by Anita Desai
Then they were out on the flat, wet sand for the tide was out, far out. The wet sand glistened and reflected the great pink clouds that sailed along in the golden sky. Children were running barefoot over it to the sea where fishermen waited in boats for those who wanted to row out to sea and immerse their coconuts in the deep. Others were just tossing their coconuts in or wading in to set them afloat. Thousands of coconuts bobbed and floated and sank. Hundreds of urchins splashed through the waves and dived for them.
Suddenly Hari pushed aside the two boys on either side of him, dashed past a tall man in front of him, and to Mr Panwallah’s astonishment, shouted, ‘It’s mine! It’s mine!’ and dived into the spray to grab a coconut thrown by someone else and fiercely fought over by three or four other boys. Hari was waist-deep in water, the spray was being churned up all around him, and there he stood, clutching the coconut to him and beaming triumphantly at Mr Panwallah.
Mr Panwallah laughed with amazement. As Hari came out dripping with his prize, he chuckled. ‘So, you’ve become a real city boy at last, have you? You’ve learned to push and fight your way with the city boys, have you? Hari, Hari – I never thought I would see you do such a thing.’
Hari began to feel ashamed and looked around for a beggar to whom he could give the coconut, but Mr Panwallah was not shocked: he was laughing.
‘Yes, you can manage now,’ he said, in a pleased way. ‘You will manage all right – I can see I don’t have to worry about you any more.’
12
Hari came back to Thul not by ferry after all but by bus – Jagu and Mr Panwallah having bought him a ticket jointly for the bus. Mr Panwallah had said goodbye to him at the shop door, quietly slipping him another ten rupee note as a farewell present, and sniffing to keep back his tears, while Jagu had taken the morning off from work to accompany him to the bus depot and see him on to the right bus. ‘Got your money safe with you, Hari?’ he kept asking anxiously. ‘Be careful of pickpockets. Don’t touch your pocket, don’t let anyone see you have so much money with you …’ for he was as anxious as Hari himself that his earnings got to the family in Thul safely. Again and again Hari had to promise to be careful, to send a postcard as soon as he reached Thul, to keep in touch with Jagu. Then at last the bus drew out and there was nothing to do but wave to each other silently.
As he left the city behind him – the slums, the peeling grey houses, the open foul-smelling gutters, the wayside bazaars, bus depots and traffic – he pressed his face to the window, searching for signs of the open country. They crossed a long, broad bridge and below it was the sea – not the sea as he knew it at Thul but the sea that separated Bombay from the mainland, a marshy sea that sank and swelled with the tide. Still, it smelt of salt as well as of mud and there were not only clumps of reeds at the edges but fishing boats and nets and glittering piles of ‘windowpane’ oysters as well. Hari shook with excitement but after that there was another long dreary stretch – the factory belt of Thana, pouring out evil-smelling smoke and chemicals into the discoloured sky, all the land around blighted and bare, not a blade of grass to be seen and the few remaining trees coated with suffocating dust. Hari wondered if this could possibly be the way that the green coastline from Rewas to Alibagh would look like one day.
There were a few signs of the beginnings of such a transformation: the highway was being widened, a railway bridge under construction, old large trees cut down and bulldozers and steamrollers at work, but the rice still stood golden and ripe in the fields, the low hills beyond them were violet and bronze, the sky clear and blue. They crossed a flat and lazy river that wound through the rice fields, then drove through a forest of large-leafed sal trees and at last were out on the coastline and Hari could see the coconut palms once more and the blur of blue in the distance that was the sea.
The bus set him down on the highway beside the hill with the temple on top. Although the old dusty road was being widened and tarred and many of the sal and banyan trees along it had been cut down to clear the way, Thul itself seemed unchanged. The hill stood, sunlit and sere, and it was still topped by the small white cube of the temple. Hari turned off the highway into the dusty, deeply rutted path between the coconut and betel palms that wound through the silent, sleepy village.
Hari came down the path through the coconut grove to the cluster of old gnarled casuarina trees on the beach. Here the breeze blew up salt and fresh, and there was the sea. The real sea, the open sea, not the sea that lapped the island of Bombay. Hari sank down on the roots of a casuarina, cupped his chin in his hand and stared and stared and stared at it. He wanted to make sure it was exactly as he remembered it, and it was. The tide was coming in, it boomed and thundered on the silver sand. The three black rocks were being submerged, only the tops showed above the creamy froth on the waves. Out along the horizon the sails of the fishing fleet showed like the wings of gulls or like butterflies, white and bright and brave against the skyline. Closer to shore were the two small islands of Undheri and Kundheri, rocky and green. Smaller fishing craft bobbed around them, trying to get back to land, to the village.
Sighing with relief, Hari got up and turned into the path over the dunes that were webbed with seaside morning glory, their flowers unfurled in flat mauve saucers. He passed his single small field and saw that the girls had sown the usual crop of tindli in it – the tiny marrows hung from the grapelike vines that had been trained over a bamboo trellis. He passed the white bungalow, Mon Repos, and noticed that its monsoon wrapping of thatch had been removed and that it gleamed white in the greenery. Then he came to the creek where the heron still stood on its stone, fishing, the kingfisher dived down in a flash of blue and the egret rose up from the reeds as white as snow. He crossed the log that lay across the creek and saw that the frangipani tree was in flower. In its shade the old hut looked as dark and dismal as ever, its earthen walls crumbling, its palm-leaf thatch hanging crooked and tattered over the eaves.
He would change it all: he would rebuild the hut, he would work on it now that he was home and make it bright and cheerful and happy.
‘Lila, Bela, Kamal!’ he called.
In an instant Lila was at the door, her old purple sari gathered about her, her face peeping out, brown and curious. When she saw him, she gasped. They stared at each other. Then she ran out crying, ‘Hari! Hari, I knew you would come. It’s Diwali tomorrow and I knew you’d come!’
‘How did you know? I didn’t write.’
‘Oh, I knew, I knew you would,’ Lila smiled. ‘And we made sweets for you, Hari – come and eat.’
Hari wanted to ask a hundred questions, all at once, about their mother, their father, Bela and Kamal, about the village and Biju’s boat and everything. Instead, he followed Lila into the house. Old and shabby it might be, but how shady and cool it was. He felt grateful for it, just as it was, and stood breathing in its air silently. Only the invisible pigeons could be heard, letting flow their musical notes like soft, feathered bubbles trickling through the air.
Then Lila came towards him with a brass tray on the palm of her hand. It was heaped with the sweets she had made of rice powder and cream, sugar and flour and semolina and coconut.
Hari said, ‘But I must wash first: I am dusty.’ He went out by the back door where the big earthenware jar stood filled with water from the well and tipping it over, he washed his face and hands, sprinkling some of the cool water on his hair as well. He felt that in all the nine months that he had spent in Bombay he had not had a wash as cool and refreshing as this.
When he turned Lila was standing in the doorway with a towel and he took it from her and wiped himself.
‘How good the water feels here,’ he said.
‘Our well is sweet, you know,’ she said, smiling.
‘But so sweet – I had forgotten.’ He shook his head, making drops fly. ‘I forgot too much. Lila, where’s Mother?’ He did not dare look at her face for fear there would be a sign on it of bad news, but Lila looked back at him steadily.
/> ‘Mother is away in hospital, in Alibagh. The de Silvas took her there in the car. I go to see her sometimes, when I have the bus fare. She is much better.’
‘How –?’
‘With good food and proper medicine, I suppose. The doctor said it was anaemia which she got because of having poor food to eat.’
Hari tried hard to take that in. He knew the food they ate was inadequate but he had not known you could fall ill because of that. Now he would have to see to it that they ate better.
‘I have all sorts of plans, Lila,’ he burst out. ‘I’ll tell you –’
‘Come, eat your sweets first. We made them for Diwali but we’ll start celebrating today,’ she laughed and went to get the tray with the sweets. Hari reached out for his favourite, a fried dumpling stuffed with sweet semolina and grated coconut, and bit into it greedily. It was crisp and delicate, the way Lila always made them. His mouth was still full when Bela and Kamal arrived.
They didn’t know what to do next – hug each other, talk or eat sweets. They tried to do everything at once, and there was hubbub. Then Hari brought out presents for them – the presents Mr Panwallah had helped him purchase in Bombay with his watch repair money – bangles for the younger girls, metal ones with a gold and silver wash that made them shine, and a sari for Lila: not one of those thick homespun ones one could buy in the village, but a mill-made one of filmy, silky cloth, striped pink and white like some freshly bloomed morning flower. The three girls were wonder-struck when he unfolded it for them to see – nothing so pretty, so expensive or so fashionable had ever come into their house before. Lila gasped and the little girls squealed and pressed their hands to their mouths.
‘Hari-bhai, where did you get so much money from? How could you spend so much?’
‘I’ve brought back money, too,’ he assured them. ‘I saved up everything I earned in Bombay, I never spent anything there – I never went to the cinema or even bought a cigarette. I had two jobs,’ he boasted – he could not help it, he knew the girls were enjoying it as much as he. ‘I worked in an eating house where the proprietor gave me free board and lodging, as well as a salary, and I worked in a watchmender’s shop next door. I was paid for the watches I mended – I have learned to repair watches, you know.’
‘Repair watches?’ cried Bela and Kamal in amazement.
‘Repair watches?’ echoed Lila hollowly, her face falling. It seemed the most useless skill anyone could bring back to the fishing village of Thul where no man ever had need to look at a watch in order to know when to take his boat out or when to bring back the fish. The tide told you that, and the sun.
Hari could tell she was disappointed. ‘I know there are no watches here now, Lila – but wait till the factory comes up, and the housing colony is built. Then there will be plenty of people with watches around here – and I’ll be the only man in Thul who knows how to oil and repair them so that they won’t have to go all the way to Bombay to get it done. Things will change here, Lila.’
‘Will they?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘When? How long will it take? And what are we to do till then?’
‘But I’ve brought back money with me, too. I want to discuss that with you – and with Mother when I go to see her.’ He did not mention their father – he knew that would be useless. ‘We can put it to some use. I thought we might buy chickens and start a poultry farm in our field: it is too small for a market garden but it is big enough for a poultry farm. We could begin by selling eggs in the village. By the time the factory comes up and all those workers come to live here, we shall have chickens to sell, too. We can make a living with a poultry farm.’
Bela and Kamal shouted with delight. They thought it a wonderful idea. They passed the tray of sweets round once more.
‘You two can look after the chickens when I set up my watch shop,’ Hari told them. ‘I’ll get the poultry farm started and then hand it over to you to run.’ He beamed at them because he could see they liked the idea.
‘It will be the first poultry farm in Thul,’ Kamal shouted. ‘There is one at Kihim, and several in Alibagh, but this will be the first one in Thul – and it will be ours.’
‘There used to be one here,’ Lila reminded them. ‘Old Sabu had one – you can still see all the broken pens and the wire netting in his garden. It failed.’
‘That’s because there was no one in Thul to buy his eggs and chickens, Lila,’ Hari explained. ‘And he had no van in which he could take them to Bombay to sell. But now people will be coming to Thul instead – thousands of them – we’ll have more buyers then we can supply. You’ll see, Lila – it’ll flourish; it can’t fail. And there’ll be eggs and chicken for Mother to eat, too,’ he added, trying hard to coax her into being cheerful.
She smiled at once at the thought. ‘It’ll be good for Mother,’ she agreed. ‘She might even be able to help – when she’s stronger.’
‘You’ll have to tell me everything. Give me all the news. You never wrote.’
‘We didn’t know where you were. Whenever anyone went to Bombay, we sent messages, but no one could find you.’
He nodded. ‘I wanted to be by myself for a while, on my own. Father –’ and at last he said the word he did not want to say – ‘Father, where is he?’
It was evident from the loudness and cheerfulness of his sisters’ voices that their father was not inside, sleeping his usual drunken daytime sleep.
‘He’s in Alibagh,’ Lila told him quietly. ‘He followed Mother. When the de Silvas took her away, he was wild. Very angry. He screamed and shouted and broke all our water pots. He was drunk, you see. But he stopped drinking and followed her to Alibagh to see that she was properly looked after. He has stayed there ever since, he never came back. When I go to see her, I always find him sitting on the veranda outside her room or sometimes out in the hospital compound. He says she may need him so he stays where she can call him.’
‘Is he drinking there?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He seems to have stopped. He hasn’t money for it, you see. The de Silvas gave him some and I take him a little – enough for food, not for toddy. He hasn’t asked for more. I don’t think he wants to drink any more.’
‘And those Khanekar men – have they come around again?’
‘No, they’ve left us alone,’ Lila breathed gratefully. ‘I think they do feel bad after all about Pinto.’
They all sat in silence, thinking about Pinto, about their father, about this strange new turn in their lives. Then Lila got up, saying, ‘Hari, let’s go to the beach and buy some fish for your homecoming dinner. Let’s all go. Then you can tell us everything as we go.’
But when they went out on the beach and found the whole sky alight with sunset’s glow and the wet ridged sand of the beach reflecting its pink and rose and violet hues, Hari could not speak for delight. He ran on to the wet sand, feeling it under his bare feet with joy. Bela and Kamal chased him. He dodged them. Lila laughed. Hari threw back his head and whooped so that the gulls rose from the sea’s edge and wheeled about in the sky, mewing. He felt like a new person, like someone who had emerged from a tightly shut box and now saw the light and felt the breeze for the first time. He could have been newly born – a butterfly emerged from a cocoon. Bela caught one arm of his and Kamal caught the other.
Laughing, they walked down the beach, watching the gulls as they swooped low to pick up the long, eel-like fish that the village women dried on the clay flats and hung from bamboo trellises in the sun. One gull flew up with one of these ‘Bombay duck’ – as they were called – in its beak, the others dived to snatch it away, it fell on the beach, they all swooped down for it, then flew ahead to settle along the tide line, quarelling and mewing, just like large farmyard chickens – except for the dazzling cleanliness of their colours – snow-white, pearl-grey and jet black.
‘Is it a good year for fish?’ Hari asked.
‘The season’s just started – we hope it will be good,’ Lila said.
; Then, in a low voice, hardly liking to ask a question of which he feared the answer, Hari asked, ‘Did they find the fishing boats that were lost in the storm?’
‘Did you hear about that?’ they asked, amazed, then told him about the search party that had gone out, led by Biju’s powerful new boat, and brought them home, battered but alive – except for three men from Alibagh who had drowned.
‘So Biju’s boat was of some use after all,’ Hari said with relief. He felt almost as if he himself had been dragged out of a stormy sea on to a placid shore.
‘It is a wonderful boat,’ Bela and Kamal chorused, but Lila said, ‘Still, he need not boast about it all the time.’
‘No, but we have to be thankful if he saved the fishermen,’ Hari reminded her. He felt deeply grateful himself and told the girls how he had heard the news on the radio during the storm and how he had longed to come home to Thul and be with his own people again. It had made him realize he was a Thul boy and would always be one, he told them, which made them beam with joy.
The fishing fleet was trying to come in, the sails outlined against the sky like fins. As the tide was going out, the boats had to drop anchor at sea and the fisherwomen had to wade out to them with their saris tucked up, to receive the loaded baskets from the fishermen and carry them back to shore. A great screaming and haggling went up as the baskets were brought in and uncovered.