Scenes From Early Life Read Online Free PDF

slaves behind Kunta Kinte and his wife, while I growled, ‘This is my slave ship, and you are all under my power for ever and ever.’ One of my two assistant slave-keeping Englishmen had got the plum role of the man with the whip – a torn-off vine – and he now dramatically brought it down on the backs of the ten slaves, hunched and moaning. Two small girls of the neighbourhood, the daughters of Mr Khandekar-nana’s niece, were happily screaming for help. They were tied with washing line to the roadside trees. Over the road, a houseboy was watching with fascination, perhaps wanting to abandon his duties and come over to join in. It was the best game we ever played, and we played it every Sunday afternoon for many weeks.
    2.
    Whenever a chick emerged from Pultoo-uncle’s chicken house, my sisters, Shibli and I would rush to see it. We would have warning. A mother hen would sit on her eggs inside the chicken house, blowing her feathers out into a big angry ball and clucking. And then one morning there would be some small puffs of yellowish feathers with the big feet of a toy, and eyes with a strange, tired, aged look. My sisters made small girlish piping noises to echo the little squeaks; Shibli would always pick one up, sometimes making the mother hen rush at him with her neck outstretched. The hens were so sharp and businesslike, getting on with their occupations, but their chicks were fluffy and yellow and not like animals at all, but like things run by inner machinery. I did not torment them, but liked to watch them, dipping their heads into the waterbowl left for them by Atish the gardener, running back to their mothers, making their small cries for attention. I could sit on my haunches, watching them, for hours.
    Once, I was alone in the garden watching some day-old chicks in this way, quite silently. The others were inside – Sushmita was reading, Shibli was making a nuisance of himself in the kitchen, and Sunchita had been sent to bed in disgrace. I had seen chicks hatch from their eggs; the struggle inside the shell was hateful to me – I always feared that the effort would be too much for them. And when they emerged, they were so wet and slimy, so ugly, I could not help imagining how frightening they would be, with their sudden sharp gestures, if they were the same size as me.
    But within hours they were small and round and fluffed quite yellow, and seemed nearly at home in the world. They stretched their plump little wings, like stubby fingers, and, not able to fly, fell from the chicken house on to the lawn under the jackfruit tree. Their movements were undecided and sudden, and you could not know what would cause them to take fright, or when they would move confidently.
    ‘They’re born standing,’ Atish the gardener said. He had laid down his tools and was now standing behind me. I think he liked watching the newly hatched chicks as much as I did. ‘Not like human beings. Human beings can’t feed themselves, they can’t walk, not for years. A chicken makes his own way out of the shell, punches his way out, and then he cleans himself off, and he stands on his two feet and off he goes like you or me. First thing he does is to find something to eat, and it’s the same food he’ll eat all his life.’
    This was true. I watched the chicks pecking at the seeds on the ground. It was exactly what the fully grown chickens ate. From the house came the sound of music: Dahlia-aunty was having a music lesson, with tabla and harmonium, and her lovely singing voice filled the garden.
    ‘Can I have a chick of my own?’ I asked Atish.
    ‘It’s not for me to say,’ Atish said.
    But he reached into the pocket of his grimy shirt and took out a chapatti. It might have been there for him to eat later, or it might have been in his shirt for some time. He tore off a corner and gave it to me. ‘If you get a chick to come to you,’ he said, ‘it will be your friend.’
    I took it, and held it out on the palm of my