The Village by the Sea

by Anita Desai

  By then Hari was so far away from Thul, he had forgotten all about the boat Jal Pari.

  6

  When Hari reached Rewas, dawn was breaking and the people who had gathered there in the night were getting down into the small fishing boats that bobbed up and down beside the pier.

  Hari climbed down from the bullock cart in which he had spent the night and looked in his pocket for some coins to give the driver but the man waved his whip in the air and said, ‘Go, run. There are the boats you wanted to catch. Mine will come in later, I’ll go and have a glass of tea in the meantime. Don’t pay me – I did nothing for you, I was coming here anyway.’ Then he brought his whip down on his bullock’s back, making it heave the cart forwards and go rumbling towards a wayside teashop.

  Hari felt stiff from his night on the bare boards of the bullock cart. He had hoped to catch a bus to Rewas and had spent an hour standing on the highway by Thul, alone in the dark, before he realized that the last bus to Rewas must have gone. So he hailed a bullock cart and asked for a lift which he was given.

  ‘Come, get in – I have to reach Rewas before daybreak. I am to meet a man who is bringing goods from Bombay for our village; he has ordered me to meet him. Food for his fields, he says – fertilizer. You know what that is?’

  Hari was astonished to hear that unlikely word in the middle of the night on a bullock cart, but he felt he did not know enough to be able to explain so he climbed in silently. It was completely bare, not even a sack on the creaking, sliding boards. As the bullock cart lurched forwards, he too lurched forwards, then backwards and, as the cart began to rumble on, he was pitched from side to side, getting rubbed and sore from the uneven boards which were not even smooth but splintered and full of knobs and knots. He sat clutching the sides and trying to keep himself from sliding about by pushing his feet against the ledge. ‘Fertilizer is a kind of manure, I think,’ he told the driver. ‘Like cowdung and compost. But different. You have to buy it.’

  ‘That’s right. Now we want everything to come from the shops, ready-made. No more spinning of yarn, no more grinding of wheat at home – and no more making of cowdung cakes or compost. I don’t know why. What is this new disease? Expensive, that’s what it is,’ complained the driver, more to hear himself speak in the night than out of any strong feeling. His voice was mild, and sleepy.

  ‘Perhaps it is not enough any more,’ Hari called back over his shoulder.

  ‘Not enough, not enough,’ agreed the cart driver. ‘Nothing is enough. We are too many on earth now. Not enough fuel for all, not enough food, not enough jobs – or schools, or hospitals, or trains, buses or houses. Too many people, not enough to go around. It was not so,’ he sighed and, hunching his shoulders, he let his chin sink on to his chest, closed his eyes and let the bullock carry him on down the straight road through the fields.

  For a while Hari sat watching the white dusty road as it seemed to flow from under the cart like a moonlit river, and at the fields on either side, bare now that the winter wheat crop had been cut, the stubble ghostly in the light of the moon that had risen over the rocky outline of the Kankeshwar hills. Nightjars flew up from the road as the cart approached, rattling hoarsely, and owls called from the dark. Now and then they passed a grove of mango trees that were like great black tents pitched in the fields, or an occasional wayside shop in which a single lantern burnt dimly. A dog darted out from one such hovel and raced beside the cart for a while, barking crazily. Then it fell back and there was silence except for the creaking and groaning of the ill-made cart as it lumbered along the road, and Hari lay down and slept.

  Let down at the Rewas pier, he was astonished to find it teeming with people. He had not thought so many would be going to Bombay. He had thought he was doing something terribly adventurous – in fact, he found himself trembling with excitement and fear – but here were men and boys of all ages and sizes, dressed in their cleanest clothes, calling and laughing and shouting as they crowded the length of the pier that led into the flat, coffee-coloured sea where fishing boats bobbed up and down wildly, waiting to be loaded.

  Adarkar, the organizer from Alibagh, stood at the head of the stairs, shouting orders as the crowd filed down into the boats. Hari too edged his way past the ticket counter that sold tickets for the ferry, the fruit stall where people were buying bananas and sweet limes for the journey, the benches that were empty still, and so to the edge of the pier and the head of the stairs. He hesitated: although he came from Thul, a fishing village, it was a long time since he had been in a boat. Then he heard Adarkar shout, ‘Go on, go on – if you are willing to fight for your village and your livelihood, into the boat with you,’ and men on either side of him pushed into him so that he was almost lifted off his feet and set down into one of the waiting boats.

  By the time the sun was up, turning the dull sea into peacock blue and emerald green and lighting up the city of Bombay on the far shore like a white castle made of sand, or salt, blinding against the hot blue sky, all the boats had been loaded and were setting out like a shoal of dolphins over the waves.

  It was fourteen kilometres from Rewas to Bombay. All the way the farmers and fishermen shouted and sang. Their voices rang from boat to boat. They were all in high spirits; it was such a rare outing for them who usually never gave up a day’s work to leave their villages, it seemed almost like a holiday. Adarkar had to shout continually to remind them why they were going to Bombay. His voice was getting so hoarse, one of the older fishermen finally tugged at his shirt, hanging out over his dhoti and wet with perspiration, and said, ‘Sit down, son, sit for a while. Keep your breath for all the shouting you are going to do in Bombay. When we get there we will shout so every man in the city hears us, never you fear. Sit and have a little rest. Give our brother some tea to drink,’ he called to the men in the boat. One of them produced a clay cup which was still half full of tea, the rest having spilt earlier. They passed it to their leader who sat down and drank gratefully. Another produced a sweet lime, peeled it and passed him the segments one by one to suck. He was grateful to them and took their advice.

  Hari who had bought neither tea nor fruit at the pier nor food from home in the night, sat very quietly on the floor of the boat and no one paid him any attention at all. There was no one else from Thul in his boat; it was full of strangers from other villages along the coast, and he sat listening to them, feeling very tired, hot and thirsty, and very afraid of the journey he had undertaken without thinking at all, simply because he had been upset and angry and simply could not bear to live another day in Thul in the old way. The time for change had come, he had felt that. He had had to make the break he had been thinking about for so long. Had he done wrong?

  Of course there was no question of turning back. Having joined this ‘procession’, there was no way he could back out of it short of leaping into the sea and swimming home. Once in Bombay, he would have to stay, work and earn a living. Was he really ready for that? He felt unsure. He looked back over his shoulder at the flat, marshy coast of Rewas, too far for him to reach. Putting his head down on his knees, he closed his eyes in despair.

  ‘Look at the boy,’ someone said. ‘Whose son is he? Have you nothing to eat, son?’ Here, take this,’ and he was handed a cold, dry chapati, folded into a triangle. He took it although his throat was so dry he thought he could not possibly chew it or swallow it, but to be polite he bit into it and it gave him a little nourishment and strength.

  He needed that for it was the most strenuous day of his life.

  He was silenced by awe when he saw the city of Bombay looming over their boats and the oily green waves. He would have liked to stand and stare as he disembarked from the boat at the Sassoon docks, aching and stiff from the long ride in the jam-packed boat, but there was no time, no leisure for that. His fellow passengers were pushing and shoving and jostling past him and he was carried along by them. They pushed and shoved because they were in turn being pushed and shoved by the Bombay crowds that throng
ed the docks – people in a hurry to get something done, so many people in such a great hurry as the villagers had never seen before. It was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw, briefly, before being pushed on, the great looming sides of steamships berthed at the docks, cranes lifting and lowering huge bales, men bare-bodied and sweating carrying huge packing cases, boxes and baskets on their heads and shoulders, grunting as they hurried, women like the fisherwomen at home with their purple and green saris tucked up between their legs as they ran with baskets of shining, slithering fish from the boats to the market, straw and mud and fish scales making the ground dangerously slippery. Added to this chaos were the smells of the city mingling with the familiar smells of the sea and fish and turning them into something strange, and the noises of the city – not only the familiar fishermen’s voices, loud and ringing, but the noise of the traffic which was so rarely heard in or around Thul.

  And now they were out through the gates and on the street and in the midst of the terrifying traffic. In all his life Hari had not seen so much traffic as he saw in that one moment on that one street. In Thul there was only an occasional bus driving down the main road of the village to the highway, and very rarely a single, dusty car. When he went to Alibagh, it was chiefly bicycles that he saw, and a few cycle-rickshaws, and of course buses and lorries. But here there was everything at once as if all the traffic in the world had met on the streets of Bombay – cycles, rickshaws, handcarts, tongas, buses, cars, taxis and lorries – hooting and screeching and grinding and roaring past and around him. He clutched the arm of the man next to him in alarm and then was relieved to find it was a farmer from Thul, Mahe.

  ‘Hurry, brother – don’t stop – come, we have to go to the Kala Ghoda, the Black Horse,’ Mahe panted, and together they dodged the traffic and ran straight into a huge red double-decker bus that screeched to a halt just before their noses. The driver leaned out of the window and bellowed at them. They stood transfixed, shaking.

  Then the police appeared – the famed Bombay police who, with a wave of their batons and a blast on their whistles, could bring the traffic to a halt or send it up one road and down another, and were capable even of controlling processions and herding marchers through the crowded city such as this one of fishermen from Alibagh.

  ‘Where have you come from, fool?’ the policeman roared at Hari. ‘Never seen traffic lights? Don’t you know how to cross a street? Come straight from the pumpkin fields, have you?’

  ‘Send him back there – let him grow pumpkins – keep him off the Bombay streets,’ shouted the bus driver fiercely.

  The policeman laughed, held up his hand to keep the bus waiting and waved to the marchers to cross the road.

  ‘We are farmers and fishermen from Alibagh,’ said Mahe quietly before he moved on. ‘We have come to speak to the Chief Minister.’

  ‘You do that,’ the policeman told him. ‘You do that – he is waiting for you, with tea and a garland and a sweet for each of you.’ He burst out laughing again, winking at the bus-driver as he did so, and then blew his whistle shrilly to make them move. Hari and his companion moved on, very hurt and offended.

  ‘These Bombay-wallahs, the rudest people on earth,’ muttered Mahe, and Hari nodded.

  Those were only the first jeers of the day. They were to hear many more as they walked through the streets to the mysterious Black Horse. As Hari looked up fearfully at the towering buildings, ten and twenty storeys high, at the huge shops and their windows that were as large as the huts at home and much brighter, and pushed past the people who teemed on the streets more plentifully than fish in the sea, he wondered about the Black Horse. Did this amazing city contain a great black horse as a kind of deity, a god? He looked for it eagerly, perhaps a little anxiously, but saw only people, buildings and traffic, and heard only the honking of horns, the grinding of gears and the roar of the great double-decker buses, the taxis and cars. People pushed past with their market bags, handbags and briefcases, grumbling, ‘Here’s another procession to hold us up,’ and, ‘What is this lot shouting for now? We’ll miss the bus – we’ll be late for work – here, get out of my way.’

  Once another procession passed directly in front of theirs and they had to stop and wait till it wound past them. To Hari’s utter amazement, all the people marching in it were women. They held up banners, raised their fists in the air and shouted, ‘Bring down the prices! We want oil! We want sugar! We want rice at fair prices!’ and ‘Long live Women’s Society for Freedom and Justice!’ Then all the women would shout in one voice, ‘Jail’ and surge forwards. At their head was a grey-haired old lady who waved not her fist but a wooden rolling-pin in the air and all the others laughed and cheerfully encouraged her to hold it high and wave it. Some held cooking pots and beat on them with long-handled cooking spoons, making a great din that they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying.

  Hari and the other Alibagh villagers stood open-mouthed in amazement: they had not brought along a single woman with them, had not thought it necessary, had been sure that they, the menfolk, could manage it all on their own and the women would only be a nuisance. Here in Bombay it seemed women did not trust men to manage for them, and they were determined to organize their affairs themselves. It was a very strange new idea to Hari and he did not join in the laughter or the jokes that followed in their wake, but walked on soberly after they had passed, wondering what his mother and Lila would have thought of it.

  Now they had the policemen flanking them, waving their batons and keeping them in orderly rows. It seemed they were quite used to such processions and knew exactly how to handle them and direct them. Hari found they were being led around a large circle around which were great domed buildings surrounded by parks and trees. ‘Look, look, the museum,’ someone cried, and another asked excitedly, ‘Will we be able to visit it?’ But no, they were being led to a square between large, old, grey office buildings and there, in the centre of the square, was an empty pedestal. ‘Black Horse. Black Horse,’ Hari heard the men saying and he asked, ‘But where is it?’ ‘Don’t you know?’ someone said. ‘It was taken away when the British left – the people of Bombay did not want to see a foreign ruler after independence, not even a stone one.’ ‘Oh,’ said Hari in gravest disappointment, for he would dearly have liked to see the emperor upon his horse. He stood stock still, staring at the empty pedestal and trying to picture the black horse on it, while the other villagers came to stand beside him. The traffic continued to pour around them as if no one cared why they had come or what they were doing here.

  A wooden ladder had been set up beside the pedestal and a thin, elderly man with a white beard, a stranger to the men from Alibagh, climbed on to it. He held a megaphone to his mouth and began to speak. Hari tried to ignore the traffic, the horns blaring and the wheels churning, and to catch a few words of the speech.

  ‘I have come here to speak to you, and speak for you, because I believe in your way of life, because your green fields and the sea are valuable to all of us as they are to you. Our trees, our fish, our cattle and birds have to be protected …’

  Hari wondered who he was and why he spoke so passionately. He looked like a city man – neat, clean and educated – not like a man from the village used to rough work in the sun and dust. Yet he spoke of fish and cattle and trees with feeling and concern. Why did he care so much?

  As if he had heard Hari’s thoughts, he answered, ‘You may wonder why I, a citizen of Bombay, care to join my brothers from the village and speak in their cause. Maybe you do not trust me to speak for you. In a way, you are right because I do have selfish reasons. All the citizens of Bombay are concerned. These factories that are to come up in Thul-Vaishet will pump deadly chemicals into the air – fertilizer cannot be manufactured without polluting the air for miles around. Sulphur dioxide, ammonia and dust will be scattered far and wide. Recently the ruling government stipulated that no fertilizer complex should be located within fifty miles of big cities. But you know how far Rewas is fr
om Bombay – it is only fourteen kilometres as the crow flies. As it is, Bombay is heavily industrialized, crowded and polluted. How much more pollution can we stand? Do you know that in Japan organic mercury was pumped into the sea, it poisoned the fish and the fish poisoned the people who were unlucky enough to eat them …’

  Hari strained to listen but the noise of the traffic that was so unfamiliar distracted him. He felt sure the cars and buses were all charging straight at him and if he did not keep a sharp lookout he would be run over. He shifted about uneasily and the men around him bumped into him and talked over his head to each other. The speaker’s educated accent was difficult to follow.

  ‘If you are forced to give up farming and fishing, you will have to leave your village and come to Bombay to find work,’ he was saying. ‘Look around the city now that you are here: is there room for twenty to fifty thousand more people? Do you think there can be enough jobs here, or houses? See how the poor and unemployed live here. Do you wish to change your life in the country amongst your green paddy fields and coconut groves for the life of beggars on the pavements of the city?’

  Hari gave a quiver. He felt certain the bearded gentleman was talking to him, questioning him. His mouth fell open with wonder: how did he know Hari had come here to find work? Hari had told no one, he hardly knew his own mind, but this speaker seemed to know more than even he did about himself. ‘Who is he?’ he asked Mahe who was standing beside him and listening with his mouth open.

  ‘Sayyid – they say his name is Sayyid Ali – something like that,’ Mahe answered. ‘Not one of the political leaders. Don’t know why they’ve got hold of him to speak to us.’