of silence. It suited my temperament, and it also seemed the least complicated way out. The news of this vow of silence spread. Simple people who had come from afar to pay their respects to the temple deity would now also stop off to pay their respects to me. I became at once a holy man and, because of the firebrand and his niece outside, a political cause.
My case became almost as well known as that of a scoundrelly lawyer in another state, a jumped-up backward called Madhavan. That insolent fellow—going against all custom and decency—had insisted on walking past a temple while the priests were doing a long and taxing set of religious ceremonies. If you made one small mistake during those particular ceremonies you had to go back to the beginning. On such occasions it was better for backwards with their distracting babble to be out of the way, and the whole temple street was of course closed to them.
Elsewhere in the country they were talking of Gandhi and Nehru and the British. Here in the maharaja's state they were shut off from those politics. They were half-nationalists or quarter-nationalists or less. Their big cause was the caste war. For quite a time they did civil disobedience about the lawyer and me, campaigning for the lawyer's right to walk past the temple, and for my right to marry the firebrand's niece, or for her right to marry me.
The processions and the one-day strikes kept me safe from the school principal and the courts, and from the girl as well. But it pained me more than I can say to be put on a par with that lawyer. I thought it unfair that my simple life of sacrifice had taken that turn. I had wished, after all, only to follow the great men of our country. Fate, tossing me about, had made me a hero to people who, fighting their own petty caste war, wished to pull them down.
For three months or so I lived in this way, accepting homage from temple visitors, not noticing their gifts, and of course never talking. It actually wasn't a disagreeable way of passing the time. It suited me. And of course in my situation the vow of silence was a great help. I had no idea where the whole thing was going to end, but after a while I stopped worrying about that. I even began, when my silence overpowered me, a little bit to enjoy the feeling of being detached, of floating, with no links to anyone or anything. Sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes or longer I forgot my situation. Sometimes I even forgot where I was.
And that was when the great writer and his friend appeared, together with the school principal, and my life took yet another turn.
The principal was also director of the state's tourist publications and sometimes showed distinguished people around. He shot me glances of pure hatred—every kind of old anxiety came back to me then—and was for passing me by, but the writer's friend, Mr. Haxton, asked about me. The principal said, making an irritated, dismissing gesture with his hand, “Nobody, nobody.” But Mr. Haxton pressed, and asked why people were bringing me gifts. The principal told them I had taken a vow of silence, and had already been silent for a hundred days. The writer was very interested in that. The principal saw, and in the way of people of his kind, and as a good servant of the maharaja's tourist department, he began to say what he thought the old writer and his friend wanted to hear. He fixed his hard hating eyes on me and boasted about my priestly family and our temple ancestors. He boasted about my own early career, the bright prospects I had. All of these things I had mysteriously given away for the life of the ascetic, living in the courtyard, dependent on the bounty of pilgrims to the temple.
I was frightened of this eulogy by the principal. I thought he was plotting something nasty, and I looked away while he spoke, as though I didn't understand the language he was speaking.
The principal said, biting hard at each word, “He fears a great punishment in this life and the next. And he is right to fear.”
The writer said, “What do you mean?” He had a bad stammer.
The principal said, “Aren't we all every day both paying for past sins and storing up punishment for the future? Isn't that