Sukhmay Jivan
The Happy Life
by Chandradhar Sharma Guleri
Translated from Hindi by Prasenjit Gupta
After you take the exams, you have to wait for the results to be announced; and how agonizingly slowly the days crawl by, only those who've taken the count themselves will know. As soon as you wake in the morning you'll calculate how many days have elapsed since the exam and how many days remain until the end of the stipulated eight-week period. Sometimes it's even necessary to tally just how many days have gone by after the eight weeks are up. Just as you're sitting down to lunch you hear the postman's footstep—and your heart jumps into your mouth. No sooner does the telegram carrier enter the neighborhood than your arms and legs begin to tremble. No rest while you're awake, nor while asleep—even in your dreams you find the aged Examiner sitting on your chest holding an eight-week-long knife to your throat.
I was in bad shape. This time the LL.B. results were going to be delayed even more—who knew what had happened, perhaps an examiner had died, or maybe he'd got the plague. His papers were to be sent to someone else. I kept thinking that all the examiners and registrars were welcome to the plague, but only after they'd marked the papers; just hold off for the next two weeks. Alternatively, why hadn't all the examiners got the plague before the examinations were held? All night I hadn't slept, and my head was spinning: I sat down to read the paper and found that the Linotype had printed four or five lines upside down. That was it; I couldn't take any more; I had to leave the house. Out in the open my spirits might rise. I mounted my iron horse and set off.
After three or four miles my thoughts calmed down. The breeze coming off the green-spread farmland, the chittering of birds, the tuneful songs at the village well of the farmers watering their land, the fragrance of deodar needles and the wind whistling through them—all this served to banish the specter of exams that shadowed my mind. The bicycle, too, is a thing of wonder. It asks neither grain nor water; you can drive it as long as your legs hold out. The road was almost deserted. Once in a while farmer children or village dogs would follow me for a short distance. I pedaled faster and faster. Only fifteen miles from my home in Sitarpur was Kalanagar, where I could get delicious ice-cream, and where I had a friend who was somewhat eccentric. He used to say he'd only marry someone he could see before the wedding. Whenever anyone happened to mention the subject in conversation, at once he'd embark upon a lengthy disquisition about his marital principles and postulates. All right; I might as well lighten my load with him.
Thought piled upon thought. I recalled the history of my friend's marriage. His father had told him: During the next vacation we'll get you married to Seth Ganeshlal's only daughter. The neighbors said that Seth-ji's daughter was one-eyed, fat, and only eight years old. His father said, People are just envious, that's why they float these rumors; and even if the girl is like that, so what, Seth-ji doesn't have any sons, he'll give her jewelry worth twenty, thirty thousand at least. At debating clubs my respected friend had declaimed along with me at great length, speaking out against child marriages and parental coercion. Now, in front of his father he himself did not dare utter a squeak, and so he was too ashamed to face his friends. His personal opinions gave way to generalizations: Hindu society itself was so rotten that our higher beliefs could not prevail. The solitary pea cannot burst the bowl. Our virtuous ideal was an animal sacrificed upon the altar of our parents' stubbornness and their headstrong natures. The soul of India could not be saved until the day—
Whishhh! Suddenly I fell from my throne to the floor—the bicycle atop me. One of the tires had lost its air. One moment the cart's on the ferry; the next moment the ferry's on the cart. When I looked down I saw that the village boys had laid a line of thorny branches across the road. I cursed them out roundly, but that didn't fix the punctured tire. I hadn't brought the pump along. Here I'd been saving the soul of India and now I couldn't even see a way out of dragging this spinning-wheel all the way to Kalanagar. From the milestone nearby I learnt that Kalanagar was still seven miles away. By the time the next milestone appeared I was completely winded. Midsummer heat; sharp pebbles on the road; the road itself reduced by laden bullock-carts to a pale sugar-fine powder six inches deep. My black patent-leather shoes were covered by an inch-thick coat of this white polish; my handkerchief was wet from constantly having to wipe off my red face—my entire appearance was not that of a gentlemanly scholar but rather that of a roadside laborer. We are such slaves to our vehicles that a walk of two or three miles makes us cry out for milk like a six-day-old infant!