The Andhi Khola (Andhi Khola)

Gangi goes on watching. It is midday, and some young lads from the Andhi Khola are on their way down to Gorakhpur to enlist at the cantonment there.^[1] They follow a recruiting sergeant along the level path, singing as they come. She is affected by the melody of their song; its refrain touches her heart:

Mother, mother, do not weep so,
My letters will come to you time after time,
Just like the sentries patrolling.

It holds a peculiar magic for her. The young men are taking this chance to sell their lives and pay off their debts: the chance is born of the tension between India and China. They sing to the beat of a drum,

[1] Gorakhpur is a town in northern Uttar Pradesh to which aspiring young recruits used to travel during the period of British rule.

and Gangi's whole body repeats their refrain. As they pass by in front of her, she suddenly remembers him. His image reappears, like the dawn mists that weave their way up the western ridge from the valley of Andhi Khola. For Gangi has not forgotten; it seems like only yesterday. She feels that even now he is climbing the steep hill path out of the valley, following the recruiter, to join the war with the Germans. Twenty-five years seem to have flown by, and still she watches that hillside.

The young men are off to earn their rice abroad and maybe to throw their lives away. They begin to disappear as they go down the slope. But Gangi goes on watching. Even when they are all out of sight, she still thinks she hears their song on the wind. . . .

He was singing the same song when he crossed the pass and disappeared for ever. She was nineteen at the time. All the other young folk of the village used to tell her how pretty she was. Then she had been fleet of foot, able to run through the forests and over the hills, as light as a flower blossom. She used to go out with him, like a lively young doe, to cut grass for the livestock. As she drowsed in the shade of a pipal tree, she often heard him singing that song.

There is a particular incident she wants to remember, but at the moment she can't recall it. She gazes up at the mountain peak, which seems to be fixed to the clouds, but a strange uneasy feeling persists.

Once, Gangi was on her way down to the valley, ostensibly to cut grass. But she was looking out for him, and suddenly she saw his figure at a bend in the path. She was struck by a mixture of joy and fear, and with her hand on her pounding breast, she hid like a bird in the roots of a tree by the Andhi Khola. Slowly, she inched her way toward the riverbank, waiting for a chance to escape without him spotting her. She jumped over one boulder and down onto another, chuckling quietly in delight. But then she thought she heard him breathing on the far side of the rocks.

Her heart still pounded, but she tried to hold her breath and jump the other way. He sounded very near, but he didn't seem to have discovered her. Perhaps he wanted to let her run for a little longer. Leaving the shelter of her rock, she jumped behind another. Then all at once she was in his arms. There she was, enfolded in his embrace, entangled with him like a bashful flower. So she put her foot into the river and splashed him with water.

Gangi smiles to herself: this was what she had tried to remember. The memory brings her comfort and relief; it is as if she has laid down a heavy load. Feeling a little lighter in spirit, she looks up the sheer hillside again. She sees the young men's dark shadows filing up the steep, twist-

ing path. Their song and the beating of the drum come to her once more. As she watches those figures, it is as if she is searching for something she has lost. They are becoming smaller and smaller, just as he did as she watched him go. Gangi feels herself becoming smaller; she becomes as small as a seven-year-old girl.

When she was seven, she once went out at sunset to look for a goat that she feared might have been lost at the edge of the fields. She didn't know that his ten-year-old body was hidden up in a mulberry tree. He leapt down in front of her and gave her a terrific fright. She quarreled with him and compared his family to hers. There was a telephone in her uncle's house, she bragged, but at his uncle's house the mice were singing about all the rice they'd stolen. In her uncle's house, they played harmoniums, but at his there was a leaky roof. The rains came through in the summer, she mocked.^[2] He became so cross with her that he slapped her in the face. Then she told his father about it, and he got a hiding. After he had taken his thrashing, she went and consoled him. From then on, she always consoled him.

How blue the memory makes her feel. It is as if she still feels his hand on her face. Lovingly, she strokes her cheek.... As if trying to hold back the tears, she looks up at the hillside once again, where it descends indifferently to the valley floor. The young men are nearly at the top, but because they are far away, she cannot hear their song anymore. Her eyes fall upon the distant, forested hill that overtops the ridge. What is the world like beyond the hills? Gangi cannot imagine; she just looks out from unblinking eyes.

Oh, her heart still pains her. It was at exactly this time of day, when evening was drawing in, that he sat outside, looking desolate. He just sat there in silence, deep in his thoughts. Gangi looked at him.

"What's the matter? Aren't you well?" she asked.

But he did not reply. Trying to start some conversation, she talked about various things, but her man remained as aloof as a rock, buffeted and broken by the Andhi Khola. Gangi was still trying to think of some way to cheer him up when he announced, "Tomorrow I am going to sign up in the war against the Germans."

Gangi felt as if she had tumbled down a waterfall. Without giving her any chance to question him, he set off for the village. Then Gangi was gripped by fear—that day his voice lacked its usual jocularity. She cast around for hope, but the more she did so, the more she became convinced—he was going to the war, for sure. His land was in a rich man's

[2] Young Gurungs, as well as members of other ethnic groups in the Himalaya, often bring a semiritualized form of mockery into their flirtations. The accusations and counteraccusations may be sung.

hands; his livestock were all mortgaged. He was not prepared to wrestle with poverty every day of his life.

After the evening meal, Gangi went and sought him out. At first, he was impatient with her, but then he murmured sweetly, "The river is for bathing in, Gangi. Or else, why would people jump in? I'm not running away from hardship. The war will pay off our debts and fill our stomachs. And I'm not going alone, after all."

Gangi did not understand at all. She simply laid her head on his chest and sobbed, choked with grief. She hugged him tightly, as if she hoped that he would not go and desert his wife like Gautam Buddha, and listened to the awesome roar of the river in the night. As she listened she fell asleep. In her sleep, she dreamed that the clear water tumbling down from the mountains was turning cloudy as it descended. First, it submerged the boulders where they had played hide-and-seek, then the woods where they had wandered since childhood, teasing each other and joking. The waters rose higher, until she was afraid that the very hills would collapse and engulf her.

She woke from her dream in terror and listened for a moment to the thundering Andhi Khola, which shattered the empty silence of the night. He was still sleeping right there beside her. Sighing mournfully, she held him tight and pressed her face against his. As she went back to sleep she felt his warm breath on her cheek. She clung so tightly it was as if she was trying to imprison him, as if her hold on him would not be broken even if the river flooded and engulfed them both. She fell asleep to the warm sound of his breathing and his sweet heartbeat.

Next morning, she found that he was gone from her arms. Chilled, she rushed to open a window and look outside. The sun had already risen over the peaks beyond the river. She went out, still fastening her clothes, but she could not see him anywhere: not on the steps or in the yard. She ran to the village, but he was not there. Nor did she find him beside the Andhi Khola. Standing by the resting place, she looked up at the mountainside.

He was becoming smaller and smaller as he went up the hill. She felt that he had torn himself from her arms and forsaken that place forever. His song came down to her on the wind, spreading sadness all around:

Mother, mother, do not weep so,
My letters will come to you time after time,
Just like the sentries patrolling.

Gangi watched him go, and as she watched, the leaves fell from the trees. As she watched, the leaves grew on the trees once more. Twenty-five years had passed, watching day and night. But still she watches. One day, he might eventually come back down that path.

Gradually, the young men vanish. There is only the empty path twisting up that fearsome slope. Gangi is still watching as the dusk, then the night, comes down on the Andhi Khola. She is hidden by the empty, silent night in which nothing can be seen. But Gangi goes on watching.

(from Sajha Katha [1968] 1979)