Someone Else's Garden

by Dipika Rai

  ‘She came to me hardly nine years old. They all wanted her, but I said no! No! No!’ Years later, the memory is still strong. ‘I taught her to read and write. I protected her, and in time it was my good fortune that she came to love me. I married her. She is a beautiful, brave, educated woman, much too good to be a bandit’s wife. I swore that no child of mine would ever have to live like me.

  ‘Soon after I got married, Sardar Ranjit Singh, the head of the gang, asked me to take over from him. That was a shock for my elder brother. He felt betrayed by the Sardar, so he grew to hate me, the person who had stolen his birthright. He even turned our younger brother against me. They knew how I loathed gratuitous bloodshed, so just to spite me they were ruthless in their raids. For them no amount of blood was enough. The blood . . . the blood . . . Cruelty is not the biggest killer, desensitisation is.

  ‘Though I threw them out, the reputation for cruelty stuck, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Then I had my son, Abhay, and I knew that he too would be forced to become a bandit one day. So when Lokend asked me to surrender I said yes.’

  Prem’s eyes glisten with unshed tears. Like a seashell that contains the sound of the sea, people have an empathy which connects them with others. Prem’s tears aren’t for himself, they are for his prisoner.

  ‘Why does Lokend Bhai do the things he does for you?’

  ‘Lokend Bhai. He’s a conundrum. He doesn’t do those things because of my story. If it were up to my history, no one would do anything for me. You don’t know how many I’ve killed, how many I’ve destroyed. No, for Lokend I am a concept. I am just a soul. Ask that man over there what I’ve done.’ He points to Gope, squatting by the temple steps.

  ‘Do you want me to hate you?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Don’t hate him,’ says Gope. ‘I hate him enough for the both of us. I hate him enough for the whole world.’

  Tenderness is a strange thing, and it is perhaps most ardent in a hard man. Somehow Daku Manmohan has allowed himself the love of Prem. In return for the boy’s love, he has been teaching him to read and write.

  ‘Hindi is a very scientific language,’ he reminds his pupil daily. ‘It is like learning to dance with your tongue! Take the tip of your tongue on to the roof of your mouth close to your teeth to pronounce the first consonant, K, then slide your tongue back a bit for the next one, KH, and a little further for the next, G, and so on.’

  When Prem can’t get his pencil round a particularly difficult curlicue, the bandit affectionately scolds the boy without any harshness in his voice.

  Each day the boy arrives at the cell, books and kite in hand. He has given up the pretence of guarding his prisoner and instead avidly shares the blitheness of the season with him, making the bandit’s imprisonment (he hopes) easier to bear.

  ‘How do you know to write?’

  ‘Do you think only village boys joined our gang? No, it was all types. There were many educated boys in my gang. One of them taught me to read. That boy died in the first Gopalpur raid.’

  ‘Do you miss your son?’ Prem asks slowly. ‘Do I miss my boy? Yes. Yes, I do. He is just about your age. He must be flying his kite too.’ Daku Manmohan starts pacing his cell like the tiger he is, trapped in a small space.

  ‘One of those in the sky might be your son’s.’ ‘You know, each night I look at the moon and I say to myself, “Take heart, old man, take heart, you share a common moon.” I may never see my family again, but we share a common moon.’ He pauses; Prem offers his silence as tangibly as a clasping hand. ‘I don’t know how much longer I will be able to wait and watch dawn break at the appointed hour . . .’ He stops pacing. ‘Why won’t they hang me? I have become an example, that’s all. People look at me and they tell their children, “Eat your food or Daku Manmohan will come and get you.” I thought I could take anything. But when I see you each morning here with your book, I think of my son . . .’ The man’s voice starts to thicken. Prem puts his hand in through the bars. The prisoner grips it tight. The warmth of the little hand dissipates the old hurt.

  ‘Maybe you will see your boy again, you never know. I am sure I will see my sister again. She ran away from her husband. You know she came to me the first day I came to work here. I hid her at Asmara Didi’s old place for two days and then . . . and then she went to the city. She was married hardly one year back. She said her husband would kill her if he finds her. I don’t know what she did. Mamta was my best sister. Bapu borrowed money from the Big House for her dowry, you know. That’s why I’m working here, to pay off Bapu’s loan. I didn’t want Mamta to marry that man. She was his second wife. He had two children and the boys all said he’d killed his first wife. I know he will kill Mamta if he finds her.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, I think she is best left hidden in the city amongst thousands of people, and you have to believe she’s safe. Perhaps she’ll run into Lokend in the city. They say he’s doing big things there. He is a good man. I wish his father could see beyond the family tradition.’

  ‘Yes, Lokend Bhai is a great man. You know, he helped my sister too, brought her food . . . now who else would do that for us low castes? He is another Gandhi, they say.’ Just the thought of his connection to Lokend Bhai makes Prem’s chest swell with pride.

  A guard comes over to let the bandit out of his cell. He doesn’t bother putting the shackles on his ankles any more; they know the bandit won’t go anywhere.

  Daku Manmohan prepares to slip on his yoke, legs bent at the knees anticipating its crushing weight. The boy runs to his side to help him.

  ‘No, I do this alone.’

  He bounces the yoke up and up, on to his shoulders, staying bent double to support the weight as he starts to walk. ‘Not today.’ The guard walks up to him and hits him lightly on his back with a branch from the tamarind tree. ‘Today you have easier work in store for you. Lucky bastard. See, he’s become an animal. He takes the yoke on his back, ready for work. You donkey, don’t you remember the fields have been ploughed? Don’t you remember cutting the wheat? Don’t you remember threshing the wheat? See what an idiot he’s become.’ The guard’s head is wobbling frantically on his neck. Each wiggle gives credence to his question. ‘In the beginning we had to beat him.’ The guard rotates the bandit by his elbow, lifts up his vest and shows his back to Prem. The bandit offers no resistance.

  The boy turns his head away from flesh more furrowed than one of the bandit’s newly ploughed fields.

  ‘Arey, this is nothing! I would break both his legs if Singh Sahib allowed me to. I enjoyed doing this to him. How many people has he killed? And guess what they have in store for him now? Grinding the wheat, that’s what,’ he says in a falsetto, then spits on the floor. ‘Why don’t they give him something even easier to do? Why don’t they give him Asmara Didi’s roses and ask him to make jam or make dough for the chapattis? Phah, for all the killing he’s done, he should be hitched to that yoke for eternity!’

  The watersheds in people’s lives appear in the commonest of places. Daku Manmohan’s intended change of job is about to try destiny’s determination to the limit.

  ‘Yes, you’d better hitch me to this yoke for eternity, for I won’t grind wheat!’

  ‘Why Daku Manmohan, what’s that I hear? You won’t grind the wheat. Won’t you just? We’ll make you do it!’ The guard is excited at last to have got a rise out of his prisoner, he is relishing the prospect of a fight, his head is all but rotating right off his neck.

  ‘Not even God can make me do it. It is woman’s work. Do what you will to me, you will never get me to grind that wheat.’

  ‘Perhaps I will have a chance to break both your legs after all,’ the guard says.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Daku Manmohan. He’s just babbling to confuse you. What’s there in grinding the wheat? It will give your wounds time to heal and then it will be ploughing season again,’ says the boy, displaying logic belong his years. But even to his youthful imagination, the picture of the bandit sitting over t
he grinding stone rotating away like he’s seen his mother and sisters do seems vulgar.

  ‘No! No one can make me grind the wheat! I’ve said what I have to say!’ Daku Manmohan allows no glimmer of enlightenment to pass through common sense. He turns suddenly and wraps the guard’s collar in his fingers. The man takes in a sharp breath, caught unawares. Slowly the danger of his situation reveals itself. An unchained killer has him by the throat. He crosses his legs to stop that urinating feeling. ‘You tell your zamindar that I am of the warrior caste, a kshatriya, and our kind will never do a woman’s work. Let him do his worst. He can get me to grind the wheat only when I am dead.’ He flings the guard away from him, walks back into his cell and shuts the door. ‘I will not do a woman’s work,’ he repeats, locking the cell door from the inside.

  The news is with the zamindar before the bandit has locked his cell door. Singh Sahib chuckles. His disability cannot camouflage the delight that takes over his entire frame. At last, the rules change. He smiles with carefree zeal and meanders through rows and rows of thoughts and plans, all to do with breaking Daku Manmohan’s will and his ultimate downfall.

  Why does he relish this prospect of cruelty? Why is he bent upon snatching away Daku Manmohan’s dignity? The reason is strange and convoluted. It is because of his sons: one a do-gooder and the other a common thug, with not an honourable bone between them. Both his boys have let him down, his fate has let him down, so now he has declared war on Fate. He will be avenged. And what better revenge on Fate than to ruin someone else’s by taking away the one thing he values above all else: his dignity.

  The laughter gurgles in his stomach like a bad lunch.

  Asmara Didi rushes to his side, and sets him upright, but she can’t quell the strange shakes that have conquered his body. ‘Calm yourself, Singh Sahib,’ she says, just about ready to rush off and get one of her balms when she notices his eyes.

  Since Bibiji’s death, the zamindar’s eyes have lacked a vigilant depth. But today she sees something extraordinary in those old and weary sockets. She sees an ancient zest in them that makes her anxious.

  As for the bandit, he gave no quarter and asks for none. Without a struggle he offers his burned-out body to its torturer. And the torture is tremendous. There are days when the bandit cannot rise from the floor, still he whispers to the earth beside his mouth, ‘I will not do a woman’s work.’ One of his legs has been dislocated at the hip and jammed back in without care. It will leave him with a limp for the rest of his life, still he says, ‘I will not do a woman’s work.’

  Each evening Prem is there by the bandit’s side, soothing his hair through the bars or bathing his eyes with a wet cloth, scurrying away like a cockroach at the sound of Asmara Didi’s footfall. Even she has to turn away from the injustice of the scene. And as for Gope, he too has stopped relishing the bandit’s torture. The beatings are too much, seeing the bandit dead would be much easier.

  But Singh Sahib remains resolutely keen. The zamindar demands the precise details of the bandit’s condition and torture every day. Slowly he is beginning to recognise the true twist of Fate, which is offering him real revenge. In the bandit’s actions he recognises a budding axiom, a dedication to honour that makes Honour proud.

  If you want to see a real man, look at Daku Manmohan. Him I understand. His honour is the most important thing, without it he would die, just like me. What has a man got anyway, but his honour? My prisoner knows this, but not my sons. How can I bring Lokend back to govern these lands? How can I stop Ram Singh from terrorising those

  that depend on us? I wish they would learn something from that man. What a man!

  What a man. Indeed.

  Though the guards beat Daku Manmohan for not grinding the wheat, Singh Sahib secretly prays that the bandit will not break under torture. And the bandit doesn’t disappoint him. Each day that Daku Manmohan refuses to grind the wheat is a private victory for Singh Sahib and a public victory for Honour. It is with greater and greater reluctance that Singh Sahib orders the torture of the bandit, but he can find no reason to stop.

  Until the day Lokend shows up.

  ‘Bapu, what you are doing is criminal, it is inhumane!’ says Lokend, more agitated than his father has ever seen him before. The mongoose makes an appearance out of Lokend’s kurta to inspect the scene; he too has never heard this tone in his master’s voice before.

  So finally something gets to you.

  ‘I agree with Bapu. Now that we have the opportunity to torture him to death, I say let’s do it, for all that he’s done to this village,’ says Ram Singh from the doorway. Neither his brother nor his father heard him come in.

  The father’s lip twitches at his older son; he wishes he could speak at this moment and let loose the words needed to crush him.

  ‘All your looking can’t harm me now, you old, crippled man. All this time you have tortured me like that bandit with your pathetic talk of honour.’ Ram Singh remembers every silent, torn and jagged day when he yearned, first for his father’s love, then his respect, and finally his approval, but he got nothing.

  ‘Stop it, stop it, Ram Singh!’ says Asmara Didi. Compromised by her weak knees, she is unable to prevent Ram Singh from entering Singh Sahib’s room and making his acrid speech. Ram Singh will not be stopped today.

  ‘You remember how I used to follow you round like a puppy dog,’ the elder son’s gaze hangs on tight to his father’s and takes him on a journey demanding remembrance, ‘until the time you beat me because I didn’t wear the correct-coloured turban. Do you remember the time you locked me up without any food because I didn’t bag enough partridges? Or the time you insulted me in front of the villagers because you didn’t like my method of calculating interest payments? I could go on forever, but what’s the use? You probably don’t remember any of these incidents. You disguised your hatred as disapproval. That I understand now. You never liked me, and you never knew why, that was your problem. Perhaps you are worse off than me, cursed to live with me when you cannot bear the sight of me. But all through that time, I loved you. It’s just as well you’ve lost your speech, because your words have lost their power. You old, bitter man, waiting to die. Die, I say, die! Die.’

  ‘Ram Singh, you will get out of your father’s room now.’ Asmara Didi has managed to get on her feet. She clamps her hand on Ram Singh’s elbow and steers him toward the door. ‘Out, Get out!’

  Lokend rushes to his father’s side, his mongoose dives deeper into the safety of his kurta. ‘You know Ram Bhaia; he’s a firecracker, full of explosive words.’

  ‘Lokend, you’ve no more done your duty by your father than your brother has.’ Finally Asmara Didi will have her say. She too won’t be stopped, she knows where her loyalties lie. She may love Lokend, but she knows that his deeds are partly responsible for the enmity between his father and his brother. ‘You and your good works. How far above us are you that nothing touches you? Who is your father going to leave these lands to?’

  ‘No one, Asmara Didi. Share these lands with those who till them. These lands don’t need governing.’

  ‘What you are suggesting will leave us with anarchy.’

  ‘Asmara Didi, I am not suggesting a political or an economic solution, I seek a spiritual solution. Open your eyes. If Bapu goes on like this he will kill Manmohan.’

  ‘Well, that may be in both their fates. What do you care? Isn’t that what you believe in? Fate. Leave everything to Fate, let Fate take charge.’

  Lokend smiles. ‘Yes, yes, it is, but that’s only half the story. Half will never satisfy you, my mother. Yes, Fate may be in charge, but only when we live on its level. I am talking about a step up, a chance for Bapu to create his own fate. “As the mighty air moving is rooted in the ether, so all beings rest rooted in the Eternal,”’ he quotes from the Bhagvat Gita. ‘Bapu, listen to me. Don’t do this to Manmohan. Don’t give him wheat to grind, give him something more difficult to do.’

  The father looks up into his son’s eyes. Lo
kend can see a tiny reflection of himself in them. There is nothing but contentment in those still, deep, old eyes. Finally, something gets to you.

  The torture stops, not because of what Lokend or Ram Singh have said to their father, but because Singh Sahib wants to get to know Daku Manmohan, a man he considers to be moulded from the same clay as himself.

  ‘He’s calling for you, Daku Manmohan. They are going to take you to the Big House.’ Prem clings to the bandit’s hand, shackled behind his back in steel for the first time in many months. ‘Tell me, Daku Manmohan, why are they taking you away? Are they going to kill you?’

  ‘Go home,’ urges Daku Manmohan. ‘Go home.’ For him, death would be a release.

  ‘Come closer,’ Asmara Didi commands Daku Manmohan.

  Singh Sahib lies almost supine on his bed. He faces his prisoner.

  ‘Singh Sahib says you don’t have to grind the wheat any more.’

  ‘I never did grind the wheat.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, I could have it chopped off just like that.’

  ‘Look, big sister, I am not your performing monkey. I am a prisoner. Kill me, that I understand. Torture me, that too I understand. But talk to me and I am unimpressed.’

  ‘Huh.’ She has to admire his spirit if nothing else. The complete absence of fear makes the bandit much stronger than any weapon could. ‘Sit.’

  Now it’s the bandit’s turn to be surprised.

  ‘Not here, there at Singh Sahib’s feet.’ But the zamindar pats the mattress next to him with his good arm, inviting Daku Manmohan to sit as an equal.

  ‘Singh Sahib –’ He lifts the same arm, silencing Asmara Didi mid-sentence, and waves her off. ‘But, Singh Sahib, are you sure?’ She doesn’t have to spell out the danger for her employer; they both know the bandit could break the cripple’s neck if he wanted, even with his hands tied behind his back.

  ‘Release me.’

  ‘You’re mad or you think me mad. Like hell I’m going to release you.’