The Barbers' Trade Union: A Story

by MULK RAJ ANAND

1

AMONG the makers of modern India, Chandu, the barber boy of my village, has a place which will be denied him unless I press for the recognition of his contribution to history. Chandu’s peculiar claim to recognition rested, to tell the truth, on an exploit of which he did not know the full significance. But then, unlike most great men of India today, he had no very exaggerated notion of his own importance.

I knew Chandu even in the days when he wore a piece of rag in the middle of his naked, distendedbellied body, and when we wallowed together in the mire of the village lanes, playing at soldiering, shopkeeping, or clerking and other little games which we invented for the delectation of our two selves and of our mothers, who alone of all the elders condescended to notice us.

Chandu was senior to me by about six months, and he took the lead in all matters. I willingly followed, because truly he was a genius at catching wasps, and at pressing the poison out of their tails, tying their tiny legs to cotton thread and flying them, while I always got bitten on the cheeks if I dared to go anywhere near the platform of the village well where these insects settled on the puddles to drink water.

When we grew older, he still seemed to me the embodiment of perfection, because he could make and fly paper kites of such intricate designs and of such balance as I could never achieve. To be sure, he was not so good at doing sums at school, perhaps because his father apprenticed him early to the hereditary profession of the barber’s caste and sent him out cutting hair in the village. But he was better than I at reciting poetry, any day, for not only did he remember by rote the verses in the text book, but he could repeat the endless pages of prose so that they seemed like poetry.

My mother resented the fact that Chandu won a scholarship at school while I had to pay fees to be taught. And she constantly dissuaded me from playing with him, saying that Chandu was a lowcaste barber’s son, and that I ought to keep up the status of my caste and class. But whatever innate ideas I had inherited from my forefathers, I certainly hadn’t inherited any sense of superiority. Indeed, I was always rather ashamed of the red caste mark which my mother put on my forehead every morning, and of the formalized pattern of the uchkin, the tight white cotton trousers, the gold-worked shoes, and the silk turban in which I was dressed. I longed for the right to wear all the spectacular conglomeration of clothes which Chandu wore — a pair of khaki shorts which the retired Subedar had given him, a frayed black velvet waistcoat decorated all over with shell buttons, and a round felt cap which had once belonged to Lalla Hukam Chand, the lawyer of our village.

And I envied Chandu the freedom of movement which he enjoyed after his father died of plague. He would do the round of shaves and haircuts at the houses of the high-caste notables in the morning, then bathe and dress and steal a ride to town, six miles away, on the foot rest of the closed carriage in which Lalla Hukam Chand traveled to town.

But Chandu was kind to me. He knew that I was seldom taken to town, and that I had to trudge three weary miles to a secondary school in the big village of Joadiala with the fear of God in my heart, while he had been completely absolved from the ordeal of being flogged by cruel masters as he had left school on his father’s death. So he often brought me some gift or other from the town, a paint brush, or gold ink, or white chalk, or a double-edged razor knife to sharpen pencils with; and he would entertain me with long, merry descriptions of the variety of things he saw in the bazaars of civilization.

He was particularly detailed in his description of the wonderful English styles of clothes which he saw the Sahibs and the lawyers, the chaprasis and the policemen wearing at the District Court, where he had to wait for the journey home at the footman’s baron Lalla Hukam Chand’s landau. And, once or twice, he expressed to me the secret wish he had to steal some money from the pitcher where his mother kept the emoluments of his professional skill, to buy himself an outfit like that of kalam khan, the dentist doctor, who, he said, performed miracles in the town, fitting people with rows of teeth and even new eyes. He described to me the appearance of kalam Khan, a young man with hair parted on one side, dressed in a starched shirt with an ivory collar and bow tie, a black coat and striped pantaloons, and a wonderful rubber overall and pump shoes. And he recounted to me the skill with which the magician unpacked an angrezi leather handbag, and flourished his shining steel instruments.

Then he asked my advice on the question of whether, as a barber educated to the fifth primary class, he would not look more dignified if he too wore a dress in the style of Dr. Kalam Khan. “For though I am not a highly educated doctor,”he said, “I learned how to treat pimples, boils, and ulcers on people’s bodies from my father, who learned how from his father before him.”

I agreed with his project and encouraged him with the enthusiasm that I felt for everything that my hero thought of or did.

2

ONE day I was thrilled to find Chandu at the door of my house in the morning. He was dressed up in a white turban, a white rubber coat — a little too big for him, but nevertheless very splendid — and a pair of pump shoes in which I could see my face reflected in clear silhouette. He had a leather bag in his hand. He was setting off on his round, and had come to show me how grand he looked in his new outfit.

“Marvelous!” I said. “Marvelous!”

And he rushed off towards the house of the landlord, whom he shaved every morning, with me following admiringly behind.

There were not many people about at this time, so I alone witnessed the glory of Chandu, dressed up as a doctor, as he strutted up the street, carefully warding off the cow-dung cakes which the village women stuck to the walls, and the dirty water which flowed through the drains. As we entered the home of the landlord, we met Devi, the landlord’s little son, who clapped his hands with joy, and shouted to announce the coming of Chandu, the barber, in a beautiful heroic dress like that of the Padre Sahib of the Mission School.

“Ram! Ram! Ram!" said Bijay Chand, the burly landlord, taking his hand to touch the sacred thread which hung over his ear since he had just been to the lavatory. “The son of a pig! He is bringing a leather bag of cowhide into our house, and a coat of the marrow of — I don’t know, some other animal, and those evil, black angrezi shoes. Get out! Get out! You son of the devil! You will defile my religion. I suppose you have no fear of anyone now that your father is dead!”

“But I am wearing the clothes of a doctor, Jagirdar Sahib,” said Chandu.

“Go away, you swine, go away and wear clothes befitting your low status as a barber. Don’t let me see you practicing any of your newfangled notions, or else I will have you flogged!”

“But, Lalla Bijay Chand!” Chandu appealed.

“Get away! Get away! You useless one!” the landlord shouted. “Don’t come any nearer, or we will have to treat the whole house with the sacred cow dung to purify it.”

Chandu returned. His face was flushed. He was completely taken aback. He rushed towards the shop of Thanu Ram, the Sahukar of the village, who kept a grocer’s store at the corner of the lane. When I got to the head of the lane, I saw the Sahukar with one end of the scale in which he had been weighing grain lifted in one hand, abusing Chandu in the foulest way. “You little swine, you go disguising yourself as a clown when you ought to be bearing your responsibilities and looking after your old mother. You go wearing the defiled clothes of the hospital folk. Go and come back in your own clothes! Then I shall let you cut my hair!” And, as he said so, he felt for the ritual tuft knot on top of his head.

Chandu looked very crestfallen, and ran in a wild rage past me, as if I had been responsible for these mishaps. I nearly cried to think that he hated me now just because I belonged to a superior caste.

“Go to Pandit Permanand,” I shouted after him, “and tell him that these garments you are wearing are not unclean.”

“Ho, so you are in league with him,” said Pandit Permanand, emerging from the landlord’s home, where he had apparently been summoned to discuss this unholy emergency. “You boys have been spoiled by your school education. It may be all right for you to wear those things because you are going to be a learned man. But what right has that low-caste boy to such apparel? He has got to touch our beards, our heads, and our hands. He is defiled enough by God. Why does he want to become more defiled? He is a rogue!”

Chandu had heard this. He did not look back but ran off in a rush, as if he were set on some purpose which occupied him more than the abuse which had been the cause of his flight.

I was very disturbed about Chandu’s fate all day, and on my way back from school I called in at the hovel where he lived with his mother.

His mother was well known for a cantankerous old woman, because she, a low-caste woman, dared to see the upper-caste people as they never dared to see themselves. But she was always very kind to me, though she spoke to me too in a bantering manner, which had grown on her through the suffering and humiliations of sixty-odd years. She said, “Well, you have come, have you, to look for your friend, if your mother knew that you were here, she would scratch my eyes out for casting my evil eye on your sweet face. And you, are you as innocent as you look or are you also a sneaking little hypocrite, like the rest of your lot?”

“Where is Chandu, then, mother?” I asked.

“I don’t, know, son,” she said, now in a sincere, simple manner. “He went up town way, and says he earned some money shaving people on the roadside. I don’t know what he is up to. I don’t think he ought to annoy the clients his father served. He is a child and gets funny notions into his head and they ought not to be angry with him. He is only a boy. You want to see him, and to go out playing, I suppose. Very well, I will tell him when he comes. He has just gone up the road, I think.”

“All right, mother,” I said, and went home.

3

CHANDU whistled for me that afternoon, in the usual code whistle which we had invented.

“Come for a walk to the bazaar,” he said. “I want to talk to you.” And hardly had I joined him, when he began: “Do you know, I earned a rupee shaving and cutting hair near the court this morning. If I hadn’t had to come back on Hukam Chand’s carriage early in the afternoon, I should have earned more. But I am going to teach these orthodox idiots a lesson. I am going on strike. I shall not go to their houses to attend them. I am going to buy a Japanese bicycle from the gambler son of Lalla Hukam Chand for five rupees, and I shall learn to ride it and I shall go to town on it every day. Won’t I look grand, riding on a bicycle, with my overall, my black leather shoes, and with a white turban on my head, especially as there is a peg in front of the two-wheeled carriage for hanging my tool bag.”

“Yes,” I concurred, greatly thrilled, not because I imagined the glory of Chandu seated upon a bicycle, but because I felt myself nearer the goal of my own ambition. I felt sure that if Chandu acquired a bicycle, he would at least let me ride to town on the back wheel or the front bar. He might even let me learn to ride myself, and lend me the machine every now and then.

Chandu negotiated the deal about the bicycle with an assurance that seemed to me a revelation of a capacity for business such as I had never suspected in him from the reckless way of spending money which had always characterized him. And then he said to me in a confidential voice, “You wait for another day or two. I shall show you something which will make you laugh as you have never laughed before.”

“Tell me now,” I insisted, with an impatience sharpened by the excitement of the tense association of my whole self with the spirit of his adventure.

“No, you wait,”he said. “I can only give you a hint at the moment. It is a secret that only a barber can know. Now, let me get on with the job of learning to handle this machine. You hold it while I get on it, and I think it will be all right.”

“But,”I said, “that is not the way to learn to ride a bicycle. My father learned to ride from the bar at the back, and my brother learned to ride by first trying to balance on the pedal.”

“Your father was a top-heavy balloon!” said Chandu. “And your brother is a long-legged spider. I,” he continued, “was born, my mother tells me, upside down.”

“All right,” I said. And I held the bicycle for him. But while my gaze concentrated with admiration on the brilliant sheen of the polished brass, I lost my grip and Chandu fell on the other side with a thud, along with the machine. There were peals of laughter from the shop of the Sahukar where several peasants congregated round the figure of the landlord. And then the Sahukar could be heard shouting: “Serves you right, you rascally son of the iron age! Break your bones and die, you upstart! You won’t come to your senses otherwise!”

Chandu hung his head with shame, and muttered an oath at me: “ You fool, you are no good! ” though I had thought that he would grip me by the neck and give me a good thrashing for being the cause of his discomfiture. Then he looked at me, smiled embarrassedly and said, “We will see who has the last laugh, I or they.”

“I will hold the machine tightly this time,”I said earnestly, and picked it up.

Chandu struggled on to the bicycle as I exerted all my strength to hold it tight. Then he said, “Let go!”

I released my grip. He had pressed the pedal with a downward pressure of his right foot, hard, and as the wheels revolved, he swayed dangerously to one side. But he had pushed the other pedal now. The machine balanced, inclining to the right a little, so that I saw Chandu lift his rump from the saddle in the most frightening manner. He hung precariously for a moment. His handles wobbled dangerously. He was tottering. At this juncture, a mixed noise of laughter and sarcasm arose from the congregation at the shop and I thought that Chandu would come to grief with this confusion, if not on account of his utter incapacity. But by a curious miracle Chandu’s feet got into the right rhythm for pedaling, his handle adjusted itself to his stiff hands and he rode off, with me running behind him, bursting with enthusiastic “Shabashes.” A half a mile’s run, and he repeated the trick.

Though I was very eager to share the joy of his newly acquired skill, I didn’t see Chandu the next day, as I was taken to see my aunts in the village of Verka.

But on the third day he called for me, and said that he would show me the joke he had talked of. I followed quickly, urging him, “Tell me what it is all about.”

“Look,” he said, hiding behind the oven of the village potter. “ Do you see the congregation of men in the Sahukar’s shop? Try and recognize who’s there.”

I explored among the various forms and, for a moment, I was quite baffled.

“Only the peasants, sitting round waiting for the landlord,” I said.

“Look again,” he said, “you idiot, and see. The landlord is there, his long-jawed face dirtied by the white scum of his unshaved beard!”

“Ha! Ha!” I shouted hilariously, struck by the contradiction of the big thick mustache, which I knew the landlord dyed in a red dye, and the prickly white bush of his overgrown mane. “Ha! Ha!” I roared, “a sick lion! He looks seedy!”

“’Sh!” warned Chandu, “don’t make a row. But look at the Sahukar. He looks like a leper with the brown tinge of tobacco on his walrus mustache which I once used to trim. Now you run by the shop and call ‘Beavers, beavers!’ They can’t say anything to you.”

I was too impetuous a disciple of the impish Chandu to wait to deliberate,

“Beavers! Beavers! Beavers!” I shouted as I ran by the shop. The peasants who were gathered round it burst out laughing.

“Catch him, catch him, the little rogue!” shouted the Sahukar. “He is in league with that barber boy, Chandu!”

But, of course, I had climbed up a banyan tree, from where I jumped on to the wall of the temple and shouted my slogan at the priest.

The rumor about the barber boy’s strike spread, and jokes about the unkempt beards of the elders of the village became current in every home. Even those who were of the high castes, even the members of the families of the elders began to giggle with laughter at the shabby appearance of the great ones and made rude remarks about their persons. And it was said that the landlord’s wife threatened to run away with somebody, because, being younger than her husband by twenty years, she had borne with him so long as he kept himself in trim, but was now disgusted with him beyond the limits of reconciliation.

Chandu did good business in town during these days, and saved money, even though he bought new clothes and new tools for himself. The village elders threatened to have him sent to prison for his offenses, and ordered his mother to force him to obey them or they would commit him to the police for a breach of the peace. But Chandu’s mother had, for the first time in her life, touched the edges of prosperity, and she told all of them what she thought of them in a language even plainer than that in which she had always addressed them. Then they thought of getting the barber of Verka to come to attend them, and offered him an anna, instead of the two pice they had usually paid to Chandu.

But Chandu outwitted them, He had conceived a new and more wonderful notion, even better than those he had thought up before. Having seen the shop of Nringan Das, the barber in the town, he applied his brain to the scheme of opening a shop himself in our village, right at the head of the bazaar. He would do it in partnership with the barber of Verka, who was his cousin, and with Dhunoo and the other barbers near our village. He proposed this extraordinary idea at a special meeting of the caste and by that gift of gab which he has he managed to convince them that it was time the village elders came to the barbers rather than that the barbers should dance attendance upon the lords.

CHANDU BROTHERS

Hairdressing and Shaving Saloon

That is the proud legend that stands today on the sign outside my friend’s establishment. And it has been followed by a number of other similar unions of working people in our parts.