Wings: Tales of the Psychic/The Man Who Lost Caste
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE
In those days, when the first wave of Hindu emigration struck the Pacific Littoral, I had a little Oriental shop down Yeslerway, in the city of Seattle. My tiny show-window was crammed with the mellow, scented things of the turbaned places. There were rugs and laces and shawls from many lands, carved ivories and soapstones, white jade and green jade; and finally there were a few Hindu gods and many and various daggers, bolos and barongs and kurkrees and khyberees.
Then came the day when he walked into my shop, all the six foot four of him, straight as a lance at rest, bearded, hook-nosed, pink-turbaned, patient-eyed, and silken-voiced. He handled with reverence the little peacock god and the cruel, scissor-like Scinde blade which lay on the counter. And so I knew that he was a Mahratta and a high-caste.
He told me that he was the servant of a retired Anglo-Indian officer who lived in the Queen Anne's Addition, and Moslim though I am and Mahratta though he was, we became friends, even if we could not break bread together.
Then one evening, when spring was white and pink, and the night air heavy with the musk of remembrance and homesickness, he told me his story:
"I am Dajee, the Mahratta. I am a high-caste. The peacock is sacred to my clan. We cannot kill that bird, and we worship its feathers.
"To-day I serve a beef-eating Englishman, a cannibal of the holy cow, though the coral necklace that I wear was handed down in our family from the time of my great-great-great-grandfather's great-great-great-grand father.
"But who can avoid what is written by Brahma on the forehead? Rajahs and ryots are alike subject to the sports of Fate.
"To-day I am in a cold land sodden with rain, and once I lived in a golden land pregnant with the beam of the warm sun. To-day I softly obey the voice of the foreigner, though my ancestors were warriors who gave the sword when it was red and a land hissing with blood.
"We are all the brittle toys of Destiny, even I, who am Dajee, a Mahratta, a high-caste.
"My father died when I was little, and there were a number of female relatives to feed. Then I borrowed forty-five rupees for my marriage. I married the daughter of Ranjee when she was tall enough to reach my waist. But my wife fell ill when she was still but a child. And she sickened and died. Then my bullock died, and there was the interest on the loan to be paid; and so the Sowcar from whom I had borrowed the money took my ancestral farm in the Moffusil.
"Thus was I alone.
"What should a man do?
"I sat down and awaited the words of Fate. And Fate spoke.
"The day after the Sowcar took the farm, some pilgrims with crimson banners passed through the village, and they visited the little shrine of Vithal, and in the evening they did bhajan before the images.
"There were clouds in the sky, and the sunset was red. And the redness fell on the whirling limbs and on the banners and on the feet of the gods and goddesses, and everything seemed bathed in a vast sea of blood. And the red lights and the wild sound of the bhajan turned my head. Madness tugged at my heart-strings. So I leapt in and I joined in the dance.
"They were Mahars, low-castes, filth unspeakable and reeking. I was Dajee, the Mahratta, a high-caste.
"Thus I lost my caste.
"I had lost my farm, my bullock, and my wife. I was a poor man. And how can a poor man feast the many priests? How can a poor man regain his caste?
"I followed my Karma. I bought a piece of red cloth which I tied to a stick. I begged for food, and went with the pilgrims on the road to Phandarpur.
"I shall never forget the first festival—the stifling press of worshipers in the temple, the streams coming up and down the ghats, the frenzy of the bhajan at night, and the image of the languid full moon in the water of the river.
"The pilgrims returned to their own country. But what was I to do? Could I return to the Moffusil?—I had lost my caste.
"So I took stick and bowl and lived on alms. I went to various Vaishnavite shrines. True I was to the worship. Assiduously I repeated the name of Hari, and all my thoughts were of release from worldly ambition, and of devotion to him.
"I wandered from the snows of Dhaulagiri to the lingams of Ceylon, and then I met the ascetic from Kashmere, the worshiper of the Lord Shiva, and I became his pupil and did bodily penance.
"Gradually I subdued my body. I submitted to the supreme ordeal of fire. I walked barefoot through the white-hot charcoal, I uncovered my head to the burning fire-bath, and I felt not the pain of the body.
"Only my tortured soul writhed with the anguish of my Fate. For I was alone and an outcast.
"I sat in the midday heat during the month of pilgrimages, with seven fires around me and the sun scorching my shaven head, and I turned my eyes toward myself and meditated on the mysterious way which is Life.
"Then I met the holy man from Guzerat who told me that to clear my vision and fatten the glebe of my understanding, I must do penance with the head hanging downward. I remember well when I started this penance.
"It was in the Grishna season, and behind the western mountains the sun was setting, shrouded with layers of gloomy clouds tinged with red like fresh-spilt blood. One last look I took at mountain and plain, and never had the mountains seemed so high, never the plains so broad. Then I hang with my head downward and shut my eyes.
"When I opened them, when I saw it all upside down, the sight was marvelous beyond description, The blue hills had lost their struggling height and were a deep, mysterious, swallowing void. Against them the sky stood out, bold, sharp, intense, like a range of hills of translucent sardonyx and aquamarine, immeasurably distant; and the fringe of clouds at the base of the sky seemed a lake of molten amber with billows of tossing, sacrificial fire.
"After the penace I went on pilgrimage to the even Holy rivers of Hindustan, and I sat in cells in lonely shrines, gazing myself into stupefaction. And so, when I thought that I had freed my soul of fleshly desires, I joined holy mendicants of many degrees.
"But I found the holy men to be quarrelsome and jealous, greedy and lustful, kissing to-day the feet of the many-armed gods and to-morrow killing men and poisoning cattle: each following his own Fate, toward the bad or toward the good.
"So what was the use of fighting against Fate?
"Then I met the Christian teacher, and he explained to me the system of his religion. I began to wonder if his was the right way, and so I got work on the railway so as to be able to watch the Christians. But I found them as gross and as carnal as all the others, and I saw no worship at all, nor heard any man repeat the name of God except to abuse.
"Also I spoke to the Christian teacher of having lost my caste. But he was angry and said that caste does not exist. Decidedly, he was a gray-minded son of an owl, of no understanding. And I left him.
"Then I became very despondent and hated Life. And I took to ganja smoking. And then, since I had lost my god, my wife, my farm, my bullock, and my caste, I stole.
"Several times I was convicted, and finally, two years ago, I got a long sentence in jail."
The Mahratta stopped in the recital of his tale and looked straight into the distance. So I asked him:
"A long sentence in jail? But you are here, in America."
Calmly he lit a fresh cigarette and replied:
"Why, yes. I am here. I followed my Fate.
"One day I remembered the strength of my sword-arm, and I strangled the jailer, and I took ship, and so I am here.
"What was I to do? In killing the jailer I but followed my Karma, and in gurgling out his last breath under the clutch of my hands, he but followed his. There is neither right nor wrong. All is Karma.
"I am Dajee, the Mahratta, and a high-caste. The peacock is sacred to my clan. But I work for the beef-eating foreigner in this cold land.
"In this incarnation Fate stole my caste, so what is it to me where and how I live?
"When I walk through the streets in the evening I think of the many ways of release which I tried and found to be vain, and of what will be the end, and what will be my next life.
"It comforts me to think that as in this life I do not remember the incidents of my last, so in the next one this life will be forgotten.
"For memory is of the body, and not of the soul.
"Once I spoke to the Englishman for whom I work, but he wishes to live again as the same being after death. For he is a Christian.
"But why?
"To remember that I am myself for one lifetime has oppressed me. To be the same being in another life would be worse than the torments of the ruru worm.
"To remember oneself forever and ever, with no chance of forgetting, is a thought too horrible for the mind to endure.
"So what should I do?
"I follow the way of my Karma. Who can avoid what is written on the forehead?"