Here is full chapter of The Sri Krishna Eating House. This is from the Book of I.C.S.E. of Class 7. It has been written in paragraphs, these paragraphs are numbered from [1] to [15]. You can read the Hindi meaning of these paragraphs by clicking these Numbers. There are also questions and answers from these paragraphs.
The Sri Krishna Eating House
This excerpt is taken from a book called The Village by the sea, which is a delightful story about a poor Indian family. The four children - Hari, Lila, Bela and Kamal - have to look after themselves because their mother is very ill and their father is drunk most of the time. hari and Lila are two older children and thee main characters in the book. Hari, feeling it is his duty to care for his family, leaves his sisters and his house and goes to Bombay (now Mumbai) hoping to work and earn some money. He knows no one in the big city, but a kind watchman takes him to a small and dirty restaurant.
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| The Sri Krishna Eating House Image 10 |
Story starts from here:
[1] Hari had been so tired and weak and anxious that first night that he had not really been aware of the place in which he found himself. He only saw it for the first time when he woke next morning.
[2] The Sri Krishna Eating House was the meanest and shabbiest restaurant Hari had ever seen; even in Thul there were cafes that were pleasanter; usually wooden sjhacks built in the shade of a mango or frangipani tree with a handful of marigolds and hibiscus crammed into an old ink bottle for a vase, coloured bottles of aerated drinks attractively arranged on the shelves and possibly a bright picture of a god or goddess on the wall with a tinsel garland around the frame and heavily scented joss sticks burning before it.
[3] But the Sri Krishna Eating House did not have even so much as a coloured picture of Krishna glued to the wall. Or perhaps there had been one and it had disappeared under the layers of grime and soot with which the walls were coated. the ceiling was thick with cobwebs that trapped the soot and made a kind of furry blanket over one's head. The floor and the wooden tables were all black, too, since they all got an even share of soot from the open stoves in the back room where the lentils were cooked all day in a huge aluminium pan and the chapatis were rolled by hand and baked.
[4] It was certainly the cheapest restaurant anyone could possibly find in Bombay - even a beggar could afford to buy himself a meal here, and the usual customers were beggars and coolies who had stopped in between carrying their loads - sacks od coal and cylinders of gas - and cat-pullers who dragged goods through the city on long wooden hand-drawn carts. These people seemed to have no fixed working hours - before daylight there were some waiting for a meal who were given the leftovers of the night before, and the last came in after midnight when the whole city seemed to collapse into exhausted, disturbed sleep. So of course the owner had no time to weep or clean his restaurant or the money to decorate it with pictures and flowers.
[5] He worked hard himself all day and had two boys to help him knead the dough in huge pans, roll out the chpatis and bake them over open fires which they kept lit day and night.
[6] When Hari said next morning - after being handed a tumbler of tea and rolled up chapati withour his asking for anything - 'I have no money to pay for all this food you are giving me. Will you let me work in your kitchen instead?' The man considered for only a moment, frowning as he thought. Then he said, 'Yes, I can do with another boy in the kitchen. Start by washing these pots. Then you can knead the dough and help roll out the chapatis. If you like, you can stay here and work for your meals and - uh - one rupee a day, like the other boys.'
[7] So Hari went to work in the small kitchen at the back of the eating house. He saw there was nothing to scour the pots with except some blackened coconut husks and ash from the fires, and he did the best he could with them
[8] Later he helped the two boys knead great hills of dough in their pans and this was hard work and made them grunt and sweat. They did not speak to each other as they worked. When the boys finally did say something to each other, Hari realized it was in Tamil, a language he did not know. Nor did they seem to know any Hindi or Marathi, the two languages he knew, so there was silence between them. They were in any case neither friendly nor inquisitive about him, or else they were simply too tired and too sad to speak. They built up the fires, and then while one rolled out the chapaties the other baked them over the fire with a pair of long tongs, and Hari was given the task of carrying them out to the customers eating at the long tables in the front room. There was so much work and such heat in that small place that no one ever seemed to have the strength or the time to talk. Hari, too, felt silent.
[9] He would have had to remain silent if the man in the shop next door had not proved friendlier. It was a watch repair shop with its name painted on a signboard over the door: Ding Dong Watchworks. And when Hari came out to empty a pail of garbage into one on the the big concrete diposal units built on the roadside, the man who stood at the counter, wearing a small black cap and with an eye-piece fixed to his eye, working at a minute watch that he held in the cup of his hand, looked at him and smiled. Hari smiled back.
[10] The old man looked so much like Sayyid Ali, the man who had spoken so well at the meeting by the Black Horse, that Hari instantly felt here was another fine and impressive man whom he could trust and who would understand him and try to help him.
[11] 'So, a new boy at the Sri Krishna Eating House,' called the old gentleman, then went back to his examination of the tiny watch, but continued to talk to Hari who stood on the pavement, staring open-mouthed at all the clocks that hung tick-tocking on the walls and the watches that glittered in the showcases.
'New to the city?' he asked in high-pitched, rather cracked and needy voice.
Hari nodded yes.
'Where do yiou come from? Jagu's village?'
'Oh no, I don't know Jagu at all. I come from Thul,' Hari said eagerly, finding the words rushing out like the small waves of the sea, brightly and happily. He felt proud of that address. Sayyid Ali of the Black Horse would have understood why but it was obvious this gentleman knew nothing of Thul; he looked puzzled and curious.
[12] 'It was the watchman of a big building on a hill who brought me here to eat - and I have stayed, to work.'
'Other people have come to Jagu for help.'
The old man nodded, poking about the watch's mechanism withh a long, fine needle.
'He is a silent man, never speaks to anyone - but he has been good to many. Like those two boys who work for him: their parents were killed in a railway accident; they were all living on a railway platform, as many do who come to the city to find work, and one day a train ran over the parents as they were crossing the line to fetch water from a pump. There's the station where it happened,' he waved his fine, yellow hand with long needle in it down the street and then continued: 'That's when Jagu found the boys as he was coming to work in the morning, and he brought them here straightway and gave them food and shelter ans work, too.'
[13] Hari was shocked by the story but he did not like to be thought of as another orphan in Jagu's care. he did have parents after all - even if one was a drunkard and the other an invalid - and a home, a proper home, not just a place on a railway platform. Thinking of them, he suddenly said, 'Sir, can you tell where the post office is? I wish to buy a postcard.'
'Ah-ha,' laughed the old watchmaker, winking at him from behind the eye-piece.
'Suddenly remembered you had someone to write to, did you? Yes, you must write. Of course you must write. Go straight up the road; next to the electric substation, there is a post office. Have you money for a postcard or can I lend you some?'
[14] Hari gratefully took the coin from him, promising to return it as soon as Jagu paid him his salary, and then hurried off to the post office. Having bought the card, he had to have a pen to write with and for this he returned to the watchmaker who seemed more likely to have one than the owner of the eating house. This was in the middle of the sweltering afternoon when there was no one in the shop, and even the two orphans had fallen asleep under the table, from heat and exhaustion.
[15] Hari sat on the steps of the Ding Dong Watchworks and carefully wrote with a ballpoint pen that the old watchmaker lent him:
The he wrote his name in large letters to fill up the space, but not his address, and went off to post it, feeling both happy to have done what he knew he should do and frightened because this meant he would be staying on in Bombay, not going home.
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Credit:- The part has been taken from ICSE book and has been used for the educational purpose of the students of Class 7 to make their study easy. Sharing knowledge is no harm.
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