The Walls of Delhi (7 page)

He decided then and there that he wouldn't go back to the Oriental Coal Mines to find out what happened to his diploma, transcript, and the rest of his certificates. Why should he? They weren't even worth the paper they were printed on. He and people like him didn't have whatever it was that it took to secure jobs, or to get their hands in the cookie jar of government project funds.

After dinner that night, Mohandas didn't sleep. He gathered seedlings and a spade, slung everything over his shoulder, told Kasturi he'd be back in the morning, and set off for the banks of the Kathina, and, once there, worked like a spirit possessed to dig irrigation channels for the seedlings of muskmelon, cucumber, watermelon, tomato, and eggplant. At around four thirty in the morning, when all the other stars, one after another, began to fade, but the North Star was still shining with all its lustre, Mohandas wiped the sweat from his forehead and chest and slowly began wading into the waters of the Kathina. Dipping his cupped hands in the water, he scooped the water back over his head, placed his flat palms together in supplication, and said
with great emotion, ‘Just please don't wash away the little plants, Kathinamai. Have mercy on Malihamai, have mercy on my son Devdas. Please don't gobble up all the crops I planted from the sweat of my brow! Because if you do I'll jump right in, height of the monsoon, with my kids and all, and fill your stomach with us!'

Tears from his eyes dripped down from his face to swim in the Kathina, where tiny kothari fish swam to the surface and fought to nip at the salt from his teardrops, while Mohandas emerged from the river with Kabirdas's name on his lips.

When Mohandas got home he found Kasturi busy plastering the courtyard with cowdung, Putlibai sorting by touch the seeds of the muskmelon, cucumber, watermelon in her winnowing basket, Kaba, who had found some shade in the corner, engrossed in husking the bamboo, and eighteen-month-old baby Devdas in his own little world sitting in the middle of the courtyard playing an innocent game of chopping grass with a little cutting tool.

Hearing the sound of his footsteps, Putlibai looked up with her sightless eyes and met Mohandas's with a smile. ‘Did you hear, Mohana, that mama myna gave birth to two chicks in the myna nest?'

If she'd been able to see she would have been happy to note the look of joy that shone on Mohandas's face when he heard the news.

After supper that night Mohandas took Devdas and Kasturi with him down to the Kathina. Kasturi had collected all the seeds and kept them safe in the folds of the sari at her waist, and had hoisted Devdas firmly on her shoulders. Long-grass rope, a spade, and trowel were slung over Mohandas's shoulders.

A few little breaths of the cool river air, and it wasn't long before Devdas was off in a deep sleeping reverie. Kasturi and Mohandas got to work filling the seedling holes he'd dug with the cow dung fertiliser and planting the various seedlings for the fruits and vegetables. It took two hours before the work was completed. Kasturi brought water from the Kathina in a ghari pot and sprinkled it over the seedbeds; Mohandas was transfixed by her beauty under the twinkling starlight. In the waning moonlight, Kasturi's dusky body looked just like the old stone statues that lay outside the little temple of Malihamai, the ones brought after their excavation from Benheru talab. Kasturi matched those beautiful bodies – her waist, arms, breasts, legs – as if a sculptor had spent years doing nothing but carefully chiselling her form.

It was well past midnight; they could hear the occasional sandpiper or pankukri. All Mohandas could smell was the scent of the sweat on Kasturi's body, mixed with the heaviness of the river air. What sort of dreams did she have when she married him – and then how did things turn out? From morning 'til night, day in and day out, without fail, good times or bad, healthy or sick, whether food was on the table or not, she was there, standing beside Mohandas. He felt a deep bond with her, utterly intimate, and he couldn't stop staring. She placed the clay jar down on the sand, stood up, and began braiding her hair. Mohandas approached; she was silent.

‘Fancy a game of kabaddi?' Mohandas suggested with a little smile. ‘Hu, Tu, Tu, it's like wrestling!'

He grabbed hold of her arm, and began tickling her stomach and armpits. She tried to squirm away, ‘Arré, arré, you'll wake up Devdas, what are you doing? Pleasestop pleasestop pleasestop!'
When she realised Mohandas wasn't about to let go, she gave him a little push, broke free and ran toward the river. She leapt like a mad doe, suddenly free, running beneath the hazy, dimming light of the celestial bodies in the sky that shone on the sandy bank that stretched off as far as the eye could see.

‘C'mon and catch me if you c-a-a-a-a-n-n-n! And if you do, I'll know you
can
and
more,
' she teased, her voice trailing off as she ran far into the distance, her shadow vanishing.

‘Hu, tu, tu, I'm coming after you!' Mohandas said as he set off at a sprint toward her.

Kasturi quickened her pace, but Mohandas was catching up. As she ran faster, giving it all she had, her feet splashed water on the riverbanks. ‘C'mon and catch me if you c-a-a-a-a-n-n-n!' She was getting winded. Mohandas's ‘Hu, tu, tu, I'm coming after you!' grew closer with every second. She realised she wasn't going to be able to get away, but nonetheless gave it one more go – and just as she was picking up speed, Mohandas managed to catch up with one great leap and grab hold of her; they plunged into the waters. ‘Lemmego! Lemmego!' she said trying to fend him off, splashing him with water, but Mohandas just held on tighter. His breath and her breath commingled in the wet river air. He tickled her as before, this time yielding great laughter. She dropped her false resistance, and in the middle of pushing him away, her body slid up right to his, like iron to a magnet.

He flipped her down onto the shallow riverbed and slid atop her. ‘My sweet little beauty!' And he began to kiss her. They flopped and splashed, unbound in the cool waters of the Kathina, as if they were two young fish, maybe a gonch or padhit, frolicking under the hazy, flickering stars in that hot monsoon midnight. Occasionally a sweet scream of delight emerged from
deep in Kasturi's bosom, piercing the night's stillness, and mixed with Mohandas's heavily breathed ‘Hu, tu, tu tuuuuu!'

An exhausted Kasturi emerged from the water and fell asleep in her soaking wet sari, Devdas at her side. As for Mohandas, he remained lying in the shallow waters of the Kathina river for who knows how many hours, eyes fixed on the gods in the sky, and singing:

Mohandas had such a sweet singing voice that night that the lapwings and pankukris in the far-away distance heard his song and joined in.

That night would later be remembered as the beginning of Sharda.

It was a good year for muskmelon and watermelon and vegetables in general, but the price remained low at the market, and there wasn't any real profit to be had. Again Kasturi was pregnant and had to take on more work, while Mohandas toiled like an animal. While that one time the Kathina had heeded his prayers, afterward its waters often crested high, its current gobbling up a month's worth of Mohandas's labor. Kaba's cough began to worsen, but Mohandas met an excellent doctor, Dr Wakankar, who worked six miles away at the government hospital in the neighbouring village, and explained that TB drugs were available free in the hospital, and that his father
should get the full course of medicine. The doctor gave him a plastic bag with a full two months' worth of the drug. But Kaba wasn't capable by himself of taking the medications on time, and he didn't take his meals or eat according to any sort of normal schedule. Dr Wakankar also told Mohandas that his mother could have an operation done that would restore some of her eyesight, but it would run to at least ten thousand. He gave his word to Mohandas that if ever an honest district collector came to the area, he'd arrange the operation; but years passed without an honest district collector coming to the area. In the meantime, a young man and woman from an NGO started visiting their weaver-caste neighbourhood, and made all sorts of promises about some project that would greatly increase their quality of life. The two youths filled out a bunch of forms, and had Mohandas sign them. But then the visits stopped; later they found out that the two had got married and gone to Delhi. She was working for a TV channel and, thanks to an uncle of his, he'd been set up with a cushy IAS job in a slum development, and was now opening his own foundation, taking trips crisscrossing India and the globe.

Time marched on with Mohandas and Kasturi somehow managing to survive by the grace of Malihamai and their own hard work. Sharda was two, Devdas four. Kaba now spent most of his time stretched out on the cot. Sometimes he'd help make some long-grass rope or husk the bamboo. But his cough got worse and worse, and he was so skinny you could count his ribs. Sometimes it seemed as if he were spewing chunks of his own flesh mixed with the blood. And meanwhile some bigwigs had found a way to have Dr Wakankar transferred to some other district, leaving no one in the hospital who would provide the
TB drugs free of charge. Whenever Mohandas went to inquire, he was told to come back next week. Kaba had weakened to the extent that he just lay on the cot staring silently at the ground after each fit of coughing. Insects began to recognise the sound of his hack. Yellow and black ants set off in droves the moment his spit hit the spot next to his bed where he spat. A swarm of horseflies attacked the moment he coughed, nearly giving Kaba a heart attack, and it looked like the end was near. He tried calling out for Putlibai, but was seized in a coughing fit before he could get the words out; finally, he ended up filling his cupped hands with a mass of spit and blood and tissue. Mohandas and Kasturi had been gone for a while looking after the plantings at the river's edge, and blind Putlibai was the only one at home. She went tripping and scrambling to Kaba's side, began touching her husband's body all over, crying. Rheumatism had stiffened her joints over the past year. Kaba lay absolutely still. After a little while after his breathing steadied he began to chastise Putlibai.

‘Hey blindy, why all the tears? I'm not about to kick the bucket yet. First I am going to attend Devdas's wedding, then send Sharda off to her new husband. After that, I can die. Stop crying!'

(Let's stop here for a minute. I bet you're thinking that I'm taking advantage of the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction, to spin you some hundred-and- twenty- five-year-old story dressed up as
a tale of today. But the truth is that the account I am putting before you, in its old and backward style, manner, and language, is a tale of a time right after 9/11, in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York; a time when two sovereign Asian nations were reduced to ash and rubble. It's a tale of a time when anybody worshipping any gods other than the god of the US and Europe were called fascists, terrorists, religious fanatics. Gas and oil, water, markets, profit, plunder: to get all of this, companies, governments, and armies were killing innocent people every day all over the world.

A time when, if you looked closely, you'd notice that everyone in power was a clone of one another, when everyone was consuming the same brands, drinking the same drinks, eating the same foods, driving the same cars made by the same car companies, bank account in the same kinds of banks. Everyone had the same kind of ATM card in their pocket and same mobile phone in their hands. They got drunk on the same booze, and you could see them on page three of the newspaper on any of the TV channels from 1 to 70, soused, naked, outrageous. Look closely and you'll notice they all have the same skin tone and speak the same language.)

The colour was totally washed out of Mohandas's blue jeans and checked shirt, and both were covered with patches Kasturi had sewn on. Kaba left his bed only if he had to answer the call of nature, but otherwise slept day and night, coughing and spitting up phlegm. Putlibai groaned incessantly from the pain of her rheumatism. And yet when they were in the presence of their
grandchildren, Devdas and Sharda, the rickety frames of grandmother and grandfather overflowed with life and tenderness and devotion to the little ones. Devdas jumped up and down on his baba Kaba's cot while little Sharda stubbornly stuck to her aaji Putlibai's lap and horsed around.

That day Mohandas and Kasturi were busy weaving bamboo mats, bamboo pith helmets, and little purses woven from bamboo. They'd received such an enormous order from Vindhyachal Handicrafts – Mohanlal Marwari's shop – that for the past ten or twelve weeks they'd done nothing but try to finish it. Kaba and Putli looked after the children. The order was for fifty mats, fifty hats, and thirty purses. Kaba got up from his cot when his cough wasn't rendering him immobile and helped husk the bamboo; it was an ancient craft, and he had a lot of experience. Kasturi wove the mats as if her fingers were working a machine. Four-and-a-half year old Devdas had put a hat over his head and with a bamboo stick in hand was driving two-year-old Sharda as if she were a goat, shouting, ‘hurry up, get along!'; wee Sharda in turn crawled on all fours as best she could from one corner of the room to the other. Just then there was a knock on the door. It was Kasturi's brother-in-law, Gopaldas, who, leaning his bike against the wall, came inside. He worked as a saw operator at Narmada Timber and Furniture at the bazaar, and the owner also sent him on errands to collect various small debts.