by Anita Desai
‘No one can take our land,’ said Biju who owned three acres of paddy and two of coconut and betel palms, apart from his fishing fleet. ‘It is ours, and we will not sell.’
‘When the government says sell, you will sell all right,’ said the stranger, snapping his fingers, ‘like that. No questions asked. You will have to – the government has chosen this place as the right one for its factories and factories will be built.’
‘Why here?’ Biju challenged him. ‘Go build your factories where the land is barren and nothing grows but stones and thorns.’ He waved in the direction of the Kankeshwar hills that separated the green belt along the coast from the barren hinterland. ‘Why should we sell our good farmland for factories?’
‘You will have to sell – it is the place the government has chosen.’
‘How can the government choose without asking us?’
‘Who will ask you, old man?’ said the stranger. ‘They sent their experts to find the right kind of land – and this is what they chose. It is near the port of Rewas so it will have transport to Bombay. It is close to Bombay – only fourteen kilometres away. They can lay a railway line here easily. The road already exists and only needs to be widened. Transport is good. It is near the sea and the wastes can be pumped into it. There is enough land for the factories, the housing colonies, all the people who will come here to work.’
‘People? What people are to come and work here?’
‘Thousands,’ laughed the man. ‘Thousands will come. Whole colonies will have to be built for them, buses and trains laid on for them, and markets –’
‘And what about us who already live here?’ asked Biju angrily, his face quite purple.
The stranger laughed and chopped at the air with his hand as if he were cutting down weeds. ‘Like that – your village will go. In its place, factories will come up, fertilizer will be made, gas will be produced, many jobs will be created. The government says so,’ he added loudly when he became aware of the angry looks of the villagers.
‘Fishermen and farmers are now to become factory workers?’ shouted Biju. ‘You mean these boys are to give up their fathers’ lands and boats and go to work in factories like city people?’
‘These boys?’ The man turned his head and gave them a cool look where they stood listening intently. ‘I don’t know about these boys – I only know about the engineers and mechanics who will have to be brought from elsewhere to run the factories.’
‘And us?’ shouted Ramu suddenly, instead of Hari who only felt a dry tickling in his throat, making him want to speak and preventing him from doing so.
‘You?’ the man looked at him scornfully. ‘This old man can put you in his boat and send you off to catch fish – fifty miles away.’ He laughed. ‘Far, far away,’ he roared, waving his hand out to the sea that glittered and swelled under the white sun.
The village was filled with anger. Hari could sense it everywhere as he walked up the village lane to the temple. He had promised Lila he would see if there was any ice for sale and bring some for their mother who was hot with fever. Although the scene was as quiet as usual – bright saris hanging up to dry on veranda rails, women watering the sacred basil plants by their doors, market women arranging and rearranging their flower garlands and bananas on leaves spread before them – there was something in the air, the languid lazy atmosphere replaced by one of stiffness, resentment, anger.
Feeling it so distinctly and strongly, Hari was not surprised to see that a large group of people had collected outside the brick hall of the temple. Not only idle young boys and fishermen with nothing else to do, but also the farmers who owned the big coconut and betelnut estates, and even women and girls – all stood in a close cluster, listening to a young man who stood on the top step of the stairs that led up to the temple. He was giving a speech and Hari drew closer to listen to him.
‘I have come from Alibagh to ask you to join us. We are all concerned in this matter – all of us who live here in these fourteen villages along the coast from Rewas to Alibagh. Every one of us is threatened. Our land is going to be taken away. Where we grow coconuts and good rice for our families, they want to build their factories. Our crops will be destroyed so that their factories can come up instead. All the filth of their factories – for when you produce fertilizers, a lot of effluents are created which have to be disposed of – these will be dumped in the sea and will kill the fish for miles around. How will we live without our land, without the sea?’ he called over their heads in a ringing voice, flinging out his arms to include them in the dilemma.
‘How will we live?’ they called back in one voice. Hari heard himself shout, ‘How?’ and was surprised by the sound.
‘They will send their men to pacify you – to pacify you with lies. The men will tell you that you will get jobs. I tell you that they cannot give us all jobs. The factories will be run by trained engineers, by men with degrees from colleges in the city. There may be a few jobs for simple people like us who have never gone to school but have spent our lives in producing food for other people. Jobs as sweepers, jobs as coolies – the worst jobs, the most ill-paid jobs. Yes, they will let us have those. But it is the engineers who will be paid well, who will be given houses to live in – engineers from the city. They say they only need five hundred acres for their factories, but thousands more will be needed for the housing colonies, and for all the small factories that always come up around the big ones. They will take at least two thousand five hundred acres from us of our best land – the richest land in Maharashtra. In return they will cut down our tall green coconut trees, destroy our paddy crops, kill the fish in the sea, and then we will be driven away because we will be no use to them. Can we let this happen to us?’ he roared.
‘No, no, no,’ the people roared back. ‘We will not! We will not!’
‘Then come with us to Bombay to tell the Chief Minister Sahib what we think of his plans. We have already spoken to the District Commissioner at Alibagh, and he has done nothing for us. A Minister Sahib is said to have come and spoken to us. The truth is, when he saw us waiting for him, he took fright and got into his car and sped back to Bombay, leaving the police to deal with us. The police drove us away with their batons. We will not stand for this treatment. We will not stand for police rule!’ he roared, his long hair flying about his shoulders and his arms raised to the sky.
‘No police rule! No police rule!’ chanted the audience, Hari amongst them, pounding the back of the boy who stood in front of him as he called out the words lustily.
‘Now we must go direct to the Chief Minister. If he won’t come and listen to us, we will go and make him listen where he sits in his office in Bombay,’ roared the young man. ‘Who will come with me? Will you come?’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ roared the crowd, even the women and children who had never been further than Alibagh and had neither the bus nor the ferry fare in their pockets.
‘Then meet me at Rewas, at the pier, tomorrow morning at daybreak, and we will set out in the fishing boats. We will sail to Bombay. We will meet the Minister Sahib in his office and make him listen to us. They will be frightened when they see us come, they will have to sit quietly and listen. We will tell them they can’t take our land, they can’t take the sea from us – the land is ours, the sea is ours!’
‘Ours! Ours! Ours!’ called the people, all raising their arms into the air and waving them like so many palms on the land, so many sails on the sea.
When Hari finally reached the shop that sometimes had a consignment of ice from the ice factory in Alibagh to sell to the fishermen, he was told it had not arrived yet, there was a delay, traffic was being held up on the highway by a massive procession of farmers and fishermen agitating against the fertilizer factory.
Hari nodded. He knew all about that. But he needed the ice. He had nothing else to do with his day, so he sat down in the dust by a hibiscus bush near the shop to wait for the ice. He was glad of the shade and the quiet around the empty shop.
He needed to be alone and to think things over by himself.
Since he had left his home in the morning – and indeed earlier than that, since last night when his sisters had seemed to be asking something of him without actually speaking – he had felt buffeted by the crowds, shoved now in this direction and now in that, and did not know which way he should choose.
Down on the beach earlier that morning, he had been prevented from asking Biju for a job by the dialogue between the city man and Biju. Listening to it, he had felt that the sarcastic, knowing watchman from the city was cleverer, shrewder and more in the right than old, bad-tempered Biju and all those clownish workmen on the boat and the idle boys who dropped out of school and had nothing to do but stand around and joke and laugh. He had given up the idea of asking Biju for work and felt like crossing over to the city man’s side, not to the side of the idle, lazy, clumsy village boys. He could see the sense and reason in the man’s words although his way of speaking had hurt him and made him turn against him as the older villagers did.
Then, listening to the forceful speech of the young man from Alibagh – someone told him his name was Adarkar and that he was a member of the Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly whom they themselves had elected in the last elections – he had felt he must stand beside his fellow villagers and fight for the right of the farmers and fishermen to earn their living by the traditional ways, even if he had neither land nor boat to fight for.
What should he do? Should he join the villagers and march to Bombay and take part in the protest against this taking over of their land and occupations? Or should he take the part of the government and the factory and try to find work there in the new, strange manner brought to them from the distant city? As he turned over these questions in his mind, he found it was the idea of going to Bombay that excited him most. That was partly because he was attracted to the thought of fighting for his land along with the other villagers and partly because of the thought of going to Bombay at last. Here was the chance to go that he had been waiting for all along. Did he dare to take it – a young, penniless boy who had never been anywhere?
He sat in the shade with his head bowed, drawing lines in the dust with a twig, till at last the lorry arrived with a block of ice wrapped in a gunny sack along with some other provisions – kerosene, sugar, molasses and wheat. Hari got up hastily to stand close to the block of ice while the shopkeeper chipped at it so as to make it fit into his ice box. He collected the chips in a piece of cloth he had with him, then bought a small piece for money so as not to anger the shopkeeper, and hurried back down the beach to get it home before it melted. He felt a certain happiness in having something to take to his mother and to Lila which dispelled his worries for a little while.
As soon as he came up the path by the creek, he realized there was something wrong. He heard the wails of his sisters, loud and clear in the still house, and broke into a run, thinking it was his mother, his mother who had –
‘Lila!’ he shouted. ‘Lila! What’s happened?’
She was standing at the doorpost, leaning her head against it, and crying, not loudly like her sisters, but quietly and heartbrokenly. He rushed up to catch her by the arm and shout, ‘Mother? Is it Mother? Here, I’ve got the ice for her – here’s the ice –’
She shook her head and, shutting her eyes, pointed to a corner of the hut. He went in, his knees shaking, to see, and found it was Pinto she pointed at – Pinto stretched out on the ground, stiff like a piece of board found on the beach, his hair matted, his eyes open and sightless. He went and knelt by the dog, staring but not daring to touch.
Then Bela and Kamal came and flung themselves at him, burrowing their weeping faces into his shoulder and pulling at his arm.
‘What happened?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘He was quite all right this morning.’
LiIa had come to stand behind them, crying. ‘He has been poisoned,’ she wept. ‘He suddenly fell ill – started vomiting here in front of the house – blood – there was blood in the vomit – and then he fell down and died. It is poison, I know – I know,’ she wailed, both in sorrow and in fear.
‘Who would poison Pinto?’ Hari asked, bewildered, flinging down the piece of ice in order to touch the dog’s wet, matted fur and try to feel some breath, some life left in the body.
‘I know who it was,’ shrieked Kamal. ‘It was that – that horrible old man – that drunkard who lives over there,’ she shouted, pointing at their neighbour’s land.
‘Yes, it was he who threatened us,’ said Lila sadly. ‘He did say he would punish us – that he would kill Pinto.’
‘Why?’ shouted Hari, in a rage, beginning to cry a little bit himself. ‘Why should he kill our Pinto?’
‘He hates us,’ Bela and Kamal wailed.
‘He said he would punish us,’ Lila remembered, ‘because Father had not paid him for some toddy. He said Father owed him some money, Father was in debt.’
‘Debt, debt, debt,’ Hari gnashed his teeth. ‘Father’s always in debt because of toddy.’ He got up and turned away from the dead dog and his wailing sisters, and walked out of the house. He would get away. He would go to Rewas. To Bombay. And never come back to this sad house, his frightened sisters, his ill mother, his drunken father. He would leave them and run, run as far away as he could go.
5
He did not know that next morning Biju’s boat was to be launched as the tide came up with the sun. Villagers came pouring out of their huts hidden in the greenery on to the shining white beach to watch. Biju’s wife had hoisted a whole cluster of flags and banners on the deck – old saris of hers cut and stitched into long banners, pink and green and violet, and flags that were a patchwork of several saris, patterned and flowered and checked in saffrons, maroons and blues. The newly painted signboard was up on the cabin wall, bright blue and pink. Biju sat resplendent on his folding chair, his arms folded across his chest which swelled with pride.
Last evening the boatbuilders had sunk two winches in the sand, attached by strong ropes to the boat. Now, in the morning, palm tree trunks were laid across the sand from the boat to the edge of the sea. A man carrying a tin full of black oil was painting the trunks with it to make the boat slide easily. Biju’s wife and daughter stood ready with trays of sweets to pass around as the boat flew down into the sea. Now the wife stepped forward to break a coconut open on its prow where a pair of eyes had been painted, black and white. The coconut cracked and spattered to shouts and cheers from all.
Now the boat was heaved up and lifted on to the oiled tree trunks. The bamboo poles that stuck out of the winches like so many arms were seized by the sweating, muscular workmen who began to wrap them round and round, unwinding the ropes with such enthusiasm that the boat, which was not held back with any other ropes, lurched wildly across the greased logs and tilted dangerously, listing to one side and making everyone abandon ropes and run for their lives. There it tilted, drunkenly, nearly toppling on to its side and falling on the sand.
The happy beam was wiped off old Biju’s face and a cloud as black as thunder crossed it. He got off his folding chair and came waddling down to see what had happened. His wife and daughter stood clutching their trays of sweets in silent dismay. The young boys who had gathered to stare all hooted and laughed. The boatbuilders stood about, grinning foolishly. No one knew what to do next.
Biju cursed the workers, lashing them with abuse. ‘Should have brought my men from Alibagh to do it – you pumpkins from the fields, what do you know about boats?’
‘Where are they today, your men from Alibagh?’ asked a man with casually folded arms.
‘They’ve all gone to Rewas today, to catch the boat to Bombay,’ answered one of the young boys, laughing. ‘They’re going to try and stop the government from building the fertilizer factory here. They want to go on being farmers and fishermen and fools all their lives,’ he hooted, waving at the confused scene around the hopelessly toppled boat. ‘All our lives we’re supposed to go on building t
ubs like this one here, and go to sea in them to drown.’
‘Oh, is that so?’ Biju turned upon him. ‘You don’t know how to build boats, how to fish, how to sail – you know nothing – you young jackass. What you need is a good thrashing.’
‘We know better than that, old Biju,’ answered the young boy coolly – it was Hari’s friend, Ramu. ‘We will get jobs in the factory. We will have good, safe jobs and money in our pockets while you go out fighting the sea to catch a few stinking fish. Then we’ll see who knows better, you or we.’ All the boys who stood around him, listening admiringly to his speech, began to laugh at the old man and his boat, calling it ‘pumpkin-shell’ and ‘empty coconut’ till he raised his heavy-muscled arms in the air and roared at them, ‘Get out, get away from here before I get my stick and lay it across your backs.’
They turned away laughing and one of them asked, ‘Where’s Hari? He hasn’t come to watch the fun.’
‘Dunno,’ replied Ramu. ‘D’you think he’s gone to Rewas with the men from Alibagh?’
‘He’d be a fool if he has,’ said another.
They drifted off, kicking up sand as they went. Some stayed back and stood about while the workmen tried to pull the ropes and right the boat, then gave up. ‘Let’s wait till the tide comes up,’ they said, wiping the sweat from their faces. ‘The tide will set the boat right and it’ll launch itself,’ they explained to Biju and also drifted away, saying they were tired and wanted tea.
Only Biju, his wife and daughter, all in their new clothes, were left on the beach, helpless. After a while the heat of the sun drove them away too.
The tide did not come up high enough to lift the boat. Next day the men tried again to upright it and launch it, but so dispiritedly, so without will or enthusiasm, that they failed. They had to try again and again, for many days – angry with Biju for forcing them to do it, and Biju angry with them for failing – and finally they inched it down the beach to the tide line where it was put to sea quietly and ignominiously in the dark of the night.