Thakchacha

“ A casual remark may very easily disturb the mind of a man who is naturally rather dense. As a boat in the hands of an unskilful steersman is tossed about in a storm, unable to make the shore, so a dull-gritted man is in almost constant perplexity, seeing only chaos around him: he can himself come to no decision on the merits of any subject. For one thing, poor Baburam Babu was naturally rather thick-headed, and for another, Thakchacha’s words were to him as the sacred Vedas: so he stood stupidly gazing about like a man in a maze, and after a while asked Thakchacha what plan he could suggest. ”

“ Just then Thakchacha approached them, limping painfully along: he was exceedingly anxious on account of Baburam Babu’s illness, reflecting that all his chances of gain had slipped away. Beni Babu, seeing him, said: Thakchacha, what is the matter with your leg? Becharam burst in with the remark: What, my friend, have you never heard of the affair of Barnagore? The pain he is suffering is only the punishment for his evil advice: have you forgotten what I said in the boat? Thakchacha tried to slip away when he heard this, but Beni Babu caught him by the arm and said: Never mind that now! ”

“ One day Thakchacha, with a deep sigh, said to his companion:— Our destiny is a very hard one: we have become mere lumps of earth: our trickery is of no further avail, and as for my stratagems, they have all escaped from my head. My house is ruined: I did not even have an interview with my wife before leaving: I am very much afraid that she will marry again. Bahulya replied: Friend, pluck all these matters out of your heart: life in the world is after all but a pilgrimage: we are here to-day, gone to-morrow: no one has anything he can call his own. ”

“ It is very hard for a man who has fallen into any misfortune to deliberate calmly. Thakchacha at once wrote off a letter to his wife. Bancharam took the letter and with a wink and a smile at Mr. Butler handed it to a messenger, saying: Run with all speed to Vaidyabati, get some heavy ornaments from Thakchacha’s wife, and return here or to the office in the twinkling of an eye; and look you, be very careful how you bring the ornaments! Look sharp, be off like a shot. The messenger testily replied: It is easier said than done, sir! ”

“ Thakchacha, come and sit by me: what is your opinion in this matter?
It is a great pleasure to me also, Thakchacha replied, to have a talk with a man like you: those two gentlemen are daft: I am afraid to go near them. All that you have said is very true: a man’s life is practically thrown away if his honour and power are lost. You and I will look well after the particulars and get rid of all the difficulties. Is there any cause for alarm then?
Matilall was naturally very extravagant, and fond of display: he had no knowledge of money matters at all, and knew nothing of business. ”

“ When I saw the disturbance, I left the bridegroom's party and joined that of the bride. What became of everybody in the end I cannot say, but Thakchacha had to return home in a dooly. You all know the saying-- 'In avarice is sin, and in sin death.' Now listen to the poetry I have composed":--
Any counsel his parasite pours in his ears,
Baburam, the old dotard, as gospel reveres.
Still dreaming of riches by day and by night,
No thought ever stirs him of wrong or of right. ”

“ Ah, Babu Saheb! the son of a Hindu should observe all the ordinances of his religion as a Hindu. A man has need of both good and bad qualities if he is to engage in the business of this life: the world is not all honest: what use would it be to me if I were the only upright man in it?"
Men always regard with approval, as the opinion of a really great mind, language that is in keeping with their own convictions. Thakchacha was well aware that he had only to talk about the observance of Hindu ceremonial, and the preservation of property, and his aim would be accomplished ”

“ Becharam.— From observation of Baburam Babu’s general behaviour, I am inclined to think that his affairs are not prospering. Alas, alas, what counsellors he has got! That wretched Mahomedan, Thakchacha, a prince of rogues! there is an evil magic in him. Then Bancharam, the attorney’s clerk! he is like a fine mango, fair outside but rotten at the core. Well-practised in all the arts of chicanery, like a cat treading stealthily along in the wet, he simulates innocence while all the while exercising his wiles to entrap his prey. ”

“ Ha! what a virtuous and eloquent man has come amongst us! Be careful, my brothers; this bearded fellow is a very cunning sort of individual." Thakchacha at once became more modest, and began to depreciate himself, but they were long engaged in a wrangle on the subject: any trifling matter will serve when people have nothing else to do, as a peg whereon to hang an argument. The jail had been shut for the night: the prisoners had had their food and were preparing, to lie down to sleep. ”

“ Baburam Babu too was in great anxiety. It seemed to be the beginning of the punishment of his misdeeds: who can remain calm in mind when he is conscious of wrong? Cunning and craft may suffice to conceal a crime from the eye of the world, but nothing can escape the conscience. The sinner is ever at the mercy of its sting: he is always in a state of alarm and dread, never at ease: he may occasionally indulge in laughter, but it is unnatural and forced. Baburam Babu wept from sheer fright, and said to Thakchacha: "Oh, Thakchacha, what is going to happen? ”

“ Barada.— What grieves me is the thought that the man from his youth upwards should have done evil and not good. Besides, there is his family to think of: they will die of starvation if he is put in chains.
Becharam.— Ah, my good friend! why do people reverence you but for all your qualities? Thakchacha never lost an opportunity of maligning and injuring you: he never ceased insulting and abusing you. Why, it was he who fabricated that charge of illegal confinement and assault against you, and he made every effort to press the charge home by means of forgery. ”

“ In such anxious thoughts Matilall was wrapped when Bancharam and Thakchacha arrived. After exchanging a few remarks, they said to Matilall: "Well, sir! why this melancholy? It makes us quite sad to see it. At your age you should be always lively and cheerful. Why this anxiety? Fie! be merry." Affected almost to tears by this sweet language, Matilall told them all that was in his mind. Bancharam said: "Why be so anxious on that account? Are we mere grass-cutters that we cannot help you out of a difficulty? What brought us to see you to day was a splendid idea that has occurred to us. ”

“ Baburam lifted the bridegroom into his palanquin, and taking Thakchacha by the hand, walked by the side, with heavy gait, accompanied by his kinsmen and near friends. From the roof of the house the boy’s mother gazed down upon her son’s face, and the women of the household called out, Ah, mother of Mati! Ah, how beautiful is your child! The friends of the bridegroom were all with him: they amused themselves by taking torches to the rear of the crowd and setting people alight, and by letting off squibs and fireworks near the houses and in the thick of the crowd. ”

“ Thakchacha rose up in great wrath when he heard this language, and said: Sir, if it is by the influence of these men that calamity has been averted from you, is all my trouble on your behalf to go for nothing? do my prayers count for nothing? The Brahmans at once humbly acquiesced saying: Ah sir, just as the divine Krishna was once Arjuna’s charioteer, so you have been the master’s! all has happened by the might of your intelligence: you are a special incarnation: calamity flies far away from anyplace where you are, as from any place where we are. ”

“ One day Ramlall remarked to Barada Babu: Sir, I have a great longing to travel: staying here, it is a constant grief to me to listen to the bad language of my elder brother and the evil counsel of Thakchacha, but my love for my parents and for my sister makes me disinclined to stir from home. I cannot decide what to do. Barada Babu replied;— Much benefit is to be derived from travel: breadth of vision is not to be had without it: the mind is enlarged by the sight of different countries, and different people. ”

“ A night of happiness passes away in the twinkling of an eye, but how slowly drag the hours when the mind is sunk in an abyss of painful thought! It may be close to dawn, and the day may be every moment drawing nearer, but yet it seems to tarry. Ways and means occupied the whole of Baburam Babu's thoughts throughout the night: he could no longer remain quietly in the house, and long before the morning came was in a boat with Thakchacha and his companions. ”

“ Thakané, in great surprise, asked the meaning of her distress; and the old woman told her that it was the custom in that country that all the girls who were born should be given to the ogre to eat.
Then Thakané clasped the baby tightly in her arms, and cried:
‘But it is not the custom in my country! There, when children die, they are buried in the earth. ”

“ These now lay at the foot of the pyramid on the funeral pyre, and in order to please and propitiate the gods, who had loved and cherished the great Tcheltzada, a number of strangers, including several of the hated white people, were to be slain and their blood sprinkled upon the ashes of the lamented atkayma. All this in honor not alone of the dead, but of his son the new Atkayma Chaka and his most holy brother, the wise and esteemed Datchapa, who as leader of the royal council had decreed the interesting ceremony that was about to take place. ”

“ O God! why hast thou made sorrow so beautiful? This girl in distress, a blushing flower driven by the wind, a pleasure boat tossed by billows—what shall a man do with her? - where keep her? The devil whispered in Taqui’s ear, “In the heart.”
“Listen my beautiful, follow me and you shall not have to take the poison,” said Taqui. ”

“ Daksha, the patriarch, his sacrifice being destroyed, overcome with terror, and utterly broken in spirit, fell prone upon the ground, where his head was spurned by the feet of the cruel Virabhadra. The thirty scores of sacred divinities were all presently bound, with a band of fire, by their lion-like foe; and they all addressed him, crying: “O Rudra, have mercy upon thy servants! O lord, dismiss thine anger!” This spake Brahma, and the other gods, and the patriarch Daksha; and, raising their hands, they said: “Declare, mighty being, who thou art.” ”

“ Parāçara said:—Do thou hear, O thou of a high-mind, how commanded by Brahmā, Daksha created living creatures. At first Daksha created his will-born progeny—the deities, the Rishis, the Gandharvas, the demons and the snake-gods. When he found, O twice-born one, that his mind-born progeny did not multiply he began to meditate upon some other means of increasing the living creatures, Then desirous of multiplying the race by means of sexual intercourse he married the daughter of the Patriarch Veerana by name Ashikni who was devotee! to austerities and the eminent supportress of the world. ”

“ A tall, handsome, noble-looking old man, he appeared like a king among men, with his ‘silvery locks waving in the breeze,’ in his case a veritable ‘crown of glory.’ You felt, when you met him, that he was no ordinary man. ‘Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men’s faces,’ says Thackeray, ‘which is honoured almost wherever presented.’ It was so with dear old Razàka, for it might almost have been said that ‘his face was his fortune’ ”

“ Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?"
Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl. Joseph simply said—"Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got to prefer it?"
"You won't like everything from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you." ”

“ It is an encouraging prospect: know you not that the ruffian Holkar, if it be he, will with the morrow's dawn beleaguer our little fort, and throw thousands of men against our walls? know you not that, if we are taken, there is no quarter, no hope; death for us—and worse than death for these lovely ones assembled here?' Here the ladies shrieked and raised a howl as I have heard the jackals on a summer's evening. Belinda, my dear Belinda! ”

“ Mr Thacher, unlike his friend, was doomed to see death approach by slow and faltering steps. If there is a trial on earth that mocks the power of human fortitude, it is to feel the usefulness of life cut off, and to be compelled to remain idle during the toils of the day, while cares and labors are thronging around. How nobly he endured this affliction, how justly he reasoned that the part assigned him was to wait, must be well remembered. The teachings of Heaven are as various as our wants. ”

“ And his breast is bared to die. Who will shield the fearless heart? Who avert the murderous blade? From the throng, with sudden start, See there springs an Indian maid. Quick she stands before the knight, "Loose the chain, unbind the ring, I am daughter of the king, And I claim the Indian right!" Dauntlessly aside she flings Lifted axe and thirsty knife; Fondly to his heart she clings, And her bosom guards his life! In the woods of Powhattan, Still 'tis told by Indian fires, How a daughter of their sires Saved the captive Englishman. ”