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  ‘And then what happened?’ I prompted him.

  ‘Perhaps it could only have happened in India—and to a person like me,’ he said. ‘This sudden compassion for the person you are supposed to destroy. Instead of being furious and outraged, instead of seizing the girl and marching her off to the police station, I stroked her head and said silly comforting things.’

  ‘And she told you that she had killed the rani?’

  ‘She told me how the rani had called her to her house and given her tea and sweets. Mr Kapur had been there. After some time he began stroking Kusum’s arms and squeezing her knees. She had drawn away, but Kapur kept pawing her. The rani was telling Kusum not to be afraid, that no harm would come to her. Kusum slipped away from the man and made a rush for the door. The rani caught her by the shoulders and pushed her back into the room. The rani was getting angry. Kusum saw the axe lying in a corner of the room. She seized it, raised it above her head and threatened Kapur. The man realized that he had gone too far, and valuing his neck, backed away. But the rani, in a great rage, sprang at the girl. And Kusum, in desperation and panic, brought the axe down upon the rani’s head.

  ‘The rani fell to the ground. Without waiting to see what Kapur might do, Kusum fled from the house. Her bangle must have broken when she stumbled against the door. She ran into the forest, and after concealing the axe amongst some tall ferns, lay weeping on the grass until it grew dark. But such was her nature, and such the resilience of youth, that she recovered sufficiently to be able to return home looking her normal self. And during the following days, she managed to remain silent about the whole business.’

  ‘What did you do about it?’ I asked.

  Keemat Lal looked me straight in my beery eye.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I did absolutely nothing. I couldn’t have the girl put away in a remand home. It would have crushed her spirit.’

  ‘And what about Kapur?’

  ‘Oh, he had his own reasons for remaining quiet, as you may guess. No, the case was closed—or perhaps I should say the file was put in my pending tray. My promotion, too, went into the pending tray.’

  ‘It didn’t turn out very well for you,’ I said.

  ‘No. Here I am in Shahpur, and still an inspector. But, tell me, what would you have done if you had been in my place?’

  I considered his question carefully for a moment or two, then said, ‘I suppose it would have depended on how much sympathy the girl evoked in me. She had killed in innocence…’

  ‘Then, you would have put your personal feeling above your duty to uphold the law?’

  ‘Yes. But I would not have made a very good policeman.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Still, it’s a pity that Kapur got off so easily.’

  ‘There was no alternative if I was to let the girl go. But he didn’t get off altogether. He found himself in trouble later on for swindling some manufacturing concern, and went to jail for a couple of years.’

  ‘And the girl—did you see her again?’

  ‘Well, before I was transferred from Panauli, I saw her occasionally on the road. She was usually on her way to school. She would greet me with folded hands, and call me uncle.’

  The beer bottles were all empty, and Inspector Keemat Lal got up to leave. His final words to me were, ‘I should never have been a policeman.’

  The Thief’s Story

  I WAS still a thief when I met Romi. And though I was only fifteen years old, I was an experienced and fairly successful hand. Romi was watching a wrestling match when I approached him. He was about twenty-five and he looked easy-going, kind, and simple enough for my purpose. I was sure I would be able to win the young man’s confidence.

  ‘You look a bit of a wrestler yourself,’ I said. There’s nothing like flattery to break the ice!

  ‘So do you,’ he replied, which put me off for a moment because at that time I was rather thin and bony.

  ‘Well,’ I said modestly, ‘I do wrestle a bit.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Hari Singh,’ I lied. I took a new name every month, which kept me ahead of the police and former employers.

  After these formalities Romi confined himself to commenting on the wrestlers, who were grunting, gasping and heaving each other about. When he walked away, I followed him casually.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said.

  I gave him my most appealing smile. ‘I want to work for you,’ I said.

  ‘But I can’t pay you anything—not for some time, anyway.’

  I thought that over for a minute. Perhaps I had misjudged my man. ‘Can you feed me?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘I can cook,’ I lied again.

  ‘If you can cook, then maybe I can feed you.’

  He took me to his room over the Delhi Sweet Shop and told me I could sleep on the balcony. But the meal I cooked that night must have been terrible because Romi gave it to a stray dog and told me to be off.

  But I just hung around, smiling in my most appealing way, and he couldn’t help laughing.

  Later, he said never mind, he’d teach me to cook. He also taught me to write my name and said he would soon teach me to write whole sentences and to add figures. I was grateful. I knew that once I could write like an educated person, there would be no limit to what I could achieve.

  It was quite pleasant working for Romi. I made tea in the morning and then took my time buying the day’s supplies, usually making a profit of two or three rupees. I think he knew I made a little money this way, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Romi made money by fits and starts. He would borrow one week, lend the next. He kept worrying about his next cheque, but as soon as it arrived he would go out and celebrate. He wrote for the Delhi and Bombay magazines: a strange way to make a living.

  One evening he came home with a small bundle of notes, saying he had just sold a book to a publisher. That night I saw him put the money in an envelope and tuck it under the mattress.

  I had been working for Romi for almost a month and, apart from cheating on the shopping, had not done anything big in my real line of work. I had every opportunity for doing so. I could come and go as I pleased, and Romi was the most trusting person I had ever met.

  That was why it was so difficult to rob him. It was easy for me to rob a greedy man. But robbing a nice man could be a problem. And if he doesn’t notice he’s being robbed, then all the spice goes out of the undertaking!

  Well, it’s time I got down to some real work, I told myself. If I don’t take the money, he’ll only waste it on his so-called friends. After all, he doesn’t even give me a salary.

  Romi was sleeping peacefully. A beam of moonlight reached over the balcony and fell on his bed. I sat on the floor, considering the situation. If I took the money, I could catch the 10.30 express to Lucknow. Slipping out of my blanket, I crept over to the bed.

  My hand slid under the mattress, searching for the notes. When I found the packet, I drew it out without a sound. Romi sighed in his sleep and turned on his side. Startled, I moved quickly out of the room.

  Once on the road, I began to run. I had the money stuffed into a vest pocket under my shirt. When I’d gotten some distance from Romi’s place, I slowed to a walk and, taking the envelope from my pocket, counted the money. Seven hundred rupees in fifties. I could live like a prince for a week or two!

  When I reached the station, I did not stop at the ticket office (I had never bought a ticket in my life) but dashed straight on to the platform. The Lucknow Express was just moving out. The train had still to pick up speed and I should have been able to jump into one of the compartments, but I hesitated—for some reason I can’t explain—and I lost the chance to get away.

  When the train had gone, I found myself standing alone on the deserted platform. I had no idea where to spend the night. I had no friends, believing that friends were more trouble than help. And I did not want to arouse curiosity by staying at one of the small hotels nearby.
The only person I knew really well was the man I had robbed. Leaving the station, I walked slowly through the bazaar.

  In my short career, I had made a study of people’s faces after they had discovered the loss of their valuables. The greedy showed panic; the rich showed anger; the poor, resignation. But I knew that Romi’s face when he discovered the theft would show only a touch of sadness—not for the loss of money, but for the loss of trust.

  The night was chilly—November nights can be cold in northern India—and a shower of rain added to my discomfort. I sat down in the shelter of the clock tower. A few beggars and vagrants lay beside me, rolled up tight in their blankets. The clock showed midnight. I felt for the notes; they were soaked through.

  Romi’s money. In the morning, he would probably have given me five rupees to go to the movies, but now I had it all: no more cooking meals, running to the bazaar, or learning to write sentences.

  Sentences! I had forgotten about them in the excitement of the theft. Writing complete sentences, I knew, could one day bring me more than a few hundred rupees. It was a simple matter to steal. But to be a really big man, a clever and respected man, was something else. I should go back to Romi, I told myself, if only to learn to read and write.

  I hurried back to the room feeling very nervous, for it is much easier to steal something than to return it undetected.

  I opened the door quietly, then stood in the doorway in clouded moonlight. Romi was still asleep. I crept to the head of the bed, and my hand came up with the packet of notes. I felt his breath on my hand. I remained still for a few moments. Then my fingers found the edge of the mattress, and I slipped the money beneath it.

  I awoke late the next morning to find that Romi had already made the tea. He stretched out a hand to me. There was a fifty-rupee note between his fingers. My heart sank.

  ‘I made some money yesterday,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll be able to pay you regularly.’

  My spirits rose. But when I took the note, I noticed that it was still wet from the night’s rain.

  So he knew what I’d done. But neither his lips nor his eyes revealed anything.

  ‘Today we’ll start writing sentences,’ he said.

  I smiled at Romi in my most appealing way. And the smile came by itself, without any effort.

  The Trouble with Jinns

  MY FRIEND Jimmy has only one arm. He lost the other when he was a young man of twenty-five. The story of how he lost his good right arm is a little difficult to believe, but I swear that it is absolutely true.

  To begin with, Jimmy was (and presumably still is) a Jinn. Now a Jinn isn’t really a human like us. A Jinn is a spirit creature from another world who has assumed, for a lifetime, the physical aspect of a human being. Jimmy was a true Jinn and he had the Jinn’s gift of being able to elongate his arm at will. Most Jinns can stretch their arms to a distance of twenty or thirty feet. Jimmy could attain forty feet. His arm would move through space or up walls or along the ground like a beautiful gliding serpent. I have seen him stretched out beneath a mango tree, helping himself to ripe mangoes from the top of the tree. He loved mangoes. He was a natural glutton and it was probably his gluttony that first led him to misuse his peculiar gifts.

  We were at school together at a hill station in northern India. Jimmy was particularly good at basketball. He was clever enough not to lengthen his arm too much because he did not want anyone to know that he was a Jinn. In the boxing ring he generally won his fights. His opponents never seemed to get past his amazing reach. He just kept tapping them on the nose until they retired from the ring bloody and bewildered.

  It was during the half-term examinations that I stumbled on Jimmy’s secret. We had been set a particularly difficult algebra paper but I had managed to cover a couple of sheets with correct answers and was about to forge ahead on another sheet when I noticed someone’s hand on my desk. At first I thought it was the invigilator’s. But when I looked up there was no one beside me.

  Could it be the boy sitting directly behind? No, he was engrossed in his question paper and had his hands to himself. Meanwhile, the hand on my desk had grasped my answer sheets and was cautiously moving off. Following its descent, I found that it was attached to an arm of amazing length and pliability. This moved stealthily down the desk and slithered across the floor, shrinking all the while, until it was restored to its normal length. Its owner was of course one who had never been any good at algebra.

  I had to write out my answers a second time but after the exam I went straight up to Jimmy, told him I didn’t like his game and threatened to expose him. He begged me not to let anyone know, assured me that he couldn’t really help himself, and offered to be of service to me whenever I wished. It was tempting to have Jimmy as my friend, for with his long reach he would obviously be useful. I agreed to overlook the matter of the pilfered papers and we became the best of pals.

  It did not take me long to discover that Jimmy’s gift was more of a nuisance than a constructive aid. That was because Jimmy had a second-rate mind and did not know how to make proper use of his powers. He seldom rose above the trivial. He used his long arm in the tuck shop, in the classroom, in the dormitory. And when we were allowed out to the cinema, he used it in the dark of the hall.

  Now the trouble with all Jinns is that they have a weakness for women with long black hair. The longer and blacker the hair, the better for Jinns. And should a Jinn manage to take possession of the woman he desires, she goes into a decline and her beauty decays. Everything about her is destroyed except for the beautiful long black hair.

  Jimmy was still too young to be able to take possession in this way, but he couldn’t resist touching and stroking long black hair. The cinema was the best place for the indulgence of his whims. His arm would start stretching, his fingers would feel their way along the rows of seats, and his lengthening limb would slowly work its way along the aisle until it reached the back of the seat in which sat the object of his admiration. His hand would stroke the long black hair with great tenderness and if the girl felt anything and looked round, Jimmy’s hand would disappear behind the seat and lie there poised like the hood of a snake, ready to strike again.

  At college two or three years later, Jimmy’s first real victim succumbed to his attentions. She was a lecturer in economics, not very good looking, but her hair, black and lustrous, reached almost to her knees. She usually kept it in plaits but Jimmy saw her one morning just after she had taken a head bath, and her hair lay spread out on the cot on which she was reclining. Jimmy could no longer control himself. His spirit, the very essence of his personality, entered the woman’s body and the next day she was distraught, feverish and excited. She would not eat, went into a coma, and in a few days dwindled to a mere skeleton. When she died, she was nothing but skin and bone but her hair had lost none of its loveliness.

  I took pains to avoid Jimmy after this tragic event. I could not prove that he was the cause of the lady’s sad demise but in my own heart I was quite certain of it. For since meeting Jimmy, I had read a good deal about Jinns and knew their ways.

  We did not see each other for a few years. And then, holidaying in the hills last year, I found we were staying at the same hotel. I could not very well ignore him and after we had drunk a few beers together I began to feel that I had perhaps misjudged Jimmy and that he was not the irresponsible Jinn I had taken him for. Perhaps the college lecturer had died of some mysterious malady that attacks only college lecturers and Jimmy had nothing at all to do with it.

  We had decided to take our lunch and a few bottles of beer to a grassy knoll just below the main motor road. It was late afternoon and I had been sleeping off the effects of the beer when I woke to find Jimmy looking rather agitated.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Up there, under the pine trees,’ he said. ‘Just above the road. Don’t you see them?’

  ‘I see two girls,’ I said. ‘So what?’

  ‘The one on the left. Haven’t you noticed her
hair?’

  ‘Yes, it is very long and beautiful and—now look, Jimmy, you’d better get a grip on yourself!’ But already his hand was out of sight, his arm snaking up the hillside and across the road.

  Presently I saw the hand emerge from some bushes near the girls and then cautiously make its way to the girl with the black tresses. So absorbed was Jimmy in the pursuit of his favourite pastime that he failed to hear the blowing of a horn. Around the bend of the road came a speeding Mercedes Benz truck.

  Jimmy saw the truck but there wasn’t time for him to shrink his arm back to normal. It lay right across the entire width of the road and when the truck had passed over it, it writhed and twisted like a mortally wounded python.

  By the time the truck driver and I could fetch a doctor, the arm (or what was left of it) had shrunk to its ordinary size. We took Jimmy to hospital where the doctors found it necessary to amputate. The truck driver, who kept insisting that the arm he ran over was at least thirty feet long, was arrested on a charge of drunken driving.

  Some weeks later I asked Jimmy, ‘Why are you so depressed? You still have one arm. Isn’t it gifted in the same way?’

  ‘I never tried to find out,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to try now.’

  He is, of course, still a Jinn at heart and whenever he sees a girl with long black hair he must be terribly tempted to try out his one good arm and stroke her beautiful tresses. But he has learnt his lesson. It is better to be a human without any gifts than a Jinn or a genius with one too many.

  Adventures in Reading

  1

  YOU DON'T see them so often now, those tiny books and almanacs—genuine pocket books—once so popular with our parents and grandparents; much smaller than the average paperback, often smaller than the palm of the hand. With the advent of coffee-table books, new books keep growing bigger and bigger, rivalling tombstones! And one day, like Alice after drinking from the wrong bottle, they will reach the ceiling and won’t have anywhere else to go. The average publisher, who apparently believes that large profits are linked to large books, must look upon these old miniatures with amusement or scorn. They were not meant for a coffee table, true. They were meant for true book lovers and readers, for they took up very little space—you could slip them into your pocket without any discomfort, either to you or to the pocket.