Helping to Govern India
WONDERFUL Mother India! As I made my way through the blazing heat across the parched grass of the square at Berhampore that morning, I fear I did not love you. Yet it was to be a day of romance.
It was in May, midway of the hot season. We had cholera through the district and up and down the Ganges valley, and were to have it five weeks more till the monsoon clouds gathered like a thick gray veil across the blazing face of the sky, and burst in the swish and swirl and thunder of the greater rains. The water was bad; the Bhagirathi River was shrunk to a brown trickle across shimmering sands, athirst for the melting of Himalayan snows. My shoulders and back were stinging with prickly heat, my ankles were swollen with mosquito bites. Altogether, a morning of exasperation.
It was hot: so hot that the red desert wind singed my nostrils; so hot that tables warped, cracking in the night like pistol-shots; so hot that the trees fringing the square hung their leaves and quivered in the glare; the minas sat in the grass, open-beaked and gasping. Only tiny blue butterflies fluttered everlastingly.
From the white, outer blaze I stumbled into the warm cavern of the huge Court building where ineffectual punkahs were flapping and creaking in every breathless room, my eyes full of green circles of light from the outer glare. I entered my own court-room on the ground-floor, laid aside my huge helmet of reed-pith, sate me down with a sigh of relief in my cane-seated officechair, mopped my face with a handkerchief already wet, and bade the grizzled punkah-wala pull harder, to stir the hot, acrid air, smelling of Indian bodies in Indian heat. After a long breath or two, I found free energy for a look round the dingy court-room, and immediately perceived that there was something in the wind.
Holding themselves a little apart from the dusky, patient crowd at the back of the court-room were three exceedingly pretty young women, hardly more than girls, bright with gold bracelets and earrings, and gracefully draped in white muslin saris broadly margined with red; they were smiling, dainty, vivacious, with brown skin no darker than cinnamon, and one could see that, they were the target of the eager and slightly scandalized observation of the dingy village folk.
The first case on the file was a charge of murder. I ordered the red-turbaned policemen, with jackets of indigo and stiff leather belts that galled their unaccustomed loins, to bring the prisoner in. The file announced that he was Mozuffer Khan, son of Mahmud Khan, of Koli village, cultivator. As he stood there in the railed dock at the right corner of my table, he did not look like a murderer. He was too jaunty, not tense enough, too well-pleased with himself for that. A shock-headed fellow with a black beard and a rakish eye, wearing a dingy breech-cloth, and with a dingy strip of muslin over his shoulders; a sturdy rascal, Mozuffer Khan, with big arms and hairy shanks, but not murderous-looking; barefooted too, which has its advantage in a court of justice.
The dusky folk of Lower Bengal make imaginative witnesses. The inspiration comes upon them suddenly, carrying them away before they realize it. They take some simple fact, some common situation, bathe it in Indian light and drape it about with Oriental trappings, laying on splashes of gaudy color and startling ornament; piling splendor on splendor. Relevancy is no great matter. It is the story for the story’s sake.
When I was quite new to it, I sometimes tried to record these purple patches, wrestling with florid, unfamiliar phrases like some old lady inquiring her way in a foreign village. Once or twice I went so far as to institute proceedings for perjury. But the Collector Sahib only laughed in his big, sympathetic way, and said, ‘Never mind them! They are not telling lies; they are composing poetry. It comes over them, and they cannot help it!’ So I came to lay down my quill, giving myself over to the pleasure of listening and watching the poet’s toes.
When he slips his cable and pushes off from the wharf of fact, to sail forth into enchanted waters, his toes, hitherto quiescent, begin to work. They knot themselves, weave in little circles in the air, cramp together, spread out again, and suddenly shut like a fan. The poetic witness rules his face, uttering his wild inventions with sad and downcast visage, as who testifies unwillingly, but truth must out; he controls his eyes, in no fine frenzy rolling; he governs his hands. But he never thinks of his toes. Wherefore the Assistant Magistrate looketh pensively downward, and cheweth the feather of his quill-pen. He is watching the rhythmic movement of the toes, sensitively responding to the strain on the subliminal mind.
The Great Charter promised that justice should be delayed to no man; yet here am I heartlessly keeping Mozuffer Khan, son of Mahmud Khan, of Koli village, cultivator, standing in the dock, in jeopardy of his life, while I ruminate on toes. Yet, as he is thoroughly enjoying his conspicuousness, I need make myself no reproach, although I may wonder what is in the back of his mind. He looks too confident for a murderer, too rakish, too light-minded; though I shall not be surprised to see him turn up some day as the victim, He must get on people’s nerves.
The Court Sub-Inspector, Bannerji by name, — Nobin Kishto Bannerji, to give him his full style and title, — is a suave high-caste Brahman, whom I like. He steers the prosecution, calling village folk to bear witness to finding the mortal remnant of one Buddun Das in a thicket of bamboos in the cool of the morning after the new moon of the fourth month. They had reported the matter straightway to the police sergeant of the nearest thana. Other witnesses seek to implicate Mozuffer Khan the debonair, weaving chains of circumstance about him, hinting causes of quarrel, even suggesting the woman in the case. Evidently unpopular, Mozuffer Khan, son of Mahmud Khan, of Koli village, cultivator; but I cannot hang him for that. He stands there in the dock, serene, unruffled, unafraid, with his cock-of-the-village air, smirking at the world and at justice. So the prosecution rests its case.
Comes the turn of the defense. The first witness is a woman, married, a Mahometan. She enters the witnessbox on my left, at the other corner of my table, and I notice that the three fair dames with red-bordered saris and gold ornaments whisper as they look at her, and giggle decorously. They have followed the whole case with such absorbed interest and curiosity that I decide within myself that they can have no part in it. By this time, our witness is sworn. She announces herself to be Motiya, the Pearl, wife of Hussein Baksh, of the village of Bel Gaon. Comely enough, too, in her countrified way, with dark hair sleek with cocoanut oil, dark skin, and big, dark eyes; clad in a dingy sari narrowly bordered with brown; barefoot, like all Indian women, in sign of age-long servitude.
The Pearl waits patiently to be questioned, her clasped hands resting on the rail of the witness-box. Wonderful, these selfless Oriental women, who nevertheless in their subjection wield so much power. The Pearl, for example, seems to have made her influence felt in more ways than one.
I ask her whether she knows Mozuffer Khan, son of Mahmud Khan, of Koli village, cultivator, the prisoner at the bar. She nods, and says she does; declares, in fact, that she knows him extremely well. How could she fail of knowing him, since he has been making violent love to her for two years now, pursuing her with amorous guile? Has he not followed her in the pasture, when she has gone to gather fuel in the wake of the herds? Has he not waited for her under the wide peepul tree at ‘ cow-dust-time,’ when she drove her little fawn-colored kine along the road, and the evening air — though she does not. say so — was full of shimmering dust of gold in the slant rays of the swift-sinking sun ? Has he not watched when she went to the village bazar for curry, vegetables, or water-jars of fine red clay, or a new muslin sari at the dokan by the village cross-road? Has he not waylaid her in the dawn and in the dusk, in all ways seeking to allure her into the primrose pathway to the big, wide gate? These are not her words, but she is very downright about the fact.
Had she told her husband, Hussein Baksh? No, of course not. Why should she tell him? What could come of that but strife, perhaps bloodshed? No, she had told no one. Is not four-eared counsel the best?
But to return to Buddun Das, the central figure in all this coil, the one person in the case who had no word to say, the ‘deceased,’as my friend the Court Sub-Inspector unctuously called him. His outworn casket had, as we saw, been found curled up in a bamboo clump in the chill of the morning. For reasons stark in their realism, conclusive in that hot time, those who retrieved him knew that he was not long dead. The vultures, indeed, had as yet taken slight interest in him. Further, it had been made clear that the said clump of bamboos was on the north side of Koli village, therefore five miles or more from the home of Motiya in the village of Bel Gaon.
This being elicited, I asked the still, quiet-voiced woman, who so frankly avowed her wooer and depicted his wooing, whether she could remember exactly when she had seen the prisoner Mozuffer Khan of Koli village, cultivator, before she heard of the killing of Buddun Das. Yes, she nodded confidently: she remembered perfectly. She saw him on the night before the murder, the night of the new moon of the fourth month, some two hours after sunset. She was sure of the day, because her lawful lord, Hussein Baksh, was away from home; had, in fact, journeyed to Kassim Bazar, driving a bullock wagon, with a load of rice-straw for the Nawab Bahadur’s elephant stable; she had cautioned him to start early, as the night would be dark. These folk who keep lunar festivals always know just what the fickle luminary is doing.
Having thus defined the time, two hours after sunset on the night of the new moon, would she tell us the place where she had seen the prisoner, Mozuffer Khan, of Koli village? Yes, she would. She saw him at her own house in the dark of the evening, her husband being then away in Kassim Bazar. The prisoner, Mozuffer Khan, had come, in fact, because he knew her husband would be away; had come to make love to her. So she bore testimony, and stood there quietly waiting for further questions, her folded hands just resting on the rail of the witness-box.
I wrote down what she had said on sheets of white foolscap with the white embossed arms of the Government of India at the top. Then I laid down my quill, sat back in my chair, and looked long at that Moslem wife so quietly and irretrievably damning herself, as it seemed, by confession of infidelity. Her husband was there in court, and all her circle; yet she was unperturbed. Among the fair dames in the corner there was a faint titter and stir of excited expectancy, instantly hushed by Eastern decorum; but the woman’s own friends were apathetic and still.
So I curiously scrutinized this modern Helen of Bel Gaon, thus, in the very presence of Menelaus, acknowledging with serene brow and tranquil speech the coming of her Paris. Then I looked at Paris, that is to say, Mozuffer Khan, of Koli village, cultivator. His whole being crowed with self-satisfaction, every ounce of conceit in the male carcass of him jubilant at the publication of his gallantries; he rubbed his hands together, his right foot caressing his hairy left shank as he listened to this comely woman thus risking all, as it seemed, name and fame and friends and future, for dear love of him. By the way, though it was in no wise relevant to the case, Mozuffer Khan of Koli village had also a wife of his own. From the jubilant Paris of Koli I looked back, still wondering, at his Helen, regarding me with frank, innocent eyes. Then, as it happened, she turned toward Mozuffer Khan, as he stood there in the dock facing her at the other corner of my writing table. Her face lit up. Did her eyes say, as I might well have expected, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine’? To my boundless surprise, they said nothing of the kind, but rather something like this: ‘Scum of the earth, of ancestry Darwinian, if I ever get a chance I’ll carve your liver!’
A sentiment and expression sufficiently startling. I picked up my quill again, dipped it meditatively into the ink-bottle, straightened my sheets of foolscap, and asked another question. The fair ladies at the back of the court held their breath, their eyes grew wide with expectancy.
She had seen Mozuffer Khan, the prisoner, on the night of the murder of Buddun Das, two hours after sunset, at her own house, her husband Hussein Baksh being then absent at Kassim Bazar? She nodded confident assent. Those were the facts and circumstance.
Then I had to venture on delicate ground. But an Assistant Magistrate must brave the matter. Would the witness tell the Court exactly what had then taken place? What had he done? And what had she done? As I asked the question, I avoided looking in the direction of Hussein Baksh.
Very frankly she gave her astonishing answer. Yes, she would tell the whole matter in detail. First, as to what Mozuffer Khan had done, there at her house, at evening. He had come up noiselessly in the dark, his bare feet contributing to that noiselessness; had proceeded to lay hold of the sliding mat-door and push it open; had then thrust in his head and shoulders, and asked her in a low voice whether she was there and alone. That is what he had done.
Then as to what she had done. At first, when the door began to move, she was frightened, thinking it was a robber. But when she heard the voice of Mozuffer Khan of Koli village, and recognized him, she at once ceased to be afraid. She prepared, indeed, in a singular way, to receive him. Rising from her bed, and going to the shelf beneath the thatch, she laid hold of a hashua, which is a short-handled billhook for chopping sugar-cane; approaching the door and Mozuffer Khan, and with her left hand seizing him firmly by his shock of hair, to get a purchase on him, she had smitten him bravely on the neck with her hashua; whereat he had yelled horribly, withdrawing his head and disappearing into the darkness. Thereupon she had pulled the mat-door back into place, and, returning to her couch, had lain down and gone to sleep. On the next morning, seeing some blood on the hashua, she had scoured it clean with sand and water. When her husband had returned, later in the day, he had told her of the murder of Buddun Das, already beginning to be the news along the roads, and as far as neighboring villages. That was all she knew about the case. So she smiled, and held her peace, — with clasped hands awaiting her dismissal.
Truly, a startling alibi; but she was visibly frank and truthful. Even an Assistant Magistrate, fresh from college lecture-rooms, must learn to distinguish between prose and poetry. So I let her go. Whereupon she peacefully rejoined her husband, who was evidently proud of his wife, so far as a Mussulman may be without condescension; and, in truth, well he might be. Then, turning to the prisoner, Mozuffer Khan of Ko!i village, I once more laid down my quill and looked him over. He was smirking delightedly, evidently fancying himself unboundedly as a devil of a fellow and nodding corroboration of Motiya’s wonderful narrative. No need to ask him if he admitted her charge. He exulted in it.
Then I considered. If Motiya had, as she said, held him by the hair with her left hand, while she struck at him with her stubby billhook, she must have hit him on the left shoulder, at present hidden by his muslin scarf. I got him to come over toward me, stood up, drew the muslin cloth aside, and, sure enough, on his shoulder there was a long, irregular streak, bluish against his brown skin; just such a scar as a hashua would make, thus held and thus valiantly wielded. Corroborative evidence of the first class, the more so because neither he nor Motiya had thought of it.
Yet it is well to go softly. Even an Assistant Magistrate learns that a scar may come in more ways than one. So, as the Crow said, in the story of the Mouse Hiranyaka, let the matter be examined further. Ordering Mozuffer Khan of Koli village to turn his back toward me, I took a long pencil, and began to touch him lightly here and there on the left shoulder, gradually working nearer to the scar. He had no inkling of what I was doing, or why I was doing it, until I pressed the pencilpoint lightly on the scar itself. Then he very genuinely winced and shrank away.
That may seem a very superfluous procedure. Yet I have had good Bengalis come to Court with terrible wounds, generally on their defenseless backs; and, though the tragical marks may have been on the right side, they have unmistakably winced, and even shrieked out, when I pressed a corresponding spot on the left. Scars of that kind yield to soap and water. Then one makes trouble for their artistic but forgetful owner. But the scar on the shoulder of Mozuffer Khan held good. The alibi stood its ground.
Fated to be quaintly corroborated too, that unprecedented yet veridical tale. For the Court clerk, a Brahman gentleman at forty rupees a month, and my esteemed friend, announced that the next witness was a Sahib, which is to say, a gentleman of Europe, and straightway proceeded to fish out a chair for him from a neighboring room. He came, too, that gentleman of Europe, and, had I stared and rubbed my eyes when I beheld him, I might well have been pardoned. For in nothing save, perhaps, a shade of color, was he distinguished from any well-todo Hindu villager: the same dhuti and gamcha, — breech-cloth and shouldercloth,— the same bare shanks and sockless shoes, the same shock of hair, even the same green-lined cotton umbrella, a shield against tropical moonstroke.
I spoke to that Sahib in English, and began to administer the oath to him in what I supposed our common tongue. But he shyly excused himself, telling me in fluent Bengali that his English was rusty for lack of use, and asking permission to testify in the local vernacular. I bade him go ahead, and offered him the chair good Sharada Babu had brought; the which, somewhat embarrassed, he took.
Pathetic derelict in the vast sea of Indian life, human flotsam on that wide, dark tide, were you a deserter or an exile from your own people? I wondered then, I wonder still, what your history was; what romance, what scandal, first motived your exile. You gave me some name like Surenne, so you were, perhaps, a silk factor, or one of the colony at Chandranagar. Yet I have a suspicion that, as you gave me your name, your toes were gesticulating their protest. I wish I had asked you to remove your shoes. I had the right to question you with the law’s rude directness. But I refrained. Your story is your own, your romance or scandal. So go back to your brown village folk of Bel Gaon and forget, day by day, the fretted, feverish race you came from; learn, unless, as I think, you have learned already, to smoke the placid hookah and chew red areca nut wrapped in green pepper leaf and smeared with lime, plugging your cheek with pan-sipari like your neighbors of Bel Gaon. Dream yourself into the large quietude of rural India; forget and be at rest!
But, for the present, Surenne Sahib is no John-o’-dreams. His errand is mere prose. For it appears that it was to Surenne Sahib’s kuti, which is to say house, that Mozuffer Khan betook himself like a stricken deer, gripping his wounded shoulder and bemoaning the waywardness of womankind; Surenne Sahib had taken him in, washing away the gore, smearing him with ointment, and tying him up in bandages; whereupon the gay Lothario of Koli village had fallen asleep much comforted, and snored the night away.
Having thus fortified the alibi, already strong, Surenne Sahib bowed himself out of Court; turned his back, perhaps for the last time, on the things and people of his race, and the immemorial brown waves closed round him.
So I prepared to release the rascal from the charge of murder; yet I had a surprise in store for him: something that had never occurred to his joyful mind. Never, indeed, have I seen man more taken aback than he was, when I told him that, though he was freed from the capital charge,—here he made a glad motion to depart, — I intended to hold him for lurking trespass, and try him in the afternoon. The which I did, and, mainly on the evidence of the Pearl, found him guilty, and locked him up for a month with hard labor. Such was his Fall of Troy.
The day’s romance was not yet done. At the rear of the Court room, where stood the three good-looking girls with broad-margined saris, the course of the village drama had been followed by politely restrained mirth and decorous giggles. It was time for the two sides to change places; the village folk were now to become admiring auditors, while the town folk, with the prettiest of the Bengali Graces as protagonist, unrolled their tragi-comedy.
The change of setting on my grimy stage was delayed a few minutes by a cause profoundly Oriental. The noon hour struck, tolled by the rail-gong at the Treasury door, and in a moment all things came to a standstill. The Mahometan lawyers, the village Moslems loitering about the Court, even Mozuffer Khan with his guardian policeman, all reverently withdrew. A moment later they reappeared on the wide concrete veranda outside the window at my left. There they laid down their prayer-mats, and, standing first with devoutly bowed heads and hands folded, they murmured the noon prayers of the Prophet’s religion; then knelt, still praying, and made obeisance, prostrating themselves before Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.
The reverence of their devotion was perfect, and wholly free from the selfconscious shamefastness that I should have felt, supposing that I, the Magistrate, had suspended Court to pray there in public. Islam is a man’s religion, a manly religion; there is something fine in the faith that takes men out to pray before the eyes of all, on the wide veranda of a police court.
Then, having reverently prayed, they came back, lawyers, witnesses, prisoners, to do what in them lay to circumvent the Assistant Magistrate with Oriental subtlety and guile, to make the worse appear the better reason. And it happened that in the first case after the noon interval the Assistant Magistrate was destined to gain a wholly new insight into one side of the life of the immemorial East.
Taking the papers from Nobin Babu, the Court Sub-Inspector, I had the next case called. Shoshi Bushan Sen against Lala Bai, assault and battery. By the whispering and tittering that instantly traversed the crowd, I knew that the affair of the day was begun.
A moment or two later the defendant was in the dock, dainty, self-possessed, smiling encouragingly at the Assistant Magistrate. I never saw you before, nor heard of you after that day, Lala Bai, yet I shall not. forget you as you stood there close to the corner of my table, your pretty, dark eyes full of cheerful faith, your pretty hair smoothed like Aphrodite’s, the parting in the middle touched with a streak of red. Your skin was golden-bronze and velvety, your brows were like Kama’s bow, limned with black collyrium; your teeth were well-matched pearls; your golden earrings, armlets, and, be it added, Lala Bai, your nose-ring, might, have rejoiced the heart of an antiquary; they came down to you, perhaps, from the famed nymph who once sought to beguile Mahadeo at his devotions.
Your pretty face, Lala Bai, was but a shade darker than Juliet’s; you had Juliet’s figure, too, and pretty little hands, your nails rose-red with henna. And for vesture, Lala Bai, you had a pretty sari of white muslin, with a broad margin, a senatorial laticlave, indicating, I am afraid, that you were very purchasable.
Very friendly was your smile, very confident of sympathy, as your pretty eyes watched the Assistant Magistrate sitting in his cane arm-chair, pensively chewing the feather of a quill as he regarded you, while the punkah flapped and fluttered through the acrid air. Since you will never read this, I may admit it: you made your impression, Lala Bai, as, perhaps, the issue of the case disclosed.
There is no case without a complainant, be it only such a mute supplicant for justice as Buddun Das; so it is time to introduce the adversary of Lala Bai.
Shoshi Bushan Sen, Bengali gentleman, being duly sworn, made declaration, in the presence of Lord Ishwara, that in the case before the Court, the evidence he gave should be true, that he would tell no lies, nor aught conceal. Then he stood there jauntily, patronizing the Assistant Magistrate with a glance, a very self-assured sprig of young India. He wore his hair cropped in the English fashion, supplemented his full-flowing breech-cloth of white muslin with a starched white shirt worn over all, had very nice patentleather shoes on his sockless feet, and grasped a white umbrella lined with green. You see that he too, like Lala Bai, made his impression on the Assistant Magistrate.
His light brown face wore a pleased and self-approving smirk, a consciousness of excellent parts. Yet he did not quite win from me the recognition his merits, perhaps, deserved. It may be that pretty Lala Bai had been too quick, and got the wind of him. Indeed, thinking it over later, I came to the conclusion that India has more arts than are embodied in her metal work and tapestries.
Happy, magpie-voiced Shoshi Babu began to testify. He was, he told the Court, a student at Berhampore College, reading for entrance at Calcutta University; destined, perhaps, to base future claims for Government employ on the fact that he was an ‘entrance fail’; he was, he said, on his way home from the College to his home in Ghora Bazar, with two young gentlemen friends, college students like himself, when they met the defendant Lala Bai, who, His Honor knew, was a shameless person, — here the Assistant Magistrate frowned, and Shoshi Babu, keenly sensitive to changes of official weather, winced perceptibly and lost a point or two of assurance, — met Lala Bai, with two companions, on the street.
He and his friends, he said, had passed some remarks among themselves, having reference to morals and the lack of them, when Lala Bai had suddenly slapped his Brahmanical face. Therefore he entered his complaint, praying that His Honor would visit on Lala Bai such exemplary punishment as might teach her the enormity of what she had done, in slapping a college student and gentleman. And His Honor’s petitioner would ever pray.
The Assistant Magistrate had not long adorned the bench; he remembered, in fact, with tingling cheeks, the first case he had tried, wherein he gave a judgment wondrous complicated, for which it would be hard to find warrant in Coke or Blackstone. Yet the Assistant had already learned that a story in Court, and perhaps in history, is good only until another story is told.
So he turned from Shoshi Bushan Sen to dainty Lala Bai, in the dock at the corner of his table. She had been watching Shoshi Babu with a hot little smile and eyes sparkling. If I mistake not, the pretty fingers were tingling to repeat that sounding smack to which he had just borne testimony.
What a pretty voice she had, and how prettily she talked Bengali; with a tag of Sanskrit now and then, learned from some kind old temple-Brahman. I think the Assistant Magistrate smiled as he took that gray goose-quill, and began to make the record on foolscap with the emblem of the Government of India at the top. I am certain Lala Bai smiled a little, as she told her story.
Yes, she said; the complainant had told the truth; but not all the truth. They had met, as he testified, in the street of Ghora Bazar, and he had made a reproach to her of her calling; but that came later. He and his two companions, college students like himself, had begun with compliments, not reproaches. The complainant indeed, the said Shoshi Bushan Sen, had caught her in his arms and kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other; and, as she did not admire Shoshi Bushan Sen, and did not wish to be kissed by him on either cheek, she had, she confessed, slapped him as hard as she could — and she hoped it had hurt him.
Thereupon the Assistant Magistrate turned to the said complainant, Shoshi Bushan Sen, and asked him whether these things were so. He grinned fatuously, and said that they were; she had slapped his face, and it did hurt, and, as for the kissing, did not His Honor know that Lala Bai was an abandoned person? So he, the complainant, Shoshi Bushan Sen, Bengali gentleman, cried to the British Raj for justice.
I am persuaded that whoever cries to the British Raj for justice ought to get it, even if, in the outcome, he likes it as little as did Shoshi Bushan Sen, Bengali gentleman. The outcome befell thus. The admirably lucid Indian Penal Code, wherein each native from Kashmir to Comorin may in his own speech read of his rights and duties, has an equally admirable appendage, called the Code of Criminal Procedure. I therewith expounded to Shoshi Bushan Sen a certain section of it, which, with admirable insight into the human heart, and the spirit and temper of the land, provides that where, in the judgment of the Court, the complainant in a case shall be deemed to have brought a
complaint which is ‘frivolous and vexatious,’the said Court may release the defendant, and may, in its high discretion, fine the said complainant a reasonable sum; which sum may, if the Court so decide, be turned over as compensation to the injured defendant, thus frivolously and vexatiously dragged before the august bar of judgment.
By which exposition, the complainant Shoshi Bushan Sen was visibly chilled, spite of desert winds. He lost, the last of his assurance, and stood, visibly perplexed, while Lala Bai began to smile.
Noting the perplexity of that young Bengali gentleman, I did my best to dispel it. I laid down for him the principle, evidently new to his Bengali mind, that a woman, even such a one as fair Lala Bai, possessed certain indefeasible civil rights. For example, if she wished to be kissed, that was her matter; but if she did not wish to be kissed, or wished not to be kissed, which is still stronger, she was within her rights and the British Raj would guarantee them to her. Wherefore it followed that, in kissing her against her will, as she testified, and as he admitted, he had been guilty of assault, and was, therefore, punishable. So I proposed to punish him under the said section of the Code; unless, indeed, — and here I turned to Lala Bai, — the defendant wished to bring a case of assault against him, in which case I stood, or sat, ready to issue a summons.
Lala Bai had a perfect sense of comedy. I had thought so, and she justified my faith. With downcast eyes and clasped hands, she said, in a voice gently sad, ‘ I forgive the Babu! ’ and then, with the shadow of a smile on her lips, glanced up through her eye-lashes.
Well, I fined Shoshi Bushan Sen, Bengali gentleman, rupees twain and sent him home rueful; not, I am afraid, duly impressed by justice and the law. Lala Bai thought better of the British Raj, I am convinced; the decision was for her a declaration of her humanity. There was gratitude in her eyes, and genuine feeling, as she bowed to me, and then trotted daintily out into the sunlight with her two companions.
I never saw you or heard of you more, pretty, graceful Lala Bai; but some day, after you close your eyes for the last time on Indian skies, you may be incarnate in some happier clime, the wings of your soul no longer besmirched, yet with all your charm remaining. Should this befall, Lala Bai, I should like to know you.