~Paramendra Bhagat~
It was past sunset. The village was veiled in the growing dark. Lanterns burned kerosene to throw the meager light in the little courtyards in front of the mud houses that sometimes made its way onto the narrow mud road, their glass covers collecting soot at the bottom. Little kerosene lamps made out of empty bottles, perhaps of cough syrup, lighted the rooms behind the walls, their tiny cotton threads at the tip spewing off tiny dark clouds of pitch black smoke along with the tiny flame that swayed with the passing breeze. The rain from the evening before had created mud puddles where the bullock carts pulled their narrow metal-framed wooden wheels trough the gulleys in the road. The dirt and hay collected from sweeping the open spaces had been lighted, and the smoke rose, hopefully to keep away the mosquitoes, especially from the animal quarters. An occasional voice could be heard, shouting, as in, get the bucket, it is time to milk the cow, and bring a lamp with you, will you.
The cart pulled in round the last corner and finally made an entry into the village. The man at the helm started talking louder to the oxen pulling the vehicle. “Watch out, left, left. Turn left, I said. Don’t pretend, turn left.” He was elaborate, partly goading his beasts of burden, partly announcing the arrival to anyone who cared, and quite a few seemed to.
Men going in the opposite direction would halt by the side of the road to let the cart pass. They would exchange words. Has there been much damage to the roads from yesterday’s rain, they’d ask. Some teased the kids they knew must be inside the cart. It always worked to make a few suggestive remarks about their maternal uncles and aunts; that was a common theme, everyone did that to everyone else.
This was one of the few families in the village that had a hood to go on top of the cart. The bride had brought it with her as part of the dowry when she was married into the family. She had been staying in the town with her husband and their two kids. The village headman had sent for them at the bus stop two hours away. The husband had gotten off the cart at the village boundary to go by the river, as was wont in the mornings and evenings.
The servant kid sat at the edge, right behind the man at the helm. He had been searching faces.
“That looks like Bisuniya’s son, am I right, am I right?” some bystander quipped as the cart neared the brick house where a crowd had been gathering for the past hour or so for the hearing to be held in the evening. Word had arrived early on of the imminent arrival. A biker from the village on his way back from town had spotted the cart, and had come to inform before he rode to his own house. He had given his estimate of the time of arrival.
The servant kid’s mother had come over to the house. It had not worked out. She had let her son be taken to the town a few months back. He might do the dishes and run a few errands, but then he was taking the goats out to graze in the village anyway, and, at least in town, he would get to eat two or even three times a day, and there would be leftover clothes for him to wear, and so they had let him go. And there would be payments in grains for the parents each month. But the boy had been unhappy.
The headman’s voice could be heard from tens of yards away as he made his way back to the house. He headed straight to the hand pump where the women waiting in line to fetch water promptly made way, and he worked on his hands and his steel water pot that had accompanied him to the river with the mud he had picked up by the side. While he was washing his hands, someone spoke from behind her veils that she had pulled down in his honor.
“Master, you look happy. I heard your son, and your daughter-in-law, and their kids are coming home for the festival.”
Immediately other older women who did not need to pull down their veils anymore jumped in in a rather playful way on the lady who had spoken.
“This woman from Vanaspatti. She always has things to say. No shame in front of elders. Her tongue rolls like someone had put some ghee on top of it.”
“Is that right?” the headman said to noone in particular. “Why did not anyone tell me they were coming?”
Of course he had known. He had been the one to make sure the cart had left the village for the bus stop early enough earlier in the day.
The headman walked through the sizeable crowd that had gathered on his verandah that was larger than all the rooms in the building, larger even than the granary. People squatting swayed sideways to make way for him as he walked at the same pace as he did out on open roads. People had been conversing in small groups. There was talk of the weather, the imminent planting season, and the general gossip from the haat bazaar at the district headquarters from yesterday, people that people had seen, or had sought, relatives they had bumped into. A group of school-going teenagers sat in a corner, talking about how Binodwa had been working on this particular girl, with little success so far.
But then the headman went upstairs to perform his evening pooja – worship – and the crowd waited another fifteen minutes or so. The complaint was that Chetoo’s calf had been caught grazing in Hardaiya’s field. Just when the hearing was about to commence, the cart arrived in the court yard, and women came out from inside the house, the daughters of the family that had themselves arrived earlier in the day or a few days earlier for the festival, the mothers-in-law, relatives. As was the custom, women were crying out loud in welcome, wiping off their tears after having taken their turn to hug the sobbing bride, as they referred to the daughter-in-law even after years. And the waiting crowd started talking about the cart, and the bride, and the lavish wedding they had been part of years back, the son’s business in town, the two kids who supposedly went to school and were taught in English.
“My friend Pukarba here is about to finish high school, and he can’t speak English, but those kids can,” one smart-aleck quipped. “And they are not even ten.”
The hearing started. The headman sat down, greeted some of the other elders who had gathered, usually with questions about their families, and asked, as he did each time, “So why are we gathered here? Will the gentleman from the great Koanro Sao family please inform me and the humble people gathered here?”
“I would but I think it would be better for yourself, Sir, and these people gathered that Hardaiya himself speaks for he is the one with the complaint for the evening,” the man ducked the spotlight for he would rather speak in the heat of arguments to sway the general opinion one way or the other.
“Hardaiya. Is he here?” the headman asked in a loud voice, although he must have known he was.
In the meantime in the other house where the women lived, the mother of the servant kid grabbed her son in the hubbub surrounding the arrival, took him aside, washed his hands and feet and his face, wiped his face off with the edge of her sari, and asked if he was hungry and wanted something to eat.
“You will be eleven a month after this festival, and you still act like a kid,” the mother said to him softly. “Nice shirt you have on you. The bride gave it to you?”
The boy said yes, and then he started talking about the ceiling fan he had seen in town. “Mother, it would be all hot outside, right, but then you go inside and sit under the fan, and it is not hot at all.”
Both mother and son knew he was not going back. The bride had been nice to the kid, and the kid had been amused by some of what he saw, obviously. Perhaps they will find another kid to go with them when they go back to town after the festival. There were many who would feel lucky to be able to go.
“If your son had stayed on, we were going to send him to school next year,” the bride told the mother the day after. “There’s one run by the government within walking distance from where we live. It is an altogether different matter to be able to go to school in a town.”
But the mother did not bring up the topic with her son. If he changes his mind, he will let me know, she thought, but she knew better. The boy had come back for good, even though he had only nice things to say about the bride’s house in town. And he obviously seemed to have got along well with the bride’s two kids for they came over to his mud house seeking for him more than once.
The father of the servant kid came over to apologize to the headman’s son.
“You are big people. And the nicest family. It is my good luck that you took my son with you. And some day he will realize it was his bad luck that he did not stay on. I am so grateful.”
And they talked about the hearing from a few evenings earlier, and other local topics popped up. The headman’s son queried about those who raised chicken in the village. And the man offered to go over and ask around.
“These men, my relatives. They have gathered from far and wide. They might appreciate an evening of non-vegetarian festivities,” the headman’s son said.
October 2, 2002
(Source : Parmendra Bhagat’s Blog )
