to Singh Sahib’s love-standard, and some even think they love their women with the same honourable hopelessness, but they don’t. Their passion is nothing but a tremor in their collective imagination, a swindle by their egos.
‘Love stories will get you nowhere,’ says her mother.
‘Yes, hai, what if he is old and beats you?’ Sneha verbalises her sister’s worst fears. Sneha’s unquestioning gullibility isn’t the only thing Mamta can count on.
Once again the ditty takes hold of her . . .
Marked Mamta’s getting married, Marked Mamta’s getting married, To an old, old man, He’ll come on an old horse to get her, He’ll give her an old sari to wear, They’ll jiggery all night together, They’ll jiggery all night together.
Marked Mamta’s getting married, Marked Mamta’s getting married, To an old, old man, He’ll beat her black and blue, Her belly will be swollen in no time, They’ll jiggery that night too, They’ll jiggery that night too.
‘Amma, that Ramu said Bapu would sell me to the bandits if no one turns up to marry me,’ says Sneha. The taunting has left her nervous too.
‘Well, you can just tell him that there won’t be any bandits left by next planting season. Singh Sahib’s youngest son is bringing them all in and locking them in jail,’ says Mamta. ‘Amma, tell us again about the bandits,’ she says, moving away from the sordid world of taunting boys.
‘Yes, Amma, tell us, what did the bandits do?’
‘Where do these questions come from? All the time stories, stories, as if you girls have no work to do . . . as if I have no work to do. We can’t fritter our lives away on stories,’ says Lata Bai.
‘C’mon, Amma, tell us about Daku Manmohan,’ says Mamta. She knows she has to plead but a little for her mother to capitulate. It was Lata Bai who gave her a taste for stories in the first place. Bending the boundaries of time and place, she would weave together threads as separate as Kashmiri silk and Bengali cotton into one gargantuan tale of bravery, epic love and histrionic honour, leaping into the arena of myth with alacrity from a very lofty height.
‘Yes, come on, Amma, Mamta Didi will be leaving soon. There will be no one to beg you for stories after she goes,’ says Sneha, pulling a face.
Lata Bai smiles. Her children are still children. She suckles Shanti. ‘Stories, stories, that’s all you care for,’ she says mock-angry. ‘What about the cooking? What about the washing? What about the weeding and tying the vines back against the walls? What about the spices? The well water? Kneading the clay for a new pot; collecting the resin and the wild mangoes. So who will do all that then? Your father?’ The children look at her, their cheeks chubby with smiles. Of course she isn’t serious, they know that.
‘Come on, Amma . . .’
‘Okay, okay. But only for five minutes. What a time that was . . .’ Lata Bai’s eyes glass over. The children come closer to her, not to miss a word. They’ve heard this story many times before, but it is always slightly different, always exciting. ‘The surprise of the bandit raid was more traumatic than the bloodiness of it.
‘I remember it was evening. Earthy clouds heralded their arrival minutes before the rhythmic hoofbeats. They looked magnificent with their turban tails flowing behind them and their oiled moustaches gleaming in the sun . . .’ The romanticism of the gang’s appearance was shattered all too soon. Not one bandit had to dismount from his horse. Gopalpur simply capitulated, offered herself up spread-eagled, naked, defenceless, to the plunderer for his taking. All night the moans of the dead and dying glided through the fields. It wasn’t a night for heroism. People hid in the hay, in ditches and in sugarcane fields. In the morning they walked out to greet a pitiless sun that showed up the destruction in its unaccountable manifestations.
‘Of course they spared the landlords, the Singh family ensconced in the Big House. Some said the Big House paid the bandits to stay away . . .’
‘But Prem says that isn’t true. He says Singh Sahib is a man of honour, and his honour wouldn’t have allowed it. He says Singh Sahib hates his son because of this surrender and if he wasn’t so sick, Singh Sahib would gladly hunt down Daku Manmohan . . . right this minute,’ interjects Mamta, filling in for her absent favourite brother.
‘Maybe, maybe. But what do we know of Singh Sahib, the zamindar of Gopalpur living in his Big House, out of our sight? We only know how much he charges for his loans and that damned son of his, Ram Singh, is like a vulture, usurping lands left, right and centre, just like Daku Manmohan. One son adds to the bandit numbers, while the other tries to cull them . . .
‘Those damned gangs. They came sweeping in from the direction of the dusty Gopalpur wind where the famines were so awful that it was said that people had begun to eat cow meat and sometimes even human flesh. At first, they took whatever their horses could carry, mostly sacks of wheat and washing left to dry unguarded on clothes lines. But we weren’t under any illusions. We knew that once the bandits attacked, they returned.
‘Each night, we had to find a different place to sleep. Under the ridge, by the riverbank, or hidden in the roots of the banyan trees . . .’ (never at the Red Ruins or the dry well, that’s where the bandits raped the girls) ‘. . . in the mornings we dragged ourselves back to our huts. As the gangs became stronger, they became bolder, and started looting everything . . . including children. That’s when my brother went missing. Others lost family too. Shyam Lal lost a son and Moti a son and a daughter. Nutan Bai thought the bandits had taken her daughter Kanno, but she found her hiding in a haystack, her leg poked through with the point of one of their knives.’
‘Even now, after all this time, Kanno doesn’t speak. We used to think her tongue was cut off, but she stuck it out at me just last week. I wonder why she doesn’t speak.’ Sneha is most concerned for the fate of dumb Kanno.
Lata Bai continues: ‘Gope’s teashop also vanished with the bandits. Gope’s tea was famous. He could pour the liquid from a great height, pulling it into brown rainbows a metre long. Each time the bandits came, they stopped at Gope’s for a cup of tea, tossing him not one rupee coins, but five rupee notes for his frothy drinks.
‘Of course, it couldn’t last. Gope was making money off the bandits, while Gopalpur was paying in sacks of grain. So the farmers managed to convince Gope to lace his tea with rat poison.
‘The bandits burned down his teashop, killed his son, and, and . . . they had their way with Gope’s daughter-in-law.’
‘Amma means raped,’ says Mamta.
‘. . . and left her to die.’
‘But you know what I heard from Sunita only yesterday? She said that Daku Manmohan is a hero to the girls in the village. She said he saved her sister from rape by that, that, that . . . Babulal. And Prem says he’s only surrendering because Lokend Bhai asked him to.’
‘I don’t know about the rape, all I know is that he never shied from killing. I remember them systematically burning everything in the village and cutting off the hands of those who dared to fight back. They left the handless and Gope alive as a lesson to others who might think of defying them. These creatures hang around by the Lakshmi temple begging for scraps . . .’
The last raid took place almost two years ago. Since then Gopalpur has managed to pull itself together. People are prosperous
