The Hope of Shridula (4 page)

On the walk back across the courtyard, Miss Abigail leaned heavily on Krishna's arm. Almost fifty years old, Krishna was, but in Miss Abigail's mind he was still the stringy little child she had taken in when he showed up at the clinic so badly burned. Except for the gray in his hair and his grown-man height, he didn't seem that much different from back then. Perhaps because his severely scarred face was wrinkle-free, giving him an ageless look.

Krishna opened the door and walked Miss Abigail across the parlor to her bedchamber.

"You made my bed for me," she said when she opened the door. "Really, my dear, you needn't care for me like an old woman."

"I do not," Krishna said. "I care for you like a dear friend."

To Abigail, Krishna was more than a friend. A son—that's how she thought of him. He had been with her since he was a child of seven years—eight, perhaps. Except for the time she sent him to Madras to attend the school for orphaned boys. He always was such an intelligent lad. And he did study hard. Still, before long he had come back to her. Life was hard for a burn-scarred Untouchable, even one who could read and write English.

"Dr. Cooper told me I should leave India," Miss Abigail said. "But why should I, Krishna? India is my home."

"The doctor worries for you." Krishna picked up the candleholder that stood on the chest beside her bed and lit the candle. "He knows that trouble is coming, and he wants you to be safe."

Miss Abigail reached out and patted Krishna's twisted hand. "If trouble truly is coming, then I thank God that you are here beside me."

4

May 1946

E
xcept for a few Sudras scattered throughout the settlement, every person the landlord owned was Untouchable. They all lived side by side in whichever huts the overseer assigned to them, and they all worked together in the fields. But that didn't mean all Untouchables were the same. Carpenters looked down on barbers, who looked down on washer folk, who looked down on basket makers, who looked down on fisher folk. And so it went until it came to the
chamars,
the leather makers. The handlers of dead animals. Everyone looked down on them. By birth, by caste, and by
jati,
Ashish was a
chamar.

Being a gentle man, like his father before him, Ashish had always made it his habit to ignore the personal slights and insults other bonded laborers tossed his way. People were people, he insisted. Let each one prove his value in the fields and paddies. But by the age of forty-six, Ashish had begun to grow old and to wear out. More and more, the daily struggles of life weighed heavily on him. One evening he came back to his hut, exhausted from many hours in the wheat fields, to find a most troubling change. The family of potters who had lived in the hut next to his for as long as he could remember were gone. A scraggly woman with two boys had taken up residence in their hut.

Ashish looked askance at the disheveled woman. In a tone that left no room for excuses, he demanded, "Who are you?"

"Jyoti," the woman answered without looking up. She was tall and angular, but so thin Ashish didn't see how she could possibly lift a bundle of grain onto her head. Her
sari
hung around her in tatters.

"Your boys. Who are they?"

"The big one is Hari. The small one, Falak."

Actually, at fourteen, Hari couldn't truly be called
big.
Tenyear-old Falak, however, was definitely small.

"Where is your man?" Ashish asked.

"Dead." Jyoti kept her eyes fixed on the ground. When Ashish didn't leave, she shifted uncomfortably and added, "I borrowed money from the landowner to send my husband to his next life in flames." Still Ashish didn't leave, so she said— without rancor, "He died cleaning night soil for the comfort of our betters."

Ashish gasped and jumped back in disgust. A family of
thottis—
scavengers. Cleaners of latrine pits and gutters! This woman belonged at the absolute bottom of the absolute lowest of the Untouchables. Ashish turned his back and hurried away.

Zia, busy at her cooking pit, watched the entire exchange. But she noticed something her husband never saw: an elegantly carved wooden necklace hanging around the woman's neck. Extraordinarily beautiful, she thought, and surely something of real value. What a strange adornment for a starving woman!

When Jyoti saw Zia watching her, her hand went instinctively to her throat. "A wedding gift from my grandmother," she mumbled.

"Beautiful," Zia said.

"I never take it off. It has grown to be a part of my neck."

"Yes," Zia said. "I understand." But she didn't really, because no one had ever given her anything of beauty.

That night, as Ashish and Zia lay together on their sleeping mats watching the stars twinkle in the black sky, Ashish shook his head and complained, "Scavengers! They should not be allowed to live here among us!"

"Many would say the same about you," Zia reminded him.

"But scavengers are hopelessly filthy."

"Because they handle filth and pick up dead animals? So, too, did your father."

"You do not understand," Ashish protested in growing exasperation. "That woman and her sons have no dignity. They eat
rats!
It is not good for Shridula that we have them living next to us."

"I do not mind,
Appa,"
Shridula called from her sleeping mat.

Ashish squinted toward his daughter, but in the dark he couldn't make out whether she was lying down or sitting up. Still, simply thinking about her filled his heart with pride. Shridula was a good girl . . . a good person . . . He would set his mind on her and forget about his frustration over the scavenger woman.

Something rustled in the branches of the
neem
tree, but Ashish made no move to investigate. Some creature, most likely. If it could find comfort and shelter in his tree, then he wished it all the best. Perhaps the gods would credit his generosity to the creature as an act of kindness.

"Poor Jyoti," Zia sighed. "She has no man to bring in extra rice."

One handful of rice each day, the allotment for a working man. Half that for a working boy. Less for a working woman. For a girl, working or not, only a pinch.
Ashish tried to push the landlord's accounting system out of his mind.

"The harvest is over," he said in a carefully gentled voice. "Very soon every family will receive an extra allotment of rice. Spices, too, and a measure of wheat to grind into flour."

Zia shook her head. "One woman and two boys. Even that will not be enough."

No, it wouldn't. Which was why industrious families dug small gardens and grew vegetables to add to their rice pots. Almost everyone sent their children into the forest to search for nuts or fruit or small creatures to supplement their diet. Zia was right. With no man to bring in the full handful of rice each day, and with two hungry boys to feed, Jyoti would find her job most difficult.

A flicker of sympathy flashed through Ashish's eyes, but only for a moment. "We are Untouchables," he said, "but we are not scavengers. Scavengers have no place among us!"

"The gods took away your three sons and gave you a girl in their place?" the men had said to Ashish when his daughter was born. "Too bad, too bad. Surely the landlord paid the Brahmin to place a curse on your house."

"No, not a curse!" Ashish had insisted with resentment. "A blessing!"

"But here you are, robbed of sons and laden with a
girl!"

"Not just any girl," Ashish said. "My Shridula. My blessing."

After the men drifted away, clucking their tongues and whispering to one another, Ashish had taken the baby from Zia and lifted the little one up in his arms. Holding her close, he whispered in her ear, "Perhaps the name will bring you hope, my little one. More hope than my name has brought me."

Hope, he had said. Not luck. Not karma.
Hope.

Like his father before him, Ashish struggled to lay aside the superstitions that haunted the lives of everyone around him. The position of the planets . . . the alignment of stars . . . amulets and lucky charms from holy men . . . blind dependence on the capricious will of a million gods and goddesses . . . the eternal turn of the wheel of karma. Ashish determined to reject them all. What he clung to was hope—for himself, yes, but even more for his child and her children, and all the children of all the generations that would follow.

"Hope!" the laborers repeated to Ashish with mocking laughter as he planted rice beside them. "Hope!" they called to him as he struggled behind a stubborn water buffalo, doing his best to maneuver his plow through thick mud. "Hope!" they taunted as he mopped his face and staggered under the blazing sun.

Hope might be a rare commodity, but hatred was not. It seethed throughout the settlement and simmered in the village. In the large cities of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, it boiled up and erupted like so much scalding lava as the people rioted and the British army poured out destruction to quash their uprisings. Still, most of that hatred was aimed at the British and their iron grip on India.

Ashish knew nothing of that. All he knew was the sea of personal resentments accumulated over a lifetime of insults and prejudice. What could such a lofty concept as a struggle for independence from Britain matter to one such as him?

"The sheds are full. There is not room for any more grain," Ashish said to Dinkar.

"Master Landlord will be pleased with the harvest," the overseer replied. "Surely he will reward us with a particularly fine feast, and with extra rice and spices to fill our own grain jars."

For a moment, Ashish's mind drifted away from the empty fields. "I wonder, what would it be like to be rich?"

"You will never know," Dinkar assured him. "Nor will I. Riches are not in our
karma.
Men like us never get what we want. Certainly not in this life. Maybe in the next, though."

"You, Dinkar? What have you done good enough to earn you a place of riches in the next life?"

"What did I do to doom me to be an Untouchable in this life?" Dinkar said with a laugh.

But Ashish wasn't laughing. "Do you really believe that? Do you think we were born untouchable because we did something so awfully bad in our past life?"

"I do not know," Dinkar said. "But I won't take any chances. I will do good in this life because I never again want to be born an Untouchable."

When Ashish got back to the hut, Zia and Shridula had his meal waiting—
sambar
made from dried lentils and seasoned with crushed chili peppers. Shridula handed him his earthenware bowl of rice with the
sambar
spooned over it.

"Mmmmm," Ashish sighed. He took the bowl and settled down under the
neem
tree.

Do good in this life,
Dinkar had said. Ashish could not forget those words.
Do good in this life.
Through the tree branches, he fixed his eyes on the bright patterns of twinkling stars.

"Certainly we would never allow our Shridula to marry a scavenger," Ashish said to Zia, who sat away from her husband, waiting patiently for him to finish his meal so she could eat. "And we will never eat in a scavenger's house. But I have decided that if a scavenger should come and sit next to us, we will not turn our backs and walk away."

Zia said nothing.

"I will do good in this life," Ashish said. In his mind he added,
Perhaps then, even though I am an Untouchable, my family will know hope.

At Boban Joseph's insistence, the women scoured the ground in search of wheat heads and dropped stalks. Zia and the others worked together in order to accomplish the job more quickly. All the others except Jyoti. Jyoti pulled off to one side and worked alone, because the other women refused to work beside her.