About the Author
Bhisham Sahni (1915-2003) is one of the most distinguished of contemporary writers in India. He pursued an academic career as well as a creative one, being both a creative writer and a lecturer at a
Delhi University College. His first collection of short stories Bhagya Rekha (The Line of Fate) was published in 1953.He has translated several Russian books into Hindi. He has also edited a literary journal called Nai Kahaniyan. His novel Tamas earned his name and fame which won him Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971. It is one of the most powerful novels about the Partition of India ever written. Written thirty years after the Partition, the narrative is both non judgemental and reflective.
The chilling memories of the blood bath and the thought provoking analysis of the consequences of communalism are relevant in present day India too. He has published seven novels and nine collections of short stories. Apart from the Sahitya Akademi Award, he won many other awards including the
Distinguished Writer Award of the Punjab Government, the Lotus Award of the Afro Asian Writers’
Association and the Soviet Land Nehru Award. In 1998, he was given the Padma Bhushan by the
President of India.
Introduction to the Passage
There is a general belief that women are always dependent on men throughout their lives. Girls and women are told from an early age that men are their protectors. Women are daughters, wives and mothers of men. Their identity is derived from these relationships, and their worth is weighed in these terms. They are ‘dependents’ of the men, and therefore their subordinates. Indeed, Indian society still struggles to define and ‘slot’ any woman who does not fall into these pre-defined categories. If a woman is unmarried, she may be suspected to be a woman of loose morals; it she has no children, she may be seen as a curse on her husband’s and if she is a widow, she could be hastily bundled away somewhere where her inauspicious shadow cannot touch others. Too often, when a woman has completed her ‘useful’ life of bearing and raising children, she is treated as a non –person by her own family; a burden to be endured rather than a treasure to be cherished, a source of embarrassment rather than pride, a creature whose emotions and feelings mean less than nothing. This is the story of one such unfortunate old lady.
Summary:
The story is about an old lady, her son Mr. Shamnath and his wife. Mr. Shamnath and his wife were busying themselves with arranging the rooms for the visit of the boss and his friends. Chairs, tables, side tables, napkins, flowers, they were all there on the veranda, neatly arranged. Suddenly a problem reared up before Shamnath. What about mother? He did not know what to do with the old woman. He did not want his old mother to come before the boss and so he discussed the matter with his wife. First, they thought of sending her to the next door old woman. But they soon gave up that idea. Then Shamnath suggested a plan that they could tell his mother to finish her meal early and retire to her room so that his boss and his friends wouldn’t see her. Even though the proposition sounded right, Shamnath’s wife said that it would not be a good idea. The old lady had the habit of snoring and since her room was next to where dinner would be served, the guests would know about her presence. He was very anxious to please his boss. He turned round and looked at his mother’s room.
Her room opened onto the veranda. As his gaze swept over the veranda, a thought flashed through his mind. He went to his mother’s room. Since morning his mother had been nervous at the goings -on in the house. She seemed to be very anxious because she knew that the big boss from her son’s office was coming to their house and she wished everything should go well. When Shamnath told his mother to finish her meal early that evening, she reminded her son that she would have to skip dinner because meat was cooked in the house. Mr. Shamnath had fixed everything. But he still felt anxious. He arranged his mother like a puppet or a rag doll in a chair in the Veranda. He told her not to snore, not to sit with her feet lifted up. As time passed, mother’s heart started pounding heavily. If the boss came to her and asked her some question, what would she say? She was scared of English Sahibs. She felt like going away to her widow-friend, but she lacked the courage to defy her son’s orders. She kept sitting there, dangling her legs from the chair. Mr. Shamnath’s dinner had reached a crescendo of success. Everything was going superbly.
The Sahib liked the Indian dishes and the Memsahib the curtains, the sofa covers, the decor. After dinner, they came out of the drawing room. When they reached the Veranda Mr. Shamnath saw his mother sitting exactly as he had left her but both her feet were on the seat and her head swayed from side to side. She snored, heavily. Mr. Shamnath seethed with anger. The Sahib walked up to Shamnath’s mother and greeted her with a ‘Namaste’. He extended his right hand and shook hands with her. Shamnath was nervous and had been trying to impress upon the boss that his mother was an illiterate, ignorant village woman. But everybody was so impressed with the old woman’s simplicity. They wanted her to sing. And she sang two lines of an old wedding song. Everybody was so happy and Shamnath’s anger suddenly changed into joy. When all the guests had departed, Mr. Shamnath went to his mother and thanked her. He wanted his mother to make a phulkari for his boss. Then she expressed her wish to go to Haridwar and spend the rest of her life there in meditation. But Mr. Shamnath told his mother to stay there and also wanted her to make a phulkari for his boss so that he could please his boss and thereby get a promotion. At last she agreed to her son’s wish. There are deep bonds that bind this mother and son. They share a history. They are what they are, and they will continue in the orbits they have made for themselves. Unseen, unrecognized, the contours of the relationship have been drawn over the decades. But the origins of the relationship are rooted in the age-old image of a mother as a giver, carer, and sacrifice to the very end of her life.