Javni: A Story

by RAJA RAO

1

I HAD just arrived. My sister sat by me, talking about a thousand things — about my health, my studies, my future, about Mysore, about my younger sister, and so on. I lay on the mat sipping hot coffee, which seemed like nectar after a tenmile cycle ride on one of those bare and dusty roads of Malkad. Drowsily, I listened to her, feeling strange comfort and freedom after nine hectic months in the city. When I had finished my coffee, I asked my sister to bring me another cup, not only because I wanted more of that invigorating drink, but because I really felt like being alone. While my sister went to get the coffee, I lay on the mat flat on my face, my hands stretched by my side. It seemed to me as though I were being carried away by a flood of some sort, caressing, feathery, and quiet. I fell asleep.

Suddenly, as if in a dream, I heard a door behind me creaking. But I did not move. The door did not open fully and somebody seemed to be standing on the threshold, afraid to come in. “Perhaps a neighbor,” I said to myself vaguely, and in my drowsiness I muttered something, stretched out my hands, kicked my feet against the floor, and slowly moved my head from one side to the other. The door creaked a little again and the visitor seemed to recede. “Gone!” I said to myself, feeling a little sorry that I had sent a neighbor away. Outside the carts rumbled and some cawing crows circled over the roof. A few sunbeams stealing through the tiles fell upon my back. I felt happy.

Meanwhile my sister came back with the coffee. “Ramu,” she whispered, standing by me. “Ramu, my child, are you awake or asleep?”

“Awake,” I said, turning my head towards the door which creaked as she shut it.

“Sita,” I whispered, “there was somebody at the door.”

“When?”

“Now! Only a moment ago.”

She went to the door, and, opening it, looked towards the street. After a while she smiled affectionately and called, “Javni! You monkey! Why don’t you come in? Who do you think is here, Javni? My brother . . . my brother!” She smiled broadly and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Really, mother!” said a timid voice. “Really! I wanted to come in, but seeing Ramappa fast asleep I thought I’d better wait out here.” She spoke peasant Kanarese, drawling the vowels interminably.

“So,” I said to myself, “she already knows my name.”

“Come in!” commanded my sister.

Javni slowly approached the threshold, but still stood outside as if I were a saint or the holy elephant .

“Don’t be shy, come in,”commanded my sister again.

Javni entered and, walking reverently as if in a temple, went and sat. by a sack of rice.

My sister sat by me, proud and affectionate. I was everything to her — her strength and hope. She touched my head and said, “Ramu, Javni is our new servant.”

I turned towards Javni. She seemed to turn away and hide her face. Her hair was growing white, and her bare, broad forehead showed pain and widowhood. “Come near, Javni,” I said affectionately.

“No, Ramappa,” she whispered.

“Come along,” I insisted. She came forward a few steps and sat by the pillar.

“Oh! Come nearer, Javni, and see what a handsome brother I have,” cried Sita.

No, I was not flattered. My big, taplike nose, and my thick underlip only seemed more monstrous than ever. Javni crawled along the floor and came a few steps nearer.

“Oh! Come nearer, you monkey,” cried my sister again. Javni advanced a few feet more and, turning her face towards the floor, sat like a bride beside a bridegroom.

“He looks like a prince,” exclaimed my sister.

“A god!” mumbled Javni. I laughed and drank my coffee.

“The whole town is mad about him,” whispered Javni.

“How do you know?” asked Sita.

“How! I have been standing at the market place the whole afternoon, to see when Ramappa would come. You told me he looked like a prince. You said he rode a bicycle. When I saw him come by the pipal tree where the fisherman Kodi hanged himself the other day, I ran towards the town and I saw how people gazed and gazed at him. And they asked me who he was. Of course I replied, ‘The Revenue Inspector’s brother-in-law.’ ‘How handsome he is!’ said fat Nanjunda of the coconut shop. ‘How like a prince he is!’ said the concubine Chowdy. ‘Oh, a very god!’ said my neighbor, barber Venkanna’s wife Kanchi.’

“Well, Ramu, so you see, the whole of Malkad is dazzled with your beauty,” interrupted my sister. “Take care, my child. They say, in this town, they practice magic, and I have heard how many a good-looking boy has been killed by jealousy.”

I laughed.

“Don’t laugh, Ramappa. With these very eyes,

I can swear to you, with these very two eyes, I have seen the ghosts of more than a hundred young men and women — all killed by magic, by magic, Ramappa,” assured Javni, for the first time looking towards me. “My learned Ramappa, never go out after sunset, for there are spirits of all sorts walking in the dark. And especially, never go by the canal after the cows have come home. It is a haunted place, Ramappa.”

“How do you know?” I asked, curious.

“How? With these very eyes, I have seen, Ramappa, with these very eyes. The potter’s wife Rangi was unhappy. Poor thing! Poor thing! And one night she was so sad that she went and jumped into the canal. The other day, when I was coming home in the deadly dark with my little lamb, whom should I see but Rangi — Rangi in a white, borderless sari, her hair all floating. She stood in front of me. I shivered and wept. She ran and stood by a tree, yelling in a strange voice. ‘Away! Away!’ I cried. Then suddenly I saw her standing on the bridge, and she jumped into the canal, moaning, ‘My girl is gone, my child is gone, and I am gone too!’ ”

My sister trembled. She had a horror of devils. “Why don’t you shut up, you donkey’s widow, and stop pouring out all your holy knowledge.”

“Pardon me, mother, pardon me,” Javni begged.

“I have pardoned you again and again, and yet it is always the same old story. Always the same Ramayana. Why don’t you fall into the canal like Rangi and turn into a devil!” My sister was furious. Javni smiled awkwardly and timidly hid her face between her knees.

“How handsome your brother is!” she murmured ecstatically, after a moment.

“Did I not say he was like a prince? Who knows what incarnation of a god he may be? Who knows?” my sister said, patting me proudly.

“Without Javni,” began my sister after a moment’s silence, “I could never have lived in this place.”

“And without you, I could never have lived either, mother!” Her voice was so rich and calm that she seemed to sing.

“In this blessed place everything is so difficult,” Sita complained. “He,” she added, referring to her husband, “is always busy with collections. The villages are few but situated at great distances from one another. Sometimes he goes away for more than a week, and I should have died of fright had not Javni been with me. And,” she added, a little sadly, “Javni understands my fears and my beliefs. . . . Men, Ramu, can never understand us. . . .”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why? I cannot say. You are too practical and irreligious. To us everything is mysterious. Our gods are not your gods, your gods not our gods. It is simple enough.” She seemed sadder still.

“But I have always tried to understand you,” I protested.

“Of course! Of course!” exclaimed my sister rapturously, and tears — ever ready — trickled down her cheeks.

“Mother,” muttered Javni, trembling. “Mother, will you permit me to say one thing?”

“Yes,” answered my sister indifferently.

“Ramappa, your sister loves you,” blubbered Javni wiping away her tears. “She loves you as though you were her own child. Oh! I wish I had seen her two children! They must have been angels! But Ramappa, what I wanted to say was this. Your sister loves you, talks of you all the time, and says, ‘If my brother did not live, I should have died long ago,’ and,” here she hesitated, but continued gazing at my sister, for fear she would be reprimanded . . . “and whenever we go to the temple, she says, ‘Keep my brother happy and give him long life and great learning.’ Only the other day. . .”

“Be quiet!” my sister shouted, fearing her secrets might be revealed.

“How long have you been with Sita?” I asked Javni, trying to change the subject.

“How long? How do I know? But let me see, the harvest was over and we were husking the grain, when they came.”

“How did you find her?” I said, turning to my sister.

“Why, Ramappa,” cried Javni, proud for the first time. “There is nobody who can work for a Revenue Inspector’s family as well as I. You can ask anybody in the town, even a pariah, and he will tell you, ‘Javni is as good as a cow,’and he will also add that there is no one who can serve a Revenue Inspector’s family so well as Javni.” She beat her breast with satisfaction.

“So it is always a Revenue Inspector’s family you serve,” I said smiling.

“Of course,” she cried, proudly, her hands folded upon her knees. “Of course!”

“Then how many Revenue Inspectors have you served?” I asked.

“How many? Now let me see.” Here she counted upon her fingers, one by one, remembering them by how many children they had, what sort of wives they had, their caste, their native place, or even how good they had been in giving her two old saris, a four anna tip, or a measure of rice.

“Javni,” I said, trying to be a little humorous, “suppose I come here some day, say after ten, fifteen, or twenty years, and I am not a Revenue Inspector, and I ask you to serve me. Will you or will you not?”

She looked perplexed, laughed, and turned towards my sister for help.

“Answer him!” commanded my sister affectionately.

“But, Ramappa,” cried out Javni, full of happiness, as though she had discovered a solution to the question, “you cannot but be a big man like our master, the Revenue Inspector. With your learning and your good looks, you cannot he anything else. And when you come here, of course, I will be your servant.”

“But if I am not a Revenue Inspector?” I insisted.

“You must be . . . you must be!” she cried, as if I were insulting myself.

“All right! I shall be a Revenue Inspector in order to have you,” I joked.

“As if it were not enough that I should work myself to death in being one,” put in my brotherin-law, as he entered through the back door, dustcovered and breathless.

Javni got up and ran away as though in holy fear. It was the master!

“She is a sweet soul,” I said to my sister.

“Almost a mother!” she added, smiling gratefully.

In the byre Javni was talking to the calf.

2

Two or three days in the week, my brother-in-law was out touring and on these days Javni usually came to sleep in our house, for my sister had a terror of being alone. Since it had become a habit, Javni came as usual even when I was there. One evening, I cannot remember why, we had dined early and, unrolling our beds, we lay down before evening had really fallen. Javni came, peeped in the window, and called in a whisper, “Mother, mother.”

“Come in, you monkey!” answered my sister.

Javni opened the door and stepped in. She carried a sheet in her hands. Throwing it on the floor, she went straight into the byre where her food was usually kept. I could never bear that, and time and again I had quarreled with my sister about it. But she would not argue about it. “They are of the lower class, you cannot ask them to sit and eat with you,” she would say.

“Nonsense!” I said. “How can you say that? Are they not like us, like any of us? Only the other day you said you loved her as if she were your elder sister or mother.”

“Yes!” she replied angrily. “But affection does not ask you to be irreligious.”

“And what, pray, is being irreligious?” I continued, furious.

“Irreligious! Irreligious! Well, eating with a woman of a lower caste is irreligious. And, Ramu,” she cried desperately, ”I have had enough of quarreling all the time. In the name of the mother who bore us, can’t you leave me alone?” And she began to cry.

“You are inhuman!” I spat, disgusted.

“Go and show your humanity!” she grumbled, and hiding her face beneath the blankets, she wept harder.

I was really too much ashamed and too angry to stay in bed. I got up and went into the byre. Javni sat in the dark, swallowing mouthfuls of rice, slowly, like a cow chewing its cud. I came and stood beside her, leaning against the wall. She stopped eating and seemed greatly embarrassed.

“Javni,” I said tenderly.

“Ramappa,” she answered, confused.

“Why not light a lantern when you eat, Javni?”

“ What use!” she replied, and continued to munch her rice.

“But you cannot see what you are eating!”

“I cannot. But there is no necessity to see what you eat.” She laughed as though amused.

“But you must!” I was angry.

“No, Ramappa. I know where my rice is, and I can feel where the pickle is, and that is enough!”

“Suppose you come with me into the hall,” I cried. I knew I could never convince her.

“No, Ramappa. I am quite well here. I do not want to dirty the floor of the hall.”

“If it is dirty, I will clean it,” I shouted, exasperated.

She was silent. In the darkness I saw her shadow near me, thrown by the faint starlight that came from the garden door. In the corner the cow was breathing hard, and the calf was nibbling at wisps of hay. it was a terrible moment. The whole misery of the world seemed to be weighing on me. And yet — and yet — one seemed to laugh at all the suffering.

“Javni,” I said to her softly, “do you eat at home like this? ”

“Yes, Ramappa.” Her tone was sad.

“And why?”

“The oil is too expensive, Ramappa.”

“But surely you can afford that.”

“No, Ramappa. It costs an anna a bottle, and that lasts only a week.”

“But an anna is nothing,” I said.

“Nothing! Nothing!” She seemed frightened.

“Why, my learned Ramappa, it is what I earn in two days.”

“In two days!” I was much too surprised to say anything.

“Yes, Ramappa. I earn a rupee a month.” She seemed content.

I heard an owl hoot somewhere, and far, far away, somewhere too far and too distant for my rude ear to hear, the world wept in its silent suffering.

Javni sat and ate. The mechanical mastication of the rice seemed to represent her, her life — her whole existence.

“Javni,” I said breaking the silence, “what do you do with the rupee?”

“I never take it,” she answered, laughing.

“Why don’t you take it, Javni?”

“Mother keeps it for me. Now and again she says I work well, and adds an anna or two to my funds, and one day I shall have enough to buy a sari.” She seemed happy.

“And the rest?” I asked.

“The rest? Why, I’ll buy something for my brother’s child.”

“Is your brother poor, Javni?”

“No. But, Ramappa, I love the child,” she said tenderly.

“Suppose I asked you to give it to me?” I laughed, for I could not weep.

“Oh, you will never ask me, Ramappa, never. But if you should, I would give it to you.” She laughed too, content and amused.

“You are wonderful!” I murmured.

“At your feet, Ramappa!”

She had finished eating, and she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. I walked out into the garden and stood looking at the sparkling stars. There was companionship in their shining. The small and the great clustered together in the heart of the quiet blue. What did they know of caste? . . . Far away a cartman chanted forth:

The winds sighed.

3

ON the nights Javni came to sleep with us, we usually gossiped a great deal about village affairs. Javni always had news to tell us. One day it would be about the wife of postman Subba who had run away with the Mohammedan of the mango shop. Another day it would be about the miraculous cure of barber Venkanna’s wife Kanchi, during her recent pilgrimage to the Bilgiri temple. My sister always took an interest in these things. Javni made it a point to find out everything about everybody, and she gossiped the whole evening until we both fell asleep.

My sister usually lay by the window, I near the door, and Javni at our feet. She slept on a bare wattle mat, with a cotton sheet for cover, and she never seemed to suffer from the cold of the rainy evenings. On one of these nights when we lay gossiping, I pleaded with Javni to tell us a little about her own life. At first she was shy and hesitant; but when my sister urged her, and I had long been pleading, she accepted, still rather unwillingly. I was all ears, but my sister was snoring away after a while.

Javni was born in the neighboring village of Kotéhalli, where her father cultivated the fields in winter and washed clothes in summer. Her mother always had work to do, as there were childbirths almost every day in one village or another and, being a hereditary midwife, she was always sent for. Javni had four sisters and two brothers, of whom only her brother Bhima now remained. She loved her parents and they loved her too, and when she was eighteen she was duly married to a boy whom they had chosen from Kalkad. The boy was good and affectionate, and he never once beat her. He too was a washerman, and, “ What do you think?” said Javni, proudly. “He washed clothes for the Maharaja when he came here.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, encouragingly, and she continued. Her husband was, I have said, a good man, and he really cared for her. He never made her work too much, and he always cooked for her when she fell ill. One day, however, as the gods ordained, a snake bit him while he was washing clothes by the river, and in spite of all the magic that barber Venkanna applied, there was no hope, and he died that very evening, crying to the last, “Javni, Javni, my Javni.”

I should have expected her to weep here; but she continued without any exclamations or sighs. Then came all the misfortunes, one after the other, and yet she knew they were nothing, for over us all, she said, Goddess Talakamma moved and reigned.

Her husband belonged to a family of three brothers and two sisters. The elder brother was a wicked fellow, who played cards, and got drunk two days out of three. The second was her husband, and the third was a haughty, young brute, who had already, it was known, made friends with the concubine Siddi, the former mistress of the Rangappa priest. He was married and he treated his wife as though she were a beast of burden; once he actually beat her till she was bleeding and unconscious. There were many children in the family, and since one of the sisters-in-law lived in the same village, her children too came to play in the house. But Javni lived on with them, working at home as usual, and doing her little bit to add to the family funds.

She never knew, she said, how it all happened, but one day a policeman came, frightened everybody, and took away her elder brother-in-law, for some reason which nobody understood. The women were all terrified and everybody wept. The people in the village began to spit at them and reduced their crops to stubble out of hatred and revenge, by driving cattle into their fields. Shame, poverty, and quarrels followed one another. And as the elder brother-in-law was in prison, and the younger busy with his mistress, the women at home made her life miserable.

“’You dirty widow,’ they would say and spit on me. I wept and sobbed and often wanted to go and fall into the river. But I knew Goddess Talakamma would be angry with me, so I stopped each time I wanted to kill myself. One day, however, my elder sister-in-law became so intolerable, that I ran away from the house. I did not know to whom to go, for I knew nobody, and my brother hated me — he had always hated me. But anyway, Ramappa, she said lowering her voice, “a sister is a sister. You cannot deny that the same mother has suckled you both.”

“Of course not!” I said.

“But he never treated me like you treat your sister.”

“So you are jealous, you wretched widow!” exclaimed my sister, waking up. She always thought people hated or envied her.

“No, mother,” she pleaded.

“Go on!” I said.

“I went to my brother. As soon as his wife saw me, she swore and spat and took away her child who was playing on the veranda, saying it would be bewitched. After a moment my brother came out. ‘Why have you come?’ he asked me. ‘I am without a home,’ I said. ‘You dirty widow, how can you find a home to live in, when you carry misfortune wherever you set your feet.’ I simply wept. ‘Weep, weep!’ he cried, ‘weep till your tears flood the Cauvery, but you will not get a morsel of rice from me. No, not a morsel.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not want a morsel of rice. I only want a shelter, wide as my palm, to rest myself.’ He seemed less angry. He looked this way and that and cried, ‘Do you promise me not to quarrel?’ ‘Yes!’ I answered, still weeping. ‘Then for the peace of the spirit of my father, I will give you the little hut by the garden door. You can sit, weep, cat, die . . . do what you like there,’ he said. I trembled. In the meantime my sister-in-law came back. She frowned and thumped the floor, swearing at me, and calling me a prostitute, a donkey, a witch — Ramappa. I never saw a woman like that. She has made my life — a life of tears.”

“How?” I asked.

“How? I cannot say. It is ten or twenty years since I set foot in their house, and every day I wake up with ‘donkey’s wife’ or ‘prostitute’ in my ears.”

“But you don’t have anything to do with her?” I said.

“I don’t. But the child sometimes comes to me, because I love it, and then my sister-in-law rushes out, roaring like a tigress, and says she will skin me to death if I touch the child again.”

“Then you should not touch it, Javni!”

“Of course, I would not if I had my own. But Ramappa, that child loves me.”

“And why don’t they want you to touch it?”

“ Because they say I am a witch and an evil spirit.” She wept.

“Who says it?”

“Both of them say it. But still, Ramappa—” here she suddenly turned gay — “I always keep aside mangoes or cakes that mother gives me, and I give them all to the child. So it flies away from the mother each time the door is open. It is such a sweet, sweet thing.” She was happy.

“How old is it?” I asked.

“Four,”she answered.

“Is that their only child?”

“No. They have four more — all grown up. One is already as big as you.”

“And the others, do they love you?”

“No, they all hate me . . . they all hate me — except that child.”

“Why don’t you adopt a child?” I suggested.

“No, Ramappa, I have a lamb, and that is enough.”

“You have a lamb too?” I said, surprised.

“Yes, a lamb for the child to play with now, and when the next Durga festival comes, I will offer it to Goddess Talakamma.”

“Offer it to the Goddess! Why Javni, why not let it live?”

“Don’t speak such a sacrilege, Ramappa. You know I owe a lambevery three years to the Goddess.”

“And what does she give in return?”

“What! What!" she was angry. “All! Everything! Would I live if the Goddess did not protect me? Would that child come to me if the Goddess did not help me? Would mother be so good to me if the Goddess did not bless me? Why Ramappa, everything is hers, O! Great Goddess Talakamma, give everybody good health, long life, and all the joys. Protect me, mother! “ She was praying.

“What will she give if I offer a lamb?" I asked.

“Everything, Ramappa. You will grow learned; you will become a big man, and you will marry a rich wife, Ramappa.”she said, growing affectionate all of a sudden. “I have already been praying for you. When mother said she had a brother, I said to the Goddess, ‘Goddess, keep that boy strong and virtuous, and give him all the joys of heaven and earth. . .‘”

“Do you love me more or less than your brother’s child?" I asked, to change the subject. She was silent for a moment.

“You don’t know?" I said.

“No, Ramappa. I have been thinking. I offer a lamb to the Goddess, for the sake of the child. I have not offered a lamb for you. So how can I say whom I love more?”

“The child!”

“No, no, I love you as much, Ramappa.”

“Will you adopt me, Javni?” No, f was not joking.

She broke out into a fit of laughter which woke my sister.

“Oh! Be quiet,” cried Sita.

“Do you know Javni is going to adopt me?” I said.

“Adopt you! Why does she not go and fall into the river?” she retorted, and fell asleep again.

“If you adopt me, Javni, I will work for you, and give you food to eat.”

“No, learned Ramappa. A Brahmin is not meant to work. You are the ‘chosen ones.‘”

“No, we are not,” I murmured.

“You are! You are! The sacred books are yours. The Vedas are yours. You are all, you are the twice-born. We are your servants, Ramappa — your slaves.”

“I am not a Brahmin,”I said half jokingly, half seriously.

“You are, Ramappa, I know you are. You want to make fun of me?”

“No, Javni. Suppose you adopt me?" I persisted.

She laughed again.

“If you don’t adopt me, I shall die and grow into a lamb in my next life, and you will buy it. What will you do then?”

She did not say anything. It was too perplexing.

“Now,” I said, feeling sleepy. “Now, Javni, go to sleep, and think tomorrow morning whether you will adopt me or not ?“

“Adopt you! You are a god, Ramappa, a god! And I cannot adopt you.”

I dozed away. Only in the stillness I heard Javni saying; “Goddess, Great Goddess, as I have vowed, I will offer thee my lamb; protect the child, protect mother, protect her brother, protect master, O Goddess! protect me. . . .”

The Goddess stood silent in the little temple by the Cauvery, amidst the whisper of the woods.

4

A JULY morning, two summers later. Our cart rumbled over the cobbled street, and we were soon at the village square. Javni was running behind the cart with tears rolling down her checks. For a full week I had seen her weeping all the time, dreading the day when we would leave her, and she would see us no more. She was breathless; but she walked fast, keeping pace with the bullocks. I was with my sister at the back of the cart, and my brother-inlaw sat in the front beside the curtman. My sister too was sad. In her heart she knew she was leaving a friend. Yes, Javni had been her only friend. Now and again they gazed at each other, and I could see Javni suddenly sobbing like a child. “Mother, mother,”she would say, approaching the cart. “Mother, don’t forget me. . . .”

“I will not. No, I assure you, I will not.” Now my sister too was in tears.

“Even if she should, I will not,” I added. I too would have wept had I not been self-conscious.

When we reached the river it was already full morning. The ferry was not plying because it was summer and there was so little water that we could wade across. The cartman said he would rest the bullocks for a moment, and I got out to breathe the fresh air, and more, to speak to Javni.

“Don’t weep,”I said to Javni.

“ Ramappa, how can I help weeping? Will I ever see again a family of gods like yours? Mother was kind to me, kind like a veritable goddess. You were so, so good to me. And master . . .”Here she broke again into fits of sobs.

“No, Javni. With it heart like yours, who will not blossom forth into godhead?" I murmured.

But she simply wept. My words meant nothing to her. She was nervous and trembled over and over again. “Mother, mother . . .”she would say between her sobs. “Oh, mother. . .”

The cartman asked me to get in. I jumped into the cart with a heavy heart. “Hoi . . . hoi . . .”cried the cartman. And the bullocks stepped into the river.

Till we were on the other bank I could see Javni sitting on a rock and looking towards us. In my soul I still seemed to hear her sobs. A huge pipal tree rose behind her, and across the blue waters of the river and under the vast sky above her, she seemed so small, so insignificant. . . .