by Akhilesh
‘How can you beat me, Maharaj? The same God inhabits everyone. We all are God’s creatures. If you beat me, He will also receive the pain.’
‘Oh, so now it is in a Shudra’s body that God dwells?’ Purohit Maharaj’s irritation was gradually converting into rage.
‘He has made everyone similar. It is man who has created chasms.’
‘There is much power in chasms. Do you want to see it?’
‘I have been watching it since birth.’
‘But you would not have seen this kind of power.’
‘Maharaj, it is only the Almighty who is powerful.’
Harhu did not return home that evening. The next morning, his body was found floating in a well. And then the unthinkable happened. All the members of Harhu’s family committed suicide. Their bodies floated in the other five wells of the village. Before this, the water level was so high in some of the wells that people could dip a bucket or a lota without a rope and draw water. There was such a blessing of water that the ponds of the village looked like tanks and the tanks looked like rivers. So, when six dead bodies were found drifting in six wells, a rumour sprang that they were killed first and then the bodies had been dumped in the wells. A belief grew that these deaths were not suicides but murders. And the apprehension built up that some terrible omen was rattling the door chain at the threshold of the village.
Many years later, the elders would tell their children that the water level in the wells, ponds and the lakes had started reducing right after this incident. That might not be the fact, but by the month of Bhado, terrible things came to pass, and the unprecedented took place. For two years in a row, clouds did not form. They did not broil, deepen or pour. The wells were in such pitiable condition that when the bucket was dropped in to draw water, it came up dry. The water level had sunk so low that water could be drawn only when two ropes were tied end to end. The soil was so hot that no sooner had an animal sat down than it would spring back up and start fanning its posterior with its tail. The irony was that they used to come to these erstwhile cool spots driven by the heat, but now they’d be staring at the dry water beds, wide-eyed.
There was no harvest. The fields lay bare, dust swirling around. Jackals howled in courtyards each night. The rats in the storerooms of the houses died of hunger. The voices of frogs and peacocks were silenced. Gradually, cattle began to perish. The villagers had no food or water to quench their hunger and thirst, how could they provide for livestock?
When the first cows and the oxen perished, the Dalit community was delighted that despite the dearth of grain, they had flesh to eat. Meat was available for storage as well – large stores! In spite of the assault of starved intestines, their feet were nimble. But what was to be done about water? Where was water? The wells that had a little water were in the possession of the savarna castes. Things got so bad that the only well with water in the possession of the Dalits was taken over by the middle castes. There was chaos among the Dalits. They would beg for water, carrying utensils to store it, wailing, shoving one another. Many fainted waiting for some water.
Grain became scarce. Farms and barns, stores, sacks, bags and bundles were empty; there were only a handful of houses that did not lack rations. The masters of these houses had hidden their stores. When the villagers’ hunger became unbearable and they became restless about finding food at any cost, the hoarders announced a sale of the grains at high prices. Since there was nothing to do in the fields, labour could not be bartered for grains. People had to sell whatever possessions they had for the food. Those who had nothing counted their last moments or else fled the village. They set out to the adjacent villages in search of work, to their relatives, and they realized that the drought had mauled not only their village but all the others around.
It was only then that their superstition that the drought was on account of the deaths of Harhu and his family was quelled. It was a sprawling famine, its hold so powerful that everyone was affected by it. They were also afflicted with blisters, wounds and papules filled with blood and pus. Everybody looked ten to twenty years older than they actually were. After the animals, it was the turn of the human beings. Some died abruptly. Epidemics broke out. Diseases passed from one house to another swiftly. Voices of mourning rose continually from one hut or the other. Sometimes, the wails swelled out of a lot of houses at once and embraced each other in the sky.
The dead were cremated in one corner of the biggest copse. But then, it had spread to the entire wood. The cremation ground of the Dalits inhabited the outer frontier of the village. They used to burn their dead in a barren piece of land. It often happened that corpses would be burning in both grounds together. If it was night, the flames from the pyres brightened the cremation grounds and the area around. The only source of light was either the cremation ground or the moon. But so many corpses were burnt that there was soon a dearth of firewood to put them aflame. Eventually, the corpses of the destitute were thrown here and there without cremation. Those that were put on the pyre too remained half-charred due to the paucity of timber. Their hands or legs or intestines or fingers or noses lay intact until animals chewed them up when no one was around.
It was in these times that Baba, known as Bhagelu Kumhar, lost an elder brother and his wife as well as his two younger brothers. These tragic deaths made him understand the grief of losing one’s kin and made him fearful of death. On the other hand, the comfort was that the number of mouths to feed had reduced, though it was still impossible to get a full meal. There was no opportunity to do even a labourer’s work. As far as his ancestral profession was concerned, it was quite hard to practice in this famine. Good clay for pottery was impossible to find. The soil everywhere had grown so hard that if one ventured to dig it, it felt one was hitting rock. No matter what amount of water one mixed with the clay, it remained as hard as stone. The bigger problem was that there were no buyers even if one made pots on the wheel. There was no occasion to celebrate or mourn and use pots. Families had stopped offering community meals on the thirteenth day after a death.
Several people had already left the village in search of work, and the exodus continued. Mostly children, women, old people, sick and the crippled were now left behind. A crawling shuffle, arid tongues, extinguished eyes were the omnipresent spectacles. Bhagelu Kumhar realized that if he did not quit the village, he too would suffer a similar fate. One night, he made up his mind, informed his wife and set off in search of work and wages.
When he stepped out of the house, he carried a staff on his shoulder. A bundle hung from the front end. Inside were three bags and a smaller bundle. One contained some sattu, the second had some jaggery, the third had some gram. He also had a spare pair of clothes, a lota, a long rope made from munj grass, a plate, a few clods of salt, a neem twig brush and another fat bundle. When the load tired one shoulder, Bhagelu Kumhar shifted it to the other shoulder.
The city scared Bhagelu. He had not imagined so many concrete houses even in his wildest dreams. And such a huge number of policemen and white people! He felt he had affronted the prestige of the Angrez Bahadur by landing up there. May God save him from hanging! He was so frightened that he tried to hide whenever he saw anyone who looked even a little like a figure of authority.
Some of the things in the city astonished him during this famine. He saw a man selling sweets, but the real wonder was that people were actually buying them. He gaped wide-eyed at a Bhishti, on his water-dispensing duty no doubt, wetting the ground with water from his goat-skin mashak in front of a bungalow. And in front of one of the offices, a bear handler made his bear dance, and then savoured a banana leisurely. Bhagelu had not eaten anything for two days. He was dreadfully hungry. Starving. On top of that, he felt an extreme fatigue. He sagged down in the shade of a tamarind tree with his back against its trunk, almost unconscious.
After a little while, a young man of around twenty or twenty-two – almost Bhagelu’s age – in superior clothes, came and sat by him. He pulled a plate ou
t of his bag, put sattu in it and mixed some jaggery. He made a round depression in the middle of the sattu, filled it with water and kneaded the mixture. When it was ready, he offered the sattu to Bhagelu also. Famished, Bhagelu accepted it and took out the saucer from his bag.
Perhaps Bhagelu’s fortune was finally on the mend. He expressed gratitude to the man who had offered him sattu and said, ‘I’m eating after full three days.’
‘Did you bring nothing from home?’
‘Whatever I could gather from my village was finished in two days.’
‘Which village is that?’
‘Gosainganj village.’
‘Why have you come here?’
‘Like everybody else, in the hope of finding work but nothing has materialized yet.’
‘Bhaiya, I came here searching for work when the famine became unbearable in the village too. But there appears to be some hope now.’ The man glanced at Bhagelu.
‘Where have you found work?’ Bhagelu grew curious, and then envious and optimistic.
‘I will be appointed a chaprasi in Calcutta. I shall have a chair to sit in. I shall also get a uniform like a policeman and a gun to hang on the shoulder. My wages will be high too.’
Bhagelu said, ‘I beg of you, please arrange something for me too!’
The man had fulfilled his objective. He had come to the tamarind tree his bait in hand, and the moment he caught sight of Bhagelu, he realized he could be easy prey. He was an agent or arkati, as they were called locally, of a labour recruiting company exporting labourers from India.
‘All right. I’ll try and do something for you.’
‘Will I too get the post of a chaprasi job?’
‘You look stronger than me, and you can be appointed a babu. You will get a chair as well as a table. Your salary will be golden guineas filled in a big purse. Bhaiya, please bestow a few guineas on me also.’ He chuckled, ‘You will get a malmal kurta to wear, a silken quilt on the bed to match and a mattress filled with feathers.’
Bhagelu fell at the arkati’s feet and said, ‘I shall wash your feet and drink the water.’
The crowds were thronging everywhere in the large kothi, from the grounds to the veranda. Most of them were men and a handful of women. They all had collected at the place to be recruited as girmitiya mazdoor. There were so many sentiments criss-crossing on their faces that it was almost impossible to deduce their mental state. There was fear, hope, stupidity, hopelessness, penury, superstition, anxiety, scepticism, and numerous other indistinguishable emotions.
Baba, alias Bahgelu, too joined them with the arkati, who had brought in seven recruits. Yesterday, he had instructed the men to collect under the tamarind tree early in the morning. When Bhagelu arrived at the crack of dawn, he found six men already standing there. They were strangers to one another; none of them had any idea of why the other was here. But when the arkati turned up in a dhoti and kurta with a gamcha on his head, the scene changed. Walking behind him, they started chatting. He escorted the seven men to the river and barked, ‘Wash.’
The river lay dry. The riverbed was withered and cracked in the distance too. They found some water after walking a long distance on the riverbed. It did not look like a river but a small creek, but at least there was some trace of water. When they had washed, the arkati led them to a shop where pooris and vegetables were being sold. He said to the shopkeeper, ‘Serve them to their heart’s content.’
The seven men found their present so improbable and delightful that they were petrified. Perhaps they thought it was nothing more than a dream and the moment they put the first morsel of poori in their mouths, they would wake up. However, it was not a dream but a part of the arkati’s work. Only a man whose belly is full has the capacity of undertaking strenuous labour and being selected as a girmitiya mazdoor. These seven were almost half-dead from a lack of food, and the recruiters would have frowned at the arkati.
Leaf plates and donas were laid before the seven men. There were pooris and sweet chutney and vegetables with gravy in the dona. It was such an incredible scene that they were wary of touching the food. However, when they started eating, they did it with the fierceness of animals. When the meal was over, they licked the leaf plates clean. But they were still unsatisfied, and they removed the wooden pins with which the leaf dona had been stapled together and licked the remains of the spices and the gravy. It was as if a volcano of hunger had erupted violently inside them. They emerged from the shop and walked with the arkati on the road, their bellies, tongues and souls glowing with contentment.
They reached the boundary of the kothi and the arkati cautioned them, ‘Don’t look nervous. When they examine you, be confident that you have strength, such mighty strength that you can shatter a mountain.’
Maybe it was because of the pooris or the heat, but Bhagelu was thirsty. He was glad to see a large earthen pitcher on a low wooden stool in a corner of the veranda, its round mouth closed with an earthen lid. A lutiya was placed over the cover. Thirsty men and women dipped the lutiya in the pot regularly to take out water to quench their thirst with the cup of their palms. He walked towards the pitcher and waiting in line, inspected the pitcher and the cover closely. The neck of the pitcher has not been moulded properly and the edges of the cup are not even. I would have done a much better job.
His turn came and he drank to his heart’s content. He thought, I have had such a wonderful meal today and such sweet water. He had just come back with his staff and bundle, and was thanking God in his mind, when he heard a man with deep black skin say, ‘If all you want to go to a foreign country to earn money, you have to put your thumb impression on a paper. If you are sick, crippled, lazy or weak, go away. You will be checked by a doctor before you put your thumb impression. Only the strong will be chosen. Look sharp, the doctor will be here any moment!’
When the medical check-up was over, the selected recruits were paraded before a magistrate. The magistrate was holding a pen in his left hand. He inquired about their names, village, district, religion, caste, etc. Soon it was Bhagelu’s turn. When he was asked about his caste, he faltered a moment, trembled and then spoke spontaneously, ‘I am a Pandey, sarkar, a Babhan.’
There was no strategy behind Bhagelu Kumhar lying about his caste. He didn’t have the ambition to hop to a higher varna because it was an impossibility in the varna system, and no one could even dare imagine such a transgression. However, it is not true either that Baba had a habit of telling lies because a man of such a low status did not have the nerve to lie publicly. The words ‘Pandey’ and ‘Kumhar’ were not homophones either to confuse the magistrate.
The fact was, when Bhagelu Kumhar was asked about his caste, he felt that if he told the truth, he might not be recruited and moreover, he might be arrested for asking for a job in spite of being a kumhar. Secondly, he might be recruited but given the same professional status in the other country as well. Thirdly, there was the strong possibility, rather a one hundred per cent certainty, that a kumhar could not earn a gold guinea as wages even if he as reborn seven times. What was the use of migrating if he was going to mould the same pitcher, surahis, toys and small earthen lamps and receive the same barley, millet and jarhan rice? The biggest dread in his heart though was that he might be recruited but insulted midway for being a kumhar and driven off.
These were a few of his reasons, but one must realize that they were not sufficient to make Bhagelu Kumhar audacious enough to narrate such a dicey lie and court such a huge risk. Moreover, it always flashed in his mind, even in later years, that he had uttered only the word ‘kumhar’ before the great officer. He believed that the impulse to call himself Pandey had remained only in his heart. Then he would suddenly feel that he had actually said the word ‘Pandey’. Whether the scene enacted before the magistrate had been real or simply his imagination – Bhagelu Pandey might himself have been in a quandary – but it could not be denied that ever since then, he had presented himself only as a Pandey.
The
ship was at anchor. When people boarded, it swayed. Bhagelu realized that he was not going to Calcutta to earn gold guineas but to Surinam only when he saw a group of the girmitiya being forced aboard. A bizarre incident occurred then – Bhagelu and five others jumped off the ship in order to escape. Three women, five men and a child followed them. The policemen beat them with lathis and hustled them back on the ship like cattle being driven into the pen.
When the ship started moving, some of the girmitiya aboard called their gods. They cried for Lord Shiva, Hanuman and Lord Ram. But the ship sailed on and entered the high seas where nothing but the blue expanse of the sea was visible, making them feel as if the world consisted only of water. Whether it was the effect of the aqua infirma or the rocking of the ship, there reigned a profound silence on the ship. Most were troubled, some were lost deeply in thought and some remembered their dear ones. And then the wail of a woman rose and in a moment, the ship started echoing with collective howling. The ship continued to cleave through the water indifferently.
The men were in the fore, and the aft was divided into two parts. One contained the girmitiya mazdoors with their families and in the other were women mazdoors travelling alone. Most of their husbands were already dead from starvation and illness; widowhood and famine and hunger had brought them aboard this ship. There were some whose mothers were dead and the unbearable brutality of their stepmothers had driven them abroad during the famine. In other cases, after the death of their father, their penurious lives had turned into a heavy load.
Bhagelu felt sad whenever he looked at the family section of the ship. When the night swelled or when a child came skipping his way, his sadness multiplied. He would go to the family section on one pretext or another and strike up a conversation. There was less misery there. However, not everyone was in a mood to talk. Their kids were frail, their cheekbones sticking out under their eyes. The men looked no better here than the men in his own section, and the women looked like the widows in the women’s section. The only difference was sindoor in the parting of the hair. Their saris were similarly torn and dirty. When they walked, there was no tinkling of anklets or clinking of bangles when they moved their hands. Most wore no other jewellery apart from an iron ring on the finger. They had their ears pierced in the hope of wearing jhumkas and balis and their noses for a nose pin years ago. But today there were only dry neem twigs instead of jewellery to prevent the holes from closing.