Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories: Raja Rao as a Short Story Writer
Author(s): M. K. Naik
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Autumn, 1966), pp. 392-396
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
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The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories:

Raja Rao as a Short Story Writer

By M. K. NAIK

Rao's great novel, The Serpent

still a vital force working for the good as

and the Rope, has been hailed as "an

>- epic ... a magnificent guide to India,

well as to the detriment of the community.

and for those who are prepared to work

for their pleasure, a book to read and reread."1 Those, however, who are not so

stories is India, the "heartbreak at the heart

prepared to work for their pleasure - and

The Serpent and the Rope with its almost

Furthermore, though the locale of these

of things" which the best of them capture
is ultimately true to the kindred points of
home and the universal human condition.
The unrest of the Thirties is mirrored in

endless philosophical acrobatics and its untiring intellectual wanderlust does demand
much from the reader - might profitably

The holy cow named after the goddess Gauri,

turn to a much earlier book by the same

in the first story, is an expressive symbol of the

Other Stories, published back in 1947, is of

the very essence of Raja Rao, and if it lacks

Indian synthesis, of India's power of "carrying on the old tradition and yet ever adapting it to changing times."3 The sacred cow,

author. The Cow of the Barricades and

three stories - the title story "The Cow of the

Barricades," "Narsiga," and "In Khandesh."

the sweep of his opus, it has still its own

dedicated to a god or a temple and there-

compensations.

fore inviolable, is part of the ancient Indian

The epigraph on the title page of the

book is perhaps the key to the heart of these

stories. The quotation is from Kabir, the

fifteenth-century Indian saint-poet: "When
I tell them the truth, they are angry,/ And

I cannot lie." In these sharply etched vignettes of Indian village life, Rajo Rao does
not lie; and this accounts for the appeal and
the power of the book.
The India of these stories is mostly rural
South India (except in "In Khandesh" where

the setting shifts slightly farther up to

Maharashtra; in "Companions," where the
author goes up north and in "A Client,"
where, for once, we are taken to a city).

tradition; yet Gauri, who dies of a bullet

fired by a British Officer during the freedom riots and thus probably saves the lives
of many in the village, is a martyr in the
cause of the modern Indian freedom struggle. "Narsiga" shows how the national consciousness roused by Gandhi percolates into

the mind of a small illiterate orphan,

though, in that process, ancient myth and

legend get inseparably mixed with Gandhi's life and character, as Narsiga the
orphan imagines the great man "going in
the air, with his wife Sita ... in a flowerchariot drawn by sixteen steeds." In "In
Khandesh," the Viceroy's special train is to

ful period in modern Indian history, for it

pass by the village and the Village Headman's orders are that the villagers should

marked the beginning of Gandhi's nonviolent struggle against the British. Yet
these stories are by no means of merely

stand by the railway line to show their loyalty to the British emperor, but that they
should stand with their backs to the train -

topical interest. For, though the impact of

for "You know how some devilish, prostitute-born scoundrels tried to put a bomb
beneath the train of the Representative of
the Most High across the Seas."

They are set in the Thirties2 - a most event-

the modern Indian resurgence brought

about by the contact with the West is very
much in evidence in them, they also reveal
how the traditional mores of Indian life are

The traditional mores of Indian life are

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RAJA RAO: SHORT STORIES 393

vividly depicted in most of the stories. Raja

Rao knows his Indian village through and

icle of austerity, self-denial, drudgery, and

misery.

through; and, true to the motto borrowed

Ignorance and credulity foster a lush crop

truth. A perfectly intimate picture of In-

of superstitions here. A plague epidemic

becomes a terrible goddess from whose

from Kabir, he is determined to tell the

dian village life thirty years ago emerges

from these stories : You can reach a village

only after a ten-mile cycle ride on a bare,

dusty road. The village crier beating his

drum, "tom-tom, tira-tira," is a walking
gazette making important announcements.
Time is not reckoned by calendar and clock
here, but by significant landmarks either in
the life of the community or in one's own.
For instance, you determine the exact time
when a family came to a village by remem-

clutches there is no escape. The idea of the

hospital horrifies plague-stricken Rati for,

"All that they did there, nobody knew.

They cut you, pierced your flesh and did a

million unholy things. Death was better."

If the morning fire in the kitchen refuses to

burn with a "hard, gem-like flame," it is

an evil omen to Beti; so is the sight of a
cat, first thing in the morning, to Ramu.

bering that "the harvest was over and we

But a lizard falling upon your right shoulder is sure to bring good luck, thinks Motilal. Little wonder then that the world of

were husking the grains when they came";

the villager should be full of magic, witch-

or, "That happened when our little Ramu

craft, and ghosts. "With these very two

was going through his initiation ceremony."

Poverty is the uncoveted birthright of the

eyes, I have seen the ghosts of more than a

hundred young men and women - all killed
by magic," Javani assures young Ramappa,
whom she admonishes "never to go out after
sunset; for there are spirits of all sorts walking in the dark."

people here. Javni, the simple servant maid,

must eat in the dark, because "the oil is too

expensive. ... It costs an anna4 a bottle."

Besides, "there is no necessity to see what
you are eating."
Religion - not in the restricted sense of a
theory of God and a creed, but in the wider
sense of Dharma, a whole way of life - is a
potent force here. Belief in Karma, rebirth,
and transmigration of souls is strong. ("If

you do not adopt me, I shall die now and

grow into a lamb in my next life and you
will buy it," says the adolescent narrator to
Javni in a spirit of badinage; but she could
believe every word of it.) The division of
society into rigid castes is still sacrosanct
here. Hence, "A Brahmin is not meant to

Winds of change are already astir in this

world of age-old tradition, in which the inevitable clash between the old and the new

has set in. If the village elders, Dattopant

and Govindopant, who are all excitement
at the Maharaja's passing by their village,
imagining how they would bow to him and
how he might perhaps send them "bags and
bags of gold," represent a deeply entrenched

feudalism, the dangerous clique of Bolopant, Vithobopant, and Pandopant with

their city chatter and subversive talk show

work." He is the "chosen one," for the

the new democratic and nationalistic urge

at work. Again, while young Ramu chafes

sacred books are his; he is the twice-born.

at the rigid social code, his married sister,

The lowly-born are his servants. Early marriages are the rule. Akkayya the child bride
loses her husband, but is perfectly unconcerned since she fails to understand the significance of the event; she enjoys the festival doll-show. "They only asked her not to
put on the vermilion mark and she did not

who loves the lowly-born Javni as if the

latter were her mother, will not eat with

mind that in the least." Wife-beating is

normal, and a widow's life is a long chron-

her, for that is irreligious, and "affection

does not ask you to be irreligious."

It is a motley crowd that lives in this

world. There is the Bania, the village grocer, who comes down from Gujarat, "poor
as a cur," who soon runs up a prosperous
business as a moneylender; the professional

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394 BOOKS ABROAD

matchmaker, skilled in the art of catching

prospective eligible bachelors; the snake

charmer; the sadhu in his Ashram; the
saintly, pontificial Brahmin who has a vision of God; the simple peasant boy; and
the city-educated young man, questioning
traditional values. They are all vividly realized. But the most memorable characters

in the book are the women, especially the

widows - Javni and Akkayya. A modern

which makes her more saintly than the trappings of orthodox sanctions. Strange indeed
are her ways : "She came every Tuesday eve-

ning before sunset to stand and nibble at

the hair of the Master . . . and ambled

round him and disappeared among the

bushes. And till Tuesday next she was not
to be seen. And the Master's disciples gathered grain and grass and rice-water to give

Hindi poet, Maithilisaran Gupta, has

summed up woman's destiny as "Even

her every Tuesday, but she refused it all

and took only the handful of grain the
Master gave. She munched it slowly and

such, O woman, alas! is your lot; There is

carefully as one articulates a string of holy

milk in your breasts, and there are tears in

your eyes." This description, almost mean-

words, and when she had finished eating,

she knelt again, shook her head and dis-

ingless (for more than one reason) in the

modern European (and to some extent in
the modern Indian) context, is seen to be

appeared." As the freedom struggle in her

only too apt in the case of the women in these

stories. Whether it is Javni, the ill-fated

widow whose sister-in-law would not let

her touch the latter's child, for she is "a

village grew more and more intense, "she

looked very sad, and somebody had even
seen a tear, clear as a drop of the Ganges,
run down her cheeks, for she was of compassion infinite and true."
It must be remembered that the picture of

witch and an evil spirit"; or Akkayya the

child-widow who spends her long life in

village life in these stories is now more than

thirty years old. Much water has flowed in

bringing up other people's children, but is

in death as in life only an irritating nuisance

the Ganges during this most eventful period, and the face of rural India - a face

to her relatives; or Beti, whose husband

does not spare the rod in correcting what

to him appears to be a spoilt spouse; or
pretty Rati, daughter of rich parents, turned
into a slave of her mother-in-law and a

"casual wife of a husband with a mistress"

- they all suffer and continue to exist,

though hardly to live.
Raja Rao is no dreamy-eyed romantic
however, and not all his women are angels

or Griseldas. Narsiga's shrewish aunt; and

Sata, the good Ramakrishnayya's widowed
daughter, "greedy, malicious and clever as
a jackal" - "they" even said she had poisoned her husband because he was too old

for her - these provide admirable foils to

upon which time left little impression for

centuries - has been, since Independence, rapidly changing, and changing, on the whole,

for the better. Economic and social betterment

is being vigorously attempted, though the

actual progress is none too rapid; efforts are
afoot to break the strangle hold of ignorance and superstition upon the rustic mind;
the Brahmin is no longer the "chosen one";
the woman's lot and the widow's are definitely improving, if a trifle too gradually.

Yet there is much in this picture that is

more or less true, even today.

"For me literature is sadhana - not a pro-

fession but a vocation. That's why I've

published so few works," declared Raja

Javni and her ilk.

Rao to an interviewer.5 His literary tech-

The people in her village describe Javni

as "good like a cow," in the typical Indian

nique, therefore, can hardly be considered

in isolation from his vision. It is indeed a

way; and, curiously enough, the Cow in the

title story is as living a character as Javni
herself. By no means an officially "god-dedi-

part of the vision, and shapes and is shaped

by it. For instance, in narrating the ancient

cated" cow, Gauri has that within her

legend of Kanakapala, "protector of gold,"

the author ends the introduction with a

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RAJA RAO: SHORT STORIES 395

benediction in the traditional Hindu style :

tive prose, and his picture of the summer

"May those who read this be beloved of

landscape in "In Khandesh" is as evocative

Naga, King of Serpents, Destroyer of Ills."

Raja Rao's style, too, captures the very feel

as the descriptions of the seasons in Kantha-

and flavor of the life it describes, itself

transformed in the process into truly "In-

dian" English. "The tempo of Indian life

must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish
life has gone into the making of theirs," observed Raja Rao in his foreword to Kantha-

pura: "In Khandesh the earth floats. Heaving and quivering, rising and shriveling,

the earth floats in a flood of heat. Men don't

walk in Khandesh. They swirl round and

round upon their feet - and move forward.
Birds don't fly in Khandesh. They are carried on the billows of heat

the earth is black. Black and grey as the

pura.6 If he recaptured this tempo in that

buffalo, and twisted like an endless line of

novel, in the present book he presents a

loamy pythons, wriggling and stretching

sensuous apprehension of the Indian scene.

His similes smell of the Indian soil: "She

beneath the awful beat of the sun

was as red as the inside of a pumpkin";

Kanakapala's "Old, old skin . . . shriveled
like the castoff skin of a plantain"; Ak-

blood of the earth mingles with the pus of

the skies - to bear cotton."

go"; "Death had entered the house like a

cobra," Hosakere Nunjundayya's "dust-

As a short story writer, Raja is no more

of an experimenter than Tagore, Anand, or
Narayan. In fact, the modern Indo-Anglian
short story writer has always erred on the
side of traditionalism in the matter of form.

covered feet seemed bluish green like cow-

At one or two places, Raja Rao indeed car-

dung"; "My father's face turned grey as a

coconut," "A heart pure as the morning

ries the process a little too far, ending two

lotus"; brides "beautiful as new-opened

guavas."

manner; for instance: "And yet, she (Javni)

was one of them - much more at least, dear

Like Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao also literally translates Indian vernacular idioms
and phrases, oaths and imprecations into

the dear reader is likely to date the story by

kayya's face "all wrinkled like a dry man-

English, thus securing a strong local color:

"Always the same Ramayana" (it is always

the same old story); "Else it would have
been your marriage day" (else you would
have had it) ; "When one has a guest like
you, even a miser will turn the Generous

Cow" (i.e., the fabled Kamadhenu, the

legendary divine cow which gratified all

desires). The village habit of prefixing an
appropriate adjective to a proper name is
well exemplified in names like Eight-verandahed-house Chowdayya, Cardamomfield Venkatesha, and Plantation Subayya.
The appellation of "the Red man" for the
white man is equally typical. Rustic speech

is also larded with picturesque terms of

of his best stories in a rather hackneyed

reader than you and I," where the address to

more than fifty years; and "anyway, here I

have written the story of Akkayya, maybe
her only funeral ceremony," where, for the

discerning reader, the funeral ceremony

might be of artistic propriety as well.

Raja Rao has nodded as badly at one or

two other points also. His English is usually

flawless, but he allows himself to write

"builded" in one place7; again, as a Mysorean not quite at home with Maharashtrian names in Khandesh, he coins the

names "Vithobopant" and "Bolopant,"

which, with their unnatural "o"s, probably

never had a local habitation in that part

of India (at least so it strikes a south

Maharashtrian) .
How does Raja Rao, the short story writer,

abuse such as "wife of a donkey," "son of a

compare with Tagore, Anand, and Na-

prostitute," "dog-born," and the like.

rayan? He clearly lacks their range and

variety. In his wide sweep, Tagore ranges

But local color is not the only forte of

Raja Rao's style. He is a master of descrip-

over themes as diverse as the decadent Ben-

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396 BOOKS ABROAD

gali aristocracy, as in The Babus of Nayan-

fatal Cleopatra to him in The Serpent and

jore; the mind of an invalid, as in Mashi;

the Rope, that occasionally exasperating ex-

and child and adolescent psychology as in

The Postmaster and The Home-Coming.

nuity. "The caste mark was not on his face

His tone and temper, too, can swing from

the pathos of Cabuliwallah to the somber

tragedy of The Trust Property; from the
sharp satire of The Parrot's Training to
the lighthearted humor of My Fair Neigh-

bour. Mulk Raj Anand is equally at home

with rural or urban life; with poor copper-

ercise in style and in metaphysical inge-

but on his soul," says Raja Rao about his

Brahmin hero Ramu, in "A Client." The

caste mark on Raja Rao's own soul has

made his intellect run away with story and

character in The Serpent and the Rope,

though in the earlier novel, Kanthapura,

the damage was limited because of the

smiths as well as with maharajas; with

much smaller framework. The sonnet's

the ways of government offices and those

"narrow plot of ground" proved a most

salutary discipline for Wordsworth. IndoAnglian writing is certainly the poorer be-

of terrorists. And, with his socialistic sympathies, he is a committed writer. Narayan

with his delicate touch brings out both the
humor and the pathos in the lives of ordinary men and women - both rustic and city-

cause Raja Rao did not submit himself

oftener to the relatively more exacting discipline of the short story.

Karnata\ University

bred - a beggar, a domestic servant, a college-student, a farmer, a clerk, and others.

But none of these writers has felt the pulse

of village India with a surer touch, nor

seen the traditional, the transitional, and the

universal in it more clearly than Raja Rao

has done in his one book. This is perhaps
the reason why he has the most distinctive

style of all the Indo-Anglians.

It is to be regretted that Raja Rao has
written so few short stories. The comparatively freer form of the novel has been a

The oldest foundation granting aid to authors in

Sweden is the Swedish Academy (founded 1786). Besides the Nobel prize, it has at its disposal the income
of a number of other legacies and donations. Among
them is the Bellman Prize of $6,000 (1965 recipient
was Sven Alfons, poet, artist, and art historian) and

the Author Award of $3,000 which last year was

presented to Per Olof Sundman. Sundman also won
the prize for the best novel of the year awarded by the

Ostersundsposten, for his Tva dagar, tva natter ("Two

Days, Two Nights").

1. Diana and Meir Gillon in The Sunday Times,

quoted by K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English,
p. 312.

2. Companions which recounts an old medieval

legend is an exception.
3. Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 477.
4. Sixteenth part of a rupee, equivalent to less than
a cent.

5. S.V.V., The Illustrated Weekly of India, January

5, 1964, p. 44.

6. p. 2.
7. p. 177, line 6. This poetic and archaic form seems
to be rather out of place in a narrative of modern life.

Six major West African languages have now been

given a unified alphabet. Meeting at Bamako, Mali,
under Unesco's auspices, an international group of
linguists has produced a simple alphabet that enables
all the sounds in six languages to be accurately represented in Roman letters. The six linguistic groups,
spread over seven nations, now have alphabets that
should enable them to transcribe an immense heritage
of oral literature, and governments now have national

languages for adult literacy teaching and primary

education.

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VIKTOR NEKRASOV

RAJA RAO
(see pages 392, 411)

(see page 381)

GIOSE RIMANELLI

(see page 386)

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