Then suddenly he thought of what his bahoo had told him about possibilities in the town, and this reassured him, easing his conflict-ridden state. With renewed vigour, he started thinking about the houses in the town’s basti, where his Melu had probably already rented out a much bigger and a better house, and that from the bus stand, his daughter-in-law and his grandsons would ride their ‘own rickshaw’ to go to this new house…

  On alighting from the bus, when bahoo’s brother looked all around, he couldn’t spot Melu anywhere. He couldn’t see any other rickshaw puller, either.

  ‘It appears as if Melu and others like him have gone on strike. Henh bhaine?’ Bahoo’s brother sounded rather crestfallen, as he lifted the bundle off the ground and put it across his shoulder.

  Bahoo saw that there was not a single rickshaw on the road. Next to the wall of the bus stand, towards the town, a few tongas overloaded with passengers were waiting; but it seemed as though they were heading towards the villages in the vicinity.

  Carrying the bundle on his head, as bahoo’s brother stepped out of the bus stand, feeling somewhat troubled, he said, once again, ‘What’s come over my brothers-in-law, today? All of them seem to have gone somewhere and died, henh?’

  They had barely turned towards the corner to take the road leading to the police station, when they heard slogans being shouted, rather loudly. As soon as they turned the corner, they saw that the rickshaw and tonga wallahs had blocked that entire stretch, right up to the market. Multicoloured cloths tied to long sticks had been placed atop all the tongas like banners, with all kinds of slogans written on them. Rickshaw handles, too, had flags attached to them. Two rickshaws, pulling up close to them, were, in fact, leading the procession. Two persons sitting in these rickshaws were carrying the tallest flags. One of them, who wore thick glasses and a trimmed beard, was now hoarse with insistent slogan shouting.

  ‘Oh, sister, Melu must be among these people,’ said bahoo’s brother, stepping off the main road.

  Grabbing hold of both her sons by their hands, Melu’s bahoo, too, backed away a little before she added, ‘Even if he is, he’s not going to take us home in a “car”. This is now a routine affair with them. I don’t know what their problem is, that every five–seven days, they start shouting and congregating like this. Then they arrive home, sheepishly, their bones and bodies all bruised and broken.’

  ‘Bhai, Bhai Singha, what is this commotion all about?’ bahoo’s brother asked a man who looked poor, dressed in a frayed coat and torn trousers, standing by a tea stall along a side of the road.

  Giving him a fleeting, casual look, that man then looked towards the procession and said, ‘What can happen to them? It’s because they are so well fed that they always keep wailing. They are saying, increase our fare. Bloody fellows, as it is, don’t you flay us alive? Even if you have to go to the bus stand, you ask for no less than two rupees. The rate is only seventy-five paisa, but they’ll say, “Sit if you want to, or go your way.” Now they are feeling the heat, as five or seven of them have been challaned. And that heat has now turned into a conflagration. Do you see why they are preening like crawling ants?’

  Looking straight ahead, he continued to talk in this peculiar vein, as if venting his long-suppressed anger. When his words didn’t draw the attention of even those who were standing right next to him, he slunk away into one of the streets, still muttering under his breath. Kick-starting his auto rickshaw parked some ten feet away, he reversed and sped away to an unknown destination.

  ‘What kind of a thing is that, sister?’ Looking in his direction, bahoo’s brother asked in all innocence.

  ‘Such people too exist here! Well, these are rickshaws that run on motorcycles. Damn them, as they are the ones responsible for the entire mess. Everything was fine till they hit the roads. Since then, our incomes have reduced by almost half.’

  The procession had now inched closer to them. Bahoo’s brother was keen to leave only after it had gone past them. He liked the idea of so many people together, lustily shouting slogans. Seeing them in action, he also wanted to join in and shout. But his sister was getting restless. Still, he kept stopping on the way to turn back and look at the procession. Going past the police station, the procession turned towards the bus stand.

  ‘Really, sister, Melu must be in the procession. What if he has already shifted the house? Where will we go looking for it?’ Angling for an excuse to watch the procession, bahoo’s brother made yet another bid to stop once they were closer to the school. Seeing a huge crowd of youngsters assembled outside the school, all of whom had probably come to watch the procession, Melu’s bahoo felt a tremor in her voice as she spoke, ‘It was only the day before yesterday that he sent us this message. How could he have moved into a haveli, so soon?’

  The long, serpentine row of rickshaws with flags was getting much longer. If he had had his way, he would have liked to have enjoyed this spectacle for some more time, but recalling his sister’s harsh words, he decided to follow her rather demurely.

  Reaching the basti in front of the mill, as soon as they turned into one of its narrow and wet streets, Beeto, the wife of their neighbour, Miana, the foreman, immediately stepped out of her dark, dingy kothri, and enfolded Melu’s bahoo in an affectionate embrace. After making polite enquiries about her parents, and caressing the heads of the children, she literally forced everyone into her own baithak.

  As bahoo’s brother crossed through the narrow door, he shuffled the bundle from his head to his arm, and said, ‘Sister, your doorway is very narrow.’

  It was his first entry into this house. (Earlier, whenever he had come, he hadn’t been able to stay long enough to either visit or know the insides of the neighbour’s houses). On hearing him speak in this manner, Beeto first adjusted her pink voile duppatta over her head, and then flashing her glowing white smile, she said, ‘Brother, after all, the doors can’t be bigger than us.’

  Bahoo’s brother felt as though she had cracked a very serious joke with him. Quietly, he walked in and sat down on a manja placed towards his left, and seeing that it had a freshly washed bed sheet with painted red flowers spread over it, he put his bundle down on the floor.

  ‘I’ll be right back.’ With these words, Beeto slipped through the back door of the baithak as though she had vanished into some dark tunnel.

  Then appraising the baithak from the roof to the floor, bahoo’s brother leaned a little towards his sister and asked her in a conspiratorial voice, ‘Sister, do they own this house?’

  ‘Why, it’s a rented one, but in a way, it is as good as theirs. Previously, her father-in-law lived here. After he died they have been living here for the past eight years. Neither can those people make them vacate, nor do they want to vacate it.’

  ‘What would the rent be?’

  ‘Not more than twenty or twenty-two rupees.’

  ‘Twenty, twenty-two rupees? For this dingy room?’

  ‘Do you think it’s on the higher side? We pay something like twenty-five rupees. If they were to leave this room today, people would be willing to pay up to fifty or even sixty rupees, and yet beg them for it.’

  The truth had not yet dawned on bahoo’s brother. Surprised, he started peering at the half-naked women peeping out from the wall-calendars, and at the brass, copper, chinaware and silver utensils adorning a wooden shelf, and the three trunks in a corner. With great difficulty, two regular beds could have been squeezed into this baithak. The thatched roof was so low that he could have easily reached up and touched it if he was on his feet. Though it was still high noon, yet the room was dark. The foreman’s wife had left a light on. The plaster was peeling off the walls, and a strange stink of dampness rose from the walls and the floor.

  ‘What does he do for a living, sister?’ asked bahoo’s brother, leading her into a conversation.

  Trying to listen to the hissing sound of the kerosene stove and peering towards the rear door, she edged closer to him and whispered into his ear, ‘She says that he works as a “foreman”, but he actually works at the grinding mill, over there.’

  Bahoo’s brother found this rather strange. He asked, ‘But why must they lie about it?’

  ‘That’s how your stock goes up. People begin to think you are from a wealthy family.’

  That very moment, Beeto walked in and asked, ‘Brother and sister, first tell me if you’d like to eat something?’

  ‘No sister. May God bless you! We had our meals before we set off. It barely takes us fifteen minutes from there. It must be half an hour since we started from home.’

  ‘Please, don’t hesitate. It’s your own house, after all.’ Sitting down on the manji next to them, Beeto asked the children, ‘What about you, “the evil ones”? Do you want to eat something?’

  The boys also refused by shaking their heads. Seeing this ‘show of hospitality’, bahoo’s brother couldn’t help smiling, so he immediately loosened a side of his turban and covered his face with it.

  Beeto was wearing a dark red kurta and salwar. This made her glowing complexion bloom all the more. Despite being thickset, her youthful, healthy and glowing looks were attractive. Bahoo’s brother liked her animated laughter—which brought the same freshness to her face that corn flowers blooming in the fields often gave off.

  For some time, sitting there, she kept talking to them casually of this, that and the other, and then disappearing behind the rear door, returned with four cups of tea on an old tray. In the middle of the tray, she had placed a plate of pakoras and sweets. Settling the tray on top of the trunks, she pulled out a durrie lying on the manji, and spread it out in front of him. After putting the tray on the durrie, she walked out the rear door once again. When she came back, she had another cup in her left hand and the kettle full of tea in her right one. Settling the kettle on the shelf, she sat down on the trunks, facing bahoo and her brother, and flashed such a smile that even he turned crimson, and instantly lowered his eyes.

  Bahoo’s brother had liked the way she had gone in and out of the room; he gathered a little courage, he looked straight ahead and smiled back at her. Holding the kettle in her hand, Beeto was trying to persuade them to have some more tea, pakoras and sweets, all this while keeping up the flow of neighbourhood gossip. Listening to what all had transpired in the mill basti, while Melu’s bahoo was away, bahoo’s brother thought for a moment that everything had gone topsy-turvy. But the very next moment, he found himself staring at Beeto’s blood-red lips from which streamed anecdotes and stories.

  Who knows why, but bahoo’s brother had somehow begun to like her already, though he had known her only for a short while. Looking at her hungrily, he started thinking, ‘What if I, too, get someone like her…’ But he couldn’t complete this train of thought, as it snapped bang in the middle, like a delicate kareer twig.

  After finishing her tea, when Melu’s bahoo asked Beeto for the keys to her house, she said, ‘I’ll just look for them. In the morning, I think, he did hand them over to me.’ After rummaging for the keys on the shelf, and pulling them out from behind the utensils, she handed them over to her and said, ‘Look? Are these your keys?’

  Melu’s bahoo said, ‘Our keys won’t get so easily mixed up with others. Our lock is typically rustic and old-fashioned.’

  Holding the bundle, when bahoo’s brother bent down a little and stepped out, he felt as though he had come out of a dungeon. Looking back at it from the outside, he said, ‘If we had such a door in our house, our children would have pulled it out by the evening, striking it repeatedly with their shoulders.’

  ‘That’s why we didn’t get into the trap of having children, you see,’ Beeto laughed heartily, stepping out with them. On hearing this, bahoo’s brother was really surprised.

  When his sister was turning the key in the lock outside her house, he asked in a somewhat mysterious voice, ‘Sister, don’t they have any children of their own?’

  ‘Not really. It’s been seven years. They have tried all kinds of remedies. But unless it’s in your karma, nothing will happen. Isn’t it?’

  Turning around, bahoo’s brother peered towards Beeto’s door, but she had already gone inside. Seeing Beeto laugh such a matter away, he was quite surprised. This had made her all the more attractive to him. ‘These town people are so fun-loving. They enjoy themselves…’ he thought to himself, though this did not in the least lessen his curiosity about her.

  ‘Oye, may I die!’ As soon as Melu’s bahoo had opened the lock and let herself in, she slapped her forehead and said, ‘I don’t see anything here. My entire house has been turned upside down. Where have all my utensils gone?’

  Anxious, she started rummaging behind the manji that stood at a right angle against the wall.

  Then she opened both the trunks and peered inside. She also swept her hand under the other manja that had been laid out. Seeing her overcome with anxiety, her brother said, as he put the bundle down on the manja, ‘Do you think, your neighbour could have taken them away?’

  ‘Why would she?’ Melu’s bahoo spoke in a tear-soaked voice, rummaging through the canisters and gunny bags lying around, ‘Why would this poor woman ever do such a thing? This is the handiwork of…that same fellow who, as it is, has sunk my boat.’

  ‘You mean Melu?’ Sitting down on the manja in the midst of the clothes scattered all around, he asked in a nervous tone, ‘Has he too started doing such things?’

  Unmindful of his words, and still looking around the cramped kothri with the sharpness of an owl, bahoo suddenly sat down on the manji with a thud, as though her legs had given way under her. Then in a choked voice, she said, ‘Had I known this, would I have left my house and gone?… Now it’ll take him two months to buy all this stuff. What am I going to do the cooking with, his head?’ Crestfallen, she sat down, and started wiping her eyes.

  It was the first time that bahoo’s brother had come to know of any such thing. He was terribly angry with his sister, who had until then, kept all this from them. So he spoke to his sister, half-chiding, ‘Why wail your heart out now? You might as well put up with it. If you are not even going to confide your woes to a bhai or a bhabhi, then what is it to us…go and die a dog’s death for all we care!’

  Melu’s bahoo couldn’t get herself to speak even a single word in response. She was perhaps ruing the fact that once all the secrets of her household were conveyed to her parents and through them, to the relatives, she would feel all the more humiliated, even inferior. Wiping her tears, she spoke, with mild trepidation in her voice, ‘Be a good brother, and don’t you convey such things to anyone! We’ll manage things the way they are. Why should we lend ourselves to social ridicule? No one will come to our rescue anyway.’

  After a minute’s silence, Melu’s bahoo blurted out everything, saying, ‘Bira, how can I possibly hide it from you. It’s been the same ever since we came here. Sometimes, we go to mortgage four utensils or ornaments, and sometimes, we go to get them back. What else can we do? When income dips, how do we stay afloat?… Every other person wants to ply a rickshaw. When we first came here, there were around fifteen or perhaps thirty rickshaws; now there must be no less than a hundred. Under these circumstances, how can we earn anything?’

  Yet, she had managed to conceal something important from him. Looking at her brother, who was now feeling more and more uncomfortable, with moist, tear-stained eyes, she said, ‘He has no bad habits, no addiction. Once in a while, he might break his vow and drink just a little, that too, when he is in the company of others, but otherwise, he is the kind who advises everyone against it…and says things like, “Oye, you stupid fools, you work so hard to earn a little money, bleaching your bones in the bargain. And if you just drink it all away, it is like casting money into a well. Who would call you wise, if you do that?” But what can he do? When he doesn’t earn enough through the day, then he goes for a night shift. His body is wasting away, and he hardly has any appetite left. It’s been seven years, and not even a spoonful of desi ghee has gone into us. Not just our bodies, but our souls, too, are completely exhausted. When he comes home late in the evening, he says, “My legs are wobbly…” He doesn’t even tell me everything. Who knows, he may have started taking drugs under the influence of others, or because he has to stay awake through the nights.’

  Though bahoo’s brother kept listening to her in silence, he felt as though she was simply trying to humour him the way you would a child. All this while, as he was listening to her, he kept thinking of Chanan, the one-armed character he knew in his village, who would always preach the same mantra to all the youngsters, ‘One, don’t ever confide in a woman, and two, don’t ever trust her. Always remember this. A woman has more than a hundred faces, and being a fool, a man can’t even know the secret of one. Then how can you ever know the secret of her hundred faces?’

  ‘But sister, if you have been in such dire straits here, why didn’t you go back to your village?’ he spoke, anger mingling with doubt.

  ‘There in the village, it’s not as though we are sitting atop a large heap of freshly threshed grain. Labour is what we do here, and that’s what we are condemned to do there, as well. Even when we came here initially, it was not out of choice. For a whole year, he had been at a loose end; no one had hired him as a siri. Besides, how can anyone live off their daily wages? In the village, you know, the daily wagers get only seasonal employment.’ After a breather, she spoke again, ‘Now, we are nowhere, neither here nor there. He is so weak and fragile that he can no longer work as a siri. So you tell me, where should we go?’