Someone Else's Garden (29 page)

But the novelty of the prisoner is wearing thin, and now only the staunchest hecklers – Gope and mute Kanno – remain. Time has made them still and silent. The only one who remains keen as a ripe chilli is Singh Sahib himself. His heart still reverberates like a tuning fork in unison with the bandit’s daily prayers. Subconsciously Singh Sahib knows that their entwined destinies will bear a profound fruit.

He finds himself humming one of the prisoner’s tunes:

‘Oh innocent heart,
oh innocent heart, What is your desire, what is your destiny?
In this material world,
You are a lost soul,
Oh ignorant heart, oh ignorant heart
What is your desire, what is your destiny? . . .’

. . . and realises that since he abducted the bandit, he hasn’t once thought of his lovely late wife Bibiji. Singh Sahib has begun to take apart the thick skein of his prisoner’s life and now thinks of him as a person, a family man with a history; and it is with building acceptance that he sees his son squat beside the cell to chat with him.

Each day Singh Sahib listens for their conversation, but the words elude him because they talk softly. In their loose postures he sees a familiarity that he lacks with his own son.

Ram Singh still comes to his father’s room nearly every day. He smells of alcohol and his manner is accusing and brooding. He talks of nothing but getting rid of the bandit. The elder son wants his father to act through him, he wants his father’s approval to kill the bandit. Singh Sahib’s approval would represent a conscious choice, a choice in favour of him over Lokend.

Today Prem’s thoughts are more with Mamta than with Daku Manmohan.
Where are you now? Mamta, take care of yourself. I always thought I would be next in line for the city, but it turned out to be you.
He is disappointed, but not as much as he thought he would be. Looking after Daku Manmohan seems almost better to him, much more dangerous, much more responsible, much more exciting. He turns around to face his charge.

‘Come here, boy, I have a story to tell you, but first one question: do you think people are defined by their deeds?’ asks Daku Manmohan.

‘No,’ replies Prem cautiously.

‘So, could you accept me as a man, instead of judging me for what I have done?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I like your honesty. Did you know your uncle was my right-hand man for many, many years, and that’s why your family was spared?’

‘Yes, we suspected as much.’

‘He was a good man. I trusted him with my life.’ Daku Manmohan thinks back to a different time. His eyes sweep past the bars of his cell into the brightness beyond without focusing on anything. ‘You remind me very much of him. He was just a little older than you when he went on his first raid.’ The boy is entrapped by the story made personal for him. ‘Shall I go on?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Then listen. My family used to be farmers too, just like your family. We too had debts with the Big House, just like your father does. My father was one of the farmers interested in forming a panchayat to regulate things like repayments and interest on loans. They would have got their panchayat if our crops hadn’t failed that year. But because our crops failed, we weren’t able to make our payments to the Big House. Singh Sahib’s father sent his henchmen to destroy us. They said that because we hadn’t paid what we owed them, they owned everything we had. So first they took our grain, then they burned down our hut and after that they took all my sisters away and sold them to a brothel in the city. My eldest sister was to be married one week later. She killed herself.’ The bandit’s eyes are red and burning.

‘Go on, go on,’ says the boy, unabashedly showing a morbid interest in the tragic tale.

‘My mother went mad after that. You may know her. She is the one who grabs the feet of all the temple-goers.’ Prem knows the woman well. She lies by the steps, breasts exposed; sometimes a passer-by will throw a rag over her. Lata Bai always put some food in her thali, cursing the bandits as she did so.

‘But we thought . . .’

‘Yes, everyone thinks that we did that to her. But I didn’t do that to my mother. As for my father, he disappeared that night, leaving us three brothers alone. We knew they would come for us the next morning, so we ran away. We went into the mountains and ravines where more like us lived. There we learned to shoot straight and sever a head with one blow. We learned to ride fast and hide in seconds.

‘The year of the drought, that’s when we hit. Hit the village as hard as we could so it would never recover. At that time, I was just a little older than you are now. After the success of that raid, there was no looking back. We raided all the villages from Gopalpur right up to Begumpet, adding to our numbers by kidnapping young boys. That’s how your uncle came to us. He begged us to spare his family, and I honoured that pact.

‘I became a senior in the gang three months before we looted Sonpur. The bandits always thought that Sonpur had the best-looking girls; most of our women came from there. The ones who didn’t eventually stay with us of their own free will became prostitutes, traded amongst the men. That’s where my wife is from, Sonpur.’ Daku Manmohan, the proudest, most feared bandit in the whole of India, allows tears to form in his eyes.

‘She came to me hardly nine years old. They all wanted her, but I said no! No! No!’ Years later, the memory is still strong. ‘I taught her to read and write. I protected her, and in time it was my good fortune that she came to love me. I married her. She is a beautiful, brave, educated woman, much too good to be a bandit’s wife. I swore that no child of mine would ever have to live like me.

‘Soon after I got married, Sardar Ranjit Singh, the head of the gang, asked me to take over from him. That was a shock for my elder brother. He felt betrayed by the Sardar, so he grew to hate me, the person who had stolen his birthright. He even turned our younger brother against me. They knew how I loathed gratuitous bloodshed, so just to spite me they were ruthless in their raids. For them no amount of blood was enough. The blood . . . the blood . . . Cruelty is not the biggest killer, desensitisation is.

‘Though I threw them out, the reputation for cruelty stuck, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Then I had my son, Abhay, and I knew that he too would be forced to become a bandit one day. So when Lokend asked me to surrender I said yes.’

Prem’s eyes glisten with unshed tears. Like a seashell that contains the sound of the sea, people have an empathy which connects them with others. Prem’s tears aren’t for himself, they are for his prisoner.

‘Why does Lokend Bhai do the things he does for you?’

‘Lokend Bhai. He’s a conundrum. He doesn’t do those things because of my story. If it were up to my history, no one would do anything for me. You don’t know how many I’ve killed, how many I’ve destroyed. No, for Lokend I am a concept. I am just a soul. Ask that man over there what I’ve done.’ He points to Gope, squatting by the temple steps.

‘Do you want me to hate you?’ asks the boy.

‘Don’t hate him,’ says Gope. ‘I hate him enough for the both of us. I hate him enough for the whole world.’

Tenderness is a strange thing, and it is perhaps most ardent in a hard man. Somehow Daku Manmohan has allowed himself the love of Prem. In return for the boy’s love, he has been teaching him to read and write.

‘Hindi is a very scientific language,’ he reminds his pupil daily. ‘It is like learning to dance with your tongue! Take the tip of your tongue on to the roof of your mouth close to your teeth to pronounce the first consonant, K, then slide your tongue back a bit for the next one, KH, and a little further for the next, G, and so on.’

When Prem can’t get his pencil round a particularly difficult curlicue, the bandit affectionately scolds the boy without any harshness in his voice.

Each day the boy arrives at the cell, books and kite in hand. He has given up the pretence of guarding his prisoner and instead avidly shares the blitheness of the season with him, making the bandit’s imprisonment (he hopes) easier to bear.

‘How do you know to write?’

‘Do you think only village boys joined our gang? No, it was all types. There were many educated boys in my gang. One of them taught me to read. That boy died in the first Gopalpur raid.’

‘Do you miss your son?’ Prem asks slowly. ‘Do I miss my boy? Yes. Yes, I do. He is just about your age. He must be flying his kite too.’ Daku Manmohan starts pacing his cell like the tiger he is, trapped in a small space.

‘One of those in the sky might be your son’s.’ ‘You know, each night I look at the moon and I say to myself, “Take heart, old man, take heart, you share a common moon.” I may never see my family again, but we share a common moon.’ He pauses; Prem offers his silence as tangibly as a clasping hand. ‘I don’t know how much longer I will be able to wait and watch dawn break at the appointed hour . . .’ He stops pacing. ‘Why won’t they hang me? I have become an example, that’s all. People look at me and they tell their children, “Eat your food or Daku Manmohan will come and get you.” I thought I could take anything. But when I see you each morning here with your book, I think of my son . . .’ The man’s voice starts to thicken. Prem puts his hand in through the bars. The prisoner grips it tight. The warmth of the little hand dissipates the old hurt.

‘Maybe you will see your boy again, you never know. I am sure I will see my sister again. She ran away from her husband. You know she came to me the first day I came to work here. I hid her at Asmara Didi’s old place for two days and then . . . and then she went to the city. She was married hardly one year back. She said her husband would kill her if he finds her. I don’t know what she did. Mamta was my best sister. Bapu borrowed money from the Big House for her dowry, you know. That’s why I’m working here, to pay off Bapu’s loan. I didn’t want Mamta to marry that man. She was his second wife. He had two children and the boys all said he’d killed his first wife. I know he will kill Mamta if he finds her.’

‘Under the circumstances, I think she is best left hidden in the city amongst thousands of people, and you have to believe she’s safe. Perhaps she’ll run into Lokend in the city. They say he’s doing big things there. He is a good man. I wish his father could see beyond the family tradition.’

‘Yes, Lokend Bhai is a great man. You know, he helped my sister too, brought her food . . . now who else would do that for us low castes? He is another Gandhi, they say.’ Just the thought of his connection to Lokend Bhai makes Prem’s chest swell with pride.

A guard comes over to let the bandit out of his cell. He doesn’t bother putting the shackles on his ankles any more; they know the bandit won’t go anywhere.

Daku Manmohan prepares to slip on his yoke, legs bent at the knees anticipating its crushing weight. The boy runs to his side to help him.

‘No, I do this alone.’

He bounces the yoke up and up, on to his shoulders, staying bent double to support the weight as he starts to walk. ‘Not today.’ The guard walks up to him and hits him lightly on his back with a branch from the tamarind tree. ‘Today you have easier work in store for you. Lucky bastard. See, he’s become an animal. He takes the yoke on his back, ready for work. You donkey, don’t you remember the fields have been ploughed? Don’t you remember cutting the wheat? Don’t you remember threshing the wheat? See what an idiot he’s become.’ The guard’s head is wobbling frantically on his neck. Each wiggle gives credence to his question. ‘In the beginning we had to beat him.’ The guard rotates the bandit by his elbow, lifts up his vest and shows his back to Prem. The bandit offers no resistance.

The boy turns his head away from flesh more furrowed than one of the bandit’s newly ploughed fields.

‘Arey, this is nothing! I would break both his legs if Singh Sahib allowed me to. I enjoyed doing this to him. How many people has he killed? And guess what they have in store for him now? Grinding the wheat, that’s what,’ he says in a falsetto, then spits on the floor. ‘Why don’t they give him something even easier to do? Why don’t they give him Asmara Didi’s roses and ask him to make jam or make dough for the chapattis? Phah, for all the killing he’s done, he should be hitched to that yoke for eternity!’

The watersheds in people’s lives appear in the commonest of places. Daku Manmohan’s intended change of job is about to try destiny’s determination to the limit.

‘Yes, you’d better hitch me to this yoke for eternity, for I won’t grind wheat!’

‘Why Daku Manmohan, what’s that I hear? You won’t grind the wheat. Won’t you just? We’ll make you do it!’ The guard is excited at last to have got a rise out of his prisoner, he is relishing the prospect of a fight, his head is all but rotating right off his neck.

‘Not even God can make me do it. It is woman’s work. Do what you will to me, you will never get me to grind that wheat.’

‘Perhaps I will have a chance to break both your legs after all,’ the guard says.

‘Don’t listen to him, Daku Manmohan. He’s just babbling to confuse you. What’s there in grinding the wheat? It will give your wounds time to heal and then it will be ploughing season again,’ says the boy, displaying logic belong his years. But even to his youthful imagination, the picture of the bandit sitting over the grinding stone rotating away like he’s seen his mother and sisters do seems vulgar.

‘No! No one can make me grind the wheat! I’ve said what I have to say!’ Daku Manmohan allows no glimmer of enlightenment to pass through common sense. He turns suddenly and wraps the guard’s collar in his fingers. The man takes in a sharp breath, caught unawares. Slowly the danger of his situation reveals itself. An unchained killer has him by the throat. He crosses his legs to stop that urinating feeling. ‘You tell your zamindar that I am of the warrior caste, a kshatriya, and our kind will never do a woman’s work. Let him do his worst. He can get me to grind the wheat only when I am dead.’ He flings the guard away from him, walks back into his cell and shuts the door. ‘I will not do a woman’s work,’ he repeats, locking the cell door from the inside.