The Post Office | Page 4

money! You'll make me so
happy if you have a little curds from me.
AMAL. Say, have I kept you too long?
DAIRYMAN. Not a bit; it has been no loss to me at all; you have
taught me how to be happy selling curds. [Exit]
AMAL. [Intoning] Curds, curds, good nice curds--from the dairy
village--from the country of the Panch-mura hills by the Shamli bank.
Curds, good curds; in the early morning the women make the cows
stand in a row under the trees and milk them, and in the evening they
turn the milk into curds. Curds, good curds. Hello, there's the
watchman on his rounds. Watchman, I say, come and have a word with
me.
WATCHMAN. What's all this row you are making? Aren't you afraid
of the likes of me?
AMAL. No, why should I be?
WATCHMAN. Suppose I march you off then?
AMAL. Where will you take me to? Is it very far, right beyond the
hills?
WATCHMAN. Suppose I march you straight to the King?
AMAL. To the King! Do, will you? But the doctor won't let me go out.
No one can ever take me away. I've got to stay here all day long.
WATCHMAN. Doctor won't let you, poor fellow! So I see! Your face
is pale and there are dark rings round your eyes. Your veins stick out

from your poor thin hands.
AMAL. Won't you sound the gong, Watchman?
WATCHMAN. Time has not yet come.
AMAL. How curious! Some say time has not yet come, and some say
time has gone by! But surely your time will come the moment you
strike the gong!
WATCHMAN. That's not possible; I strike up the gong only when it is
time.
AMAL. Yes, I love to hear your gong. When it is midday and our meal
is over, Uncle goes off to his work and Auntie falls asleep reading her
Râmayana, and in the courtyard under the shadow of the wall our
doggie sleeps with his nose in his curled up tail; then your gong strikes
out, "Dong, dong, dong!" Tell me why does your gong sound?
WATCHMAN. My gong sounds to tell the people, Time waits for none,
but goes on forever.
AMAL. Where, to what land?
WATCHMAN. That none knows.
AMAL. Then I suppose no one has ever been there! Oh, I do wish to
fly with the time to that land of which no one knows anything.
WATCHMAN. All of us have to get there one day, my child.
AMAL. Have I too?
WATCHMAN. Yes, you too!
AMAL. But doctor won't let me out.
WATCHMAN. One day the doctor himself may take you there by the
hand.

AMAL. He won't; you don't know him. He only keeps me in.
WATCHMAN. One greater than he comes and lets us free.
AMAL. When will this great doctor come for me? I can't stick in here
any more.
WATCHMAN. Shouldn't talk like that, my child.
AMAL. No. I am here where they have left me--I never move a bit. But
when your gong goes off, dong, dong, dong, it goes to my heart. Say,
Watchman?
WATCHMAN. Yes, my dear.
AMAL. Say, what's going on there in that big house on the other side,
where there is a flag flying high up and the people are always going in
and out?
WATCHMAN. Oh, there? That's our new Post Office.
AMAL. Post Office? Whose?
WATCHMAN. Whose? Why, the King's surely!
AMAL. Do letters come from the King to his office here?
WATCHMAN. Of course. One fine day there may be a letter for you in
there.
AMAL. A letter for me? But I am only a little boy.
WATCHMAN. The King sends tiny notes to little boys.
AMAL. Oh, how lovely! When shall I have my letter? How do you
guess he'll write to me?
WATCHMAN. Otherwise why should he set his Post Office here right
in front of your open window, with the golden flag flying?

AMAL. But who will fetch me my King's letter when it comes?
WATCHMAN. The King has many postmen. Don't you see them run
about with round gilt badges on their chests?
AMAL. Well, where do they go?
WATCHMAN. Oh, from door to door, all through the country.
AMAL. I'll be the King's postman when I grow up.
WATCHMAN. Ha! ha! Postman, indeed! Rain or shine, rich or poor,
from house to house delivering letters--that's very great work!
AMAL. That's what I'd like best. What makes you smile so? Oh, yes,
your work is great too. When it is silent everywhere in the heat of the
noonday, your gong sounds, Dong, dong, dong,-- and sometimes when
I wake up at night all of a sudden and find our lamp blown out, I can
hear through the darkness your gong slowly sounding, Dong,