Strength to Say No
Page 2
‘That’s so you don’t waste the rest?’
‘Exactly! Sometimes you can make three cigarettes with one leaf. But most often you make two. Then you put just the right amount of tobacco, always with the idea of making it as profitable as possible. The more bidis you make with the same small amount of material the more money you earn.’
Baba takes up a pinch of tobacco, lays the right amount on the eucalyptus leaf then puts the rest back in the basket. The next movement of his fingers seems automatic. In a few seconds my father has rolled the cigarette, circled it with a fine thread, packed down the top and folded the bottom. The cigarettes are arranged in packets of twenty-five at one side of the basket. He takes a second leaf with his right hand while the left grabs some tobacco.
‘Can I do it too?’
My father continues his mechanical movements as he replies, ‘Not now. I have to hurry because in the morning you work best and quickest. When I’ve finished you can practise. But pay close attention and don’t waste the tobacco.’
These last few years Baba’s abilities have greatly diminished. Since he is sitting down all day he has pains in his back and cramps that make him stop for several hours. His eyesight is also failing and his productivity suffers because of it. But this work by itself is not enough. To meet our needs when the occasion presents itself Baba goes to make some extra money at demonstrations organized by the communists by warming up the crowd with his drum. At other times he is employed as a porter or day worker in the rice paddies. The work is hard but it pays better.
I spend most of my days in the little courtyard in front of our house. I play jacks with stones and sometimes marbles or hopscotch with my friends and neighbourhood children. I did go to the village school, but when I was four my parents stopped sending me there. I learned to count up to ten, but only in Bengali – English isn’t taught until much later. I am afraid I’ll never have the chance to learn any more. From then on I help Ma to tidy up and clean our home. I also help her cook, at least when there’s any food. It is not unusual for us not to have much to eat. I’ve got used to eating very little in order to leave more for my younger brothers and sisters or for Baba so that he can work. Lately the situation is very bad. Ma nurses my little brother Swapan, but she is not well. My father can’t afford to send her to a doctor in town. The one in the village is the only one who has listened to her chest, but the medication he provided hasn’t changed anything. Ma is always in a bad mood, and her pain is increasingly severe. The only solution is just to wait for it to go away.
We no longer have anything to eat. For several weeks now we have had to make do with one meal a day. My young brothers and sisters have empty bellies and often cry. The conversations between my parents end in arguments. Ma reproaches my father for not bringing in enough money to feed the whole family, forcing him to beg for rice from the neighbours. He is ashamed of it, but it is the only way for his children to have their next meal. The people of the village know our situation and give what they can out of solidarity. We are of the same caste, the same community and the same village.
During the day I help my father roll cigarettes so that he can earn more money. I take his place when he has cramps or when his back hurts too much. I make the same movements he does, but I don’t have his endurance. I get tired very quickly after rolling a few hundred bidis.
My big sister Josna found work in a brick factory. The conditions there are very hard. She sleeps there, and when she comes home she tells us that she has trouble breathing. She inhales toxic fumes all day and also complains of back pains, but she would not quit the job for anything in the world. Without her wages we wouldn’t be able to live.
One morning Ma asks me to go to the fields of the Mahatos, a rich family of landowners in Bengal. It’s about an hour away on foot. I go cross-country, and I’m afraid of coming across snakes. I’m terrified of reptiles, and I know that their bites can be fatal. Several villagers have already been bitten by cobras.
I arrive at the rice paddy at around seven o’clock. The heat is still bearable. I go to meet the owner, and he confirms that he needs workers, especially at this time of the year when it’s very hot during the day. I have to pull up the tall grass that is choking out the rice plants. I say to myself that if my parents had not had so many children they would be able to provide for themselves without having to beg from the neighbours. I have the feeling that I’m one of those weeds. At the end of the day I’m exhausted, my back and legs and hands ache and my face is sunburned. The owner congratulates me on my zeal and presents me with a sack of muri (puffed rice) and fifty rupees in coins. He asks me to come back the next morning at the same time because seeds have to be planted.
I return home accompanied by other children from the neigh bouring villages. I can barely carry the sack on my shoulders. It’s five o’clock, and I would quite like to go to bed, but I still have to help Ma remove the chaff from the rice grains before cooking them.
The work in the rice paddies is exhausting, but you have to take advantage of it because once the rainy season starts there will be no further work. The owner now pays us a hundred rupees per day. That’s double the amount he paid before and as much as all the money that was brought home by everybody’s wages. In the evening I carry back the sack of rice clasped to my chest, one hand on top and the other under the packet for fear that it will tear. I cry all the way home. I think that it’s the tiredness after so much effort. My mother cooks the rice in a big casserole. I am very hungry and feel dizzy. There are five of us around the dish, and there won’t be enough for everyone. I eat sparingly and then retire discreetly. Later in the evening I take Baba’s basket and roll some cigarettes. After making hundreds of them I collapse on a straw mattress near the door, fully clothed. I wake up in the middle of the night, freezing cold in the low night temperatures.
Baba is patching the roof so that it won’t leak during the monsoon. In the evening when I get home from the rice paddy he asks me if I want to go back to school. I reply that I don’t. If I am in the classroom that means that I can’t earn money any more in the fields nor roll extra bidis when my father has finished his ten hours of daily work. The maths are simple. It is not profitable to go to school.
Several people came to the village during the day and asked all the families if their children were working, either with them or for an employer. They convinced my father that I ought to go to school. It’s obligatory for someone of my age.
‘I don’t want to go there, and I won’t go!’
‘Rekha, if you go to school you won’t be obliged to go to plant rice shoots for the rest of your life. Look at me! I’m worn out by all these years of labour. I can’t sit down any more. I’ve been inhaling tobacco for such a long time that I have trouble breathing, and my sight is failing.’
‘I am going to help you. Josna is away, but I can take your place rolling cigarettes. I know how to do it now. Look, you see that I can easily do five hundred of them. The two of us will make more than a thousand cigarettes a day …’
‘I don’t want to put your future in danger. If you are educated, if you know how to read and write, you will be even more useful to us.’
‘You think that’s better? Because of the dowry?’
My father is embarrassed by my reply. He looks away and says, ‘Yes. Your mother and I hope to pay less if you have some schooling …’
‘I don’t intend to get married.’
‘But you’ll have to. When you’re ten or so we’ll find you the best possible husband.’
I must be around seven or eight years old. I can hardly imagine that in less than two years I will be the wife of some man.
‘If I go to school it’s not to reduce my dowry but to study and to become someone important, someone who earns a good living.’
They came early in the morning. They went from family to family to meet the children one at a time. They asked me what work I was doing and if I was already going to school. I answered that I was happy
as I was and that I didn’t need to go to school. The people from NCLP were visibly ready for this kind of talk. They told me that my parents were going to be com pen sated if I was sent to school. There was a Bengali government programme for this, and the budget had been approved by the executive in New Delhi. From the day that I started going to school regularly my life changed completely.
Saraswati, Budhimuni, Sunita, Afsana – my best friends – and I are in the same school, which is situated a few hundred metres from our houses near the temple of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. Our teacher, Atul, is very welcoming. He con gratulates us at length for having come and then shows us around the place. Our classroom is on the first floor of a building annexed to the main school. We are a little older, and the teachers are afraid that we won’t fit in with the other pupils; besides, our programme is accelerated, the idea being that we will catch up on the basic material in three years, while the other pupils have to study for five years.
We then meet Arjun, our headmaster, who will also be our teacher of mathematics and English. He, too, thanks us for coming and wishes us much success in our new surroundings. He presents each of us with a book, a notebook, a pen, a slate and some pieces of chalk.
The room is big and has two worn-looking blackboards facing one another across the room. There are two big windows covered by grilles, a chair for the teacher and a big rattan mat for the pupils. The class is divided into two. While one half is studying Bengali, the other half is turned towards the second black board and learns history or geography. It’s very disconcerting because there is no separation, and at times I can’t really tell who is speaking and who is teaching what. So I decide to take my place in the front row.
I feel that Atul likes me. He is a good teacher. He is very gentle and never raises his voice. When a pupil doesn’t understand a question or has trouble grasping an idea he rephrases his words, while sometimes slipping some clues to the answer into his question. He is a very skilful teacher and always insists that we reply by ourselves, even if it means helping us sometimes in quite an obvious way.
The class always begins with the Indian national anthem, and then we launch into some Baul songs – Bengali religious folk songs. Atul compliments me on my voice and tells the other pupils to follow my example. I am flattered but always very shy and embarrassed when I am asked to sing in front of my classmates. After that we learn Bengali grammar and vocabulary. During these few hours we don’t need to work in the rice paddies or anywhere else. Playtime is one of the privileged moments in the day. All that is asked of us is that we play – that we act like children and not adults. We also have classes concerning hygiene and the importance of education in our future lives. So I learn that we ought to wash our hands several times a day and that we should take a shower with soap and shampoo at least once a week.
This first year is by far the most enriching experience I have ever had up to now. I am hard working in class, and I find the lessons easy. What’s more I very quickly become one of the best pupils in the class. I know how to count up to a thousand, and I know the alphabet by heart. I understand the importance of what Atul and Arjun are teaching us.
Back home I say that I love school. My mother ignores my enthusiasm and asks me to wash the dishes and tidy the house. I obey out of fear that she will get angry with me. Her glassy eyes seem to bulge from their sockets. It’s time to go to see another doctor other than the one in the village – who, as my father says, only prescribes the medicines that he has and not the ones that she needs to get well. Baba is seated on a thick cushion and is mechanically rolling some bidis. He squirms around in all directions to find a comfortable position for his back. I suggest that he go to lie down for a few minutes, and I take the basket and roll some bidis so that he can reach his daily quota.
3
THE EVIL EYE
I have the impression that the screaming is rending the sky and ripping open the moon. How many people are indoors? I don’t know. I stopped counting after the fifth or sixth person. In the courtyard of the house the neighbours’ children are terrified by my sister’s cries. The women weep; the men worry in silence. Some of them think to make themselves useful by praying and invoking the gods. Others tie up their livestock for fear that they will be scared by these terrifying noises and run off into the fields.
‘We have to call a doctor,’ says one of the villagers.
‘At this hour of the night?’ replies another.
‘What for?’ say some others.
‘These midwives have come from their village for us. Even though they’re from a different community they are childbirth professionals. It’s said that they can perform miracles, including when the mother is young or suffering intensely during the contractions,’ says a grandmother who has given birth to eight children.
But that night there won’t be a miracle. Baba leaves the house with his arms hanging limp by his sides. Everyone looks at the ground, and the embarrassed crowd disperses listlessly. I creep towards the house, and through the half-opened door I can make out my sister Josna surrounded by several women. She is motionless, perhaps already dead. The midwives hold the baby with its head down and pat it harder and harder. There’s no reaction from the baby. My mother is slumped sobbing on my sister’s chest. I don’t know if I ought to enter or go back into the courtyard with the other children. I decide to go back out. This is the second time that my sister has tried unsuccessfully to give birth. Perhaps this time she will even lose her life.
My sister and I are very close in spite of there being nearly ten years between us. We are two partners who like to take care of each other. She looks after me when our parents are away, cooks my meals and takes me to the pond so that I can bathe. Josna is more than a big sister – she is a friend I can confide in, and we share all our secrets without fear.
My parents introduced her to her first husband when she was twelve years old. He was a fellow who came from a neighbouring village, and his parents were farmers. He was neither attractive nor repulsive. He had an ordinary physique with fine down on his upper lip and hardly more hair on top of his head. His big, callused hands convinced my parents that he would be a good husband. His good qualities as a worker, someone capable of founding a family and of feeding it – that was the deciding factor in the eyes of my mother. The meeting took place at our house. His parents came to ask for the hand of Josna, who they had, of course, never seen before. To make a good impression my parents bought a quarter-chicken, a kilo of better quality rice than usual and some rotis spread with oil. Ma cooked a dish in a sauce. The discussion lasted several hours, and when the moment came to speak in concrete terms about the wedding the two lovebirds were invited to get acquainted.
My sister was embarrassed – and he was, too. They sat on the pavement opposite in plain sight of the two sets of parents. Josna was half turned away, and her veil covered almost all of her head. They spoke, or rather whispered, for several minutes under the amused gaze of the village children.
Later the meal was served, and the men took their places around the table that my father had borrowed from his brother. The women served them the midday meal. The mother of the proposed groom praises the qualities of her son. ‘He is a hard worker, young, intelligent. He could have gone to school and become someone important, but somebody had to help cultivate the fields. After all, that’s why you have children, isn’t it?’
Ma laid out Josna’s strong points: her beauty, her youth, her culinary talents and her ability to take care of children. Josna had already been raising her younger brothers and sisters for several years now.
By the time we have chai the union is sealed and the dowry fixed at ten thousand rupees. The ceremony will be paid for by the father of the groom. Baba is delighted because he was thinking that he would have to stump up fifteen or twenty thousand rupees and pay half the wedding costs. But it is true that his son-in-law has not been to school nor even been to a town, and so it would be foolish to pay more, especially as he ha
s neither a vehicle, nor personal inheritance, nor rich parents, nor great agricultural lands that could generate comfortable revenues.
The wedding will take place in a month. Everything has been organized during the course of one meal. In around thirty days my older sister will be the responsibility of her future husband and one mouth fewer to feed for Baba. Josna is sad to have to leave the house and to go to live with a man she didn’t even know existed this morning and with who she is going to spend the rest of her life.
On the day of the wedding my sister is radiant. Her sari is dotted with sparkling sequins and her hands are decorated with intricate designs in henna. She is swathed in a large piece of white fabric. As for every wedding the whole village is involved. The musicians are Baba’s friends, the old carts for the procession belong to the neighbours and the cooking pots that are used to prepare the food for the guests belong to Ma’s parents. The rest of the village makes up the wedding procession.
The Hindu priest, facing the couple, celebrates their union and recites their duties for the rest of their lives. The crown of flowers presented to my sister by her husband marks the beginning of singing and dancing that will last for several hours. For reasons of economy the wedding lasts for one day only. Josna’s father-in-law can’t afford to offer more than that.
During the whole ceremony I saw my sister’s fear at the idea of leaving her family. She seemed lost in the middle of all the congratulations, and all those eyes looking at her disturbed her more than they made her happy. We knew each other so well that I didn’t have to talk to her to know what she was thinking. She realized that she would never again be a child and that she had just abruptly entered adulthood once and for all – although she was still only an adolescent. I promised to visit her as soon as it was possible. She undertook to come back to see us every month. Her in-laws did not have any objection to that on the condition that Josna didn’t stay more than two days and one night.