The Gypsy Goddess (21 page)

It seemed to us that we only had two options: go to jail, or go to the graveyard.

We try to paraphrase the court. We try to understand contempt. We understand that massacres need not legally be murders. We also understand that when circumstances change, the facts change.

The police had taken a dying declaration from Palanivelu. Since he had scraped through and survived death, he was now an accused in Pakkirisami Pillai's murder case. We realize that the law has stealthy claws; it sneaks up and catches the most unsuspecting person.

We heard that the state assembly has stood up in silence for a minute as a mark of respect to the forty-two (plus two, double silent) who died in Kilvenmani. Not only for our deceased, but also for three former members and two sitting members of the assembly who had also recently died. We think they would have stood up anyway, even if nothing had happened in our village. Their standing up and staying silent for a minute had nothing to do with us.

Back in the courtroom, we watched the landlords own up to their crimes.

They did so with practised ease. The first accused said he was fixed because he was the number one enemy of the Communists. The second accused said he was being framed because he was a close relative of the first accused. The fifth accused said he was being indicted in this criminal conspiracy because he was a public speaker who had successfully broken up the party's agricultural strike by making caste-Hindu labourers report to work. The sixth accused said he was being fixed as a result of similar successful intervention that earned him the enmity of the Communists.

The eighth accused, the eleventh accused, the eighteenth accused and the nineteenth accused were being made to face this accursed fate because, being petty land owners,
they had worked in other landlords' farms for lower wages in defiance of the Communist call for a general strike. This was self-justifying scab talk.

Then the others admitted their guilt. The tenth accused believed that he was suffering because he had prevented us from grazing our animals on his land, the fourteenth accused believed that he was suffering because he was the first accused's brother, the fifteenth accused believed that he was suffering because he was the fourteenth accused's son, the seventeenth accused believed that he was suffering because he had appeared as a prosecution witness in another case against a couple of us, the twentieth accused believed that he was suffering because he had served as a prosecution witness in many cases against us.

They were giving themselves up. They were making it clear that they were our enemies. We were happy with their honesty. But the judge pretended not to grasp the obvious, he bought into the victimized image peddled by the
mirasdars
. If they said they were our enemies, would that not explain why they would have attacked us and burnt our families alive? Why did the Special Additional First-Class Magistrate not understand this?

We did not know how the law worked. Of course, ignorance of the law was no excuse. But we did not know why this judge refused to see the truth when it was staring him in the face. We did not know how to make these thoughts
penetrate his frozen skull. We knew that even poking his brain with a cattle-prod could not help him. He seemed to be perpetually drunk. Those books in his room were as useless as fifty sickles hanging around the hip of a man who did not know how to reap.

When heavy rains have passed, drops of water continue to trickle down the roofs of our thatched huts. That is how we felt when the police told the court that all three of the shotguns seized from the landlords were found to be in working condition by the forensics department. Muthusamy said that more than twenty guns were used that night alone, but we were happy that even small things were working in our favour. Everything would point to the criminals.

Then, the police said that the time of last use could not be ascertained at all.

A half-truth is not a lie, it is a long, long rope. When the guilty get a grip, they climb out.

At Muthusamy's tea stall, newspapers told us about a defeated censure motion.

‘This House censures and disapproves the policy of the Ministry in particular respect, namely its failure to protect law and order in Tanjore district, resulting in the ghastly
incident of arson on 25 December 1968 in the village of Kilvenmani and the death of 42 innocent women, children and old men.'

The newspaper also tells us that the motion was defeated. Like 36 to 125, but that doesn't matter. A margin does not make a defeat in our name any better.

Soon, the government appointed a commission. It was called the Commission of Inquiry on Agrarian Labour Problems of East Tanjore District. Everyone called it the One Man Commission. Everyone said the commission was a paper tiger. Someone said it was a joke. Someone else said it was eyewash.

We went to the commission and repeated our stories. The party also sent a memorandum briefing the commission about the history of agricultural reform in East Tanjore.

The commission gave its report the following August. It found the wages to be a pittance. It said the wage had to provide for minimum subsistence. It recommended a wage revision once every three years. The government tabled the commission's report on the floor of the House. Nothing happened after that. Neither to the commission nor to the agrarian labour problems of East Tanjore district. We forgot the commission and the commission forgot us.

Less than a year after the horror, children started to die in our district. In the beginning, it was a story from somewhere else, but then it became an everyday occurrence. The newspapers claimed these were mystery deaths. It was a mystery to people who did not know about starvation. Only the children of the toilers and coolies died, not the children of the landlords or the children of the shopkeepers or the children of the teachers. The newspapers did not notice this detail.

We did not have any children to lose to death, because childhood has gone away from our village. Strangely, we have outlived our parents and our children. We live between the dead. The children who have survived sound like our parents.

We told our stories to the court and to the commission. We testified on their terms. We were examined and cross-examined. In their words, we deposed. Since we saw with our eyes, we spoke about what we had seen. However, the Special Additional First-Class Magistrate was not very pleased with our versions.

Perhaps he wanted a single story: uniform, end to end to end. The ‘
Once upon a time, there lived an old lady in a tiny village
' story. Sadly, we are not able to tell such a story. A story told in many voices is seen as unreliable.

In order to put us down, he quotes a big book. The big book quotes another big book. And it says, ‘Unless the testimonies of two or more witnesses corroborate, it will not be possible to verify the guilt of the accused.'

We were men who were running to save our lives. We carried a different death in each eye. We cried. Our conches blew into deaf ears. They could see that the stories did not match. So the guilt would not be verified and the court would let them be, set them free. This is how the accused would be acquitted, this is how the guilty would turn innocent.