Someone Else's Garden (20 page)

Asmara Didi wipes her forehead and looks at the ceiling. Summer is returning with gusto. Overhead the cloth fan attempts to drag the still air from side to side in the musty room. She made it operational just this morning. Now one of the servants sits outside the window pulling on the rope tied to his toe to move the giant cloth frill. She chose yellow for the colour of the fan to inject some light into the room, but one can see that it makes little difference, hanging too far above their heads to provide either air or colour.

‘There is Ram Singh,’ she says, hearing footfalls in the corridor. ‘Must be time for his daily visit,’ she growls.

Each day Ram Singh makes sure to pass the bandit’s cell on his way to his father’s room, as usual firing barbs along the way. ‘How goes your life today? Everything to your satisfaction? Not too hot, is it? How about the food? Too spicy? Not enough meat?’ He spits on the floor. ‘Filthy man. Filthy, filthy man, not fit to be called human. Ruined our poor village.’ As usual, Daku Manmohan just stares at him. As usual, this unnerves Ram Singh. ‘I’ll break your face if you stare at me like that. How dare you look at
me
like that?’

He enters his father’s room. ‘Can’t you get more light in here? Why do you sit in darkness all day? Your prisoner has a better room than you.’ The father bristles internally. Ram Singh is the person he least wants to see.

He approaches his father. ‘Get rid of him, Bapu. That man is a disgrace to us all. Let’s hang him from a tree. Then the village will know what we’ve done for them.’ His words are laden with zeal. Like the bandit, the father too keeps silent. ‘But no, you can’t do that, of course. You have given your word, and we all know your word is more precious than your life. Good God! Bapu, for once listen to me. He should be cut into bits and fed to the dogs for what he’s done to the people here.’

‘I hate to agree, but this once I think Ram Singh is right.’

Ram Singh looks from his father to Asmara Didi. Her agreement makes him suspicious.

‘Do it, Singh Sahib. Do it. Or get someone else to,’ she urges.

‘Yes, you won’t even have to associate yourself with the deed,’ says Ram Singh. ‘Just give me the word, Bapu . . . I’ll have it done.’

This time it’s the old woman who looks from father to son, her nose and mouth quivering with revulsion. ‘He’ll have it done,’ she says. ‘
He
has the people for the job.’ No one is deceived. She isn’t complimenting Ram Singh on his competence.

There are so many words lodged in the old man’s throat. Has it all come to this? An ignominious murder by an anonymous hand in the middle of the night. Is that to be his brand of justice?

Only one word flies from his mouth. ‘Nnno!’ It’s the most import ant word anyway. What use are explanations? What purpose will they serve? Maybe it’s best that God robbed him of his speech, he couldn’t change his son’s mind even if he tried. Or Asmara Didi’s, for that matter. It would be easier to fill a lake with a perforated spoon than change their minds.

Singh Sahib resolves to put more guards round the cell to keep would-be assassins away. He needs someone he can trust. Lokend would be the first choice, but he is away so much. Who then? Prem. That’s right. Prem, the indentured farmer’s son who is devoted to Lokend, that’s who he’ll send for.

With great reluctance, Asmara Didi, the mouthpiece of Singh Sahib, explained the job to Prem. ‘It is now your duty to look after the prisoner. I don’t mean really
look after,
I mean just be an extra set of eyes. Report anything strange directly to me. Here, take this drum, beat it if anything suspicious happens, but don’t beat it needlessly, otherwise I will beat you myself. Remember, you are doing this for Lokend Bhai, only Lokend Bhai,’ she told him.

The boy examines the cell hesitatingly. The bandit catches his look. Why have they brought out the damn boy? He reminds him of his own son. The prisoner waves the boy away. The boy stands his ground. He has been instructed to keep watch by Lokend Bhai himself. He feels that manly feeling filling his chest. It is more than duty that stops him from walking away.

Asmara Didi approaches, kicking a path through the offerings of flowers and fruits left by grateful village girls. ‘What has the world come to? People will idolise almost anyone, no matter how evil. Why we should have to employ someone to take care of this murderer is something I will never understand,’ says Asmara Didi. She takes Prem by the arm and sets him to one side like a piece of discarded furniture. ‘Murderer,’ she shouts at the prisoner. ‘Murderer! Don’t think you will be able to lounge in your cushy cell for the rest of your days. Today you start ploughing Singh Sahib’s fields. I have arranged the most stony, barren, virgin field of all for you. You know a lot about ravaging, right? Let’s see if you know as much about building something of value.’

‘Eh, old woman, there isn’t a field you can give me to work which I won’t be able to tame.’

‘Yes, you have a lot of experience with taming, haven’t you? Your brand of taming is rape. Rapist!’

Red creeps into Daku Manmohan’s eyes. ‘I may be many things, but I am not a rapist,’ he shouts at Asmara Didi. ‘You want to see a rapist? You don’t have to look far. Your zamindar’s eldest son, he is the rapist.’

Singh Sahib listens keenly to the conversation from his distant window. It was as recently as yesterday that he’d seen two young girls, just in their teens, hand a plate of food and a garland through the bars to the bandit. They’d bent down as if to touch his feet, but the bandit had waved them off. The two girls claimed that Daku Manmohan himself had saved them from gang rape by members of the Big House.

The lovesick adoration of village girls has made the incarceration far more interesting than he’d hoped. Mixed up the truth, made a muddle of morality, a cocktail of good and evil, blurred the boundaries, made everything grey, just like life. What would Lokend’s
Bhagvat Gita
say about all this?
By the delusion of the pairs of opposites sprung from attraction and repulsion, all beings walk this universe wholly deluded.

He can hear the bandit’s denial clearly. ‘I am a man of honour. I am a family man. I have a wife. I have never raped a girl,’ he shouts, but Asmara Didi is already halfway to the house, too far away to hear him.

Chapter 7

W
HEN HER HUSBAND POKES HER WITH
his toe, it always seems to connect with the scar that runs across her left side.
A little deeper and you could have cut me in two.
She knows so little of the workings of her body that she thinks they’ve fixed her up. For what? Possibly no children, but she doesn’t really know.

It is one of the men from the night huddle who helps to put things straight. Again he arrives smoking a bidi. This time during the day.

‘So how is she?’

‘Good. The same.’

‘No problems then?’

‘No, not really. In the beginning she complained of pain in her back, but that was for a few days only. I stopped her going to the well. That’s the only thing she really couldn’t do. “The children are grown,” I said, “let them bring the well water.”’

Mamta doesn’t remember that conversation. Let the children bring the well water? Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. With her insides on fire, what did she know or care? Her stepdaughter gave her white pills every day. Her husband came home and counted the pills and demanded his son’s corroboration before he was satisfied. If you miss a single pill she’ll die, he’d told his daughter, using the doctor’s words.

‘So how much did you get?’

‘As you said, enough to buy another piece of land, but not enough to move by the river. Still, it’s good. I trust nobody, I got the money in cash. He offered me some papers to sign, said, “Keep the money with me, it will grow in value,” but I said no. Took me for a fool, I think. I said, “No, give me the cash in advance.” So they gave me everything but twenty-five thousand, which they gave me after the operation. That too they tried to cheat from me, but I threatened them. I had taken my knife and stick. I said I would report them to the police for having cut the flesh out of her. Ha, ha, there was nothing they could do!’ He is proud of his victory over a far stronger foe.

‘Now you have the money, and we don’t have to move. We never had to, it was just a rumour. That man, Lekhen or whatever his name is, is giving his own lands to the bandit families.’

The men laugh, their bodies relax, relieved by the news. Then he’s angry for the injustice of it all. ‘Why did they tell us that we had to move?’

‘Look at it this way, if you hadn’t heard the rumour, you wouldn’t have got all this money for nothing.’

Again he relaxes, happy in the thought that things have at last gone in his favour.

‘I’m going to have my wife done too.’

Now Mamta’s husband is the one with all the information. They all look to him for advice.

‘Don’t go after three in the morning. I met two people there whose wives were done after three . . .’ He shakes his head, and not with sorrow. ‘The best time is twelve to two. The doctor is still fresh.’

‘If you are sure everything is okay, then I will arrange it soon.’

‘Make sure there is someone at home to give her the pills. You know these women, they won’t take their medicines if you tell them to, just to spite us I think. I don’t know what gets into their heads. After all, we don’t want to be responsible for a death.’

And that’s how Mamta knew that her scar had somehow bought her family a piece of unneeded land.

Her stepdaughter touches it often.

‘It’s so long. Lucky they stopped. Hai, Amma, you might have died otherwise.’ The girl can state the ghoulish obvious without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. She still hasn’t learned the tact of grown-ups; for her, such a strange thing cannot go unmentioned.

‘Yes, they could have.’ Mamta says the words but feels no fight. She’s alive, what more does she need? Nothing that leaves you alive can be all that bad. She doesn’t shake off her stepdaughter’s hand, and endures the tickling sensation which conceals a friendship. What did they take out of her that was worth money? She has no one to ask, no one to tell.

She’s seen the notes and doesn’t know what to make of them. She thinks the bigger ones are worth more. Each morning her husband counts the notes, then he shoos them all out of the hut and hides them in a different place. He trusts no one. With so few bonds he thinks his own family might rob him blind.

The boy has been pestering his father to buy him a kite. For the past few weeks he’s been flying the one rescued from a nearby tamarind tree. Actually there is nothing quite like the thrill of finding an abandoned kite, like luck itself, a gift from God. The kite was riddled, but Mamta patched up the holes in an obsequious bid to buy the boy’s kindness. For a few days after, the boy and the stepmother were cautiously aware of each other, even friendly to one another. But that friendliness was dispelled with her husband’s next slap. The boy knew not to align himself with the lowest-ranking family member.

Mamta sees that money has changed her husband. The money has made him unpredictable. Sometimes he is ebullient, and comes home singing the latest Hindi movie song, at other times he is brooding and sulky. He goes more and more to the tents, but he doesn’t have to put his name in the book any more. In fact, he has taken his name out of every book, paying his debts in full. His only tangible purchase so far has been a little transistor radio which only he can turn on. To make sure of this, he takes the batteries with him in his kurta pocket when he leaves the hut.

She allows herself an hour to search for the money after the males leave. An hour is a long time. Most days she is able to find it, then the girls have a little satisfied giggling session and go on with their chores. She can tell by the thickness of the wad how much her husband is spending on transitory improvements in the quality of his life including five bottles of good booze (the kind guaranteed not to make you blind), a few hookahs with the other men, three visits to the prostitute and a game of cards. He is a lucky man, the game of cards has allowed him to fatten his wad and even get his son the longed-for kite. Money for free, he has thought of buying the prostitute a nose pin and new straw for his mattress. But it is a dangerous game he’s playing. Now, not just winning and losing but playing or not playing are decisions out of his control.

His new status is such that twice a week men come to his veranda to gamble. Yes, they shun the tented city, where there is a levy on every win, to play on their friend’s land.

He has acquired many new friends since the last time Mamta served them. She pulls her pallav low over her eyes, and brings out the tea. The tea has improved with the money, it is thick and sweet. With each sip they notice its spicy rich flavour.

They talk of her as if she’s not around.

‘Lucky woman, no, to have a husband with so much money. Have you seen the land?’

‘Yes, but I am going to wait to make enough to go by the river. Once and for all, I will move to a fertile field. Not to this place or another like it, where we have to till and till until our backs break, and depend on the rain. My son works Kanti Nath’s plot. I will pull him back and have him work for me instead.’

The reluctant moonlight lights up their faces in turn so they become partly visible to the woman serving them. They hold their cards close to their chests. It’s not just from the voices that she knows who is missing but also from the prizes her husband brings home: a recognisable ghaghra choli or a pair of sandals. Sometimes it’s sacks of grain or cooking pots. Her kitchen has filled up in the past few months with other people’s possessions lost to her husband in a game of cards.

Mamta’s husband has begun to contemplate a novel future. He is no longer paralysed by the insecurity of freedom. As a rich man he will certainly get a new wife. He will either beat Mamta and send her back to her parents or arrange a cooking accident for her. The prostitute has got under his skin. He would like to marry the woman with the hefty cleavage and delicious, well-fed thick hips. The songs she hums under her breath make him dizzy. His transistor is no comparison for her voice.