‘Let her sleep.’
Jasoda felt her water breaking. This was unusual. Her earlier children had always given notice before coming. ‘Go down and wait for me. Don’t move till I come.’
She pushed Himmat along. The baby was in a hurry. Jasoda held tightly to the banister and crawled up to the terrace on all fours. She was terrified the child was going to choke inside her. The wooden threshold was the most difficult to negotiate. She used her breasts, elbows, hips and knees to thrust herself forward. But it was no use. Her belly wouldn’t clamber over. She was exhausted. She would just open her legs wide and hope for the best. One last effort. She put all her weight on the palms of her hands, slipped one thigh across and then, after an interval, the other one.
She was lying on her back now, oblivious to the sky and sun, conscious only of the thing inside her which was in such a headlong rush. Her hands lay dead on either side as she gasped for air. She pulled up her ghagra. The baby would need air. Slowly, very slowly, her breathing eased. The child was already out. She felt it nudging her thigh.
She looked at it for a long time. Its henna-coloured hair lay in flat, wet curls. She untied the knot of her ghagra and pulled the string out. She wound it once around the girl’s neck and pulled the ends apart with her fists. The string started to cut into her calloused hands. She could sense Himmat’s eyes watching her from the doorway.
‘I told you to wait downstairs.’
Himmat withdrew into the shadows.
‘Go down and get me a knife.’
‘Jasoda,’ Sangram Singh called out. ‘Jasoda. Where the hell is that woman?’
‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘Have you packed my lunch? I’m late. Where’s Himmat? Is he ready?’
‘Forget the knife,’ Jasoda said softly to her son. ‘Go and put on some clothes. Your father’s waiting for you.’ As the boy turned to go, she added, ‘Tell Daadi to pack your father’s lunch. I will be down in no time.’
‘What took you so long?’ her husband asked sourly.
Jasoda had to hold on to the heavy wooden mortar in which she pounded the millet to powder to keep her balance.
‘Are you planning to go naked?’ she asked Himmat as she hurriedly clapped the lid on the lunchbox that Daadi had prepared for her son, wrapped it in an old newspaper, slid it into a cloth bag and handed it to Himmat.
‘I don’t want to go,’ Himmat said. ‘I get bored there.’
‘Shorts. Now.’ Jasoda’s voice was peremptory.
‘Stand still.’ She guided Himmat’s foot into one leg of the shorts and then the other foot. ‘Wear your cap or you’ll get a sunstroke.’
Not even a stray dog yelped. All the windows were shuttered. Even the grocer’s shop was closed. Sangram Singh’s black umbrella bobbed up and down while his shoes crunched loudly as they made contact with the ground. Every few minutes he had to stop for his son to catch up with him.
‘It’s my lunch you are carrying, Himmat. Don’t swing it as if it were a cricket bat.’
They were outside the village now. The huts of the untouchables were still a quarter of a mile away. Himmat kicked the peak of an anthill, knocking it down. An army of ants spilled out.
Sangram Singh whacked his son on the head.
‘Do you want those ants to have you for lunch, stupid? There will be nothing left of you but dry white bones. Not that anyone will miss you.’
Father and son had walked forty metres when Sangram Singh stopped.
‘Take out the lunchbox and give me the bag.’
‘Are you going to eat here on the road?’
‘Give me the bag,’ Sangram Singh was short with his son, ‘and the newspapers.’
Sangram Singh walked back to the anthill, scooped up the fallen turret with the yellowing papers and shoved it into the cloth bag.
‘Let’s go.’ He caught the collar of Himmat’s shirt and dragged him for a few steps. ‘Look sharp. I haven’t got all day.’
As the road dropped, the other half of the village became visible. Himmat raced his father down to the huts.
‘Savitri.’ Sangram Singh knocked on a door. ‘It’s me.’
Dulare opened the door and crept out sheepishly. ‘Hot day today. Hot enough to kill us all.’ He grinned foolishly. ‘Not that it’s different on any other day.’
‘Do I have to tell you the same thing every time?’ Sangram Singh scolded Himmat. ‘Give the tiffin box to Savitri.’
‘How long will you take?’ Himmat looked up at his father.
‘As long as I wish.’
‘May I go home then?’
‘Who’s going to carry the lunchbox back? Me?’
‘Come, Chhote Huzoor, we’ll play noughts and crosses in the shade.’ Dulare and Himmat walked to the rear where the hut had just begun to cast a shadow.
‘How come you don’t have children, Dulare?’
‘Good question, Chhote Huzoor. How come we are untouchables and you are not? How come it’s the rainy season and there’s not been a drop of rain? How come, how come? Because nobody expects God to be just or reasonable.’
Sangram Singh put down the bag as Savitri closed the door. She took off Sangram Singh’s shoes and briskly fanned the air around his head. ‘You want to eat now or later?’
‘Later.’
‘What’s in the bag?’
‘You’ll find out when the time’s right.’
As she lay on the mattress beside him, Sangram Singh opened the three-tiered lunchbox. He took the lid off the second compartment and picked up the yellow rock of jaggery which was resting on top of the bajra rotis.
‘I thought you didn’t want to have lunch right away.’
Sangram Singh put his finger on his lips. Savitri looked intrigued but there was also a shade of apprehension on her face. Sangram Singh crushed the brittle rock slowly over her breasts and belly. He bent down and began to lick the sweet powder. Savitri’s eyes closed and she began to breathe through her mouth as wave after wave of unhurried pleasure crested and broke inside her. Her companion’s tongue continued to move back and forth over her as he reached for the bag. He lifted his head and smiled. He squeezed the bag and released his grip gently. Savitri felt dark-brown showers fall on her body as Sangram Singh kept kneading the earth in the bag. Suddenly she went taut and screamed. Her eyes flew wide open.
‘Is my father hurting Savitri?’ Himmat asked Dulare.
‘It won’t be the first time.’ Dulare smiled ruefully. ‘Play, Chhote Huzoor.’
Hundreds of ants were crawling all over Savitri, their progress uncertain as they got caught in the sticky quagmire of the jaggery. She knew there was only one way to limit the damage – keep still, as when a beehive is disturbed. Sangram Singh watched fascinated as some of the ants headed for Savitri’s neck and a couple disappeared in the clump of hair above the fork of her legs.
‘You better move away or they’ll get at you too,’ she said to Sangram Singh between tightly compressed lips.
Sangram Singh jumped up in panic.
‘What shall I do, you slut, what shall I do?’ he began to yell dementedly as the ants started stinging him.
‘Is Savitri thrashing my father now?’
‘That would be something, wouldn’t it?’
Himmat shook his head. ‘Savitri wouldn’t dare touch him.’
‘That’s true. We are untouchables.’
‘There’s a small gunny sack of pesticide left over from last year on the shelf above the chullah. Smear it on yourself,’ Savitri suggested.
Sangram Singh got up and grabbed the sack, poured the powder on his hands and rubbed it manically on his chest and arms and thighs.
‘Not so hard. Otherwise the pesticide will burn even more than the ant stings.’
It took Sangram Singh a long time to settle down.
‘Will you put some on me?’
Sangram Singh looked at Savitri with intense hatred. He was safe and didn’t want to go near her. ‘Why should I?’
‘Do you want to go home unfulfilled?’
He stood as far away from her as he could. Savitri closed her eyes tightly as Sangram Singh sprinkled the powder on her. He watched the ants flee. Some of them curled up and died. The others ran helter-skelter. He took his shoe and brought it down hard on the ones still alive. ‘Die, you bitches.’
A few ants escaped Sangram Singh’s wrath. But only for a moment or two. He picked up the ones that had got away between his thumb and index finger and crushed them. ‘Nobody crosses Sangram Singh and goes scot-free.’
He looked at Savitri and started laughing uncontrollably. She did not know how to react.
‘You should take a look at yourself,’ he said to her. ‘The devil himself would be frightened out of his wits.’
He brought over the cracked mirror which stood atop a rusty tin trunk next to two clay water pots. ‘Here, see for yourself.’
Savitri closed her eyes after barely looking at her reflection. Her left eye was swollen and purple-blue. Her lips were red, ready to burst, the lower lip hanging out pendulously. She did not venture to look at the rest of her body.
‘See, even you can’t bear to look at yourself.’ Sangram Singh laughed heartily.
‘You find me funny?’
‘Don’t you?’
Savitri did not ask Sangram Singh to look at himself in the mirror.
Something about Savitri’s disfigurement must have been highly provocative. Sangram Singh became twice the man he normally was. He squeezed her breasts and bit her engorged lips till they bled. Then he fell upon her. He pounded at her steadily. She held him close and tight.
‘Don’t stop, don’t stop,’ she gasped, her fingers pressing hard and deep into his buttocks. ‘Just this once, go all the way. Please, don’t withdraw, I beg you.’
He did not stop. He went on and on. When she relaxed her grip on him just a little, he slipped out.
‘No, no,’ she screamed, ‘please don’t.’
She tried to force him back. He slapped her across the face.
‘After all these years, do you still think I’m going to spill my seed in you? What will your offspring be? A noble warrior like me? An untouchable? Or a plain nothing?’
Siyaram hardly ever left his house now. He spent the whole day and at least three-quarters of the night digging. He was an old man and had to stop every ten minutes, sometimes lie down and rest. He was used to working with his hands, cutting down the rock-hard and tortured stumps of trees and branches whose sap the sun had sucked dry forty, maybe fifty years ago. But that was just work, a matter of pacing, a measured progression to the day before he returned home. What he was engaged in now was the opposite. He had to postpone the moment of his death at any cost. He had to secure the wood for his pyre so that no one could get at it. He could then afford to wait for the final event of his life, at peace with himself and his maker.
Whoever had stolen the wood had managed to take only what was stored in the kitchen. But the knowledge that someone had unscrewed the wooden shutters of the window and got away with a quarter of his horde without his realizing it had unnerved him. He had fixed the window and barred it as he had every entry into his home. On the day he managed to reach two feet below the floor, he came across rock. The point of the pick hit stone and the metallic reverberations juddered Siyaram’s waist, elbow, arm and dislocated his brains. The noise was jarring during the day but became intolerably amplified at night, keeping half the village awake.
Jasoda knocked on her neighbour’s door for almost five minutes and was about to turn back when she heard the old man holler.
‘Who is it? I’ve no intention of opening the door for thieves who will steal whatever little wood I’ve got left.’
‘It’s me … Jasoda.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I was worried about you.’
‘Nobody’s ever worried about me. What everybody worries about is how to get their hands on my wood.’ He was standing behind the closed door. ‘Is that husband of yours with you?’
‘No, I’m alone.’
‘Now you know I’m alive, you can go back.’
‘I’ve got a little food for you.’
‘Tell the truth, what do you expect from me? Gift the wood to you or my house? Or both?’
‘Take the thali of food so I can go back.’
Siyaram pulled back the bolt. ‘Nobody does anything for free, Jasoda.’ He stood with the pick, ready to strike.
‘Don’t judge the world from one bad experience. Shall I take the food back?’
He lowered the pick but was undecided.
‘What have you got?’
‘No feast, Siyaramji. Just some rotis, an onion, and chilli powder. Instead of shrinking our bellies, the drought should have killed our appetites.’
‘Thank you for thinking of an old man. But I still believe only the wicked shall inherit the earth.’
‘Why don’t you ask your sons to come and look after you?’
‘They’ll come only when I’m dead to find out what’s been left to them.’
Jasoda looked at the broken floor.
‘Why are you digging the ground?’
‘To bury my treasure-trove, all the gold and jewels I have.’
‘You’ll die before you break the rock, Siyaramji. Chop the wood into smaller pieces and all of it will fit.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. You need good long logs to build a pyre.’
‘There’s no prescribed length in our holy books.’
‘How would you know?’
Jasoda smiled. ‘Just guessing.’
When she was back at her own door, Siyaram called out to her, ‘You are a good woman, Jasoda.’
‘Only God can judge that.’
It was about a fortnight later that the villagers saw the writing scratched on the door of the temple. ‘Those who steal today must return to an empty house tomorrow. Your wife, children and friends will strip you of your hearth and home. Beware, Prince. Beware, grocer. Beware, village.’
Two days later there was a message on the blackboard of the school building. ‘His Highness may be the culprit but his flunkies too must pay for their crimes. Beware, priest. Beware, Sangram Singh. Beware, village.’
Soon, the walls of several homes in the village (not the ones in the untouchable part though) carried these dire warnings. A week later, Himmat dragged his mother out. Now their house too was marked. ‘Those who will not speak against injustice are the silent accomplices of the Prince and his henchmen. When your house and women are despoiled, do not raise your voice, for no one will pay heed to your pleas.’
A sense of foreboding gripped the villagers, especially the women who could not read but were all the more terrified when they learnt that yet another wall had been written upon.
In the afternoon, Sangram Singh and Himmat went for their usual walk. Savitri was squatting on her haunches in the shade of the hut, cleaning pots. She looked uneasy and unwilling to meet Sangram Singh’s eye. Father and son watched as she scrubbed the vessels with fresh sand till the brass shone and then wiped them with a dry cloth.
‘Why don’t you go inside?’ Savitri asked.
‘Will you be long?’
‘We had seven pots and pans when I got married. Four have been with the pawnbroker at Jalta for the past two years.’ She smiled. ‘Three utensils can’t take all that long.’
Sangram Singh went inside. Himmat sat down not too far from Savitri.
‘May I clean them with you?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not a man’s work, beta.’
‘Where’s Dulare?’
‘Out in the fields.’
‘Who shall I play with?’
‘You know what my name for you is, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Himmat’s mouth puckered with happiness. He stood with his arms akimbo. ‘I am your Vithoba.’
‘Yes, you are my Vithoba from a distant land called Pandharpur. You are the god with infinite patience. The g
od who waits for his devotees, however long it takes.’
‘A thousand years?’
‘Two thousand.’
‘Five thousand years?’
‘Seven thousand.’
‘Tell that boy to shut up. And why are you so hysterical?’
‘Hysterical? Just chatting with Chhote Huzoor.’
‘Get inside.’
Savitri entered the hut, locked the door, picked up an old cardboard from atop a wooden shelf and fanned him. He lay still on the mattress. She switched the cardboard from one hand to the other several times and her arms began to ache.
‘Would you like to undress now?’
He did not answer. His fingers began to caress the arch above the hard, cracked heel of her foot.
‘Please don’t.’ A tremor ran through Savitri and she withdrew her foot. He caught it in his hand and ran his index finger from one end of the sole to the other. She got up swiftly, turned her back to him, took off her choli and stepped out of her ghagra. He was now standing behind her, his fingers drifting down her thighs. She laughed and moved away. ‘Please don’t. You know how easily I get tickled.’
He pulled her to him and played crab’s feet on her belly.
She doubled with laughter, thrashed her hands and pushed him away. He pinned her against the wall, stretched her arms behind her head and raced his fingers from the underside of her arms to her armpits, to her breasts. She was laughing hysterically now, fighting to free herself but he held her firmly, pressing down on her.
‘Stop, stop, you are hurting me.’
He paid no heed to her pleas. He was digging into the sides of her flat, hard stomach. She wriggled and twisted, her torso rose and flopped, her shoulders turned sharply, she screamed in pain and went into a foetal position, her mad, unfocussed laughter shaking the whole hut. Her foot made contact with his chest and pushed him off. She was up and running but he was beside her, she was at the door, he lunged for her and grabbed her ankle. She threw the bolt and was outside the door. She was unsure on her feet and slid down to the ground in a heap. The door closed behind her. She tried to get her breath back but her stomach hurt and she had to make do with sharp, shallow intakes of air.
Himmat was peering at her from the side of the hut. He looked scared and close to tears.