Leela's friend extensim of a story
Answers
Leela, a five-year-old, likes Sidda, the 'servant', whose company she loves. He is an imaginative play-fellow (game with moon and ball); she plays at 'teaching' him; he reads to her lovely stories and they are v happy together. Leela adores him. Mother suspects S of stealing L's chain. S, once questioned, feels frightened: 'His throat went dry' (93). Sidda runs away. L takes S's side against her mother. L doesn't mind if S has her chain, but Mother thinks S is a thief and may return to 'loot' (112). L asks uncomfortable questions about how they treated S as a servant. Father has reported S to police who say he's a thief. The police arrest S who denies he's taken it. L also is sure he hasn't and is v upset when S is taken away. Mother is materialistic: asks 'Any news of the jewel?' (L had lost a chain…..) whereas L asks 'Where is Sidda?' (169): author implies that L cares properly for what is most precious – the true 'jewel' – Sidda. Parents keep talking – erroneously – about the 'jewel', until Mother finds chain in the tamarind pot.
Moral of the story
The story raises questions about the treatment of servants, how they were treated as less than the masters, and automatically suspected of wrongdoing. Author suggests that L's attitude to S is the right one, and that he is the true 'jewel', not the chain that L lost. When they find the chain, the father is illogical and still calls S a criminal: a case of 'give a dog a bad name – and hang it'. They're not concerned about S and his reputation – how he might always have been treated like this. They think they've had 'all this bother' about Leela: but they've made 'all this bother' about a mere chain – which L wanted S to have anyway – and she was too young to have: so mistaken values. Honesty, trust, hastiness of judgement – prejudice, injustice. Due to the way the investigation was conducted, one is made to doubt that S had committed the previous crimes.
Sidda was hanging about the gate at a moment when Mr Sivasanker was standing in the front veranda of his house brooding over the servant problem.
"Sir, do you want a servant?" Sidda asked.
"Come in" said Mr Sivasanker. As Sidda opened the gate and came in, Mr Sivasanker subjected him to a scrutiny and said to himself, "Doesn't seem to be a bad sort ... At any rate, the fellow looks tidy."
"Where were you before?" he asked.
Sidda said, "In a bungalow there," and indicated a vague somewhere, "in the doctor's house.". "What is his name?". "I don't know master," Sidda said. "He lives near the market." "Why did they send you away?". "They left the town, master," Sidda said, giving the stock reply.
Mr Sivasanker was unable to make up his mind. He called his wife. She looked at Sidda and said, "He doesn't seem to me worse than the others we have had." Leela, their five-year-old daughter, cane out, looked at Sidda and gave a cry of joy. "Oh Father!" she said "I like him. Don't send him aay. Let us keep him in our house." And that decided it.
Sidda was given two meals a day and four rupees a month, in return for which he washed clothes, tended the garden, ran errands, chopped wood and looked after Leela.
"Sidda, come and play!" Leela would cry, and Sidda had to drop any work he might be doing and run to her, as she stood in the front garden with a red ball in her hand. His company made her supremely happy. She flung the ball at him and he flung it back. And then she said, "Now throw the ball into the sky." Sidda clutched the ball, closed his eyes for a second and threw the ball up. When the ball came down again, he said, "Now this has touched the moon and come. You see here a little bit of the moon sticking." Leela keenly examined the ball for traces of the moon and said, "I don't see it."
"You must be very quick about it," said Sidda, "because it will all evaporate and go back to the moon. Now hurry up...." He covered the ball tightly with his fingers and allowed her to peep through a little gap.
"Ah yes," said Leela