“Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet…” from Rudyard Kipling’s Ballad of East and West (1889) was quite familiar to me from a young age. I did not know then that in 1890, Kipling had made the twain meet in a short story, Without Benefit of Clergy. I chanced to read it in A Treasury of Short Stories in 1962 or so.
The story had struck me as rather weird and clumsy, with quaint dialogues and characters, yet impressive in some ways I could not quite comprehend or relate to. There was something at once raw and endearing about it, particularly about its central character, Ameera, yet something artificial about it, too!
Near 94 now, I chanced to read the story again a couple of weeks ago. Much to my surprise, the story dazzled. It struck me as a work of art catching the reader by the throat as it were.
It is the story of a British Army officer, Holden, somewhere in northern India, apparently well versed in Hindustani, secretly buying a Muslim girl from her impoverished mother for a bride price and settling her with her mother in an old rented house, safe from public gaze and guarded by a watchman. Holden secretly visits his “queen” at her “fortress”, entertains her and slowly gains her confidence.
In time, the illiterate girl comes to reciprocate Holden’s love and treats him as her “husband”, eventually bearing him a child, a boy. That alters the scenario somewhat but also binds the couple. Their love is idyllic. Holden is thrilled.
The secret love nest does not last. First, the little prince dies from a seasonal malady and soon the queen falls to cholera. Holden is devastated. He desires to keep the house a little longer but his landlord, Durga Das, has other ideas: “When the birds are gone what need to keep the nest?” he says. “I will have it pulled down…”
Kipling had earned my respect as one who knew India inside out, including its castes, temples, multiple gods and goddesses, the works. His stories had been dear to me, particularly The Miracle of Puran Bhagat, Lispeth, The Finances of the Gods. His later stories — after he had left India — had appealed to me equally. For instance, The Gardener, The Wish House, Mary Postgate…
Great short stories — sorry, the kind of stories I like — are becoming rarer and rarer, which is why I keep returning to those by old favourites such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Maupassant… They never disappoint. In fact they, like Kipling, seem to mature with the reader’s age!
pmwarrier9@gmail.com
