From the other end of this very ‘solid’ earth, Melu’s bapu had, a couple of hours ago, returned to the village, feeling miserable over his separation from his grandsons, then on this very earth, he had heard the lamentations of Dharma’s children. On coming closer, when he had peered hard, apart from Dharma’s daughter-in-law and his wife, he had also seen a couple of other women—perhaps they were related to them and had come to make anxious enquiries. Or perhaps, they were from the vehra itself, and had come to deliver roti-tuk. But why were the children screaming their lungs out in this wild manner?

  That very moment, the track loader surged ahead, thundering like a swarm of locusts, crushing the children’s screams under its cacophony, and began to pull down the rest of Dharma’s kothri, levelling out the uneven mounds of earth, and then after turning around with the alacrity of a tortoise, it suddenly reversed. Unable to keep looking in that direction anymore, Melu’s bapu had simply lowered his eyes, and walked on.

  He had walked the entire stretch up to the dharamshala with his eyes lowered, and when on nearing it, he finally raised his eyes, he saw Finnah (the snub-nosed one) step out of their house. He was dressed in a military uniform, and on his turban he had wrapped a red muffler with a floral pattern. Finnah’s complexion appeared to be much brighter than before. He greeted Melu’s bapu from a distance, ‘Chachaji, Sat-Sri-Akal! So tell me, how are you doing? Going strong? I had come mainly to find out about you.’

  On coming closer, Melu’s bapu thumped his shoulder cheerily, and said, ‘You say, how are you? In good health?’

  ‘I’m fine, and with your blessings. Enjoying myself!’

  ‘Are you here on a long leave?’

  ‘Just about a month-and-a-half.’

  ‘I see. You are welcome. Come and sit. Have some “cha-sha” before you go.’

  ‘No, I’ll come in the evening. Right now, I have to go and find out about Chacha Dharma. I’m also thinking of going to the town.’

  On hearing Dharma’s name, Melu’s bapu became solemn all over again, and as before, he lowered his head.

  When Finnah looked back, somewhat furtively, he sensed that Dyalo was, on one pretext or the other, still looking in his direction. For a while, he thought of staying back, and sitting down for a long gossip session with Melu’s bapu, so that he could, at least, give Dyalo a straight look. Within a year, she had grown into a young woman—she appeared much taller than before, too. Her features had shaped well. She had even learnt the art of dressing artfully. But thinking of Dharma Chacha and the tragedy that had struck his family, he said rather abruptly, ‘Doesn’t matter. Now, I’m here only. We’ll keep running into each other, morning-evening. And chacha, if I can be of any service, do let me know. Don’t hesitate, henh?’

  ‘Look at him, the crazy one!’ Melu’s bapu spoke half-admonishing, ‘You are not a stranger. Besides, you come after six months or sometimes, even a year. So, it’s our duty to look after you, rather than…’

  ‘No, no, chacha! It’s always the duty of the youngsters.’ Making Melu’s bapu glow with a simpering smile, he said, ‘All right then, should I go to chacha first? The panchayat might be back much before I land up there.’

  With some deep thought overwhelming him, Melu’s bapu kept looking after Finnah, as he proceeded towards the dharamshala.

  Of all the young men in the vehra, Finnah was the most handsome. He had been in the army now for five years, and his family hadn’t felt the lack of anything. Though he was already twenty-four and his family was constantly pressuring him, he was not ready to get married. Whenever they tried to talk to some family for his alliance, he would start lecturing them like an elder, ‘Bapu, am I going to grow old so fast? First, let’s marry off all the three girls. Then, I’ll get fixed up somewhere. There is no famine of girls in our area.’

  With the money he earned, he had already married off two of his sisters. The third one’s alliance was already fixed. Whenever the vehra folks sat down to draw up a list of sensible young men, Finnah’s name would always figure at the top. He had shouldered the responsibility of his entire family. ‘Whose son actually thinks like this these days?’

  ‘Who thinks?’ Melu’s bapu repeated these words, as he entered his kothri. ‘He addresses even a far-removed stranger in a respectful manner, and greets everyone with utter humility. Such sons are born only to the fortunate ones. They aren’t born in every other family, after all.’

  Talking to himself in this manner, when Melu’s bapu went and sat down on the manji set out in the sun, he kept discussing Finnah with Dyalo for a very long time. Feeling embarrassed, Dyalo kept saying, ‘hoon-hanh’. Every time he mentioned Finnah’s name, scared of revealing her innermost thoughts, Dyalo would simply give her bapu a sidelong glance, in a bid to assess his response.

  Almost a year before Finnah had joined the army, one day he and Dyalo had run into each other in Partapa’s fields. Almost like a child, he had asked her, very spontaneously, ‘Dyalo, you… you, too, join the army with me. No?’ At the time, Dyalo was barely thirteen or fourteen years old, and Finnah was five or six years her senior. On hearing this crazy idea, Dyalo had laughed so much that she hadn’t been able to stop for a long time. On seeing a dimple on Dyalo’s right cheek, formed by her hysterical laughter, Finnah had smiled to himself.

  ‘You’re really the grandfather of all the crazy ones!’ This is what Dyalo had said as soon as she had stopped laughing. ‘Do girls ever join the army, you crazy fellow?’

  But Finnah had, again, spoken with his characteristic naivety ‘Why ever not? Girls drive motorcycles and cars these days. They pilot planes, too, and you say they can’t join the army?’

  Dyalo always found such talk on his part somewhat strange. He would always read out such stories from the newspapers and from books to the people living in the vehra. As he had studied up to class five, he was regarded as the most qualified young boy in the entire vehra. But when he discussed such things with Dyalo, she always thought he was being naive. That is why, thinking back to what he had said, she had kept smiling to herself, as she lay on her manji that night. And when she had met Finnah after many days, reminding him of his idea of joining the army, she had teased him no end. This had left him so deeply embarrassed that thereafter, he had not been able to face Dyalo for several days.

  Today, when Finnah visited their house, Dyalo had suddenly been reminded of that incident. She had stuffed her chunni into her mouth and gagged her laughter somehow. Then she asked him, somewhat sheepishly, ‘Bhai, do you live in Dilli, now?’

  ‘It’s quite far from Dilli, nearly eight hundred miles away. By train, it takes two days to get there. It’s a very strange place. Men and women chew their words and speak.’ Then, once again, he had started telling her the same kind of stories that he used to narrate to other people before joining the army.

  Dyalo did like him a great deal. Now on hearing bapu praise him, she had temporarily forgotten how bharjai and her nephews had visited them like strangers and left, something that had rankled in her mind for a long time. While reflecting on her childhood memories, some of which were bound up with Finnah, she was suddenly reminded of Melu, who had become a stranger despite living under the same roof. For months on end, he would not visit them. Coming in late, he would merely spend the night and leave the next morning, in the pre-dawn hours, as if he didn’t wish to come face to face with anyone. But each time Finnah came home, dumping his holdall and trunk at home, he would immediately set off to pay his respects to the elders in the community. Even today, though he had been home barely a couple of hours, he went to call on virtually everyone, made enquiries about Dharma, and then left for the town.

  ‘There is no dearth of goodness in this world,’ Melu’s bapu continued to talk, as though to himself, ‘Now, just see, he is no blood relation of theirs. Rather, Dharma’s son had once picked a fight with his father. But he is such a good person that when he came home on leave, and learnt about it, he went straight to Dharma and said, “Now chacha, do tell bhai not to use such language in future. Why should he? Is my father not related to him? So, if he speaks ill of him, won’t he feel embarrassed, too?” Just look at this, such satyugi people also exist in this kalyug.’

  It was as if Melu’s bapu had forgotten everything else, and all he could remember now was Finnah.

  It was late afternoon. When Dyalo asked Melu’s bapu if he wanted some rotis, he was still caught up in his thoughts and said, ‘If there is any, then give it to me. You don’t have to make it afresh now. I’m not hungry, really.’

  Dyalo handed over a roti and a half that was leftover. Seeing two chunks of molasses on top, he first thought of asking her how much dough was left, but then the moment his eyes fell upon the firewood near the chulha and a few sticks of cotton plants lying in the courtyard, he asked, ‘Putth, didn’t your bebe get these dry sticks yesterday?’

  ‘Yesterday, she was saying that Partapa hadn’t started harvesting his cotton yet. She’ll bring them today.’

  ‘But how will we burn the wet ones she brings from Partapa? She is crazy. Why couldn’t she get a bundle from someone else?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I will go. I’ll go and get the dry ones from someone. Two bundles will see us through for ten days or so.’

  Again, Melu’s bapu’s face fell. When he used to work as a daily wager, they had never felt the dearth of dry firewood. Punnan, the mate who used to take care of the canal, was an old friend of his. Whenever he needed some firewood, his friend would fell a keekar and bail him out. Now in the winters, his body just didn’t have enough strength to let him work; he barely managed to look after himself.

  ‘All right then…you don’t worry. If God permits, I’ll go with you tomorrow.’ It was as if he was trying to reassure Dyalo.

  After eating his roti, he lay down on the manji once again. Carrying a chunni in her hand that she had begun embroidering the previous year, Dyalo came and sat next to him on a brick. Straightening her chunni out, she started looking at the small, floral design, embroidered in pale, yellow-coloured thread, in such a way as though she was reminding her bapu of her daaj. On seeing the chunni, Melu’s bapu wanted to ask her something, but then he turned his face away from the sun. After a while, lying on the manji, his face covered with a khes, he had started taking long deep breaths, as though he was trying to push out something stuck inside his chest. His breathing was, in fact, becoming harder.

  Lost in her own thoughts, Dyalo had started embroidering the incomplete floral design on the chunni. Each time she pulled the needle through her chunni, with an audible jarring sound, she felt as though her bapu’s breathing was slowing down further. But Dyalo was not looking in his direction.

  ‘Bapu.’ After some time, she called out to him loudly, as if she was shouting for him somewhere out in the wilderness.

  ‘Hanh!’ Startled, Melu’s bapu took the khes off his face, and asked, ‘Putth, what is the matter?’

  For a long time thereafter, Dyalo couldn’t think of anything to say. Surprised, he had kept looking at Dyalo; but she was lost in her thoughts, again, as she went about moving the needle in and out of her chunni, somewhat mechanically.

  ‘What is the matter, putth?’ Melu’s bapu asked in a somewhat impatient manner.

  Still Dyalo didn’t utter a single word. But after a while, feeling somewhat embarrassed, she said, ‘I was…I was saying that, bhai, let all of us go to the town, now…’

  She hadn’t quite finished saying what she was, when Melu’s bapu also fell silent in the same way in which she suddenly had, and started looking towards the sky. Dyalo also didn’t speak a word more. It was as if their mutual silence was now fanning out like fog, enveloping them. So much so that they couldn’t even see each other, very clearly. Then after a very long time, it was Dyalo who broke the silence.

  ‘Now why are we all sitting here?’ When she put this solemn question in a spontaneous manner, the way a wise person often does, Melu’s bapu felt a lump rise in his throat. But Dyalo spoke again, ‘If you were working as a siri for someone, it may have been an obstacle. But now that we live off our own resources, we’d be much better off there. Besides, the way bhabhi’s brother was saying, our Melu bhai might have taken some big house on rent there. Now what is left for us here?’

  He felt as though each word of Dyalo’s was corroding his guts, like mercury. The fog before his eyes became denser and the sky appeared dark and inky.

  That very moment, when some commotion was heard outside, Melu’s bapu got up with a start, and said, ‘What has happened now!’

  Lurching forward, Dyalo saw a big crowd of people approaching their house from the direction of the dharamshala. Long before they reached Dyalo’s house, many other women of the vehra had gathered around them. In the cacophony that followed, nothing was clear. Certainly, something was brewing. Gathering her chunni and putting it away on the wrong end of the manji, she said, ‘I will go and find out.’

  Rising from the manji in a hurry, Melu’s bapu said, ‘No, putth, you don’t go, I will go.’

  Dyalo found this kind of behaviour on the part of her bapu somewhat strange. She looked at his face and felt as though its glow had died in a minute. More than the commotion outside, it was the ‘dhak-dhak’ of her own heartbeat that Dyalo could hear very clearly now. Without even casting a glance towards her, bapu simply gathered his khes and set off towards the dharamshala.

  As Dyalo peeped out of the door, she saw Bogha’s mother beating her chest, wailing and screaming loudly. Then suddenly, she started running towards the village, spouting abuses at whoever came her way. By the time she had reached the village well, two women had caught hold of her. She kept beating her chest in the same violent manner, calling out the names of someone’s sons and abusing them, shaking her head in a violent manner like a crazy woman, trying her best to wriggle out of the grasp of the two women and flee. Her chunni and one of her juttis lay a little short of the well, in the tracks left by a horse cart. Half of her scattered gray hair had fallen all over her face, on account of which she looked almost like a witch. After a while, when she saw two men leave the congregation and come towards them, she wriggled out of the grip of those two women and ran towards the village. As the women were still tugging at her kurta, it split up to her armpit, and hung loose. One of the men who had followed her grasped her firmly from behind, and both of them dragged her away to her house. Following close on their heels, the entire crowd also proceeded towards Bogha’s house.

  Dyalo could still hear the shouts and screams of Bogha’s mother. ‘Weh, may all your three sons die! May God make you lose everyone, so that not even a single person survives to light a deeva! You come to me, and I’d swallow you alive, weh, you demons of yore! I spit on you, you stubborn ones. I spit on you.’

  It was a dreadful voice. Squirming inside, Dyalo plugged her ears with her chunni. She couldn’t stand by the door, any longer. Trembling in fear, she went and lay down on the manji. After some time, the commotion began to die down. She felt as though Bogha’s mother’s wailing had also subsided somewhat.

  Then Dyalo heard the footfalls of her bapu, and instantly, she sat up on the manji. She could sense that bapu was out of breath. His eyes lowered, he came in and sat on the manji, and the moment he did so, an incessant bout of coughing began. Dyalo didn’t ask him a thing. Simply getting up from there, she went and sat on the same brick again.

  ‘What will become of this world?’ slumping down on the manji, he asked as soon as he had caught his breath again.

  ‘What’s the matter, bapu?’ Now Dyalo’s voice sounded more composed.

  ‘What do you think is the matter? These bloody rascals have come into some money, and now they go around preening.’

  ‘Who are you talking of?’

  ‘This, Taroo Singha, who else? In the morning, these people might have seen Bogha’s footprints in their cotton fields. He was busy watering his fields when these buggers started dragging him into their trolley, saying, “Hanh, hanh, he is the one who stole our cotton at night”. Bheeta has come from the fields, and he was saying, “All the three sons of Taroo kept hitting him in the trolley as they drove right up to the canal.” Each time he abused, the elder one would jump at his throat, hit him hard in the ribs, and say, “Now tell us, at what rate did you sell the cotton?” Oh…oho! Have you ever heard of such brutality? Oye stupid fellows, even if that poor man has made a mistake, does it mean you should go to the extent of killing him? Compassion has completely dried up in human beings, but God watches everyone. At least you should fear Him, if nothing else. Oh… oho…! What times have we fallen on? Waheguru, Waheguru! All right, Sacche Patshah, it’s all up to you, now!’ While talking in this manner, he was racked by such a paroxysm of coughing all of a sudden that he couldn’t even breathe for some time. Dyalo felt as though the earth was revolving upside down. She felt as though her chunni lying towards the wrong end of the manji was also floating in the air.

  Melu’s bapu was now being racked persistently by bouts of coughing. It was as if his entire body was being winnowed. Still coughing badly, he was sitting up on the manji. It had made no difference to the intensity of his cough, though. Dyalo got up and went towards the chulha to light the fire—she knew very well that now her bapu wouldn’t be able to pull himself off the manji unless a few drops of tea had seeped inside him.

  As she was about to light the chulha, she was again reminded of the firewood. But seeing bapu’s condition, she didn’t have the heart to say anything to him. She took a dung-cake out of the many bebe had stored away. Breaking up the small, dry sticks of a bushy weed, she pushed them into the chulha. Then as she was breaking the dung-cake into smaller pieces to scatter them over the sticks, she discovered that the cake was damp at the core. The bushy weeds did catch fire, but the pieces of dung-cake remained unlit. Crushing them, as she thrust two more sticks into the chulha, the entire courtyard was flooded with smoke.