Half a Life Read Online Free PDF

and he called for my mother. I could see very clearly the thick pads of hardened skin on the soles of his feet. They were dirty and cracked and there were little strips peeling off the side. As a courtier my father had never been allowed to wear shoes. But he had bought shoes for me.
    He said at last, “You've blackened all our faces. And now we'll have to face the anger of the school principal. You've dishonoured his daughter, since in everybody's eyes you are as good as married to her.”
    So, though I hadn't touched either of them, and though I had gone through no form of ceremony with either of them, there were two women whom I had dishonoured.
    In the morning my father was hollow-eyed. He had slept badly. He said, “For centuries we have been what we are. Even when the Muslims came. Even when we starved. Now you've thrown our inheritance away.”
    I said, “Now is a time for sacrifice.”
    “Sacrifice, sacrifice. Why?”
    “I am following the mahatma's call.”
    That made my father stop, and I said, “I am sacrificing the only thing I have to sacrifice.” It was a line that had come to me the evening before.
    My father said, “The school principal is a powerful man, and I am sure he will be finding ways of lighting a fire under us. I don't know how I can tell him. I don't know how I can face him. It's easy enough for you to talk of sacrifice. You can leave. You are young. Your mother and I will have to live with the consequences. It will be better, in fact, if you did leave. You wouldn't be allowed to live with a backward here. Have you thought of that?”
    And my father was right. It was easy enough for me so far. I wasn't actually living with the woman. That idea became daily more concrete, and it repelled me more and more. So I was in a strange position.
    For some weeks life went on as before. I lived in my father's government house. I made occasional trips to the image-maker's. I went to work in the Land Tax department. My father was always worried about the school principal, but nothing happened.
    One day the messenger said to me, “The Chief Inspector wants to see you.”
    The Chief Inspector had a pile of folders on his desk. I recognised some of them. He said, “If I tell you that you've been recommended for another promotion, would it surprise you?”
    “No. Yes. But I am not qualified. I can't cope with these promotions.”
    “That's what I feel, too. I've been going through some of your work. I am bewildered by it. Documents have been destroyed, receipts thrown away.”
    I said, “I don't know. Some vandal.”
    “I think I should tell you right away. You are being investigated for corruption. There have been complaints by senior officials. It's a serious matter, corruption. You can go to jail. RI, rigorous imprisonment. There is enough in these files to convict you.”
    I went to the girl at the image-maker's. She was the only person I could talk to.
    She said, “You were on the side of the cheats?” It seemed to please her.
    “Well, yes. I didn't think they were ever going to find out. There's so much paper in that place. They could cook up any kind of case against anybody. The college principal is against me, I should tell you. He wanted me to marry his daughter.”
    The girl understood the situation right away. I didn't have to say any more. She made all the connections.
    She said, “I will get my uncle to take out a procession.”
    Uncle, procession: a mob of backwards carrying their crude banners and shouting my name outside the palace and the secretariat. I said, “No, no. Please don't have a procession.”
    She insisted. Her blood was up. She said, “He's a crowd-puller.” She used the English word.
    The thought of being protected by the firebrand was unbearable. And I knew that—after all the blows I had dealt him—it would have killed my father. And that was when, caught between the girl and the school principal, the firebrand and the threat of imprisonment, caught between the