by Dipika Rai
She steps backwards and almost falls over her husband’s slippers left carelessly in the doorway. Even in her fearful state it annoys her to see the slippers. He purposely leaves them there every night for her to pick up. This night she does pick them up. She takes a step back from the door. Then another. And another. Before she knows it she is far away. Far away from her stridently sleeping family.
Later she won’t remember leaving her memory box, her ultimate sacrifice, in the warm dip of her stepdaughter’s bed. She has left the sleeping girl her happiest memories, her connection with her mother, Shanti, the leather slippers and her benign childhood. Even deep in her conscience, where unconscious thoughts lie, she knows she will never be able to forgive herself for this night, but with a sacrifice so grave perhaps the judging universe will be able to forgive her.
Intuitively she runs away from the well, as she has no way of knowing how many hours there are to sunrise when it will be in full use. No matter how early she gets to the well, someone is always there before her. At best she hopes to find a ravine or a mound where she can hide till she finds a bullock cart going somewhere . . . perhaps to Gopalpur. Of course she has no place in Gopalpur, but she is desperate and thinking irrationally. She is already making up her stories. A story for the bullock cart driver who will get her to Gopalpur and a story for her father who will most certainly want to send her back. And, if her story doesn’t work, then she has money enough to buy her freedom within her own family.
Ignoring the cool night air, the sweat leaks from her pores like resin from a gum tree. She still hasn’t realised the flaw in her plan. She may be clutching a wad of money, but hasn’t thought to pack anything to eat. How many days will she have to stay in hiding? Perhaps someone will find her skeleton pecked clean by vultures and long polished by the sun. Perhaps someone will shed a tear or two for her, but most likely she will die unnoticed and unmourned.
She divides the wad of notes into different piles. One goes between her breasts, the other she ties in the end of her pallav that’s tucked in, and the third she rolls into the band of her petticoat. She releases her knife from bondage and tucks that too into the band of her petticoat.
She thinks of the bandits and their hideouts, but the river ravines are miles away. She thinks of the wolves, silent on dead moon nights, feasting on her tired flesh. Wolves mate for life. Where would one find such loyalty these days but in animals? If wolves can mate for life, why can’t humans?
Her eyes have got used to the starlight, but she has no reference point to guide her. She has now come way beyond her hut, beyond where most men from her village have been. Then she sees them, her personal guardians, darker than the night.
The electric poles are almost the end of her. She feels she’s safe, and in that very instant becomes aware of her body. Her thirst is dire. Her shivering is real. Her thoughts are cacophonous. Why did she leave her behind?
She is on the cusp of an epiphany, but she won’t loosen her grip. She must leave her past behind if she is to survive and conquer it, only the enlightened can withstand its heat and in the blue flame of communion conquer its lust. Her immediate reality must become her only valid reason for survival.
Thirst rakes the back of her throat. She pulls her hands out from between her thighs. She is alive, that has to be enough for now. She realises the flaw in her plan. Why didn’t she think to bring some food? Her thoughts send her to her knees, but she won’t allow them to take over again. She shuts her eyes. At least now she doesn’t have to make those elemental decisions, turn right or left? She must now just stick to the poles and walk. That’s all. She walks on, towards the electric poles. The same electric poles she’s seen back home in Gopalpur, the white-ant-eaten electric poles that will bring her home.
But suddenly she is unsure, almost certain the promise is a trap, a looming betrayal. She is still on the sine curve of uncertainty; it will make many zigzags before she will be able to rely on herself. Her battered body must rest. She lies down in the furrow of someone else’s field, consciously renewing her resources. It is a poorly planted field, the crop not even inches high. It won’t yield much. Even on such a night she knows that the seedlings have been planted late and that the worms will get to them in warm weather. She thanks Devi it isn’t her field that’s planted late, and suddenly she is afraid in a different way, more than of being raped, even more than of dying under some stranger’s knife. She is leaving behind the only life she knows. She can’t lie still any longer. Her feet have started to blister. She slips on her husband’s slippers. They flap like useless chapattis in the sandy soil. She cuts off the ends and ties them to her feet with strips of sari material taken from the inside pleats, a place no one will notice.
Unconsciously pacing herself, she walks on, but she knows that soon the dawn will come. The sunrise, her true enemy, will appear as unexpectedly as a surprise.
Eventually she finds a straggly bush to serve as her daytime nest. She is exhausted, the sunshine may turn the colour behind her lids to blood, but still she sleeps in dreamless comfort, a gift from her exhausted body.
The tinkle of cowbells sends her into military readiness. She digs deeper under the bush into the earth. Watching. The cowherd, oblivious to his audience of one, pulls out his flute, places it sideways against his lips and blows out a sweet sad sound. He is only a boy, his clumsily tied turban an untidy tangle on his head. She is tempted to ask where she is, but then she pictures her dirty face, her birthmark, the scar along her body . . . and decides to stay hidden. She thinks of her stepson, but sees her stepdaughter’s face instead. Her thoughts censure her. Why did she leave her behind? How could she leave her behind?
Do you know what I did? I condemned a young girl to death.
She wants to scream.
Mamta is afraid she is going mad. She tries to think of the direction in which Jivkant left. He took a train. Where would she have to go to catch a train? She is helpless, hopeless, held prisoner by a sweet sad song.
The cowherd moves on. Mamta moves with him, from bush to bush. He must be from a nearby village. She must find something to eat, or a roaming cow to milk. It isn’t easy to milk a cow, especially one that doesn’t know you, but Mamta has always had a way with animals. The cowherd sets aside his flute, sits down with his back to a tree, tilts his turban over his eyes and goes to sleep. He will awake just as it is time to go home. The cows always come back to him.
Mamta moves slowly, crouched low. She can hear the deep sounds of wooden cow bells, followed by the tinny sound of a calf’s bell. A calf means milk. She runs towards the sound. She sees the mother, white, gentle, elegant, with deflated udders. She has been recently milked. Nevertheless Mamta approaches her, unthreatening, staying as far from her calf as possible.
Mamta smells of earth and grass, of nature. The cow recognises a creature just like herself, a vulnerable animal. She lets her come close. Mamta kneels, and squeezes a teat, gripping it between her forefinger and thumb, coaxing the milk out. The cow moves away. She goes after it, first on her knees, then her feet. It continues to distance itself. Bent over with pain, Mamta gives up the chase. The cow stops.
This time Mamta is gentler and manages to squeeze out just enough milk for a few gulps. She drinks directly from the teat, completely unconcerned now with hiding herself.
When she picks herself up, wiping the back of her hand across her lips, she sees something so familiar in the distance that she is disoriented. The gleam of the Big House. There is no one in sight, because of the time of day; afternoons are time to hide from the sun.
She walks, runs, trying to stay hidden, towards the house. Why? Because people naturally gravitate towards other people. It is a rare soul who is a true pioneer, making his home in uninhabited lands. Even such a pioneer almost never does it alone; if he can, he takes his group with him. No matter what cruelty man wreaks on another – the human race is always one to seek itself out. At best Mamta had hoped to find a ravine or a mound where she could hide till
she could find a bullock cart going to Gopalpur, but she’s done far, far better than that.
She runs straight towards the old outhouse, the new jail for Daku Manmohan.
Chapter 8
IN PREM’S DREAMS HE IS ALREADY a hero, the only one in the village with first-hand knowledge of Daku Manmohan. The thought makes him smile smugly. He sits, looking into the distance enjoying his newfound status. The boys will want to know if the prisoner has scars or a hidden gun, the girls will want to know the precise details of his appearance down to the exact length of his moustache and the great love he bears his wife. He can almost taste the sweet-sour tamarinds soaked in jaggery on his tongue. How many will he demand per answer? Not too many, just enough to keep the questions affordable. After all, the responsibility of the myth now lies with him.
Like the other village girls, Prem’s sister Sneha too has a crush, sight unseen, on Daku Manmohan, and sends little mementoes with her brother to his cell every day: folded betel-leaves, a weaver bird’s discarded nest, a dried-up blue butterfly pressed carefully between two ficus leaves, and perfumed half-fermented mauwa fruit, almost ready to become an alcoholic drink. What’s fit for consumption Prem eats en route, the rest he throws away.
‘Boy!’ The summons is a gunshot. Prem drops to the ground his ear touching mud. ‘Ha, ha. So much fear for a chained man. What is the world coming to?’
He is instantly on his feet, embarrassed.
‘I won’t bite. Promise. Come. Closer . . . Closer still. Closer, I said. I wish to see your face. What’s your name?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘You’re fascinated by me, aren’t you, boy?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Prem speaks nonchalantly.
‘Look at you. A young man, with a young man’s dreams, but soon you will be an old man; an old man with a young man’s dreams. You have nowhere to go. What can you do with yourself in such a place? Your father has sold the family into bondage. What is left for you but to work another man’s fields or become a bandit like me?’ Daku Manmohan ensnares him with the expertise of one well practised in the art of persuasion.
‘I will never be like you. I will die first, Daku. I will kill myself rather than become like you,’ Prem counters with the idealism of youth.
‘Then why are you here, hanging round my cell every day like a pet dog?’
‘For Lokend Bhai. Don’t think I would ever protect you if Asmara Didi hadn’t asked me to.’
‘Protect me? You protect me? From what? I know why you are here. What else do you have to do? Now you’ve met me you will become the big boy in your gang. I’m right, aren’t I? All the boys will ask about the dangerous Daku and you’ll tell them, won’t you?’
The boy is confused by how easily the bandit can see through him. ‘No! I’m here because Lokend Bhai asked me to be.’
‘That’s what you think, but you are really here because my life seems so exciting to you. You are here because you wish you could be more like me.’
‘More like you? You? If they let me, I would cut off your head.’
‘No one’s stopping you – cut it off then. It would be a blessing for me. I won’t harm you, I promise. You know where the knife is? You’ll find one on the roof of the shed; the guards keep it there to pare betel-nuts.’ The boy stands still. ‘Don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.’ The boy runs off.
From her hiding place, Mamta has heard the conversation, and now she sees someone approach. Prem! Is she mad? Thank you, Devi. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho. She is saved. He was always her favourite, the most humane of them all. She takes a step forward and then stops, scared. Will he force her to go back? Oh, my brother, please . . . She thinks back to the younger Prem, the one she carried on her hip. Surely for all the times I gave you my food, picked you up, patched your wounds, played with you . . . you will be on my side. Then she is unsure. I am unclean, useless, untrustworthy . . . I left her behind. I am nothing. She drops down in the mud, from where she is she can see the shed quite clearly. Prem jumps up, trying to reach something on the roof. She can see the guard resting inside. Prem cannot reach the top of the shed with his hand. He takes a stick from the tamarind tree and sweeps it along the edge. A knife clatters to the floor. She sees her brother hesitate, confused. He knows he is trapped. What should he do with the knife? He can’t kill the bandit, but he can’t take the knife and then not kill the bandit without being judged a coward. So he leaves it in the dust and walks back to the cell, out of Mamta’s sight once more. She listens for conversation.
Prem returns empty-handed. ‘It wasn’t there. You lied,’ he says it viciously enough to give credence to his words.
‘You see, at your age it’s easy to fill your belly with brave words and dreams.’ They both know the truth.
‘What do you know about bravery then? It is braver to earn an honest dry crust of bread than to steal a cake.’
‘My, don’t you sound grand! A day will come when you will find that even a dry crust of bread won’t be forthcoming. I can see that you have been spending too much time with our mutual friend Lokend.’
That name. Those leather slippers . . . that quiet look. Wherever Mamta goes, he is with her.
‘You aren’t fit to mention his name, let alone call him your friend,’ the boy jealously claims his mentor exclusively for himself. ‘If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be here. Without the protection of the Big House you would be dead!’
These are his lands, he has walked here, lived here, slept in that mansion over there. Mamta knows she is crazy.
‘Yes, you would think that. Boy, you know nothing of my life. You cannot judge me.’
‘I can judge you. I will judge you. Each and every time I meet you, I will judge you. There is nothing you can say about your life that will justify what you’ve done to other people. Do you realise how many you’ve ruined?’
‘Yes, I do! Don’t you think I think about that every day? Every day since choosing this life I have prayed for forgiveness. I am like the goddess Kali who needs human blood to purify her soul. I too have my bloody destiny.’
At last Mamta realises the man is Daku Manmohan. The bandit, the destroyer, the dream breaker; the saviour, the dream maker. Oh, Prem, there are crueller men than this bandit of yours, and I have met them all in one man.
‘Destiny, pah! I spit on your destiny. If you were a man you would kill yourself rather than accept your destiny like an unmarried girl. Give me the word and I’ll bring you a rope to hang yourself or a knife to cut your veins,’ says Prem, realising he can never carry out his threat. But the bandit doesn’t need to know that.
‘Do it then! But don’t dare judge me, for as sure as there is sight in my eye, I will cut out your tongue.’
‘From in there? You’ll cut out my tongue from in there, will you?’ Prem laughs and moves closer to the bars.
Careful, my brother. Step back. Mamta retreats into the bushes. If she’s caught they will report her to the village, a runaway wife.
‘You are Lata Bai’s boy, aren’t you?’ Their mother’s name puts both siblings on guard. Mamta takes a step forward, ready to defend Prem.
Caution enters the boy’s frame and he is instantly still, waiting. He looks at the bandit. ‘What’s it to you?’ he asks.
‘Did you never wonder why your family was spared?’
How can he answer such a question? Yes he did, but he was grateful to his gods.
‘Didn’t reach for the truth then, did you? What difference would it have made if we had looted you? Your fate would have been no different, you would still be working for the Big House. Think about that, my friend.’
‘You are a dog. The worst kind. You sneer at the Big House, without thinking that your friend Lokend Bhai is from the Big House. Each time you say something against the Big House you say something against Lokend Bhai.’
Again that name. Oh Devi, give me some rest. ‘The Big House saves me today, but it was the Big House that made me a bandit years ag
o . . .’
‘Hello, my friends, I see you are getting to know each other,’ says Lokend.
Mamta recognises the third voice. She recalls his eyes, that look that has calmed her most frantic thoughts and kept her connected to life.
‘Lokend Bhai, don’t worry, I will keep an eye on this bandit. He won’t escape while I’m on watch,’ says Prem, the big man in front of his mentor.
‘I know, I know you will. Manmohan, your fields seem to be doing well. The harvest will be good.’
‘Yes, perhaps it will. I was never a farmer, you see.’ Daku Manmohan smiles wryly, the world outside has little impact on him. It passes over his head like a cloud in fast flight. All he knows is that, come shower or shine, he will till.
‘As the crops come in you’ll see that time passes quickly,’ says Lokend, leading him into the future.
When will time pass quickly for me? I have been running all my life. And now you are here. Perhaps this is God’s answer. Lokend Bhai. His name is too heavy for her thoughts.
‘Stay away from him, Lokend Bhai,’ says Prem. ‘He is deceitful. He would kill you if he had a chance, he would kill us all.’
‘Oho, Prem, let down your heavy load, my boy, lead a lighter life. Don’t worry so much. I know Manmohan like I know my own brother.’
‘Leave it, Lokend, the boy’s right. People like me have killed his faith. Now I just want these days to be over. I am so tired of wishing my life away.’
‘Remember, my friend, the Past and Future are both spoken for, only the Present remains free.’
‘The present, yes, the present . . . it torments me. I took away their food, their crops, their everything, how can I ever return their future to them?’ The bandit pleads for his sanity.