by Dipika Rai
Most fathers place their small sons on their shoulders for a better look. All of a sudden the rudali goes quiet, the tabla goes silent, the women’s cue to leave. Now mothers start herding their daughters back to their farms. This is no place for women. Lata Bai pulls Sneha behind her. ‘He never did anything for us, why should we shed one tear for him?’ she says bitterly.
‘But Prem is there . . . and, what’s more, he’s holding his hand,’ Sneha says with envy. She still nurses her infatuation for Daku Manmohan, a man with a beautiful wife and a tragic life. There is no figure more romantic than an honourable man forced to live in a dishonourable world.
Lata Bai says nothing. She walks back to her field. Sneha follows her mother, but turns around for one last look at the body. ‘We must tell Mamta,’ she says. Mamta’s name emerging from Sneha’s mouth at exactly this time is just more proof that everything in the universe is connected.
‘Mamta!’ says Lata Bai. ‘None of this concerns her. She has abandoned her family for a big-city job. She has run away. She is dead for us. You must never speak of her again.’ One son with a bandit and one daughter run away from her husband.
‘A big-city job. Oh, how lucky, how lucky, lucky, lucky. Oh, Amma! The city. Can I go too?’
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ She shakes Sneha by the forearms. ‘Don’t you start getting ideas beyond yourself. It’s because of her that there are no offers for you. As if someone would marry the sister of a runaway wife.’
‘Amma!’ says Sneha. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay married. Don’t worry.’
‘That is, if any man will have you. Mamta has strangled your future by leaving her husband,’ says Lata Bai.
‘Amma?’ she looks at her mother, eyes wide with betrayal. Her mother always stood up for them.
Mothers have to be soft and hard, bitter and sweet. Lata Bai gathers Sneha in her arms, and presses her face gently to her chest. ‘Now you be a good girl,’ she tells her roughly. It isn’t often that Sneha gets to feel this close to her mother. The funeral doesn’t seem that impersonal any more. She wants to cry. ‘For your amma’s sake, you be a good girl. Forget about the city, it isn’t for you. We will look harder for a husband, that’s all. You just get married and be a good wife,’ says Lata Bai.
The rudali stops her musical antics so the prayers can start. The retinue of Singh Sahib’s retainers shoo the little children away as Lokend approaches the bier with a burning branch. Burning the father’s body is the eldest son’s prerogative, if not duty, but Ram Singh has made up his mind: no union, not in life, not in death.
The fire is born mature, like a god. The body catches fast and is a surprisingly noisy thing. It’s as if it sings with its last voice, the final thread that connects it with this life.
Very quickly, the mourners cannot see the body for the flames. The heat from the fire forces the farmers to take a step back, but the bandit and his little companion stay standing where they are. Prem shields his eyes and then hides his face in his folded hands. The orange flames reflect off Daku Manmohan, turning his whole being luminous. Singh Sahib’s body sighs and clicks almost to the very end. It seems that coded messages pass between the dead man and his friend.
The bandit stands planted in the soil as firmly as the mango trees. He knows what this funeral means. It is the end of him too. He thinks of their long chess games. Neither had wanted to be alone, separated from the other in the thickening of his life. What was he to Singh Sahib? What was their connection? How can he explain the circumstances that brought him to this particular place on this exact day? Even destiny seems like a feeble excuse, there has to be more of a reason.
What if the future asks nothing more from him than just having been?
It is a time of death, he rationalises, such thoughts are bound to burble to the surface like a new brook finding a crack in turned earth. You changed my life. If you must measure your life by some standard, know this, you changed my life.
Lokend urges a stick into Daku Manmohan’s hands and steers him towards the bier. ‘Go do it,’ he whispers. ‘Go on,’ he says.
‘But . . .’
‘He would have wanted you to.’ Asmara Didi does not challenge Lokend.
The bandit advances with the stout stick. ‘Accept his soul, oh Devi. Release us all from the bondage of rebirth.’
Asmara Didi clutches her prayer beads even tighter as Daku Manmohan tries to crack open his friend’s skull with the stick. The ritual gets to her every time. The burned body starts to fracture and crumble. The head, black as a burned coconut, lolls drunkenly to one side.
Thwack! goes Daku Manmohan’s stick again, but this blow is weaker than the last. The audience will stay till the end, when the skull is finally split open to set free the soul. They’ve seen this done many, many times before. Thwack, thwack, thwack. There is a loud crack.
The priest drops his hand like a referee giving his approval. Daku Manmohan has released his friend’s soul to commune with the Eternal. The rudali resumes her dirge. This time she sings alone; the farmers are walking back to their fields and the servants back to the Big House. Ram Singh had walked away as soon as the pyre was lit.
Then the rudali falters, she can’t sustain the holy music much longer.
In that collapsed moment, the bandit starts singing. His music fulfilled the zamindar almost as much as it irked Asmara Didi. But today, they are all grateful for his song. His voice is a rivulet, racing out to meet others like itself in the voices of Asmara Didi, Lokend, the rudali and the remaining gathering of farmers, becoming first a brook, then a stream and finally a grand shining river.
‘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?’
Still singing, the bandit walks closer to the smouldering heap. His voice falls low, becoming a whisper. He sings exclusively to his friend. As the song finishes, he tosses Singh Sahib’s chess set into the fiercest part of the fire. His duty complete, Daku Manmohan turns with the smooth grace of a dancer and walks back to his cell with Prem holding on even tighter to his hand.
Used to hearing her children’s slightest sounds, Lata Bai senses the weeping in the hut that night. She knows that Prem is crying silently, secretly in his corner. She reaches out to touch her son’s shuddering shoulder, then draws her hand back mid-mission.
Prem’s shoulders shiver with each jagged breath, long and tortured, matching his thoughts, and his mother’s feelings. He cries for Daku Manmohan, for his scarred back and his tiny cell; he cries for Lokend Bhai, achieving so little with such great sacrifice; he cries for Asmara Didi, coping in a mansion full of loss; he cries for Singh Sahib, for his restless and broken spirit; he cries for Mamta, alone in the city; he cries for Lata Bai, grieving her children, both dead and alive; he cries for Sneha, without offers of marriage; he cries for Jivkant, and the disappointment he caused them; he cries for his lost brother Mohit; he cries for Gope, destroyed by the bandits; for Kanno, struck dumb by fright; for his dead baby sister Shanti, for his father, for the rudali, for the mourners, for himself.
Lata Bai wills him to stop. She doesn’t want her son’s sorrow to wake her husband. She feels safe only when Seeta Ram is sleeping, as she can no longer predict his actions. Seeta Ram had taken a stick to her when Lala Ram told him about the money orders. The beating was severe, the words too terrible to remember, but it was expected. What wasn’t expected was that his anger would spill over to Sneha. ‘Let that daughter of yours pay my share. I’ll send her to the Red Bazaar. She has no offers of marriage anyway.’
Lata Bai leans towards Prem, absorbing his shudders like a buffer. By clasping the boy in her arms, she doesn’t feel so alone any more, her son’s tears somehow wash her own pain away. She lies im mobile, considering the night, both softened and hardened by defeat. ‘Go to the city
,’ she whispers her consent. ‘Go and find your life. Take Sneha with you. There is nothing for her here.’ She will no longer interfere in her children’s lives, better for Sneha to go to the city than to become a prostitute.
When Prem finally stops crying, his mother gets up and goes outside to cough in peace.
The day the zamindar died, Ram Singh took over the Big House and vowed things would be different in Gopalpur from then on. Lokend granted Daku Manmohan his official freedom as he knew it to be his father’s unspoken dying wish. However, once again the bandit chose to stay in his cell.
A week later his body was found on the garbage heap close to the Red Ruins. Prem went to see the corpse just to make sure it was Daku Manmohan and not someone else. His right hand was holding the black queen so tightly that the boy couldn’t free it for himself. That night all across Gopalpur the village girls broke their bangles for their saviour. Many had seen him at the funeral, and had bitten their knuckles that night for the curls in his ash-coloured hair, the light in his eyes and the straightness of his back. The finality of his murder left the village girls with an unfinished story which they concluded in their secret language of romance. Each woman had her own version: hoping to become his redeemer in the telling of his story. In time, his legend will be borne by the few who will carry the news of his chivalry to the well-side, and sustained by the many who will give him a great reputation as a man of honour.
‘Now that Daku Manmohan is dead, what will I do? The village is lost to me. They see me as a traitor, where will I go? Take me to the city with you.’ Prem’s plea isn’t just about self-preservation, it is also about forgetting the past.
‘Don’t worry now. Go back home to your mother,’ Lokend reassures the boy whose life has been so intrinsically scarred by association.
‘Take me with you to Begumpet. My mother has agreed to let me go. The word is that you are going to become a big politician. Become a big politician for our sakes, Lokend Bhai. For me and my sister’s sakes. Sneha will have to go to the Red Bazaar if I don’t take her to the city. My eldest sister is already in Begumpet. You remember her, don’t you? Mamta. You helped her that night.’
He can recall the scar along her side, and suddenly, the smell of buttered chapattis. It seems like yesterday. ‘Yes, I remember her well.’
‘Her husband came looking for her, but I said we didn’t know where she was. Take me, take Sneha.’
Lokend looks into Prem’s ardent eyes and pats his head. ‘You are getting tall. Becoming a man. All right then, little man, we will go to the city. Get Sneha packed.’ There is just one thing left for Lokend to do before he can leave for Begumpet.
‘When?’ Daku Manmohan’s wife asks even before Lokend enters her hut. She has been so tuned in to the circumstances that would bring about his death that she knew precisely when it would happen.
‘They found him this morning.’ Lokend offers no solace. She must stand alone. ‘I see you have done more.’ The steam rising off boiling pots of thickening cane juice sweetens the air. The smell of festivity doesn’t fit the news.
‘Yes, we sell our jaggery at Saraswati Stores now. Can’t make enough of it.’
‘And the embroidery?’
‘Still sells in Begumpet. We have three new girls.’ She is a natural-born leader, just like her husband was. She has turned the opportunity offered her into a thriving business, employing not just the wives and daughters of other bandits, but girls from the village as well. Still, she does not see the miracle in her achievement. ‘Lokend Bhai, I envy you your peaceful place where no one can reach you. If you ever fall in love, you will understand. I knew I would never see him again, and yet . . .’
‘There is no end in Death,’ he says.
‘It isn’t end enough, that’s the problem,’ she replies. A boy comes running towards her, he is a little smaller than Prem. ‘Say namaste to Lokend Bhai, your father’s friend.’
‘Namaste,’ says the boy.
‘Abhay?’ The boy nods. Abhay, the fearless. His father was proud of his choice of name.
‘He’s gone,’ she tells her son without ceremony.
‘Who?’ ‘Your father.’
The boy doesn’t know where to look, and less how to act. He should cry, he should feel something, he should . . . Lokend takes his shoulder. ‘I am going to Begumpet. Would you like to come with me? You will have a friend, another boy, Prem, almost the same age as you.’
The woman says nothing. The boy steals a look at his mother for some sign of approval or otherwise. Their relationship has been distant. She did not replace the man in her life with another.
‘No, I’ll stay with Amma.’ Again he seeks something from her, a sign that he’s made the right decision. She does nothing.
Lokend pats his back. ‘Abhay, remember your name,’ he says, ‘there is power in names. Abhay the Fearless One. Your father was a fearless man, perhaps that’s the legacy you have inherited from him.’ The boy scrapes the floor with his toe, making half-moon lines, back and forth.
‘Abhay, Abhay,’ a voice calls out to him. Lokend and the boy look towards the voice. They both know it well.
‘I’m glad you are here with them,’ says Lokend.
‘Taste this,’ says Asmara Didi, putting a small piece of jaggery in each of the three open mouths like a mother bird feeding her fledglings, ‘the next thing she’s going to start is pickling.’
Dear Mamta,
There is big news in Gopalpur. Singh Sahib is dead, and Ram Singh is Gopalpur’s new zamindar. Amma says things are not good. Daku Manmohan is also dead. They found his body thrown in the rubbish tip by the Red Ruins. They murdered him just one week after Singh Sahib’s death. Can you imagine? The Red Ruins are now redder with the blood of grieving girls for all the bangles that were broken. I think Sneha secretly broke her bangles there also.
I don’t know if Amma told you that Mohit Bhaia is in the city too. He ran away to join Jivkant Bhai. Everyone in the village knows. We haven’t heard from him. Asmara Didi has moved out to live with the bandit wives. She didn’t stay with Ram Singh. I too will be leaving soon. Thank God, Amma has given her blessing. I cannot stay in this place a minute longer. Everywhere I look I am reminded of that great man. He may have murdered and killed and maimed . . . he may have done many bad things, but in the end he was a good man. You have to believe that.
I will come with Lokend Bhai to the city. He is a saint. He looks after me better than Bapu ever did. Lokend Bhai is to become a big politician. Who knows, I might get a position in his office one day. I have learned to read and write thanks to Daku Manmohan, that’s why I am writing this letter.
You must never give up your good job in the city. Never come back here, especially now that Bapu knows about the money orders. Bapu went quite mad when he found out that Amma had taken all the money you sent. He beat Amma, and then started on Sneha. It is the worst for Sneha, we have no offers for her. You should see her condition, she begs at Lala Ram’s for food. Though our loans are forgiven, the rains failed again, and we have no money. The thatch is gone from the roof and the floor is always wet. I know Bapu’s planning to sell Sneha in the Red Bazaar soon. But I think I can save her by bringing her to the city. Amma says I am her only hope now. Sometimes I don’t know what I am supposed to do. Thank God we will be coming to the city soon.
You must look out for those brothers of ours. If you see them, send them back to Amma. Please come and see our new Netaji Lokend Bhai when he comes to Begumpet,
Your loving brother,
Prem
Netaji Lokend Bhai. She can recite an opera to happiness and apprehension. The slippers, the look, the hands on her shoulders. She thought they were to remain a distant sweet memory, but the mention of his name has caused the best part of her past to spring to life. Mamta stays holding the letter. She feels a moment of pride. ‘My brother wrote this letter. Can you believe that?’
‘The Red Bazaar?’ Cynthia D’Souza has her own questions.
; ‘It’s near the old quarter where all the tanneries are.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘You ask your amma about it.’ Mamta doesn’t elaborate.
‘Oh, it’s one of those places, is it?’ She is just worldly enough to hint at the reality of prostitution. ‘So what will you do about your sister?’
‘Nothing. What can I do about Sneha? How can I look after her here? Where will I put her? Under the stairs?’
‘Ask Mummy to help you find her a job.’
‘Do you really think I should?’
‘You can’t let her stay in that place. Shall I write the letter?’ The girl with large breasts and finely painted lips, who only eats with a spoon and fork and never anything she doesn’t like, pleads on behalf of hair-slowly-turning-orange-soon-to-be-sent-to-the-Red-Bazaar Sneha.
‘Yes, please write the letter. How will I send it to my brother?’
‘Oh, that’s easy, we’ll send it care of this Lokend.’
‘But he’s such a big man. Why would he give Prem the letter?’
‘Well, is he or isn’t he a saint?’
Mamta giggles. ‘All right, we’ll send it to Lokend Bhai.’
Cynthia jumps straight into a cross-legged position on her bed. She writes quickly. Mamta stares up at her from her squat. She pulls Mrs D’Souza’s donated sweater closer round her. The thought of becoming her sister’s saviour makes her cringe.
‘You’ll get sick, wrapped up like that in this heat. Get sick and die before you can see your brother or your sister at the rally.’ Cynthia has never understood her sweeper’s aversion to wind. ‘God, I hate the heat. I don’t remember another year when it was this bad.’ For a brief moment the girls hold the letter together at either end and peer into its heart. One smells of rose soap, the other of phenol.
