The band of forearms
An actor dressed in a saree, habituated to covering his mouth with his hand to hide his moustache, is sitting beside the bear cage. Prabhakar is sitting by. The actor is telling him a 'true story' about his hometown, Pune.
Actor
Vasudeo Balwant Phadke is a great man today, a mad dacoit who has frightened the British. He used to come to my uncle's akhada to learn wrestling, you know. He would never even wrestle, just stand there and watch the others, in the manner that you Brahmans have.
Prabhakar:
You knew him?
They used to call him home to eat, he would sit in their kitchen and eat off so much chivda. He told good jokes, Kaka told me. And he had a wound on his shoulder, that he would always hide with his towel. He said he had hurt himself on the fence one day, but then they got to know, who he really was.
Prabhakar is listening wide eyed
Actor:
In the military accounts department for 15 years now, Vasudeo Balwant Phadke is used to the presence of paper. Plenty of paper, many files, and a pride in knowing how to write in English.
That afternoon in the large stone cavern of the office, in a cool darkness, Vasudeo metamorphoses. His hair shrinks first, becomes unruly. Then his toes flow out in curves ending in a flourish of nails. His eyes open wide, then wider, and redden with angry veins. His fingers let go of their role as a pen clutch. They open up begin to flow wildly like pennants in a blue sky. His long fingered hand sweeps the table clean and makes all on it disappear, out of sight, under it- the inkpot falling on the papers and all the wretched English that was written on them. The papers astrew on the floor.
No one notices? Or people just let it be. They know his grievance..he had applied for leave to meet his ailing mother, but the leave application had taken its time touring so many desks, that his mother had died meanwhile.
Actor 2:
Ahhh, that is too sad, too sad. But such is the pain that people bear in their bosoms. Such is the pain that I..
he shakes his head as the other actor interrupts him to continue.
Actor:
Like a slow caterpillar, the quiet Vasudeo had been standing in corners, watching the wrestlers at Lahuji's Gajpeth talimkhana for a while. He saw upper caste revolutionaries, including Tilak, had been frequenting this place run by a lowly Mang. They were seeking the pulse of Parsuram, the warrior brahman.. they came to the Mang to find it. And what a fighter he was, Lahuji! And he spoke so well.
Even as the office ate away so many of his precious hours, Vasudeo would make his way to the talimkhana when he could.. and with every conversation made there, with every energetic roll of body he made on the sand there, he was spinning himself his chrysalis.
When the chrysalis finally moulted, a fine angry face with light eyes unfurled itself with glorious creases all over its skin. The printing machines in Pune would go made making his images, soon. He would serve paper no more, paper would serve him.
In one fell swoop, one bearded man had defeated another.. Lytton's Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act were both rubbished, as the lithographic presses found new energy to run and bring out images, and a government clerk took to arms.
When the butterfly-brahman-bandit flew over the landscape on a horse, leading an army of Ramoshis, he was followed by skyfuls of screeching parrots that flew away from the Chitrashala prints.
He wanted no more truck with the ill kept bodies, prone to acidity, of his own community. He would never keep writing in a file again either, he fought, and he lived among those who fought. Their first joyous raid was at the house of a local business man in a village in Pune district..there, in his vault, was the collections of income tax to hand over to the government.
Vasudeo and his army looted the British loot, and decided they would work to give it back to the people.
When two strong men come face to face though they come from the ends of the earth Coleridge
Babaraya:
Did Prabhakar really tell that story to you, Baba?
Sarasvati kisses Prabhakar's head:
He was a great storyteller, always.
She looks across at her husband.
