University of Chicago

Translated from Punjabi by C. Christine Fair

His name was “Nandu”. He was a servant in our neighbour’s house, where he did all of the household chores. He was a smallish boy. Who knows what his actual name was. Everyone just called him Nandu.

Sometimes he would finish his work in the afternoon and would come sit with me. Although he was from Garhwal, he spoke Punjabi well, albeit haltingly. His face always made it appear as though he were laughing. We gave him the nickname “Laughing Man.”

“Nandu, how many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Four sisters and three brothers. All of the sisters are older than I am, and the brothers are younger.”

Then Nandu fell silent. It was as if he were thinking that if his brothers were older, they would be working, and Nandu would not have cuts on his hands from washing vessels all day at such a young age. Nor would he have been forced to leave his small house nestled in the mountains.

“Nandu, how did you manage to leave your parents and everyone else to come here?”

Then he smiled, and his lips spread out. “Who knows why?” he smiled, but it seemed as if the smile was trying to convince me that it doesn’t matter whether you want to or don’t want to do all of this work, you still have to do it. Right?

“Madam, back there, we barely eat twice a day. We cooked once a day, and we ate the leftovers for a second meal. Moreover, I was not free there at all. I would take the cows outside for grazing. I also bathed them sometimes. I would also feed them fodder. When my mother would milk the cows, I wanted to drink the milk fresh from the bucket. But madam…if we don’t sell the milk, then maybe we won’t even be able to cook one meal.

“And there, people must have their own lands?”

“What kind of lands, Madam? Just small parcels. And then you have to pay land tax and interest on the loan.”

When Nandu spoke like this, it seemed to me that this child was a fifty-year-old man. Yet he was hardly thirteen years old. He was eight or nine when he ran away from his village to come here. Perhaps, he couldn’t tolerate hunger. There had been a time when he had been self-respecting. He would go on saying, “Where I used to work before, the old woman was angry with me one day. And I left.”

I was astonished that now he is verbally abused all day long, but he has gone nowhere. The reason may be that he had grown accustomed to it.

Nandu only spoke Punjabi. He would say that he had forgotten Garhwali. And he never posted letters to his family. He would say that he only knew his father’s name and the name of his village. Nothing else. And the villages in Garhwal had such long addresses. Sometimes he would become very sad thinking of his mother and father. Once, I saw him outside, wiping his eyes with his dirty Ludhiana shirt. But usually, he would try to hide his pain in a smile from which his broad lips would stretch wide. He said carelessly, “According to them, I died long ago.”

Our neighbors were Sikhs. And Nandu bought a gutka[1] with his salary, even though he was completely illiterate. (He only took that part of his salary that he needed for necessities.) He also bought a picture of Guru Gobind Singh Ji and wrapped it in his spare shirt to keep it safe. When the shirt he is wearing gets dirty, he washes it, wraps the picture of Guru Gobind Singh in it, and wears the other shirt.

Over time, he began imitating the children of his boss, a Sikh man, and began wearing a turban. He also got the worn-out turban of his boss’s youngest son. For two annas, he bought some grey dye and dyed the turban. He also acquired a small kirpan[2], which he did not remove while bathing or sleeping. He went from Nandu to Nand Singh.

One time, a man from his village came to find him.

“Does someone by the name of Nandu live here?
“There’s no one here by that time. You’ve come here by mistake,” Nandu said with deliberation. He was already afraid that if some man from the village recognised him, he would have to send money home. And maybe he would have to return to that place, where, after caring for the cows all day, he got only one meal, and for the second meal, he was given dried pieces of roti. Here, he could satisfy his hunger at least twice a day. He didn’t need to worry a bit about work. And what about scolding and abuse? Ultimately, a person learns to tolerate these things.

Even though Nandu’s face had completely changed, seeing his wide laughing lips, the man from his village recognised him. He said something to Nandu in Garhwali. Nandu began to say somewhat angrily, “I don’t understand what you are saying. Don’t talk nonsense. Speak correctly.”

And the next day in the afternoon, when he told me that he no longer understood Garhwali, I suddenly let out a sigh. Maybe I sighed because Nandu had forgotten his mother tongue, which must have been the first words he heard when God threw him on this planet, thinking him to be disposable.

“What did he say to you, Nandu?”

“Nothing. He said only that ‘your mother is missing you a lot.’ But I know no one is crying for me. She must be thankful that there is one less hungry mouth to feed. She used to always say to me, ‘May you die.’”

But that man from Nandu’s village kept coming around. Over time, Nandu’s heart softened. Nandu remembered his mother, he remembered his elderly father, who must no longer be able to work the fields. And Nandu remembered his small, dirt shack, whose outside wall was plastered with rocks. The fragrance of fresh soil and paste made of cow dung and mud floated to his mind. And now Nandu was constantly sad. In the end, he was still a child, all of thirteen years old.

Then one day, who knows what happened, but cysts appeared near his ear. The boss, the Sikh, was charry of the illness, thinking no one would keep a sick man in his house. He tossed Nandu out. While leaving, Nandu cried copiously! He gave me the gutka and the picture of Guru Gobind Singh. He was going back to his village. He said he would take them back when he returned from his village.

So much time had passed without hearing from him. On several occasions, my eyes would well up looking at his things. Poor Nandu.

Then one day, there was a knock at my door. It was the afternoon. I opened the door. A smallish boy was standing there wearing a dirty hat and a filthy shirt, and in his hands was a smallish bundle. I thought someone must have come to meet our servant. But seeing those wide lips smiling in his laughter, I immediately recognised him. It was him. Nandu.

Nandu had cut his long hair. Now his name was Anand Ram. I asked him how he was doing and gave him some water. He spoke haltingly. While speaking, he said some words that I had difficulty understanding. In the end, embarrassed, he began to explain that due to living in his village, it was hard for him not to speak Garhwali. In the end, he was still Nandu, who had come to me in the afternoon and to tell me all of his sorrows.

“Your things are still with me, Nandu.”

“You keep them.” It seemed as if words were not coming to him. He didn’t know what to say, “I have another photo.” He began to open his bundle. There were a few pieces of clothing from which Nandu withdrew a picture. It was a picture of Lord Krishna.

I kept on thinking that hunger knows no religion. Wherever one gets food, one adopts that religion and that language. Then what is the essence of a person? A cog that has to fit into every machine because a cog outside of a machine doesn’t get oil, and it becomes rusty. And Nandu? What was Nandu? A thing without life? He was a ball rolling down the mountainside, which, moving very quickly down the hill, would get stuck on a rock momentarily, then again begin rolling. Maybe Nandu was like that same wind-up doll that my little brother has. The only difference is that the wind-up doll is fat, whereas every one of Nandu’s ribs could be counted.

After two years, Nandu came yesterday. There was barely any difference in his build. I recognised him immediately. But he could not recognise my little brother. In those two years, he had grown a lot. The wheels of time leave different marks on different people.

Now Nandu spoke Hindi. He spoke some words very quickly, which I had difficulty understanding.

“So Nandu, where are you these days?”

“I’m working for a woman from Madras. She’s terrible. She harasses me a lot. Otherwise, everything is fine. Initially, I couldn’t eat their food, but now I can.”

Then I thought he was doing this just to keep his belly full, just like sparrows and crows who eat to keep their bellies full. Just like wild dogs roaming the streets to fill their bellies. What is a meal? Whatever you get, you eat, whether it’s leftover food or something else. Something just to fill one’s stomach. But to feed himself, one has to sell himself.

I had thought that Nandu had sometimes become Nand Singh and sometimes Anand Ram. There was a time when he kept a picture of Guru Gobind and a gutka. Now he keeps a picture of Krishna. Sometimes he spoke Garhwali, sometimes Punjabi, and now Hindi. But Nandu kept on washing dishes. Nandu kept on sweeping. He kept on washing clothes. He went on cooking. And he continued to be scolded. Still, he’s a child. Poor Nandu!

“Sister, are you still writing stories?”

“Yes, Nandu. I’m writing now.”

“And you were saying that you were going to write my story?”

I smiled. Feeling demoralized, he began to ask, “But who will read it?”

Then it occurred to me that Nandu couldnot read his story himself, but many others would read it.

“Nandu, the people of future generations will read about Nandu and thousands of Nandus, just like the Bible. And these stories will be worshiped just like you worship these pictures. Because you all strengthen the foundations of the new world.”

Who knows whether he understood what I was saying, but he smiled.

[1] A quid of betel and tobacco

[2] Small dagger, a ritualistic thing carried by Sikh men

Ajeet Cour (born 1934) is an Indian writer who writes in Punjabi. She is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award by the Government of India. She is the author of twenty-two books, including novels, novellas, short stories, biographical sketches, and translations. Her novellas include Dhup Wala Shehar (The town with Sunshine) and Post Mortem. Her novel, Gauri, was made into a film, while her short story Na Maaro (Don’t Beat) was serialised for television. Her works have been translated into English, Hindi, and several other languages.

C. Christine Fair (born 1968) did her Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She is currently a professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. Her translations have appeared in Muse India, Orientalia Suecana, The Bangalore Review, Borderless, The Punch Magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and The Bombay Review.

The Cave of Echoes

Title: The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers

Author: Wendy Doniger

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

It is impossible to define a myth, but it is cowardly not to try. For me, the best way to not-define a myth is to look at it in action, which is what have tried to do throughout this book: to see what myth does, rather than what myth is. It seems to me that by the time you’ve defined your terms in an argument, you’ve lost interest in the problem. But at this point, as we begin to reexamine our own assumptions about myths, it might be useful to list some things that I think myths are not: myths are not lies, or false statements to be contrasted with truth or reality. 1bis usage is, perhaps, the most common meaning of myth in casual parlance today. Indeed, other cultures, too, call myths lies. The Malagasy end the recitation of any myth with a traditional tag-line: “It is not I that lie; this lie comes from olden times.” In our culture, in particular, myths are often given the shadowy status of what has been called an “inoperative truth,” when in fact they might better be characterized as operative fictions. Picasso called art a lie that tells the truth, and the same might be said of myths.

What a Myth Is and Is Not

The desecration of the word “myth” to mean “lie” began with Plato, who contrasted the fabricated myth with the true history. It is, I think, an irony that our word for myth in most European languages, together with our basic attitude to myths, comes from ancient Greece, one of the very few cultures in the world from which we have almost no example of real, live myths, of myths as a part of a vital tradition; by the time most of the Greek myths reach us, they have been so thoroughly reworked in artistic and philosophical forms that they are mythological zombies, the walking dead. Plato was, as Eliade pointed out long ago, the first great demythologizer; he “deconstructed” the myths of Homer and Hesiod. It was Plato who challenged, successfully, the status of the poetic myth-carvers and myth collectors and banished them from his Republic. We can see in Plato a spectrum of mythmakers: at one end are anonymous wet nurses, who transmit the old myths to helpless infants; at the other end are the poets, like Hesiod and Homer, the “mimetic clan” who cannot imitate the true forms since no one has ever seen the forms and the poets can only imitate what they have seen.

Plato warns us that we must not tell these poetic myths about the gods even if they are true; in this, I think, he affirms the power of myths to influence human life; for he fears that a bad myth will make a bad life. (We shall see, in chapter 6, other Greek arguments against the evil effects of the myths in Greek tragedies.) Moreover, it is hard to escape from this image of the bad life; the stories that we learn in childhood have a marvelous hold on our memory.

Yet it is necessary for people to believe in good myths, even if they are false; this is the argument that Plato advances for the “noble lie” (gennaion pseudos) in the Republic, the statement that distorts an outside surface in order to convey an inner truth. Some of these good myths come from the old days; Plato distrusts this sort of “mythologizing,” the stories about centaurs and Chimaeras and Pegasus and so forth, but he distrusts even more the people who analyze them away as metaphors for the North Wind and so forth ( anticipating Friedrich Max Miller by some twenty-four hundred years); such analyses are altogether too clever and waste an awful lot of time. 13 People do have to have myths, Plato concedes; if they don’t believe in the old ones, we must construct new ones for them, logically, and this is very difficult to do, for we must convince them, in the cold light of reason, of the truth of the myths in order to make them accept the laws that we wish to give them:

“How can one assert in cold blood that the gods exist? Because we must hate and find unbearable those who, today as in the past, due to having refused to allow themselves to be convinced by the myths related to them since earliest childhood by a mother or a nurse giving them the breast, have obliged us, and still do so, to develop the arguments which take up our time now.”

For this reason, despite his opposition to myths and mythmakers, Plato himself was also a great “remythologizer” who invented the drama of the philosophical soul and made it a new kind of myth, a reasonable, logical, “likely” myth, to challenge the old myths of centaurs and so forth. In this way, when it came to myth, Plato managed to hunt with the hounds and to run with the hare. As Marcel Detienne has put it: “Plato’s work marks the time when philosophy, while censuring tales of the ancients as scandalous fictions, sets about telling its own myths in a discourse on the soul, on the origin of the world, and on life in the hereafter.” It was Plato who transformed ancient mythic themes to make the myth of Er, the myth of Eros, and the myth of the creation of the universe. Though Plato’s “likely or resembling story” can be a myth in the sense of a narrative ( and in that sense is interchangeable with logos meaning “narrative”), it is not a myth in the negative sense of a bad copy, like the myths of Homer ( which are negatively contrasted with logos meaning “reason”).

Yet Plato does apply the word “myth” ( mutbos) to the story of the world that he creates in the Pbaedo, a myth that he says is “worth hearing,” though it is merely another “likely story”:

“Now, to assert vehemently that things like this are really so as I’ve narrated them, doesn’t befit any man of sense. But that this is so, or something pretty much like it, about our souls and their dwelling place, since it is clear that the soul is immortal-it is quite fitting that we say that. “

The likely story is not the truth; but it resembles the truth, and is as close as we can ever get to the truth about certain subjects. Plato confesses that he resorts to telling myths, despite the fact that such stories are not literally true, because there is no other way of using words to produce even the effect of truth.

Plato regards the myth that he constructs in the Pbaedo as an essential vehicle for salvation, a kind of religious or magic charm:

“It is well worth running the risk that these things are so for anybody who thinks them so. (For it’s a fair risk.) And he must recite these things over and over to himself like a magic charm, even as I at this moment and for a long time past have been drawing out this myth.”

Plato ends the Republic with his own myth, the myth of Er, which he certainly does not regard as a lie: “And so the myth was saved and was not lost, and it will save us, if we believe it, and we shall safely cross the river of Lethe and we will not sully the soul. “

For Plato admits that a myth says something that cannot be said in any other way, that cannot be translated into a logical or even a metaphysical statement. A myth says something that can only be said in a story.

Which brings me to what I think a myth is. Let me begin with a rather cumbersome and rather functional definition: A myth is a story that is sacred to and shared by a group of people who find their most important meanings in it; it is a story believed to have been composed in the past about an event in the past, or, more rarely, in the future, an event that continues to have meaning in the present because it is remembered; it is a story that is part of a larger group of stories.

The assertion that a myth is a story is basic to my argument; for I think that the myth is persuasive to us because the action itself is persuasive. Even when what happens in the myth is not physically possible in this world ( as when, for instance, a man turns into a fish), when the event is described in detail, as something that happened, we can see it happening, and so it enlarges our sense of what might be possible. Only a story can do this.

About the Book

The Cave of Echoes celebrates the universal art of storytelling, and the rich diversity of the stories—especially myths—that people live by. Drawing on Hindu and Greek mythology, Biblical parables, and the modern mythologies of Woody Allen and soap operas, Wendy Doniger—renowned scholar of the history of religions—encourages us to feel anew the force of myth and tradition in our lives, and in the lives of other cultures. She shows how the stories of mythology—whether of gods, sages, demons or humans—enable cultures to define themselves. She raises critical questions about how myths are interpreted and adapted, and the ways in which different cultures make use of central texts and traditions. Drawing connections across time and place, she proposes that myths are not static beliefs but evolving narratives, and that by entering into other cultures’ stories, we may unexpectedly rediscover our own.

Written with scholarly depth and characteristic wit, this is a landmark work in the comparative study of mythology. It’s essential reading for anyone interested in how we understand others—and ourselves—through the stories we tell.

About the Author

Wendy Doniger is the author of several acclaimed and bestselling works, among them, The Hindus: An Alternative History; Hindu Myths; The Ring of Truth; Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion and Other Realities; Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares; An American Girl in India; and translations of the Rig Veda and the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar). She is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions at theUniversity of Chicago, and has also taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the University of California, Berkeley.

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