by Dipika Rai
‘Some guests are on their way.’
Mamta takes it to mean that she must make more tea. Still the man doesn’t look at her. What should she be feeling? Hatred in every aching pore? Vengeance in each battered limb? Fear in her solidly plundered body?
If she thought about her thoughts, they would surprise her. She feels no hatred, vengeance or fear. She can see each tea leaf fall with finality into the bubbling water, and knows she can count the leaves accurately. She admires the tips of her fingers. How well they release the leaves in a smooth stream, an aesthetic, even beautiful, stream of brown powder. The tea leaves live in a red Brooke Bond tin, slightly rusted round the edges. The tin has lost a hinge. Every two weeks her husband brings the tea leaves wrapped in newspaper. She pours them into the tin, then she boils the newspaper to repossess every last bit of essence from it for her own brew. The tin has precisely ten and a half pinchfuls left in it. She can tell by the weight.
They don’t often have guests. The last time there were guests she and the daughter had to go out and look for fallen mangoes. The man had wanted mangoes for his friends, and mangoes he got. Oh, why doesn’t he send me out to look for mangoes this time? It is winter, silly woman, where would you find mangoes? A rueful smile rushes to her lips, filling them with blood. She wants to be on her own, with her swollen eye and broken tooth, to heal in the embrace of some unknown tree like an animal, free in her solitude and feeling like a live thing. Here she feels dead. She has that detached quality that tells her she may have strayed into another’s nightmare.
‘They’ve come,’ says a girl’s voice.
Mamta tilts her head and looks into the fresh eyes of a child. They give her a melting softness on the inside, like the feel of warm hands bringing her back to standing a long time ago. Where have I seen those eyes before? Whose face is this? These hands? What place is this? What state is this? A hand grasps her fingers.
‘Amma!’
My daughter. Of course.
She can hear the men talking outside. The smell of tobacco enters the hut looking for a place to sleep. There are four, maybe five. The night is too thick to penetrate. But even if she could see their faces, she wouldn’t recognise them as the city-shoe-wearers from her wedding. The men sit in a circle covered by blankets as if afraid of wolves. This is the first time she’s seen her husband gather the sticks from behind the house and pile them up into a nice and tidy cone ready for burning. The fire is sickly, it goes out three times before he is able to keep it alive by blowing into its heart.
Yes, go on blow. One puff. Now from the side. Lower! Almost there. One more puff and you’ll have it. She shouts silent instructions to her awkward spouse. With the fire going, the men turn to the matters at hand.
The husband sends his son to call Mamta.
‘They’re waiting,’ the boy announces from the door. Her step-daughter lets go of her hand. Mamta grabs it again. She will be lost without this child. This child gives sense to her life, purpose to her sense. The girl uncurls her stepmother’s fingers with her spare hand, one by one. Even at her age, she knows this is a matter for Mamta alone.
The night air bites into her wounds, immediately stiffening them. Under her pallav her face tests its limits, winking, crinkling, hurting, blinking, hurting, hurting.
‘So this is her.’ She can’t tell which one has spoken. They are so tightly huddled against the cold.
‘Is she all right?’ That voice she knows. It is her husband’s and he is not asking after her health.
‘She should do. When?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘We’ve already spoken, as soon as possible, could even be tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow then.’
Her husband waves her back into the hut.
‘Tell her nothing, no need to make her nervous,’ says the first voice.
What could he do to me now to make me nervous?
The men stay well into the night, smoking. She has to make tea three times before they will leave. Each time it is a different snatch of conversation that she hears.
‘. . . come with you then . . .’
‘No, we’ll go alone. I’ll take my son.’
And the next time.
‘. . . by the river, that’s the best kind.’
‘You’ll need much more for that kind.’
And finally.
‘. . . no she won’t. No one has died before. Why should your wife?’
‘She might, just to make trouble for me.’ The men laugh. ‘I don’t want any trouble.’
How will she recall that night she awoke in the white-lit air-conditioned van? The night her husband and another man carried her to the bullock cart, bouncing back to her hut, placed under the gunny sack to wait for morning? Will she recall that night? Or is it one of those too horrible times that her brain, taking pity on her soul, will choose to wipe from the memory? She will recall that night, but not in terms that you might think. When she realises what happened, she will recall it as the night she did her duty for her family, with no sense of shame or lingering fear. She will be matter-of-fact about it, resigned and, therefore, resilient.
Chapter 6
SINGH SAHIB LOOKS OUT OF HIS new room at the ancient trees, barren with age, yet standing tall. He breathes deep of the mustiness round him and twists what he can of his face into a smile. The animals smile back at him. They are all in a state of readiness with bared teeth, upright tails, exposed claws and a listening gaze. He is well matched here, amongst the animals he killed himself. He is proud to point out that none were killed in cold blood, some wounded him in return and several got away before finally ending up in his sights. Surrounded by so much death, the zamindar is curiously alive.
Asmara Didi has raised Singh Sahib’s bed just high enough for him to get a view of the outhouse from the new window she’s had put in for precisely this purpose. Each day he looks out through the trees to the grisly building beyond, the very building responsible for his own downfall. Each day he watches someone new approach to shout a filthy curse or throw something at Daku Manmohan. The bandit never retaliates. His silence rings loud.
Day by day the zamindar observes his prisoner. Day by day he finds his life returned to him in the plans he makes for the bandit’s torture and prolonged death.
The songs start as soon as Asmara Didi approaches. Daku Manmohan knows that singing gets to her the most.
Oh innocent heart, oh innocent heart,
What is your desire, what is your destiny?
In this material world,
You are a lost soul,
Oh ignorant heart, oh ignorant heart,
What is your desire, what is your destiny?
It is upon a fractured wind that the bandit’s ghazals, songs of desperate love, yearning and loss, reach Singh Sahib’s ear. The words take the zamindar on a personal journey, forcing him to relive each of life’s disappointments over and over again.
‘Arey-oh, Daku! Can’t you leave the singing to others? Have you ever thought that you have no right to defile such beautiful words with your filthy tongue. Beast! You know only of killing. How many have you killed?’ Asmara Didi shakes her head at him in rage. For all her early spiritual learning, she is still an agitated soul.
‘Many more than you people say, you old crone. Ha, ha. Come here to torment me, have you? Better people than you have tried, old woman, and where has that got them? Come a little closer if you dare, I’ll smash your head in with my bare hands.’ He speaks strongly, but there is no real fight in him.
‘Then Singh Sahib will chop off your hands. It’s because of Lokend that you are still alive. Thank your lucky stars.’
Singh Sahib is used to the sparring between Asmara Didi and Daku Manmohan. She is the only one he ever graces with a reply. He thinks it is more out of respect for the old woman than anything else.
Each day the battle gets fiercer.
‘How long do we have to keep him here? All day long he sits and stares, looking at us with
those killer’s eyes. Can’t you find something for him to do? Yesterday Gope and his friends threw a beehive into his cell. He was covered with stings the size of lemons. He thrashed around like a landed fish. But did you hear a word out of him? No. It’s unnatural, I tell you, downright unnatural. The day before it was excrement, last week it was snakes. It’s too degrading. He doesn’t care what we do. Just sits and looks, and sings his mournful songs. That’s become his life’s work.’
‘It’sss . . . my word.’
‘Oh yes, you’ve given your word, all right. There are too many of your kind who have. Giving your word as freely as chaff riding wind,’ she says under her breath. ‘What about the group that came to see you yesterday? Surely you are not going to give them free access to the temple so they can exhibit their cripples in front of his cell like seasonal melons.’
‘The gulsss . . .’ He puckers his lips into a smile, a private joke; he doesn’t take the woman’s fretting seriously.
‘Huh, the girls. Don’t tell me about the girls,’ she says, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘Singh Sahib, girls will be girls. Oh, I know what they say. He is an avatar, their saviour. If rumours are to be believed, he has saved the whole virgin population of Gopalpur from rape. It is idle talk, just idle talk. Uneducated people are easily fooled, they need to treat someone as God, you know that. Plus he is handsome.’
Singh Sahib looks at her in questioning surprise.
‘Oh no, I’m way beyond noticing a man for his looks. But girls . . . give them something different and they are infatuated right away. Maybe he saved some of them from rape. So what? He’s committed his own heinous crimes.’
Singh Sahib chuckles.
‘Laugh all you will, but that man can’t be kept like this.’
Singh Sahib moves his head slightly. She knows what it means. Daku Manmohan’s proximity has put her in bad humour and made her irreverent. ‘At least give him something to do. How about the corner field? Let him plough that,’ she barks with exasperation.
He nods. Anything to stop her yapping. He has come to a point where he enjoys his thoughts, rolls them around in his mind like a hard-boiled sweet . . .
‘This incarceration is making you unnaturally happy. Don’t think I don’t see it, Zamindar Sahib. Hai! I wish Bibiji was alive, what would she have said to all this?’ Asmara Didi thinks that by bringing Bibiji into the room she can force the zamindar to acknowledge the absurdity of his ways. But Singh Sahib is not biting.
‘Hiss . . . sss . . . inging . . . ha, ha.’ This time he laughs aloud. It is a huge effort of will for him. His prisoner has made him fierce, focused, not even talk of his wife can lure him away. The bandit has been in captivity for six months now, and Singh Sahib has recorded the moments of his life in the minutest detail. That remains his biggest occupation. Nothing else seems to concern him.
She tries another tack. ‘Lokend has got some NGO from Delhi to give him money to complete the building. The well is already dug. I’m told Gope and Kanno will move into the new ashram soon.’
Lokend has done it virtually unaided. He has built an ashram for the victims of the bandit raids, the same cripples that he saw on the day of the surrender, on the same piece of land he had intended for Daku Manmohan’s prison, exactly behind Babulal’s Topaz Suppliers, purveyors of farming equipment.
‘I thought that having the bandit this close would force Lokend to come home. But he is too busy fulfilling other people’s dreams.’ Asmara Didi’s sarcasm bites like a red ant. ‘He has come to see you, hasn’t he?’ she asks, knowing full well what the answer is. It is now her turn to bait the old man.
‘Huh.’ It hurts Singh Sahib that Lokend meets only Asmara Didi each time he comes to visit the bandit.
Asmara Didi wipes her forehead and looks at the ceiling. Summer is returning with gusto. Overhead the cloth fan attempts to drag the still air from side to side in the musty room. She made it operational just this morning. Now one of the servants sits outside the window pulling on the rope tied to his toe to move the giant cloth frill. She chose yellow for the colour of the fan to inject some light into the room, but one can see that it makes little difference, hanging too far above their heads to provide either air or colour.
‘There is Ram Singh,’ she says, hearing footfalls in the corridor. ‘Must be time for his daily visit,’ she growls.
Each day Ram Singh makes sure to pass the bandit’s cell on his way to his father’s room, as usual firing barbs along the way. ‘How goes your life today? Everything to your satisfaction? Not too hot, is it? How about the food? Too spicy? Not enough meat?’ He spits on the floor. ‘Filthy man. Filthy, filthy man, not fit to be called human. Ruined our poor village.’ As usual, Daku Manmohan just stares at him. As usual, this unnerves Ram Singh. ‘I’ll break your face if you stare at me like that. How dare you look at me like that?’
He enters his father’s room. ‘Can’t you get more light in here? Why do you sit in darkness all day? Your prisoner has a better room than you.’ The father bristles internally. Ram Singh is the person he least wants to see.
He approaches his father. ‘Get rid of him, Bapu. That man is a disgrace to us all. Let’s hang him from a tree. Then the village will know what we’ve done for them.’ His words are laden with zeal. Like the bandit, the father too keeps silent. ‘But no, you can’t do that, of course. You have given your word, and we all know your word is more precious than your life. Good God! Bapu, for once listen to me. He should be cut into bits and fed to the dogs for what he’s done to the people here.’
‘I hate to agree, but this once I think Ram Singh is right.’
Ram Singh looks from his father to Asmara Didi. Her agreement makes him suspicious.
‘Do it, Singh Sahib. Do it. Or get someone else to,’ she urges.
‘Yes, you won’t even have to associate yourself with the deed,’ says Ram Singh. ‘Just give me the word, Bapu . . . I’ll have it done.’
This time it’s the old woman who looks from father to son, her nose and mouth quivering with revulsion. ‘He’ll have it done,’ she says. ‘He has the people for the job.’ No one is deceived. She isn’t complimenting Ram Singh on his competence.
There are so many words lodged in the old man’s throat. Has it all come to this? An ignominious murder by an anonymous hand in the middle of the night. Is that to be his brand of justice?
Only one word flies from his mouth. ‘Nnno!’ It’s the most import ant word anyway. What use are explanations? What purpose will they serve? Maybe it’s best that God robbed him of his speech, he couldn’t change his son’s mind even if he tried. Or Asmara Didi’s, for that matter. It would be easier to fill a lake with a perforated spoon than change their minds.
Singh Sahib resolves to put more guards round the cell to keep would-be assassins away. He needs someone he can trust. Lokend would be the first choice, but he is away so much. Who then? Prem. That’s right. Prem, the indentured farmer’s son who is devoted to Lokend, that’s who he’ll send for.
With great reluctance, Asmara Didi, the mouthpiece of Singh Sahib, explained the job to Prem. ‘It is now your duty to look after the prisoner. I don’t mean really look after, I mean just be an extra set of eyes. Report anything strange directly to me. Here, take this drum, beat it if anything suspicious happens, but don’t beat it needlessly, otherwise I will beat you myself. Remember, you are doing this for Lokend Bhai, only Lokend Bhai,’ she told him.
The boy examines the cell hesitatingly. The bandit catches his look. Why have they brought out the damn boy? He reminds him of his own son. The prisoner waves the boy away. The boy stands his ground. He has been instructed to keep watch by Lokend Bhai himself. He feels that manly feeling filling his chest. It is more than duty that stops him from walking away.
Asmara Didi approaches, kicking a path through the offerings of flowers and fruits left by grateful village girls. ‘What has the world come to? People will idolise almost anyone, no matter how evil. Why we should have to employ some
one to take care of this murderer is something I will never understand,’ says Asmara Didi. She takes Prem by the arm and sets him to one side like a piece of discarded furniture. ‘Murderer,’ she shouts at the prisoner. ‘Murderer! Don’t think you will be able to lounge in your cushy cell for the rest of your days. Today you start ploughing Singh Sahib’s fields. I have arranged the most stony, barren, virgin field of all for you. You know a lot about ravaging, right? Let’s see if you know as much about building something of value.’
‘Eh, old woman, there isn’t a field you can give me to work which I won’t be able to tame.’
‘Yes, you have a lot of experience with taming, haven’t you? Your brand of taming is rape. Rapist!’
Red creeps into Daku Manmohan’s eyes. ‘I may be many things, but I am not a rapist,’ he shouts at Asmara Didi. ‘You want to see a rapist? You don’t have to look far. Your zamindar’s eldest son, he is the rapist.’
Singh Sahib listens keenly to the conversation from his distant window. It was as recently as yesterday that he’d seen two young girls, just in their teens, hand a plate of food and a garland through the bars to the bandit. They’d bent down as if to touch his feet, but the bandit had waved them off. The two girls claimed that Daku Manmohan himself had saved them from gang rape by members of the Big House.
The lovesick adoration of village girls has made the incarceration far more interesting than he’d hoped. Mixed up the truth, made a muddle of morality, a cocktail of good and evil, blurred the boundaries, made everything grey, just like life. What would Lokend’s Bhagvat Gita say about all this? By the delusion of the pairs of opposites sprung from attraction and repulsion, all beings walk this universe wholly deluded.
He can hear the bandit’s denial clearly. ‘I am a man of honour. I am a family man. I have a wife. I have never raped a girl,’ he shouts, but Asmara Didi is already halfway to the house, too far away to hear him.
Chapter 7
