Translated from the Hindi by Aditi Yadav
“What is it that Shakuntala doesn’t know?”
“Who? Shakuntala! Doesn’t know a thing.”
“Why sahab? What doesn’t she know? What is it that she cannot do?”
“She cannot summon that goonga.”
“Well, what if she does summon him?”
“Summon!?”
The girl cast one resentful look at the lady who was speaking and shouted ... dooon … de!
The mute did not hear. All ladies burst out laughing. The girl hid her face.
He is mute because of congenital deafness. He gestured placing his hands over his ears. He piqued everyone’s interest, quite like how the heart wells up with a pleasure infused curiosity on hearing a parrot chant Ram-Ram.
Chameli used her fingers to gesticulate—then?
The mute motioned his hand in front of his face to convey—ran away. Who? It gradually made sense—when he was only a little child, his mother, veiled under a ghoonghat, abandoned him; because the father—gesturing big moustaches—had died. Thereafter, he had been brought up—by whom? The details couldn’t be deciphered, but those people beat him up a lot.
They were all gripped by compassion. He fervently tries to talk, but to no avail—only a bundle of grating caws! Indistinct sounds being puked out, like some pre-historic human still sparring with all his heart and soul to fabricate language.
It was Chameli’s first time to see what becomes of a human with damage in the voice box. What torment it is, when one itches to pour one’s heart out, but cannot.
Sushila stepped forward to signal, “Open your mouth!” And the mute opened his mouth—but nothing could be seen inside it. She enquired, “Crow inside your throat?” The mute understood. With mere gestures he told, “Someone slashed it in an attempt to clean the throat when he was still a child.” And he speaks like a wounded animal yelping, complaining, like a dog howling, and sometimes, his tone lashes with the ferocity of a volcanic eruption. He knows that he is deaf. He smiles after explaining. He knows that no one understands his language, nonetheless, he speaks.
Sushila said, “His gestures are incredible. He has a sharp brain.” She asked, “What do you eat? Where do you get it?”
It’s the kind of story that’s made everyone sit stunned in silence. He prepared laddoos all-night-long at a halwai’s place, scoured huge pots, did odd jobs, washed clothes—there were gestures for everything, but—
The mute’s tone transitioned into a screech. He thumped his chest to convey—“I’ve never spread my hands out for begging, I don’t take alms.” Cupping his arms with his hands, he relayed, “I feed myself with hard work,” and rapped his belly to declare, “For its sake, for its sake ...”
The sight of the children in the orphanage had always brought tears to Chameli’s eyes. That day too her eyes welled up. She has always been tender-hearted. She said to Sushila, “He can’t be employed as a servant either.”
But the mute had been grasping things all this while. He can fetch milk. If you want it fresh, express with a milking gesture, or if you want it simmered thick, just demonstrate with hands like a halwai pouring milk from one vessel to another. If you want vegetables just wave in circular motion or show the long finger … so on and so forth. And Chameli gestured, “Will you stay in our house?”
The mute consented but asked with hand gestures— What will you offer? Food?
“Yes. Some money,” Chameli nodded her head.
She displayed four fingers. The mute thumped his chest with his hand, as if to say— Agreed. Four rupees.
Sushila said, “You’ll regret. What work can he possibly do?”
“I feel sad for the poor guy,” Chameli answered. “Work or no work; it’ll at least cheer up the children.”
At home he had been beaten up by his aunt and uncle; they had brought him up. They wanted him to labour in the bazaars as a baggage carrier to earn 12-14 aanas and hand the money to them; in exchange they’d toss bajra and chana rotis in his face. The mute doesn’t even go home now. He works here. Children mock him. But he never gets annoyed. Chameli’s husband is a simple ingenuous man. The poor mute will get by somehow, but Chameli’s husband knows that such emotion of compassion only reflects a human being’s voicelessness—-when he wants to do a lot, but can’t. And thus, the days keep passing by.
Chameli called out, “Goonge?”
There was no response. She got up and looked for him—nothing could be traced.
Basanta said, “I don’t know a thing.” “Must have run away,” her husband said stoically. He was gone for real. Nothing made sense. She silently went back to cook. Why did he run away, that gutter worm?! We offered him a roof over his head, even that couldn’t satisfy him. The world mocks us, our house has earned the moniker of museum now … why …
When the couple and the kids were done eating, Chameli put the leftover rotis in a bowl. All of a sudden, a shadow moved at the entrance. It was the mute. He signaled with his hands—I am hungry.
“There isn’t a single work that you do, you beggar.” She threw the rotis in his direction. Infuriated, she turned her back on him.
But the mute stood still. He didn’t even touch the rotis. Both of them stayed silent for a long time. Then, for some reason, he picked them up and chomped on them. Chameli poured milk into the glass. Seeing that he’d finished eating, she got up and stood next to him, with tongs in her hand.
“Where’d you gone?” Chameli asked in a stern tone.
She got no response. He hung his head low like a criminal. She hit his back with a sharp blow of the tongs. But the mute did not cry. He was aware of his crime. A tear from Chameli’s eyes trickled down to the floor, which made him cry too.
Later there were instances where the mute chose to go absconding and return as and when he felt like. Working at different places and running away had become second nature to him. And Chameli wondered—whether he’d taken alms the other day or stumbled willingly into acceptance of motherly endearment?
Basanta hit the mute with a hefty blow. His arm slightly shot up in air, but for some reason, it froze on its own. His eyes welled up and began to cry. His wails were so jarring that Chameli had to leave the chulha and step out. Spotting her, the mute tried to convey across something through his gestures. Chameli enquired at length. She could only gather that Basanta had hit him while they were playing.
Basanta said, “Amma, he wanted to beat me up.”
“Really, you?” Chameli looked at the mute and asked. Even in that moment, Chameli had not forgotten that he wasn’t able to hear a thing. But the mute comprehended the body language. He grabbed hold of Chameli’s hand. For a moment, Chameli felt as if it was her son who’d held her hand that day. Suddenly, she shook him off with disgust. She did it out of love for her son.
Had her son been deaf-mute, he too would’ve been suffering similarly. Thoughts failed her. Yet again, her heart flooded with motherly affection for the mute. She returned to sit across the chulha with fire blazing inside it—the very fire that cooked everything was what quenched the most terrifying fire of all—the fire of hunger, the one that turns humans into slaves. She realised that the mute possessed greater physical strength compared to Basanta. Basanta had never gripped her hand with the kind of force with which the mute had held it. Notwithstanding the facts, the mute had never laid a finger on Basanta.
The roti was getting charred. She flipped it over instantly. The roti was getting cooked, it was the reason why Basanta was Basanta … Goonga was Googa.
Chameli wondered. Probably the mute had understood that Basanta is the master’s son—he can’t touch him. Some kind of turbulence whirled inside her heart too, but motherly love cast a veil on it. And then she remembered he’d held her hand. Perhaps because she ought to have punished Basanta, she had the right to do so.
But she couldn’t understand it then. Hearing repeated painful cries of the mute, Chameli got up and went out. On second thoughts, she went back inside the kitchen, and emerged with a stale roti from the previous night.
“Goonga!” she called out.
What consciousness resided in some unknown part of the mute’s eardrums that he never failed to hear her voice! He appeared. He had tears in his eyes, as though they had a grievance, a contempt against being discriminated. Chameli thought that the boy was very perceptive. Helplessly, her lips curled into a smile. She said, “Here, have it.”, extending her hand out.
The mute could not ignore this voice and everything associated with it. He laughed. If his cries were strange excruciating notes, then his laughter was nothing more than a sudden grunt ringing in Chameli’s ears. That inhuman sound sent chills up her spine. What had she done? She’d petted an animal whose heart had human-like sentiments. In a fit of revulsion, she said, “Here you! Have you been stealing?”
The mute kept quiet. He hung his head down. For a moment, Chameli trembled with rage, and glared at him for a long time. She thought, “Hitting won’t fix him right. Making him plead guilty to the crime, and skipping the punishment might have an effect. Moreover, he isn’t one of my own. He should live decently if he wants to be here, else he can go and spend his life on roads like a dog licking leftovers, receiving insults from one door to another, in disgrace.”
Stepping forward, she grabbed the mute’s hand and pointing to the door she said, “Get out!”
It seemed as though the mute hadn’t comprehended a word. His eyes popped up wide in abject shock. Perhaps his lips parted slightly to say something, but no voice emanated. Chameli stayed ruthless. She added as she uttered this time, “Go, get out! If you don’t want to work properly, you are not needed here. Stay if you can stay like a servant, else get lost. No one can put up with your tantrums here. No one has that kind of free time. Understand?”
And then Chameli bellowed in frenzy, “Rascal, scoundrel! Earlier you’d said that you don’t take alms, now you go and beg in public. You run away every day—it has become your habit to lick leaves. A dog can’t help being a dog, can it? No. No, we don’t want to keep you, get lost this very moment …”
But that anguish, that rage, all meant nothing in front of him. Just like an idol in a temple doesn’t respond, he didn’t utter a syllable. All he grasped was that the lady of the house was livid and was asking him to leave the house. It hit him with shock and disbelief.
Chameli herself felt embarrassed. What a fool she was being! What was she ranting on in front of a deaf person? Could he even hear a thing?
She grabbed his hand and in a sharp aggressive motion, pushed him out of the door. The mute left, trudging along, as Chameli watched on.
About an hour later, both Shakuntala and Basanta burst screaming, “Amma! Amma!”
“What’s it?” Chameli asked from upstairs.
“Goonga …” spoke Basanta. But before she could say anything, she went down and witnessed—the mute was drenched in blood, his skull was injured. He’d been beaten up by the street-boys, for he did not want to be a pushover just only because he was mute; resting his head on the entrance of the house, he yelped like a dog.
And Chameli kept watching him silently—watching centuries of lamentation reverberating vigorously within this silent depression.
And thus these mutes have been spreading across the world, proliferating, in diverse forms—those who wish to speak, but can not; those, whose heart’s vengeance can’t challenge atrocities despite knowing the difference between justice and injustice—because even as there be a voice to speak, it is of no consequence … because they are incapable.
And Chameli broods—who in the modern times is not a mute? Whose heart does not writhe with animosity and repugnance against society, country, religion and people, but they cannot evade the beguiling web of shallow happiness—because one yearns for love, one yearns for equality!
Rangeya Raghav (1923 –1962) was a prodigious Hindi litterateur who wrote a host of novels, poems, short stories, plays and essays. Many of these works deal with thought provoking interpretations of history and mythology, while others paint the picture of Indian society of his times. Despite a short life of span 39 years, the mettle of his literary genius and wide spectrum of his works make him one of the most revered figures of Hindi literature.
Aditi Yadav is a writer and translator. She is also a South Asia Speaks fellow (2023). Her works appear in Rain Taxi Review of books, Scroll.in, The Punch Magazine, EKL review, Usawa Literary Review, gulmohur quarterly, Borderless Journal and The Remnant Archive.