The Weary Generations

by Abdullah Hussein

  The three boars trapped by the beaters were heading blindly towards the pits. Two of them, perhaps remembering their first run, suddenly turned back and charged through the legs of the beaters, tusking one man in the leg. The third, a huge beast, ran on right down the line of Juginder Singh’s pit. Fixing the grip of both his hands on the spear, Juginder Singh raised its front end, aiming at the boar’s chest between its forelegs. A split-second before the impact, the boar turned ever so slightly to the side. The spear’s point ploughed through the skin of the boar at full force from shoulder to hind leg and slipped out, exposing a thick layer of cotton-white fat along the boar’s side. Juginder Singh had been unable to stop it. He swore. The beast fell headlong into the pit on top of a cowering Juginder Singh, ripping the skin on his back with an angry jerk of its tusk. The next moment it jumped out of the pit and disappeared, squealing wildly, into the trees. Both the hunter and the hunted had exposed one another’s bodies and drawn blood. The beaters stopped and gathered round Juginder Singh’s pit. As Naim, who had run off to the other side when the last two boars charged them, was coming back to the pits his eye caught two hind hooves sticking out from behind a tree. Quietly he went round and saw the wounded animal sitting there, his good side resting against the tree trunk, a wide sheet of skin hanging from the open side, dripping blood. With his spear raised to the level of the boar’s chest, Naim approached the beast. The boar just looked dumbly at the man coming towards him. At the last moment Naim changed direction and, positioning himself on the side, quickly pushed the spear through the boar’s open wound. The pig squealed. Those tending the two injured men around the pits came running. They saw shivers running through the boar’s body and Naim pushing the weapon deeper and deeper into it.

  ‘Push, push,’ they shouted. ‘Right on, keep pushing, hard, harder …’

  With only one hand, an arm and a shoulder behind the long, heavy spear, Naim had to grit his teeth to dredge up the last of his strength to get the spearhead into the animal’s vitals. The boar didn’t struggle much. There was a moment when Naim, looking into the beast’s glittering eyes, thought he heard the abrading sound, vibrating through the iron to his ear, of the steel point piercing far into the boar’s trunk. He also wished at that instant that he had another hand to put behind it so that the business would end sooner. The last few seconds were the hardest for Naim, not for the strength that it required of him but because he couldn’t take his eyes off the expressionless, slowly dying face of the boar, who finally let out a high, agonized cry and slumped to the ground, resting its snout lightly before it. A cheer went up from the men standing around.

  ‘Gone through the heart,’ one said. ‘It puts its snout on the ground only when something breaks its heart in two.’

  ‘How do you know about the snout?’ another asked. ‘They all die like that.’

  ‘I know,’ the first one said. ‘My life is spent among pigs.’

  ‘We know,’ the second answered, ‘you are almost one of them.’

  Laughter arose from the assembly of men. Naim didn’t bother to pull his spear out of the dead pig’s body. He walked back to where Juginder Singh was lying in his pit. Two men were burning up a cotton cloth, mixing it with a man’s urine and rubbing the stuff into his wound. Naim sat down at the edge of the pit and realized that he hadn’t really wanted to kill the boar, only to test the strength of his arm, and that in the end, looking at the animal’s helpless face, he had even wished that it would jump away from him and run.

  ‘I have taken revenge for you,’ he said to Juginder Singh.

  ‘Good,’ Juginder Singh said, smiling through a grimace of pain. ‘If Mahindroo was here, he too would go after it and kill the bastard.’

  Naim wanted to say, no, it was just luck. But he kept quiet. He felt the absence of Mahinder Singh deeply. The story he had told the village was that Mahinder Singh had died fighting bravely on the battlefield. ‘Yes,’ Naim said. ‘He would.’

  Dusk was falling as they returned to the village. Roshan Agha’s new Ford car was parked near the haveli. Everybody in the hunting party saw it and quickly went off to their homes, except Naim, who turned his mare towards the haveli. On horseback Naim could see over the boundary wall. There were two chairs in the courtyard, one large, throne-like, on which Roshan Agha sat, and on the other sat the munshi. All the older sharecroppers and field labourers from the village were sitting on the ground in front of the chairs. They had all put on their best clothes and starched turbans with high shamlas in honour of the Agha; the only one among the elders not present was Niaz Beg. Around the yard stood three tables, and on two of them, towards the sides, there were oil lamps with tall clear glass chimneys. The third table was set beside Roshan Agha’s chair. There was a white china plate on this table filled with a small heap of dried fruit, although Roshan wasn’t eating anything from it. There was a low hum of talk among the men. Suddenly a high-pitched voice from one side shouted, ‘Ahmad Din.’

  Ahmad Din got up from the middle and walked forward.

  ‘Not like that,’ the munshi said severely. ‘On your knees.’

  Ahmad Din hesitated a moment. The munshi gestured to his servants. Two young men came up and, grabbing Ahmad Din by the shoulders, forced him down to the ground, where he stood on all fours, looking up. Upon another silent gesture from the munshi, the men tore off Ahmad Din’s splendidly wound red silk turban and knotted it loosely around his neck, holding on to the other end of it.

  ‘Grass in his mouth.’ ordered the munshi.

  One of the men pulled up a handful of grass from the earth and pushed it in Ahmad Din’s mouth. By now, all resistance had gone out of the old man.

  ‘Now come,’ the munshi said.

  The servant with one end of the turban in his hand gave it a tug. Ahmad Din crawled for a yard, then fell flat on his stomach, shivering throughout the length of his dry old body.

  ‘He got double his share, Agha Ji,’ the munshi said to Roshan Agha, ‘just as your janab gave your honourable word when his son went to war. Now, with one mouth less to feed, his store is full of wheat, and yet he refuses to pay motorana.’

  Roshan Agha hadn’t spoken a word the whole time. His face showed displeasure and he didn’t look straight at what was going on. In the end he lifted his right hand and waved it as if fanning away the air from in front of his nose. The man holding Ahmad Din’s turban dropped it instantly and withdrew. But Ahmad Din did not rise. He lay there, face down, as if trying to hide his head in a hole in the ground, shivering uncontrollably. Naim turned his eyes away. Riding home, he passed Roshan Agha’s car. He had a thick twig in the hand that held the reins. With the full force of his arm, he threw the twig at the car. It skidded off the top of the car and fell on the other side. He was halfway to his house when he heard quick footsteps behind him. He pulled up and looked over his shoulder. In the growing dark of the evening he recognized the young schoolmaster Hari Chand. A primary school had been started in the village on Roshan Agha’s orders in Naim’s absence. Hari Chand was the only teacher, hired from outside, who taught some village children in a side room of the haveli.

  ‘Naim sahib,’ the teacher said to him, ‘will you come with me for a few minutes?’

  ‘Where?’ Naim asked him.

  ‘To my humble house. I would be grateful.’

  Naim got down. After a brief pause, he started following in the footsteps of the schoolmaster. It was a single dark mud hut in which Hari Chand lived.

  ‘Just a minute, sir,’ he said, ‘I will light the lantern.’

  The glass casing of the hurricane lamp hanging from the wall was smudged with dirt. There was a misshapen hole in the ground that served as a hearth, and around it the walls had become blackened with wood smoke. A narrow cot, covered by a heavy, rough cotton durree, lay along one wall. Books, sheets of paper and pencils were scattered on the cot. More bound volumes and half-open copybooks lay irregularly on a bare table that wobbled on the uneven floor.

  ‘Please
sit down,’ Hari Chand said, pointing vaguely to the cot. ‘Do you like green tea?’ Then without waiting for an answer he added, ‘I will make a cup for you.’

  Rearranging one or two books to make room, Naim sat down on a corner of the cot. The schoolmaster was breaking up some twigs. After placing them neatly in the hearth, he struggled for a minute with a damp matchbox, finally getting the twigs alight, and fanning the fire by furiously blowing in it. Smoke filled the room.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Hari Chand suddenly asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the haveli.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you upset?’

  Naim took a minute to answer, then said quietly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Agha is not a bad man. I saw his face turn pale when the wretched old man was crawling like an animal on a leash. But what difference does it make? He won’t do anything because his raj runs on such things. The whole thing is rotten.’

  Naim sat without answering, watching the schoolmaster grind a cardamom pod on a hearth-stone to brew with the tea.

  Hari Chand spoke again. ‘Have you considered your father’s position?’

  A look of sorrow mixed with a kind of panic passed across Naim’s eyes.

  ‘He wasn’t there tonight,’ continued Hari Chand. ‘He is a proud man and a brave one. But he is in a bad way. Who caused him to be like that? You tell me.’

  The schoolmaster splashed boiling tea from one cracked earthen cup into the other to bring out the colour of the tea. He mixed raw sugar into the cups and, coming to sit beside Naim on the cot, handed one to him. They sipped the hot tea.

  ‘What would you say if I told you that you can change all this?’ Hari Chand said to Naim.

  ‘Me?’ asked Naim.

  ‘You, me, all of us.’

  ‘How?’

  Hari Chand looked at him with a steady gaze. ‘First you have to be ready to do it.’

  ‘I can’t be ready before I know how,’ Naim said.

  ‘I can’t tell you. I have a particular job to do here. But you will meet our people.’

  ‘Who. when, where?’

  ‘One question at a time,’ Hari Chand said with a smile. ‘I will tell you in a few days. You will meet one man first in Rasool Nagar.’

  ‘Who is this man? I mean, who are you working for? The Congress?’

  ‘No. They don’t approve of what we are doing, although our goals are the same.’

  ‘It’s a town,’ Naim remarked idly after a while, enjoying the flavourful tea after a long day and wishing subconsciously to forget the whole evening and even Hari Chand.

  ‘Only a small town,’ said Hari Chand. ‘Delhi is a big city. Even bigger is Calcutta, where you come from.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We know a lot about you. This man you will meet also knows you. We have talked about you.’

  Naim was quiet for a few moments. Then he said slowly, almost absent-mindedly, ‘I only come from Roshan Pur.’

  ‘Are you ready for this?’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  The schoolmaster had thick black hair on a pockmarked face with rough features. He had had the good fortune to go to school for a few years. But inside that simple peasant’s body was a different heart. Shaking hands with him on his way out, Naim felt a deep sense of friendship with this man to whom he had spoken for the first time that night. He unwound the reins of his mare from the thick nail that served as the door-handle of the hut and said farewell. Before turning into his house he saw Roshan Agha’s car starting off from the village and the munshi and a few others, unseen by their master, bowing at the tail lights as they disappeared into the dust thrown up by the wheels.

  Following Hari Chand’s directions a few days later, Naim knocked at the door of an old, narrow, two-storey house that seemed to have fallen into disrepair. It was situated in an equally narrow street which Naim, on horseback, could scarcely pass through. The door was opened by a white-haired man in old blue railway-type uniform.

  ‘I have come from Roshan Pur,’ Naim said to him. ‘Hari Chand sent me. Master Hari Chand?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the man nodded. ‘But nobody comes here on a horse. Look, tie it up by the wall. Here, there is a hook by the door, fortunately. And tell your horse to stand sideways so that it does not stop people getting past. Hee, hee. Can you control it? Come in when you have done it, the door is open.’

  There was an inner door leading to a back room. By the time Naim had dealt with his mare, which he now regretted bringing with him, another man had emerged into the front room.

  ‘My name is Balkamand,’ he said, offering his hand to Naim.

  ‘I am Naim Ahmad Khan.’

  ‘I know, please come in, come with me.’

  Balkamand led Naim into the back room. The room looked in bad shape. Most of the plaster had fallen off the walls, exposing small, thin bricks laid upon each other with mud instead of mortar in the old style. The dried mud had been pulverized over the years, causing the wall to crack and warp, bringing it to a state of near collapse. An old man sat on a stool, his elbows on a table before him, studying some papers. Balkamand introduced him to Naim. ‘Kishan Das sahib, our Assistant District Secretary.’

  The old man looked up.

  ‘And this is Mr Naim Ahm–’

  Before Balkamand could finish, old Kishan Das stood up to shake hands with Naim. ‘I know. Naim from Roshan Pur. I got Hari Chand’s message some days back. Sit down.’ He offered Naim another stool. ‘I saw you at Roshan Agha’s party a few years ago,’ he said.

  Naim, halfway to sitting on the stool, stood straight up again in utter surprise. ‘Were you there?’ he asked.

  ‘I only saw you from the other side of the lawn. But I heard what you said. I tried to contact you when we set up our branch here, but you had gone to the war by then. Please sit down.’

  Kishan Das, completely bald except for a fringe of white hair around the base of his head, had an unusually young voice and a strong grip. The man who had opened the door brought two cups of tea which he set down on the table. Neither of the two men paid any attention to the tea. Kishan Das gazed at Naim quietly for a moment, then said, ‘If you just consider your family’s history – your father, grandfather – you will realize how treacherous these people are who represent this system, the system of poverty and slavery, these people who control all our lives. They will not bat an eyelid before betraying those who provide them with the means to lead their grand lives.’ He paused. ‘If you are prepared to work to change all this, you should know beforehand that it is risky and dangerous work.’

  ‘I am not afraid of danger,’ Naim said.

  ‘I know. You fought bravely in the war.’

  ‘Nobody sets out to be brave in war. It’s just a –’

  ‘I am talking of the risk involved. We are poor people and possess nothing. But you have lands and awards from the sarkar. You have something to lose.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ Naim said to him.

  ‘Mind you, it may not come to that. All you have to do is not get caught.’ He laughed, and an expression as young as his voice spread across his face. ‘Brave as you are, what we need most of all is educated people. We only have simple peasants and day labourers. We have very few people with any proper education to work in the field.’

  Naim nodded in reply.

  ‘Let me tell you how we can proceed,’ Kishan Das said. ‘You will spend two weeks here. Balkamand will tell you all about it. Then you will go out into the field. You need not see me until then, but do look me out when you are ready to go.’

  They got up and shook hands. In the front room Balkamand pointed to a cot with a durree spread out on it, a cotton sheet jumbled up towards the foot and a thin, hard pillow with smudges of oil on it at the head of the bed. ‘You can sleep here,’ he said.

  ‘Is it your bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where will you sleep?’

  ‘Ooh – somewhere
,’ Balkamand said vaguely. ‘Have some food, it’s ready.’

  ‘All right.’

  Naim ate one roti with cauliflower cooked in mustard oil, thinking all the while that perhaps he was eating Balkamand’s share of food. Balkamand was a tall man of middle years with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. But his most distinguishing feature was his eyes, which had a shine in them that seemed to come not from the surface but from somewhere within.

  When Naim had finished eating, he stood up. ‘I will come back in a few days,’ he said. ‘I have to prepare my father. Also,’ he laughed, ‘I have to take my horse back to the village.’

  ‘Of course,’ Balkamand smiled, ‘I had forgotten all about that.’ He shook Naim’s hand, his eyes shining more intensely. For a few seconds Naim couldn’t take his eyes away from Balkamand’s face.

  ‘Do you want to ask me about anything else?’ Balkamand asked.

  ‘No,’ Naim said, slightly embarrassed for appearing to stare at the other man’s face.

  ‘Look,’ Balkamand put his hand on Naim’s arm, ‘if you have any questions, ask without hesitation.’

  ‘No, no,’ Naim said, ‘it’s just –’

  ‘What?

  ‘You have a remarkable shine in your eyes, that’s all.’

  Balkamand blushed like a young boy. They walked to the door. Naim untied the mare’s reins from the door-hook. Some children had gathered in the street, looking at the horse.

  ‘When you get to my age,’ Balkamand said to Naim, ‘the eyes change. They either make you blind or make you see further.’