The Cauliflower Read Online Free

treated in their humble Kamarpukur household during these special occurrences. He watched her intently. He studied her closely. One time he even quietly whispered in my ear, “Ah, wouldn’t it be just splendid if the spirit who now possesses my aunt would someday possess me?”
    Uncle was set apart from the very beginning. I have often been told that he was a beautiful baby and a beautiful child, and when I look back on those early years that is very much what I, too, remember. He was always cherished and celebrated. Uncle was handsome and charming. His face was full, like a shining moon. He was greatly loved and admired in the small village where he was raised. One village elder was so besotted by Uncle that he would even take the young Uncle out into the rice fields, hang scented garlands around his neck, then secretly feed and worship him there as an incarnation of the young Krishna. Village religion is a private religion. It is a householder’s religion. The Christians have one God and one way to worship him. We Hindus have a thousand gods and a thousand ways to worship them. The gods call to us—they speak to us—and whoever speaks the loudest or the most persuasively we respond to with a most profound sincerity. We make the best choices we can and then try to cultivate as deep a love as we can possibly muster.
    Uncle was always an impressive actor and a mimic. He made everybody laugh with his delightful pranks. The village women constantly sought out the wonderful Gadai to sing and to dance for them. He was one of their very own. Throughout his life women have treated Uncle as a girl, and men have happily indulged their wives and their mothers and their daughters in this curious whim of theirs. Uncle is so sweet and so innocent. They have nothing to fear from him. Uncle could never pose any threat. The very thought of it is laughable! He is a child. Untarnished by the world. And for this very reason Uncle could go wherever he chose. No door was closed to Uncle. The womenfolk of Kamarpukur were all completely devoted to him. Even as he grew from a child into a young man he continued to possess a feminine quality that made him at once their confidant and their plaything. Nothing could be kept hidden from the young Uncle. He could not be curtailed.
    There was one exception to this rule, however, in the shape of a successful trader by the name of Durgadas Pyne. Durgadas Pyne was as fond of Uncle as everybody else, but he maintained a strict system of purdah in his home and would often brag to other villagers about how nobody in Kamarpukur had ever seen the women of his family. On one occasion he made this brag within Uncle’s hearing, and Uncle was greatly provoked by this statement. He immediately insisted that he could know and see everything that happened among the women in Kamarpukur, even those cloistered in Durgadas Pyne’s household. Durgadas Pyne merely laughed at Uncle. He did not take this brash boy seriously.
    A short while later, at sunset, an impoverished weaver woman dressed in a filthy sari and veil and coarse ornaments arrived at Durgadas Pyne’s home, her basket of wares tucked under her arm. She told Durgadas Pyne that she had come to the market at Kamarpukur to sell yarn but had been unexpectedly abandoned by her thoughtless companions. She then asked—in pitiful tones—if he might provide her with a shelter for the night. After a brief interrogation of her story Durgadas Pyne was satisfied by her tale and sent her to his women’s apartments to be cared for there. The weaver woman spent the entire evening with Durgadas Pyne’s womenfolk, eating, laughing, and engaging in gossip for many hours. She was finally distracted by the frantic calling in the street outside of Rameswar Chatterjee, who was then searching for his missing brother, Gadadhar. I think you can probably work out the end of this story. Suffice it to say that Gadadhar had hoodwinked Durgadas