by Anita Desai
‘I feel wealthy when I see all of you beside me,’ said their mother quietly.
There was a little silence as they sat listening to the wind in the palms and the surf breaking on the beach and watching the lamps flicker and the stars shine. Then their father coughed, cleared his throat and spoke for the first time in his rusty voice. ‘Only our Pinto is missing,’ he said, making them all start with surprise. ‘Poor Pinto,’ he murmured, and fell silent again. Although he said no more, everyone realized he was saying he was sorry for the role he had played in Pinto’s death, for being responsible for it in a way. It was the first time he had ever said he was sorry for the way things had been in the past. They were all struck dumb till Lila got up, wiping her eyes with a corner of her sari, and said, as if to console her father, ‘Shall I make you some tea? Or would you like hot milk?’
He shook his head and so did the others: they wanted nothing more now.
The day after Diwali was the Hindu New Year’s Day when every house in the village was decorated with fresh garlands of mango leaves and marigolds, every shop opened a new ledger at a special ceremony and prayers were said to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, in the hope that she would bless them in the coming new year.
So the next morning found Lila and her sisters busily sweeping and cleaning and putting up fresh garlands and drawing new rangoli patterns. Later in the day the annual bullock cart races were to be held on the beach and excitement ran high in the village where bullocks were having their curved horns painted pink for the occasion while the tonga drivers decked their tongas with tinsel and streamers and brushed and curried their horses and brightened their harnesses with spangles.
Only Hari had nothing to do. He watched the others for a while and then said, ‘There’s nothing for me to do now so I’ll go and visit the sahib up at the house.’
‘All right, but come back soon,’ called his mother who was sitting on the veranda floor and helping Lila to draw an elaborate rangoli.
‘You said you would take us to the races on the beach, Hari,’ his younger sisters screamed when they saw him crossing the log over the creek.
‘I know, I know,’ he called. ‘I’ll be back on time.’
When he went up to Mon Repos he found Lila had already swept it clean and drawn a simple red and white rangoli pattern on the veranda tiles while the younger girls had hung a garland of mango leaves over the door. There was no one there now and it was very quiet. Hari had to wander around and search before he found the sahib down at the edge of the marsh, sitting amongst the rushes, as still as the heron on the stone, staring through his binoculars at the coconut tree on the other bank.
He heard Hari’s footsteps and turned his head slightly but did not speak. Hari hesitated, wondering where he had seen the man before. He searched his crowded memories of Bombay for a hint because that was where the man had come from, his sisters had told him, but he could not remember.
‘Am I disturbing you, sir? Shall I come later?’ he asked uncertainly.
In answer the gentleman patted the ground beside him and said, ‘Do you want to talk to me? Sit down – then we won’t disturb the birds.’
Hari knew from his sisters that the sahib was ‘studying the birds’ but he had no idea how one did such a thing. Now he would learn: Mr Panwallah had told him he must go on and on learning whatever he could and never stop. Remembering that, it struck him how like Mr Panwallah this gentleman was although he had white hair under his beret and a beard. Both of them were somehow birdlike. It made him feel confident and reassured enough to ask respectfully, ‘You are studying the birds here, sir?’
‘I have been studying the nest-building habits of the baya birds,’ said the gentleman and waved his hand at the nests that dangled and swayed from the coconut tree that leaned across the marsh. ‘I watched them all through the monsoon and now they are bringing up their young, see,’ he said in a tone of excitement and turned away from Hari to watch.
Hari had no alternative but to watch, too, although he had never paid the birds any attention before. They were not even pretty birds like the kingfishers or egrets, but small and spotted and brown like sparrows, although some had yellow heads. But now that he was forced to look, it struck Hari how wonderful it was that these small creatures had built this colony of strange nests that swung above the water where no one could get at them and harm the young. The nests were shaped like tubes or funnels, and woven neatly out of grasses and paddy leaves, made compact by careful weaving and blobs of mud. The birds flew in and out of them, crying, ‘Tililili, tililee – kiti – tililee – kitee.’
The gentleman explained to Hari, ‘It is so difficult to build a nest like that that the young male has to practise before he actually plans to build one and raise a family. If anything goes wrong and the nest does not turn out right, he abandons it and starts another. It is only when the nest is perfect that he is satisfied. And he builds several so that he can have several wives. He even decorates them by sticking on flower petals or feathers with blobs of mud to attract the females. Females will only mate with those that have managed to build them good homes.’ He chuckled. ‘Can you think of anything cleverer?’
Suddenly Hari gave a start: he recognized the voice, he was sure he had heard it before. He turned and stared at the man in wonder, and then realized who it was – the man who had spoken to the crowds at the Black Horse in Bombay and told them why he, a citizen of Bombay, cared so deeply for the Alibagh coast and feared so much that it would be spoilt by all the changes that were to come. Now here he was, in Thul!
‘Sir,’ he blurted out, ‘sir, I heard you speak at the Black Horse, in Bombay, when I came with the men from my village –’
The gentleman lowered his binoculars and stared at him as a bird might, with his head a little to one side. ‘Oh, you were one of them?’ he asked, and at last seemed to find Hari as interesting as one of his weaver birds. ‘I see, I see. Come let us go into the veranda and talk – it is too damp to sit here for long.’
But even when he was on the veranda he could not give up his binoculars and his observation of birds and kept raising them to his eyes to watch the flight of a drongo or some bee eaters with little chuckles of delight which made Hari feel that he had missed a great deal by paying no attention to the birds that swarmed in Thul. He would have to learn to use his eyes more, he decided, when the gentleman lowered his binoculars and said, ‘So, you’re one of the Alibagh farmers who came to Bombay to give a petition to the chief minister, are you?’
‘Oh no, sir, I’m from Thul – I live in that hut there,’ Hari told him. ‘My sisters wash and cook for you.’
‘Ah yes, yes,’ he cried, but just then a pair of fork-tailed drongoes swooped into the air and somersaulted in the sunlight, making their blue-black feathers glint, and he gave a cry and stared open-mouthed at them.
‘I went to Bombay in the procession,’ Hari reminded him, interrupting the harsh shrieks of the drongoes. ‘We wanted to stop them from building a factory here.’
‘Ahh,’ sighed the birdwatcher, dropping the binoculars and sinking down into a cane chair. ‘So you’re one of those who put up a fight. You’ve lost the fight, you know – we lost the case in court. The politicians won – so they can make plenty of money from the sale of land and licences in the name of progress. Thul is lost,’ he sighed, straightening the spectacles on his nose. ‘Everything is doomed. The fish in the sea will die from the effluents that will be pumped into the water. The paddy fields will be built over by factories and houses and streets. My little baya birds will find no more paddy leaves for their nests. Or grain or food for their young. They will have to fly away. I may not see them another year.’
He sounded so heartbroken that Hari asked, ‘Why do you care so much about the birds, sir?’
‘The birds are the last free creatures on earth. Everything else has been captured and tamed and enslaved – tigers behind the bars of the zoos, lions stared at by crowds in safari parks, men and women in houses
like matchboxes working in factories that are like prisons. Only the birds are free and can take off and fly away into space when they like.’ His face shone when he spoke and his voice trembled. ‘I suppose that is why I love them – for their freedom, which we don’t have. Perhaps I would also like to leave all – all this ugliness we’ve made on earth and fly with them. Wouldn’t you?’ he asked Hari.
‘But we can’t fly, sir,’ Hari reminded him, earnestly. ‘We are here on earth, we cannot leave it. We must live here, somehow.’
The gentleman looked at him with sad eyes. ‘Yes, what will you do? What will become of you? I don’t know, my friend. When it comes to people, I – I know nothing. I am lost. What will you do?’
Hari came a little closer to him. ‘Sir, I thought – I thought – since it is too late to start fishing or farming now, this will not be a good place to farm or fish any more, and since I don’t want to work in a factory – I thought I would buy some chickens, build chicken coops in my field, start a poultry farm, sell eggs in the village and chickens to the rich people who will come to Thul once the factory is built, and so we will live – for a while. Later I want to set up a watchmending shop – I have learnt a little watchmending,’ he added with shy pride.
‘Have you?’ asked the birdwatcher in astonishment. ‘Can you – d’you think you can mend my watch for me? I fell into the creek, you know,’ he chuckled, ‘and my watch hasn’t worked since. Do you think you can get it to tick?’ He took it out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Hari who took it eagerly. He could hardly believe that he was being asked to do something for the great man who had spoken to him in Bombay and come to Thul to study the birds.
Taking the watch, he shook it gently and held it to his ear. ‘Water has got into the works, sir. It is very easy to clean and dry that – I did many during the monsoon in Bombay.’
The birdwatcher was staring at him as he spoke as if he were a bird performing some wonderful and interesting act. Then he shot out of his chair, crying, ‘Adapt! Adapt!’
‘What, sir?’ asked Hari, puzzled. He did not know the word.
‘Adapt – that is what you are going to do. Just as birds and animals must do if they are going to survive. Just like the sparrows and pigeons that have adapted themselves to city life and live on food leftovers and rubbish thrown to them in the streets instead of searching for grain and insects in the fields,’ he explained, ‘so you will have to adapt to your new environment.’
I don’t think I know how to do that, sir,’ said Hari uncertainly.
‘But, boy, you’ve just told me how you are going to do it. You are going to give up your traditional way of living and learn a new way to suit the new environment that the factory will create at Thul so as to survive. Yes, you will survive.’
Hari could not understand half the words the birdwatcher was using. He could not understand him at all but his words reminded him of what Mr Panwallah had said to him the day he went to see him and found him sitting on his balcony and watching the pigeons on the station roof ‘The wheel turns,’ he said slowly and wonderingly, remembering Mr Panwallah’s words. ‘The wheel turns and turns and turns,’ he said, understanding, and turned to tell Sayyid Ali that he understood the connection now, and how birds and men were united in this great turning of the wheel, and how the birds, if we understood them, could show us and teach us many important things. ‘Sir, I understand,’ he shouted, but just then the excited figure of the birdwatcher suddenly stopped hopping about on the edge of the veranda and disappeared abruptly: he had tumbled backwards and fallen off the veranda into the hibiscus bush below. Hari jumped down to help him to his feet, asking anxiously, ‘Are you hurt, sir? Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ stammered the birdwatcher who only seemed a little shaken and began to chuckle as Hari helped him dust his clothes and find his binoculars. ‘It’s a good thing I’d given you my watch,’ he laughed, ‘or I’d have broken that, too.’
‘It’s safe with me, sir,’ Hari said, patting his pocket, ‘and I’ll take it home and fix it so I can give it back to you by this evening. Will that be all right, sir?’
But the birdwatcher did not reply: with a cry of delight, he was stumbling back to the marsh, having seen a little baya bird arrive with something in its beak for its young. He seemed to have forgotten Hari.
Hari did not really mind: what the birdwatcher had told him had already filled him with the confidence he needed and wanted. Now he would go ahead.
Of course he would first take his sisters to the races on the beach.
Their horns painted pink and crimson, the milk-white bullocks thundered over the sand, the wooden carts lumbering after them, the drivers in their bright new turbans shouting themselves hoarse as they waved their whips in the air and urged them along.
‘Biju’s cart – Biju’s bullocks – Biju’s won!’ A shout went up at the far end of the beach and was passed back through the crowds on the dunes. Biju, standing amongst them in a new, dazzling white dhoti, beamed, looking larger and broader than ever, with his wife and daughter beside him in their new Diwali finery. People shouted and congratulated him – they seemed to have forgiven Biju at last for his boasting and arrogance – after all, he had helped to rescue the drowning fishermen. That great storm had brought all the fishermen closer together, they had realized how much they depended on each other and needed each other, and they seemed to be celebrating this closeness today.
Then it was the turn of the tongas which were lighter and went faster, the wheels spinning over the sand and the horses flying along, their necks outstretched, their manes rippling and the spangles on their harnesses glinting.
‘Look, look, look,’ screamed Bela and Kamal, beside themselves with excitement.
‘Don’t scream,’ said Hari. ‘Here, have some sweets,’ he added, and passed them the bag of sugar toys he had bought for them in Alibagh. The girls fell upon them and munched loudly and happily after passing them around to their friends. Life seemed perfect to them at that moment.
After the races, when the crowds had thinned, Hari still stood on the dunes and saw a group of women coming down the path with small flat baskets on the palms of their hands. They were walking down the beach to the three rocks that stood in the sea. He watched them wade into the peacock blue and green sea, the foam breaking against their ankles, to scatter flower petals and coloured powder on the rocks as they prayed to the sea. He saw that his mother was amongst them.
‘Lila, look!’ he said. ‘Look, Lila.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANITA DESAI
1937 Anita Desai (née Mazumbar) is born in Mussoorie, northern India
1957 Graduates from Delhi university with a BA in English literature
1958 Marries businessman Ashvin Desai; they have four children together
1963 Her first book Cry, the Peacock is published
1978 Receives both the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the National Academy of Letters Award for her novel Fire on the Mountain
1980 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction, and again in 1994 and 1999
1982 A Village by the Sea is first published
1983 Awarded the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for The Village by the Sea
1993 Novel In Custody is adapted for screen
1999 Fasting, Feasting shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction
2005 The Zig Zag Way is published
2014 Lives in the Hudson River Valley in the USA, travels to India and Mexico
Interesting Facts
Anita Desai was brought up speaking German at home but also learnt Hindi and English. As well as moving around in India she has lived in England and all over America.
She knew she wanted to write from a very young age; she read a lot of books and was found scribbling away in the corner of a room so often that her family called her ‘The Writer’.
Where Did the Story Come From?
When her children were small, Anita Desai lived in
Mumbai and often took them to a small fishing village on the Arabian Sea for holidays. There they observed the lives of fishermen and rice and coconut farmers, but when the village was chosen as the site for a giant fertilizer factory, much was to change. A poor family that lived in a hut behind the big house went through these changes. The book is about the ways in which their lives were affected. Many families and many places in India have had this experience.
Guess Who?
A She herself looked like a crumpled grey rag lying there. She had been ill for a long time.
B [He] was small and furry, grey and white, and brave as a lion
C … the man who stood at the counter, wearing a small black cap and with an eyepiece fixed to his eye, working at a minute watch that he held in the cup of his hand
ANSWERS:
A) Mother
B) Pinto the dog
C) Mr Panwallah
Words Glorious Words!
Lots of words have several different meanings – here are a few you’ll find in this Puffin book. Use a dictionary or look them up online to find other definitions.
inundated overwhelmed by things that need attention
dhoti a garment worn by men in India
arid a region suffering from immensely dry soil, often barren
jalebi a sweet made from sugar, flour and water
dissipate to get rid of or cause something to disappear
taciturn someone who says little; reserved
puja a religious ceremony involving prayer
Did You Know?
Bombay is no longer known by that name; it was renamed Mumbai in 1996. Mumbai is the second most densely populated city in India, after the capital Delhi, and is among the top most populated cities in the world. Alarmingly, more than fifty per cent of Mumbai’s population lives in slums like Jagu and his family.