LATTU RAM'S ADVENTURE

By BHABANI BHATTACHARYA

Mother Durga watched from her shrine with red lips and painted elongated eyes. She had ten arms, and rode a tame- looking lion. One arm held a spear aimed at tnahisasoor, a cowering buffalo-faced demon who was sin personified. Mother Durga descends from her mountain home once a gear and stays for four days. Craftsmen, whose art has run in the family for centuries, build the clay body of a young woman, with a lovely varnished face and balloon breasts, and into that abode the Brahmin priests invoke the spirit. On the evening of the fourth day Mother Durga departs, and the image, a mere shell when the spirit has left, is carried in procession to a tank on the outskirts of the town, conveyed to a boat and cast in deep water. Her brief sojourn on the planet, Earth, has been an occasion for rejoicing and reunion. All over India Durga Pujah is the greatest, jolliest Hindu festival.

But Lattu Rain, twelve years old, squeezed and jostled by the enormous crowds as they staggered from stall to stall, was in no jovial mood. He wore a serious, determined look on his small, pock-marked face. He walked with an aim. A few Minutes before, he had stood at the radio stall and heard the boom of a mechanical voice : " Hellow everybody, a boy Hiralal is missing. He is thin, dark, short of two front teeth. He has a squint in the left eye, noticed particularly when he laughs. The parents are worried to death. Will you be on the look-out, please, and if you find him rush him up to Radio Corner."

During the next ten minutes every little child in the fair, if he seemed forlorn, was in peril of having his cheeks squeezed, so that the teeth would show. The number of boys short of two front teeth was surprisingly high. These were examined for a squinted left eye. " Laugh ! " a man jabbed in the ribs of his five-year-old find. The little one shut his eyes, opened his mouth wide, and howled. The search was useless. The vast fair was thronged with hundreds of families, each trailing with children, always on the move. The tumult of voices, the honk of toy trumpets, the nasal intonation of -gramophone records were the staccato pulse-beats of a restless sweltering night. Some little boys were examined by zealous bands of volunteers a dozen times over, so that their cheeks turned red and ached. Then the mothers of the suffering ones began to protest, words were exchanged, loud and sour, and there was a counter-campaign to stop the squeezing of tender cheeks.

At short intervals a voice boomed from the loudspeaker, soaring above the tumult, and repeated its message about the missing child. But Hiralal seemed irretrievably drowned in the stream of surging crowds, which swelled more and more with- the advance of night.

Lattu Ram did not lose hop:. While he moved round the Stalls watching the exhibits, Hiralal was at the back of his mind, occupying his inmost thoughts. His wide brown nostrils dilated a little. " Oh thou Squint-eye, I will yet spot thee." Some coloured posters exhibited by the Red Cross Society held Lattu Rain's eyes. " Do not spit on public grounds," said one. " It sows the seeds of tuberculosis." There was the picture of an emaciated sufferer spitting on the street : clouds of deadly germs were seen rising from the dust and mingling with the air. Lattu Ram moved away, deeply impressed. As he went he saw an old man clear his wrinkled throat and spit. Lattu Ram rushed up to him.

" Fool ! " he denounced. " Thou sowest the seeds of tubosis."

Eyes blinked in amazement. " What sayest thou ? "

" Blockhead, thou sowest the seeds of the dread disease tubosis."

Eyes glared at the youngster.

" Well-manured is thy head with cow-dung, my baccha, and fertile, overmuch fertile. Let me sow cucumber seeds in it, my baccha, for they will sprout fast and thick."

Lattu Ram hated the suggestion. Eye on eye, he backed away, and felt hot on the cheeks as he heard the old man snigger. His throat was parched. " I need some tea to moisten my tongue," he told himself. There was a café round the corner. " Hot Drink's Cabin," the signboard announced.

He went in and took a wooden-seated chair. Then he saw a slim little thing perched some cubits away, smothered under a great saffron-coloured turban, dangling his bare brown legs. Ten yards of cloth had composed the intricate convolutions of that headgear. The boy was drinking tea from a saucer with much smacking of the lips, eyes half- closed with enjoyment.

In that moment Lattu Ram knew instinctively that he had found the one whom so many volunteers had sought in vain. They had looked for a child with a frightened forlorn expres- sion. But a brave five-years-old was just as likely to possess an adventurous soul, and welcome the opportunity to do a bit of exploring all by himself.

Lattu Ram moved to the child. " Hello Hiralal," he called.

The little boy did not answer, nor even did he remove the saucer from his smacking lips, but his small black eyes widened a little, lifted, and blinked thrice at the stranger.

And that was enough for Lattu Ram. The name of this child was Hiralal. But Lattu had to be doubly sure. So he said, " Mind, my friend, you are swallowing a hair with your tea."

Instantly Hiralal put the saucer down and cried, " Where ? Where ? "

" Open your mouth and let me see ? "

Hiralal opened his mouth, and sure enough he was short of two canine teeth.

" My mistake. Wasn't a hair." Lattu Ram grinned in a good-natured way.

Hiralal grinned too. The black pupil of his left eye swerved sideways, making it squinted.

It was no hard job for Lattu Ram to induce the missing one to make a trip to Radio House.

AN article entitled " Ink of Poppies," by Miss Dorothy L. Sayers, which appeared in The Spectator of May 14th, took as text certain passages in a manifolded document which had been addressed to her in common with a number of other well-known writers. The name of the author of the document was not mentioned in the article in question, but Miss Laura Riding, from whom in fact it emanated, explains that it was privately circulated and should not in her view have been quoted in any form, since it is to be incorporated in a forthcoming book. A document that was obviously being widely distributed was not under- stood by Miss Sayers or The Spectator to have a private character, but we regret that it should through the medium of The Spectator have been put to any use of which its writer disapproves.