NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
23
“Are, Nachchatar, how are you making do here? Happy?” asked Bharat. “There you had so much fun.”
“What to do sahib, one has to make do,” said Nachchatar.
“His employer is going to buy. Nachchatar knows everything. Tell him what grows well there.”
“Yes,” said Nachchatar. “That is what he said. He came here yesterday.”
“Madam did not ask you to come work for her again?”
“No. I have heard that she hasn’t been to the farm in a year or so.”
Listening to them talk Adhirath was stunned to know that these men who worked on such large fields where you could hardly hear the other person call out, and who would not be allowed to listen to the conversations of their employers at any time, who had never seen the houses of their farmhouse owners in the city, knew such a lot about them.
Nachchatar had worked for the Bindals from the day they had bought the farmland. The whole plot was 17.3 acres big. Of these nine acres had been registered in the name of bahuji. Her parents had paid for the land. The day the land was registered, that day in the registrar’s office the Vaseeka Navees…
“Who is this Vaseeka?”
That led to a lot of laughter. Bharat told him that the, “deed writer is known as vaseeka navees. He is the one who knows what the government rate of land is and how much stamp duty you have to pay.”
“That vaseeka navees knew my father,” Nachchatar said.
He had got him the job on the farm. Bapu, he said, used to serve tea at the court. By caste they were malis. He knew everything, making beds, planting nurseries, weeding, manuring. But he had to admit that Madam also knew a lot of gardening. She could wield the spade as well as any gardener. She had made so many different kinds of foreign flowers bloom in her garden. When the house was built she handpicked everything. In the beginning she used to come to the farm regularly. Used to say that when the house is built she would move in, live here. Then the house was completed but by then she had had her child. She never stayed here but all the trees on the farm were planted by her. She used to do everything with enthusiasm and care. Everyone grows mustard and wheat but she grew barley, oats, foreign varieties of corn and even baby corn and many different kinds of vegetables that he had never seen before.
“Baby coran, you know, you have a special technique to grow it. Madam taught me. When the male flower forms each and every flower has to be plucked. Before it blooms. I did not even know that there is a male flower in the plant. If you don’t pluck the flower what happens is that the cob begins to form seed. Then it does not remain soft or what you baby coran. It must not be fertilized, that is what she told me. Once she said that she would grow rice on a small plot. I said this soil is sandy it will not hold water. So she told me there is no need to fill up the plot with water. You can grow rice without water logging also. It will need irrigation, that is all. She got some special seed. The plants also came up but they got burnt in the sun pretty soon, in a couple of days.”
Everyone laughed. Someone remarked that nobody can grow everything, just because you have money does not mean you can grow whatever you want to.
“Okay, okay. Tell us about what happened on the day of Holi,” said Bharat.
“What is there to say? Since the time bahuji stopped coming here I quit the job. Now if something goes wrong with the tractor, there is nobody to get it repaired. This year they harvested mustard on only four acres and that too with great difficulty. For nearly a year and a half only malik used to come here, bahuji did not set foot here. Earlier that direver, Parduman, he would come here to enjoy himself. He brought seed, he would take back vegetables. Get the house cleaned. He had the keys to the house. Sometimes he spent the night here. then he began to get that girl. My life became hell. We are not such people. Once I called bahuji and chote malik picked up the phone. I told him what was happening. He said he would come here and teach him the lesson he deserved. Asked me to call him the day he brought the girl. I called him the next time the fellow came. Chote malik reached the place that very day. After that so much filth was spread that I cannot even begin to describe it. Don’t even ask me.”
“What happened?” Adhirath felt the blood race in his veins. As if he could see the face of the murderer. He had a strong hunch that Parduman and Udairaj were somehow in cahoots with each other.
“I left the job, sahib. We are decent folks. I also have a wife, back in my ancestral village. I left and never went back, bahuji aksed me man y times to come, but I did not go. Has been over a year. They kept getting people to look after the place for short periods. I asked this boy to work for them. And look the police has broken his leg. I swear by my mother sahib, we never do anything dirty. Where there are dirty goings on I don’t live there. I know this man, he is very decent. He will not steal a guava. I should never have sent the poor lad to work there.”
“This thing happened on Holi. I have been wondering how it happened. Nobody came. Nobody stayed at the faram and look they found the body of that woman there. I wonder what happened,” said Bharat almost as if to himself. Adhirath knew he was fishing for more information.
It wasn’t clear why but Adhirath felt as if nobody wanted to talk about that day. It was as if they felt that if they as much as mentioned that day something worse could happen. They all began to talk about other things. When they were all a little high, Bharat asked them what ill omen had overtaken them that day that the moment the day is mentioned everyone behaves as if yogurt has been set in their mouths and they cannot even move their lips.
“Abey, here I am thinking we are all friends here, we are like family. We are not going to tell anyone. One just wants to know what the mystery is. If the police came here and gave you two kicks you would all be babbling all night. And forgetting all about omens,” said Bharat with some asperity.
It was Nachchatar who started talking about it. “In the day everyone had done their teeka. This Cheti came here at noon. There were others too. We had some bhang. I won’t lie sahib, it is evening time and lights are on. God is watching. The bhang grows here, wild. We plucked it and ground it and made our drinks. We do it off and on.”
“I have heard…” began a man and suddenly went silent. Bharat asked him to elaborate, many times.
“Arre, what he will hear, mad man,” said Nachchattar cautioning that man.
“You interfere in his speech. He will forget whatever he knows, for sure. Here I am thinking these are my own people and getting booze for you and you are treating me like I am an outsider. Hiding things from me. I am an outsider and so are you. we should be all united or not?” his tone was miffed.
“That sarpanch, no, that same former sarpanch, he went to get a haircut. He said his Holi had been fantastic. He was saying that night something did happen in the Bindal faram. They were passing by they had seen, that there was no car but the lights were on,” Sunny said. He was plonked on the charpai along with them.
“That is what I heard,” said the man who had begun it all. “That former sarpanch, I have heard, went to a doctor to get his hand bandaged, here.” he placed his hand on at the base of the little finger of his left hand. “Here. He said that the night of Holi he was giving a bone to a dog and the dog bit him. But he did not get injection for dog bite. I told him he should get those injections, the fourteen injections they give you when a dog bites you. It is very dangerous, this kind of deep bite. He began to scold me. Said you mind your own bijness. People, you know, were saying…”
“What?” asked Adhirath despite himself.
“Are, say it,” said Sunny. “Let me tell you. In the village they are saying, it was not a dog but a bitch that bit him. A fair bitch!” he winked as he said this. Everyone began to laugh.
“He said that the lights were on in the farm? Then?” Adhirath wanted to take the conversation back to the half told tale of that night. He forgot to sip from the glass he held.
“I said you should have gone in. You have been the sarpanch, who can dare not let you in? He says, I went. That direver was there. He had brought that girl with him. He said he threatened to call the police. He told the direver he can’t run a brothel in the village.”
“Is that all? He just threatened and came away?” Bharat said. “This is the way a leader should behave.”
“He told me that he wanted to call the police the next day but the police came on its own. The randi was also taught a lesson she deserved.”
“This Sarpanch has become so decent, has he? And that Pardhan? They must have been together. They simply issued a threat and came away? Why did they never call the police till now?”
“Sahib, do these faram people also vote in elections of the panchayat?” Cheti asked him.
“Listen to him, now! How are they concerned with matters of the village?” Nachchattar said. “They are big people. Work in the city. That is why village people let us stay here because we work for them, we have their backing. Otherwise they would have swallowed us alive by now. That is why nobody gets their bahu beti here.”
Nachchattar said that when her child was small Saroj madam used to get him to the farm. He used to run a lot in the field. Open fields. No fear of any traffic. He climbed trees. She had also slung some swings made of ropes, some long swings also in which people could go to sleep. “They call them something. She had told me. Yes, hemok. After that she began to send seeds with Parduman. He took back vegetables. The menager arranged for everything that needed to be done. After that even the menager lost his job. Then he lost his life.”
“After that the direver became so daring I can’t tell you,” said Cheti. “And that woman too. Earlier she used to stay with the malik at night and sometimes the direver brought her here in the day. She began to think she owned the place. And that the malik would dance to any tune she played.”
“Was the malik going to marry her?” asked a man.
“What rubbish you talk,” Nachchattar reprimanded him. He sounded as if the man who had suggested this had insulted him. “Who ever marries a whore? She first passed from under the direver’s thighs. She was asking for money. That is all.”
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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