‘That new mate at kassi is really obnoxious. He snarls worse than a bitch. The other day, he started abusing us and, that too, without any provocation…He also told us, “Don’t you dare come this way again…”’

  ‘Doesn’t matter! You tell him that it’s only for a day or so,’ Melu’s bapu said, consoling him. But Shinda would have none of it. Then his bapu offered a sop, saying, ‘You’re a good son of mine. You shouldn’t behave like this. Hang on till I recover. Then we’ll go and sell our heifer at the mandi…And I’ll take you to your brother in town…You can study up to seventh or so and pick up a job…Then you enjoy yourself. Look, it’s only a matter of time…Let me just recover first…Do you hear me?’

  This was certainly not the first time that Shinda had heard his bapu talk the way he did now. Somehow, he knew it in his bones that there was no escaping his fate. No amount of excuses, howsoever ingenuous, would either save the day for him or let him have his way. If anything, his excuses would only invite more rebukes, perhaps a severe thrashing as well.

  Seeing the tension mount, Dyalo called him over to the courtyard on some pretext and then thrusting a thick lump of molasses into his pocket, she whispered, ‘When you return I’ll give you dried coconut to eat. I’ve put it away, especially for you.’ Then handing him two rotis left behind by bebe, she spoke louder than usual, ‘Now be a good brother of mine and get going. When I come to give bebe her roti, you wait for me near the peepul tree on the banks of kassi. I’ll bring two rotis for you as well. And missi ones, if you like?’

  Wiping his eyes dry with his kurta, Shinda groaned as he twisted the rotis to thrust them into his pocket before he spoke, his voice brimming with emotion, ‘And if you fail to bring it, I’ll refuse to go tomorrow.’

  At first Dyalo couldn’t help laughing at his childishness, but then a lump rose in her throat. Untying the cord of the young heifer, she-calf and the goats, she swabbed her face with her chunni and said, ‘Don’t, if you don’t want to. But go, at least, now…Be a good brother, eh!’

  Shinda slipped into a pair of old, worn-out, over-sized and pointed juttis belonging to Melu. As he stepped out of the courtyard, he first gave a stinging blow to the heifer upon its spine, and then brought down the same stick upon the she-calf’s ankle, mouthing rough abuses. While the heifer and the she-calf, lifting their tails, took to their heels, speeding towards the fields, he stood there, his teeth clenched, his right hand wheedling the stick into the goat’s ‘things’, and the left one rummaging through his pocket.

  Melu’s bapu had heard the sound of Shinda whiplashing the cattle. Dyalo knew it would have him worked up, so she shouted across to Shinda almost the way a town crier does, ‘Weh, don’t you beat these dumb ones!…They haven’t had a bite of fodder since morning…And there you are, bashing them up, you fool!’

  Unable to contain himself, Melu’s bapu snapped irritably, ‘This fellow is so stupid. Be it morning or evening, he is always crying. O bloody fool, don’t you know how ill-starred we already are! It’s like “O God, don’t give me my daily bread, otherwise my mother will send me off to fetch the firewood.” It’s their evil deeds, perhaps; what a nuisance, they can’t even think for themselves. O bloody fool, you think I’m rearing them just to bilk them one day? Even if we do make a little money on them, aren’t you going to use it all up? Or do you think I’ll carry it all away, tucked into my breast pocket…!’

  Every time he was piqued by something or the other, he would fret and fume in much the same manner. When Dyalo heard him talk like this, she felt as though he was addressing himself not so much to Shinda as he was to Melu. Even though, deep inside, he felt terribly angry with Melu for not having maintained his link with ‘this house’ ever since he had left for the town, yet each time Melu came home on a perfunctory visit, that too, after a gap of four to five months, Melu’s bapu would be euphoric for several days thereafter. What he found rather hard to contain was the sheer joy the thought that his son was living well gave him. After Melu’s return, he would go around the village, spinning yarns and boasting,

  ‘Now what should I tell you about city life! All I can say is that people really have a good time there. There’s no interference, no nit-picking. You do your work, collect your wages and enjoy a good night’s rest. There’s no one around to grab your money or to make trouble. These mahajans don’t trouble their workers half as much. In this respect, our jats are much worse. They flay you and glower. Now look at our Melu. He is enjoying himself. And what did he get out of that crop-sharing job he did for three years with these “one-eyed” ones. The sky above is my witness, and may God give me the strength to speak the truth. These people didn’t give us even a single paisa. With great difficulty they parted with money, that too, not even half of what they owed us. And each time we went to settle the account, it was the same refrain, “You’re the ones who owe us, not we you”.’

  But these ‘stories’ were for the benefit of other people. In his heart of hearts, he was sorely disappointed with Melu. Whenever Melu’s bebe made the mistake of repeating this, saying, ‘It’s all right. They should earn for themselves and enjoy whatever they get,’ he attacked her, saying, ‘To hell with their enjoyment! We reared him, married him off, and even educated him up to class five. Now, we’ve to marry our daughter off. I’m unable to move my limbs. Isn’t it his duty to save some money and send it to us? Do I get a regular pilshan that I can pay off all the family expenses?’

  This invariably silenced Melu’s bebe. Knowing well that there was an element of truth in whatever he said, she would, however, insist on passing the blame to her ‘good-for-nothing’ daughter-in-law, who, according to her, had perfected the art of inventing alibis ever since she had started living in town. Somehow, she always felt that her son was blameless, and that it was the daughter-in-law who squandered all her son’s money on whatever caught her fancy, the soft-on-the-palate chaat or the fashionable clothes.

  Walking in, Dyalo asked, ‘Bapu, if you’re feeling hungry, should I cook for you right away?’

  But before Melu’s bapu could respond to her, he was racked by yet another paroxysm of coughing. Without waiting for a response, Dyalo had started pouring flour out of the old container.

  That very moment, Dheeru chowkidar came rushing in, holding a rough stick, panting and shouting, ‘Oye, is there anyone alive here?…Hurry up…on your feet. Bloody, there’s deep trouble there, and here you are, coughing away like a horse…You’d better get there fast…The panchayat has already been summoned…Oye, they’ve killed our people…!’

  Melu’s bapu couldn’t make head or tail of what he heard. Though Dyalo shouted after Dheeru, he had, by then, already retraced his steps. She could only shout across to him in a tremulous voice, ‘Tayya, why don’t you tell us clearly what has happened?’

  Without coming to the point, he simply shouted across to her, ‘That is something you can find out later. Right now, you just send your bapu across. Tell him to hurry up.’ And he went away, mumbling, ‘You’ll know what’s happened once you’ve to pick up all your belongings and move to some godforsaken place like the gypsies…’

  This was enough to make Melu’s bapu rise to his feet. Wrapping the khes about his shoulders, he said, ‘Putth, you get on with your kneading, while I go and make enquiries. This bloody fatso is making such a noise early in the morning.’ As he slipped his feet into his juttis, ready to leave, he mumbled to himself, ‘Hope nothing untoward has happened! It is rather unusual for him to sound so nervous…’

  Barely had he gone as far as the polling-booth dharamshala, when he ran into Pala. Striding on ahead, his hands locked behind his back and his head and face half covered with an old blanket, Pala spoke as nervously as Dheeru, ‘Oye come along. Why don’t you walk a little faster? This time around it’s not going to be all that easy. We’ll have to rise to the challenge, whether we like it or not. How can we sit quietly over it? Today, “they” have been ruined tomorrow it could be “us”…’

  Walking on ahead, Pala kept talking to himself as he went past a low, damp, fertile patch and cut a corner to head straight towards Wadhawa’s fields. Hearing him speak, Melu’s bapu felt as if someone had pushed him from behind. He stopped awhile, and adjusting the blanket around his shoulders, darted a quick glance all around. But for the three or four children who were busy playing, he couldn’t spot anyone near the dharamshala. A cold shiver ran up his legs as he muttered, ‘Oh my God, it appears the worst has already happened.’

  Going across the fertile patch when he threw yet another glance towards the dharamshala, it appeared completely deserted. The women had left for the fields to gather firewood, chaff, green fodder or whatever, some perhaps to pick cotton; and all the men, it seemed, had retreated to Naranjan’s arbour.

  With the intense cold of January lashing against them, the tahli and keekar branches had begun to wilt. In Surjit Singh’s fields that lay ahead, the wheat crop standing amidst the stubble of cotton had grown to the size of an outspread palm. Towards the right, in the adjoining fields, the sarson shoots, spreading as far as eyes could see, swayed majestically in the wind. The yellow flowers had acquired a brighter tint in the glow of the rising sun. Seeing it, Melu’s bapu felt as if he was turning oblivious to everything else, at least momentarily, lost as he was in the shades of yellow and green that enveloped him.

  Once again, it occurred to him that he, too, should set off towards Naranjan’s arbour, but as soon as his eyes fell upon Pala’s grimy turban heaving above the sarson shoots, he was seized by a sudden fear. Pala had walked on ahead, leaving him way behind. To think that ‘the old Pala’, who was perhaps no less than fifteen or twenty years his senior, was still as young and sprightly as ever, he was overcome by a sudden sense of shame. Though his own body was no less stronger than a lamb, he would often go hopping like a grasshopper.

  ‘It’s nice to feel reassured, after all.’ Thinking about him, Melu’s bapu muttered to himself, ‘All his four sons were earning and all of them respected his authority, too. They brought him no less than thirty to forty rupees a month. With everything going his way, why won’t a man at seventy or seventy-five prance around the way he does?’

  As he looked up, the ground beneath his feet appeared to slip away. Beyond Naranjan’s sarson fields, close to the far end, he could see an assembly of about fifty people. On peering harder, he saw a huge mud door where Dharma’s kotha had once stood, and this was a long way off from Wadhawa’s fields.

  Not until had he reached the pathway skirting Wadhawa’s fields did everything fall into place. But at that very moment (perhaps because of a sudden draught of wind) such a shiver ran through his body that his teeth began to chatter. And when he lowered the blanket over his head and face to wrap it around tightly, it triggered another bout of coughing. Right up to the bridge that lay over kassi, the spasm made him helpless. On reaching the bridge, when he raised his eyes, he was left gasping. No remnants of Dharma’s kotha were visible; only the loud wails of Dharma’s wife and daughter-in-law could be heard, mingling with the heart-rending shrieks of their children. When he heard a mix of voices rising from Wadhawa’s fields—which were not very far from the pathway—from the people gathered there, he felt a strange dread rising, spreading and casting its shadow all around.

  When he was about to reach the spot, it was almost as though he had been struck deaf. Their noise was now a deafening roar, like the sound of hail crashing down upon the reeds growing wild on the banks of a pond. Staring ahead with unseeing, vacant eyes, he couldn’t recognize anyone present. On being pushed from behind, he stumbled forward to settle down on his haunches near a heap of mud. The village panch of their street, standing in Dharma’s backyard, was busy proclaiming, apparently in a bid to soothe everyone around him, ‘…Now this is what we should do…without losing any more time, we should head straight for the DC’s office. If he avoids us, then we shall go to the commissioner.’

  ‘You may get into this “knocking about” later. First, you should think of how to put their belongings together and where to keep them?’ Pala, the old one, intervened, glaring at the panch, ‘Their hungry children have been crying for food since last night…And there are these people, busy giving a religious discourse…Wah! What sort of men are you, really?’

  ‘O you, Tau of mine! All this has already been sorted out. You have turned up only now in the afternoon and started acting like a high priest!’ The village headman glowered as he spoke.

  Dharma’s entire family insisted that they would not move out; they would rather stay on the rubble of their demolished kotha, without touching even a morsel of food. It seemed as if they had made up their minds about committing slow suicide. The panch of their street and other elders were of the opinion that the matter should somehow be settled amicably, at least temporarily, believing that a good deal of restraint was needed to handle the whole situation. But Dharma simply refused to concede. Rising to his feet, he announced his decision to the panch, ‘O you youngsters, you may do what you please, but we shall not move from here till our last breath. As it is, no one can say that we are alive anymore. With the roof over our heads gone, our plight is much worse than that of the dead…’

  With these words, he turned his back and walked away, leaving some fifty-odd men standing there, totally transfixed. For a long time, none of them were able to think of anything to say. The ageing Pala was the only one who had the courage to pick up the strands from Dharma. He started admonishing everyone, ‘It’s all right then! You think it’ll help settle the dispute anyway? You’ve been talking so carelessly for far too long. And where has it led us? Has anyone bothered, even once, to offer a cup of tea to their children? All you can do is blabber endlessly, as if wisdom is all yours…’

  Pala’s reprimand did have a chastening effect on everyone present, at least temporarily. As a matter of fact, it hadn’t even occurred to anyone that Dharma’s entire family had not eaten anything since the previous night. If they had not made any arrangements, it was only because no one had any idea as to what had transpired, not until daybreak.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you must do,’ the panch said philosophically. ‘All of you should proceed to the dharamshala. There we’ll take a decision and then proceed… Is that all right?’

  Unable to accept the panch’s proposal, more than half of those who had assembled there began to murmur dissent. There was the same crackling sound again, but seeing that there was hardly any other way out, all of them began to slink away to the dharamshala.

  Up until now, none of them had turned their attention towards Melu’s bapu. Sitting quietly, he was watching Dharma and Pala march towards Dharma’s family, perched atop a small mound. As if on a sudden impulse, he rose to his feet and started towards them. On drawing close, he saw something incredible: the place where, until yesterday, was the site of two mud-plastered kothris, adorned with the utensils owned by Dharma’s daughter-in-law, today was just a heap of loose earth, a foot-and-a-half-high. Two or three loosely tied bundles lay upon the heap. Among other things, some earthen pots and pans, utensils, old weeding implements and worn-out sickles, two shovels, the handle of a hoe and a handful of keekar branches to be used as firewood had been dumped in the middle of a wooden manji. Two of Dharma’s granddaughters and a grandson were circling the manji, running around barefoot, dazed and frightened. Off and on, they would wipe their eyes clean with their shirts, look around bewildered and break into loud, heart-rending wails. Dharma’s wife and daughter-in-law made no effort to console them, as they were sitting like professional mourners, their faces covered, almost as if they could not see or hear anything. They seemed to have been crying silently.

  Some two or three feet away stood a solitary mud door. Beyond that, far off, near the city, rose the sky-high, demon-sized chimneys of the thermal plant. Intimidated, he turned his gaze away and moving closer, as he looked at the bundles and rags lying upon the manji, he felt as lost as a vagrant.

  Dharma and ‘the old Pala’ had, in the meanwhile, moved over to the other side and were seated next to the iron poles upon which they planned to fix barbed-wire fencing. Dharma was sitting with his head bent, and Pala, who sat facing him, seemed to be handing down homilies in his characteristic manner. Melu’s bapu came up and quietly settled down on his haunches, some two or three feet away from them. Both looked up momentarily, throwing a casual glance at him; then Dharma returned to his former posture and Pala went back to his homilies.

  ‘Now this is what you should do—pack off the small children with me, at least till such time as any decision is taken. Treat our house as your own, or you think there is any difference between us? You and your two sons should adopt a do-or-die approach, pick up the lathis and stay put where you are…We’ll see, how any “bastard” plucks up the courage to come anywhere near us…O my! Isn’t it gross injustice…You’ve been here for seven years now…If it comes to that, tomorrow the village people will start saying “Bhai, this place where you all are living belongs to the village. Pick up your stuff from here and move over. We’re going to demolish your kothris in the street and reallocate the land”. And you think if anyone is ruined like this, he would simply get up and leave? Even if we were to agree to leave, where would we go? Is there any place we can call our own? People who have spent a lifetime here, wearing out their bones, where should they disappear now, leaving their homes behind? Eh!’

  Dharma listened to him quietly, without nodding assent even once, all the while crushing the mud-baked bricks between his palms. Around this time, Dharma’s grandson, who was probably no more than three, came and hid his face in his lap, and started staring at Pala and Melu’s bapu, rolling his fingers in his mouth all the time. Wiping his eyes clean with a corner of the khes, Dharma pushed him aside gently. Crestfallen and dejected, he rose to his feet and walked away, looking over his shoulder, again and again.