by Asha D.
Sachi
The air was infused with the sweet and heady scent of tea- leaves. Almost like incense, it welcomed those who entered like the smoky fog of prayer sticks. Those familiar with their teas could sometimes sniff out distinctly the nectarine flavor of the hibiscuses from the earthy smell of black teas, the flowery tints of the herbals from the bitter tang of green teas. Yet always, the multitude of fresh aromas from the various different leaves would somehow float and mix together in a choreographed blend of olfactory delight. Oftentimes, when the sunlight streamed through the high panel windows near the ceiling, tea dust and floating fibers could be seen swaying and swiveling around in a mid-air dance, other- worldly and hypnotizing. A bed of fine twigs, dried leaves and little buds crunched underfoot unless the floor had a recent sweeping.
Sachi walked into the delectable room and paused for a bit, taking in the calm and familiar scent. Despite being thinly separated from the outside by a layer of plain bamboo beaded curtain, the essence of the tea- room enveloped her and she felt transported away from the clamor of reality. Soothed by her workspace, Sachi gathered up the tasks ahead of her.
There were sacks of newly fired leaves from the oven lined up against the wall and waiting for her obediently like freshly chastised school kids. Her tools were also lined up neatly where she had left them before, on the lopsided wooden table- top under the windows. There was a neatly piled stack of sieves with meshes of various diameters, a bulky weighing scale with its platform heavily scratched and discolored, a box of polyethylene bags and wide white stickers to put on those, a few large shallow metallic dishes, and lastly, an exercise book wrapped in brown paper with a blue ball-point pen placed over it. Taking in a deep breath and jiggling her hands loose by her side, she went over to the table to grab her first pick.
Lightweight yet larger than her face, the big sieve with the largest holes was awkward in her petite hands, as were the other sieves. She went over to the nearest sack of dark leaves, placed a large shallow dish on the earth beside it with the sieve on top, and tipped over the sack of leaves. Out flowed the dried and curled up leaves, a dark downpour of various sizes. They rained down upon the sieve and dish, creating a loud pitter-patter that Sachi delighted in.
She knew the sound of waterfalls from the one or two times she had watched them, bewitched, on scenes from movies in the little TV her neighbors owned. Closing her eyes and placing her palm under the stream of tea, Sachi almost believed that she was under a waterfall, or inside the TV.
Smiling slightly, she paused pouring before the dish may overflow, and squatting beside it, she lifted the sieve and started shaking. Back and forth, sideways and circular, shaking and occasionally tapping, Sachi got lost in the long and repetitive task of separating the leaves into their various grades by size. The material that passed through the first sieve with the largest mesh size was sieved through the subsequent mesh size, while the retained tea leaves were packed into a bag. On and on, the process was repeated, each smaller gradation of sieved particles singing a smoother, higher pitched choir on the metal dish beneath, until the last remaining bits consisting of the smallest cuts of leaves and tea dust gushed down the same way as sand and twinkled its rhymes against the plate.
Eventually, the sacks of tea were replaced by polyethylene bags of tea- weighed, recorded, and labeled, separated by consistent grades. It was past noon by the time Sachi’s stomach reminded her of break-time by way of a painful ache, and the sun was scorching down from her high sentry in the sky. Stretching with her arms interlocked above her head, Sachi stepped outside into the blinding light. Squinting and shading her eyes with her small palms, Sachi gazed out into the paramount sight before her.
Acres and acres of rolling green plains receded out as far as her eyes could see. Drinking in the sunshine, the infinite sectors of land all radiated a luminous emerald. Valley winds blew freely, causing ripples across the jade sea like shallow waves racing towards shore. In the midst of the vast tea plantations, numerous dark figures dipped in and out of sight, mere ant figures from Sachi’s viewpoint. Somewhere out there, one of those figures was her mother. She almost always skipped her afternoon meal, saying that she preferred to eat at the end of the day, once all tasks were completed and she could be fully relaxed. Sachi knew this was not completely true; her mother chose to work through lunch time so she could pick more leaves, and save up to occasionally buy an extra loaf of bread, or a snack for Sachi from the sweets shop in the town square nearby.
Sachi wanted fervently to join her mother and the others in the tea- picking out in the field. She had gone with them many times and knew exactly which leaves to pick. Albeit she was much slower than the rest, she came so close to almost matching Milli didi’s speed the last time she went. She couldn’t wait to go down into the fields and compete with the other women again. The speed with which their hands flew from plant to basket, like the blurry blades of a propeller, was utterly mesmerizing to Sachi. It was boring up here in the workshop where she felt caged in, but she was given strict instructions. Children under the age of ten should not be picking tea, she was told whenever she complained. So she was stuck indoors with the other “children” although it irritated her that Milli didi was only one year older but working in the fields. Yet, even Milli didi along with the other older “children” were not allowed to work on many particular days. Days when the rich tourists visited in their cars and bright clothes. Or days when the fat policemen drove by in their noisy jeeps and faded, stained uniforms.
On those days, warning shouts would ring through the camps and fields, urging the children to run back indoors and pretend that they never picked a leaf in their lives. If any child gave anything away, Raviji, or Badha Dada as he was better known around his lands, would ensure to visit the child’s living quarters, and leave the family in such a state that they would be afraid to say anything for days afterward, and some even had trouble moving about with full mobility. “Wouldn’t want to be working in the fields now, would you Sachi?” her mother would whisper to her after such episodes. “You are too small to understand, poor child. You should want to go to school instead of into the plantations…” Sachi’s stomach growled suddenly, distracting her from her thoughts. She made her way over to the canteen.
The canteen was really just an open area with some dried up banana leaves tied together across a few poles to create shade. Sachi spied Manoja didi sitting in a corner and chewing on a piece of stale looking roti. She skipped over to her side and took a seat beside Manoja didi on the dry, dusty ground. Manoja didi smiled at the child and nodded her greeting. Sachi opened up the small paper- wrapped parcel she’d brought along from home and bit into the lunch her mother had prepared. It was also roti, but rolled with some ghee and dried daal. After finishing, Manoja agreed to play a game of marbles with Sachi before she headed back outside and to more picking. Sachi liked Manoja didi for her bashful ways, and her acquiescent attitude when the children asked her for games and things. After they parted ways, Sachi returned to her workroom, only to be greeted by more bags of tea that had been dropped off for her while she was eating.
The distant call of a rooster and nearby rustling about by her mother and father woke Sachi up next dawn. It was still dark outside, but the stirrings of a new day had already begun. She could hear the splashing of water as her neighbors washed their drowsy faces with cold water outside their doors. Freshly brewing tea eluded its sweet fragrance into the misty dawn air and it wafted into Sachi’s nose and up into her mind, pushing away the drowsiness. Rolling over in her stiff mat, Sachi forced open her heavy lids and awakened to yet another day.
After having doused her face in some cool water, changing into her day clothes and drinking her cup of morning tea with a couple of biscuits, Sachi grabbed two empty water pails and started on her daily trail towards the local water tap. No matter how early she reached the tap, she always ended up having to join a long line of patient waiters. Once she had even reached before the time that the tap st
arted to dispense any water. Yet even then, there was a crowd of early risers blocking her way. When the first spills of water sputtered out of the tap opening, the crowd exclaimed their soft delight as one. If water could have been drawn from the tap anytime during the day, the queue would not have been as unbearable. However, water only came to this tap twice a day and sucked the dwellers to it like clockwork. When running, the tap would be a prime attraction in the village. Frequented incessantly by women and men filling up their pails and pots with water for cooking and washing, by children who bathed in its splashes and sloshes. When the water failed to gorge out however, the tap could have been mistaken as a lonely pipe wrongly plunged into the wrong place on the ground.
By the time she had filled her pails and was returning back with them hanging from each stiffly held arm, the sky had lightened into a blushing rouge. Some tea- pickers were already making their way onto the shadowy fields so as to avoid the sun’s wrath later with their woven bamboo baskets hanging and bumping on their backs. Sachi returned to find her father had already left and her mother scrambling to be out the door quickly too. “Thank you beta,” she said with a quick peck on Sachi’s cheek before filling up her little plastic bottle with water from a freshly filled pail and bounding out to join the march towards the fields. She’d left Sachi her lunch on the steps, roti rolled up in paper again.
Taking her time, Sachi sauntered towards her workshop. Thinking that today might just be different, she decided to stop by the outhouse and check if things had changed since the last time she was there, a couple of days ago. Before even approaching the doors of the latrine, she knew that nothing had changed. The foul smell of defecation and urea made her wrap her scarf over her nose, and she caught sight of the overflowing, stomach-turning mess surrounding the steps to the latrine before turning away. Sighing, she realized that she’d just have to do it in the fields again. Even though that was not allowed, the villagers complained about the state of the toilet and just went about their business in the fields amongst the plants instead.
Sachi took a detour through the fields. She found a spot where the plants were almost as tall as her and where no plantation workers had come to yet, and disappeared beneath the bushes when she squatted. Re-emerging after finishing, Sachi decided to walk through the plants in the direction of her workshop instead of taking the well-trodden and more direct path. She brushed the leaves with her hands as she walked, and sniffed at the evergreen buds, relishing the soft soil supporting her underfoot as opposed to the pebbled dirt road she usually took. She hadn’t gotten far when she heard a rustling nearby. Pushing away some of the branches ahead of her, Sachi saw that she had come up behind another woman who seemed like she was also about to go about her personal activity unaware. Sachi was about to look away and retreat quietly, but something about the woman seemed off.
She had gathered up her skirt and petticoat into a bunch and held the bundle up in front of her midriff such that her dark, sinewy legs were bare and glistening in the soft morning sun. However, she made no move to bend her knees or descend towards the ground. Instead, Sachi saw her back remain upright, and a shimmering, yellow stream arced its way down toward the soil. It dampened the soil and flickered off a few leaves, up until when the jet of liquid ebbed and waned to some drips, and then nothing at all. The woman moved away from the spot and released her fabrics to unfurl and cover over her bottom half again, but not before Sachi glimpsed the dark, bulbous parts of the person, the parts that women did not have.
The person looked around shiftily, hoping to reconfirm that no other soul was there, but when she turned her eyes found and glued onto a shell- shocked Sachi. The person was Manoja.
“Sachi!” Manoja gasped. It was hard to determine whose eyes were wider at that instant. Manoja seemed to shiver in downright fear, shrinking in front of a girl distinctly smaller than her. Meanwhile, Sachi was rooted to the ground, eyes round like the moon and sparkling in disbelief. Manoja took a step forward reached out a shaky hand towards the child, but Sachi stumbled backwards.
Raising her palms in helplessness, Manoja made no more effort to approach the child. But after a whole two minutes had passed of both of them standing motionless in the middle of the softly swaying field, Manoja started softly speaking.
“Sachi, meri beti, my dear child. I’m sorry you had to see that. It was meant to forever be my secret, but now you also know. Perhaps I would’ve told you if you were a little older, I know you can be a good friend and this secret is truly a hard one to harbor all by myself, always alone.
‘Some of us in this world, grow to be happier in a body that they were not born with, beti… I am one such person. I may be like your father, brothers, uncles, child, but actually I really just want what you have. Please don’t hate me for this wish, beti, please…”
Manoja’s face was streaked with tears by then, and she was having trouble choking out her words. “Do you remember when I first came to this plantation to work, Sachi? Do you?” she enquired.
It was a broken and faded vision, but Sachi suddenly had a snapshot in her mind of Manoja’s arrival to the village. She remembered. She shuddered.
Manoja had arrived at the village a couple of years ago with blood running down her face and her feet cracked and blistered. Her hair was a frenzy with twigs and dried leaves stuck on, and her arms were cut and bruised black and blue. “I remember,” Sachi replied, “You had run away from the hands of some naughty men and had walked for 3 days straight until you found our village.” The villagers had taken pity on her state and allowed her to recover in their estates as well as take up work in the fields.
Manoja nodded her head, but also snorted a barking laugh that confused Sachi. “I had run away from home, child. It was my mother and father who had beaten me like that, not some brainless men. Although no doubt they would’ve done the same if they knew too. I am lucky to even be alive. My own mother and father were so ashamed when I gathered the courage to tell them that they wanted me dead.” Manoja suddenly sank to the ground and stared into the roots, dazed and glossy- eyed.
After what seemed a lifetime, Sachi slowly crossed the distance and placed a small hand on Manoja’s shoulder, over the soft drapes of her saree. “I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered.
The initial shock flowed and ebbed with time to become a distant but natural comprehension in Sachi’s mind. She became more comfortable with the nature of her knowledge, and discovered more about Manoja bit-by-bit, question-by-question. On some days when both their lunch times would coincide, Sachi would look around and ensure they weren’t being paid attention to by anyone before voicing her curiosities in an undertone.
“When did you know?”
“When I was about your age.”
“Do you get the monthlies too like Mama?”
“No child, it doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re really happy now?”
“Yes.”
Although she could not fully comprehend why Manoja would do what she was doing, Sachi’s discovery came to change nothing. She still played marbles and board games with Manoja, and oftentimes she could not even remember how Manoja might be any different. All that mattered was that she had a friend.
One sultry night, Sachi was aroused by the sounds of a strangely agitated crowd of neighbors. Oil lamps were being lit all around the quarters as villagers awoke and more and more squinty- eyed people emerged in their slippers and sleepwear to seek out the source of the commotion. Sachi’s father got up gruffly, commanded her mother and her to stay while he went out to figure out what the heck was going on. The females stayed behind, but hovered just outside their doorstep with ears strained for information.
By the time her father returned, streaks of pink and orange were already pooling above the distant fields. Distraught and heavy- footed, he approached the women bristling impatiently for news. With a look that screamed he would rather be anywhere else, he stuttered, “It… It’s Manoja. She…” Her father balked,
his rumpled features screwed up into a harrowed look. “She was a he. Some thugs… Her body was found hurled upon the steps to the latrine.” He shook his head form side to side like a droopy old dog. “The police are here now. They have Badha Dada with them. Everyone is saying there will be no picking today.”
Raising his forlorn eyes to glance at Sachi, he took her clammy hand in his warm, rough ones, attempting to offer some reassurance. Sachi suddenly felt bone- cold, and hollow inside. She snatched away her hand from her father’s grasp, and without a second thought, she ran.
She chopped and pushed at the murmuring crowd in her way and tore through the squalid quarters until she found the beaten dirt road leading away from the village. Processing neither any of the shouts ringing after her nor the sharp pricks of stone under her bare soles, Sachi knifed through the air, hot blood pounding in her ears. A figure fast receding into a blood orange sky, she ran and ran without an end in mind, but the echo of her fiend’s voice inside her head, saying that once, Manoja used to be known by the name of Manoj.