ii.                  A Meeting of Primitive and Civilized

There were paddy fields (rice fields) some distance from the Jhajha railway colony and at the time of the year I decided to do some pigeon shooting there, where pigeons were feeding in the stubble. I had a 12 gauge shot gun and a pillow slip in which to place my trophies, the slip taken without my mother knowing.

I was then in my mid-teens, no gun licence, but what sahib needed a licence in those days in India? I passed a village which was going about its usual morning chores. The men and women saw me and took no notice; however. a chokra (urchin), in torn and soiled shirt and shorts began to follow me, an act which as a callow youth I took to be one of admiration. I had assumed some of the power of the gun culture I was displaying. The boy kept a certain distance from me, a silent admirer's distance, I thought. We were crossing a field in which there was a depression when the boy signalled me by hand to go over to him. I did so, somewhat disdainfully. He scrabbled with his fingers in the mud side of the depression and there, in the middle of miles of fields, he pulled out a fish. It might have been for me the miracle of the loaves and fishes. From being "master of all I survey", I and the shotgun were reduced to nothing.

I do not know if the chokra had acted out of emulation or friendliness. Not a word did we exchange. In after years I read of a species of fish that could breathe in moist mud and I realized then that the depression in which the fish had lived was moist because it was flooded every year during the monsoon and other rains. Bubbles from the breathing of the fish had been the give-away sign to the boy for the location of the fish. The boy had revealed to me a wonder, and I was properly humiliated in its presence. I went home quietly.