One of the meanings of the word ‘olio’ is ‘a miscellany’.

The books in
the Aleph Olio series contain a selection of the finest writing to be
had on a variety of Indian themes—the great cities, aspects of
culture and civilization, and other uniquely Indian phenomena. Filled
with insights and haunting evocations of a country of unrivalled
complexity, beauty, tragedy and mystery, each Aleph Olio book
presents India in ways that it has seldom been seen before.
 Also in Aleph Olio
The Essence of Delhi
In a Violent Land
Love and Lust
Forthcoming in Aleph Olio
Ways of Dying
The Book of Kings
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
First published in India in 2019
by Aleph Book Company
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New Delhi 110 002
Anthology copyright © Aleph Book Company 2019
Cover image copyright © designer_an/Shutterstock
p. 139 (Acknowledgements) is an extension of the copyright page.
Copyright for the individual pieces and translations vests
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not been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in
future editions.
In the works of fiction in this anthology, names, characters, places and incidents are either
the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any
actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
In the works of non-fiction, the views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors’
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ISBN: 978-93-88292-55-9
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 Small towns always remind me of death.
My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees,
it is always the same,
in the summer or winter,
with the dust flying,
or the wind howling down the gorge.
—From ‘Small Towns and the River’
by Mamang Dai
 A NOTE ON STYLE

As the various stories and essays in this book have been excerpted
from books that have their own styles of spelling Indian words and
proper nouns, no attempt has been made to standardize the text
according to the Aleph house style. The only stylistic rules that have
been observed throughout the book are that British spellings have
been used and Indian words have not been italicized.
 CONTENTS

1. SHASHI THAROOR
Scheduled Castes, Unscheduled Change
2. RUSKIN BOND
The Night Train at Deoli
3. R. K. NARAYAN
An Astrologer’s Day
4. D. B. G. TILAK
The Man Who Saw God
Translated from the Telugu by Ranga Rao
5. RAHI MASOOM REZA
A Village Divided
Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright
6. SHRILAL SHUKLA
Raag Darbari
Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright
7. MADHURI VIJAY
Lorry Raja
8. ABHIMANYU KUMAR
The Lynching That Changed India
9. SNIGDHA POONAM
The Man Who Lived
10. P. SAINATH
Ganpati Yadav’s Gripping Life Cycle
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors
 one
~

SCHEDULED CASTES, UNSCHEDULED CHANGE*

SHASHI THAROOR

I
was about eight or nine when I first came across Charlis.
A few of us children were kicking a ball around the dusty
courtyard of my grandmother’s house in rural Kerala, where my
parents took me annually on what they called a holiday and I
regarded as a cross between a penance and a pilgrimage. (Their
pilgrimage, my penance.) Balettan, my oldest cousin, who was all of
thirteen and had a bobbing Adam’s apple to prove it, had just
streaked across me and kicked the ball with more force than he
realized he possessed. It soared upwards like a startled bird, curved
perversely away from us, and disappeared over our high brick wall
into the rubbish heap at the back of the neighbour’s house.
‘Damn,’ I said. I had grown up in Bombay where one said things
like that.
‘Go and get it, da,’ Balettan commanded one of the younger
cousins. Da was a term of great familiarity, used especially when
ordering young boys around.
A couple of the kids, stifling groans, dutifully set off toward the wall.
But before they could reach it the ball came sailing back over their
heads towards us, soon followed over the wall by a skinny, sallow
youth with a pockmarked face and an anxious grin. He seemed
vaguely familiar, someone I’d seen in the background on previous
holidays but not really noticed, though I wasn’t sure why.
‘Charlis!’ a couple of the kids called out. ‘Charlis got the ball!’
 Charlis sat on the wall, managing to look both unsure and pleased
with himself. Bits of muck from the rubbish heap clung to his shirt
and skin. ‘Can I play?’ he asked diffidently.
Balettan gave him a look that would have desiccated a coconut.
‘No, you can’t, Charlis,’ he said shortly, kicking the ball towards me,
away from the interloper who’d rescued it.
Charlis’s face lost its grin, leaving only the look of anxiety across it
like a shadow. He remained seated on the wall, his legs—bare and
thin below the grubby mundu he tied around his waist—dangling
nervously. The game resumed, and Charlis watched, his eyes liquid
with wistfulness. He would kick the brick wall aimlessly with his foot,
then catch himself doing it and stop, looking furtively at us to see
whether anyone had noticed. But no one paid any attention to him,
except me, and I was the curious outsider.
‘Why can’t he play?’ I finally found the courage to ask Balettan.
‘Because he can’t, that’s all,’ replied my eldest cousin.
‘But why? We can always use another player,’ I protested.
‘We can’t use him,’ Balettan said curtly. ‘Don’t you understand
anything, stupid?’
That was enough to silence me, because I had learned early on
that there was a great deal about the village I didn’t understand. A
city upbringing didn’t prepare you for your parents’ annual return to
their roots, to the world they’d left behind and failed to equip you for.
Everything, pretty much, was different in my grandmother’s house:
there were hurricane lamps instead of electric lights, breezes instead
of ceiling fans, a cow in the barn rather than a car in the garage.
Water didn’t come out of taps but from a well, in buckets laboriously
raised by rope pulleys; you poured it over yourself out of metal
vessels, hoping the maidservant who’d heated the bathwater over a
charcoal fire had not made it so hot you’d scald yourself. There were
the obscure indignities of having to be accompanied to the outhouse
by an adult with a gleaming stainless-steel flashlight and of needing
to hold his hand while you squatted in the privy, because the chair-
like commodes of the city had made you unfit to discharge your
waste as an Indian should, on his haunches. But it wasn’t just a
question of these inconveniences; there was the sense of being in a
different world. Bombay was busy, bustling, unpredictable; there
were children of every imaginable appearance, colour, language,
and religion in my school; it was a city of strangers jostling one
another all the time. In my grandmother’s village everyone I met
seemed to know one another and be related. They dressed alike, did
the same things day after day, shared the same concerns,
celebrated the same festivals. Their lives were ordered, predictable;
things were either done or not done, according to rules and
assumptions I’d never been taught in the city.
Some of the rules were easier than others to grasp. There were,
for instance, complicated hierarchies that everyone seemed to take
for granted. The ones I first understood were those relating to age.
This was absolute, like an unspoken commandment: everyone older
had to be respected and obeyed, even if they sent you off on trivial
errands they should really have done themselves. Then there was
gender: the women existed to serve the men, fetching and carrying
and stitching and hurrying for them, eating only after they had fed the
men first. Even my mother, who could hold her own at a Bombay
party with a cocktail in her hand, was transformed in Kerala into a
dutiful drudge, blowing into the wood fire to make the endless stacks
of thin, soft, crisp-edged dosas we all wolfed down. None of this had
to be spelled out, no explicit orders given; people simply seemed to
adjust naturally to an immutable pattern of expectations, where
everyone knew his place and understood what he had to do. As
someone who came from Bombay for a month’s vacation every year,
spoke the language badly, hated the bathrooms, and swelled up with
insect bites, I adjusted less than most. I sensed dimly that the
problem with Charlis, too, had something to do with hierarchy, but
since he was neither female nor particularly young, I couldn’t fit him
into what I thought I already knew of Kerala village life.
We finished the game soon enough, and everyone began heading
indoors. Charlis jumped off the wall. Instinctively, but acting with the
casual hospitability I usually saw around me, I went up to him and
said, ‘My mother’ll be making dosas for tea. Want some?’
I was puzzled by the look of near panic that flooded his face. ‘No,
no, that’s all right,’ he said, practically backing away from me. I could
see Balettan advancing towards us. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Charlis added,
casting me a strange look as he fled.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked Balettan.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he retorted. ‘What were you saying to
him?’
‘I just asked him to join us for some dosas, that’s all,’ I replied.
Seeing his expression, I added lamely, ‘you know, with all the other
kids.’
Balettan shook his head in a combination of disgust and dismay, as
if he didn’t know whether to be angry or sad. ‘You know what this
little foreigner did?’ he announced loudly as soon as we entered the
house. ‘He asked Charlis to come and have dosas with us!’
This was greeted with guffaws by some and clucks of disapproval
by others. ‘Poor little boy, what does he know?’ said my favorite
aunt, the widowed Rani-valiamma, gathering me to her ample bosom
to offer a consolation I hadn’t realized I needed. ‘It’s not his fault.’
‘What’s not my fault?’ I asked, struggling free of her embrace. The
Cuticura talcum powder in her cleavage tickled my nose, and the
effort not to sneeze made me sound even more incoherent than
usual. ‘Why shouldn’t I invite him? He got our ball back for us. And
you invite half the village anyway if they happen to pass by.’
‘Yes, but which half?’ chortled Kunjunni-mama, a local layabout
and distant relative who was a constant presence at our dining table
and considered himself a great wit. ‘Which half, I say?’ He laughed
heartily at his own question, his eyes rolling, a honking sound
emerging from the back of his nose.
I couldn’t see why anyone else found this funny, but I was soon
sent off to wash my hands. I sat down to my dosas feeling as
frustrated as a vegetarian at a kebab-shop.
‘Who is Charlis, anyway?’ I asked as my mother served me the
mild chutney she made specially since I couldn’t handle the fiery
spiced version everyone else ate.
‘I don’t know, dear, just a boy from the village,’ she responded.
‘Now finish your dosas, the adults have to eat.’
‘Charlis is the Prince of Wales, didn’t you know?’ honked Kunjunni-
mama, enjoying himself hugely. ‘I thought you went to a convent
school, Neel.’
‘First of all, only girls go to convent schools,’ I responded hotly.
‘And anyway the Prince of Wales is called Charles, not Charlis.’ I
shot him a look of pure hatred, but he was completely unfazed. He
soaked it in as a paddy field would a rainstorm, and honked some
more.
‘Charlis, Charles, what’s the difference to an illiterate Untouchable
with airs above his station? Anyway, that’s how it sounded in
Malayalam, and that’s how he wrote it. Charlis. So you see how the
Prince of Wales was born in Vanganassery.’ He exploded into self-
satisfied mirth, his honks suggesting he was inhaling his own pencil-
line moustache. I hadn’t understood what he meant, but I vowed not
to seek any further clarification from him.
My mother came to my rescue. I could see that her interest was
piqued. ‘But why Charles?’ she paused in her serving and asked
Kunjunni-mama. ‘Are they Christians?’
‘Christians?’ Kunjunni-mama honked again. ‘My dear chechi, what
do these people know of religion? Do they have any culture, any
traditions? One of them, that cobbler fellow, Mandan, named his
sons Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Can you imagine?
The fellow didn’t even know that “Mahatma” was a title and “Nehru” a
family surname. His brats were actually registered in school as M.
Mahatma Gandhi and M. Jawaharlal Nehru. So of course when this
upstart scavenger shopkeeper has to name his offspring, he went
one better. Forget nationalism, he turned to the British royal family.
So what if they had Christian names? So what if he couldn’t
pronounce them? You think Charlis is bad enough? He has two
sisters, Elizabeth and Anne. Of course everyone in the village calls
them Eli and Ana.’
This time even I joined in the laughter: I had enough Malayalam to
know that Eli meant ‘rat’ and Ana meant ‘elephant.’ But a Bombayite
sense of fairness asserted itself.
‘lt doesn’t matter what his name is,’ I said firmly. ‘Charlis seems a
nice boy. He went into the rubbish heap to get our ball. I liked him.’
‘Nice boy!’ Kunjunni-mama’s tone was dismissive, and this time
there was no laughter in his honk. ‘Rubbish heaps are where they
belong. They’re not clean. They don’t wash. They have dirty habits.’
‘What dirty habits?’ I asked, shaking off my mother’s restraining
hand. ‘Who’s they?’
‘Eat your food,’ Kunjunni-mama said to me, adding, to no one in
particular, ‘and now this Communist government wants to put them
in our schools. With our children.’ He snorted. ‘They’ll be drinking out
of our wells next.’
X
A few days later, the kids at home all decided to go to the local
stream for a dip. On earlier Kerala holidays my mother had firmly
denied me permission to go along, sure that if I didn’t drown I’d catch
a cold; but now I was older, I’d learned to swim, and I was capable of
toweling myself dry, so I was allowed the choice. It seemed a fun
idea, and in any case there was nothing better to do at home: I’d
long since finished reading the couple of Biggles books I’d brought
along. I set out with a sense of adventure.
We walked through dusty, narrow lanes, through the village,
Balettan in the lead, half a dozen of the cousins following. For a
while the houses we passed seemed to be those of relatives and
friends; the kids waved cheerful greetings to women hanging up their
washing, girls plaiting or picking lice out of each other’s hair, bare-
chested men in white mundus sitting magisterially in easy chairs,
perusing the day’s Mathrubhumi. Then the lane narrowed and the
whitewashed, tile-roofed houses with verdant backyards gave way to
thatched huts squeezed tightly together, their interiors shrouded in a
darkness from which wizened crones emerged stooping through low-
ceilinged doorways, the holes in their alarmingly stretched earlobes
gaping like open mouths. The ground beneath our feet, uneven and
stony, hurt to walk on, and a stale odour hung in the air, a compound
of rotting vegetation and decaying flesh. Despair choked my breath
like smoke. I began to wish I hadn’t come along.
At last we left the village behind, and picked our way down a rocky,
moss-covered slope to the stream. I didn’t know what I’d expected,
but it wasn’t this, a meandering rivulet that flowed muddily through
the fields. At the water’s edge, on a large rock nearby, women were
beating the dirt out of their saris; in the distance, a man squatted at a
bend in the stream, picking his teeth and defecating. My cousins
peeled off their shirts and ran into the water.
‘Come on, Neel,’ Balettan exhorted me with a peremptory wave of
the hand. ‘Don’t be a sissy. It’s not cold.’
‘Just don’t feel like it,’ I mumbled. ‘It’s okay. You go ahead. I’ll
watch.’
They tried briefly to persuade me to change my mind, then left me
to my own devices. I stood on the shore looking at them, heard their
squeals of laughter, then looked away at the man who had
completed his ablutions and was scooping water from the river to
wash himself. Downstream from him, my cousins ducked their heads
underwater. I quickly averted my gaze.
That was when I saw him. Charlis was sitting on a rocky overhang,
a clean shirt over his mundu, a book in his hand. But his eyes
weren’t on it. He was looking down at the stream, where my cousins
were playing.
I clambered over the rocks to him. When he spotted me he
seemed to smile in recognition, then look around anxiously. But there
was no one else about, and he relaxed visibly. ‘Neel,’ he said,
smiling. ‘Aren’t you swimming today?’
I shook my head. ‘Water’s dirty,’ I said.
‘Not dirty,’ he replied in Malayalam. ‘The stream comes from a
sacred river. Removes all pollution.’
I started to retort, then changed my mind. ‘So why don’t you swim?’
I asked.
‘Ah, I do,’ he said. ‘But not here.’ His eyes avoided mine, but
seemed to take in the stream, the washerwomen, my cousins. ‘Not
now.’
Bits of the half-understood conversation from the dining table
floated awkwardly back into my mind. I changed the subject. ‘It was
nice of you to get our ball back for us that day,’ I said.
‘Ah, it was nothing.’ He smiled unexpectedly, his pockmarks
creasing across his face. ‘My father beat me for it when I got home,
though. I had ruined a clean shirt. Just after my bath.’
 ‘But I thought you people didn’t—’ I found myself saying. ‘I’m sorry,’
I finished lamely.
‘Didn’t what?’ he asked evenly, but without looking at me. He was
clearly some years older than me, but not much bigger. I wondered
whether he was scared of me, and why.
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘I’m really sorry your father beat you.’
‘Ah, that’s all right. He does it all the time. It’s for my own good.’
‘What does your father do?’
Charlis became animated by my interest. ‘He has a shop,’ he said,
a light in his eyes. ‘In our part of the village. The Nair families don’t
come there, but he sells all sorts of nice things. Provisions and
things. And on Thursdays, you know what he has? The best halwa in
Vanganassery.’
‘Really? I like halwa.’ It was, in fact, the only Indian dessert I liked;
Bombay had given me a taste for ice cream and chocolate rather
than the deep-fried laddoos and bricklike Mysoor-paak that were the
Kerala favourites.
‘You like halwa?’ Charlis clambered to his feet. ‘Come on, I’ll get
you some.’
This time it was my turn to hesitate. ‘No, thanks,’ I said, looking at
my cousins cavorting in the water. ‘I don’t think I should. They’ll
worry about me. And besides, I don’t know my way about the
village.’
‘That’s okay,’ Charlis said. ‘I’ll take you home. Come on.’ He saw
the expression on my face. ‘It’s really good halwa,’ he added.
That was enough for a nine-year-old. ‘Wait for me,’ I said, and ran
down to the water’s edge. ‘See you at home!’ I called out to the
others.
Balettan was the only one who noticed me. ‘Sure you can find your
way back?’ he asked, as my cousins splashed around him, one
leaping onto his shoulders.
‘I’ll be okay,’ I replied, and ran back up the slope as Balettan went
under.
X
Charlis left me at the bend in our lane, where all I had to do was to
walk through a relative’s yard to reach my grandmother’s house. He
would not come any farther, and I knew better than to insist. I walked
slowly to the house, my mind full of the astonishment with which his
father had greeted my presence in his shop, the taste of his sugary,
milky tea still lingering on my palate, my hands full of the orange-
coloured wobbling slabs of halwa he had thrust upon me.
‘Neel, my darling!’ my mother exclaimed as I walked in. ‘Where
have you been? I’ve been so worried about you.’
‘Look what I’ve got!’ I said proudly, holding out the halwa. ‘And
there’s enough for everyone.’
‘Where did you get that?’ Balettan asked, a white thorthumundu, a
thin Kerala towel, in his hand, his hair still wet from his recent swim.
‘Charlis gave it to me,’ I said. ‘I went to his father’s shop. They—’
‘You did what?’ Balettan’s rage was frightening. He advanced
towards me.
‘I—I—’
‘Went to Charlis’s shop?’ He loomed over me, the towel draped
over his shoulder making him look even older and more threatening.
‘Took food from Untouchables?’ I began to shrink back from him.
‘Give that to me!’
‘I won’t!’ I snatched the halwa away from his hands, and as he
lunged, I turned and ran, the precious sweet sticky in my grasp. But
he was too fast for me; I had barely reached the yard when he
caught up, seized me roughly by the shoulders, and turned me
around to face him.
‘We don’t do this here, understand?’ he breathed fiercely. ‘This isn’t
Bombay.’ He pried my hands apart. The halwa gleamed in my palms.
‘Drop it,’ he commanded.
‘No,’ I wanted to say, but the word would not emerge. I wanted to
cry out for my mother, but she did not come out of the house.
‘Drop it,’ Balettan repeated, his voice a whiplash across what
remained of my resistance.
Slowly I opened my hands outwards in a gesture of submission.
The orange slabs slid reluctantly off them. It seemed to me they took
an age to fall, their gelatinous surfaces clinging to the soft skin of my
palms until the last possible moment. Then they were gone, fallen,
into the dust.
Balettan looked at them on the ground for a moment, then at me,
and spat upon them where they lay. ‘The dogs can have them,’ he
barked. He kicked more dust over them, then pulled me by the arm
back towards the house. ‘Don’t you ever do this again.’
I burst into tears then, and at last the words came, tripping over
themselves as I stumbled back into the house. ‘I hate you! All of you!
You’re horrible and mean and cruel and I’ll never come back here as
long as I live!’
X
But of course I was back the next year; I hardly had any choice in the
matter. For my parents, first-generation migrants to the big city, this
was the vital visit home, to their own parents and siblings, to the
friends and family they had left behind; it renewed them, it returned
them to a sense of themselves, it maintained their connection to the
past. I just came along because I was too young to be left behind,
indeed too young to be allowed the choice.
In the year that had passed since my last visit, there had been
much ferment in Kerala. Education was now universal and
compulsory and free, so all sorts of children were flocking to school
who had never been able to go before. There was talk of land
reform, and giving title to tenant farmers; I understood nothing of
this, but saw the throngs around men with microphones on the
roadside, declaiming angry harangues I could not comprehend.
None of this seemed, however, to have much to do with us, or to
affect the unchanging rhythms of life at my grandmother’s house.
My cousins were numerous and varied, the children of my mother’s
brothers and sisters and also of her cousins, who lived in the
neighbouring houses; sometimes the relationship was less clear than
that, but as they all ran about together and slept side by side like a
camping army on mats on the floor of my grandmother’s thalam, it
was difficult to tell who was a first cousin and who an uncle’s father-
in-law’s sister’s grandson. After all, it was also their holiday season,
and my parents’ return was an occasion for everyone to congregate
in the big house. On any given day, with my cousins joined by other
children from the village, there could be as many as a dozen kids
playing in the courtyard or going to the stream or breaking up for
cards on the back porch. Sometimes I joined them, but sometimes,
taking advantage of the general confusion, I would slip away
unnoticed, declining to make the effort to scale the barriers of
language and education and attitude that separated us, and sit alone
with a book. Occasionally someone would come and look for me.
Most often, that someone was my aunt, Rani-valiamma.
As a young widow, she didn’t have much of a life. Deprived of the
status that a husband would have given her, she seemed to walk on
the fringes of the house; it had been whispered by her late
husband’s family that only the bad luck her stars had brought into his
life could account for his fatal heart attack at the age of thirty-six, and
a whiff of stigma clung to her like a cloying perfume she could never
quite wash off. Remarriage was out of the question, nor could the
family allow her to make her own way in the world; so she returned
to the village house she had left as a bride, and tried to lose herself
in the routines of my grandmother’s household. She sublimated her
misfortune in random and frequent acts of kindness, of which I was a
favoured beneficiary. She would bring me well-sugared lime-and-
water from the kitchen without being asked, and whenever one of us
brought down a green mango from the ancient tree with a lucky
throw of a stone, she could be counted upon to return with it
chopped up and marinated in just the right combination of salt and
red chilli powder to drive my taste buds to ecstasy.
One day Rani-valiamma and I were upstairs, eating deviled raw
mango and looking out on the kids playing soccer below, when I saw
something and nearly choked. ‘Isn’t that Charlis?’ I asked, pointing to
the skinny boy who had just failed to save a goal.
‘Could be,’ she replied indifferently. ‘Let me see—yes, that’s
Charlis.’
‘But he’s playing in our yard! I remember last year—’
‘That was last year,’ Rani-valiamma said, and I knew that change
had come to the village.
 But not enough of it. When the game was over, the Nair kids
trooped in as usual to eat, without Charlis. When I asked innocently
where he was, it was Balettan, inevitably, who replied. ‘We play with
him at school, and we play with him outside,’ he said. ‘But playing
stops at the front door.’
I didn’t pursue the matter. I had learned that whenever any of the
Untouchable tradespeople came to the house, they were dealt with
outside.
With each passing vacation, though, the changes became more
and more apparent. For years my grandmother, continuing a tradition
handed down over generations, had dispensed free medication
(mainly aspirins and cough syrup) once a week to the poor villagers
who queued for it; then a real clinic was established in the village by
the government, and her amateur charity was no longer needed.
Electricity came to Vanganassery: my uncle strung up a brilliant neon
light above the dining table, and the hurricane lamps began to
disappear, along with the tin cans of kerosene from which they were
fuelled. The metal vessels in the bathroom were replaced by shiny
red plastic mugs. A toilet was installed in the outhouse for my
father’s, and my, convenience. And one year, one day, quite
naturally, Charlis stepped into the house with the other kids after a
game.
No one skipped a beat; it was as if everyone had agreed to pretend
there was nothing unusual. Charlis stood around casually, laughing
and chatting; some of the kids sat to eat, others awaited their turn.
No one invited Charlis to sit or to eat, and he made no move himself
to do either. Then those who had eaten rose and washed their hands
and joined the chatter, while those who had been with Charlis took
their places at the table. Still Charlis stood and talked, his manner
modest and respectful, until everyone but he had finished eating,
and then they all strolled out again to continue their game.
‘Charlis hasn’t eaten,’ I pointed out to the womenfolk.
‘I know, child, but what can we do?’ Rani-valiamma asked. ‘He
can’t sit at our table or be fed on our plates. Even you know that.’
‘It isn’t fair,’ I said, but without belligerence. What she had stated
was, I knew, like a law of nature. Even the servants would not wash
a plate off which an Untouchable had eaten.
‘You know,’ honked Kunjunni-mama, tucking into his third helping,
‘they say that boy is doing quite well at school. Very well, in fact.’
‘He stood first in class last term,’ a younger cousin chimed in.
‘First!’ I exclaimed. ‘And Balettan failed the year, didn’t he?’
‘Now, why would you be asking that?’ chortled Kunjunni-mama
meaningfully, slapping his thigh with his free hand.
I ignored the question and turned to my aunt. ‘He’s smarter than all
of us, and we can’t even give him something to eat?’
Rani-valiamma saw the expression on my face and squeezed my
hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll think of something.’
She did; and the next time Charlis walked in, he was served food
on a plantain leaf on the floor, near the back door. I was too
embarrassed to hover near him as I had intended to, but he seemed
to eat willingly enough on his own.
‘It’s just not right!’ I whispered to her as we watched him from a
discreet distance.
‘He doesn’t mind,’ she whispered back. ‘Why should you?’
And it was true that Charlis probably ate on the floor in his own
home.
When he had finished, a mug of water was given to him on the
back porch, so that he could wash his hands without stepping into
our bathroom. And the plantain leaf was thrown away: no plate to
wash.
We returned to the game, and now it was my turn to miskick. The
ball cleared the low wall at one end of the courtyard, hit the side of
the well, teetered briefly on the edge, and fell in with a splash.
It had happened before. ‘Go and get it, da,’ Balettan languidly
commanded one of the kids. The well was designed to be climbed
into: bricks jutted out from the inside wall at regular intervals, and
others had been removed to provide strategic footholds. But this was
a slippery business: since the water levels in the well rose and fell,
the inside surface was pretty slimy, and many of those who’d gone in
to retrieve a floating object, or a bucket that had slipped its rope, had
ended up taking an unplanned dip. The young cousin who had
received Balettan’s instruction hesitated, staring apprehensively into
the depths of the well.
‘Don’t worry,’ Charlis said quietly. ‘I’ll get it.’ He moved towards the
edge of the well.
‘No!’ There was nothing languid now about Balettan’s tone; we
could all hear the alarm in his voice. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ And Charlis,
one half-raised foot poised to climb onto the well, looked at him, his
face drained of expression, comprehension slowly burning into his
cheeks. Balettan ran forward, roughly pushing aside the boy who
had been afraid to go, and vaulted into the well.
I looked at Rani-valiamma, who had been watching the game.
‘Balettan’s right,’ she said. ‘Do you think anyone would have drunk
water at our house again if Charlis had gone into our well?’
X
Years passed; school holidays, and trips to Kerala, came and went.
Governments fell and were replaced in Kerala, farm labourers were
earning the highest daily wage in the country, and my almost
toothless grandmother was sporting a chalk-white set of new
dentures under her smile. Yet the house seemed much the same as
before. A pair of ceiling fans had been installed, in the two rooms
where family members congregated; a radio crackled with the news
from Delhi; a tap made its appearance in the bathroom, though the
pipe attached to it led from the same old well. These improvements,
and the familiarity that came from repeated visits, made the old
privations bearable. Kerala seemed less of a penance with each
passing year.
Charlis was a regular member of the group now, admitted to our
cardplaying sessions on the porch outside, joining us on our
expeditions to the cinema in the nearest town. But fun and games
seemed to hold a decreasing attraction for Charlis. He was
developing a reputation as something of an intellectual. He would
ask me, in painstaking textbook English, about something he had
read about the great wide world outside, and listen attentively to my
reply. I was, in the quaint vocabulary of the villagers, ‘convent-
educated’, a label they applied to anyone who emerged from the
elite schools in which Christian missionaries served their foreign
Lord by teaching the children of the Indian lordly. It was assumed
that I knew more about practically everything than anyone in the
village; but all I knew was what I had been taught from books,
whereas they had learned from life. Even as I wallowed in their
admiration, I couldn’t help feeling their lessons were the more
difficult, and the more valuable.
Balettan dropped out of school and began turning his attention to
what remained of the family lands. It seemed to me that his rough
edges became rougher as the calluses grew hard on his hands and
feet. He had less time for us now; in his late teens he was already a
full-fledged farmer, sitting sucking a straw between his teeth and
watching the boys kick a ball around. If he disapproved of Charlis’s
growing familiarity with all of us, though, he did not show it—not
even when Charlis asked me one day to go into town with him to see
the latest Bombay blockbuster.
I thought Charlis might have hoped I could explain the Hindi
dialogues to him, since Keralites learned Hindi only as a third
language from teachers who knew it, at best, as a second. But when
we got to the movie theatre, Charlis was not disappointed to discover
the next two screenings were fully sold out. ‘I am really wanting to
talk,’ he said in English, leading me to an eatery across the street.
The Star of India, as the board outside proclaimed, was a ‘military
hotel’; in other words, it served meat, which my grandmother did not.
‘I am thinking you might be missing it,’ Charlis said, ushering me to a
chair. It was only when the main dish arrived that I realized that I was
actually sitting and eating at the same table with Charlis for the first
time.
If he was conscious of this, Charlis didn’t show it. He began talking,
hesitantly at first, then with growing fluency and determination, about
his life and his ambitions. His face shone when he talked of his
father, who beat him with a belt whenever he showed signs of
neglecting his books. ‘You can do better than I did,’ he would say
before bringing the whip down on Charlis. ‘You will do better.’
And now Charlis was aiming higher than anyone in his family, in his
entire community, had ever done before. He was planning to go to
university.
‘Listen, Charlis,’ I said gently, not wanting to discourage him. ‘You
know it’s not going to be easy. I know you’re first in class and
everything, but that’s in the village. Don’t forget you’ll be competing
for places with kids from the big cities. From the—convents.’
‘I am knowing that,’ Charlis replied simply. Then, from the front
pocket of his shirt, he drew out a battered notebook filled with small,
tightly packed curlicues of Malayalam lettering in blue ink,
interspersed with phrases and sentences in English in the same
precise hand. ‘Look,’ he said, jabbing at a page. ‘The miserable hath
no other medicine / But only hope. — Shakespeare, Measure for
Measure, III.i.2,’ I read. And a little lower down, ‘Men at some time
are masters of their fates; / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
/ But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’ Charlis had underlined
these words.
‘Whenever I am reading something that inspires me, I am writing it
down in this book,’ Charlis said proudly. ‘Shakespeare is great man,
isn’t it?’
His Malayalam was of course much better, but in English Charlis
seemed to cast off an invisible burden that had less to do with the
language than with its social assumptions. In speaking it, in quoting
it, Charlis seemed to be entering another world, a heady place of
foreign ideas and unfamiliar expressions, a strange land in which the
old rules no longer applied.
‘For the Colonel’s Lady an’ Judy O’Grady,’ he declaimed at one
point, ‘“are sisters under their skins!”’—Rudyard Kipling,’ he added.
‘Is that how you are pronouncing it?’
‘Rudyard, Roodyard, I haven’t a clue,’ I confessed. ‘But who cares,
Charlis? He’s just an old imperialist fart. What does anything he ever
wrote have to do with any of us today, in independent India?’
Charlis looked surprised, then slightly averted his eyes. ‘But are we
not,’ he asked softly, ‘are we not brothers under our skins?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, too quickly. And it was I who couldn’t meet his
gaze.
The following summer, I was sitting down to my first meal of the
holiday at my grandmother’s dining table when Rani-valiamma said,
‘Charlis was looking for you.’
‘Really?’ I was genuinely pleased, as much by Charlis’s effort as by
the fact that it could be mentioned so casually. ‘What did he want?’
‘He came to give you the news personally,’ Rani-valiamma said.
‘He’s been admitted to Trivandrum University.’
‘Wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’
‘Untouchable quota,’ honked the ever-present Kunjunni-mama,
whose pencil-line mustache had gone from bold black to sleek silver
without his ever having done a stroke of work in his life. ‘Reserved
seats for the Children of God. Why, Chandrasekhara Menon’s son
couldn’t get in after all the money they spent on sending him to
boarding school, and here Charlis is on his way to University.’
‘The village panchayat council is organizing a felicitation for him
tomorrow,’ Rani-valiamma said. ‘Charlis wanted you to come, Neel.’
‘Of course I will,’ I responded. ‘We must all go.’
‘All?’ snorted Kunjunni-mama, who was incapable of any action
that could be called affirmative. ‘To felicitate Charlis? Speak for
yourself, boy. If you want to attend an Untouchable love-in organized
by the Communists who claim to represent our village, more’s the
pity. But don’t expect to drag any members of the Nair community
with you.’
‘I’ll come with you, Neel,’ said a quiet voice by my side. It was
Rani-valiamma, her ever-obliging manner transformed into
something approaching determination.
‘And me,’ chirped a younger cousin, emboldened. ‘May I go too,
Amma?’ asked another. And by the next evening I had assembled a
sizable delegation from our extended family to attend the celebration
for Charlis.
Kunjunni-mama and Balettan sat at the table, nursing their cups of
tea, and watched us all troop out. Balettan was silent, his manner
distant rather than disapproving. As I passed them, I heard the
familiar honk: ‘Felicitation, my foot.’
The speeches had begun when we arrived, and our entry sparked
something of a commotion in the meeting hall, as Charlis’s relatives
and the throng of well-wishers from his community made way for us,
whispers of excitement and consternation rippling like a current
through the room. I thought I saw a look of sheer delight shine like a
sunburst on Charlis’s face, but that may merely have been a reaction
to hearing the panchayat president say, ‘The presence of all of you
here today proves that Charlis’s achievement is one of which the
entire village is proud.’ We applauded that, knowing our arrival had
given some meaning to that trite declaration.
After the speeches, and the garlanding, and Charlis’s modest reply,
the meeting broke up. I wanted to congratulate Charlis myself, but he
was surrounded by his own people, all proud and happy and
laughing. We made our way towards the door, and then I heard his
voice.
‘Neel! Wait!’ he called out. I turned, to see him pulling himself away
from the crush and advancing toward me with a packet in his hands.
‘You mustn’t leave without this.’
He stretched out the packet towards me, beaming. I opened it and
peered in. Orange slabs of halwa quivered inside.
‘It’s the last bag,’ Charlis said, the smile never fading from his face.
‘My father sold the shop to pay for me to go to university. We’re all
moving to Trivandrum.’ I looked at him, finding no words. He pushed
the halwa at me. ‘I wanted you to have it.’
I took the bag from him without a word. We finished the halwa
before we got home.
X
Years passed. Men landed on the moon, a woman became prime
minister, wars were fought; in other countries, coups and revolutions
brought change (or attempted to), while in India elections were won
and lost and things changed (or didn’t). I couldn’t go down to Kerala
every time my parents did; my college holidays didn’t always
coincide with Dad’s leave from the office. When I did manage a visit,
it wasn’t the same as before. I would come for a few days, be
indulged by Rani-valiamma, and move on. There was not that much
to do. Rani-valiamma had started studying for a teacher’s training
diploma. My grandmother spent most of her time reading the
scriptures and chewing areca, usually simultaneously. Balettan,
tough and taciturn, was the man of the house; now that agriculture
was his entire life, we had even less to say to each other than ever.
My cousins were scattered in several directions; a new generation of
kids played football in the yard. No one had news of Charlis.
I began working in an advertising agency in Bombay, circulating in
a brittle, showy world that could not have had less in common with
Vanganassery. When I went to the village the talk was of pesticides
and irrigation, of the old rice-levy and the new, government-
subsidized fertilizer, and, inevitably, of the relentless pace of land
reform, which was taking away the holdings of traditional landlords
and giving them to their tenants. It was clear that Balettan did not
understand much of this, and that he had not paid a great deal of
attention to what was happening.
‘Haven’t you received any notification from the authorities,
Balettan?’ I asked him one day, when his usual reticence seemed
only to mask ineffectually the mounting level of anxiety in his eyes.
‘Some papers came,’ he said in a tone whose aggressiveness
betrayed his deep shame at his own inadequacy. ‘But do I have time
to read them? I’m a busy man. Do I run a farm or push papers like a
clerk?’
‘Show them to Neel,’ Kunjunni-mama suggested, and as soon as I
opened the first envelope I realized Balettan, high-school dropout
and traditionalist, had left it too late.
‘What are these lands here, near Kollengode?’
‘They’re ours, of course.’
‘Not anymore, Balettan. Who’s T. Krishnan Nair, son of Kandath
Narayananunni Nair?’
‘He farms them for us, ever since Grandfather died. I farm here at
Vanganassery, and Krishnan Nair takes care of Kollengode, giving
us his dues after each harvest. It’s the only way. I can’t be at both
places at the same time, can I?’
‘Well, it says here he’s just been registered as the owner of those
lands. You were given fourteen days to show cause as to why his
claim should not have been admitted. Why didn’t you file an
objection, Balettan?’
We were all looking at him. ‘How can they say Krishnan Nair owns
our land? Why, everybody knows it’s our land. It’s been ours ever
since anyone can remember. It was ours before Grandmother was
born.’
‘It’s not ours anymore, Balettan. The government has just taken it
away.’
Balettan shifted uneasily in his chair, a haunted, uncomprehending
look on his face. ‘But they can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Can they?’
‘They can, Balettan,’ I told him sadly. ‘You know they can.’
‘We’ve got to do something,’ honked Kunjunni-mama with
uncharacteristic urgency. ‘Neel, you’ve got to do something.’
‘Me? What can I do? I’m a Bombay-wallah. I know less about all
this than any of you.’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Kunjunni-mama. ‘but you’re an educated man.
You can read and understand these documents. You can speak to
the Collector. He’s the top IAS man in the district, probably another
city type like you, convent-educated. You can speak to him in
English and explain what has happened. Come on, Neel. You’ve got
to do it.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said dubiously. The advertising life had not brought
me into contact with any senior Indian Administrative Service
officers. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would say to the Collector
when I met him.
And then I saw the look in Balettan’s eyes. He had grown up
knowing instinctively the rules and rituals of village society, the
cycles of the harvest, how to do the right thing and what was never
done. He could, without a second thought, climb trees that would
make most of us dizzy, descend into wells, stand knee-deep in the
slushy water of a paddy field to sprout grain into the world. But all
these were skills he was born with, rhythms that sang in his blood
like the whisper of his mother’s breath. He wore a mundu around his
waist, coaxed his buffalo across the fields, and treated his labourers
and his family as his ancestors had done for thousands of years. He
was good at the timeless realities of village India; but India, even
village
India, was no longer a timeless place. ‘Don’t you understand
anything, stupid?’ he had asked me all those years ago; and in his
eyes I saw what I imagined he must have seen, at that time, in mine.
 ‘I’ll go,’ I said, as Balettan averted his eyes. In relief, perhaps, or in
gratitude. It didn’t matter which.
X
The Collector’s office in Palghat, the district capital, was already
besieged by supplicants when I arrived. Two greasy clerks presided
over his antechamber, their desks overflowing with papers loosely
bound in crumbling files held together with string. Three phones rang
intermittently, and were answered in a wide variety of tones, ranging
from the uncooperative to the unctuous, depending on who was
calling. People crowded round the desks, seeking attention, thrusting
slips of paper forward, folding hands in entreaty, shouting to be
heard. Occasionally a paper was dealt with and a khaki-uniformed
peon sent for to carry it somewhere; sometimes, people were sent
away, though most seemed to be waved towards the walls where
dozens were already waiting, weary resignation on their faces, for
their problems to be dealt with. All eyes were on the closed teak door
at the corner, bearing the brass nameplate M. C. THEKKOTE, I.A.S.,
behind which their destinies were no doubt being determined.
‘It’s hopeless,’ I said to Balettan, who had accompanied me. ‘I told
you we should have tried to get an appointment. We’ll be here all
day.’
‘How would we have got an appointment?’ Balettan asked,
reasonably, since we did not yet have a phone in the village. ‘No, this
is the only way. You go and give them your card.’
I did not share Balettan’s faith in the magical properties of this
small rectangular advertisement of my status, but I battled my way to
the front of one of the desks and thrust it at an indifferent clerk.
‘Please take this to the Collector-saare,’ I said, trying to look both
important and imploring. ‘I must see him.’
The clerk seemed unimpressed by the colourful swirls and
curlicues that proclaimed my employment by AdAge, Bombay’s
smartest new agency. ‘You and everyone else,’ he said sceptically,
putting the card aside. ‘Collector-saare very busy today. You come
back tomorrow, we will see.’
 At this point Balettan’s native wisdom asserted itself. He insinuated
a five-rupee note into the clerk’s palm. ‘Send the card in,’ he said.
‘It’s important.’
The clerk was instantly responsive. ‘I am doing as you wish,’ he
said grudgingly, ‘but you will still have to wait. Collector-saare is so
so very busy today.’
‘You’ve told us that already,’ I replied. ‘We’ll wait.’
A peon wandered in, bearing tea for the clerks. Once the man at
the desk had satisfied himself that his tea was sugared to his taste,
he added my card to the pile of papers he gave the peon to take in to
the Collector. ‘It will take some time,’ he added curtly.
It didn’t. Soon after the door had closed behind the peon, the black
phone on the clerk’s desk jangled peremptorily. ‘Yes, saar. Yes, saar,’
he said, perspiring. ‘No, saar. Not long. Yes, saar. At once, saar.’ He
had stood up to attention during this exchange, and when he
replaced the receiver there was a new look of respect in his eyes.
‘Collector-saar will be seeing you now, saar,’ he said, with a salaam.
‘You didn’t explain who you were, saar.’ The five-rupee note re-
emerged in his hand. ‘You seem to have dropped this by mistake,
saar,’ he said shamefacedly, handing it to Balettan.
‘Keep it,’ Balettan said, as mystified as I by the transformation in
the man’s attitude. But the clerk begged him to take it back, and
bowed and scraped us towards the imposing doorway.
‘Obviously Bombay’s ad world counts for more than I thought with
these government-wallahs,’ I whispered to Balettan.
‘He’s just happy to be able to speak English with someone,’
Balettan suggested.
The clerk opened the door into a high-ceilinged office. The
Collector rose from behind a mahogany desk the size of a Ping-Pong
table, and stretched out a hand. ‘It’s so good to see you again, Neel,’
he said.
It was Charlis.
‘Charlis!’ I exclaimed, astonishment overcoming delight. ‘B—but—
the name—the IAS—’
‘You never did know my family name, did you? After all these
years.’ Charlis spoke without reproach. ‘And yes, I’ve been in the
IAS for some time now.’ The Administrative Service, too, I found
myself thinking unworthily, offered one more of the quotas Kunjunni-
mama liked to complain about. ‘But this is the first time I’ve been
posted so close to Vanganassery. I’ve barely got here, but once I’ve
settled in, I’m planning to visit the village again soon.’ He added
casually, ‘It’s part of my district, after all. That’d make it an official
visit, you see.’
He seemed to enjoy the thought, and I found myself looking at
Balettan. I didn’t know what I expected to find in his expression, but it
certainly wasn’t the combination of hope, respect, and, yes,
admiration with which he now regarded the man across the desk.
Charlis seemed to catch it, too. ‘But what is this? We haven’t even
asked Balettan to sit down.’ He waved us to chairs, as tea appeared.
‘Tell me, what can I do for you?’
We explained the problem, and Charlis was sympathetic but grave.
The law was the law; it was also just, undoing centuries of absentee
landlordism. In our case, though, thanks to Balettan’s inattention
(though Charlis didn’t even imply that), it had been applied unfairly,
leaving Balettan with less land than his former tenant. Some of this
could be undone, and Charlis would help, but we would not be able
to get back all the land that had been confiscated. Charlis explained
all this carefully, patiently, speaking principally to Balettan rather than
to me. ‘Some changes are good, some are bad,’ he concluded, ‘but
very few changes can be reversed.’
‘Shakespeare or Rudyard Kipling?’ I asked, only half in jest,
remembering his little notebook.
‘Neither,’ he replied quite seriously. ‘Charlis Thekkote. But you can
quote me if you like.’
Charlis was as good as his word. He helped Balettan file the
necessary papers to reclaim some of his land, and made sure the
files were not lost in the bureaucratic maze. And the week after our
visit, knowing I would not be staying in Vanganassery long, Charlis
came to the village.
I will never forget the sight of Charlis seated at our dining table with
the entire family bustling attentively around him: Rani-valiamma, on
leave from the school where she was now vice-principal, serving him
her soft, crisp-edged dosas on Grandmother’s best stainless-steel
thali; Kunjunni-mama, honking gregariously, pouring him more tea;
and half the neighbours, standing at a respectful distance, gawking
at the dignitary.
But the image that will linger longest in my memory is from even
before that, from the moment of Charlis’s arrival at the village. His
official car cannot drive the last half-mile to our house, on the narrow
paths across the paddy fields, so Charlis steps down, in his off-white
safari suit and open-toed sandals, and walks to our front door,
through the dust. We greet him there and begin to usher him into the
house, but Balettan stops us outside. For a minute all the old fears
come flooding back into my mind and Charlis’s, but it is only for a
minute, because Balettan is shouting out to the servant, ‘Can’t you
see the Collector-saare is waiting? Hurry up!’
I catch Charlis’s eye; he smiles. The servant pulls a bucketful of
water out of the well to wash Charlis’s feet.

*Extracted from India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond

 two
~
THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI
RUSKIN BOND

W
hen I was at college I used to spend my summer vacations in
Dehra, at my grandmother’s place. I would leave the plains
early in May and return late in July. Deoli was a small station
about thirty miles from Dehra. It marked the beginning of the heavy
jungles of the Indian Terai.
The train would reach Deoli at about five in the morning when the
station would be dimly lit with electric bulbs and oil lamps, and the
jungle across the railway tracks would just be visible in the faint light
of dawn. Deoli had only one platform, an office for the stationmaster
and a waiting room. The platform boasted a tea stall, a fruit vendor
and a few stray dogs; not much else because the train stopped there
for only ten minutes before rushing on into the forests.
Why it stopped at Deoli, I don’t know. Nothing ever happened
there. Nobody got off the train and nobody got on. There were never
any coolies on the platform. But the train would halt there a full ten
minutes and then a bell would sound, the guard would blow his
whistle, and presently Deoli would be left behind and forgotten.
I used to wonder what happened in Deoli behind the station walls. I
always felt sorry for that lonely little platform and for the place that
nobody wanted to visit. I decided that one day I would get off the
train at Deoli and spend the day there just to please the town.
I was eighteen, visiting my grandmother, and the night train
stopped at Deoli. A girl came down the platform selling baskets.
 It was a cold morning and the girl had a shawl thrown across her
shoulders. Her feet were bare and her clothes were old but she was
a young girl, walking gracefully and with dignity.
When she came to my window, she stopped. She saw that I was
looking at her intently, but at first she pretended not to notice. She
had pale skin, set off by shiny black hair and dark, troubled eyes.
And then those eyes, searching and eloquent, met mine.
She stood by my window for some time and neither of us said
anything. But when she moved on, I found myself leaving my seat
and going to the carriage door. I stood waiting on the platform
looking the other way. I walked across to the tea stall. A kettle was
boiling over a small fire, but the owner of the stall was busy serving
tea somewhere on the train. The girl followed me behind the stall.
‘Do you want to buy a basket?’ she asked. ‘They are very strong,
made of the finest cane…’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a basket.’
We stood looking at each other for what seemed a very long time,
and she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a basket?’
‘All right, give me one,’ I said, and took the one on top and gave
her a rupee, hardly daring to touch her fingers.
As she was about to speak, the guard blew his whistle. She said
something, but it was lost in the clanging of the bell and the hissing
of the engine. I had to run back to my compartment. The carriage
shuddered and jolted forward.
I watched her as the platform slipped away. She was alone on the
platform and she did not move, but she was looking at me and
smiling. I watched her until the signal box came in the way and then
the jungle hid the station. But I could still see her standing there
alone…
I stayed awake for the rest of the journey. I could not rid my mind of
the picture of the girl’s face and her dark, smouldering eyes.
But when I reached Dehra the incident became blurred and distant,
for there were other things to occupy my mind. It was only when I
was making the return journey, two months later, that I remembered
the girl.
 I was looking out for her as the train drew into the station, and I felt
an unexpected thrill when I saw her walking up the platform. I sprang
off the footboard and waved to her.
When she saw me, she smiled. She was pleased that I
remembered her. I was pleased that she remembered me. We were
both pleased and it was almost like a meeting of old friends.
She did not go down the length of the train selling baskets but
came straight to the tea stall. Her dark eyes were suddenly filled with
light. We said nothing for some time but we couldn’t have been more
eloquent.
I felt the impulse to put her on the train there and then, and take
her away with me. I could not bear the thought of having to watch
her recede into the distance of Deoli station. I took the baskets from
her hand and put them down on the ground. She put out her hand for
one of them, but I caught her hand and held it.
‘I have to go to Delhi,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I do not have to go anywhere.’
The guard blew his whistle for the train to leave, and how I hated
the guard for doing that.
‘I will come again,’ I said. ‘Will you be here?’
She nodded again and, as she nodded, the bell clanged and the
train slid forward. I had to wrench my hand away from the girl and
run for the moving train.
This time I did not forget her. She was with me for the remainder of
the journey and for long after. All that year she was a bright, living
thing. And when the college term finished, I packed in haste and left
for Dehra earlier than usual. My grandmother would be pleased at
my eagerness to see her.
I was nervous and anxious as the train drew into Deoli, because I
was wondering what I should say to the girl and what I should do. I
was determined that I wouldn’t stand helplessly before her, hardly
able to speak or do anything about my feelings.
The train came to Deoli, and I looked up and down the platform but
I could not see the girl anywhere.
I opened the door and stepped off the footboard. I was deeply
disappointed and overcome by a sense of foreboding. I felt I had to
do something and so I ran up to the stationmaster and said, ‘Do you
know the girl who used to sell baskets here?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said the stationmaster. ‘And you’d better get on the
train if you don’t want to be left behind.’
But I paced up and down the platform and stared over the railings
at the station yard. All I saw was a mango tree and a dusty road
leading into the jungle. Where did the road go? The train was moving
out of the station and I had to run up the platform and jump for the
door of my compartment. Then, as the train gathered speed and
rushed through the forests, I sat brooding in front of the window.
What could I do about finding a girl I had seen only twice, who had
hardly spoken to me, and about whom I knew nothing—absolutely
nothing—but for whom I felt a tenderness and responsibility that I
had never felt before?
My grandmother was not pleased with my visit after all, because I
didn’t stay at her place more than a couple of weeks. I felt restless
and ill at ease. So I took the train back to the plains, meaning to ask
further questions of the stationmaster at Deoli.
But at Deoli there was a new stationmaster. The previous man had
been transferred to another post within the past week. The new man
didn’t know anything about the girl who sold baskets. I found the
owner of the tea stall, a small, shrivelled-up man, wearing greasy
clothes, and asked him if he knew anything about the girl with the
baskets.
‘Yes, there was such a girl here. I remember quite well,’ he said.
‘But she has stopped coming now.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What happened to her?’
‘How should I know?’ said the man. ‘She was nothing to me.’
And once again I had to run for the train.
As Deoli platform receded, I decided that one day I would have to
break journey there, spend a day in the town, make inquiries, and
find the girl who had stolen my heart with nothing but a look from her
dark, impatient eyes.
With this thought I consoled myself throughout my last term in
college. I went to Dehra again in the summer and when, in the early
hours of the morning, the night train drew into Deoli station, I looked
up and down the platform for signs of the girl, knowing I wouldn’t find
her but hoping just the same.
Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to break journey at Deoli and
spend a day there. (If it was all fiction or a film, I reflected, I would
have got down and cleared up the mystery and reached a suitable
ending to the whole thing.) I think I was afraid to do this.
I was afraid of discovering what really happened to the girl.
Perhaps she was no longer in Deoli, perhaps she was married,
perhaps she had fallen ill…
In the last few years I have passed through Deoli many times, and
I always look out of the carriage window, half expecting to see the
same unchanged face smiling up at me. I wonder what happens in
Deoli, behind the station walls. But I will never break my journey
there. I prefer to keep hoping and dreaming and looking out of the
window up and down that lonely platform, waiting for the girl with the
baskets.
I never break my journey at Deoli but I pass through as often as I
can.
 three
~
AN ASTROLOGER’S DAY
R. K. NARAYAN

P
unctually at midday he opened his bag and spread out his
professional equipment, which consisted of a dozen cowrie
shells, a square piece of cloth with obscure, mystic charts on it,
a notebook and a bundle of palmyra writing. His forehead was
resplendent with sacred ash and vermilion, and his eyes sparkled
with a sharp abnormal gleam which was really an outcome of a
continual searching look for customers, but which his simple clients
took to be a prophetic light and felt comforted. The power of his eyes
was considerably enhanced by their position—placed as they were
between the painted forehead and the dark whiskers which streamed
down his cheeks: even a half-wit’s eyes would sparkle in such a
setting. To crown the effect he wound a saffron-coloured turban
around his head. This colour scheme never failed. People were
attracted to him as bees are attracted to cosmos or dahlia stalks. He
sat under the boughs of a spreading tamarind tree which flanked a
path running through the Town Hall Park. It was a remarkable place
in many ways: a surging crowd was always moving up and down this
narrow road morning till night. A variety of trades and occupations
was represented all along its way: medicine-sellers, sellers of stolen
hardware and junk, magicians and, above all, an auctioneer of cheap
cloth, who created enough din all day to attract the whole town. Next
to him in vociferousness came a vendor of fried groundnuts, who
gave his ware a fancy name each day, calling it Bombay Ice-Cream
one day, and on the next Delhi Almond, and on the third Raja’s
Delicacy, and so on and so forth, and people flocked to him. A
considerable portion of this crowd dallied before the astrologer too.
The astrologer transacted his business by the light of a flare which
crackled and smoked up above the groundnut heap nearby. Half the
enchantment of the place was due to the fact that it did not have the
benefit of municipal lighting. The place was lit up by shop lights. One
or two had hissing gaslights, some had naked flares stuck on poles,
some were lit up by old cycle lamps and one or two, like the
astrologer’s, managed without lights of their own. It was a
bewildering criss-cross of light rays and moving shadows. This
suited the astrologer very well, for the simple reason that he had not
in the least intended to be an astrologer when he began life; and he
knew no more of what was going to happen to others than he knew
what was going to happen to himself next minute. He was as much a
stranger to the stars as were his innocent customers. Yet he said
things which pleased and astonished everyone: that was more a
matter of study, practice and shrewd guesswork. All the same, it was
as much an honest man’s labour as any other, and he deserved the
wages he carried home at the end of a day.
He had left his village without any previous thought or plan. If he
had continued there he would have carried on the work of his
forefathers—namely, tilling the land, living, marrying, and ripening in
his cornfield and ancestral home. But that was not to be. He had to
leave home without telling anyone, and he could not rest till he left it
behind a couple of hundred miles. To a villager it is a great deal, as if
an ocean flowed between.
He had a working analysis of mankind’s troubles: marriage, money
and the tangles of human ties. Long practice had sharpened his
perception. Within five minutes he understood what was wrong. He
charged three pies per question and never opened his mouth till the
other had spoken for at least ten minutes, which provided him
enough stuff for a dozen answers and advices. When he told the
person before him, gazing at his palm, ‘In many ways you are not
getting the fullest results for your efforts,’ nine out of ten were
disposed to agree with him. Or he questioned: ‘Is there any woman
in your family, maybe even a distant relative, who is not well
disposed towards you?’ Or he gave an analysis of character: ‘Most
of your troubles are due to your nature. How can you be otherwise
with Saturn where he is? You have an impetuous nature and a rough
exterior.’ This endeared him to their hearts immediately, for even the
mildest of us loves to think that he has a forbidding exterior.
The nuts-vendor blew out his flare and rose to go home. This was
a signal for the astrologer to bundle up too, since it left him in
darkness except for a little shaft of green light which strayed in from
somewhere and touched the ground before him. He picked up his
cowrie shells and paraphernalia and was putting them back into his
bag when the green shaft of light was blotted out; he looked up and
saw a man standing before him. He sensed a possible client and
said: ‘You look so careworn. It will do you good to sit down for a
while and chat with me.’ The other grumbled some vague reply. The
astrologer pressed his invitation; whereupon the other thrust his
palm under his nose, saying: ‘You call yourself an astrologer?’ The
astrologer felt challenged and said, tilting the other’s palm towards
the green shaft of light: ‘Yours is a nature…’
‘Oh, stop that,’ the other said. ‘Tell me something worthwhile…’
Our friend felt piqued. ‘I charge only three pies per question, and
what you get ought to be good enough for your money…’ At this the
other withdrew his arm, took out an anna and flung it out to him,
saying, ‘I have some questions to ask. If I prove you are bluffing, you
must return that anna to me with interest.’
‘If you find my answers satisfactory, will you give me five rupees?’
‘No.’
‘Or will you give me eight annas?’
‘All right, provided you give me twice as much if you are wrong,’
said the stranger. This pact was accepted after a little further
argument. The astrologer sent up a prayer to heaven as the other lit
a cheroot. The astrologer caught a glimpse of his face by the
matchlight. There was a pause as cars hooted on the road, jutka
drivers swore at their horses and the babble of the crowd agitated
the semi-darkness of the park. The other sat down, sucking his
cheroot, puffing out, sat there ruthlessly. The astrologer felt very
uncomfortable. ‘Here, take your anna back. I am not used to such
challenges. It is late for me today…’ He made preparations to bundle
up. The other held his wrist and said, ‘You can’t get out of it now. You
dragged me in while I was passing.’ The astrologer shivered in his
grip; and his voice shook and became faint. ‘Leave me today. I will
speak to you tomorrow.’ The other thrust his palm in his face and
said, ‘Challenge is challenge. Go on.’ The astrologer proceeded with
his throat drying up. ‘There is a woman…’
‘Stop,’ said the other. ‘I don’t want all that. Shall I succeed in my
present search or not? Answer this and go. Otherwise I will not let
you go till you disgorge all your coins.’ The astrologer muttered a few
incantations and replied, ‘All right. I will speak. But will you give me a
rupee if what I say is convincing? Otherwise I will not open my
mouth, and you may do what you like.’ After a good deal of haggling
the other agreed. The astrologer said, ‘You were left for dead. Am I
right?’
‘Ah, tell me more.’
‘A knife has passed through you once?’ said the astrologer.
‘Good fellow!’ He bared his chest to show the scar. ‘What else?’
‘And then you were pushed into a well nearby in the field. You were
left for dead.’
‘I should have been dead if some passer-by had not chanced to
peep into the well,’ exclaimed the other, overwhelmed by
enthusiasm. ‘When shall I get at him?’ he asked, clenching his fist.
‘In the next world,’ answered the astrologer. ‘He died four months
ago in a far-off town. You will never see any more of him.’ The other
groaned on hearing it. The astrologer proceeded.
‘Guru Nayak—’
‘You know my name!’ the other said, taken aback.
‘As I know all other things. Guru Nayak, listen carefully to what I
have to say. Your village is two days’ journey due north of this town.
Take the next train and be gone. I see once again great danger to
your life if you go from home.’ He took out a pinch of sacred ash and
held it out to him. ‘Rub it on your forehead and go home. Never
travel southward, again, and you will live to be a hundred.’
 ‘Why should I leave home again?’ the other said reflectively. ‘I was
only going away now and then to look for him and to choke out his
life if I met him.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘He has escaped my
hands. I hope at least he died as he deserved.’ ‘Yes,’ said the
astrologer. ‘He was crushed under a lorry.’ The other looked gratified
to hear it.
The place was deserted by the time the astrologer picked up his
articles and put them into his bag. The green shaft was also gone,
leaving the place in darkness and silence. The stranger had gone off
into the night, after giving the astrologer a handful of coins.
It was nearly midnight when the astrologer reached home. His wife
was waiting for him at the door and demanded an explanation. He
flung the coins at her and said, ‘Count them. One man gave all that.’
‘Twelve and a half annas,’ she said, counting. She was overjoyed.
‘I can buy some jaggery and coconut tomorrow. The child has been
asking for sweets for so many days now. I will prepare some nice
stuff for her.’
‘The swine has cheated me! He promised me a rupee,’ said the
astrologer. She looked up at him. ‘You look worried. What is wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
After dinner, sitting on the pyol, he told her, ‘Do you know a great
load is gone from me today? I thought I had the blood of a man on
my hands all these years. That was the reason why I ran away from
home, settled here and married you. He is alive.’
She gasped. ‘You tried to kill!’
‘Yes, in our village, when I was a silly youngster. We drank,
gambled and quarrelled badly one day—why think of it now? Time to
sleep,’ he said, yawning, and stretched himself on the pyol.
 four
~
THE MAN WHO SAW GOD

D. B. G. TILAK
Translated from the Telugu by Ranga Rao

T
he news that Gavarayya’s wife had eloped was spread gleefully
through the entire village. That only the day before China had
violated the borders of India and that the war was still on
suddenly became unimportant. Some even forgot about it. It seemed
that in the entire Telugu country only the people of this village
recognized or appreciated the special significance of a woman
eloping!
At street junctions, in the coffee shack (there was only one in that
village), on the low ridges of agricultural fields and near the
panchayat building, the men; near the compound walls of their
homes, at the wells, and on the steps of the public pond, the women:
everyone was talking about this most wonderful development. A
simple elopement may not have created such a sensation;
specifically, it was the fact that the woman had eloped with a useless
tailor working on a sewing machine on a pyol opposite the house
that made the incident so unusual and so worthy of gossip. It would
have been less damaging to the husband’s reputation, in the opinion
of experienced village elders, if she had eloped with someone else, a
gentleman. Many young men felt hurt that Gavarayya’s wife had
unnecessarily insulted and wronged them.
 ‘What did she see in that man to elope with him?’ asked a young
woman of her mother-in-law for the third time, unable to curb her
curiosity.
‘Mind your own business. Why didn’t you yourself elope with him,
you would have found out,’ said the mother-in-law, irritably.
The consensus among the villagers was that Gavarayya got what
he deserved.
X
Everyone in the village hated Gavarayya. Physically, he was dark
and ungainly. Face pitted with pockmarks. Lips thick and coarse.
Brows bushy, as though caterpillars had been stuck there.
Gavarayya lived on the outskirts of the village in an old-fashioned
house with rooms opening off a central courtyard.
‘I knew something like this was going to happen,’ said Avadhani,
with his eyes half-closed. Avadhani was the trustee of the village
temple.
Chalapati, the munsif, who was in charge of law and order, and
Narasimham, the karanam or revenue officer, nodded their heads.
Seeing he had their attention, the temple trustee annotated the
Upanishad-like statement he had just made.
‘Will the Lord Venugopala overlook such lapses? The first spouse
had died anyway. Now this second wife has perpetrated something
worse than death. Yet, has he done one charitable act? Has he
accepted one word of good counsel?’
The munsif, Chalapati, tapped his walking stick on the floor and
said, ‘Has he allowed anyone to get close to him? A wicked man,
this Gavarayya, sir. Too much ego, too much arrogance...’
‘Sinful wealth, sinfully earned, sir! Won’t the consequences follow?
The other day all the young fellows went and asked him to donate
one rupee for the bhajan, just one rupee, and he chased them away,
it seems…’ said the karanam.
X
Twenty years ago, at the age of twenty, Gavarayya had arrived in the
village. A paternal aunt lived here. He had neither a father nor
mother.
When he landed up he had some cash with him. There was a town
about two miles from the village. Every day he would go to the town
early in the morning and return after sunset. When the villagers
came to know that he was engaged in the hides business everyone
uttered God’s name, ‘Hari, Hari’, with their hands over their ears.
They made it clear to the paternal aunt that Gavarayya’s business
was utterly sinful; no good could come of it. But the aunt didn’t do
anything about it. Some even took the liberty of trying to persuade
Gavarayya that trading in the hides of animals was not ethical.
‘Why only the hides of animals, I would even sell human skins, only
they are too thin and useless,’ was apparently what Gavarayya said
in response. He was a stubborn, headstrong fellow. Wouldn’t talk to
anyone; wouldn’t socialize with anyone.
Why, no one had even seen Gavarayya laughing. Worse, it
appears Gavarayya did not distinguish between ‘Sin’ and ‘Virtue’.
It was generally believed that during the last twenty years he had
made more than a lakh of rupees. The elders of the village—
because they were generous people and righteous—forgave his
sinful ways of making money and in the interest of his welfare, with a
desire to ensure his pleasant tenure in the next world, advised him—
patiently and ceaselessly—to make donations and endow charities,
construct the temple pavilion, pick up the bill for the construction of
the school building, perform week-long religious ceremonies.
Narrowing his round, deep-set eyes, pressing his cheroot tightly
between his lips, Gavarayya would say sharply, ‘I won’t give a single
copper. Go and complain to whoever you want.’ He has no sense of
decency or proportion, they all said behind his back. Because he had
a cash balance of one lakh rupees they did not say it openly to him,
for by birth they were wise.
A few days after he arrived at his aunt’s house, Gavarayya brought
his first wife across. He wouldn’t let her go anywhere. She wasn’t
even allowed to go to the neighbours’ houses. The paternal aunt, the
wife and Gavarayya—the three of them were like three ghosts. A
rumour circulated in the village that Gavarayya’s wife was possessed
from time to time by some spirit, and that without anyone’s
knowledge, at midnight, while everyone slept, an exorcist would
come and perform mysterious rites and offer fumigations to try and
cure her.
X
How they survived in such isolation no one could understand. A little
while later, a bangle seller visited the village to sell his wares. He
claimed to have come from Gavarayya’s native place. He supplied
more details about Gavarayya’s past.
Gavarayya’s father had been a very wicked man, it appeared. He
gambled and drank. His wife, a sick woman, was perpetually
confined to her bed. As a result Gavarayya’s father had a mistress in
the neighbouring town. As a child Gavarayya did not know anything
of a mother’s care and attention. Because of his father’s evil
reputation, no one made friends with Gavarayya. He was not even
allowed to join the village school. The founder of the school was a
renowned landlord of the area. Gavarayya’s father fought endlessly
with that man. The landlord was a man of considerable standing in
the community; every year he would organize the religious
celebrations of Lord Subbarayudu, and feed the public. Ganging up
with a bunch of rowdies, Gavarayya’s father would create trouble at
these celebrations. Gavarayya’s father alleged that once, during a
life-and-death crisis, the landlord had made him sign a mortgage for
twice the amount that he had actually lent him and then unjustly
seized the little land he owned. But of course the elders in the village
were not so foolish as to believe the words of a rowdy. Besides they
themselves were clandestinely engaged in usury on the same
principles as the landlord’s. As for the general public, not even in its
dreams would it believe that such a gentleman and a great devotee
of the Lord like the landlord would commit such an atrocity.
Distressed by Gavarayya’s loneliness and isolation, his father
brought him a puppy and two kittens and told him to play with them.
‘These are better than humans,’ he would remark to his sick wife.
Gavarayya spent his entire childhood playing with dogs, trees and
walls. After some time his sick mother passed away. With her death,
the wrongdoings of Gavarayya’s father increased greatly.
Gavarayya’s father had loved his wife very much. He had spent a lot
of money on her treatment. Now, when in her last days, he could not
find the money for her medical treatment, he blamed it all on the
landlord’s perfidy and went crazy. One evening when a labourer of
the landlord was returning from the fields, someone broke his head
with an iron rod. The landlord said that his suspicion centred entirely
on Gavarayya’s father. They arrested Gavarayya’s father and
charge-sheeted him. All the villagers gave irrefutable evidence.
Though they may or may not have witnessed the murder, they
honoured the orders of the pious landlord as divine commands.
Gavarayya’s father was sentenced to life. He pointedly told
Gavarayya: ‘Don’t trust anyone. Stand on your own feet. All humans
are traitorous wretches, venomous serpents.’ He was then taken
away by the police.
Without a mother or father, Gavarayya survived in that house in a
state of pure terror. Pining for them, without food or water for two
whole days, sitting in a corner of that house, the fourteen-year-old
boy wept disconsolately.
No one came anywhere near him, didn’t even greet him. All those
good souls in the village probably thought that the father being a
rowdy and a murderer, the child had inherited his traits and that the
farther they kept away from him the better it would be for them.
Gavarayya fell ill. No question of medical treatment or anything
remotely like it. The fever turned out to be smallpox. The entire
village could hear pitiful, terror-stricken cries coming from that house:
‘Amma, I am dying.’
The moment they came to know that it was smallpox, people
stopped going anywhere near the house. ‘If the son too were to die,
it would be good riddance for the village,’ some said. One day in the
evening a jutka stopped before Gavarayya’s house. A forty-year-old
woman climbed out of the horse-drawn carriage. She was covered in
jewellery from top to toe. She was tall, well-built. Not even the hair at
the temples had greyed. The whole street came out and stood
gawking at her. She didn’t glance this way or that, but went straight
into the house. A servant followed with boxes and luggage and the
door shut behind him.
 Through the servant it transpired that she had had a liaison with
Gavarayya’s father. She had been on pilgrimage for the past six
months to various religious centres, and had only returned two days
earlier. Having come to know that Gavarayya’s father had been
sentenced to life imprisonment and that this had effectively made the
son an orphan, she had left at once for the village. That marked a
turning point. Though Gavarayya looked uglier than ever after his
recovery from his illness, she did not flinch from him. One or two
women took the liberty of trying to convince her of the folly of taking
over the responsibility of bringing up the ugly son simply because
she had had a liaison with the father. But as was her nature she
didn’t bother about anyone’s opinion. After some time she found a
bride for Gavarayya and married him off. Just before she died, when
Gavarayya was twenty, she passed on to him her jewellery and cash
of ten thousand rupees.
X
Everyone in the village was familiar with the next few phases of
Gavarayya’s life: his arrival at his paternal aunt’s house in this
village, his starting the hides business, and after seven or eight
years, the loss of his wife. However, now that they knew about his
origins courtesy the bangle seller, their hatred of Gavarayya began
to seem entirely justified. His father was a wicked man, a murderer;
this fellow, playing since his childhood with cats and dogs, had
himself acquired animal traits. Moreover he had been brought up by
a fallen woman. That such an inhuman fellow had landed in their
village of all places made them feel deeply anguished.
But then elders like Avadhani did not despair at first. True,
Gavarayya was a wicked man. A picture of ugliness—that too was
true; a miser who wouldn’t part with a copper—agreed; mulish fellow,
uncultured—everyone knew that. All the same, a rich man. If his
riches could be made to support good acts he, and his elders, would
find salvation. With that altruistic intention they approached
Gavarayya frequently, counselled him on the numerous ways in
which he could become a virtuous man. Support the celebrations of
the Lord Venugopala’s festival, they said. Construct a pavilion in the
temple, they said. Must repair the temple compound wall which had
tilted, they said. Gavarayya did not bite once at any of the
suggestions being made. At least come to the temple, have the
Lord’s darshan and take His prasadam, they said. They hoped that
because it wouldn’t cost him anything he might consider at least this
suggestion sympathetically, and that over time his visits to the
temple would lead to the seed of piety sprouting in his stony heart.
But not once did Gavarayya go anywhere near the temple.
Unable to stand the sight of a fellow creature turning an atheist and
a sinner, prompted by their own good nature and devotion to duty,
the village elders employed the weapon of boycott. But this didn’t
work either. Because Gavarayya had boycotted the village from the
beginning. And besides, the washerman, the trader and the barber
kept serving him clandestinely. As he paid their dues promptly, not
one of them wanted to lose him as a customer.
When Gavarayya’s first wife slipped and fell into the well and
drowned, Avadhani and the others called on him and condoled with
him. All this was the result of his karma, he should wake up now at
least, they exhorted him. But Gavarayya did not care. Not just that,
within a year he married a girl who was fifteen years younger than
him and brought her home. Though she wasn’t much of a beauty,
she decked herself out fashionably. Gavarayya took care of her with
great love and affection, people used to say. But she too, for her
part, never stepped outside her house. If out of curiosity anyone
called on her, she chatted with them pleasantly. If anyone made fun
or spoke sarcastically of either Gavarayya’s looks or his age, she
would say, ‘He is a very good man.’ Often she went by cart to the
neighbouring town to watch a movie. That Gavarayya relaxed all his
rules for his wife came as a surprise to everyone. But then even that
relaxation was within certain limits: the residents of the house had to
stay away from the villagers and from the happenings in the village
of course.
How she had developed enough intimacy with the sewing machine
man on the pyol of the opposite house as to elope with him, nobody
knew. But this mishap gave the munsif, the karanam and others
great joy. In the absolute darkness around them they now saw a ray
of hope. Take advantage of the situation, they said to themselves.
All four of them together called on Gavarayya one day. It was a
very big house. An old-style house, large and spacious, with rooms
on all four sides opening out to a central courtyard: a manduva
house. At the rear, the haystack, the cattle-shed, trees and the like.
And beyond there were no more houses; it was all fields. Gavarayya
had steadily expanded the small dwelling of his paternal aunt till it
had reached these proportions.
This house would never be like any of the others. The buzz and stir
of life was missing and a terrifying loneliness had accumulated within
it, it appeared. As if at night ghosts with reversed feet roamed all
over the house and then at daybreak climbed up and hid in the attic
or in the corners of the eaves. Even those four, enjoying authority,
status and an inborn courage, felt, it is true, a little dread as they
stepped into that house.
His eyes closed, Gavarayya sat leaning against the wall. Through
the banian he wore, his powerful chest and muscles, pock-marked
all over, looked like dented babul timbers. Hearing their steps, he
opened his eyes and looked at them. With streaks of red, his eyes
looked like the eyes of a drunk. Avadhani, the munsif, the karanam
and another village elder sat down on the bench next to Gavarayya.
Gavarayya gave them a questioning look.
The karanam began to speak: ‘You didn’t deserve this calamity,
Gavarayya. You are quiet and peaceable by nature, you never
bother others or interfere in their lives. When the news came, believe
me, we thought, ‘O, what a pity!’ Our minds were convulsed with
compassion.’
Gavarayya did not react. He just kept looking at them.
The munsif said: ‘Whether it be in the matter of payment of taxes
or of salaries to the field hands—he always punctually fulfilled his
duty. He never kept with him money due to others. To that fellow, that
field hand Subbayya, even before the year was over Gavarayya
measured out his grain. That fellow has been singing his praises,
“Our landlord is an extremely large-hearted man…”’
 Gavarayya still did not respond. Whether he had heard them or
not, they had no clue. He just kept looking at them.
‘But then there is one small matter, Gavarayya babu,’ said
Avadhani. Greatly skilled at speech, he said whatever it was that he
was expressing softly, smoothly, solemnly, blending it all with a
special pity and tenderness. As the temple trustee, his words had
even greater authority. ‘Take it for granted that no one can cross this
worldly ocean happily without support from God. You are an
excellent man, a straightforward man—even if, as far as your
business is concerned, it is totally against the laws; this is
unambiguously asserted by our shastras. But then in the age of Kali,
certain exceptions have been made by men. Therefore, it can be
overlooked. Even then they insisted on one thing—whatever it is, if
you don’t stop thinking of God, all your hardships will evaporate like
the mist. ‘With fruit, flower, leaf or even water’—ancestors said
—‘God is easy to please…’
Gradually, a smile of triumph appeared on the faces of all four
men. The normally snarling and growling Gavarayya was keeping
quiet today. What everyone believed was that an impregnable fort
wall was now showing a crack. They felt that Gavarayya could be
reformed slowly. They rose, took their leave. Gavarayya still said
nothing, just kept staring at them.
II
A year passed. Off and on, the karanam, the munsif and others
would call on Gavarayya at his house. They would invite him to have
a darshan of the deity, or for a harikatha recital, or for something
else, and would personally escort him to the event in question. Now,
even the villagers would raise their hands in namaskaram when they
passed him on the street. But Gavarayya would not speak a word.
Like a man enchanted he would sit in the temple or through the
harikatha. Sometimes he would get up abruptly and walk away. The
elders would shake their heads. ‘Rakshasa, son of a whore! Is he
going to change easily?’ they would say.
Avadhani would respond, ‘Does he have a choice in the matter?
Defying society and dharmam where can this fellow go?’
 X
The compound wall of Lord Venugopala’s temple was on the verge
of collapse. They couldn’t put off repairs any longer, the elders
decided. Not less than twenty-five thousand it would cost. Nobody
could come up with such a huge sum except Gavarayya, they said.
During the year Gavarayya had made huge profits. Even if you
ignored the hides business, he had bought a three-quarters share in
the oil mill in the town. In wonder, the villagers all told each other that
in just this one oil business he had made a lakh of rupees. They
thought that the reason for this prosperity was the newly sprung piety
in him, but, lest he forgot, made it a point to tell him this again and
again. On an auspicious day, the munsif, the karanam, the trustee of
the temple and the wealthy people in the village together called on
Gavarayya and explained the need to repair the temple compound
wall. They were unanimous in their opinion that he alone should take
it up.
‘Your name will become immortal, Gavarayya. In your name we will
have puja and religious rites performed,’ they added.
‘Why does God need a temple? And where is the need for a
compound wall around the temple?’ asked Gavarayya, chewing the
end of the cheroot in his mouth.
They were all dumbstruck. ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’ said the
karanam and slapped his own cheeks in a gesture of expiation.
The temple trustee winked at the karanam.
‘The question which Gavarayya has posed is not an ordinary one.
Even philosophers and maharishis have been given no end of
trouble by this knotty question. But then, even without our
knowledge, inside Gavarayya there is saadhana at work, a spiritual
process. If we can be patient for a few more days, a great man like
Gavarayya will himself find an answer to his question. The favour of
the Lord will not come directly and fully at one go. Comes in gradual
stages, let me tell you. When that day of Grace comes, our
Gavarayya himself will, I assure you, say, ‘Here, Avadhani garu, take
this ten thousand—get the compound wall constructed.’ Won’t he?’
 Gavarayya, who had never done it before, now raised his hands
and made a namaskaram to Avadhani. ‘I have to go now, so please
show yourselves out. I have a job to do in town.’ Saying this, he
strode out. Avadhani was taken aback. They looked at each other.
‘Avadhani, you have conquered. He bowed his head and made a
namaskaram to you! Curse him! He is changing. Surely changing,’
said the karanam with glee.
‘By the time the rainy season is over—take my word for it—he will
drop the twenty-five thousand before us. Along with the compound
wall we will build parapet walls for our houses,’ said the munsif,
chuckling into his moustache.
X
The rainy season came. The rain poured down heavily, angrily,
powerfully. With thick clouds, darkened sky, lightning and thunder,
nature was all hustle and bustle like a wedding pandal. Though the
streets were slushy, womenfolk, among them newly married girls,
held the pleats of their saris above their ankles, and with much
gaiety and merriment took part in auspicious ceremonies at various
houses. The farming community was busy in the fields. Though the
munsif’s wife suffered from arthritis and Avadhani’s daughter retched
from the nausea of pregnancy, these problems did not in any way
affect the collective happiness of the village. Though the karanam’s
widowed sister kept staring through the window at the young man
who had come to visit his relatives, and kept waving her hand to him
ceaselessly, because of his short-sightedness and the shadows cast
by the clouds he missed her signals. The coolies and others such
continued to live on the outskirts of the village; besides the village’s
inhabitants, the gutters, the gulleys, the diseases—everything was in
proper order. In the library building, constructed by the panchayat,
the card players continued their games round the clock.
All was right with the world, until an unexpected development
shattered the village’s sense of peace and equilibrium. The munsif
and a couple of others were sitting on the munsif’s pyol, covered in
shawls, puffing happily at their cheroots, absorbed in a spiritual
discussion. Paanakaalu came running up to them. He looked
distraught. From his appearance it appeared that right behind him
followed some catastrophe—an earthquake or a deluge.
‘Hey you. What’s happened?’ asked the munsif.
‘She has come sir. She has returned, sir,’ said Paanakaalu.
Two months earlier, the munsif’s bull calf had slipped its tether and
run away. The munsif said with a smile, ‘Then there’s nothing to be
worried about? I shall come and see. Tie it up in the cattleshed.’
‘Not the young bull, babu! It’s Gavarayya’s wife!’ said Paanakaalu.
His announcement made them all straighten up. ‘What, what, what
did you say?’ they all said simultaneously. In a hushed voice
Paanakaalu gave them his version of what had happened. The night
before, very late, after watching the late-night movie in the town, as
Narasimham from the cloth shop approached the village, he noticed
someone moving in the dark of the trees by the roadside. It struck
him that it might be a ghost and he was scared, his heart beat fast.
He ran and hurriedly woke up Paanakaalu sleeping in a hut a little
distance away. Both returned to investigate. They found a young
woman, in dirty clothes, her hair in disarray, plodding along
laboriously. She was carrying a small bundle. They went up to her to
see who she was, but failed to recognize her. They accosted her;
she did not respond. She quickened her pace. The two followed her
at a distance. She cut across the fields and entered the thatched
shed that lay between Gavarayya’s backyard and the fields. It was
overflowing with firewood, old tin cans and odds and ends. For a
moment they thought of waking up Gavarayya and informing him of
his uninvited visitor but were afraid he might react violently and beat
them up.
In the morning Paanakaalu remembered the incident and went to
look inside the shed. The visitor of the night was none other than
Gavarayya’s wife! Her belly bulged considerably; she must be due
any time now. She lay on the straw, groaning.
‘Do you think Gavarayya knows about this…?’ asked the munsif.
‘No, babu. He leaves for town early in the morning, as you know,’
said Paanakaalu.
The munsif rose quickly. Put on his chappals and started for
Avadhani’s house. On the way everyone greeted him and enquired
of him, ‘What, munsif, it seems Gavarayya’s wife has returned. What
is happening to this village and the people, babu? Right and Wrong,
Merit and Sin, all things are trampled into the dust! If those who
elope and conceive are allowed to come back and are accepted by
their husbands, won’t the young in the village too go out of control!
What has happened to this village, babu, and to these elders!’ said
an old woman past sixty seated on a pyol. Even before he reached
Avadhani’s house the munsif realized that the whole village was
discussing Gavarayya’s wife. Avadhani looked testy, angry.
‘Do you know?’ asked the munsif, climbing the steps.
‘Every child and adult knows! Only you, supposed to be performing
the munsif’s duties, don’t know. With what audacity has this sinful
female returned to this village? Doesn’t she have any respect for
dharmam? Doesn’t she fear God?’
In no time at all the karanam, the munsif and the elders of the
village, were seated in conference. They said they needed to
ascertain unambiguously if Gavarayya was going to drive away the
fallen woman immediately or leave the village himself. That very
morning someone in the Untouchable quarter had contracted cholera
and the reason for that was the sinful woman’s stepping into the
village, said one elder. Avadhani’s elder sister pushed the door
slightly ajar and said, ‘We are all dying of shame. If these violators of
our laws remain in the village what will be the fate of householders,
annayya? Please think about this. Please tell us if you want us to
remain in the village or jump into the pond.’
‘Gavarayya is not at home. As soon as he returns, you elders go
and tell him what you think of all this. How can he not respect your
views? Whatever you may say, Avadhani garu, this man is not the
old Gavarayya. He has now learned to discriminate between Sin and
Virtue. He has developed respect for God, and more than that,
respect for you,’ said Seshagiri, the biggest landowner of the village.
‘How many hopes we pinned on Gavarayya!’ said the munsif with a
sigh, remembering the compound wall of the temple, and the twenty-
five thousand.
‘Doesn’t Gavarayya’s aunt still live in that house? What is she
doing? Keeping quiet?’ asked the karanam.
 ‘What aunt, babu? She has fallen ill and is now bedridden, poor
woman. She has grown really old,’ said someone.
X
At dusk Gavarayya got off his cycle. The moment he stepped into his
house, he found Avadhani, the karanam and the munsif waiting for
him. When he raised his eyebrows quizzically at them, Avadhani told
him the whole story. Gavarayya’s eyes became red. His thick lips
shook. He rushed to pick up a crowbar from the corner of the room. ‘I
shall kill that whore,’ he shouted.
Avadhani hurriedly said, ‘No, don’t! No need for such a drastic act.
Gavarayya babu, your devotion to morality is well known, why get
into a murder case now? It will create trouble for you, and create
trouble for us as well…throw her out of the house, that’s all.’
Gavarayya did not listen to him. He rushed out of the house. His
visitors, realizing that in his present state there was no telling what
he might do to them, slipped quickly out of the house and returned to
their own homes. Gavarayya went into the thatched shed. It was all
cluttered and gloomy inside.
Gavarayya strained his eyes to see. He saw his wife lying supine
on the ground in the corner. He went over to her and raised the
crowbar. Then he paused. Unsure as to whether she was dead or
alive, he knelt down and peered at her face. It was pale and
emaciated. Her hair was dirty and knotted. Pitiful, paralysed by fear
of death, her face looked awful. He called her name, ‘Chitti.’ Shook
her by the shoulders. Chitti opened her eyes. Recognized
Gavarayya. Tears trickled from her eyes. She lifted her shaking
hands and made a namaskaram to him. ‘Don’t do anything to me, I
shall go away,’ she said in a feeble voice.
Gavarayya recalled that his mother had, just before her death,
done exactly this—raised her hands and made a namaskaram to his
father and looked as pitiful. Chitti’s hands slid down and lay
helplessly at her sides.
He sat there for a while, lost in thought. Then, he went in and
brought back water in a chembu and a bowl full of rice. ‘Chitti,’ he
said softly. Chitti opened her eyes. ‘Get up, eat this rice and go away
at first light. Don’t show me your face again, is that clear?’ he said.
Chitti nodded her head. Gavarayya stood up and said, ‘If you are
seen in this shed in the morning, you won’t escape death.’ He
returned to the house.
X
That night Gavarayya had no appetite. The food was tasteless. He
felt as though fires had been lit underneath his feet. Outside in the
sky thick clouds gathered. The wind screamed through the leaves of
the trees, crashed into the eaves of the roof and ricocheted off with a
terrible moaning sound. After tossing and turning for a while,
Gavarayya fell into a restless sleep. In his sleep, he had a horrifying
nightmare. His father and his mother had been tied to a stake and
fires had been started all around them. The people who had started
the fire appeared to be Avadhani, the karanam and the munsif. Both
his father and his mother were screaming in agony and terror, ‘Babu-
i, babu-i.’ In a while they were reduced to red and black ashes. Out
of the ashes rose somebody. He quickly strode towards the thatched
hut in Gavarayya’s backyard. That person had a conch in one hand,
and the divine discus in the other, and Vaishnava marks on his
forehead. He looked like the image of Lord Venugopala that he had
seen in the temple. Tears were flowing out of the eyes of Lord
Venugopala. God was crying. He took the infant from Chitti’s bed into
his arms and began consoling Chitti, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am with you.’
Meanwhile, armed with burning torches, a mob of furious villagers
came and set the thatched shed on fire. The blaze enveloped the
shed. The flames were reaching the sky. God was burning. Chitti
was burning. The innocent little infant was burning.
Gavarayya woke up with a start. His forehead was dripping with
perspiration. The casement shutters were flapping in the wind. The
wind roared, thunder and lightning crashed—it was terrifying.
Gavarayya wiped his face. He gulped down a glass of water and
looked out into the darkness. The dark outside blended with the rain,
like black poison sliding down from the heavens, black sin surging
like a rising sea. In that terrifying darkness, these men, houses and
homes, fears, desires, everything appeared unreal. Out of the furious
tandava of Nature, the awe-inspiring dance of the elements, a
singular truth emerged, and struck him like a whiplash. There was a
huge flash of lightning. The tip of the gopuram of Lord Venugopala’s
temple was starkly outlined by the light. Something flashed in the
depths of Gavarayya’s mind. Gavarayya coughed. Lantern in hand
he went into the backyard. It was a huge yard. Shrill, loud moans
came from the thatched shed. He went in. Chitti was writhing in
labour. Unable to watch the sight, he left the lantern there and came
out and stood in the cold, wind and rain. He didn’t know how long he
stood there. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a
dreadful sound.
It seemed like lightning had struck somewhere close by. Chitti
screamed aloud, ‘Babu-i.’ Gavarayya froze for a minute. Presently,
he heard an infant puling—‘kayre, kayre.’
A smile spread across Gavarayya’s hard-bitten, ugly face. In that
downpour, in that darkness, finding his way by the lightning flashes,
Gavarayya ran to fetch the village midwife.
X
It was eight in the morning. Avadhani, the karanam, Seshagiri, the
munsif, were all seated in the verandah of Gavarayya’s house. The
storm had cleared away and everything was washed by soft sunlight.
In that sunlight everything—the trees, leaves, grass and the black
wings of the crow on Gavarayya’s house—shimmered. Only the
faces of Avadhani, the munsif and the others didn’t shine. Anger
swirled in their frustrated eyes. Outside the house, the village
servant and a couple of servants who had come with their masters
stood as if ready to carry out their slightest bidding, their arms
deferentially crossed across their chests, embodiments of obedience
and resolve.
After a while Gavarayya came out of his house. He looked like an
iron girder on the move. Narrowing his little eyes, he looked directly,
disdainfully at them. Avadhani said fiercely, ‘I didn’t expect you would
do this, Gavarayya! Thought you were more of a gentleman than
this. Would you let a fallen woman live in your house? Would you
bring up a baby boy fathered by some stranger? You have not only
lost both shame and self-respect, but committed a sin, a horrible sin.
Do you think that God will forgive and tolerate you?’
Gavarayya sat relaxed, leaning against the wall. From the waist-
folds of his dhoti he took out a leaf of tobacco and rolling it, said, ‘I
have been advised by God himself.’
‘What did He tell you?’ asked Avadhani.
‘I am going to adopt that boy. That girl will stay put in my house,’
said Gavarayya.
‘You will play husband to a woman who eloped?’ blustered
Seshagiri, unable to believe his own ears.
‘If I marry a girl half my age what else will she do? If I throw her
out, where will she go? Give her food and clothes and she will stay
here and take care of the boy,’ said Gavarayya.
Avadhani guffawed contemptuously.
‘Did you say God had told you? Which God, I ask? The God of
adultery? Those who have engaged in great penance have not been
rewarded, but…’
‘God appeared before me. I have seen God,’ said Gavarayya
stubbornly. His eyes shone when he said this.
‘You had better send her and her child packing. We are not going
to accept such a blatant act of immorality,’ said the karanam.
‘We won’t allow you to come anywhere near the temple,’ said
Avadhani.
‘The village as a whole will unite against you, Gavarayya! We are
telling you calmly and respectfully what your next course of action
should be, but you are not accepting our advice. We are not going to
sit idle, I warn you,’ said the munsif.
Suddenly Gavarayya rose, picked up the crowbar lying by the wall
and thundered, ‘Who dares challenge me, let me see? Who can
challenge me? Have I stolen someone else’s money? Did I ask any
of you to come here? Who are you to come and preach to me?
Whoever interferes in my affairs I shall cut in half with a single blow
—let whoever wishes to come, come forward.’ He was shaking with
rage. He was like a volcano erupting. His appearance, his fury
terrified the village servant who stood gaping in fear. Avadhani stood
up. The others too stood up.
 ‘Then you say you will not abandon her,’ said Avadhani.
‘I won’t leave her,’ said Gavarayya.
‘Then we are ostracizing you. The washerman and the barber
won’t come to you. What’s more, I’d like to see which labourer will
dare to work in your fields!’ said Avadhani.
The munsif looked at the village servant and said, ‘Make sure the
whole village knows what has been decided. Announce it
everywhere on your tabor.’
Gavarayya gave them a thunderous look, and said, ‘Get away from
me, you so-called village elders! I wouldn’t live in this godforsaken
village even if you asked me to. I won’t allow my child to be brought
up in the midst of such wretched people, thoo!’ He hawked and spat,
and glared at the departing Avadhani and the rest of the delegation.
Before seven days, a week passed, Gavarayya’s house was locked
up. It transpired that Gavarayya had bought a house in the town and
had put his house and land in the village up for sale.
 five
~

A VILLAGE DIVIDED*

RAHI MASOOM REZA

Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright

THE DOZING TOWN

W
ithin the old fort of Ghazipur there’s now a school, where the
sound of the Ganga’s waves reaches, but where the
murmuring or cold sighs of history do not. No sentry now
patrols the walls; nor even do schoolboys come to them to speak to,
or hear from, the river shimmering in the light of the setting sun.
No one can guess how many stories the muddy waters of this
great river must know. But mothers are absorbed in tales of jinn,
fairies, ghosts and thieves, and for goodness knows how long this
sleepy town on the banks of the Ganga has never even thought of
sitting in the river’s school to hear stories of its forefathers.
If anyone were to come and sit on these walls, and close his eyes,
it’s still not impossible for the villages and fields on the far shore to
be transformed into dense jungle, for the huts of the rishis of the
tapovan to appear, and for the young princes of Ayodhya, Ram and
Lakshman, to emerge, bows slung over their shoulders, defending
the sacred solitude of the forest.
But no one does sit on these walls because, when the age comes
for them to do so, the young men of Ghazipur, their chests a yard
wide, are yoked to the mill of unemployment to squeeze out the oil of
their dreams, to drink that poisonous oil and quietly die.
 A nudge of my bridal nosering sent
My love as far as Calcutta.
In the jute mills of Calcutta the dreams of this town are woven into
the warp and woof of gunny cloth and sent to distant lands, leaving
behind only empty eyes, desolate hearts and weary bodies, which lie
in some small, dark room, constantly longing for footpaths, village
ponds, and fields of paddy, barley and peas.
Calcutta!
Calcutta is not the name of a city. For the sons and daughters of
Ghazipur it is another name for the yearning that comes of
separation. This yearning is a whole story in itself, in which the kajal
lining the eyes of countless women has been washed away by tears,
and then dried. Every year thousands upon thousands of men far
from home send back thousands upon thousands of messages with
the monsoon clouds. Perhaps that’s why clouds burst over Ghazipur
and, in these rains, seeds of yearning sprout in new and old walls, in
the roofs of mosques and temples, in the cracks of school windows
and doors, and the pain of separation awakes and begins to sing:
No one stirs out in the monsoon rains,
Only you would leave for a distant land.
Calcutta, Bombay, Kanpur and Dacca are the boundaries of this
town. Far-flung boundaries. The people from here remain of here
even after they leave. No matter how far balloons rise into the sky
their link with the ground, where some child holds a fine thread, does
not break.
But here for some time the threads in many children’s hands have
broken.
If the truth be told, this is the story of those balloons, or perhaps of
those children who hold the ends of the limp threads in their hands
and who are searching for their balloons, unaware of what befell
them when the threads broke.
X
The Ganga constantly strokes the head and cheeks of this town like
a mother caring for her sick child but when she senses no response
to her love she begins to sob inconsolably, and the town is drowned
in her tears. People say there’s a flood. Muslims begin to sound the
call to prayer. Hindus begin to make offerings to appease the
offended Mother Ganga. The Ganga frets at this insult to her love
and begins to strike her head against the walls of the fort and her
bright, white tresses tangle and spread far and wide. We call it foam.
When the Ganga sees that no one comprehends her pain, she wipes
her eyes and then we say that the water is receding. Muslims say
that the call to prayer is never without effect; Hindus say that the
Ganga has accepted their offerings. No one says that the tears of
the Mother have made the land even more fertile—for miles around
a coverlet of soft earth has been drawn over the land.
But what can the Ganga do? The bullocks here don’t have strength
enough to bear the weight of the plough.
This town is heedless of its past. It doesn’t even have the time
occasionally to lie in the cool shade of a banyan tree and think about
its history, which spreads from the time of the Ramayan to the
present. As for the future, it doesn’t have the courage even to
consider it. There is a tiny hole in the pot of time, from which
moments fall drop by drop. This town lives in moments, dies in
moments, and then is reborn in moments.
Who knows when this great penance will end? Ghazipur is not on
the caravan route of life. Sometimes, if the wind blows past here, it
brings the dust of the caravans, and Ghazipur can find happiness in
rubbing that dust into its clothes and body like attar of roses.
This is my town. Whenever I pass through its narrow lanes, it puts
its hand on my shoulder. It meets me here and there on the roads of
all my various stories. But I have not yet been able to grasp its whole
reality; that’s why I want to see it one more time.
This novel is in fact my journey. I have set out in search of
Ghazipur, but first I will stop at my Gangauli. If I can capture the truth
of Gangauli I will have the courage to write the epic of Ghazipur. This
novel is really the prologue to that epic.
But I must say one thing more. This is not the story either of a few
individuals or a few families. This is not even the story of the village
in which the characters, good and bad, are attempting to fulfil
themselves. This story is neither religious nor political, because time
is neither religious nor political...and this story is actually about time.
It is the story of time passing through Gangauli. Some old people
die, some young men grow old, some children grow up and some
are born. This is the story of the dreams and courage trapped in
these changing ages of man. It is the story of the ruins where houses
stood and of the houses built on those ruins.
And this story is as true as it is false.
I know the art of mixing truth with falsehood and falsehood with
truth. Here and there I use the first person so that the story cannot
go far from me, and I can touch it when I wish—to summon the
courage to convince myself and you that I am like the story I am
telling. Therefore, this is both an autobiography and a tale of others’
experiences.
This age is like an unbound book lying in an open plain. Even the
slightest gust of breeze sets its pages fluttering back and forth. In the
pages the paragraphs advance and recede before the reader,
sometimes he finds himself ten pages ahead, and sometimes is left
ten pages behind. That is why I am making unreserved use of the
first person—so that the pages do not turn by themselves, so that
order remains and I can see what was, what is and what is to be.
X
They say that on a dark night in the month of Asharh, at the start of
the monsoon, a chieftain of Tughlaq, Saiyid Masood Ghazi, crossed
the swollen Ganga and attacked Gadipuri. Accordingly, the town
changed its name from Gadipuri to Ghazipur. The roads were the
same, the lanes too, and the houses—just the name changed.
Perhaps names are outer shells which can be changed. There is no
unbreakable bond between names and identity, because if there
were then Gadipuri too should have changed when it became
Ghazipur, or at least the defeated Thakurs, Brahmins, Kayasths,
Ahirs, Bhars and Chamars should have called themselves Gadipuris,
and the victorious Saiyids, Sheikhs and Pathans should have called
themselves Ghazipuris. But they didn’t. They are all Ghazipuris and
if the town’s name had not been changed then they would all have
been Gadipuris.
These new names are fascinating. When the Arabic ‘fateh’ or
‘victory’ is joined to the Hindi ‘garh’ or ‘fort’ it makes one unit—the
town of Fatehgarh. That is why even after the creation of Pakistan I
cannot comprehend its reality. If you take the ‘Ali’ from Aligarh,
‘Ghazi’ from Ghazipur and ‘Dildar’ from Dildarnagar, then whole
towns will become desolate and nameless and if you take the ‘Imam’
from imambaras—the houses of the Imam—then how can you have
Moharram?
The Ganga still holds Ghazipur to her breast, as she did Gadipuri.
That is why it makes no difference whether it’s called Ghazipur or
Gadipur. Masood Ghazi’s family would have been certain to seize
the surrounding countryside in any case. This family, which chanced
here from Delhi, would still have been sure to have split into several
landowning families and I would still have written this story.
One son of Masood Ghazi, Nuruddin the Martyr (how and why he
became a martyr I, and probably no one, knows) forded two rivers
and conquered Gangauli, a village about a dozen miles from
Ghazipur. They say that the name of the raja of this village was
Gang and the village was named Gangauli after him. But even after
Nuruddin Saiyid’s family established its hold over the village,
Gangauli did not become Nurpur or Nuruddinagar—and my
Gangauli’s name is no worse than my Ghazipur’s.
But the amusing thing is that the tomb of Nuruddin the Martyr,
which is newer than Gangauli, looks much older... This small brick
structure must certainly once have had a roof but for the last thirty-
five years or more I have seen it in ruins. Only on the tenth day of
Moharram, when processions from both ends of the village come
here, is there some kind of gathering. The men who learn lathi-work
together congregate a short distance from the tomb, fencing with
leather-covered wooden truncheons and shields, whirling long sticks,
displaying how to fend off attack with a knife, and performing feats of
swordsmanship. Then suddenly one man shouts, ‘Bol Muhammadi!’
and the whole village replies, ‘Ya Husain!’
 For some time now the residents of Gangauli have been dwindling
in numbers and the percentage of Sunnis, Shias and Hindus has
been growing. Perhaps this is the reason that there’s no longer such
a large crowd at the tomb of Nuruddin the Martyr and the air of
Gangauli no longer resounds with the cry ‘Bol Muhammadi!—Ya
Husain!’ as it did formerly. Perhaps this is the reason that today the
tomb looks so forlorn and keeps searching with its blind eyes and
asking, ‘Where has my Gangauli gone?’ But the foundations of this
tomb are in the soil of Gangauli and that is why it stands alone,
exactly where it always has.
Great trees do not move from their places unless they are felled or
their roots grow hollow. Abul Qasim-cha, Baddan-bhai, Tannu-bhai,
Tassan, Qaisar, Akhtar and Gigge are in Pakistan. But the tomb of
Nuruddin the Martyr is still here in Gangauli and not even the
Custodian of Refugee Property has laid a hand on it because he
knows the tomb of Nuruddin the Martyr belongs not to the refugee
Saiyids of Gangauli, but to Gangauli itself. The life of the banyan tree
is rather long, and then several generations have enriched this
memorial with their bones.
Apart from the tomb, the Saiyids of Gangauli also made a Karbala.
This Karbala was to the south of the tomb and the tomb itself to the
east of Gangauli. The Saiyids had also dug a tank on the western
edge of the village. This tank must have been built by the heirs of
Nuruddin the Martyr because there is no sign of any temple nearby.
On the mounds of earth excavated from the tank are mango and
jamun trees and on the tenth of Moharram the Saiyid gentlemen of
Gangauli come to say their prayers here. West of this tank is a
deserted three-doored indigo factory made of brick and lime which
we, for some unaccountable reason, call a godown.
This is a memorial to John Gilchrist, in other words a monument of
yet another age. Now it comes in useful for the cowherds who sit
here to suck sugarcane, or for lovers.
In between a decrepit tomb and a ruined factory lives this village.
At two ends of the village are the homes of the Saiyids. All in all
there must be ten houses. The ones to the south are called the
Dakkhin Patti, or southern side, and those to the north the Uttar
Patti, or northern side. In between are the homes of the weavers.
From Sibtu-da’s house the quarters of the Raqias, or Muslim traders
start, and then a dirty mud lane leads into Gangauli bazaar and,
pressed beneath low
shops and mangy, scratching dogs, passes into the open area
around the tomb of Nuruddin the Martyr, and draws a breath of relief.
Around the village are several settlements of thatched huts. In one
live the Chamars, in another the Bhars and in another the Ahirs.
There are three main gates to Gangauli. One is in Uttar Patti and is
called the Gate Under the Pakkar Tree. This has a large, wooden
door. Opposite is a pakkar tree. Just as you step down from the gate,
on the right are several whitewashed platforms, on which beautiful
wooden tazias are placed on the ninth day of Moharram, and then
there is a large courtyard. These courtyards are of great social
importance to the zamindars. Marriage processions from the grooms’
side come here. Feasts of birth and death are held here. Subjects of
the zamindars’ domains are punished here. Land disputes are
complicated and resolved here. Police officers, deputy collectors and
collectors are entertained with dance and song here. If there were no
such courtyards there could be no zamindars.
So there is one Great Gate in Uttar Patti and two in Dakkhin Patti.
Of the latter one was built by my grandmother’s family. This is called
the Barka or Great Gate, and the other Great Gate, which is called
Abbu Miyan’s Gate belongs to Abbu-da’s forefathers.
MY VILLAGE, MY PEOPLE
I ran through Gori-dadi’s courtyard and slipped into the Dakkhin
Patti’s room with three archways. I tripped and fell. My elder brother
was running after me. The fact was that my sister had made some
roast coriander mixture and hidden it in a chest. We saw her do it.
The coriander mixture disappeared. My sister complained to my
mother. Mother chased us—that’s why we were running.
My brother had just rushed over and picked me up when I saw
Mother’s hand over my head. I wriggled like a girai fish and freed
myself. Mother had caught hold of my brother’s hair. I crept away
quietly. Just opposite was the small door of Naima-dadi’s private
apartment. I slipped through it.
There was hardly room for anything besides the guava tree in the
small courtyard of her apartment, two small string beds just
managing to fit into the remaining space. On one lay Naima-dadi,
telling her prayer-beads; two black kurtas, two pairs of black, close-
fitting pajamas and two black dupattas were hanging out to dry on a
clothesline passing near her head. Black dye was dripping from the
corners of one dupatta and soaking the string of her small bed.
I don’t know what Manjhale-dada’s father ever saw in this Naima-
dadi that he left a good and fair Gori-dadi, and took in marriage this
doll of black earth, and built for her these private quarters. In any
case, Naima-dadi was a common weaver woman, and could not live
in the same house with Saiyid ladies, descendants of the Prophet.
People of the old school used to pay great attention to who could sit
where and with whom. I didn’t understand these things, but then
there were many other things I couldn’t understand either. I couldn’t
even work out why Manjhale-dada’s only son, Gujjan Miyan, called
more properly Saiyid Ghaznafar Husain Zaidi, and known to me as
Chote-da, left a good, fat, round, soft and smooth Hussan-dadi and
kept a prostitute called Zumurrad, or Emerald.
I’ve never seen Zumurrad, but I’ve seen Hussan-dadi from the time
I opened my eyes to the time she closed hers. She was very tight-
fisted, but very beautiful. Not one woman of Gangauli had ever seen
Zumurrad, but they all thought that she’d cast some spell on Gujjan
Miyan. As this was considered a Bengali art, all the women of
Gangauli were absolutely certain that Zumurrad was a Bengali. In
fact, she was from Barabanki.
The women of the village had no complaint against Gujjan Miyan
for taking up with a whore. There was no harm in keeping a
prostitute. However, it was a sin to leave a beautiful wife like Hussan.
After all, didn’t Athar Miyan manage to get along with his one-eyed
bride, that is Rabban-bi? And Athar Miyan was considered a
handsome man. But, God bless him at every turn, he never let his
one-eyed bride’s heart be soiled, even though in those days that
wretched Jinti, the barber’s daughter, had so blossomed that the
Saiyid men were going mad for her, and every wife dreaded the day
a private apartment would be added to her courtyard. But Athar
Miyan didn’t give Jinti a glance because it would have hurt his bride’s
heart—that wretched Jinti was melting for him, but still...
In the same way that I didn’t understand Naima-dadi and
Zumurrad’s stories, I couldn’t fathom why, when Rabban-bi was one-
eyed, and Athar Miyan was a real piece of the moon and sun, and
Jinti, the barber’s daughter, was melting for him too, he didn’t take
her in.
It wasn’t considered wrong to marry a second time or put some
common woman in your house, and perhaps there wasn’t a single
Saiyid family which didn’t have its bastard boys and girls. Even in
houses where there was nothing to eat, the menfolk managed to
indulge their fancies for grafted mangoes and grafted families.

*Extracted from A Village Divided

 six
~

RAAG DARBARI*

SHRILAL SHUKLA
Translated from the Hindi by Gillian Wright

T
he edge of a town. Beyond it, the ocean of the Indian
countryside.
And there, on the edge of the town, stood a truck. As soon as
you saw it you could tell that the sole purpose of its creation had
been to rape the roads of India. Like reality, the truck had many
aspects. From one point of view, the police could say that it was
standing in the middle of the road. Looked at another way, the driver
could say that it was on the side of the road. According to the
dictates of current fashion, the driver had opened the right-hand door
so that it hung out like a bird’s wing. This enhanced the truck’s
dimensions and made it impossible for any other vehicle to pass.
On one side of the road there was a petrol station; on the other,
shops constructed of bits of rotting thatch, wood, local know-how and
various items of assorted
junk. At first sight it was clear that the shops were too numerous to
count. Nearly all of them offered one of the favourite drinks of the
Indian masses which is made from dust, dirt, tea leaves which have
already been used several times, boiling water and so forth. The
shops also stocked sweets, which battled valiantly day and night
against the onslaughts of rain, dust storms, flies and mosquitoes.
The sweets demonstrated the manual dexterity and scientific
expertise of our local working men. They showed that even if we
don’t know how to make a decent razor blade, we’re still the only
people in the world who can turn rubbish into the tastiest of snacks.
The truck driver and the cleaner were standing in front of a shop,
drinking tea.
Rangnath spotted the truck from a distance and immediately
hastened his step.
Today, the railway had deceived him. He had left home thinking the
local passenger train would be two hours late as usual, but it was
only an hour and a half late and had left without him. Having
contributed to the literature of the complaints book, and made
himself a laughing stock in the eyes of the railway staff, he left the
station. Now, as he walked down the road towards the truck, he
began to smile.
When he reached it, the driver and the cleaner were still sipping
their tea. Glancing around aimlessly and containing his smile,
Rangnath asked the driver in an uninterested way, ‘Driver sahib, is
this truck going in the direction of Shivpalganj?’
The driver had his tea to drink and the woman shopkeeper to look
at. Paying little attention to Rangnath, he said, ‘It is.’
‘Will you take me with you? I’ll get out at the fifteenth mile. I have to
go to Shivpalganj.’
The driver assessed all the possibilities of the woman shopkeeper
in one glance and then turned his gaze upon Rangnath. Oho! What a
sight! Like the great God Vishnu who stands like a pure lotus flower
from head to toe, so stood Rangnath head to toe, a vision in white
khadi cotton, the homespun cloth popularized by Mahatma Gandhi.
He wore a khadi cap, shirt and pyjamas, and over his shoulder hung
a bag of the kind used by the Gandhian Bhoodan Movement. In his
hand was a leather attaché case. The driver saw him and was
amazed. Then he thought for a moment and said, ‘Please take your
seat, sir. We’ll leave right away.’
X
The truck shuddered into life and set off. Freeing themselves after a
while from the twisting, chaotic grasp of the town, they came upon a
clear and empty road. Here, the driver was able to get into top gear
for the first time, but the gear lever kept slipping into neutral every
hundred yards, and since the driver had his foot on the accelerator,
the shuddering increased as the speed of the truck decreased.
Rangnath said, ‘Driver sahib, your gearbox is exactly like our
government.’
The driver accepted this citation of merit with a smile. Rangnath
tried to make his statement more intelligible.
‘No matter how often you put it into top gear, it slips every few
yards and goes back into its old rut.’
The driver laughed. ‘You’ve said something very deep, sir.’
Next time he went into top gear, he lifted his leg to an angle of
about ninety degrees and held the gear pressed under his thigh.
Rangnath wanted to say that the same technique was needed to run
the country but, thinking that this would be a still deeper statement,
he remained silent.
Meanwhile, the driver returned his thigh to its proper place, put a
long stick against the gear and wedged the other end under the
dashboard. The truck kept up speed. Terrified at the sight of it,
cyclists, pedestrians, horse-drawn carts and all other vehicles for
several furlongs ahead drove off the road; judging from the speed at
which the vehicles fled, it seemed as if they thought the truck was no
truck, but a flame of fire, a typhoon from the Bay of Bengal, some
foul-mouthed official unleashed on the public or a gang of wild
Pindaris. Rangnath thought that they should have had an
announcement made in advance, warning people to keep all their
livestock and children at home as a truck had just left the town.
The driver asked, ‘Tell me, sir, how are you? It’s a long time, is it,
since you’ve been into the country?’
Rangnath smiled, encouraging this attempt at civility.
‘What are you doing these days, sir?’
‘Digging up grass.’
The driver laughed. He nearly ran over a naked ten-year-old boy.
Safe, the boy dropped down on to a small bridge like a wounded
house lizard falling from the ceiling.
 This had no effect on the driver. Pushing his foot even farther down
on the accelerator and laughing, he said, ‘What a thing to say! Go
on, sir, tell me what you mean.’
‘I told you. I’m digging up grass. In English, you call it research.
Last year I did my MA. This year I’ve started research.’
The driver was smiling as if he were listening to Tales from the
Thousand and One Nights.
‘So, sir, why are you going to Shivpalganj?’
‘My mother’s brother lives there. I’ve been ill and I’m going to stay
in the country for a while to recover.’
The driver laughed for a rather long time.
‘What a tale you’ve made up, sir!’
Rangnath gave him a doubtful look and asked, ‘ What’s made up
about it?’
At this innocent question, the driver rocked with mirth.
‘What things you’re saying! Very well then, forget it. Tell me, how is
Mittal sahib? What happened to the murder case in the police lock-
up?’
Rangnath was completely unnerved. Choking, he said, ‘But how
would I know who this Mittal sahib is?’
The driver put a brake on his laughter. The truck too slowed down.
He took a close look at Rangnath.
‘You don’t know Mittal sahib?’
‘No.’
Jain sahib?’
‘No.’
‘The driver spat out of the window and asked in a clear voice, ‘You
don’t work for the CID, then?’
Irritated, Rangnath said, ‘CID? What on earth do you mean?’
The driver let out a long sigh and began to examine intently the
road ahead. Some bullock carts were travelling along it. In
accordance with the popular principle of stretching your legs
wherever and whenever you get the chance, the drivers lay on top of
their carts, asleep and with their faces covered. The bullocks, not on
their own initiative but as a result of long practice, quietly pulled the
carts down the road. The scene merited comparison with the bovine
public and its lethargic leaders, but Rangnath hadn’t the courage to
say anything. He had been upset by the remark about the CID. The
driver blew, first his rubber horn and then another horn which,
despite its three musical tones, was truly terrifying. The bullock carts
proceeded on their way. The driver was pushing the truck on at a
good speed and seemed to be about to fly over the carts. But as he
got closer, he suddenly seemed to realize that he was in a truck, not
a helicopter. He braked, the stick which had been wedged against
the dashboard fell down, the gear changed and the truck squeezed
past the carts, almost touching them.
Further on, the driver spoke to Rangnath with contempt, ‘If you’re
not CID, then how come you’re wearing khadi?’
Rangnath had been put in low spirits by these aggressive
questions but he treated this one as a normal inquiry and answered
simply, ‘Everyone wears khadi these days.’
‘Come off it, no sensible man does. Only politicians, plain-clothes
men and fools.’
He opened the window, spat and changed into top gear. The
personality cult surrounding Rangnath had come to an end. For a
while he sat quietly. Then he began to whistle. The driver nudged
him with his elbow and said, ‘Look here, sit quiet. This is no place for
hymn singing and such things.’
Rangnath shut up. The driver was annoyed,
‘This gear keeps on slipping. It goes into neutral. What are you
staring at? Grab hold of it and keep it in place!’
A few minutes later, he said in the same tone, ‘Not like that! Like
this. Keep the pressure up and hold it properly!’
For some time a horn had been blowing behind the truck.
Rangnath had heard it but the driver was paying no attention. After a
while, the cleaner, who was travelling in the back, hung round the
side of the truck and began to tap on the window by the driver’s
head. In the language of the truck-wallahs, this action obviously had
some dreadful import because the driver slowed down immediately
and pulled the truck over to the left-hand side of the road.
The horn belonged to a station wagon—the sort of station wagon
which, thanks to foreign aid, is used in the hundreds for the progress
of the country and which can be seen on any road at any time. The
station wagon passed the truck on the right, slowed down, and a
khaki-coloured arm stretched out to signal the truck to stop. Both
vehicles drew to a halt.
An officer-like peon and a peon-like officer stepped down from the
station wagon. Two constables in khaki uniforms also got out.
Immediately they began to rob and loot in the style of the old Pindari
dacoits. Someone seized the driver’s licence; someone else, the
registration card; someone began to tap the rear-view mirror;
someone else blew the horn. They wobbled the running board,
switched on the headlights and rang the bell at the back of the truck.
Whatever they looked at was defective. Whatever they touched, they
found something wrong with it. In this way, in four minutes those four
men had found forty faults with the truck and, standing beneath a
tree, they began to discuss the treatment which was to be meted out
to the enemy.
Rangnath could only make out that the stories of the principles of
karma and poetic justice were true. The truck was being checked
and God was taking His revenge on the driver for his insult to
Rangnath. He remained where he was. But in the middle of all this
discussion, the driver found the opportunity to say, ‘Sir, please get
down. Where is the need to sit there holding the gear now?’
Rangnath got down and went and stood under another tree. Under
the first one, the driver and the checking party were discussing every
single point of the truck in detail. As he watched, the discussion
shifted from the parts of the truck to the general condition of and the
economic chaos facing the country and, in a short time, the
individuals present had broken up into small subcommittees.
Standing under separate trees, they began to ponder each issue in
their capacity as experts. After a lot of discussion, a sort of open
session began under one tree and soon it became apparent that the
seminar was coming to an end.
Finally, Rangnath heard the nasal voice of the officer.
‘Well, Ashfaq miyan, what’s your opinion? Should we let him off?’
The peon said, ‘What else can you do, sir? How long can we go on
drawing up charges? If there were only a couple of faults, we could
charge him.’
A constable said, ‘It would be tomorrow morning by the time we
finish making out the charge sheet.’
After talking around the point, the officer said, ‘OK, Banta Singh,
you can go. We’ve let you off.’
The officer had been standing under a tree, watching Rangnath for
some time. Lighting a cigarette, he came towards him. When he was
close, he asked, ‘You too were in the truck?’
‘Yes.’
‘He didn’t take any fare off you, did he?’
‘No.’
The officer said, ‘I guessed as much by looking at your clothes. But
it’s my duty to check.’
To annoy him, Rangnath said, ‘This isn’t real homespun khadi. It’s
mill cloth.’
The officer replied deferentially, ‘Ah, sahib, khadi is khadi. What’s
the difference between the real and the imitation?’
After the officer left, the driver came up to him with the peon. The
driver said, ‘Just give us two rupees, will you, sir?’
Turning his face away, Rangnath answered harshly, ‘What do you
mean? Why should I give you money?’
The driver took the peon’s hand and said, ‘Please come. Please
come with me.’
As he moved off, he said to Rangnath, ‘l got checked just because
of you. And you speak to me like this when I’m in trouble. Is this how
you’ve been educated?’
The present education system is like a pariah bitch lying in the
road, whom anyone can kick. The driver, as he went on his way,
attacked it with a sentence and headed towards the truck with the
peon. Rangnath saw that evening was closing in, his attaché case
was in the truck, Shivpalganj was still five miles away and he needed
people’s goodwill. He approached the truck slowly. The driver of the
station wagon was blowing his horn repeatedly to call back the peon.
Rangnath tried to give the driver two rupees. The driver said, ‘If
you’re giving now, then give to the Orderly sahib. What will I do with
your money?’
 As he spoke, he began to sound like those religious ascetics who
never touch money themselves and tell others that their money is
nothing but the dirt of their hands. The peon pocketed the money,
took a last puff at his beedi, threw its half-lit stub more or less on to
Rangnath’s pyjamas and set off towards the station wagon. After he
left, the driver started the truck, went into top gear just as before, and
gave Rangnath the lever to hold. Then suddenly and without any
reason, he puckered up his lips and began to whistle a song from a
Hindi film. Rangnath listened in silence.
A little later, he began to distinguish bundle-like objects in the
twilight on both sides of the road. They were women sitting in rows,
talking contentedly and at the same time relieving themselves. Below
the road, there were heaps of rubbish and their stench was making
the evening breeze blow with the sluggishness of a pregnant
woman. From some distance away came the sound of barking dogs.
A curtain of smoke drifted in front of Rangnath’s eyes. All this meant
there was no denying that they had come to a village. Shivpalganj.

*Extracted from Raag Darbari

 seven
~
LORRY RAJA
MADHURI VIJAY

W
hat happened was that my older brother, Siju, got a job as a
lorry driver at the mine and started acting like a big shot. He
stopped playing with Munna the way he used to, tossing him
into the air like a sack of sand, making him sputter with laughter.
When Amma asked him anything, he would give her a pitying look
and not answer. He stopped speaking to his girlfriend, Manju,
altogether. He taunted me about playing in the mud, as he called it,
breaking chunks of iron ore with my hammer. With Appa especially
he was reckless, not bothering to conceal his disdain, until he said
something about failed drivers who are only good for digging and
drinking, and Appa wrestled him to the ground and forced him to eat
a handful of the red, iron-rich earth, shouting that this was our living
now and he should bloody learn to respect it. Siju complained to the
mine’s labour officer, Mr Subbu, but Mr Subbu dismissed it as a
domestic matter and refused to interfere. After that, Siju maintained
a glowering silence in Appa’s presence. When Appa wasn’t around,
Siju sneered at our tent, a swatch of blue plastic stretched over a
bamboo skeleton. Never mind that he was being paid half a regular
driver’s salary by the owner of the lorry, a paan-chewing Andhra
fellow called Rajappa, because Siju was only fourteen and could not
bargain for more.
Never mind that Rajappa’s lorry permit was fake, a flimsy
transparent chit of paper with no expiry date and half the words
illegible, which meant that Siju was allowed to transport the ore only
to the railway station in Hospet and not, like the other drivers, all the
way to port cities like Mangalore and Chennai, where he’d run the
risk of arrest by border authorities. Never mind that the mine’s lorry
cleaners, most of whom were boys my age, called him Lorry Raja
behind his back and imitated his high-stepping walk. None of it
seemed to matter to him. And, as little as I wanted to admit it, he was
a raja in the cab of that lorry and moreover, he looked it. His hair was
thick and black, and a long tuft descended at the back of his neck,
like a crow’s glossy tail feathers. His nose was straight, and his
eyeballs were untouched by yellow. His teeth remained white in spite
of breathing the iron-laden air. He seemed, when he was in the cab
of that lorry, like someone impossible and important, someone I
didn’t know at all.
X
The ore went to the port cities, and then it went onto ships the size of
buildings. I hadn’t seen them, but the labour officer,
Mr Subbu, had told us about them. He said the ships crossed the
ocean, and the journey took weeks. The ships went to Australia and
Japan, but mostly they went to China. They were building a stadium
in China for something called the Lympic Games. Mr Subbu
explained that the Lympic Games were like the World Cup, except
for all sports instead of just cricket. Swimming, tennis, shooting,
running. If you won you got a gold medal, Mr Subbu said. India had
won a gold medal in boxing the last time the games were held.
The stadium in China would be round like a cricket stadium, except
ten times bigger. Mr Subbu spread his arms out wide when he said
this, and we could see patches of sweat under the arms of his nice
ironed shirt.
X
The whole world worked in the mines. At least that is what it seemed
like then. There was a drought in Karnataka and neighbouring
Andhra Pradesh, and things were so bad people were starting to eye
the mangy street dogs. Our neighbour poured kerosene on himself
and three daughters and lit them ablaze; his wife burned her face but
escaped. Then came the news of the mines, hundreds of them
opening in Bellary, needing workers. And people went. It seemed to
happen overnight. They asked their brothers-in-law or their uncles to
look after their plots and their houses, or simply sold them. They
pulled their children out of school. Whole villages were suddenly
abandoned, cropless fields left to wither. Families waited near bus
depots plastered with faded film signs, carrying big bundles stuffed
with steel pots and plastic shoes and flimsy clothes. The buses were
so full they tilted to one side. There wasn’t enough space for
everyone. The people who were left behind tried running alongside
the buses, and some of the more foolish ones tried to jump in as the
bus was moving. They would invariably fall, lie in the dust for a while,
staring up at the rainless sky. Then they would get up, brush off their
clothes, and go back to wait for the next bus. For months my family
watched this happen. We didn’t worry, not at first. Appa had a job as
a driver for a sub-inspector of the Raichur Thermal Power Plant, and
we thought we were fine. Then there was the accident, and Appa
lost the job. He spent the next few weeks at the rum shop, coming
home long enough to belt me or my brother Siju or Amma. After that
was over he cried for a long time. Then he announced that we were
going to work in the mines. All of us. Siju, who was in the seventh
standard at the time, tried to protest, but Appa twisted a bruise into
his arm and Siju stopped complaining. I was in the fifth standard, and
to me it seemed like a grand adventure. Amma said nothing. She
was pregnant with Munna then, and her feet had swollen to the size
of papayas. She hobbled into the hut to pack our things.
Within a week, we squeezed onto a bus that was leaking black
droplets of oil from its heavy bottom, and Appa bought us each a
newspaper cone of hot peanuts for the journey. I flicked the burnt
peanuts into my mouth and watched as the land slowly got dryer and
redder, until the buildings in the huddled villages we passed were red
too, and so was the bark of the trees, and so were the fingers of the
ticket collector who checked the stub in Appa’s hand and said, ‘Next
stop.’ We lurched into a teeming bus station with a cracked floor, and
I asked Appa why the ground was red, and he told me this was
because of the iron in it. While Appa was busy asking directions to
the nearest mine that was hiring, and Amma was searching in her
blouse for money to buy a packet of Tiger biscuits and a bottle of
7Up for our lunch, Siju came up to me and whispered that, really, the
ground was red because there was blood in it, seeping up to the
surface from the miners’ bodies buried underneath. For months I
believed him, and every step I took was in fear, bracing for the sticky
wetness of blood, the crunch of bone, the squelch of an organ. When
I realized the truth I tried to hit him, but he held my wrists so hard
they hurt, and he bared his teeth close to my face, laughing.
X
That afternoon, just about a year after we had come to the mine, I
was working an open pit beside the highway, along with a few other
children and a handful of women. I squatted by the edge of the road,
close enough that the warm exhaust from the vehicles billowed my
faded T-shirt and seeped under my shorts. The pinch of tobacco
Amma had given me that morning to stave off my hunger had long
since lost its flavour. It was now a bland, warm glob tucked in my
cheek. Heat pressed down on my skin, and there was a sharp,
metallic tinge to the air that made me uneasy. The women, who
usually laughed and teased each other, curved their backs into shells
and hammered in silence. The children seemed more careless than
usual because I kept hearing small cries whenever one of them
brought a hammer down on a thumb by accident. The horizon to the
west was congested with a dark breast of clouds, but above me the
sun blazed white through a gauze sky. The monsoons were late, too
late for crops, but I knew they would hit anytime now. Over the past
week, furious little rainstorms had begun to tear up the red earth,
flooding various pits, making them almost impossible to mine. I
remembered that during the last monsoon, a drunk man had
wandered away one night and fallen into a flooded pit. His body, by
the time it was discovered, was bloated and black.
Lorries crawled in sluggish streams in both directions on the
highway. The ones heading away from Bellary were weighed down
with ore, great mounds wrapped in grey and green tarpaulin and
lashed with lengths of rope as thick as my ankle. The empty ones
returning from the port cities rattled with stray pebbles jumping in the
back. The faces of the lorry drivers were glistening with sweat, and
they blared their horns as if it might make the nearly immobile line of
traffic speed up. Now and then a foreign car, belonging to one of the
mine owners, slipped noiselessly through the stalled traffic. I recited
the names of the cars, tonguing the tobacco in my mouth: Maserati.
Jaguar. Mercedes. Jaguar. Their shimmering bodies caught the sun
and played with it, light sliding across their hoods, winking in their tail
lights. The mine owners lived in huge pink and white houses on the
highway, houses with fountains and the grim heads of stone lions
staring from the balconies. I looked up as a sleek black Maserati
went by, and in its tinted window I saw myself, a boy in shorts and a
baggy T-shirt, crouching close to the dirt. And standing behind me,
the distorted shape of a girl. I stood up quickly, hammer in hand, and
whirled around.
Manju flinched, as if I might attack her with it. A few days before, I
had seen two kids get into a hammer fight over a Titan watch they
had found together. One of them smashed the other’s hand. Later I
found a small square fingernail stamped into the ground where they
fought.
‘I’m not going to hit you,’ I said.
Her slow smile pulled her cheeks into small brown hills sunk with
shadowy dimples. She smoothed down the front of her dress, which
was actually a school uniform. It had once been white but was now
tinged with red iron dust. It wrapped around her thin body, ending
below her knees and buttoning high at her throat. Her hair spilled in
knotted waves down her back. She and her mother had arrived at
the mine around the same time as we had. Her mother was sick and
never came out of their tent. I didn’t know what was wrong with her.
For a while Manju had been Siju’s girlfriend, saving up her extra
tobacco for him, nodding seriously when he spoke, following him
everywhere. Then he had stopped speaking to her. The one time I
asked him about it, Siju leaned to one side, curled his lip, and spat
delicately into the mud.
 ‘Hi, Manju,’ I said. We were the same height, though she was a few
years older, maybe fifteen.
‘Hi, Guna,’ she said, and squatted at my feet. I squatted too and
waited for her to do something. She picked up the piece of ore I had
been working on and gave it two halfhearted taps with her hammer.
Then she seemed to lose interest. She let it fall and said, ‘He came
by already?’
‘No,’ I said.
I liked Manju. Whenever journalists or NGO workers came to tour
the mines, Manju and I would drop our hammers and prance in
circles, shouting, ‘No child-y labour here!’ According to the mine
owners, it was our parents who were supposed to be working. We
simply lived with them and played around the mine. The hammers
and basins were our toys. The journalists would scribble in their
notepads, and the NGO workers would whisper to one another, and
Manju would grin widely at me. Then, after we found out about the
Lympic Games, we had contests of our own. Running contests,
stone-throwing contests, rock-piling contests. The winner got the
gold medal, the runner-up clapped and stomped the dirt in applause.
I liked playing with Manju because I almost always won, and she
never got angry when she lost, like the boys sometimes did.
‘Manju,’ I said now. ‘Want to race? Bet I’ll get the gold medal.’
But she just shook her head. She stared up at the lorries. She was
thin, and the bones at the top of her spine pushed like pebbles
against her uniform. I wanted to reach out and tap them gently with
my hammer. One of the lorry drivers, a man with a thick moustache,
saw her watching and made a wet kissing sound with his lips, like he
was sucking an invisible straw. His tongue came out, fleshy and
purple. He shouted, ‘Hi, sexy girl! Sexy-fun girl!’ My cheeks burned
for her, and I could feel the weight of the women’s gazes, but Manju
looked at him as if he had told her that rain was on the way. I busied
myself with filling my puttu with lumps of ore. Each full basin I took to
the weighing station would earn me five and a half rupees. On a
good day I could fill seven or eight puttus, if I ignored the blisters at
the base of my thumb.
 I felt the other workers looking at us, the frank stares of the
children. I carefully shifted the glob of tobacco from my right cheek to
my left.
‘You shouldn’t be playing those dumb-stupid games anyway,’
Manju said.
‘No?’ I said cautiously. ‘Why not?’
Manju said, ‘You should be in school.’
I didn’t know what to say. It had been two years since I sat in a
classroom. I had only vague recollections of it. The cold mud floor.
Sitting next to a boy called Dheeraj, who smelled of castor oil. Slates
with cracked plastic frames. The maths teacher who called us
human head lice when we couldn’t solve the sum on the board. All of
us chanting in unison an English poem we didn’t understand. The
boy stood on the burning deck. The antiseptic smell of the girls’ toilet
covering another, mustier, smell. Dheeraj giggling outside. Then
three, four, five whacks on the fleshy part of my palm with a wooden
ruler, and trying not to show that it hurt. The boy stood on the
burning deck whence all but he had fled.
‘You used to come first in class, no?’ Manju said. A grey gust of
exhaust blew a wisp of hair between her teeth. She chewed on it.
Her face was whiskered with red dust.
‘How do you know?’
‘Siju told me,’ she said, which surprised me. ‘Siju said you got a
hundred in every subject, even the difficult ones like maths. He said
you shouldn’t be wasting your potential here.’
I had never heard him say anything like that. It sounded like
something an NGO worker might say. I wondered where he had
heard the phrase.
‘But, Manju,’ I said, ‘I like it here.’
‘Why?’
I was about to tell her why—because I could play with her every
day and because the mine was vast and open and I was free to go
where I liked, and, yes, the work was hard but there was an
excitement to the way the lorries rumbled past, straining under their
heavy cargo—but right then Manju dropped her hammer.
In a strained voice she said, ‘He’s coming.’
 Siju’s lorry looked no different than any of the others, except that it
had been freshly cleaned. It had an orange cab, and the outer sides
of the long bed were painted brown. The bed bulged with ore, like
the belly of a fat man. Siju was clearly on his way to the Hospet
railway station. The back panel of the lorry was decorated with
painted animals—a lion and two deer. The lion, its thick mane
rippling, stood in a lush forest, and the two deer flanked it, their
delicate orange heads raised and looking off to the sides. Siju was
especially proud of the painting, and I knew he stood over his lorry
cleaner each morning, breathing down the boy’s neck to make sure
that all the red dust was properly wiped off the faces of the animals.
His insistence on keeping the lorry spick-and-span was part of why
the lorry cleaners made fun of him.
He must have seen us squatting there by the highway, but he kept
his eyes on the road. I raised my hand and waved. When he didn’t
respond, I said, ‘Oy, Siju! Look this way!’
He swivelled his head toward us briefly.
Manju’s big eyes followed him.
Then one of the women working nearby, a woman with a missing
eye whose eyelid drooped over the empty socket, spat out her
tobacco with a harsh smack and said to Manju, ‘Enough of your
nonsense. Go sit somewhere else. Leave those boys to do their
work.’
Manju didn’t answer, so the woman said more loudly, ‘You! Heard
me? Go sit—’
Manju picked up a pebble and flung it at her. It hit the woman on
the shoulder, and she yelped.
‘Soole!’ the woman hissed.
Manju turned her thin face to the woman. ‘Soole?’ Manju’s voice
trembled. ‘You’re calling me a soole? You old, dirty, one-eyed
monkey.’
I looked at Manju, afraid to speak. She picked up my ore and
began hammering at it.
‘Manju—’ I began. I thought she was going to cry, but then she
looked up. ‘I wish you had a lorry,’ she said. ‘Then you and me could
drive to China.’
 X
Later I took my full puttu to the weighing station. On my way I passed
Amma working with a group of women at the base of a slope. I
stopped to watch her. She was shaking a sieve, holding it away from
her body, a red cloud billowing around her. Dark pebbles of ore
danced and shivered in the wide, shallow basin. A few feet away
Munna, naked except for an old shirt of mine, crawled in aimless
circles. If he got too far or tried to stuff a fistful of dirt into his mouth,
Amma or one of the women would reach out an arm or a leg and
hook him back in. When Munna saw me, he stretched out his short
arms, ridiculous in their baggy sleeves, and screamed with delight.
Amma looked up. She put down the sieve and straightened her
back. She was as small as a child, her hands barely bigger than
mine. The other women glanced at me and continued working. The
muscles in their forearms were laid like train tracks.
‘How many?’ Amma called up.
‘Three,’ I said. I held up the puttu. ‘This is the fourth one.’ There
were still a few hours of daylight left. A few hours before the red hills
of Bellary turned black and the day’s totals were tallied and
announced by the sweating labour officer, Mr Subbu, and no matter
the numbers, how high or how low, the workers would be expected
to cheer.
With her eyes on me, she put a hand inside her blouse to touch the
small velvet jewellery pouch she kept there. Whatever jewellery had
been in there was pawned long ago. I knew that now it contained a
few hundred rupees, two or maybe three. This was what she had
saved, in secrecy, for months, money that Appa overlooked or was
too drunk to account for. It was for me, my school fees, and she liked
to remind me it was there. She eyed me, her lower lip hanging open.
I knew she was debating whether to speak.
‘Guna,’ she said finally. ‘Tonight, when Appa comes—’
‘Have to go,’ I said. ‘Lots of work. It’s going to rain later.’
She sighed. ‘You don’t want to go back to school?’ she asked. ‘You
don’t want to study hard and get a proper job?’ She lowered her
voice. ‘Such a clever boy you are, Guna. Such good marks you used
to get. You want to waste your brains, fill your head with iron like a
puttu?’
I made no reply. I remembered what Manju had said about my
potential, and I saw myself flinging the entire contents of the puttu in
Amma’s face, iron flying everywhere, scattershot.
Amma was keeping half an eye on Munna, who was trying to climb
into the sieve. ‘Did Siju get a trip today?’ she asked.
‘You’re asking about Lorry Raja?’ I said.
‘Don’t act like those lorry-cleaner boys. He drives well.’
I hopped from one foot to the other, balancing the puttu like a tray.
‘Lorry Raja tries to turn on his indicators and turns on the windshield
wipers instead.’
‘Guna!’ Amma said.
‘Lorry Raja is always combing his hair in the rearview mirror.’
One of the women working next to Amma laughed. She had large
yellow teeth and a gold stud in her flared nostril. Amma glanced at
her, then at the ground.
Encouraged by the woman’s laugh, I added, ‘Lorry Raja’s lorry
doesn’t even go in a straight line.’ I waggled my palm to show the
route Siju’s lorry took.
Amma scooped up Munna before he overturned the sieve. She
sucked the edge of her sari’s pallu and scrubbed his cheek, which
was, like her own, like mine, red with iron dust. The dust mixed with
our sweat and formed a gummy red paste, which stuck to our skin
and was almost impossible to get off without soap and water, of
which we had little, except for whatever dank rain gathered in stray
pits and puddles. It was easy to tell
who the mine workers were. We all looked like we were
bleeding.
Amma put Munna down, and he began to try to crawl up the slope
to me. She held her small body very straight and looked at the other
women. ‘Siju is the youngest driver on-site,’ she announced loudly.
The other women, even the one who laughed earlier, took no notice.
‘Only fourteen and already driving a lorry.’ Amma was breathing
heavily, and under her red mask she was flushed.
 Munna slid back down the slope and landed on his bottom. He
began to wail, his toothless mouth open in protest and outrage.
‘He’s your brother,’ Amma said.
We looked at Munna. Neither of us moved to pick him up.
‘I know,’ I said.
X
I registered my fourth load at the weighing station and emptied my
puttu into the first of a line of lorries waiting there. The weighing
station was marked off from the neighbouring permit yard by a low
wall of scrap metal: short iron pipes and rusted carburetors and
hubcaps that sometimes dislodged and rolled of their own accord
across the yard, stopping with a clang when they hit Mr Subbu’s
aluminum-walled shed. This shed, a square, burnished structure
three times as big as the tent we lived in, was the labour office.
Complaints were lodged there, and labour records were written down
in a big book. How many labourers worked per day; how many
puttus they filled; how many labourers were residents at the mine
camp; how many were floaters, men and women who arrived by the
busload in the mornings and stood in a ragged line, waiting to be
given work. Mr Subbu would come out of his office and point at
random, and those who were not chosen would shuffle back to the
bus depot on the highway, where they would take a bus to the next
mine to try their luck. Those who stayed were given a hammer and
puttu. Most of them, used to this routine, brought their own. During
the day Mr Subbu’s shed could be seen from anywhere at the mine.
All you had to do was look up from your hammering, and there it
was, a sparkle on the rust-coloured hillside. His maroon Esteem was
parked outside, a green tree-shaped air freshener twirling slowly
from the rearview mirror. I noticed the greenness of the air freshener
because there was not a single green tree near the mine; they all
bore red leaves.
Mr Subbu stood in the shade thrown by a backhoe loader, drinking
a bottle of Pepsi. He was wearing a full-sleeved shirt with the top
button undone, and I could see the triangle of a white undershirt and
a few black tangles of hair peeping from the top. He sweated
profusely, and there were large damp patches on his chest and lower
back, and two damp crescents in his armpits, which swelled to full
moons when he raised his arms.
I stood there, watching him. One of the workers, a young woman
with two long braids, came up to him to say something. Mr Subbu
listened with his head bent. Then he put his hand on the girl’s
shoulder and replied. The girl stood so still that her braids did not
even swish. When he finished speaking, he let his hand fall, then she
turned and walked away. There had been a rumour in the mine camp
about one of the new babies, and how it had Mr Subbu’s nose, and
the mother, a rail-thin woman called Savithri, had been forced to
sneak away from the camp at night before her husband came for her
with the metal end of a belt. I had heard Appa call Mr Subbu
shameless and a soole magane, but something about the way he
stood all alone in his nice clothes seemed lonely and promising. And
as I stood there watching him, it occurred to me suddenly that he
might be able to help me. My heart beat faster, and I pictured myself
standing in the shade with him, talking, he smiling and nodding.
I went over to stand by him, my empty puttu thudding against my
thighs. He finished the Pepsi and threw the bottle under the backhoe
loader, all without paying attention to me. Then he wiped his mouth
with a handkerchief.
‘Taking rest?’ he said. He had seen me around the mine, but he
didn’t know my name, of course. There were hundreds of children
running everywhere, and under that coat of red we must have all
looked the same to him.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Only five minutes,’ I added, lest he think I was
shirking.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Subbu.
His eyelids drooped, and he nodded his head slowly. I waited for
him to offer me a Pepsi, and when he didn’t, I kept standing there. I
wondered what a man like that thought about. I looked out over the
mine, the land cut open in wide red swatches. Compared to the
mine, the plain beyond seemed colourless, the trees sitting low to
the ground, hardly different from the bushes, whose woody stems
bore patches of dry leaves. In the distance there were hills that had
not yet been mined, and they looked impossibly lush, rising and
falling in deep, green waves against the sky. And the sun, the sun
was a white ball that tore into everything, into the blistered skin on
the backs of my hands, into the body of the backhoe loader, into the
yawning red mouth of the mine.
I cleared my throat. Mr Subbu’s mouth parted and closed, parted
and closed. Long strings of spit stretched and contracted between
his lips.
‘Sir,’ I said.
Mr Subbu’s eyes snapped open. ‘Hm?’
‘Sir, I want to ask something.’
He looked at me. I took a deep breath and held his eyes. They
were not unkind eyes, only a little distant, a little distracted.
‘I want to become a driver, sir. Lorry driver,’ I said, speaking
quickly.
Mr Subbu seemed to be waiting for more, so I continued, ‘I know
driving, sir. My father taught me. He was the driver for the sub-
inspector of the Raichur Thermal Station, sir. He drove an Esteem,
sir, just like yours.’ And I pointed to the maroon car that was parked
outside his shed.
I didn’t think of it as a lie. When Appa had driven for the sub-
inspector, I had sat in his lap whenever the sub-inspector was in a
meeting or on an inspection tour or at the flat of a woman who was
not his wife. I would hold the Esteem’s steering wheel, dizzy from the
musky odour of the leather upholstery, while Appa drove us slowly
around the streets of Raichur, his foot barely touching the
accelerator, whispering in my ear, ‘Left, now. Get ready. Turn the
wheel slowly.’ And his hands would close over mine, swallowing
them, and I would feel the pressure of his fingers and respond to
them, pulling as he pulled, inhaling the spice of the cheap, home-
brewed daru that was always on his breath, waiting for those
moments when his lips brushed the back of my head, and we would
guide the car together, the big maroon bird making a graceful swoop
and coming straight again. ‘Expert,’ Appa would whisper warm and
rich into my hair as I frowned at the road to hide my pleasure. ‘So
young and already driving like an expert.’
 I said nothing about the accident, about how Appa had been
drunker than usual, how he had shattered the knee of the woman,
how he had cried later because of the noise the woman made—a
resigned sigh, oh—before she fell.
Mr Subbu’s fingers kneaded one another.
‘Please, sir,’ I said.
‘How old are you?’ he asked.
I paused. ‘Thirteen,’ I said, rounding up.
‘Thirteen,’ Mr Subbu said. He squinted out into the sun, and then
he pointed to one of the workers moving over the surface of the red,
undulating plain. The sun shrank him into a black dot, no bigger than
one of the pebbles I filled my puttu with. ‘See him?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. And together we watched him for a while.
Then Mr Subbu said, as if posing a maths problem, ‘What is he
doing?’
‘Working,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Mr Subbu. ‘Smart boy. He’s working.’
I watched a lorry wind its way to the bottom of a hill, heading to the
highway, on an uneven road sawn into the hillside. Behind it trailed a
hazy red cloud.
‘Work hard, and you will get whatever you want,’ Mr Subbu said,
his voice louder than necessary, as if many people had gathered to
hear him. ‘That’s the best advice I can give you, my boy. Your father
would tell you the same thing.’ And he touched me on the shoulder,
a fatherly touch, at the same time pushing me lightly so that I found
myself back in the sun again.
X
Instead of going back to the site beside the highway, I went to find
Appa. Half-hidden behind a mound of earth, I watched him being
lowered into a pit, a rope tied under his arms and passing across his
bare chest. He had taken off his pants and wore only a pair of frayed
striped boxer shorts. He carried a long-handled hammer like an
extension of his arm. The loose end of the rope was held by three
men, who braced their feet to hold the weight of Appa’s body. Then
the earth swallowed him, feet first.
 I often came to watch him work like this, when he didn’t know I was
there. I would count the seconds he was down in the pit, listening for
the steady crash of his hammer, muffled thunder. I would wait, alert
to the slightest sound of panic, the faintest jerking of the rope. I knew
that no matter how many times one did a job, the worst could
happen the next time. And just as the waiting became unbearable,
and I was about to run into the open, to give myself away, he
emerged, red-faced, dangling, gasping like a man being pulled from
water.
They untied him, and he began rubbing his skin where the rope
had cut into him. One of the men said, ‘Nice weather down there?’
and Appa said, ‘Sunny like your wife’s thullu.’ The man laughed.
Appa said, ‘One day I want to tie up that bastard Subbu and send
him down there.’ The other man said, ‘He’d get stuck, first of all.
Second thing is he’s too busy putting his fat hands all over girls.
What else you think he does in that office all day?’
‘Fat bastard,’ Appa said. He raised his hammer and brought it
down once, hard. Then he lifted it again and let it crash down, and
then he did it again, the rise and fall of the hammer all part of the
same smooth motion. I could feel the impact of each blow travel
through the ground between our bodies, from the muscles in his
arms to the muscles in my legs, connecting us.
‘Thank god I have only sons,’ Appa said, and the man laughed
again.
X
When I returned to the site beside the highway, Manju had
disappeared. The ground where she had been squatting was
scuffed. I crouched over it and tried to make out the marks of her
bare feet. A few women were still hunched over, their hammers
clinking in rhythm. The woman with the missing eye pulled a pinch of
tobacco from a large grey wad and handed it to me. I took it and
chewed on it slowly. The bitter tobacco juice flooded my mouth.
The woman watched me chew. ‘Want to know where that girl
went?’ she asked.
 I tried to imagine what could have happened to her eye. I wanted
to apologize for Manju throwing a stone at her, but I was angry at the
woman for calling Manju a soole.
‘She probably went back to her tent,’ I said.
‘Take another guess,’ the woman said. ‘Shall I tell you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Smart boy,’ she said.
Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Listen to me.
That girl is not nice. Okay? Not nice. You should stay away from her.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I have to work.’
For the next few hours I worked without stopping. I pounded the
ore with my hammer, the blows precise, never faltering, the ring of
metal against metal filling my head. Sweat poured down my wrists,
and I had to keep wiping my hands on my shorts. Lorries ticked by
on the highway, marking time. Siju’s lorry did not drive past again.
After a while the women stood up and stretched their backs. They
flexed their fingers and curled their toes in the dirt. The one who had
given me the tobacco smiled, but with just one eye her smile looked
insincere. They took up their full puttus and their hammers and
walked off in the direction of the weighing station. As they walked, I
noted their square backs, their strong thigh muscles showing through
their saris, their strange bowlegged gait, their gnarled feet caked with
dirt. None of them owned shoes except for the odd pair of rubber or
plastic sandals. Manju had been right, I thought. They looked less
like women and more like monkeys, the muscular brown monkeys
that would swarm our village outside Raichur. They were fearless
and feral, those monkeys, grabbing peanuts from children’s hands,
attacking people with their small, sharp teeth. A pack of them would
sit on top of a low, crumbling wall, chattering and picking lice from
each other’s fur, in the way that these women scratched their armpits
and laughed in low, coarse voices.
X
The day ripened into purple and then rotted into black, the air
sagging with the smells I never noticed when the sun was there to
burn it all away, the stench from pools filled with stagnant water and
buzzing with mosquitoes, the sweet whiff of shit drifting from the field
we all used, furtively or defiantly, even the women and girls. I
registered my last load of iron and returned to our tent, where Amma
was preparing the coals for dinner. Clouds pressed down on the
camp, our city of plastic tents, and we could hear the voices of the
men coming down from the top of the rise where they gathered to
drink after work every evening. I could hear Appa’s voice above the
others, his laugh the loudest. Amma glanced up every now and
again, her face a shining red circle of worry in the light of the coals. I
held Munna on my lap, and he blinked sleepily into the coals. When
we heard Appa’s singing, the notes warbling as he came down the
rise towards us, Amma glanced quickly at me and began blowing at
the coals. I pressed my nose into Munna’s neck and smelled his sour
baby smell. The coals pulsed brightly every time Amma blew, her
cheeks puffed with the effort.
‘Guna, the paan,’ Amma hissed, and I rummaged in a plastic bag
for the battered shoe-polish tin in which we kept a stock of crumbled
areca nut and a small stack of betel leaves.
‘Wipe Munna’s nose,’ she ordered, and I used Munna’s sleeve to
wipe away the shining thread of mucus that trickled out of one
nostril.
‘Guna—’ and that was all she had time to say before Appa ducked
his head under the tent and collapsed among us, creating a
confused tangle of arms and legs. Amma smoothly moved out of his
way and began pressing balls of dough between her palms and
pinching the edges until the dough became round and flat, and she
laid them over the coals to bake. She stared at them intently, as if
they might fly away. Appa leaned on his elbow. He was no longer
stripped down but was wearing his torn T-shirt that said Calvin Kline
and his faded pants rolled up to his knees. In January he had
smashed his hammer into the large toe of his left foot, and it had
healed crooked, like a bird’s beak.
‘Supriya,’ Appa said, drawing her name out. Shoopreeya.
Amma said nothing.
‘So serious you look,’ Appa said. His face seemed to contract and
expand, and his daru-scented breath filled the tent. ‘Not happy to
see me? Not even one smile for your husband? Your poor husband
who has been working like a dog all day?’
Amma bit her lip so hard the bottom of her face twisted. She picked
a baked roti off the coals with her bare fingers and laid it on a sheet
of newspaper. Appa hiccupped.
I held out the shoe-polish tin. Appa took it, popped it open, and
sprinkled some areca nut on a betel leaf. He folded the leaf into a
neat square and began chewing it. Red juice came out of the side of
his mouth. I watched it trickle down his chin.
‘Guna,’ he said then, his mouth red and wet. ‘How many puttus
today, Guna?’
I was about to say eight when I caught sight of Amma’s face,
looking engorged and pleading in the light from the coals. Without
taking her eyes off the rotis, she slipped a hand into her blouse and
touched her breast where the velvet pouch was.
I said, ‘Six.’
‘Six,’ Appa repeated. ‘That’s all?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Appa.’ I waited for the sting of the slap.
But instead he reached out and slowly caressed the side of my
face. He ran his hand from the top of my head down my cheek, over
my chin, and to the soft spot on my neck, where my pulse had begun
to race. His hand was like sandpaper, covered in scabs and blisters,
some that had burst and scarred, some that were still ripe. I felt
every bump and welt against my skin, every dip and hollow. It was as
if he were leaving the living imprint of his hand on my face.
‘No, no,’ he said in a rich voice, his singing voice. ‘Don’t say sorry. I
should be sorry. I should be the one saying sorry. It’s because of me
you are here. All of you. It is all my fault.’ His voice trembled on the
edge of a cliff, and his eyes were so dark.
I felt a pricking behind my eyes. My face was humming. There was
a heaviness to my limbs. I wondered if this was what he felt like
when he was drunk.
‘My fault,’ Appa said. ‘I’m a bad father.’
Appa held out his hand, and I dropped my wages into it. All of it,
even the eleven rupees I had just lied to him about. Appa’s palm
closed around the money, and he dropped it into his pocket. I
tightened my arms around Munna. I didn’t dare look at Amma.
I heard her body shift. She let out a breath she’d been holding.
‘That is his school money,’ she said.
Appa didn’t turn to look at her.
‘That is his school money,’ she said again. ‘We said this year he
would go back. You have to keep some of that for tuition fees.’
He said, ‘You’re telling me what to do? In my own house you’re
telling me?’
Black spots appeared on the rotis, each accompanied by a small
hiss.
‘You’re just one man,’ Amma said, staring at the spots. ‘How much
daru will you drink?’ She paused. ‘I should have had a daughter.’
‘What bloody daughter?’ said Appa. ‘Why you want a daughter?
You want for me to pay dowry? Some snot-nosed fellow comes and
says, I want to marry her, and I have to go into my own pocket and
lick his bum? No, thank you.’
‘Daughters help their mothers. And you’d drink all of her dowry
anyway,’ muttered Amma.
I thought he was going to caress her too, the way his hand went
out, but then I saw he was pinching her, clamping down on the
fleshiest part of her waist, right above her hipbone, the strip of bare
skin between the top of her petticoat and the bottom of her blouse.
She flailed, her mouth open without screaming. One of her hands
caught Munna on the side of the head, and she kicked a stray coal
so close to my foot that I could feel it scorch my toe. I drew my foot
back and waited for Munna to cry, but he didn’t.
When Appa let go, there were two semicircles of bright red on
Amma’s hip, the skin slightly puckered. She was moaning softly but
did not let the rotis burn. She picked them off and put them on the
newspaper. She was breathing hard through her teeth.
‘Supriya, you know what problem you have? You don’t smile
enough,’ Appa told her. ‘You should smile more. A woman who
doesn’t smile is ugly.’
X
Then Amma’s gaze travelled beyond the coals, beyond Appa’s prone
form, and I turned to see Siju standing at the entrance of the tent. He
looked fresh. His hair was combed, of all things. He stood there,
watching us, and suddenly I could see us through his eyes, the
picture we presented, me with my toes curled in, Munna swaying
with sleep in my arms, Appa reclining on his elbow, Amma hunched
over the coals. I saw what he saw, and then I wished I hadn’t seen it.
‘What you think you’re staring at?’ Appa said. ‘Sit down.’
Siju picked his way to an empty spot between Appa and me. As
soon as he sat down, the tent felt full, too full. We were too close
together, fear and anger flying around like rockets.
‘Where did you go today?’ Amma asked Siju. To my surprise, he
didn’t turn away like he usually did but looked at her with a distant
sort of sympathy, as if she were a stranger he had made up his mind
to be kind to.
‘Hospet,’ he said.
‘Hospet,’ Amma repeated gratefully. ‘Is it a nice place?’
With the same careful kindness he said, ‘Actually, I’ve never seen
a dirtier place.’
‘What the hell you were expecting?’ Appa said, trying to provoke
him. ‘All cities are dirty. You want to eat your food off the street, or
what?’
Siju ignored him, and I could sense Appa stiffening.
‘How many trips did you get?’ Amma asked.
‘Trips!’ Appa snorted. ‘He drives that bloody lorry ten kilometres to
the railway station. Ten kilometres! How do you call that a trip?’
Siju began to massage his feet. Amma put another roti on the
coals. Appa glared at them both, their exclusion of him causing the
pressure inside to build and build.
‘So? How many?’ Appa said. His head swiveled slowly in Siju’s
direction. ‘How many trips? Your mother asked a question, can’t you
hear? You’re deaf or something?’
‘Three,’ said Siju curtly.
‘Don’t talk like I’m some peon who cleans your shit. Say it properly.’
‘Three,’ repeated Siju.
 ‘You’re listening, Supriya?’ drawled Appa with exaggerated awe.
‘You want something to smile about? Your son got three trips to the
bloody railway station in a bloody lorry. Three trips! What you want a
daughter for? With a son like this?’
His glassy gaze never left Siju’s face. Amma laid the last roti over
the coals.
‘Bloody lorry driver thinks he’s a bloody raja,’ muttered Appa.
I pinched Munna under the arm, hoping to make him cry, hoping to
create a distraction, but he wouldn’t. I pinched again harder, but he
sat still, a soft, surprisingly heavy weight on my lap. One of the coals
popped, and my heart jumped. I remembered the way the manager
of the thermal station had come to our house after Appa’s accident.
Spit flew from the manager’s mouth as he screamed, landing lightly
on Appa’s face, and I remembered how Appa didn’t wipe it off. I
remembered the way Appa had said, ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. No, sir.
Sorry, sir,’ like he didn’t understand the words. Like they were a
poem he had memorized. That night he went and lay down on the
road, and when Amma went to bring him back in, he said, ‘Supriya,
leave me alone! I deserve this.’ And I remembered the way she held
his head, speaking to him softly until he dragged himself up and
followed her back inside.
Now he waited to see what Siju would do.
For a second I thought he would hit Appa. Then he shrugged.
‘Being a bloody lorry driver is better than hammering bloody pieces
of iron all day.’ He looked at me as he said this, and I looked away.
X
Amma used her finger to smear the rotis with lime pickle, rolled them
into tubes, and handed them to us. She held her arms out for
Munna, slipping her blouse down her shoulder, baring her slack
breast with its wine-coloured nipple. Munna latched on, his black
eyes shining in the semidarkness, unblinking, gazing at us. The roti
was warm and tasted of smoke, and the pickle was tart, the lime
stringy and tough. I thought only about the food, about how it was
filling my mouth, sliding tight down my throat, unlocking something. It
was always this way. The food loosened something in all of us, a
tightly wound spring uncoiling. I felt myself starting to relax. Food
could do this, and warmth, and the approach of sleep. There were
these moments of calm, when no one spoke, and there were only
the coals and the insistent flapping of the plastic tent and the
mumble of other families and the sky hanging low.
Then Siju, leaning towards me, spoiled it all by saying, ‘I have
something to say to you.’
I swallowed quickly. ‘I don’t want to hear anything,’ I said. We kept
our voices down because Appa seemed to have fallen asleep. He
was snoring lightly.
‘Listen just one second.’
‘Oh-ho, Lorry Raja wants to say something,’ I said.
‘Don’t—’
I put my fingers in my ears and chanted, ‘Lorry Raja! Lorry Raja!’ I
knew it was silly, but I wanted to keep this fragile peace, to clutch it
tightly in my fist like a precious stone.
‘Guna, listen!’ Siju said, louder than he had intended.
‘What’s the racket?’ said Appa, coming out of his doze.
‘Nothing,’ said Siju.
‘Nothing,’ I repeated.
Appa closed his eyes again. Amma was still breast-feeding Munna,
her head bent in contemplation of his placid sucking.
‘That monkey woman called Manju a soole,’ I said quietly.
Siju picked at a scab on his knee.
‘What are you two talking about?’ Amma asked.
Before Siju could reply, I said, ‘Manju. His girlfriend.’
‘The girl whose mother is sick?’
I nodded.
‘Poor thing,’ Amma said. ‘Maybe I should go see if I can do
something.’
But then Munna fell asleep, still making halfhearted sucks at her
nipple, and her eyes went soft. She brushed her hand against the
tuft of hair sticking up from his red-stained forehead.
‘Don’t bother,’ Siju spat. ‘She knows how to get what she wants.’
‘I’m going to see if she’s okay,’ I said, standing up. To my surprise,
Siju stood up too.
 ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
‘No!’ I shouted.
‘Yes,’ said Amma. ‘Both of you go.’
‘Siju,’ Appa said. He was still in that reclining position. His calves
under the rolled-up pants were like polished cannonballs. I
remembered the way I had seen him earlier that day, bare chested,
bent at the waist, his long-handled hammer making smooth strokes,
crashing against the ground. He was not a big man or a tall one, but
he was a man who broke iron for ten hours every day.
Siju looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and reached
into his pocket. He brought out a set of folded notes and pressed it
into Appa’s outstretched palm. Appa tucked it into his pocket, where
my own wages nestled. He hummed something tuneless and closed
his eyes.
Amma was watching us both. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take something for
them.’ She made me wrap two rotis in newspaper. ‘Come back
before it rains.’
X
‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,’ I told Siju as we picked
our way through the maze of tents. ‘I won’t tell.’
Instead of answering he was quiet, which made me nervous. A rat
the size of my foot ran across our path and disappeared into the
blackness to our right. The rats were a problem in the camp. They
got into our food, chewed holes in our blankets, bit babies as they
slept. Last year a baby had died from a rat bite. I thought of Munna
asleep, of the whole camp silent, a ship of blue plastic afloat on
these hairy black bodies that moved and rustled under it, restless
and hungry as the ocean.
Manju wasn’t in her tent. From inside came the loud, ragged
breathing of her mother. Siju raised his eyebrows at me and jerked
his chin in the direction of the tent’s opening. I shook my head; I
could just make out the shadowy figure wrapped in a blanket,
smaller than a person should be. Then Manju’s mother coughed, a
colourless wheezing cough, like wind passing through a narrow,
lonely corridor. I took an unconscious step backwards.
 ‘She’s not there,’ I whispered.
‘Smart fellow,’ Siju whispered back.
‘So now what?’
‘We go back to our tent.’
‘You go back,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait for her here. She must have gone to
the toilet.’
Siju gave me a long, searching look. ‘Guna,’ he said. ‘Just forget
her.’
‘No!’ I almost shouted. I felt the start of tears, burning in the ridge
of my nose. Before I could stop myself, I said, ‘She wants me to take
her to China.’
‘What?’ His voice was flat.
‘In my lorry,’ I said. I knew I was babbling. I squeezed the rotis and
felt the warmth seep through the newspaper. ‘She said if I could
drive a lorry, I could take her to China. To see the Lympic Games. I
asked Mr Subbu, but he said no. He said if I work hard I’ll get what I
want.’
Siju let out a long breath. ‘You asked Subbu?’ he said. ‘That fat
bastard? You asked him?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘My god.’ My brother shook his head. ‘Come with me,’ he said.
X
Mr Subbu’s Esteem was still parked outside his aluminum-walled
shed. The shed was directly under a single lamp post, whose light
cast it in a liquid, silver glow. The lamp post was connected to a
generator, which growled like a sleeping dog. We crept up to the
backhoe loader, which was just outside the shoreline of light.
Siju put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Not too close,’ he said.
‘Why are we here?’ I asked. He put a finger on his lips.
We waited, partly hidden by the massive machine. I leaned against
it, and the cold of its metal body was a shock. Siju was standing
behind me, very close. There was a strange calmness to the whole
scene, the glowing shed, the purring of the generator, the still air.
And then, with a movement so smooth and natural that I forgot to
be surprised, Manju stepped from Mr Subbu’s shed. She stood there
for a moment, her uniform and thin legs perfectly outlined in the light
of the lamp, her face lifted like one of the deer on the back panel of
Siju’s lorry. Then she turned and looked straight at us. I jumped, but
Siju’s hand was on my shoulder again.
‘Be still,’ he whispered.
But Manju had seen us. Her uniform seemed even bigger on her
frame than it had earlier in the day. She was floating in it as she
came over to us. Her feet were soundless in the dirt. As soon as she
was level with the backhoe loader, Siju stepped out and pulled her
behind it. She put her hands on her hips and looked at us for a long
time without speaking. Behind her, the lamp snapped off, plunging
everything into darkness. Then the headlights of Mr Subbu’s Esteem
came on, and the car floated away, as if borne on an invisible river.
‘So,’ Manju said. As my eyes adjusted slowly, I noticed that her
eyes were swollen. She had been crying. I thought of the shed, of Mr
Subbu’s hands kneading each other, of the cold bottle of Pepsi, of
the way he’d put his hand on the shoulder of the girl with the braids. I
thought of the woman with one eye saying, That girl is not nice.
‘How long have you been standing here?’ Manju asked.
‘Relax,’ said Siju coolly. ‘Guna felt like taking a walk.’
‘A walk,’ Manju repeated. She looked at me quickly, accusingly,
and I felt a spike of guilt. ‘And you just walked this way,’ she said.
Siju shrugged. ‘That’s how it happened.’
I said, ‘We came to give you these rotis.’ I pressed the newspaper-
wrapped rotis into her hand. She looked at them as if I had done
something meaningless.
‘Let’s go back to the tent,’ I told Siju. I wanted to get away from
Manju’s raw, swollen face. Her tears had made clear channels in the
red paste on her cheeks.
‘Just one minute,’ Siju said. He leaned in close to Manju so that his
face was barely inches from hers. He smiled. It was not a nice smile.
‘Guna told me you want to go to China,’ he said.
Manju looked at me, puzzled. I closed my eyes. ‘What?’ she said
uncertainly.
‘Still want to go?’
 X
He had made a copy of the lorry key. In Hospet. He had waited in the
lorry while a shopkeeper fashioned a new one, which was raw and
shining and silver. It made me uncomfortable to look at it.
In the lorry yard, the smell of grease and diesel strong in my nose,
I whispered, ‘Mr Subbu will throw you out if he finds out. Appa will kill
you.’
‘Shut up,’ Siju said in a normal voice. ‘Mr Subbu! Appa! You think I
care? Come with us or stay here and shut up. Your decision.’
He climbed into the high cab of the lorry. He reached over and held
a hand out for Manju, who held it indifferently, as if she were being
asked to hold a piece of wood. He let me struggle in by myself.
When I had shut the door, he inserted the shining key into the
ignition.
‘They’re going to hear us,’ I said.
‘No, they’re not,’ he said grimly. He turned the key and started the
engine.
It sounded like thunder rolling across the plain. I closed my eyes
and waited for a shout, a light shining in our faces, the relief of
discovery. But no one came. The city of tents stayed dark, except for
the glimmer of burning coals. The sky answered with thunder of its
own.
Siju did not turn on the headlights, and the lorry drifted out of the
yard, past the weighing station, past the permit yard, rounding the
perimeter, the camp turning silently on its axis like a black globe, the
dirt road invisible.
‘On your marks,’ I heard Siju say. He sounded calm. ‘Get set. Go.’
And then I felt the pressure release, the lorry pick up speed, and
we were driving downhill, and there was wind rushing in through the
windows, filling my lungs. I could feel Manju’s shoulder against mine,
and there were Siju’s hands curled on the wheel, and the floorboard
thrummed under my feet, and I was suddenly awake, wide awake,
filled with the cold night air.
Siju flipped on the headlights, and I saw that we were no longer
within the boundaries of the mine, we had left it behind, and trees
flashed by, their lowest branches scraping the sides of the lorry.
There was no time to feel anything. All I could do was keep my
balance, keep my shoulder from slamming against the door. We
hurtled past rocks that were big enough to jump off. Siju drove
leaning forward, without slowing for anything, and the lorry bounced
and jostled, and its springs screeched, and in the yellow beam of the
headlights I saw the ground jump sharply into focus for an instant
before we swallowed it. The hills in the distance were getting closer,
and I wondered if Siju intended to drive to the top of them, or even
beyond. I wanted him to. I wanted him to drive forever. As long as he
kept driving, we would be safe.
But then he stopped, let the engine idle fall into silence. We were in
the middle of the plains, far enough away from the mine to seem like
a different country. The ground stretched away on every side. The
trees provided no orientation. They simply carved out darker shapes
in the darkness. Siju took his hands off the wheel and ran them
through his hair. Manju’s chest rose and fell under the uniform. She
stared straight ahead, through the grimy windshield, even after we
had been sitting there in silence for minutes.
‘Gold medal,’ I heard Siju whisper.
I opened and closed my mouth, each time to say something that
crumbled and became a confused tangle of words.
‘You shouldn’t have brought Guna,’ Manju said. The sound of my
name made me shiver, as if by naming me she had made me
responsible. For this, for the three of us, here. As if whatever
happened here would be because of me.
‘Why not?’ Siju said. ‘He deserves to come, no? You know, he
even went to Subbu today and asked if he could be a lorry driver. All
because of you. Sweet, no? Bastard said no, of course. I could have
told him not to waste his time; Subbu has his fat hands filled with
your—’
‘You think I like this?’ she said. She spoke to the windshield, to the
open plain. ‘Begging for money? Sir, please give money for
medicine. Sir, please give money for surgery. Sir, Mummy’s coughing
again. Doctor says her lungs are weak. Sir, please give money for
doctor’s fees. You think it’s nice to stand still and let him do whatever
he wants? And he gives too little money, so every time I have to go
back. You think it’s a big game?’
I could tell that Siju was taken aback. ‘You could work—’
‘Fifty rupees per day!’ Manju said. ‘Even if I work all day and night,
it would not even be enough for food. Sometimes you’re so stupid.
Even Guna is smarter than you.’ After she said this, she seemed to
collapse. I could feel her shoulder sag against mine.
‘Manju,’ I said. For no reason other than to say her name.
Siju sat in silence for a while. Then he made a strangled sound in
his throat, like he was coming to a decision he already hated himself
for. He opened his door and jumped out.
‘Come on,’ he said to Manju.
I made a move to get out.
‘No, you stay here,’ Siju said.
‘But—’ I started to say.
‘Guna, just stay here,’ Manju said. She sounded tired.
I bit down on my lip. Manju put her arm around my shoulders and
pulled me close. I could smell metal in her hair. It was the most vivid
thing I had ever smelled. It was a smell that had a shape, edges as
solid as a building. And then for no reason I thought of our
neighbour’s wife, the one who survived after her husband tried to
burn them all. She lived in the temple courtyard after that, and the
priests fed her. Sometime she would take dried pats of cow dung
and put them on her head like a hat and stare at passers-by, the skin
of her cheek rippled pink. I don’t know why I thought of that woman
just then, but I did. And while I was remembering her, Manju was
sliding away from me, into the driver’s seat, her legs stretching to the
ground. She dropped with a little grunt.
I heard them walk around the lorry, heard the clink of the chain and
the rusted creak as the back panel was lowered. I felt the vibrations
of their movements come to me through the empty lorry bed. A
scraping noise, and I knew Siju was spreading a tarpaulin sheet
across the back. Through the metal, through the fake leather of the
seat, through the cogs and gears and machinery, I could feel their
movements, the positioning of one body over another. I heard Siju
say something in a low voice. I don’t remember hearing Manju reply.
 And then I didn’t want to hear any more, so I listened instead to the
whirring of insects in the bushes, the nighttime howls of dogs from
the villages whose fires hung suspended in the distance, the wind
that traveled close to the ground, scraping dry leaves into piles. The
darkness made it vast, vaster than the mine, which in the daytime
seemed so large to me. It was different in every way from the camp,
where the sounds were either machine sounds, lifting and loading
and dumping and digging, or people sounds, eating or snoring or
crying or swearing at someone to shut up so they could sleep.
A light wind brushed my face, carried the smell of rain. Tomorrow
the work would be impossible, the ground too wet to dig, the ore
slippery and slick, the puddles swollen to ponds. The men would
slide around, knee-deep, and curse. The children would push each
other, making it into a rough game. The lorries would get stuck, their
wheels spinning, flinging mud in all directions, and we would have to
spend an extra hour digging them out. There would be red mud in
the crooks of our elbows, in our fingernails, in our ears. The coals, in
the evening, would refuse to light.
For a second I couldn’t move, as if the coming days and weeks
and months and years were piling on top of me like a load of ore,
pinning me against the darkness, and then I found myself slipping
into the driver’s seat and taking hold of the shining key, which stuck
out of the ignition like a small cold hand asking to be grasped. I tried
to remember what to do, what I had seen others do. I carefully
pressed the clutch. I needed to slide forward to the edge of the seat
to do it. I turned the key, and the lorry rumbled to life. I waited for a
second, holding my breath, and then in a rush I released the clutch
and stomped on the accelerator. The lorry bucked, then jumped a
couple of feet, and my temple hit the half-rolled driver’s-door window.
I put my finger to my skin, and it came away wet with blood. The
engine stammered and died, and everything went back to silence.
Siju wrenched open the door and dragged me out of the cab. He
grasped two handfuls of my shirt and shook me.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said. ‘What kind of idiot are you?’
When I didn’t answer, he let go of my shirt. His pants were
unzipped, and I looked at the V-shaped flap that was hanging open.
He saw me looking and said, ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Just say it, Guna.’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He zipped his pants.
‘Then get inside,’ he said. ‘We’re going home.’
‘What about Manju?’ I asked.
‘She wants to sit in the back.’
‘It’s going to rain,’ I said. ‘She’ll get wet.’
‘Just get inside the bloody lorry, Guna,’ Siju said. ‘Don’t argue.’
X
Inside the cab I hugged my body and tried to stay awake. The cold
air was still coming in, and I wanted to roll up my window, but Siju
had his open, his elbow resting on it, head leaning on that hand, the
other guiding the lorry. He was driving slowly now, taking care to
avoid the bumps and dips in the uneven ground. We passed a rock,
ghostly white, that I didn’t remember from the journey out. From the
corner of my eye, I looked at him, my sullen brother. Not a raja but a
fourteen-year-old lorry driver in a Bellary mine.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.
He drew his hand inside. ‘What’s going to happen to what?’
To everything, I wanted to say. But I said, ‘Manju’s mother.’
He let a few moments go by before answering. And when he did,
what he said was, ‘Come on, Guna. You’re smart. You know.’
‘We could have given her the money from my school fees,’ I said.
‘For what?’ He sounded like an old man. ‘So she can die in three
months instead of two?’
After that we didn’t talk. The trees fell away, and the ground
became smoother. The camp came into view, almost completely
dark, just a few remaining fires that would burn throughout the night.
Siju parked in the lorry yard and jumped out. I stayed sitting in the
cab. A few drops of rain fell on the windshield and created long
glossy streaks as they travelled down. The camp would wake to find
itself afloat. The rats would come looking for dry ground. Munna
would need to be nursed. Amma would put her hand behind his soft
downy head to soothe him. Appa would bail out the water that
pooled in the roof of our tent. Amma would tie an old lungi of Appa’s
to two of the bamboo poles to create a hammock for Munna that
would keep him above the reach of the rats. Manju’s mother would
shift to a more comfortable position and wait for the rain to stop.
There didn’t seem to be a reason for any of it, a logic that I could
see. There was repetition and routine and the inevitability of
accident. Tomorrow Mr Subbu would drink a Pepsi, and we would dig
for iron.
I heard Siju say my name, and I heard the panic in his voice. It was
raining in earnest now, the windshield a silver wash. I pushed open
the door and nearly fell out. My feet sank into the soft mud. Siju was
standing at the back of the truck, the back panel open. His hair hung
draggled around his face, and drops of water clung to the tips. He
pointed wordlessly to the lorry bed. I forced my eyes to scan the
entire space for Manju, but she wasn’t there.
We stood there for what seemed like an hour, though I knew it was
less than a minute. I pictured her walking across the plains, her face
directed to some anonymous town. She would walk for hours, I
knew, and when she got tired, she would sleep exactly where she
stopped walking, her arms shielding her face from the rain. I
imagined her curled up on the ground. I imagined that her hair would
plaster her cheek. I imagined that her uniform would be washed back
into white, a beacon for anyone watching, except no one would be.
X
Over the following months Siju began sucking diesel out of the
lorries and selling it back to the drivers at 20 per cent below pump
prices, and by the time the monsoons ended, he had earned enough
money for one year of school fees for me. He gave it to Amma
without telling me, and I never thanked him directly. We had spoken
very little since the night of the lorry ride. I watched him closely for a
while, worried that he would disappear too, but he came back night
after night, sometimes after we had all fallen asleep, never smiling,
never saying much. I knew he took the lorry out sometimes, but he
never took me with him again. He stopped swaggering, and the lorry
cleaners seemed disappointed. I went to school in the mornings and
returned to the mine afterwards.
The next August, after the flooded pits were starting to dry out
again, Mr Subbu arrived at the mine late one afternoon and
announced that he was giving everyone the rest of the day off. He
smiled at the responding cheer. Then from his Esteem he brought
out a small colour television and a white satellite dish and hooked
them up to the generator, setting them on a rickety table with the
help of one of the labourers. He fiddled with the antenna until a
picture flickered on the screen.
We all gathered around to watch the magnificent round stadium in
China fill with colour and light and music and movement. We
watched graceful acrobats and women with feathers and children
with brightly painted faces. We watched glittering fireworks and
slender athletes in shiny tracksuits and flapping flags with all the
shades of the world. We watched as the stadium slowly filled with
red light, and thousands of people arranged themselves into
gracious, shifting shapes in the centre. Thousands more gathered in
the seats, their faces reflecting the same awe we felt. We watched,
all of us, in silence, stunned by the beauty of what we had created.
 eight
~
THE LYNCHING THAT CHANGED INDIA
ABHIMANYU KUMAR

PART 1: ‘OPEN WOUNDS’—THE LYNCHED

Jan Mohammad is worried.
It has been two years since his brother, Mohammad Akhlaq, was
lynched, and the 18 men who stand accused of killing him have been
released on bail.
On 28 September 2015, the 52-year-old ironsmith was dragged
from his house in the village of Bishara, in the district of Dadri in
Uttar Pradesh, after a local Hindu temple announced that a cow,
considered sacred by many Hindus, had been slaughtered. He was
beaten to death and his son was severely wounded.
Nine months later, the police filed a First Information Report (FIR)
charging 44-year-old Jan and several other members of his family,
including his murdered brother, with cow slaughter. They deny the
charge.
The Allahabad High Court later put a stay on the arrest of all the
family members except Jan. Although no charge sheet has yet been
filed against him, he fears he could be arrested.
According to the FIR, Prem Singh, Mohammad’s neighbour, saw
him slaughter a calf with the help of Jan and other members of the
family three days before the lynching. He was the only witness to the
alleged slaughter. But Jan says he wasn’t even in the village on that
day.
 Arrest isn’t all Jan fears. At his house, not far from the village
where his brother was killed and to which he says his family can
never return, he explains his concerns.
‘Since the accused are out of jail, they have been emboldened.
From the way they speak to the media, I can sense their aggression.’
‘I do fear they might attack me or my wife or children any time.
They live nearby. They might just see me at the market and attack,’
he says.
Jan has a resigned air about him as he smokes and drinks sweet
tea served by his son. He has been provided with a 24/7 armed
police guard, but this does little to reassure him. ‘One gunman won’t
be able to save me from an angry mob,’ he reflects.
He also worries that the regional government, which since March
has been led by Yogi Adityanath of the ruling Hindu-nationalist BJP
party, could remove his police guard.
‘I have been outspoken to the media about this case. They might
not like that,’ he says. ‘And the accused are close to the ruling party.
They might put pressure [on them].’
A 24-hour news channel is on mute in the background as Jan
explains that the meat that ‘was recovered and forms the basis for
this case was found by the police at the lynching spot three hours
after the lynching took place’.
‘This makes it quite possible that they planted it to frame us,’ he
says.
His lawyer, Yusuf Saifi, says the same thing.
A preliminary report by the government’s District Veterinary Officer
in Dadri, which was made public in December 2015, said that based
on a physical examination, the meat looked like mutton. It
recommended that a forensic examination be carried out. That
subsequent examination by the University of Veterinary Science and
Animal Husbandry in Mathura concluded, in a report made public in
May 2016, that the meat was ‘of cow or its progeny’.
Nevertheless, by September 2016 the police had found no
evidence that a cow had been slaughtered by Jan and his relatives,
and The Hindu newspaper reported that the case was going to be
closed.
 But Mohammad Ali, who reports on western Uttar Pradesh for The
Hindu and has been writing a book on Mohammad’s lynching, says:
‘With the change in government, no closure report has been filed.
They are sitting on the case, using it as a stick to beat the family
with.’
Jan says the open case is like a ‘sword hanging above’ him and
compounds the pain he feels over losing his brother.
‘He was brutally lynched by people who knew him, who used to
break bread with him, neighbours…and every lynching that has
come after his has refreshed our pain. Every few months, we see a
video [of a lynching] in the news. This keeps our wounds open.’
PART 2: ‘PROTECTING THE MOTHER COW’—THE ACCUSED
At a village close to Bishara, four young men—Vishal Rana, Sri Om,
Puneet Sharma and Rohit—have gathered in the home of Ved
Nagar, a local Hindutva leader—the form of Hindu nationalism to
which the BJP subscribes.
The four are among the 18 accused of lynching Mohammad
Akhlaq.
The opulent living room has a huge flat-screen TV, high ceilings
and white walls. Vishal Rana sits in the middle, leaning forward as
he speaks. The others sit around him, fiddling with their
smartphones. They are all in their early 20s, except for Rohit who
says he was only 15 when the alleged crime was committed. Vishal
appears to be the leader of this small group.
‘Now that we are all out on bail, we want to pursue the case
against the family for cow slaughter,’ he says. ‘We did everything to
protect the mother cow.’
Vishal is the son of a local BJP leader.
The four maintain that Mohammad died of a ‘heart attack’ and not
as a result of the injuries he suffered.
Vishal gestures angrily as he says: ‘We went to jail because of the
media and its misreporting.’
The post-mortem report says something different. ‘Shock and
haemorrhage due to ante-mortem injuries…This is the cause and
manner of death,’ it states, noting that Mohammad had 18 wounds,
mostly to his skull. It makes no mention of a heart attack.
Ved Nagar, who is in his 30s, dressed entirely in black, sits
sprawled on a sofa as he listens to the conversation. His demeanour
is forceful, but his smile and polite tone help to soften it—most of the
time.
Outside his home, a life-size poster features his photo, the name of
his organization of voluntary cow protectors, Gau Raksha Hindu Dal,
and a warning: ‘We will slaughter anyone who slaughters a cow.’
‘I regret the death,’ Ved says calmly. ‘He died without even
suffering heavy blows. He was a physically weak man. He died due
to the pushing and shoving.’
The younger men say Ved ‘has done a lot’ for them and that ‘we
will go wherever he asks us to come’.
As far as they are concerned, they are the victims.
‘Our families have been financially ruined,’ says Sri, who had been
working for a contractor at a power plant in the village before he was
arrested. His father died several years ago and his mother is
paralysed, so his job was an important source of income for his
family. They suffered without it during the year and a half he was in
prison, he says.
Lawyer’s fees of at least $600 a month have also placed a heavy
financial burden on each of their families, they say.
‘I am looking for a job now,’ says Sri, adding that this isn’t easy
when charged with murder.
Mohammad’s family, on the other hand, received a ‘lot of money, a
house and high security’, argues Vishal, who continues to work at his
brother-in-law’s advertising boards business in New Delhi.
Mohammad’s mother, wife, children and brothers have received
45,00,000 rupees (about $70,000) in compensation. They have also
been given three apartments at highly subsidized rental rates, but
Jan says none of the family dares to live in them as they are located
along a remote highway on the outskirts of a nearby city.
The men say they were tortured in jail and that one of their fellow
accused, 21-year-old Ravin Sisodia, died as a result. The jailers
have denied this and the police have not filed any charges. Officials
at the jail and the New Delhi-based hospital where Ravin died say
dengue or chikungunya, along with kidney disease, was the cause of
death.
Now that they are all out on bail, the accused and their lawyer are
trying to get their murder charges changed to charges of culpable
homicide not amounting to murder.
The charge sheet filed by police at the end of 2015 may help them
in this, says The Hindu journalist Mohammad.
‘What happened, according to the cops, is that Vishal Rana and his
cousin Shivam discovered a plastic packet with meat in it, after
[Mohammad] Akhlaq had allegedly disposed of it. A local doctor
confirmed to them that it was beef. Following this, they forced the
temple priest to make an announcement that a cow had been
slaughtered and that everyone should gather near the transformer,
the main meeting place in the village. This is how the public
spectacle of the lynching started,’ Mohammad explains.
In the charge sheet, however, there is no conspiracy charge.
‘This was a spontaneous reaction of an emotional crowd,’ says
Ram Sharan Nagar, lawyer to 10 of the accused. ‘Even the police
mention no conspiracy or planning. So it would be unfair for the
police to push for murder charges.’
Sitting in a South Delhi cafe, 33-year-old journalist Mohammad
reflects: ‘If the charges are changed, they will be let off very lightly or
they will be acquitted. It will set the template for what is going to
happen in other cases.’
PART 3: ‘WE ARE HELPING THE POLICE’— AT THE COW
SHELTER
About 200 kilometres from Bishara, in the village of Dahmi in the
state of Rajasthan, Suresh Yadav is angry.
The volunteer with the right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary
organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is wearing a
spotless dhoti kurta—a traditional Indian form of dress—and sitting
on a plastic chair in the poorly lit lobby of the Sri Rath Gaushala cow
shelter.
 The focus of his anger is the Supreme Court of India, which
recently ruled that district administrations should be responsible for
stopping cow-related violence in their localities.
‘Does cattle smuggling take place or not?’ the 50-something-year-
old asks combatively.
‘They are calling gau rakshaks (cow protectors) murderers. You tell
me, do the police have the capacity to catch all the cattle smugglers?
We are only helping them,’ he says, before launching into a tirade
against Muslims.
I am at the cow shelter to meet Jagmal Singh Yadav, but he hasn’t
turned up. Suresh appears to be here in his place.
Jagmal, who is in his seventies, was one of those accused of
murdering Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old Muslim dairy farmer, in the
nearby town of Behror on April 1. Despite being among six people
named by Khan before he died, Jagmal has since been absolved,
along with the five others, by the police.
The mob that attacked Pehlu allegedly suspected that the milk
cows he was transporting were being smuggled to a slaughterhouse.
A video of the attack went viral.
Suresh says he knows all of the accused—who mostly belong to
the dominant Yadav and Ahir castes, who traditionally work in the
dairy business—and can, therefore, speak on their behalves.
When I tell Suresh that Arif Khan, Pehlu’s son who was with him
that day and was also beaten up, had shown me the papers to prove
that the milk cows were purchased at a government-sanctioned
cattle fair, he scoffs.
‘They are not beyond killing even [milk] cows for meat. Once you
acquire a taste for cow meat, like they have, you cannot resist it,’ he
says.
Pehlu’s cows are now being kept at the Sri Rath Gaushala, which
according to local media reports used to be run by Jagmal.
It is one of the biggest cow shelters in the area, with 350 cows.
Some people say it is 100 years old, others that it is 200.
‘These are cows which have become old and the villagers cannot
take care of them any more. We get abandoned cows, too,’ explains
Rajendra Yadav, an administrator at the shelter.
 Suresh insists that Pehlu and his sons were facing charges of
cattle smuggling. When I tell him that according to media reports,
they had been exonerated, Suresh refuses to believe it. He is livid at
the media for ‘misreporting’ the case.
‘Not one of the papers or channels have written in our favour,’ he
says.
PART 4: ‘THEY ARE AGAINST MUSLIMS AND DALITS’—THE
SEARCH
FOR JUSTICE
Suresh might be upset about the media coverage, but it is the
authorities’ reactions that concern others.
In April, Human Rights Watch noted: ‘Instead of taking prompt legal
action against the vigilantes, many linked to extremist Hindu groups
affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the police, too
often, have filed complaints against the assault victims, their
relatives, and associates under laws banning cow slaughter.’
A recent report by the website IndiaSpend revealed that ٩٧ per
cent of the cow-related violence that has taken place in India since
٢٠١٠ happened after the BJP government of Narendra Modi came to
power in May ٢٠١٤.
According to the same report, 28 people have been killed in 63
incidents of cow-related violence in the past seven years. Of those,
24—86 per cent—were Muslim.
After failing to arrest the eight people who were initially accused in
the Pehlu Khan case, the police have arrested seven other people.
Five of them have already been released on bail.
‘Our dairy business is finished,’ says Pehlu’s 20-year-old son, Arif,
as he sits on the porch of his family’s farm in Jaisinghpur, two hours’
drive from Dahmi. ‘We have no other source of livelihood. Even our
relatives are poor, so we cannot turn to them for help.’
He says nobody from the local government has come to see them
and they haven’t received any compensation.
‘Only Imran Pratapgarhi, the poet, has given us some money. We
have to borrow money to go to Jantar-Mantar [the government-
designated protest spot in New Delhi],’ Arif explains.
 His family is worried, he says, that they will not get justice under
the current state and central government.
‘They are against Muslims and Dalits [the least privileged in the
caste system]. Only they have died in the incidents of lynching over
cows,’ he reflects.
PART 5: ‘A SCAPEGOAT IS NEEDED’—AT THE COURT
It is 9.30 a.m., the scheduled time for the bail plea of Rameshwar
Dayal, one of those accused of lynching a 16-year-old Muslim
student called Junaid Khan. But the judge, Y. S. Rathor, is yet to
arrive at the court in Faridabad, an industrial town in the southern
part of the National Capital Region.
‘He is a good judge for criminal cases. So was his father,’ I
overhear Rameshwar’s lawyer, Mahinder Bharadwaj, tell one of his
assistants.
The police arrested six people for the lynching, which took place on
a train heading south from New Delhi on June 22.
Junaid died after being stabbed eight times. His older brothers,
Hashim and Shakir, were wounded. According to Hashim, the
brothers were called ‘beef eaters’ and ‘Pakistanis’ by a mob of at
least 25 men.
Four of the accused have been given bail. The main accused,
Naresh Kumar, who confessed to stabbing Junaid with a kitchen
knife, remains in jail.
In his statement to the police, Rameshwar admitted to using
religious slurs and participating in a fight with the brothers, but said
he did not play any part in the killing.
Subhas Chand, Rameshwar’s brother, is sitting on a bench in the
corner of the courtroom. When questioned about the case, he says
he is an ‘illiterate farmer’ and doesn’t know the details.
‘Ask me in yes or no, and I will answer,’ he says.
I ask if he thinks his brother, a New Delhi government employee, is
guilty of the alleged crime.
‘No,’ he says promptly. Then he stops talking.
Mohit Bharadwaj and Dev Dutt, two young men from the same
village have accompanied Subhas Chand to the court. They, too, say
they believe Rameshwar is innocent of murder.
‘We are here in solidarity,’ says Mohit as Dev nods. ‘There was a
lot of pressure on the police to show some arrests, so they picked up
the boys from our village at random.’
The village is Khambi, in Palwal district, not far from Faridabad. It
is mostly inhabited by members of the most advantaged castes.
The main accused, Naresh Kumar, is from a neighbouring village
called Bhimrola.
The judge arrives at around 10 a.m. and, in a matter of minutes,
adjourns the hearing until September 15.
Rameshwar’s lawyer, Mahinder Bharadwaj, says that his plea is
based on the premise of parity. ‘His offences are bailable, just like
those of the four others who have received bail,’ he explains as he
walks down the court stairs flanked by file-carrying assistants.
Asked why he thinks the judge didn’t grant bail, he replies:
‘[Because] there is too much media pressure and a scapegoat is
needed.’
Nibrash Ahmad, the lawyer representing Junaid’s family, had
earlier told me that the police had removed the charge of murder
from the charge sheets of five of the accused, which had helped four
of them get bail.
‘They never informed us that they were doing so. We have
protested this and have complained to the higher courts, Human
Rights Commission and Minority Commission about this. We want
the investigating officer to be changed,’ he explained in his chamber
as several other younger lawyers sat on wooden benches, listening
to him intently.
Rameshwar’s bail please was eventually rejected on September
20.
PART 6: ‘CRIES FOR HELP’—A LYNCHING ON A TRAIN
Junaid’s brother, Shakir, is at his family’s home in Khandawali
village, just south of Faridabad. He was stabbed five times during the
attack and, while recuperating, hasn’t been able to do his work as a
commercial driver.
 Shakir hadn’t accompanied Junaid and Hashim that day. But he
had entered the train in Ballabgarh, the nearest station to their
village, after receiving phone calls from his brothers asking for help.
On their way back from New Delhi, the brothers had gotten into a
fight after an elderly man had asked Junaid to give up his seat for
him. According to Hashim, Junaid immediately did so, but several
men started to abuse them.
Junaid’s father, Jalalluddin, says his sons were stopped from
leaving the train at Ballabgarh. ‘When Shakir entered the train, he
heard cries for help,’ he says.
‘They were fighting when I entered,’ Shakir explains. ‘We could not
stop the train as we could not find any chain to pull.’
Junaid died from his stab wounds, after being left at the station
after Ballabgarh.
Shakir remained in bed for days, unable to walk. Hashim has made
a complete recovery from the two stab wounds he received.
The family has been awarded a total of about $30,000 in
compensation from the government, NGOs and local politicians. One
MP from Kerala gave them a small car.
‘Brinda Karat of the CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist))
keeps in touch with us,’ says Jalalluddin.
But the family is worried about four of the accused getting bail. ‘We
learnt they got bail only through the media. The police kept us in the
dark,’ says Shakir.
PART 7: ‘NOT IN MY NAME’—THE POLITICIAN
The recent Supreme Court directive that angered Suresh Yadav
came after a petition was filed by Congress party politician Tehseen
Poonawala. He is one of those behind the ‘Not In My Name’ protests
against cow-related lynching and is also pushing for a new law.
Standing on the lawn of Congress MP Digvijay Singh’s bungalow in
New Delhi, as a press conference he had organised on behalf of
Pehlu Khan’s family winds up, Tehseen explains that the details of 11
cases were included in their petition to the Supreme Court.
‘The problem is that the central government or the state
governments we listed in our petition are yet to respond. In fact, this
is the third time the Court has reacted on the issue but the response
of the said governments has been the same,’ he says.
If it was up to Tehseen, the case against the six accused who were
cleared of murdering Pehlu Khan would not be over. He is now
urging the Supreme Court to transfer the case outside of the state of
Rajasthan. His brother Shehzad Poonawala, a lawyer, is arguing the
petition.
The politician is currently organizing protests against lynching in
Uttar Pradesh, after which he plans to visit Jharkhand where such
incidents have also occurred. ‘We will go all over the country to
mobilise people in favour of the new law,’ he explains, as he
negotiates a cab ride back to his house.
The new law, which has been drafted by his team of lawyers, has
provisions for several measures, including the immediate suspension
of police officers under whose watch such incidents occur, having
the district magistrate investigate cases instead of the police,
ensuring the protection of witnesses and having the cases heard by
a judge with no less than seven years of experience.
‘It also allows for the rehabilitation of the families of the victims and
provides adequate compensation,’ he explains.
But many legal experts say it is a lack of political will, rather than a
lack of laws, that is the main obstacle to bringing justice to the
victims of mob violence.
Meanwhile, as the judicial battle continues, the victims say the
stakes are high.
‘The cow is just an excuse,’ says Jan Mohammad. ‘Muslims of the
country are under siege and an attempt is being made to turn them
into second-class citizens.’
 nine
~
THE MAN WHO LIVED
SNIGDHA POONAM

A
t 8.30 a.m. on 27 January 2018, Rahul Upadhyay was having
his morning tea on the outskirts of Kasganj, in northern India.
He then received a phone call telling him that he was dead.
‘It was a friend of mine and he was saying that messages about my
death had been circulating on social media since the previous day. I
thought he was joking, but he sounded very serious.’ Upadhyay
asked his friend to forward these posts to him on WhatsApp. All of
them carried a photograph lifted from his Facebook page in which a
marigold garland hung from his neck—the flowers were a symbol
that marked him as dead as any other long-departed ancestor. What
panicked him were the comments:
‘Rahul Upadhyay martyr’
‘one more life lost to jihadis’
‘blood for blood’
By 10 a.m., Upadhyay was convinced something terrible was going
to happen if he didn’t immediately prove to the world that he was
living. He tried logging onto his Facebook account, but his phone
was no longer connected to the Internet. He called up another friend
and learnt that they were cut off too. The fury over the ‘news’ of his
death had spread so quickly that the local administration had taken
emergency action, and cut off all access to the Internet in the city.
X
At 10 a.m. on 27 January, Kasganj was burning. The public buses
were the first to be set on fire. Even without the internet, the rumours
of religious violence had done their work. Most of them about
Upadhyay’s death. Thousands of people were convinced that he had
been killed by a bullet fired by a Muslim
rM. r*3be M
had charged in carrying guns and revolvers; the Hindus claimed the
Muslims were waiting for them on rooftops waving guns and
revolvers.
The two sides faced off; someone in the crowd opened fire and a
bullet hit a 22-year-old Hindu man called Chandan Gupta. Gupta
died immediately. In seconds, photos of him, digitally framed and
garlanded with marigolds, were circulating through Kasganj via
Facebook and WhatsApp. Local Hindus were calling him a martyr
and calling out for revenge. By the afternoon of 26 January, another
photo went viral. This one announced the murder of ‘another of our
boys’ by ‘Muslim mobs’ and demanded Hindu blood boil. The face of
the murdered man was Rahul Upadhyay’s. Hindu mobs formed and
rampaged through the city, attacking Muslims and destroying their
property.
Rahul Upadhyay never even left his home on Republic Day. The
24-year-old journalist spent the day in his house on the outskirts of
town, hoping to file a regular Republic Day report based on press
releases. ‘I have never attended a protest or a rally in my life,’ he
later told me. The Internet shutdown in Kasganj continued over the
next two days, and without it he didn’t know how to respond to the
rumours of his death, which had continued to spread. They had
already crossed the official boundaries of the district through
WhatsApp to areas which still had access to the web, and from there
the fake news continued to travel far and fast.
‘My family received nearly 400 phone calls in those two days
asking about my death and offering condolences. Imagine the pain
of parents being consoled about the death of a son who was sitting
in front of them!’
As the family confirmed the fact of his ‘good health’ on one phone
call after another, news channels flashed live coverage of the
outrage over his death. In Gorakhpur, posters of his garlanded photo
were being pasted on walls. In Agra, a candle march was organized
in his name. In Bareilly, a prayer meeting was held. People in places
as far away as Delhi and Mumbai swore revenge in his name.
‘I was feeling sad and scared. People were using my name to
provoke violence,’ Upadhyay said. He had no idea why he had been
chosen to be the face of this anti-Muslim campaign. ‘I suppose as a
local journalist I am a known name,’ he speculated. Some of the
WhatsApp posts mourning his death didn’t even carry a photo of
him. Instead, they included photographs of a man who had actually
died on Republic Day—though he’d died in a road accident in
Mumbai, more than a thousand kilometres away. Things were
turning truly bizarre. Rahul Upadhyay decided he should drive into
town to show people he was alive, but by this time the district
administration, panicking about the ongoing violence, had shut down
the roads as well.
By the morning of 29 January, when the curfew was lifted and the
Internet was back on, the Muslim areas of Kasganj looked like
disaster sites. First the houses had been destroyed, then the shops,
and finally the mosques. Hundreds of people had been injured. At 10
a.m., Rahul Upadhyay showed up at the police station, presented
himself to the deputy inspector general, and made the most
noteworthy statement of his life: ‘I am Rahul Upadhyay and I am not
dead.’
At a press conference called by the district administration,
Upadhyay, a tall, lean man dressed in a striped shirt and a sweater
vest, stood stiff and unsmiling as he was asked again to confirm that
he was indeed alive. Speaking into the mikes, he repeated two lines
from what had become his favourite ghazal, ‘There had been a
rumour about my poor health / but it is endless questions from
people that made me actually ill.’
Later that day, the town’s police announced that they had arrested
four people for spreading rumours over social media. One had been
arrested for being the admin of a WhatsApp group that had sent out
provocative posts, and the others for circulating it. A hunt was
launched to ‘nab’ other people guilty of forwarding rumours.
X
These four aren’t the first culprits to be arrested for spreading
rumours through social media. In May 2017, two people were
arrested in rural Jharkhand for spreading rumours that led to the
lynching of seven people. The posts were generated on Facebook
and circulated over WhatsApp; the murderous crowds later
explained to the police that the posts looked too ‘real’ not to respond
to.
The messages, sent to parents in remote areas dominated by tribal
communities, claimed that outsiders were kidnapping kids from
schools in order to sell off their body parts. Hundreds of children go
missing in Jharkhand, a hub for human trafficking, every year. Every
tip, real or fake, provokes paranoia. These posts had photographs of
dead children as well as various objects—syringes and
handkerchiefs—purportedly used in the kidnappings. The text,
written in Hindi, read: ‘Suspected child lifters are carrying sedatives,
injections, spray, cotton and small towels. They speak Hindi, Bangla
and Malayalam.’ Parents were told to watch out for the movement of
suspicious-looking people in their neighbourhoods, especially people
who dressed in black and spoke a mysterious language. None of the
people who were beaten to death on the suspicion of being child
lifters wore black. Four of them were Bangla-speaking Muslims who
were driving through the area with cattle they intended to sell back
home, in the neighbouring state of West Bengal. Ten days after
these attacks, two people were arrested for starting the rumours—a
businessman for creating the post on Facebook and a journalist for
releasing it into local WhatsApp groups. Their motives remain
unknown.
There was nothing vague about the target of the next rumour that
went viral in Jharkhand. One morning in June 2017, someone in the
Ramgarh district sent out a WhatsApp message saying that a local
Muslim trader was driving out of town carrying beef in his car. It was
forwarded hundreds of times within an hour, and soon a mob
surrounded his vehicle, dragged him out, bludgeoned him to death,
and set the car on fire. Two days later, the town’s police arrested the
local representative of the Bharatiya Janata Party for ‘instigating the
mob’. This wasn’t the first time an Indian politician has egged on a
mob in the name of religion, but now they no longer have to gather a
crowd and make a speech to incite that hatred. One click is all it
takes.
 X
In March 2018, large-scale Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Bihar
after a Hindu procession passing through a Muslim area was hit by a
slipper. Following a pattern set over the past few years, hateful
messages calling on Hindus for an urgent reprisal showed up on
WhatsApp groups in Samastipur, where the incident took place, and
shot through the state in a matter of hours. Blazing through Bihar for
a whole fortnight, the violence burnt down thirty-eight districts and
left hundreds wounded. Among the 200 people arrested were two
leaders of the BJP who had ‘disturbed communal harmony’.
In a society as divided as India—which segments according to
caste, class, religion, region and language—clashes have always
been common. And they have often started with rumours. But these
are no longer circulating through tea shops and fish markets.
Instead, they are regularly going viral on WhatsApp, the Facebook-
owned instant messaging service. The speed with which
communities can now respond to these rumours has left officials at a
loss, and challenge the very existence of India’s many minority
groups. Of the country’s 300 million smartphone users, 200 million
use WhatsApp, making India the messaging platform’s biggest
market.
It is easy to see why WhatsApp is India’s favourite social network.
It is free. It is easy to use—you don’t have to sign up or log in. The
app consumes less data than Facebook or Twitter. And it allows you
to send a private message to 256 people at the same time, a feature
that enables old communities—family groups, village groups, caste
groups—to go online and new communities to form, from school
mom groups to condo groups.
Indians produce the majority of the 55 billion WhatsApp messages
sent every day, from simple and repetitive ‘good morning’ texts to
scanned pages of school homework, baby photos and political
propaganda. WhatsApp is fast emerging as the primary source of
news for Indians, except most of what circulates as news over these
private groups isn’t based on facts at all. The consequences can be
deadly. Rumours spread over the service are killing people in India.
 X
Most people don’t think first of India when they think of fake news.
They think of America, where fake news influenced the result of the
last presidential elections; of Russia, which may have used fake
news to influence those elections; even of Macedonia, where most of
this fake news was generated on demand. In India, however, fake
news is not just a threat to democracy, but to people’s lives. Fake
news looks more legitimate when shared over WhatsApp. It’s sent
directly to you, it’s sent by someone you know, and it shows up not
as a non-committal link but a personalised package of text, images
and videos. It’s far more difficult to identify fake news in a well-
packaged WhatsApp message than it is to tell a fake news website
from an authentic one. Fake news is also the hardest to fight in India
because these messages can only be read by those to whom they
are sent.
The fake news travelling through India’s WhatsApp groups is often
meant to provoke sectarian tensions, which has never been more of
an issue than today. The BJP now rules over two-thirds of India—
under their sway, a platform with as much reach as WhatsApp is a
tempting weapon to use against religious minorities. Often all that’s
needed for violence to break out is a photograph of a dead cow.
According to an analysis of media reports by India Spend, a data
journalism website, 86 per cent of the 124 Indians killed in cow-
related violence since 2010 have been Muslims, and half of these
attacks were based on rumours. 97 per cent of them happened after
the BJP won central elections in May 2014.
How do you fight rumours circulating through a network to which
you have no access? I asked Pratik Sinha, who runs a website
called Alt News that fact-checks fake news in India.
‘We are talking about millions of people circulating a rumour—of
the kind we saw at the time of India–Pakistan Champions’ trophy
cricket match, when someone sent out a fake video showing that
Indian Muslims were cheering for Pakistan. Usually these rumours
oscillate between Facebook and WhatsApp. Those who want to start
a rumour prefer to do that on WhatsApp, because it’s hard to trace
the origin. You get a post on a WhatsApp group, you share it to your
Facebook page, it goes viral. How do you know that’s how it works?
Look at what happened in the case of protests over the film
Padmaavat in Gurgaon, where someone circulated a post naming
five Muslim men who attacked a school bus.’
Released in January, the period film from Bollywood told the story
of a fourteenth-century Muslim emperor’s obsession with a Hindu
Rajput queen and caused a militant group of Rajputs to riot through
north India in outrage.
‘The post was going viral on Facebook. How did you know the
people posting it had received it on WhatsApp? Because the people
posting this identical status update on Facebook had no connection
with each other. We contacted Gurgaon police about the claims
made in the post and they said there was no truth in it. The next
morning, Gurgaon police tweeted out asking people not to believe
the rumour.’
WhatsApp is one of the biggest law-and-order challenges before
Indian police and administrative officers today. As a young
superintendent of police in Jharkhand asked me, ‘How can we stop a
riot or lynching from happening until we know a rumour is circulating
and can plan action accordingly?’ They have no option but to find a
way.
In Jamshedpur, where seven people were lynched because of
rumours of child abduction, the local officers have been planting
trusted people in popular WhatsApp groups to keep track of ‘public
chatter’. In Rajasthan, where a Hindu man recently shared on
WhatsApp a video of him killing a Muslim man he suspected of ‘love
jihad’—the notion that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women in
order to convert them—police officers have also begun embedding
themselves covertly in local WhatsApp groups.
In Varanasi, the police have been circulating a list of legal
punishments people are liable to face for starting or sharing any
‘statement that can cause religious disharmony’ through WhatsApp.
In Vadodara, where another viral rumour about love jihad forced the
police to shut down the Internet in 2016, the police are creating
videos about the ethical and legal dangers of spreading rumours and
trying to make these go viral as well.
A large part of modern Indian policework is about finding ways to
counter rumours. Uttar Pradesh, where additional superintendent of
police Rahul Srivastav is posted, isn’t only India’s most populous
state but also its most fractious. Every day throws up a new
challenge, Srivastav tells me. Most rumours travelling through
WhatsApp groups in Uttar Pradesh are meant to create sectarian
trouble. In March 2017, the police in Lakhimpur Kheri imposed a
curfew in response to the circulation of a video of a cow being
slaughtered; in May 2017, the police in Saharanpur shut down
Internet services after they failed to control clashes between upper-
caste Hindus and outcaste Dalits that left two dead and 20 injured; in
July 2017, the police in Shamli had to counter a rumour that Muslims
had set the local police station on fire, stripped a group of Dalits and
paraded them through town. ‘There is no such incident,’ they said on
their official Twitter account. ‘Don’t spread rumours.’ And yet the
rumours flew.
In October 2017, Srivastav led the launch of a special Twitter
account to fight the rumour-mongers. One of its fact-checking
initiatives has been to challenge the widely reported story that the
Uttar Pradesh state police in the Jalaun district had imprisoned
donkeys accused of trampling through jail premises and ‘eating
expensive plants’. The Twitter handle of the local police pointed out
the next day that the donkeys had been incarcerated by the prison
department: ‘The police had nothing to do with it.’
But it is also through this handle that the Kasganj police declared
to the nation on 29 January that Rahul Upadhyay was not dead:
‘Contrary to rumours spread on social media, Rahul Upadhyay is
alive. We have arrested 4 people for spreading false rumours.’ By
the end of that day, Upadhyay had become famous for being the
man who had not died in the Kasganj riots. Leaving the police station
after the press conference, he ran into a friend who congratulated
him on his new-found celebrity. ‘He asked me how it feels to be
famous,’ Upadhyay said. ‘I told him no one wants to be famous for
just being alive.’
 ten
~
GANPATI YADAV’S GRIPPING LIFE CYCLE
P. SAINATH

W
e were late. ‘Ganpati Bala Yadav has already come across
from his village twice, looking for you,’ said Sampat More, our
journalist friend in Shirgaon. ‘He returned both times to his
own village in Ramapur. He’ll be back a third time when we tell him
you’ve reached.’ The two villages are five kilometres apart and
Ganpati Yadav covers the distance on a bicycle. But three round
trips would mean 30 kilometres, on a summer’s day in mid-May, on a
‘road’ that was mostly dirt track, with a cycle a quarter of a century
old. And a cyclist aged 97.
As we readied for lunch at the house of More’s grandfather in
Shirgaon, a village in Kadegaon block of Maharashtra’s Sangli
district, Ganpati Bala Yadav rode up nonchalantly on his bike. He
was puzzled when I apologized profusely for having him cover such
distances in the sun. ‘Hardly matters,’ he said with his mild tone and
gentle smile. ‘I went to Vita yesterday afternoon for a wedding. There
too, on my cycle. That’s how I get about.’ A round trip from Ramapur
to Vita would have meant 40 kilometres. And the previous day was
much hotter, with the temperature in the mid-40s Celsius.
‘A year or two ago, he rode up to Pandharpur and back, nearly 150
kilometres,’ says Sampat More. ‘Now he is not doing that kind of
distance.’
Ganpati Yadav, born in 1920, was a freedom fighter in the ranks of
the Toofan Sena (Whirlwind Army), the armed wing of the prati
sarkar or provisional, underground government of Satara,
Maharashtra, that declared independence from British rule in 1943.
The prati sarkar had nearly ٦٠٠ (or more) villages under its control.
He participated in the Toofan Sena’s rebellions against the Raj. ‘I
was mostly a courier, taking messages and meals to revolutionaries
hiding in the forests,’ he says. Several of those long, dangerous
journeys were on foot; later, came those on a cycle.
Ganpati Yadav was and remains an active farmer. In the recent
rabi season, he raised 45 tonnes of sugarcane on his half acre. He
had close to 20 acres once, but divided that up amongst his children
long ago. His sons have nice homes on the same property where he
resides. But Ganpati Yadav and his 85-year-old wife Vatsala—a still-
active homemaker who cooks and cleans daily—prefer to live in a
spartan dwelling, essentially consisting of one central room. Vatsala
was away from the village when we visited.
Ganpati Yadav’s modesty meant that his children learned late of
his role as a freedom fighter. His older son, Nivrutti, grew up on the
farm but left at age 13 to train as a goldsmith in Erode and then
Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. ‘I knew nothing of his role in the freedom
struggle,’ he says. ‘I only got to know when G. D. Bapu Lad [a
legendary leader of the prati sarkar] asked me if I knew of my
father’s courage.’ Bapu Lad, says Ganpati Yadav, was his mentor
and guide. ‘He found me a bride, arranged our marriage,’ he recalls.
‘Later, I followed him in the Shetkari Kamgar Paksha [Peasants and
Workers Party of India]. We were connected to the end of his days.’
‘When I was in Class 7, my friend’s father told me of his bravery,’
says Mahadeo, another son of his. ‘At that time, my attitude was—it
was no big deal. He hadn’t killed any British soldiers or police. Only
later did I learn the importance of his role.’
His regular role was that of a courier. But Ganpati Bala Yadav was
also part of the team that pulled off the great train robbery at Shenoli
in Satara in June 1943, led by Bapu Lad and Toofan Sena founder
‘Captain Bhau’.
‘Four days before the attack on the train, we came to know that we
had to pile up rocks on the tracks.’
 Did the attack party know this was a train carrying a British
(Bombay Presidency) payroll? ‘Our leaders were aware of this.
People who were working [in the railways and government] had
tipped them off. We came to know when we started looting the train.’
And how many attackers were there?
‘Who counted at that time? Within minutes, we had made piles of
rocks and stones that we dumped on the tracks. Then we encircled
the train when it stopped. Those inside didn’t move or resist as we
looted the train. Please know we did this to damage the Raj, not for
the money.’
Outside of such militant operations, Ganpati Bala Yadav’s role as a
courier was also complicated. ‘I delivered food to our leaders [hiding
in the forest]. I would go to meet them at night. Usually, there were
10-20 people with the leader. The British Raj had declared a shoot-
at-sight order against these underground fighters. We had to travel
by hidden ways and long, circuitous routes to reach them.
Otherwise, we could have been shot by police.’
‘We also punished police informers within our villages,’ says
Ganpati Yadav. And goes on to explain how the prati sarkar, or
provisional government, came to also be called the ‘patri sarkar’.
The Marathi word patri, in that context, refers to a wooden stick.
‘When we discovered one of these police agents, we encircled his
home at night. We would take the informer and an associate of his
outside the village.
‘We would tie up the ankles of the informer after placing a wooden
stick between them. He was then held upside down and beaten on
the soles of his feet with sticks. We touched no other part of his
body. Just the soles. He couldn’t walk normally for many days.’ A
powerful disincentive. And so came the name patri sarkar. ‘After that
we would load him on the back of his associate who would carry him
home.’
‘We meted out punishments in villages such as Belavade, Nevari
and Tadsar. One informer called Nanasaheb stayed in Tadsar village
in a big bungalow, which we broke into at night. We found only
women sleeping. But then we saw one woman in a corner, covering
herself with a sheet. Why was this woman sleeping separately? Of
course it was him, and we carried him away in that very sheet.’
Nana Patil (head of the provisional government) and Bapu Lad
were his heroes. ‘What a man Nana Patil was, tall, huge, fearless.
What inspiring speeches he used to give! He was often invited by the
big people around here, but only went to smaller homes. Some of
those bigger people were British agents.’ The leaders ‘told us not to
be scared of the government; that if we united and joined the
struggle in large numbers, we could free ourselves of the Raj.’
Ganpati Yadav and about 100-150 others in this village joined the
Toofan Sena.
Even then, he had heard of Mahatma Gandhi though ‘I never got to
see him. I once saw Jawaharlal Nehru, when [the industrialist] S. L.
Kirloskar brought him to this region. And, of course, we had all heard
of Bhagat Singh.’
Ganpati Bala Yadav was born into a farm family and had only one
sibling, a sister. His parents died when he was very young and the
children moved to a relative’s house. ‘I attended maybe the first 2-4
years of school and then dropped out to work in the fields.’ After his
marriage, he shifted back to his parents’ dilapidated house and their
tiny farm. He has no photographs from his early life and couldn’t
afford to have any taken.
However, he worked extremely hard—and at 97, still does.
‘I learned how to make gur (jaggery) and sold it across the district.
We spent our money on educating the children. Once educated, they
left for Mumbai and started earning and even sending us money.
Then I shut down the jaggery business and invested in more
farmland. Eventually our farm prospered.’
But Ganpati Yadav is unhappy with how today’s farmers are
sinking under the burden of debt. ‘We got swarajya (independence),
but things are not what we were expecting.’ He feels the current
national and state governments are worse than the previous ones,
which were also bad. ‘No telling what they’ll do next,’ he says.
Though most of his courier work for the Toofan Sena was done on
foot, Ganpati Yadav ‘learned cycling around age 20-22’. That
became a mode of transport in the latter part of his underground
work. ‘The cycle was a novelty in our times.’ There were long
discussions in the village, he says, on this fascinating new
technology. ‘I learned how to ride it on my own, falling innumerable
times.’
It’s late afternoon and the 97-year-old has been up since before 5
a.m. But he seems to have enjoyed speaking to us for hours and
shows no tiredness. The one time he frowns is when I ask him how
old his cycle is. ‘This one? About 25 years. The last one I had for
about 50 years, but somebody stole it,’ he says sadly.
As we leave, he clasps my hands tightly and, asking me to wait a
moment as he wants to give me something, disappears into his little
abode. There he picks up a small vessel, opens a pot and dips it in.
Then he steps out and gives me a cup of fresh milk. When I’ve had
that, he clasps my hands again, tightly, his eyes moist with tears. My
own are welling up, too. No further words are needed or spoken. We
depart knowing we were privileged to be, however briefly, part of
Ganpati Bala Yadav’s wonderful cycle of life.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement is made to these copyright holders for

permission to reprint copyrighted material in this volume:
‘Small Towns and the River’ by Mamang Dai is extracted from
Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics (Cambridge, 2005),
reprinted by permission of the author; ‘Scheduled Castes,
Unscheduled Change’ is extracted from India: From Midnight to the
Millennium and Beyond by Shashi Tharoor (Penguin Books India,
1997), reprinted by permission of the author; ‘The Night Train at
Deoli’ is extracted from Small Towns, Big Stories: New and Selected
Fiction by Ruskin Bond (Aleph, 2017), reprinted by permission of the
author; ‘An Astrologer’s Day’ is extracted from The Very Best of R.
K. Narayan: Timeless Malgudi by R. K. Narayan (Rupa, 2013),
reprinted by permission of Bhuvaneshwari Srinivasamurthy; ‘The
Man Who Saw God’ by D. B. G. Tilak (1961) translated by Ranga
Rao, reprinted by permission of Satyanarayana Murthy; ‘A Village
Divided’ is extracted from A Village Divided by Rahi Masoom Reza
translated by Gillian Wright (Penguin Books India, 2003), reprinted
by permission of the publisher; ‘Raag Darbari’ is extracted from
Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla translated by Gillian Wright (Penguin
Books India, 1992), reprinted by permission of the publisher; ‘Lorry
Raja’ by Madhuri Vijay (Narrative Magazine, 2011), reprinted by
permission of the author; ‘The Lynching That Changed India’ by
Abhimanyu Kumar first appeared in Al Jazeera, 2017, reprinted by
permission of the author; ‘The Man Who Lived’ by Snigdha Poonam
(Granta, 2018), reprinted by permission of the author; and ‘Ganpati
Yadav’s Gripping Life Cycle’ by P. Sainath (PARI, 2018), reprinted by
permission of the author.
 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Ruskin Bond (born 1934) has been writing for over sixty years, and
now has over 120 titles in print—novels, collections of stories, poetry,
essays and books for children. He has won several awards for his
work, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992 and Padma Shri
in 1999.
Abhimanyu Kumar is a freelance journalist with The Hindu, the
Sunday Guardian and Youth Ki Awaaz.
R. K. Narayan (1906–2001) was one of the country’s greatest
writers, illuminating the human condition through small-town life. He
created the fictional town of Malgudi, which he introduced in his first
work of fiction, Swami and Friends; it was the setting for many of his
works. In 1958 Narayan’s work The Guide won the Sahitya Akademi
Award and was adapted for film and Broadway. He won numerous
awards, including the Padma Vibhushan, and was nominated to the
Rajya Sabha.
Snigdha Poonam is the author of Dreamers: How Young Indians
are Changing Their World, which won the Crossword Non-Fiction
Book Award, 2018. She reports on national affairs at the Hindustan
Times. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New York
Times, Caravan, Granta and other publications.
Ranga Rao was the author of three novels, Fowl-Filcher, The Drunk
Tantra and The River is Three Quarters Full; and the short story
collection, An Indian Idyll and Other Stories. He has also edited and
translated into English two anthologies of Telugu stories, Classic
Telugu Short Stories and That Man on the Road.
Rahi Masoom Reza (1927–1992) was a novelist, poet, scriptwriter
for TV shows and movies and lyricist. He wrote screenplays for over
300 films and shows, including B. R. Chopra’s popular television
series, Mahabharat. Several of his works depict the agony caused by
Partition. His novel Adha Gaon depicts feudal life at the time of
Indian independence and focuses on the lives of ordinary people.
P. Sainath (born 1957) is the founder editor of People’s Archive of
Rural India. He is a professor and a photojournalist who focuses on
poverty, social and economic inequality and rural affairs. He is the
recipient of over forty national and global awards for his reporting,
including the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007 for
Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts and the
Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in
its inaugural year in 2000. Sainath’s book Everybody Loves a Good
Drought remains a bestseller and is considered a classic on rural
poverty.
Shrilal Shukla (1925–2011) wrote over twenty-five books, most
famously Raag Darbari, a satirical take on village life in India, which
received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1970. He was awarded the
Jnanpith Award in 2011.
Shashi Tharoor (born 1962) is the bestselling author of eighteen
books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and
columnist. His books include the path-breaking satire The Great
Indian Novel, the classic India: From Midnight to the Millennium and
Beyond and the No. 1 bestsellers, An Era of Darkness: The British
Empire in India, for which he won a Ramnath Goenka Award, and
Why I Am a Hindu. His latest book is The Paradoxical Prime
Minister: Narendra Modi and His India. He has won numerous
literary awards for his work, including the Commonwealth Writers’
Prize.
D. B. G. Tilak (1921–1966) was an influential Telugu poet, novelist
and short-story writer. He is best known for his collection of poems
Amrutham Kurisina Ratri (The Night When Nectar Rained) published
in 1969.
Madhuri Vijay is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing
has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative
Magazine and Salon, among other publications. The Far Field,
published in 2019, is her first book.
Gillian Wright is a journalist, author and translator. She has
translated classics of modern Hindi literature such as Raag Darbari,
Adha Gaon and Middle India: Selected Short Stories of Bhisham
Sahni. She co-authored India in Slow Motion with Mark Tully and has
collaborated on various books with him.