The Hope of Shridula (5 page)

When evening came and Dinkar released the workers to go to their huts, Zia watched the scavenger woman. Jyoti ran to get her empty water jars, then hurried to the well. Immediately the other women ceased their chatter and gossip. Without a word, they grabbed up their jars and drew away.

"Filthy!" one called out.

"The stink of the dead is on you!" another accused. She covered her nose and mouth with her
pallu.

An old woman with three teeth spat at the scavenger woman.

Zia wanted to speak a kind word, but while she still struggled to think of something, Jyoti finished filling her water jars. Taking care to keep her head lowered, she turned and hurried away. The women laughed and shouted out more ridicule after her.

That night, as they lay under the stars, Zia whispered to Ashish, "I watched the scavenger woman today. When she thought no one was looking, she tucked heads of wheat into her
sari."

"She is a fool," Ashish said.

"Her family must be very hungry for her to risk such a thing."

"The harvest has been a good one," Ashish told his wife. "Soon the landowner will reward all of us with a great feast and bags of extra grain. Don't worry. Her stomach will soon be filled again."

With the harvest over, the laborers had more time to sit together in the shade and complain. All their faithful work, and still no feast to celebrate the harvest. Grain supplies running low for everyone, and still no extra allotments.

"Be patient," Dinkar pleaded. "Master Landowner gave us his word. He is an important man in the village and his life is busy, but he will reward your hard work just as he promised. He will celebrate the successful harvest with you."

The men gathered in whatever shade they could find and grumbled to one another. The landlord was responsible for their misery. The British were to blame. It was the fault of the rioters in the city, or the fault of the army that shot those same rioters down in the streets.

The women also clustered together, but away from the men. As they watched the cook fires dying out, they voiced complaints of their own.

"Look over there," said the woman with three teeth. She gestured toward Jyoti, who was careful to keep her distance from the other women. Jyoti was on the ground, bent over on her knees.

"Just look at her!" said Cala, an especially tall worker. "Digging in the dirt with those filthy hands of hers!"

"She's pulling up roots!" Zia exclaimed. "The poor woman is starving!"

Zia looked over at the men. Ashish was no longer listening to the others. His eyes were on the desperate woman clawing at the ground.

5

May 1946

o
n the last day of her life, Parmar Ruth Varghese told her sons the truth. That is, she told them as much of the truth as they needed to know.

"Boban Joseph, you have grown into a selfish man," she said to her eldest. "You have no wife and no children, yet you hoard your father's house and everything in it for yourself. One single room you allow for me and Glory Anna to share. Two small rooms for your brother, even though he has two sons with wives of their own, and three grandchildren. It is not right."

At first, Boban Joseph stood dumbstruck. His mother had always been such a quiet woman, at all times submissive to the man who served as head of the household—which now meant him. But he quickly found his tongue.

"It is not your place to criticize me," he said. "You may be my mother, yet you are still an old woman. What do you know of such things?"

"I know what is right and what is not right," Parmar Ruth answered.

"Father spoke his wishes, and his wishes are the law," Boban Joseph said. "Saji Stephen would inherit the poorer field. That is now in his charge—for all the good it does him. The best rooms of the house would be mine—those that face east and south, including the great room and both of the kitchens. Saji Stephen would have whatever was left. I would own all the good lands, and all the animals, and all the laborers listed in father's leather book. I would control the family wealth of jewels and gold coins—had any remained from his selfindulgent ways! That entire bequest was left to me to do with as I wish."

"What choice did your father have?" Parmar Ruth asked. "He knew the person you were. He saw your eyes cling to the young girls that did not belong to you. Yet what choice did he have?"

A deep flush rose in Boban Joseph's face.

"The harvest is well past, my son, and you have yet to celebrate with the laborers. You have not yet spread the promised feast before them. No gifts of grain and spices have been offered them. Your father would have immediately rewarded each one for so great a harvest—and rewarded them richly. He would not have stopped there, but would have spread his generosity throughout the village. Even beyond, all the way to the village boundaries."

"I am a busy man." Boban Joseph's voice was bitter, his tone insultingly dismissive.

"Your father would have—"

"Father wasted the wealth of our family, not me. My father squandered the jewels and gold coins that should have been mine!"

"There is much you do not know," his mother said.

"I know I do not have his luxury to spend my days on the veranda preening for the public, bragging about my expensive Persian carpet, showing it off for all the village to see."

Parmer Ruth shook her head. "You are a selfish man, my son."

Saji Stephen, Boban Joseph's younger brother, heard his mother's harsh words and unaccustomed tone. He hurried in to see how he might take advantage of the family discord.

"Just look at my own family's quarters," Saji Stephen chimed in. "Three men, two women, and three children all squeezed into two small rooms while you, Boban Joseph, amble alone though the rest of the house!"

Boban Joseph opened his mouth, a bitter retort hanging on the edge of his tongue, but it was Parmar Ruth who spoke. "And you, Saji Stephen—always my pet, forever my baby. Tell me, what is your use on this earth? You take and you take, from one person and the next, but what do you give back?"

"I am a man of wisdom and the arts," Saji Stephen huffed. "You know that!"

"I know only one thing," Parmar Ruth said. "Your daughter was not to blame for the death of her mother. Only because I would not allow you to abandon the newborn to the hungry animals, but took her as my own, is she still alive today. You do not even acknowledge her as flesh of your flesh. But acknowledge her or not, she is still your daughter."

Saji Stephen's face flushed hot.

Boban Joseph pushed his brother aside and faced his mother. "You are an old woman and the day is hot," he said impatiently. "Go back to your bed. I will instruct the servants to bring you tea."

Parmar Ruth made no move to obey. "You believe your father wasted his wealth, my son? He did not. He would never be such a fool."

Boban Joseph started to argue, but his mother turned her attention back to Saji Stephen. "Glory Anna will marry in her fourteenth year," she said. "That will be next year after the rice harvest is complete. Your sister's Uncle Dupak has already arranged the marriage."

Smirking in spite of himself, Boban Joseph answered, "Sunita's Uncle Dupak? He won't find much of a husband for Glory Anna, I fear. Saji Stephen has no money for a dowry."

"It is not a matter for Saji Stephen to decide. Or you, either."

Boban Joseph glared at his mother. "If you think for one minute that I will be willing to pay—"

Parmar Ruth swayed. Brushing her hand across her face, she looked with glassy eyes into her son's angry face and murmured, "I warn you, Boban Joseph: stay away from Glory Anna. If you do not, you will lose everything. I warn you: this night your soul will be required of you."

Early the next morning, Glory Anna's horrified shrieks shook the household awake. "Come! Hurry!" she screamed. "Someone come and help!"

The Sudra servant Udit ran in from outside. Saji Stephen's sons rushed from the veranda where they slept. They all pushed the distraught girl aside and hurried back and forth, but they could do nothing. Parmar Ruth was already cold in her bed.

The entire day, everyone scurried back and forth through the house. And the entire day, Glory Anna sobbed alone in their room. In her room.

Without her grandmother, Glory Anna was truly alone. She had never thought of Saji Stephen as her father, though she knew he was. All she knew of her mother was that she died giving life to her. Saji Stephen's married sons didn't acknowledge Glory Anna's existence, and neither did their wives . . . although Sheeba Esther, wife of the second son, was kinder to the girl than anyone else.

So sad! Glory Anna had never been without her grandmother. So lonely! She had no one else to care about her or protect her. And suddenly, so afraid. Surely her father and her uncle would want her gone. The quickest way to accomplish that would be to arrange an immediate marriage for her and send her away. But her Uncle Boban Joseph would not be willing to pay much of a dowry, and her father would not be able to do so. So what sort of husband might she expect? A sick old man with one leg? A humpback who would beat her with a stick? Perhaps someone like her father—or, worse, like her uncle Boban Joseph.

"I will take mother's room for my own," Saji Stephen announced to his brother as they waited on the veranda for the priest to arrive.

"You will do no such thing!" Boban Joseph shot back. "That room faces south, so it is rightfully mine."

"You never step your foot into all the rooms you have now! Soon the rains will come and my sons and their wives and children will no longer be able to sleep outside. Where is the shelter for all of them, I ask you?"

"Your ever-expanding family is not my concern," Boban Joseph said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Take that worthless field of yours and build yourself as large a house as you want on it. And when you go to live there, take Glory Anna with you."

Though Saji Stephen had lived for almost half a century, though his belly had grown flabby and much gray now sprinkled through his hair, he sprang up off the floor with amazing agility and stomped his feet the way he always had as an angry child. Boban Joseph burst out laughing. Not a laugh of mirth, but a hoot of derision and ridicule.

Blind with fury, Saji Stephen pointed at his brother and bellowed his mother's words: "This night your soul will be required of you!"

Boban Joseph, still laughing, jumped up and stamped his feet in an exaggerated mock tantrum. "Your soul, your soul!" he whined in a ridiculing, childish voice. "Cling tightly to your soul!"

Sputtering with rage, Saji Stephen struggled to find a searing retort to toss back, but he could think of none. He turned and ran from the veranda.

Because she was a Christian and not a Hindu, Parmar Ruth Varghese's body was buried in the church courtyard. For the rest of the day the family stayed inside the house. Servants waved fans over them in a vain effort to stir up a cooling breeze. Children of the servants ran back and forth with trays of sweets and pots of tea.

When the sun finally set, Boban Joseph called for Udit, his most responsible servant. "Arrange a harvest feast for the laborers," he instructed. "It should be quite fine, but not costly. We have plenty of rice in the storehouse. Make good use of it."

To his brother, who had returned to the veranda and was pouting alone in the corner, Boban Joseph said, "You will be in attendance at the feast." It was an order.

Saji Stephen said nothing. That was a matter for his brother to decide. Saji could stomp and pout, but in the end he would do as his brother said. To obey was his job—his only real job.

"And you will be on your best behavior, too," Boban Joseph warned. "Unity and family loyalty."

Yes, of course. Always unity and forever family loyalty. Never mind that Boban Joseph was a selfish
thag—
a rogue who bullied and cheated the entire village. Unity and family loyalty. Never mind that whenever Boban Joseph prowled the streets, fathers from all castes hurried to hide their young girls from him. At all costs, unity and family loyalty.

The first rays of morning sun glowed deep orange over the still-black fields. Shridula roused herself. She stepped out from the shelter of the
neem
tree and looked around in surprise. This was to be a day of celebration. A day of rest. No one had to go to the fields, yet the entire settlement was already awake and buzzing with excitement.

"
Amma! Appa!"
Shridula called joyfully. "What food will the landlord bring for our harvest feast?"

"Two harvest feasts every year of your life," Ashish said with a laugh, "and every one you ask us that same question!"