are you trying to say?
Indro: What am I trying to say? I'd only come to tell you that your fridge has broken down. The game you shot and brought yesterday has gone bad.
Captain: If it's gone bad, throw it out. Our double-barrel is all right, isn't it? The cartridges aren't out of stock? If the gun's there, there's no shortage of game.
Indro: But if the fridge breaks, the game can't be saved from going bad for many days.
Flashback 2
( Notes of music rise and slowly fade. )
Captain: I've heard you've put in an application to have yourself transferred to the school right here?
Indro: Of course I have. Should I stay here and go to that village to teach?
Captain: But what need have you to do a job? In our family the women don't work. This is our age-old custom and tradition here.
Indro: When the age changes, these age-old customs and traditions should change too.
Captain: But in homes where food and clothing come to one with honour, why should the women do jobs?
Indro: A job isn't done only for the means of food and clothing. The mind's inclination is also a thing. I do this job because I find contentment in this work of teaching. I feel a sense of pride.
Captain: But social custom? The honour of home and family? Your contentment and pride have become great things, then?
Indro: You've seen the world — even you talk of social custom and family honour? The social custom that's vexed by reading and teaching, the false honour that's hurt by it — how long can anyone bear that burden?
Captain: What do you mean? Is this honour such a heavy thing?
Indro: The honour that's stung even by a woman's foot stepping outside the house — if it's not heavy, how is it light? If on this earth the honour of all families were in danger of falling like this, would not opening and running schools and institutions for girls and women be a sin throughout the world? The tradition that's stung by women's reading and writing — that tradition has, with every trick and effort, failed to stop this light, Captain ji; to cry it up is like waking the dead asleep in their graves.
Captain: Indro! You call me and the elders of my family fools? You'll live in this very house and keep grinding mung on our chest? How can this be?
Flashback 3
( Music rises and fades. )
Captain: Indro, mother is asking — today is Karva Chauth; today you didn't go to school?
Indro: Karva Chauth? What difference does my going to school make to Karva Chauth?
Captain: Today married women don't do sewing or stitching; the work of writing too ought not to be done.
Indro: But for this no holiday is officially given in the schools. Fasts and vows are people's private things; the work of one's trade shouldn't stop for them. And then several fasts are utterly reactionary, symbols of woman's slavery. This fast too I count as one of them. In it the question isn't so much of our women's foolishness as of their ignorance — to ask, in the next life too, for the same husband of this life. In a society where the husband has no obligation toward the wife, for women to repeat this demand every year — that there too the husband be joined to them again and again — what is it but a drama of ignorance?
Captain: Are your senses in their place, Indro? You don't want me to be your life-partner in the next life too?
Indro: ( silent. )
Captain: Why don't you speak? Answer.
Indro: No.
Captain: No?
Indro: I don't believe in the next life. But even if I did —
Captain: Even if you did, what?
Indro: What right have I to rob another of her right?
Captain: What do you mean?
Indro: That photo. The simple sister of mine standing beside you in it — whatever thing she may have asked for, keeping this fast — how can I now ask that same thing for myself too? Wouldn't that be a betrayal of her? Or...
Captain: Or what?
Indro: Or is your idea that this drama will be repeated in the next life too in just this way? That all of us will have to come onto this stage again with our roles? That this sister of mine will have to die thus, and I, becoming a schoolteacher, will have to look after, once again in this house, the game you bring and store in the fridge? (ha ha) These fairy tales are tasty, but...
Captain: These are fairy tales?
Indro: Yes — what else are they?
[ With music, these flashbacks of the past end. ]
Road: God forbid, God forbid — this girl is of an utterly different kind, grandfather. Her words are bold and sharp, certainly, but just as true and reasoned too.
Banyan: Manglo, for the barren social tradition these words are very dangerous. This is plain rebellion, my dear!
Road: What is the barren social tradition, grandfather? That those who are in the dark stay made in the dark, and those for whom it's needed go on enjoying that light as they please?
Banyan: Who likes change, Chenchlo? Change is an earthquake, a deluge, the blind, headstrong flood of a river. (pausing) When the story of your making, of this change, began to be written on this route, what did you know of how much digging and tearing was done on this road? How many trees and creepers were cut and felled? How many stones and ridges were moved from their age-old places and shifted. A little deluge, as it were, had come.
Road: But it's for this very thing that you call me Manglo, grandfather.
Banyan: This upheaval of change seems very strange at first, Manglo, but just as the plough churns up the earth and then the crop waves green — does the greenery and gold of that crop not enchant anyone's heart?
Road: All right, grandfather, then... this girl has come from her in-laws here to her maternal home. But if this ray stayed in that darkness, perhaps that darkness too would be dispelled a little.
Banyan: Or that darkness would slowly have swallowed this innocent ray too.
Road: Darkness and light! What kind of maya is this of creation, grandfather?
Banyan: Just this — here is struggle, and creation, Shiv-dei. Here is endless struggle. Neither do the glooms come to an end, nor do the rays accept defeat. It seems the Captain, on his way back, has gone by the village road with his jeep. That dust has risen there on that dirt road.
[ ( The sound of a jeep moving in the distance; the jeep stops and sounds its horn loudly two or three times. The clamour of children... jeep, jeep... ) ]
Banyan: Whose jeep is this? Go and see. Who's come, this stranger, who must announce his coming at a girls' school in the village with such a loud horn? Let me go and see myself.
Banyan: Here, friend — you said you wanted to see the schoolteacher. There she is, your schoolteacher.
Friend: Greetings, sister-in-law.
Indro: Greetings. Are these the Captain sahib who sounds the horn so loudly? Mother said...
Captain: Schoolteacher ji, we've come to fetch you.
Indro: With these cartridges, guns and jeep?
Friend: No, sister-in-law, we'd gone hunting.
Indro: Got no game?
Captain: Game? Just cast a glance at the back seat, schoolteacher ji. These friends say — who'll store all this game? Without my sister-in-law...
Indro: It seems your fridge still isn't fixed? The power to store shot game is only in fridges, Captain sahib.
Captain: The fridge is quite all right now.
Indro: Then what need is there of a schoolteacher? A living schoolteacher can't be kept in that fridge of yours.
Captain: [angrily] Indro! Your pride still hasn't gone.
Indro: This is no pride, Captain ji. How is refusing to go and sit alive in that fridge of yours a matter of pride? Why this insistence of yours on keeping everything, living and dead, in the same fridge?
[ The holiday bell rings — the clamour of children. ]
Indro: Loading all this game in the jeep, this round of yours showing off your bravery in these villages — these simple people don't quite like it, so...
Captain: [angrily] Indro!
Friend: Captain sahib, come, let's go! [ The jeep starts and drives off. ]
A Girl: Sister, who were those gun-people?
Indro: They'd lost their way. The poor things just turned up here.
Girl: How did they come onto the dirt old road, leaving the new road? They couldn't understand even this much, sister?
Indro: No, they couldn't — that's why the poor things had such a hard time of it.
[ The clamour of girls; in between, the receding sound of the jeep. ]