The Spoilt Child/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
Matilall and his Friends.
When a child is once corrupted, it is hard to effect any improvement. Every means should be tried to instil good principles into the mind from childhood: the character may then ripen for good and the mind become more strongly bent towards the right than towards evil; but if a boy gets hold of bad companions or receives ill advice in his early boyhood, then, such is the unsteadiness natural to his age, all will probably go wrong with him thereafter. So long then as he remains still a boy, with the mind of a boy, he must be assiduously employed in a variety of good pursuits. If boys were to receive an education like this up to the age of twenty-five, there would be no probability of their following evil courses: their minds would by that time have become so elevated that the mere mention of evil would excite anger and loathing. But it is very difficult for children in this country to receive such a training, owing, in the first place, to the lack of good teachers, and in the second to the lack of good books. There is urgent need of works that will promote the growth of high principles and of sound judgment, but ordinary people are persuaded that a solid education consists in teaching the meaning of a number of sounds: then again, very few people seem to have any idea of the methods whereby good principles are implanted in the mind; and finally the nature of the home surroundings of children in this country is strongly against the implanting of such principles. One boy may have a drunkard or a gambler as his father, another may have as his uncles men of immoral life; the mother herself too, being unable to read or write, may not exert herself for her children's education. A great deal of evil moreover is learnt from association with the different members of the household, the men and women servants; it may be also that from consorting with all kinds of boys in the village or at the village-school, children get to learn their evil ways and vicious habits, and so are ruined for life. Even where but one of the causes mentioned exists, the obstacle in the way of good education is grievous enough, but where they all exist in combination, there the drawbacks are simply terrible. It is like setting fire to straw: let a man only pour ghee where the fire is beginning to blaze, and within a very short space the flame is everywhere, and reduces to ashes whatever it finds in its way.
Many people thought that Matilall would have reformed after the affair of the police court; but the boy who is devoid of good qualities and high principles, and without any regard for honour or dishonour, has no particular feeling of abhorrence for punishments. Evil thoughts and good thoughts alike have their origin in the mind, and are therefore intimately bound up with the character: a mere physical affliction or trouble then cannot be expected to change the wind's direction. Doubtless, when the sergeant of police was dragging Matilall along through the streets, he may have thought it at the actual time a trouble and a disgrace, but the feeling was only momentary: once in the guard-room, he seemed to have lost all anxiety or fear or sense of dishonour and he was such a nuisance all that night and the whole of the next day to his neighbours, as he sang and imitated the cries of dogs and jackals, that they put their hands to their ears, and exclaiming "Ram, Ram!" said to each other: "Why, we are far worse off with this boy in our neighbourhood than if he were in prison." When he stood before the magistrate next day, he kept his head bent down like Shishu Pal, of Mahabharata renown, but it was done to deceive his father. In reality he recked little whether he went to jail and was put in fetters, or what happened to him.
Boys absolutely devoid of respect, of fear, and of shame, and addicted to purely evil courses, are afflicted with no ordinary disease: their complaint is really mental, and if only the proper remedies are applied, a cure may in process of time be effected. But Baburam Babu had no ideas on the subject at all: he was firmly convinced that Matilall was a very good boy, and used at first to wax very wrath if he heard him abused. Though all sorts of people were continually telling him about his son, he was as one who heard not; and if afterwards from his own observations a doubt did arise in his mind, he kept his misgivings to himself, and for fear of being mortified before others, refrained from expressing them, but simply gave secret orders to the door-keeper not to let Matilall leave the house. This was no remedy: the disease had obtained too strong a hold upon the boy, and no possible good could result from simply keeping him a prisoner and constantly in his sight. You may put a bar of iron on a mind once corrupted, without making any impression: on the contrary, mere repression may only have the effect of intensifying the evil in the mind. At first Matilall used to get out of the house by jumping over the wall. On the release of his old companions of Bow Bazar from jail, they came to live at Vaidyabati, and some of the boys of the place having joined them, they formed themselves into a band. Matilall's sense of respect and fear was soon destroyed altogether by his association with these young scamps, and he ended by paying no attention at all to his father.
Boys who have not been accustomed from their childhood to innocent and harmless amusements, are apt to take to diversions of a low kind. The children of Englishmen are instructed by their parents in a variety of innocent pastimes, in order that they may have sound minds and sound bodies: some draw and paint: some cultivate a taste for botany: some learn music: some devote themselves to sport and gymnastics: each takes up the form of harmless enjoyment most congenial to him. Boys in this country follow the example that is set them: their one wish is to be dressed in gorgeous attire, with a profusion of gold embroidery and jewels: to make up picnic parties of their chums and gay companions, and to live luxuriously in all a Babu's style. Fondness for display and extravagance naturally characterizes the season of youth: if care is not very early exercised in this matter, the desire grows in intensity, and a variety of evils result, by which eventually body and mind alike may be irretrievably ruined.
Matilall gradually threw off all restraint: he became so depraved that, continuing to throw dust in his father's eyes, he now openly spoke of him in the most unfilial and atrocious manner. The constant burden of his talks with his companions was: "Ah, if my old father would but die, I could then enjoy myself to my heart's content!" Any money he demanded from his parents they gave him: if there was any hesitation on their part, he would at once say: "Very well, then, I will go hang myself, or else take poison." His parents in their alarm thought: "Ah, what must be, must! Our life is bound up with the boy's life, he is our Shivratri lamp: let him live and we shall have our libations when we are gone." Matilall spent his whole time in riotous living: he hardly spent a minute of his day at home: at one time he would be engaged at a picnic, taking part in a theatrical entertainment, or making one of a party of amateur musicians: at another, he would be running about getting up a procession in honour of some local deity, or else absorbed in contemplating a nautch: or again, he would be creating a disturbance, and making unprovoked assaults upon other people. His appetite for stimulants, whether it were ganja, opium or even wine, never failed him, and tobacco of course was in constant demand.
They carried foppery to an extreme, these young Babus, wearing their hair in curls and using powder for their teeth. Their dress was of fine Dacca muslin embroidered with gold lace: on their heads they wore embroidered caps; carried in their hands silk handkerchiefs perfumed with attar of roses, and light canes; and smart English dress shoes with silver buckles adorned their feet. As, moreover, they had no spare time for their regular meals, they carried about with them all sorts of dainty sweetmeats.
Unless an evil disposition is checked at the very outset, it grows worse every day, and in time becomes quite brute-like in its nature: just as when a man has once become enslaved to opium, the quantity he takes tends constantly to increase, so when a man has become addicted to evil habits, the craving for still more grievous courses comes naturally of itself. Matilall and his companions soon began to think the amusements they had hitherto been indulging in too tame: they no longer gave them any special pleasure; so they set to work to devise means for more solid pleasures. They now started sallying forth in a band late in the evenings, setting fire to and plundering houses, setting the thatch of poor people's huts alight, visiting the houses of loose women and creating a disturbance, pulling their hair about, burning their mosquito curtains, and plundering their dresses and ornaments. Sometimes, they would even insult a respectable girl. The people of the place were terribly annoyed at all this, but the young men only snapped their fingers at them in derision, and consigned them all to perdition.
Baburam Babu had been for some time in Calcutta on business. One day towards evening, a zenana palki was passing the Vaidyabati house. As soon as the young scoundrels saw it, they at once ran out, surrounded it, and commenced beating the palki-bearers, who thereupon set the palki down and ran for their lives. Opening the palki, they saw a beautiful young girl inside. Matilall ran forward, seized the girl's hand, and dragged her out of the palki trembling all over with confusion and fear. In vain she looked around her for help: she saw only pitiless dark space. Then weeping bitterly she called on the Almighty: "Oh Lord, protect the helpless young orphan! I am content to die, only grant that I may not lose my honour." As the young Babus were all struggling together to get possession of her, she fell to the ground; they then tried to drag her by main force into the house. Matilall's mother hastened outside in some trepidation when she heard the sound of the girl's weeping, and the miscreants thereupon took to their heels. Seeing the mistress of the house, the young girl fell at her feet and said in her distress: "Oh dear lady, protect my honour! You must be a devoted wife yourself." None but a faithful and virtuous wife can understand the danger of a virtuous woman. Baburam Babu's wife at once lifted the girl off the ground and wiped away her tears with the border of her sari, saying as she did so: "My dear child, do not weep, you have no further cause for fear; I will cherish you as my own dear child: the Lord Almighty always protects the honour of the woman who is faithful to her vows." With these words she dispelled the girl's fears, and when she had soothed and consoled her, accompanied her to her home, and left her there.