The Village by the Sea (2 page)

Hari was curious to see something new in the village just as all villagers were since there so
seldom was anything new. Picking up a pebble to toss from one hand to the other, he walked towards it. There seemed to be no one around although the door was open and he could see a cooking fire and some tin pots on the earthen floor of the hut. He went to inspect the lorry and there found the driver asleep on the front seat, his bare feet sticking out of the window. Hari stared, wondering who could have sent these steel pipes and why. The man snored loudly.

Hari walked back to the lane and there met one of the village boys wheeling his bicycle through the dust.

‘Hey, Ramu – who has come to build a house here?' he called to the boy.

Ramu stopped and waited till Hari had caught up with him. ‘Haven't you heard?' he asked. ‘Everyone is talking about it in the village.'

‘I don't go to the village,' Hari said. ‘All they do there is drink.' He did not add that he was afraid to meet his father outside the toddy shop, and that he did not have any money to spend in the village shops.

‘But you must have heard,' Ramu said. ‘The government is going to build a great factory here. Many factories. Hundreds of them.'

‘
That
is going to be a factory?' Hari waved at the tin and straw shack left behind and laughed scornfully.

‘Oh, that is only the watchman's hut. First they send a watchman. Then they send their materials so he can guard them. Soon they will be sending bulldozers and earthmovers and steamrollers. They are going to widen the highway – make it twice as broad. Then their machines can be brought here. Then they will build houses for the workers. The workmen will come. The factories will be built.'

Ramu went on and on describing the future to Hari who could not believe it. The tin shack and the yellow lorry with the sleeping driver did not look as if they could be the beginning of such mighty changes. ‘And what will happen to the hill and the temple on top?' he asked, completely disbelieving Ramu's tale.

Ramu made a cutting gesture with his free hand, as if he were cutting through a swathe of grass. ‘They will cut it down,' he said. ‘Make it all flat. Build the factory on top.'

‘Hah.' Hari laughed, not believing a word. How could the hill and the temple disappear? It had been there all his life and his father's and
grandfather's as well. Ramu was surely telling a tale. ‘We'll see,' he said. ‘What are they going to make in this wonderful factory of yours?'

‘It isn't mine – but they will give me work. They will have to have men working in their factories – so we will get jobs,' shouted Ramu, waving his arm in the air and looking excited.

Now they had come to the village pond where the lane became smooth and even. Ramu jumped on to his cycle and pedalled off, shouting, ‘We'll get jobs, Hari – we'll get jobs. You'll see.'

Hari thought about it all morning while he worked quietly in the field behind their hut. All the time that he hoed and dug out stones and pulled up roots, preparing the single small field for a winter crop of vegetables, the same words kept ringing in his ears – ‘A job. A factory. Many jobs. Many factories. Jobs – factories. Factories – jobs.' He was soon sweating in the sun as he bent and pulled and tugged and dug. Once he cut his big toe quite painfully on a sharp stone. Once, as he approached a sturdy ixora bush that had to be cut, he saw a black snake slither under it and hide
so that he had to leave it alone. But all the time he thought of the factory and a job. Could he get one, too? Could he work in a factory and earn money? No, he thought, he had not finished school. Although he could read and write and add figures, he had not taken an exam and had no degree, so how could he get a job? But did you really need a degree to work in a factory? Any man could work machines and use tools if his hands were fit to work. As Hari's were.

He stopped to study his hands. They were worker's hands – square and brown and callused. It was true he had done nothing with them but dig and sow and break coconuts from the trees and drag nets in the sea, but he could teach them to work machines. He felt sure he could. Was he sure? No, perhaps not quite sure.

He was still standing and staring at his hands when Lila came down the path from their hut, a water pot held against her hip with one hand and Hari's lunch of a few dry
chapatis
tied in a cloth in the other, and their short black and white dog Pinto following at her heels. Pinto darted forwards when he saw Hari and came hurrying to meet him. Lila followed slowly. She was tired and she did not like to see Hari standing idle in the empty
field. But she only said, ‘Here – eat,' and handing him his lunch, went to the well to fill the water pot.

Hari followed her and helped her to draw up the bucket after it had plopped into the still green depths of the well, frightening a small frog or two, slowly filled and grown heavy at the end of the rope. Then he sat down on the edge of the well to eat his bread. There was nothing to eat with the
chapatis
but a pinch of salt and a few green chillies Lila had plucked from a bush near their hut.

She stood watching him, her hands on her hips.

‘What will we do?' she said suddenly.

Hari knew exactly what she meant, but he did not like to tell her so. He did not feel like talking. He never did talk much and always preferred to think things out very slowly and carefully before he did. So he went on eating his dry bread and chillies.

‘Father's still lying there, asleep. He sleeps all day. He will only get up at night and go straight to the toddy shop,' Lila said, almost crying.

‘Let him,' said Hari.

‘Hari, he will kill himself drinking the toddy those wicked men make and sell.'

‘Let him,' Hari said again, chewing.

‘And Mother? And Mother?' cried Lila. ‘And us? What about us? Who will look after us?'

‘He
does not look after us,' said Hari, spitting out the end of a very sharp chilli. ‘We look after ourselves, don't we?'

‘But how?' cried Lila. ‘We don't go to school any more, you and I. Only Bela and Kamal go – and next year we won't be able to buy them any new books. We hardly eat anything but this dry bread, or dry rice, every day. There's hardly ever any money to buy anything with in the bazaar – only when we sell our coconuts to the Malabaris. The only time we eat fish is when you go fishing. Father never does. And then, Mother: how will Mother get well if she never gets any medicine?'

Now Hari hunched his shoulders. He did not like Lila to say – to scream aloud – all these things that he knew and thought about all the time. What could he do? He worked in the field, he climbed the trees and brought down the coconuts to sell. When he had time, he took a net and fished along the shore. What more could he do? He knew it was not enough but it was all he could do.

‘What can I do?' he mumbled. ‘I'm doing what I can.'

‘I know,' said Lila, with tears beginning to tremble in her eyes. ‘But don't you think we have to do something
more
now, Hari?' she pleaded.

This made Hari stop chewing, put away the remains of his lunch and stare at her while he thought of a way to answer her and reassure her. ‘Something will come along, Lila,' he said at last. ‘The boys in the village say a factory is to be built in Thul and everyone will get jobs there. Perhaps I will get one too.'

‘When?' cried Lila.

‘I don't know. Not now, not for a long time. In the meantime – in the meantime I'll look for work. The next time the de Silvas come from Bombay I'll ask them if they can take me back with them and give me work.' This was an idea he had had but never spoken of before. He was quite surprised to hear the words out loud himself. So was Lila.

‘In Bombay?' she cried. ‘Then you would have to leave us, Hari?'

‘Yes. If I am to stay here, I could get work on a fishing boat – I will ask and we'll see.'

Lila nodded. She felt relieved now to think Hari was growing up and would soon be able to find work and earn money. Of course he was still
young, a year younger than her, and she could not expect him to work and earn like a man. Change would not come suddenly or quickly to their home and family, but it would come. She had to believe that it would come.

She got up and bent to pick up the heavy water pot. Hari bent too, to help, and together they lifted it on to her head. She stood for a moment to get her balance and then walked away, back to the hut. Now she could go back to work. Pinto followed her, just as he always did, devotedly.

Hari could not work any more. Although he had felt hopeful when talking to Lila of the future, he now wondered if he could really do anything about it. He stared at the dry, stony field that he had to plant with vegetables. What if he did clear and dig the field and sow some aubergines and marrows? The vegetables would be eaten. Then there would be nothing. It was simply not enough.

He walked down to the sea which was heavy and still and glittering in the noonday sun. The tide was far out. The fishing fleet stood becalmed at the horizon as if it had come to the end of the
world and could go no further, its sails hanging slack at this still time of day. Only the pariah kites wheeled in the sky, up in the very dome of it, looking down on the crawling sea and the little creatures on earth from their great height and distance. Now and then they whistled thin, shrill whistles. And the pigeons cooed and cooed in the great banyan trees, sounding as if they were trying to console.

Hari sat down in the grove of casuarina trees where it was always shady and even a little breeze murmured through the soft grey needles of the old twisted trees. It was the coolest and shadiest spot on the whole beach and Hari was not the only one to seek it out at midday. One of the old men who owned the coconut grove next to theirs lay there asleep, his head on a pile of casuarina needles, his turban spread over his eyes. He was a bad-tempered, drunken old man and Hari was careful not to wake him.

He put his hands behind his head and leaned against a tree trunk, half closing his eyes against the glare from the sea. Out of the white-hot sky one of the floating kites swooped suddenly down, snatched up something on the beach and swooped upwards again. Hari opened his eyes to see what
it was that dangled helplessly from its beak. A pair of kites chased after it, the prey dropped from its beak and Hari saw that it was a dead snake.

He was going to get up and go and inspect it when Ramu came cycling up and stopped under the trees, along with two other boys from the village who, like Hari, had given up going to school although not for the same reasons as Hari. He could no longer pay the fees, low as they were, nor buy books which they could easily for their fathers owned fishing boats and went out to fish and brought home catches they could sell to the dealers who took them to Bombay in lorries. They had simply grown bored with school and were waiting for some opportunity to come along which would bring them money and a good time. They were quite old enough to help their fathers fish but they did not like to, thinking it a boring occupation for uneducated men.

Hari, Ramu, Bhola and Mahesh – they used to play on the beach together and go hunting with their dogs, and wrestle and climb coconut trees and go to the occasional stage shows that were put on in the village on festival nights. Now they were too old to play and they just sat or lay about under the casuarina trees, talking.

What did they talk about?

‘We will get jobs – then we will have money.'

‘
How
will we get jobs?' Hari asked, sitting up suddenly and filling his hands with fistfuls of sand. ‘They will bring men from the cities to work in the factories.'

‘No, they won't,' all three boys shouted in protest.

They were silent for a minute, then one said, ‘How can they? City people won't come to live in a village. Where can they live? There's nowhere for them to live, and no shops, no cinema. They won't want to come here. We live here – we can work in their factories.'