by Farahad Zama
But, of course, he didn't do that. That afternoon, Thin-legs improvised a trap by digging a hole on an animal path near the waterhole. Doe-eyes watched him in silence as he scraped a hole in the soft sand with a stick and then covered it with some brush. It was clear that she didn't understand what he was doing. The first hole was too shallow. A warthog fell into the hole almost as soon as they had withdrawn from it, but it jumped out and ran away when they approached it. But now Doe-eyes realized what he was trying to do and she started helping him. Together they deepened the pit and covered it carefully with thin branches and leaves. Then they waited... and waited. No other animals came that way for a long time. A honey badger came after a while but sniffed the edges of the hole and walked around it. Thin-legs despaired. He had three people to provide for, including himself. But finally, after the sun went over the horizon and was half-way down, a herd of dik-diks came along the path, prancing on their delicate feet. Normally humans hunted gazelles because dik-diks were too skittish to approach and could run almost as fast as their bigger cousins. One dik-dik fell through the hole and the others scattered rapidly as the two humans ran towards them. He split up from Doe-eyes at the last minute and circled the pit so they approached the trapped animal from opposite sides. He had made two spears earlier from long staffs of wood whose ends he had ground to a point and hardened in a fire. The small antelope looked up at them with big eyes as they drove their spears into it from both sides. Thin-legs then jumped on to the dik-dik's back and cut its throat with his stone cutter. They whooped and hugged when they finally dragged the carcass of the animal out of the trap. They went back to the camp and had a feast with Doe-eyes miming how she had driven the spear into the trapped dik-dik. Fast-as-deer smiled at both of them.
Three evenings later, as it was getting dark, Doe-eyes came over to where Thin-legs was lying on a rock that was still warm from the day's sun. 'Don't you like me?' she asked.
'What do you mean?'
'We are together all the time but you haven't tried to mate with me,' she said.
He sat up and looked at her goggle-eyed with surprise. 'I... ah...er...'
She dropped on to the rock next to him and kissed him on the mouth. His arms tightened round her and he pulled them both off the rock and on to the soft ground next to it. He rolled until he was on top. For a bare moment he was worried that Fast-as-deer might see or hear them. Her legs opened and he sank into her and forgot about everything else.
The next half-mooncycle was the happiest in Thin-legs's life – the days were relaxing and the moonlit nights were filled with passion. He found that with just three mouths to feed, he didn't have that much work to do. They had a few traps going that kept them supplied, Fast-as-deer was getting steadily better and he was now able to hobble a few steps. Thin-legs had so much spare time that he was able to make faster progress on his project: during their last migration, he had exchanged several flints for tiny sea shells with another tribe at the lake. Each shell about the size of the tip of his little finger. He had wanted twenty-eight of them – one for each day of the moon cycle but he had ended up with just twenty-four. Doe-eyes saw him patiently drilling a hole in one of the shells with his thin stone tool. 'What are you doing?' she asked.
He smiled and said nothing. He had an idea, but he wasn't sure how it would work and he wanted it to be a surprise.
One evening, the three of them had just finished their meal and Fast-as-deer said, 'How is the waterhole? Has it shrunk anymore?'
Doe-eyes nodded. 'It's much smaller than when everybody left,' she said.
'What are we going to do when the water runs out? I can hobble a little bit, but I am not yet strong enough to walk all the way to the next camp.'
'Don't worry about it,' said Thin-legs. 'The rains will come before the moon is eaten up and water will be the least of our problems.'
'You keep saying that, but I don't know how you can tell what's going to happen in the future.'
'Have I let you down yet?' asked Thin-legs.
Fast-as-deer shook his head. 'No...' he said slowly.
Doe-eyes bit her lower lip and looked worried, but remained silent. Thin-legs was worried too – but not about water. They were having a great time – he and Doe-eyes were together, food was plentiful, his beads were almost all drilled, but he knew that their life was precarious. Hyenas and lions hadn't attacked them – if they were assailed, the three of them wouldn't be able to put up any defence at all. He wasn’t being immodest, but Thin-legs knew that if he was injured, the others wouldn't survive. It was just a matter of time before something happened that would wipe them out. That's what he was worried about – the unknown.
The moon slowly whittled away. This particular day, one of his traps contained a honey-badger. They killed it but before roasting it, Thin-legs took out the animal's gut, cleaned it and laid it on a rock to dry. Doe-eyes and Fast-as-deer were curious but he just shrugged off their questions. Some more days passed and the gut dried out, becoming sinewy just the way Thin-legs had imagined it would be. It was a glorious time.
Thin-legs luck did not hold. The rains came exactly as he predicted – with the new moon. One day the sun was baking down and the next, dark clouds billowed in from the south, bringing heavy rains. The rain drops were fat as larva bugs and the thirsty earth slurped them in. The rain kept falling long after the ground could absorb any more. The waterhole swelled to four times its old size, dry beds became rushing streams and the brown grass seemed to turn green and grow to a man's height almost overnight. The three humans were miserable. The traps had collapsed, their makeshift roofs were leaking water, their fire was quenched and there was no dry kindling to make any more and while they were not thirsty, they were definitely hungry.
'What do we do?' asked Fast-as-deer.
Over the past days Thin-legs had become the de-facto leader of the group and they were looking to him for solutions. Thin-legs shook his head. For once, he couldn't think of a way out. 'We have to wait for the rains to reduce,' he said.
'That could be days and days. We'll starve by then,' said Doe-eyes.
'I'll go to the waterhole and see if I can hunt anything,' he said. But they all knew that one man on his own could do nothing, especially one like Thin-legs who, at the best of times, was no great hunter. 'May be if you come as well, it might help,' he continued, looking at Doe-eyes. Women were no good at hunting. They could not run fast and they did not have the strength in their arms to drive a spear. But she was better than nothing and they didn't have a choice if the three of them were to survive.
Their situation got worse. On the second day, they managed to catch a meerkat and forced themselves to eat the raw meat, but it was too chewy and they retched. Hunger gnawed at them. Thin-legs and Doe-eyes spent a whole day foraging, beyond where the women would normally go, and found a marula tree but that did not yield much because it was not the season for the juicy fruit to ripen. Four days with hardly any food made them weak and sleepy.
Later that afternoon, they heard noises and looked at each other. That sounded like a human tribe – which was even more dangerous than being attacked by a herd of hyenas. They would kill Thin-legs and Fast-as-deer and take Doe-eyes. Thin-legs gripped his spear and several men came over the ridge and into the camp. The man in the middle was big and hefty and he carried a mean-looking spear. He lunged at Doe-eyes. Before he could go to her help, the other men surrounded him.
The man who lunged at Doe-eyes was his old rival Strong-arm. Their tribe was back! A meal quickly revived them and there was lots of chatter and sharing of news. Big-stone's mate Yam-finder, who had been pregnant, was now the mother of a baby girl. The little boy who had irritated Thin-legs had lost his first milk tooth – he proudly showed the gap in his mouth. The tribe had turned back when the rains had come and the three of them were grateful for that. They couldn't have survived on their own for much longer.
Slim-waist hugged Doe-eyes and was talking almost non-stop while her friend was oddly silent
. Thin-legs wanted to announce that he and Doe-eyes were now mates. He had managed to finish drilling holes into all the beads, except four that he had crushed while drilling, and had strung them into a chain with the dried gut before the rains came. He now took it out of its hidey-hole, gave it to Doe-eyes, and stood up with a smile to make the announcement to the tribe. Doe-eyes pulled him down and flung the string of beads away from her. The chain, which had taken him days of effort to make, snapped and the beads scattered. Thin-legs looked at her, stunned. Doe-eyes went to Strong-arm and hugged him tightly. Her intentions could not be clearer. 'You are not a man,' she said. 'You can tell the future. You talk to the sky and you told us exactly when the rain would come.' She turned and buried her face in Strong-arm's chest.
A few days later, Thin-legs slunk away from the fire, and sat down with his back against the lookout rock, away from the rest of the tribe. Strong-arm and Doe-eyes were now officially mated. He scowled when he thought about it and drove the end of his spear into the ground next to him. He didn't need her, he thought fiercely, but he still felt miserable. There was a break in the clouds and he had a good view of the sky. As the sun dipped in the west, the azure dome turned dark and the stars appeared twinkling in the sky. He oriented himself with the Cross and then started looking – he had noticed an anomaly and was curious about it. It was winter and he shivered in the breeze that now blew from the east. He wanted to go back to the fire but that would ruin his night vision. Now, where was that star...
Some time later, he heard a scratching noise and he looked up in sudden fear – it could be a snake. He relaxed when he saw it was a human female. She sank into the ground next to him and he recognized her as Slim-waist. She stayed silent for a while and the warmth of her body felt nice against his side. 'What are you looking at?' she asked softly.
'The stars,' he said shortly. They fell silent again and after a little while, he thawed. He liked her unspoken company. He pointed south in the sky. 'Do you see those two bright stars?' It took her a while but eventually she figured out which ones he was referring to. 'Imagine a sleeping line between them and a standing up one between those two stars.' He wiggled his hand, pointing to the other two stars in the Southern Cross. 'Where the two lines meet, that is the centre of the sky.'
'What do you mean the centre of the sky?'
'All the stars move round that point. I wish there was a star there – we could call it the Pole Star.'
They were silent again for a bit and then Slim-waist said, 'I see what you mean. That bright star over there was just above that Baobab tree and now it's gone higher and those stars on that side have gone down. They seem to go round that point between the four stars.'
Thin-legs smiled in the darkness. He had tried to explain it to others in the tribe but nobody had shown any interest. He wondered why he hadn't noticed Slim-waist before. He knew her, of course, like any other person from his tribe but he had always dismissed her as the annoying companion of Doe-eyes. He shifted slightly and his leg rubbed against hers. He jerked away quickly, but she didn't seem to mind. He fell silent, thinking about Doe-eyes, wondering why she should get so freaked out because he predicted the rains accurately. Suddenly he noticed that she had moved closer and their sides were in contact – shoulder against shoulder, hip against hip and leg against leg. He froze for a moment but she asked about the red star.
'That star is different,' he said. 'It doesn't twinkle and it moves.'
'All stars move,' she said. 'We just talked about that.'
'They move but not relative to each other. Last month, that red star was there, in that group of stars,' he pointed to the left of where it currently was. 'And now it is with those stars. I don't understand why it wanders.'
Her hand stroked his thigh and he turned and kissed her. Instantly, the stars were forgotten. Afterwards, they lay back, panting. 'Wow!' she said. 'I wonder if we made a baby.'
'What do you mean?' he asked.
'You figured out how the stars move but haven't you noticed this? Once a man and woman start mating, the woman soon stops bleeding every mooncycle.'
'And soon after she stops bleeding, her belly swells and a baby comes out!' he said, stunned that he had not observed it before. He had always thought that making babies was an exclusively female affair. He suddenly felt fiercely protective. 'You had better not mate with anybody else,' he said, almost growling.
Slim-waist laughed. 'I'll never do that, Star-man,' she said, and kissed him.
And that was the beginning.
~ ~ ~
6. Success
Himagiri is a small village that fits in the gap between the western bank of the River Sarada and the base of the eponymous hill with the twelfth-century Vishnu temple at its peak. Each year, on the full moon day closest to the winter solstice, thousands of pilgrims from all over the district trek through the village to the temple. The rest of the time, its one hundred and sixty families are left almost completely alone with the fields stretching out along the bank of the river and half way round the hill like the wings of a butterfly on either side of its thin body. Back in the seventies, when Ramana lived there, government revenue records classified Himagiri as an interior village with irrigated lands that supported two paddy crops a year. Not that Ramana knew anything about interior or road-point villages in those days. He was only ten years old and he had crossed the ford that connected the village to the outside world.
That particular evening in early November, the village had a festive look. It was the day of Deepavali, the festival of lights. All the houses along the main street that stretched from the ford in the river to the start of the temple road up the hill were freshly whitewashed and lit up with masses of earthen lamps. Later on, once it got dark, every household would set off fireworks. 'Naanna, please, can we get some fireworks?' asked Ramana.
His father shook his head. 'You might as well burn money,' he said. 'What's the point?'
Ramana's eyes filled with tears. 'We never get any fireworks. Everybody else does.'
'I am not made of money,' said his father shortly. He turned away to pick up a pot and told his son, 'Help me fill the drum. Fireworks are dangerous and we might need the water.' Ramana and his family lived with the other lower caste families in a lane off the main street. They were all landless labourers who, as the saying goes, were born in debt, lived in debt and died in debt. The houses in the lane were all small square huts thatched with palm leaves that could go up in a conflagration from a single spark.
'No!' shouted Ramana. 'You are mean and never give me anything I want.' He rushed off before his parents could stop him. Everybody celebrated Deepavali by bursting firecrackers – flower pots which shot sparkling flames into the air high as a man is tall; Vishnu chakras, round coils that went spinning round and round; snakes, tiny discs that gave out black smoke and expanded into long reptilian shapes when lit; Lakshmi bombs that exploded with a huge noise and rockets, oh, the rockets. How he'd love to let a rocket off into the air and see if it went as high as the temple on top of the hill... It was not fair that his family was so poor that he could not afford any of this.
On the main street he saw Sreenu, a friend, come the other way eating a flaky sweet pastry. Ramana's mouth immediately watered. Sreenu's family lived next door to them and he couldn't afford such a good sweet either. 'Where did you get it?' he asked.
Sreenu licked a crumb off his finger and said, 'They are giving away sweets at the big house. Hurry, there was a big crowd already.'
Ramana nodded and broke into a run. The big house was the Rao family home, which was the only two-storey structure in the village. The Rao family owned more than half the land around the village, the rest being divided into small landholdings owned by the farming caste families. Below them in social and economic status were people like Ramana's parents who did not own any land and had only their labour to offer in return for a living. As Sreenu had said, there was a crowd in front of the big house – mostly adults, which surprised Sreenu. He woul
dn't have expected so many adults to clamour for sweets. He wriggled his way through them, helped by his small body. When he reached the front, he saw to his dismay that the sweets were all gone. They were now giving out saris for women and dhotis for the men. Mr Rao, the patriarch of the house, was sitting in a wicker-strung grandfather chair, with that sleek, well-fed, rounded look that only rich people have. He was a vigorous man, despite being in his sixties, and he had a benevolent smile on his face as he looked indulgently at the mob, while occasionally twirling his white moustache. The patriarch's son Nagesh, a man in his late twenties, looked much more harried. He stood in front of the villagers with a servant and the two men were trying to hold them in line with outspread arms so that the people arrived in front of the elder Mr Rao in single file. Nagesh's daughter, about the same age as Ramana, stood next to her grandfather and helped him. As each person came up to them, she took one set of clothes, male or female depending on who it was, and held it out to Mr Rao. The patriarch laid a hand on the gift and the girl would then hand it to the recipient who would bow deeply and bless Mr Rao and his family, wishing them eternal prosperity.
'There are enough clothes for everybody. Don't shove,' Nagesh shouted. The crowd pushed noisily but Nagesh and his servant held the line.
'Where are the sweets?' said Ramana.
Nagesh, the younger Mr Rao, ignored him. Ramana repeated his question again, shouting loudly to be heard above the noise of the crowd. The servant finally noticed the boy. 'The sweets are finished. You should have come earlier,' he said.
Ramana was crushed. The sweet that Sreenu had been eating looked so delicious and more expensive than any he had ever tasted. The fact that he couldn't get it now made it seem even sweeter. The crowd behind him pulsed and he stumbled forward beyond the line established by Nagesh and the servant. He raised himself to his knees and saw, behind the patriarch, a small table, a footstool really, made of wood with an intricate hand-carved design on its legs. But it wasn't the design that caught his eyes. On the table, almost entirely covering it, was a silver plate. The plate wasn't entirely flat. It rose in the middle like a little volcano rising to a crater and in the hole sat a tumbler, gently misting with condensation on it. But it wasn't even the tumbler that caught his eye, though it was made of sterling silver with a beautiful etching of mango leaves on it. Sweets were piled round the tumbler – Mysore pak, doodh peda, cashew barfi and even a boondhi laddu. And that was just on three quarters of the plate. The final fourth of the plate was heaped with a spicy mixture of lentils, cashew nuts, sev and half a dozen other ingredients, all fried a light golden and looking just as enticing as the sweets.
