Nectar in a Sieve (4 page)

In our sort of family it is as well to be the first-born: what resources there are, have later to be shared out in smaller and smaller portions. Ira had been fed well on milk and butter and rice; Arjun too, for he was the first boy. But for those who came after, there was less and less. Four more sons I bore in as many years -- Thambi, Murugan, Raja and Selvam. It was as if all the pent-up desires of my childless days were now bearing fruit. I was very fortunate, for they were, without exception, healthy; and in their infancy and childhood my daughter looked after them almost as much as I did. She was a great one for babies, handling them better than many a grown woman while she was still a child.

How quickly children grow! They are infants -- you look away a minute and in that time they have left their babyhood behind. Our little girl ran about in the sun bare and beautiful as she grew, with no clothes to hamper her limbs or confine her movements. Then one day when she was five -- long before Arjun was born -- Nathan pointed her out to me as she played in the fields.

"Cover her," he said. "It is time."

I wanted to cry out that she was a baby still, but of course Nathan was righti she had left infancy forever. And so I made a skirt for her, weaving bright colours into the white cotton that she might like it, and so she did for a time, wearing it gladly, twirling it about her as she spun round and round; but when the novelty had worn off, she became fractious and wanted to tear it from her. It was nearly a month before she resigned herself to it.

With six children to feed we could no longer afford to eat all the vegetables we grew. Once a week I would cut and pack our garden produce, selecting the best and leaving the spoilt or bruised vegetables for ourselves, cover the basket with leaves and set off for the village.

Old Granny was always glad to buy from me, and at first I would make straight for the corner of the street where she sat with her gunny sack spread before her. The old lady would pick out the purple brinjals and yellow pumpkins, the shiny green and red chillies, feeling them with her wrinkled fingers and complimenting me on their size.

"None like yours," she would say. "Such colour, such a bloom on them!" Perhaps she said it to everyone who came to her, but I would feel absurdly pleased and go away with my insides smiling. Then one day Biswas, the moneylender, stopped me in the street. I would have passed after a brief salutation, for among us there is a dislike of the moneylending class, but he stood squarely in my path.

"Ah, Rukmani," he said, "in a hurry as usual, I see."

"My children are not of age to be left alone for long," said I, speaking civilly.

"Yet surely you have time for a little business with me?"

"If you will tell me what business?"

"Buying and selling," he said, cackling, "which is your business, as lending is mine."

"If you will make yourself clear," I said, "I will stay and hear; otherwise I must be on my way."

"Those vegetables," he said, "that Old Granny buys from you. What price does she pay you?"

"A fair price," I said, "and no haggling."

"I will pay you four annas a dozen for brinjals, and six annas each for pumpkins, if they are large." He was offering almost double what Old Granny paid.

I went away. The following week I sold almost my whole basket to him, keeping only a little for Old Granny. I did not like selling to him, although he paid me a better price. It was business and nothing else with him, never a word of chaff or a smile -- or perhaps it was the flattery I missed -- and I would much rather have had it the other way; but there you are, you cannot choose.

To my surprise Old Granny made no comment, beyond smiling reassuringly when I muttered guiltily that our needs at home were growing. In the beginning she may not have known, but when I sold her, week after week, one small pumpkin or half a dozen brinjals she must have guessed the truth. But she said nothing, nor did I, for we both knew she could not pay me more, and I could not afford to sell for less. As it was, we were going short of many things. We no longer had milk in the house, except for the youngest child; curds and butter were beyond our means except on rare occasions. But we never went hungry as some of the families were doing. We grew our own plantains and coconuts, the harvests were good and there was always food in the house -- at least a bagful of rice, a little dhal, if no more. Then when the rice terraces were drained, there was the fish, spawned among the paddy, and what we could not eat, we dried and salted away. And every month I put away a rupee or two against the time Ira would be married. So we still could not grumble.

CHAPTER IV

CHANGE I had known before, and it had been gradual. My father had been headman once, a person of consequence in our village: I had lived to see him relinquish this importance, but the alteration was so slow that we hardly knew when it came. I had seen both my parents sink into old age and death, and here too there was no violence. But the change that now came into my life, into all our lives, blasting its way into our village, seemed wrought in the twinkling of an eye.

Arjun came running to us with the news. He had run all the way from the village and we had to wait while he gulped in fresh air. "Hundreds of men," he gasped. "They are pulling down houses around the maidan and there is a long line of bullock carts carrying bricks."

The other children clustered round him, their eyes popping. Arjun swelled with importance. "I am going back," he announced. "There is a lot to be seen."

Nathan looked up from the grain he was measuring into the gunny bag for storing. "It is the new tannery they are building," he said. "I had heard rumours."

Arjun, torn between a desire to dash back and a craving to hear more from his father, teetered anxiously to and fro on his heels; but Nathan said no more. He put the grain away carefully in the granary, then he rose. "Come," he said. "We will see."

All the families were out: the news had spread quickly. Kali and her husband, Kunthi and her boys, Janaki, surrounded by her numerous family, even Old Granny, had come out to see. Children were everywhere, dodging in and out of the crowd and crying out to each other in shrill excited voices. Startled pi-dogs added to the din. We formed a circle about the first arrivals, some fifty men or so, who were unloading bricks from the bullock carts. They spoke in our language, but with an intonation which made it difficult for us to understand them.

"Townspeople," Kali whispered to me. "They say they have travelled more than a hundred miles to get here." She was prone to exaggerate, and also believed whatever was told her.

In charge of the men was an overseer who looked and spoke like the men, but who was dressed in a shirt and trousers, and he had a hat on his head such as I had only seen Kenny wear before: a topee the colour of thatch. The others wore loincloths and turbans and a few wore shirtsi but as the day wore on they doffed their shirts, one by one, until all were as our men.

The men worked well and quickly, with many a sidelong glance at us; they seemed to enjoy having created such a stir and lured such a big audience. As for the overseer, he made much play of his authority, directing them with loud voice and many gestures but doing not a stroke of work himself. Still, it must have been hot for him standing there waving his arms about, for the shirt he wore was sticking to his back and now and then he would lift his hat as if to allow the wind to cool his scalp.

Until at last there was a commotion about the edges of the circle of which we were the inner ring. The crowd was parting, and as the movement spread to us we gave way too, to let a tall white man through. He had on a white topee, and was accompanied by three or four men dressed like him in shorts. The overseer now came forward, bowing and scraping, and the red-faced one spoke to him rapidly but so low that we could not hear what he was saying. The overseer listened respectfully and then began telling us to go, not to disturb the men, although for so long he had been glad of many watchers. In our maidan, in our village he stood, telling us to go.

"As if he owned us," muttered Kannan the chakkli. I think that already he foresaw his livelihood being wrested from him, for he salted and tanned his own skins, making them into chaplis for those in the village who wore them. So he stood his ground, glaring at the overseer and refusing to move, as did a few others who resented the haughty orders that poured from the man's lips; but most of us went, having our own concerns to mind.

Every day for two months the line of bullock carts came in laden with bricks and stones and cement, sheets of tin and corrugated iron, coils of rope and hemp. The kilns in the neighbouring villages were kept busy firing the bricks, but their output was insufficient, and the carts had to go further afield, returning dusty and brick-filled. Day and night women twisted rope, since they could sell as much as they made, and traders waxed prosperous selling their goods to the workmen. They were very well paid, these men, some of them earning two rupees in a single day, whereas even in good times we seldom earned as much, and they bought lavishly: rice and vegetables and dhal, sweetmeats and fruit. Around the maidan they built their huts, for there was no other place for them, and into these brought their wives and children, making a community of their own. At night we saw their fires and by day we heard their noise, loud, ceaseless, clangour and din, chatter, sometimes a chanting to help them get a heavy beam into position, or hoist a load of tin sheeting to the roof.

Then one day the building was completed. The workers departed, taking with them their goods and chattels, leaving only the empty huts behind. There was a silence. In the unwonted quiet we all wondered apprehensively what would happen next. A week went by and another. Losing our awe we entered the building, poking into its holes and corners, looking into the great vats and drums that had been installed into then, curiosity slaked, we set about our old tasks on the land and in our homes.

There were some among the traders -- those who had put up their prices and made their money -- who regretted their going. Not I. They had invaded our village with clatter and din, had taken from us the maidan where our children played, and had made the bazaar prices too high for us. I was not sorry to see them go.

"They will be back," said Nathan my husband, "or others will take their place. And did you not benefit from their stay, selling your pumpkins and plantains for better prices than you did before?"

"Yes," said I, for I had, "but what could I buy with the money with prices so high everywhere? No sugar or dhal or ghee have we tasted since they came, and should have had none so long as they remained."

"Nevertheless," said Nathan, "they will be back; for you may be sure they did not take so much trouble only to leave a shell in our midst. Therefore it is as well to accept these things."

"Never, never," I cried. "They may live in our midst but I can never accept them, for they lay their hands upon us and we are all turned from tilling to barter, and hoard our silver since we cannot spend it, and see our children go without the food that their children gorge, and it is only in the hope that one day things will be as they were that we have done these things. Now that they have gone let us forget them and return to our ways."

"Foolish woman," Nathan said. "There is no going back. Bend like the grass, that you do not break."

Our children had not seen us so serious, so vehement, before. Three of my sons huddled together in a corner staring at us with wide eyes; the two youngest lay asleep, one in Ira's arms, the other leaning heavily against her; and she herself sagged against the wall with their weight as she sat there on the floor. There was a look on her lovely soft face that pierced me.

"Ah well," I said, dissembling, "perhaps I exaggerate. If they return we shall have a fine dowry for our daughter, and that is indeed a good thing."

The lost look went from Ira's face. She was a child still, despite the ripeness of her thirteen years, and no doubt fancied a grand wedding even as I had done.

They came back. Not the same men who went, but others, and not all at once but slowly. The red-faced white man came back with a foreman, and took charge of everything. He did not live in the village but came and went, while his men took over the huts that had lain empty, the ones who came last settling beside the river, bringing their wives and children with them, or dotting the maidan even more thickly with the huts they built for themselves and their families.

I went back to my home, thankful that a fair distance still lay between them and us, that although the smell of their brews and liquors hung permanently in the sickened air, still their noise came to us from afar.

"You are a queer being," Kunthi said, her brows flaring away from her eyes. "Are you not glad that our village is no longer a clump of huts but a small town? Soon there will be shops and tea stalls, and even a bioscope, such as I have been to before I was married. You will see."

"No doubt I will," I said. "It will not gladden me. Already my children hold their noses when they go by, and all is shouting and disturbance and crowds wherever you go. Even the birds have forgotten to sing, or else their calls are lost to us."