The Faith of Ashish (12 page)

Ah, yes. The power to pronounce curses and cast spells. To call up evil spirits. Boban Joseph stared at the scrawny boy, and a twinge of fear ran through him. But he mustered his bravado. "Your powers don't frighten me," he stated. "Your father's tiger doesn't frighten me!"

"My laborers respect me," Mammen Samuel said to Brahmin Keshavan. "They need a superior being to look up to, someone far above any ordinary person. They need someone they can depend on to deal with the forces that lie outside their control. For them, I am that person."

"Why, then, did you come to me?" asked Brahmin Keshavan." Cast a spell of your own to rid your slaves of the tiger."

"I deal in the real world, not in the realm of superstition!"

"Then I ask once again: why did you come to me?"

Mammen Samuel didn't answer, so the Brahmin pressed harder. "If you feared the tiger to be an evil spirit, why did you dare carry your small son to within the reach of its deadly jaws?"

Mammen Samuel bristled. "I kept Saji Stephen safely in my care the entire time. Never was he in any danger."

"You are absolutely certain of that? Or is it that you would risk the life of your youngest son in order to ensure great profits from your harvest?"

Mammen Samuel's moustache twitched and his black eyes flashed, but fury so flooded him that his tongue could not form an appropriate reply. He turned his back on the Brahmin, ready to walk away. But then he paused. Without turning again to face Keshavan, he warned, "Work your spells, if you will. Call down a mountain of curses. What does it matter to me? I can gather others around me who will help me bring in my harvest. Savages from the hills and the beaches—I will bring them to my settlement. Of course, they and their families will live across the fields from your pure house!"

"I have decided to give more attention to my prayers," Mammen Samuel told his wife. "Prayer in the morning and evening, at the moment of night's darkness and the first light of day—that's what the Indian Hindu religion promotes. Pray at each union of day and night. It could be a good rule for a Christian too. I have decided that I shall follow that pattern."

Parmar Ruth looked at her husband most curiously, but she held her tongue.

It had been so long since Mammen Samuel had prayed that he wasn't sure he remembered how. He sat all alone in a room with his legs crossed, just as he had seen Brahmin Keshavan do. He had no idol, of course, but he stared straight ahead at a picture of Jesus that hung on the wall and intoned:

"Kill the tiger. Kill the tiger or move it far away from my fields." He paused to consider. "Prosper my harvest with much golden grain, and my thoughts with increasing wisdom." For good measure he added, "Bless everything I do and prosper me in all things. Bless me and prosper me more than you bless and prosper Brahmin Keshavan."

Satisfied with his prayer, Mammen Samuel smiled and said a hearty "Amen."

T
he savages! Yes! Such an inspired idea, and it had come to Mammen Samuel but a mere moment before the words leapt from his mouth. He immediately recognized the brilliance of his budding scheme.

It had been a particularly dry year. The previous summer's monsoons were disappointingly light, and since then not one drop of rain had fallen. Already a smattering of tribal people had drifted down from the mountains and up from the beaches in search of food—or money to buy food—and the hot weather had not even started. Many more were sure to follow. With Mammen Samuel's workers refusing to go to the fields before full daylight, and insisting they be allowed to return to the safety of the settlement before sunset, the harvest fell further and further behind. The tribal people's strong arms and backs could indeed be put to good use. But Mammen Samuel saw an even more appealing reason for elation: Brahmin Keshavan.

As much as the Brahmins despised Untouchables, they loathed tribal people even more. Not only did the tribals eat meat, including wild chickens and the pigs villagers kept to clean up the garbage, but they ate beef. Yes, they actually dared to eat cows!

Mammen Samuel chuckled as he imagined the Brahmin's raging: "Uncivilized! Filthy, polluting, stupid
savages!"
If it made Keshavan angry to see Untouchables mixed together on the other side of the field, now he would be beside himself!

Mammen Samuel sat back, folded his hands across his belly, and enjoyed his first hearty laugh in many days.

Generally, tribal folk took care to keep their distance from people of caste. Even now, when drought made them desperate, they pulled away from the offer to work in the fields of a rich, upper caste landowner. All except Hilmi, who had watched his fishing lakes dry up, his unused boat crack in the sun, and his family wither from hunger.

Latha and Sethu stood on the outside of the crowd gathered to watch as Anup led the fisherman and his family into the settlement. Fierce, they were. Small and wiry, their skin almost black. And Hilmi, the most fearsome of all, with teeth brown and cracked from chewing betel nut, and no turban to cover his wild hair. He wore his
mundu
tight and short, wrapped around him like a pair of shorts.

"Just look! His legs and knees exposed for all to see!" Latha exclaimed, clucking her tongue with disapproval.

Behind Hilmi walked two young boys, both older than Ashish, though not by many years. Hilmi's wife—Jeeja, a thin, nervous woman in a shabby, dirt-colored
sari—
followed after and two girls came along behind her. The girls looked to be older than Anup's two oldest daughters. Both wore metal collars around their necks, and their hair stuck out, dry and most untidy.

"I may be poor, but I do put oil on my hair," Sethu sniffed. "I do that."

A tiny girl—she looked to be the age of Baby—fussed as she struggled to keep up with the older girls. The oldest swooped the little one up onto her hip and carried her the rest of the way.

Anup didn't lead the family to a hut. Instead he indicated a clearing on the other side of the courtyard. Without a word, Hilmi and his sons set to work constructing a small dwelling of palm branches and leaves while the older girls wove a door from sticks. Jeeja busied herself laying down stones for a cook pit.

As interesting a diversion as the new family was, the workers couldn't spend too much time staring at them. Bigger concerns pressed on their minds.

"For the
puja,"
a man stated as he propped a small idol up against the trunk of the single mango tree that grew alongside the courtyard.

Everyone had a house god. Several families who had more than one offered to lend the extra to the settlement for a village shrine. It would be a place for the settlement community to worship and pay homage and generate favor. Anup's daughter Devi and several other girls who worked in the landlord's garden brought fragrant flowers to sprinkle over the idols so they would feel like honored guests in their new home. An old woman brought a small pan of water so the gods could wash their feet.

"Coconut meat," a limping woman murmured as she laid out the first, precious offering.

All evening, as villagers prepared their meager meals, they brought pieces of baked
chapatis,
bits of rice, vegetables, and fruit to lay before the gods.

"Remember our kindness to you," they chanted. "Remember and preserve us from the tiger."

But when Latha laid out her handful of rice—which meant none would be left for her to eat that evening—she whispered, "Remember our family's sacrifice to you, and free us from this wretched place."

The next morning, the workers awakened to the unfamiliar sound of tinkling music. Someone was ringing bells for the
puja,
in honor of the new village gods at the break of a new day.

As Latha laid out her morning sacrifice, Sethu stepped up beside her with a split guava for the altar. Sethu nodded toward the hut of leaves and said out loud, "I will not work beside that ugly woman."

Sethu was not a tactful person. Often she said things that upset others and caused quarrels between them. Even so, Latha counted her as a good friend. Sethu, always willing to help, demonstrated her generousity in unexpected ways. Whenever her daughter Devi brought vegetables for her family from the master's garden, Sethu shared them with Latha. Only two days earlier, Devi had spent the day milking the landlord's cows. Her hands and arms ached so badly that she came home in tears. But she also brought a broken pot filled with fresh milk. Sethu set most of it to boil over her own cooking fire, but she sent Lidya to Latha with the last of the milk in the broken pot. "
Amma
says it's from a black cow!" Lidya had announced. "That means it's especially sweet and creamy."

"The woman cannot help being ugly," Latha pointed out to Sethu. "Look at my face. I, too, am ugly. I will work beside her."

Sethu shrugged. "Do as you wish."

Before the workers left for the field, Ashish began his search for firewood. Virat wanted to be certain Anup and the others saw his little boy hard at work. But because of the tiger, he gave the boy strict warnings: "Do not search in the woods. You must not even step the toe of your foot over the edge of the courtyard. Not even one time, Ashish. Promise me you won't."

"But then I can't find any wood," Ashish protested. "Someone else already gathered up all the twigs and little branches I can reach and burned them in their own cooking fires."

"I know it's hard for you," Virat said. "But it is your job. So many families depend on you now to bring them their firewood. But if you go out where the hungry tiger waits, there will be no Ashish left for anyone. Please, my son, work hard and do your best."

"And make certain everyone sees you working hard," Latha added.

After the laborers left for the fields, Little Girl called out, "Ashish! Come over here by the tree! Look at all the food!"

"That's not for us," Ashish said. "It's offerings for the gods."

"I think the gods are already full up," Little Girl answered." Otherwise they would be eating right now."

Ashish looked at the ground around the altar: such a delicious spread of rice and cashew nuts and bananas and all sorts of good things. His stomach rumbled.

"Well," he said, "if you are sure the gods want us to eat it."

"Yes," Little Girl insisted. "But I don't think they want anyone else to know we did."

Even little children feared the gods, but not nearly as much as they feared the men and women of the village. Most of all, they feared Little Girl's mother, Sethu.

That evening, Latha worried over the diminishing weight of her rice sack. Instead of boiling a handful of rice for the evening meal, she took a handful of wheat flour from the earthenware jar, mixed it with water and kneaded it into dough. That night they would eat
chapatis
baked over the fire and dipped in spiced vegetable water. Not as good a meal as rice, admittedly, but enough to fill their stomachs. Latha boiled the last sweet potato from Anup, threw the remainder of the greens from Devi into the pot, and sprinkled in dried chilies and herbs. How she longed for curds—yogurt—to go alongside it. How she longed for a bulging sack of rice!

"The gods will bless us and bring us more food," Latha said as she handed a
chapati
to Ashish. "Because we have done what is right, the gods will reward us."

A lump of guilt rose up in Ashish's throat. "You can have my share,
Amma,"
he said. "I'm not hungry tonight."

Latha, worried over Ashish's health, coaxed and pleaded with her son to eat. But he swiped at the tears in his eyes and steadfastly refused. Finally Virat said, "Leave the boy alone."

"I will not eat your food," Latha said to Ashish.

Virat took the boy's hand. "Come with me," he said. "We will take your
chapati
to the bull that lives in the field. It will be a special offering for the god Shiva from you. Would you like that?"

"Very much,
Appa,"
Ashish said.

While Virat and Ashish were away, Latha gathered up the water jugs and carried them to the well. After she filled them and prepared to start back home, she noticed Sethu sitting alone beside the tamarind trees.