Kabuliwala Quotes

My five-year-old daughter Mini can’t stop talking for a minute. […] Her mother often scolds her and makes her shut up, but I can’t do that. When Mini is quiet, it is so unnatural that I cannot bear it. So she’s rather keen on chatting to me.

[…] I saw my daughter sitting on a bench in front of the door, nattering unrestrainedly; and the Kabuliwala was sitting at her feet, listening—grinning broadly, and from time to time making comments in his hybrid sort of Bengali. In all her five years of life, Mini had never found so patient a listener, apart from her father.

Rahamat would say to Mini, “Little one, don’t ever go off to your śvaśur-bāṛi.’ […] She […] couldn’t clearly understand what Rahamat meant; yet to remain silent and give no reply was wholly against her nature, so she would turn the idea round and say, ‘Are you going to your śvaśur-bāṛi?’ Shaking his huge fist at an imaginary father-in-law Rahamat said, “I’ll settle him!”

I have never been away from Calcutta; precisely because of that, my mind roves all over the world. I seem to be condemned to my house, but I constantly yearn for the world outside. […] At the same time, I am such a rooted sort of individual that whenever I have to leave my familiar spot I practically collapse.

Mini’s mother is very easily alarmed. The slightest noise in the street makes her think that all the world’s drunkards are charging straight at our house. […] She was not too happy about Rahamat the Kabuliwala.

Mini came straight out with her ‘Are you going to your śvaśur-bāṛi?”

‘Yes, I’m going there now,’ said Rahamat with a smile. But when he saw that his reply had failed to amuse Mini, he brandished his handcuffed fists and said, “I would have killed my śvaśur, but how can I with these on?’

Living at home, carrying on day by day with our routine tasks, we gave no thought to how a free-spirited mountain-dweller was passing his years behind prison-walls. […] [Mini] even stopped coming to her father’s study. And I, in a sense, dropped her.

I had never confronted a would-be murderer before; I shrank back at the sight of him. I began to feel that on this auspicious morning it would be better to have the man out of the way.

Every year Rahamat carried this memento of his daughter in his breast-pocket when he came to sell raisins in Calcutta’s streets: as if the touch of that soft, small, childish hand brought solace to his huge, homesick breast. My eyes swam at the sight of it. I forgot then that he was an Afghan raisin-seller and I was a Bengali Babu. I understood then that he was as I am, that he was a father just as I am a father. The handprint of his little mountain-dwelling Parvati reminded me of my own Mini.

Mini now knew the meaning of śvaśur-bāṛi; she couldn’t reply as before—she blushed at Rahamat’s question and looked away. I recalled the day when Mini and the Kabuliwala had first met. My heart ached.

Mini left the room, and Rahamat, sighing deeply, sat down on the floor. He suddenly understood clearly that his own daughter would have grown up too since he last saw her, and with her too he would have to become re-acquainted: he would not find her exactly as she was before. Who knew what had happened to her these eight years?