My Reminiscences | Page 8

but
that bit never got done. There was a pull at the curtain but it was not
drawn. The elders, thought I, can do whatever they please, why do they
rest content with such shallow delving? If we young folk had the
ordering of it, the inmost mystery of the earth would no longer be
allowed to remain smothered in its dust covering.
And the thought that behind every part of the vault of blue reposed the
mysteries of the sky would also spur our imaginings. When our Pundit,
in illustration of some lesson in our Bengali science primer, told us that
the blue sphere was not an enclosure, how thunderstruck we were! "Put
ladder upon ladder," said he, "and go on mounting away, but you will
never bump your head." He must be sparing of his ladders, I opined,
and questioned with a rising inflection, "And what if we put more
ladders, and more, and more?" When I realised that it was fruitless
multiplying ladders I remained dumbfounded pondering over the matter.
Surely, I concluded, such an astounding piece of news must be known
only to those who are the world's schoolmasters!


PART II

(4) Servocracy

In the history of India the regime of the Slave Dynasty was not a happy
one. In going back to the reign of the servants in my own life's history I
can find nothing glorious or cheerful touching the period. There were
frequent changes of king, but never a variation in the code of restraints
and punishments with which we were afflicted. We, however, had no
opportunity at the time for philosophising on the subject; our backs
bore as best they could the blows which befell them: and we accepted
as one of the laws of the universe that it is for the Big to hurt and for
the Small to be hurt. It has taken me a long time to learn the opposite
truth that it is the Big who suffer and the Small who cause suffering.
The quarry does not view virtue and vice from the standpoint of the
hunter. That is why the alert bird, whose cry warns its fellows before
the shot has sped, gets abused as vicious. We howled when we were
beaten, which our chastisers did not consider good manners; it was in
fact counted sedition against the servocracy. I cannot forget how, in
order effectively to suppress such sedition, our heads used to be
crammed into the huge water jars then in use; distasteful, doubtless,
was this outcry to those who caused it; moreover, it was likely to have
unpleasant consequences.
I now sometimes wonder why such cruel treatment was meted out to us
by the servants. I cannot admit that there was on the whole anything in
our behaviour or demeanour to have put us beyond the pale of human
kindness. The real reason must have been that the whole of our burden
was thrown on the servants, and the whole burden is a thing difficult to
bear even for those who are nearest and dearest. If children are only
allowed to be children, to run and play about and satisfy their curiosity,
it becomes quite simple. Insoluble problems are only created if you try
to confine them inside, keep them still or hamper their play. Then does
the burden of the child, so lightly borne by its own childishness, fall
heavily on the guardian--like that of the horse in the fable which was
carried instead of being allowed to trot on its own legs: and though
money procured bearers even for such a burden it could not prevent
them taking it out of the unlucky beast at every step.
Of most of these tyrants of our childhood I remember only their

cuffings and boxings, and nothing more. Only one personality stands
out in my memory.
His name was Iswar. He had been a village schoolmaster before. He
was a prim, proper and sedately dignified personage. The Earth seemed
too earthy for him, with too little water to keep it sufficiently clean; so
that he had to be in a constant state of warfare with its chronic soiled
state. He would shoot his water-pot into the tank with a lightning
movement so as to get his supply from an uncontaminated depth. It was
he who, when bathing in the tank, would be continually thrusting away
the surface impurities till he took a sudden plunge expecting, as it were,
to catch the water unawares. When walking his right arm stood out at
an angle from his body, as if, so it seemed to us, he could not trust the
cleanliness even of his own garments. His whole bearing had the
appearance of an effort to keep clear of the imperfections which,
through unguarded avenues, find