The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  ‘Never said you couldn’t.’

  Dalbir was looking to the ground. His eyes were wet.

  ‘I didn’t bring you anything back. I’m sorry. I said I would, but I didn’t.’

  ‘That was four years ago,’ Dalbir said. ‘I’m fourteen now.’

  Tochi stepped aside and watched his brother turn into the field, where brown buffalo were feeding. In the house, his mother was unpacking his clothes, shaking them out and hanging them on a thin wire she’d tied across the back wall.

  ‘Geckos will climb in if you leave them on the floor like that.’ The gold wedding hoop in her nose glinted in the daydark.

  Tochi crouched beside the door. He took off his boots and placed them against the wall. He heard his father shuffling and turned to see him wriggle upright, using his shoulder-stumps as a kind of motor. There was a glass of whisky on an upturned bucket level with his face and he laboured to catch the straw in his mouth. When he finished he breathed out gratefully. ‘Why’d you tell him? What good is he here?’

  ‘Was he drunk when it happened?’ Tochi asked.

  His mother moved to the mud oven, squatting. ‘He thought he’d switched the machine off.’

  ‘When can you go back?’ his father said, slurred. ‘You need to go back and work.’

  ‘We need a man in the house,’ his mother answered. ‘I can’t even get a proper rate for the milk any more.’

  Dalbir stepped under the doorway – he still didn’t need to duck – and slid down the wall opposite his brother, copying his pose: crouched on his backside, knees pitched up and arms draped loosely over the top. Palms cupped. And then Palvinder, their sister, arrived, her salwaar covered in cuttings from the crops she was helping pull up. She touched Tochi’s forearm as she passed and joined her mother in the corner of the room, and both women started blowing into the cave of the mud oven in an effort to get the cooking-fire going.

  The dhal was thin and barely covered the shallow plate, the potatoes few. Tochi tore his second roti in two and threw half across to his brother. His sister passed round glasses of hot tea, the side of each glass stamped with a cartoon mouse. Tochi blew across the rim of his glass, while his mother and sister used the ends of their chunnis as gloves. Afterwards they rolled out the wicker mats and Dalbir went and lay beside his father. Palvinder shook her mat out by the back wall, furthest from the door, and Tochi was to sleep across the entranceway, in case of intruders. His mother pulled her chunni over her head, hiding her face, and said she was going to check on Devi Bai down the lane, because her son was off looking for work and the daughter-in-law wasn’t behaving as a daughter-in-law should. Tochi listened to the starry rustle of her clothes as she stepped away.

  ‘What d’you have?’ his father asked. His eyes seemed redder through the dark.

  ‘Is there none left?’

  ‘Did you not save any?’

  ‘I sent it all to you.’

  His father sighed and turned his face to the wall. Tochi stood and went outside, jumping the fat river of sewage that ran in front of their home. The night sky shone so bright it made silver splashes in the drains. He could hear drills somewhere. He heard his mother returning, too, coming through the night like a nearhand ghost. She stopped beside him. She looked older than he remembered. The hair thinner. Still that overbite which had passed on to her daughter but not her sons.

  ‘I’ll look for work tomorrow.’

  ‘We need you in the field. We’re running out of time.’

  Tochi kicked his heel into the muddy lane, making a divot. ‘I’ll still look.’

  ‘They’ve refused Palvinder’s hand,’ his mother said.

  He nodded and, arm outstretched, reached for his mother, and she held his hand and rested her small head lightly inside it.

  He’d slept with his head on his wrist, and now his wrist ached, but he didn’t move. He just lay there with eyes open. He could see his father naked to the waist and Palvinder squatting beside him, washing him with the tin bucket and strawberry soap. He was all torso, the stumps of his arms skinned over. Skinned over and shrunk and wrinkled like meat. Tochi closed his eyes, then opened them again. His mother held out a glass of tea and a salted paratha. He sat up and ate.

  ‘Where’s chotu?’

  ‘Working,’ his mother said.

  ‘He’s early.’

  ‘It’s because you’re here,’ Palvinder said, looking at him over her shoulder, still soaping their father. ‘I usually have to drag him up by his ankles.’

  It was just past seven and children were heading off to the village school, hands looped around the straps of their dusty backpacks. Tochi made for Babuji’s house. No doubt the old man was aware of his return – someone would have informed him soon enough – but Tochi wanted to pay his respects in person. To thank him for organizing his father’s treatment and to assure him that this quarter’s rent would be on time. But Babuji had gone to Calcutta on some business for one, maybe two months, and Tochi was told by the servant to return then.

  He walked to the field, bending to enter the concrete hut. His scythe was still hanging from the rusty hook by the motor switch, as if it had not moved in the last four years. He took it up, along with three rough brown sacks, and stepped back out into the green-and-blue morning. Dalbir was many yards down a row of cut wheat, the crops lined neatly behind him. He’d already done two rows, nearly three. He’d set off too fast. He’d learn. Tochi reached up for a tree branch and brought his scythe down upon it. The branch fell cleanly across his feet. He tied his white dhoti up between his thighs and headed off, away from his brother.

  He went at his own pace, a regular hacking once on each side of the root before twisting the whole thing out with a sharp turn of his wrist. It was only around mid morning, when he squatted to start on his eighth row, that his thighs began with that familiar ache. His brother was slowing. Each time Tochi looked back from under his armpit, Dalbir seemed to be moving with heavier feet, flicking the sweat from his brow, breathing harder. By noon Tochi had finished his half, and even filled the brown sacks and carried them to the hut. Dalbir still had at least one-quarter of his to go. Tochi took up his scythe and started at the other end, and a little over an hour later they finished together.

  ‘I could’ve done it on my own,’ Dalbir said.

  ‘Never said you couldn’t,’ Tochi said, and he picked up three steel buckets, two in one hand and one in the other, and made for the path, to where the buffalo were tied to their trees.

  ‘Already?’ Dalbir called after him, panting.

  ‘Already.’

  They measured the milk into metal canisters and carried them home for their mother and sister to sell around the village. Done for the day, Tochi found a clean white shirt and brown trousers and went down to the village pump to fill a bucket with water. He bathed in front of the entrance to their shack, using his old dhoti first as a screen and then a towel. He used the same water to wash the mud from his sandals.

  The next village, Jannat, was about two miles away and he was there under the half hour. A hunched old woman with a blue hydrangea in her hair squatted beside the entrance arch, a wicker basket of almonds and cherries displayed before her. It was a village even tinier than his own, boasting just one road and ten, maybe twelve, huts. But the fields looked rich, Tochi thought; they still needed tilling. He passed under the arch and carried on towards the house with the big red metal gates, knocking once. A male servant materialized on the balcony. He asked Tochi his name, then told him to wait a few steps from the gate. Madam didn’t like them getting too close to the house.

  Nearly an hour later, the gate yawned open and the landowner stepped nervously outside. Tochi got up from where he’d been crouched in the roadside shade and waited for the man to beckon him forward. He was tall, elderly, his olive-green robes rippling over a full round belly. He asked Tochi what his business was. Was he causing trouble with someone from this village?

  ‘No, sahib.’

  ‘Because
I hear there is a lot of trouble about.’

  ‘My family live in peace, sahib.’

  ‘I won’t stand for any trouble, you understand? Keep your goonda-giri away from my village.’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  The man slapped at the back of his neck. A midge, maybe. ‘It is the elections. Every time. They send people mad.’

  Tochi said nothing. He wasn’t expected to have a view on such things. A donkey came clip-clopping up the road behind him. The landowner walked down the slight incline to his gate and raised his hand to stop the tangawallah. He spoke to the man on the cart – something about a land dispute between two local brothers – and then climbed aboard. He told Tochi he’d be back in a little while. Tochi nodded and went back to wait in the shade of the roadside tree.

  Another hour later, three young men took shape on the road, beedis glowing palely in the heat and dhotis tucked up around their groins. As they neared they kissed the air, prompting Tochi out of the shade and into the white sun. The men took his place, chatted a while, crushed their beedis under their feet and went on their way again.

  It was nightfall by the time the landowner returned, whistling to himself. He seemed a little drunk. Tochi stood and moved into the moonlight. The old man looked surprised, frightened even, and his hand went round to his back.

  ‘I have a gun,’ he said.

  ‘I’m from Manighat, sahib.’

  ‘Are you here to cause trouble? I have a gun.’

  ‘I’m looking for work, sahib.’

  ‘You can’t buy my vote. You Sena logh think you can buy anything. I have a gun.’

  ‘I will work very hard, sahib. I have a brother also who can work if you need him.’

  There was the squeak-squeak of a metal bolt being simultaneously twisted and yanked, and then the gates opened. It was the servant. ‘Shall I put your food on the table, sahib?’

  ‘Has everyone else eaten?’

  ‘They are waiting for you.’

  The landowner started up the incline to his gate.

  ‘Sahib, about any work . . . ?’ Tochi said.

  The landowner stopped, turned round. ‘There’s not even enough for the men from this village. Maybe try further on.’

  The old man made to leave again, but Tochi dared another question. ‘Could I trouble your kindness for a suggestion, sahib?’

  ‘Villages nearer the city, maybe. Most of their sons have gone to work in the town.’

  The servant closed the gate behind his master, and Tochi heard the bolt being forced back across.

  The next day he put on the same clothes and headed out again, past Jannat and on to the next village, another dirt-driven plot of huts and flat fields of wheat and corn. He could see fields of high cotton, too, bending demurely in the sunlight. The landowner was in his house, completing his ablutions. Tochi was asked to wait in the courtyard. He stood beside a large tulsi plant and reached over to stroke its velvety leaves. It felt nice. When he heard a door open, he returned his hands behind his back.

  The landowner sat on his charpoy in just a white vest and lunghi while one of his granddaughters knelt behind massaging mustard oil into his hair. He listened to Tochi, then said he was sorry, but there would be uproar if he gave work to someone from outside the village, especially in these times.

  ‘I have quick hands, sahib,’ Tochi said. ‘I’ll get all the cotton before it dries.’

  ‘Sorry, kaka,’ the man said, and slid his eyeballs up, his brow constricting in the effort to meet his granddaughter’s looming face. ‘Tell your dadi to give this young man five rupees. He’s come so far to hear bad news.’

  Tochi said there was no need, and, if sahib would give him the gift of his permission, he would prefer to get on his way.

  The next village was six miles further on and it was past noon when he arrived at the gate. But the landowner had gone on a month-long pilgrimage, and his sons were spending the day in the city.

  He carried on, walking the sandy edge of the asphalt to avoid the thickening traffic. The roadside shacks turned from mud to tin, and he passed a petrol garage where two attendants in grubby IOCL overalls lazed against a pump. He was on the fringes of the city. He entered Randoga, the biggest village in the district, with a skyline of wooden balconies and red Airtel satellite dishes.

  A wide dirt track separated the fields and their farmhouses from the mazy central bazaar. He passed a man leading a herd of wet black cows and asked him who were the main landowners around here. The man pointed to a few farmsteads, but said he doubted they’d be in at this hour. Tochi made for one of the houses anyway, cutting a diagonal through a field of wheat. He stopped at the open gate. A woman, bent at the waist, was cleaning the courtyard with a charoo. She was too glitteringly dressed to be the lagi. Tochi tidied his shirt into his trousers and wiped the sweat from his face with the inside of his collar. He tapped his knuckle twice against the metal gate, then took a step back and put his hands out of sight. She twisted round, still bent over, and asked him what he wanted.

  ‘Please forgive me, memsahib. I wondered if sahib had a minute, please?’

  ‘What do you want that only takes a minute?’

  So he wasn’t in, or at least not within earshot, and she sounded like trouble. ‘I’ll be on my way, memsahib.’

  ‘I said what do you want?’ She stood, queenly, and dropped the charoo to one side. She looked young. There were red ribbons strewn through her hair-bun.

  ‘I’m looking for work, memsahib.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s what you all say, but when you get it . . . Look! We have to clear up after your mess.’

  ‘I’ll leave you in peace, memsahib.’

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘I need to find work.’

  ‘Here,’ she said again.

  He started towards her, her face ageing with every stride: the lines showing through her powder, the smear of henna beneath her hairline, the thick bristle around pencilled eyebrows.

  ‘What kind of work?’

  ‘Farm work, memsahib.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘From the city,’ he lied. He didn’t want any trouble following him home.

  She stared for a while. Then: ‘We do have work. Lots of it. But sahib has gone to the bazaar.’

  ‘Acha, memsahib.’ He turned to go.

  ‘You can wait inside.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Did you not hear?’

  ‘Memsahib, I need to find work.’

  ‘I told you there is work. Just wait inside.’

  He didn’t move.

  Her hard face hardened further. A shadow over a stone. ‘Things easily go missing from these houses. It’s an open entrance, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want anyone in this village to think you weren’t trustworthy.’

  Tochi went through a large green door inlaid with gauze against the mosquitoes. He waited beside the charpoy, covered in its white sheet. He heard a door swinging open, clattering shut, and a tap running. A minute or so later she entered, her make-up now all gone. ‘That sheet stains so easily,’ she said, and started unbothering herself from her sari.

  Afterwards, he walked back round the dirt track and on to the pale stone lanes of the bazaar. A parade was on: Sita in her Rajasthani red, dupatta pulled forward like a deep hood and led by a single boy in white turban and tunic, miserably banging his drum. Tochi picked his way through the singing crowd, slipping into the spaces vacated by others, always moving ahead. No one seemed to notice him. He emerged into a side alley crammed with wedding-card manufacturers and moved away as some girls rode past, quacking their scooter horns. The alley spread into a paved square where four young men were playing cards on an unstitched brown sack, the kind used to transport crops. Their lunghis were rolled up around their knees and their calves covered in mud and field cuttings. Tochi crouched beside them and at the end of the hand asked if there was work around here. They said there was lots of work, but also lots of people looking for it.
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  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Go and register at the dhak-khana,’ one of them said. He seemed the youngest of them, with a fluffy moustache above thin lips. ‘They’ll add you to the list.’

  ‘It’ll be a long list.’

  He made a so-so motion with his head. ‘A year. Maybe six months if you give him enough. And have a phone for your home.’ By which he meant steal a phone for your home.

  Tochi nodded. So they could call him if a job came up. ‘Do you know anything? Any work going?’

  ‘Yaar, if I did do you think my brother would be sitting at home counting his fingers?’ They laughed and dealt the next hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tochi said, standing.

  ‘It’s these elections,’ the young man said. ‘People are scared to hire us. The Sena logh have scared them.’

  In the western corner of the bazaar, he found the post office, between a liquor store and an open-air stall selling electric fans. There was no door, only a rusting metal shutter rolled up and held in place with a wooden pole wedged at each end. Inside, he couldn’t see anything of the walls: they were hidden behind the immense rows of shelving that gave slightly under the weight of all those paper files. The postmaster sat at his table, writing into a blue ledger. With one hand he held his hair off his face. His cuffs were checked neatly back, revealing a silver bracelet on one wrist and a gold wedding thread around the other. Tochi waited to be noticed. The postmaster looked up, raised his eyebrows and kept them there.

  ‘I’m here to register, sahib. For work.’

  ‘Six months,’ the postmaster said and bent back down to his book.

  ‘I don’t mind what the work is, sahib. Farm work would be best, but I don’t mind as long as it’s work.’

  ‘Six months.’ He didn’t even look up.

  Tochi took out from his back pocket a twenty-rupee note. ‘It’s all I have, sahib.’

  When the man didn’t reply, Tochi returned the note to his pocket and made to go.

  ‘You don’t have a family?’ said the man.

  ‘I have a father, a mother, a sister and a brother.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t work?’

  ‘He has no arms.’