Once It Flowers

1

The banyan tree was big. Its roots, no doubt on account of the substation nearby, secretly penetrated deep into the ground.

T

here were only two brick buildings here: the village extension worker’s quarters and the police substation. Compared to the other thatched dwellings in the village, both looked grand.

The police substation was not in use; it had been abandoned over a year ago. When it was built, it was situated at what must have seemed the centre of habitation. Now the centre and the police had shifted to nearby Barganv.

Barganv boasted a sizeable population. A rice mill had just been built. There was a timber business with electric saws. There was a flour mill and a middle school. All this activity required a police substation.

But in the small village, the old substation looked like a security guard with handlebar moustaches, assigned to provide protection and care to three or four poor people. The villagers did not use the path by the banyan tree even though the substation lay empty. Goats that thought nothing of interrupting the primary school teacher by vaulting up the verandah into his classroom, avoided the substation. Sometimes cows strayed that way. The herder would be frightened and call out to them to turn back. The cows paid no attention. No harm came to them, probably because of the protection they enjoyed as cows. In the schoolroom, Guruji shouted out the day’s lessons to his students. The students repeated the words loudly after him. The din was deafening; a tiger would have bounded out of the jungle to escape such cries and been hunted down immediately. The goats, on the other hand, were not perturbed. They could be seen happily running up and down the schoolhouse verandah.

There was a sweet-water well in the substation compound. Had there been no substation adjacent to it, the well would have attracted other dwellers. But even though it had been empty for a long time, the village didn’t extend towards the police station by so much as a hut. It kept its distance as before.

The old village watchman continued to sweep the grounds and refill the water pot on the verandah of the deserted substation with water from the well. When the clay water pot cracked, he would claim free replacement from the potter since the water pot was intended for the police. He believed in keeping the old substation ready in case an official stopped by on a tour of duty. He imagined the official would stay at the substation and address the village assembly outside Jivrakhan’s shop. Nobody had told the watchman it was important to keep the substation spruced up; he did it on his own. The government official would arrive with his papers and draw up a chair on the verandah. The villagers would squat below, indicating that they did not claim equal dignity with the official. If it happened to rain while they were squatting they stayed put, even if a strong shower drenched them. They would wait in the shower till the official finished gathering his papers and dismissed the assembly. Sometimes it took the official only a couple of minutes to gather his papers, at other times a full four or five. If the rain was light, the official continued his work and the people sitting out in the open did not disband.

There was a large peepul tree outside Jivrakhan’s shop. In the monsoon, the first arrivals for an assembly sat nearest the trunk in case it rained. But when the official appeared and drew up his chair, the villagers would notice the empty space between them and Jivrakhan’s shop and think it proper to fill that space. They moved ahead till the peepul tree’s shelter lay far behind the last man in the assembly. This would happen in the summer as well. The villagers would squat near the verandah while the peepul’s shade remained arranged about the tree trunk. If the shade drifted down from the tree the way leaves fell, there would be enough shade for each person to gather and wear on his head. On the other hand, if such assemblies continued to take place in front of Jivrakhan’s shop for a hundred years, the shade from the peepul tree would probably extend all the way to it. The continual growing of a tree is a natural thing. The tree doesn’t grow by using its brains. It grows according to its nature. If the peepul used its brains, it would have grown towards Jivrakhan’s shop from the beginning. Jivrakhan opened his shop seven or eight years ago. He could have chosen a site nearer the peepul tree if he wished. He owned land in a number of nearby villages. He was a rich farmer.

Some village elders liked to sit by the peepul tree. Their grey presence made the leafy tree look ancient, a solitary giant in a dust-blown landscape. Its leaves made soft slapping sounds when the wind blew. The entire village was like a melancholy performance which had been going on for ages. It was the performance that mattered, not whether it grew out of suffering. If the village performed suffering well, there was instant applause.

The watchman’s first grandson was dead. He fiercely loved his second grandson, out of dread that he might lose this one too. When the watchman set out to sweep the substation, the grandson cried to be taken along. He enjoyed playing on the cool, polished verandah. He would be naked, like the other children in the village, save for a black string around his waist. A rusty key hung from the black string. The watchman had found the key in the substation compound. If the other children in the village had not been equally naked, the grandson running around on the verandah would have appeared to be an animal. The child’s father was named Ghasiram.

Six or seven years ago, Ghasiram had a little too much to drink and got into a quarrel with Jivrakhan. He began calling Jivrakhan names. Jivrakhan sent for help to the substation. When the policeman arrived to arrest him, Ghasiram snatched his son from his wife and clasped the child to his chest as he was being led to the lockup. The child was his first-born, four months old. The policeman told the child’s mother that she could not accompany them. Ghasiram stumbled along, unsteady on his feet, swearing at Jivrakhan. The farther he went from Jivrakhan’s shop, the louder he yelled out his curses.

He lurched forward a few steps, paused, and planted a kiss on his son’s cheeks. When Ghasiram paused, the policeman, the watchman and the villagers all stopped. The watchman pleaded with Ghasiram to let go of the child. Ghasiram refused. The policeman shoved Ghasiram forward in the direction of the substation. Ghasiram yelped at the shove, but the child started to laugh.

The sub-inspector of police realized that the child would have to be pried from Ghasiram. He told the policeman to take the child away. Ghasiram began swearing at the sub-inspector. The policeman aimed a blow at Ghasiram’s head, taking care not to hurt the child. He must have thought Ghasiram’s head was at a safe distance from the child’s body. Ghasiram slumped from the blow with the child still in his lap. The child began to scream.

Ghasiram thought he would save himself if the baby was with him. Perhaps they would let him off because his child was so young. Perhaps they wouldn’t hit him because the child might get hurt in the process. It’s conceivable that he didn’t think any of this through; he may have snatched the child from its mother on an impulse. Meanwhile, the policeman advanced towards him again, ready to deliver another blow. Ghasiram was terrified. He stepped back, holding the baby out like a shield. ‘Please be kind to the baby,’ he seemed to say. The watchman had tears running down his face. ‘Let him go,’ he pleaded with the policeman. ‘Don’t beat him, please.’

Ghasiram turned so that his back was to the policeman. He clasped the child to his chest. The liquor made him unsteady. The policeman struck Ghasiram’s middle. The blow spun him around. The baby’s nose began to bleed. The policeman was baffled. The child had stopped crying, but Ghasiram wailed piteously. He handed the child over to the watchman.

The watchman came out of the substation with his grandchild on his arm. He saw dry cow-dung by the side of the road. He picked up a piece of cow-dung and held it to the child’s nose. The bleeding slowed. The watchman hurried to Ghasiram’s house. Ghasiram’s wife was not at home. She was away buying salt from Jivrakhan’s shop. The child died in his arms before the watchman could enter Ghasiram’s house. Ordinarily, Jivrakhan would not have let Ghasiram’s wife buy from his store, but he relented when he learned her child had died. Ghasiram’s wife stood before him, asking to be allowed to buy salt. Jivrakhan nodded assent and sold the salt without telling Ghasiram’s wife about her child. Ghasiram was released from detention the following day.

The watchman lived in a two-room quarter adjoining the police substation. It had been built more recently than the substation, but the rooms were in poor condition. The roof sagged, the walls were crumbling. There was a heap of broken bricks and plaster outside from which thorn apples and prickly bhatkataiya had sprung up. The compound wall of the substation had lost a few bricks, too, but the vegetation inside was intact. A shrub of henna grew to one side. A banyan tree lifted its many branches to the sky. Its roots, probably on account of the substation nearby, secretly penetrated deep into the ground.

There were only two rooms in the substation: the big lockup and the small lockup. The clerk functioned from the table he had placed out on the verandah. The substation sub-inspector used the small lockup as his office. Originally the sewage drain ran from the big lockup through the small lockup. The sub-inspector had the drain rerouted so it let out directly from the big lockup. The hole between the big lockup and the small lockup was sealed. The other small opening in the big lockup remained: a transom high up along the wall barred with four thick rods. The rods could let in either a cat or cat-sized light and air. It seemed that coming through the transom bars light and air quarrelled over precedence and did not make their way in together. Coming in through the wide bars of the door was easier, but once in, they had trouble getting out again. The light had to spend the entire day locked up. The air grew stale.

If a bird ever flew in through the transom, a cat was sure to follow. If the bird found a way out through the bars on the door, the cat did likewise. If the bird was a free spirit, the cat was as much a free spirit. The cat was the power to pounce upon and seize.

The sub-inspector had the transom in the smaller lockup enlarged. He who has power over transoms and doors can exploit the air and light as he chooses. No one could exploit the air and light in an open field because there were no transoms or doors to be found there. Darkness didn’t need doors or transoms in any case. Doors couldn’t be shut against it. Nor could scraps of darkness be swept out with a broom. It got as dark in the big lockup as it did in the open field. This seemed unjust. Some little difference should have been allowed to prevail between the darkness in a field and the darkness in a lockup.

The quiet of the village by day and the silence of the night were rather similar. Jivrakhan’s hurricane lamp blazed at night like the bright lights of a town. But if you subtracted the light of his hurricane lamp from the darkness of the village, a whole realm of darkness remained. A whole world huddled in that darkness. A whole world feared for its life in that darkness.

The distance upto which Jivrakhan’s transistor radio could be heard was almost as great by day as it was by night. Or perhaps the sound travelled thirty feet farther at night. If the transistor came on at high volume while Guruji was holding class, he would borrow a student’s slate and write on it: ‘Please turn down your radio. Signed: Guruji’, and ask the student to take it over to Jivrakhan.

When the volume dropped, Guruji understood that his message had been received. Meanwhile, the boy would return and show his slate to Guruji. The message on the slate board would read: ‘My mistake. I have lowered the volume as per instruction. Signed: Jivrakhan.’ Jivrakhan’s handwriting was well-formed in a shopkeeperly way. Guruji’s letters were well-formed in a teacherly way.

If a boy was seen hurrying towards the village with his slate, people knew Guruji had sent him out with a message. Jivrakhan called this system ‘telephone’. ‘Guruji’s on the phone,’ Jivrakhan would say when he spotted a messenger boy. He would call the boy over and read out the message on the slate: ‘I need my underpants to be ready by evening. Signed: Guruji.’ ‘Is tailor Dina wanted on the telephone?’ Jivrakhan would ask. The student would nod. ‘Go deliver the message then.’ Jivrakhan would stop the boy on his way back too. He would read out Dina’s reply. ‘All right, Guruji. Signed: Dina Tailor.’ Dina had finished high school. He could have signed his name in English if he wished. Seeing Guruji’s signature at the bottom of his message made the others eager to add their own signature to their replies.

Guruji’s wife would be cooking on the verandah of the schoolhouse. ‘We’ve run out of salt,’ she would say. The children would hear her and stop reading. ‘I’ll get it,’ three or four of the students would volunteer. They would offer their slates to Guruji. He would select one from among them and write. ‘One kilo of salt, please. Signed: Guruji.’ Jivrakhan would receive the message and respond, ‘I have now extended two-and-a-quarter rupee credit to you. Signed: Jivrakhan.’

One day, a storm blew down what remained of the thatch and tile roof over the schoolhouse. The tiles fell and broke. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Five or six tiles fell by Munni’s feet. A rafter landed near Munna. Dust got into Guruji’s eyes. His wife saw their winnowing basket fly from the verandah to the top of the embankment. Then it tipped over and was carried away by the canal waters below. If the storm had come during school hours the students might have been hurt. Many houses in the village lost their roofs. Half of the roof of Jivrakhan’s shop was blown back over the other half. The strong wind was followed by rain. Jivrakhan’s rice and brown sugar got soaked in the rain.

It wasn’t evening yet. Evening lingers in the open spaces of a village, but night comes suddenly. At first it isn’t dark and then suddenly it’s coal dark. The rain had let up. With the roof blown off, all the classrooms were naked to the sky. Guruji stood in the room for Class Four. A crow sat on top of the wall, dripping from the rain and holding a frog in its beak. It flew off as the watchman entered the room, dropping the frog near Guruji’s feet. The frog hopped away into the pile of tiles. The tiles were made of unbaked mud dried in the sun and rain had made the mud run.

‘Did you hear something fall?’ Guruji asked the watchman.

‘It’s a frog, Guruji.’ He moved some tiles aside. The frog lay dead on its back.

Guruji’s wife was out on the verandah, trying to gather up their belongings. Munni helped by looking for things that may have been buried in the rubble.

It occurred to Guruji to ask the watchman whether his family and he could take shelter for the night in the verandah of the substation. He knew that the others whose roofs had blown away would also need shelter there. Some of those villagers had come to the schoolhouse. The walls of the schoolhouse would shield them from the wind, but what about the protection from the rain.

‘Watchman, my family and a few people from the village are going to take shelter at the substation.’

‘You and your family can stay there, but please don’t bring other villagers with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re a government employee; the substation is a government building.’

‘The schoolhouse is a government building, too, and people are seeking shelter there.’

‘The schoolhouse is a different matter.’

‘I don’t want other villagers to get into trouble because of me,’ Guruji said. ‘We won’t go either.’

‘Please go there with your family,’ the watchman repeated.

‘Are you trying to make things difficult for me?’

‘No, Guruji.’

‘You should go there with your family,’ one of the villagers spoke up. He was younger than the watchman, dressed in a torn dhoti. His skin was a shiny black. Glossy black veins snaked across his calves. He was employed as a contract carpenter in Lalpur and had worked on the construction of many fashionable bungalows there.

‘Things will sort themselves out. No one has used the substation for eighteen months now. Here, give us a hand.’ The watchman called out to fellow villagers.

‘Let me think this through,’ Guruji said.

‘What’s there to think about?’ the watchman said.

‘There’s nothing to think about,’ a couple of villagers chimed in.

‘The substation is away from other houses. What if we need help from neighbours at night?’

‘Just shout for us,’ the watchman said. He was missing the long fat chonga bidi which he would normally tuck into in his turban.

‘Shouldn’t we check with the sub-inspector?’

‘Take shelter there tonight. We’ll get the sub-inspector’s permission in Barganv tomorrow.’

‘All right,’ Guruji said with sudden decisiveness. ‘Let’s carry our things to the substation.’

The villagers shifted Guruji’s belongings, each one taking a small load. They hung sacks of grain at the ends of a long bamboo pole.

Munna and Munni ran ahead with the watchman. Guruji’s wife followed the man with the pole. Guruji seemed preoccupied. He walked back into Class Three. There was an unused piece of chalk lying by the blackboard. Guruji picked up the piece of chalk, but it was damp. He tossed it away and it landed among broken tiles, leaving a little white mark at the edge of one of the tiles. Guruji would be able to locate the piece of chalk by the mark on the tile.

Munni helped the watchman sweep out the substation. The watchman swept the substation regularly, but the storm had blown in a lot of dust. Munna, in the meanwhile, discovered a neem tree in the substation compound just beyond the verandah, which had a bowl-shaped trunk. The trunk had bent down and then grown straight again. Munna jumped off the verandah onto the neem tree and began to run up and down its branches.

When Guruji arrived at the substation, he saw that people were busy with cleaning. He decided to return to the village with the watchman. The watchman parted company from him at a turn in the path. Guruji continued to the village extension worker’s quarters. He was disappointed to see a lock on the extension worker’s front door.

The village extension worker had not married. He was mostly on the road, and returned to his quarters only a few days in a month. Guruji had stopped by his lodgings a number of times but never found him home. Sometimes the extension worker was away for as long as two weeks at a time. It would have made Guruji happy to find him in.

It wasn’t night yet. Guruji paced outside the substation as if he was keeping watch. In case of any danger, he would be the first one to spot it and warn the people inside. Then he got tired of walking and wanted to lie down. The clouds turned the evening darker. It seemed strange to him that the police station was now his home. He had made a mistake. He would spend the night there and return with his belongings to the schoolhouse tomorrow. It wouldn’t be right to make the substation their permanent home even though the substation was likely to keep kidnappers and thieves away. If a new police circle inspector lost his way in these parts, he would recognize the police station and go towards it. Guruji would step forward to meet the circle inspector. He would tell him truthfully that the substation was not in use; the new substation was in Barganv village. The circle inspector would not believe him. He would suppose that the policemen at the substation had left for a crime scene. He might think Guruji was the father of one of the younger policemen. ‘I won’t be able to make it to Barganv. Please tell your son that the new circle inspector came by.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ Guruji would say. When Munna and Munni returned from the school in Barganv, he would tell Munna that the circle inspector wanted to have a word with him. Munna would say, ‘What can the circle inspector want from me?’

‘He thinks you are the officer in charge of the substation.’

‘I was studying at school.’

‘Am I not your father? Isn’t it possible for you to study to become a policeman?’

‘I will never become a policeman.’

‘Become a circle inspector, then.’ But what if Munna had narrowed his ambitions and announced, ‘I will become a schoolteacher.’

The times were not that bad. It was possible to find an empty substation to move into if a schoolhouse was damaged by a storm. Because the future was unknown, people were free to think anything they wished about the future. This freedom remained under-utilized. People imagined bad outcomes readily, happy outcomes more reluctantly. Life seemed to be lived as if death was imminent, the way a would-be suicide might live before the planned suicide takes effect.

Guruji thought life would be different the following day. The following day he would open the door of the lockup to head out to school. He would wake up late. He wouldn’t have slept well. The students would be running wild through the schoolhouse. He would quicken his steps. The station sub-inspector would spot him hurrying out of the lockup. His dhoti would get in the way of his walking faster. The sub-inspector would suspect that a convict was escaping. He wouldn’t think that somebody beaten down by life was returning from the police station after reporting the crime committed against him. Four or five armed policemen would be accompanying the sub-inspector.

‘Catch him. Don’t let him get away,’ the sub-inspector will say. The policemen will run towards him, their guns ready. ‘Stop or we will fire.’ Why should he stop? He’s not a thief. To demonstrate that an honest man has nothing to fear, instead of stopping he will tuck in the ends of his dhoti and start running. A policeman will fire. The bullet will fly past him. He will run faster, hoping to get behind the trunk of the school’s neem tree.

A second gun will fire. He will feel a sharp pain in his left foot.

Two days earlier, he had stepped on an acacia thorn. He pulled the thorn out, but its tip broke inside his foot. It must have been infected; he limped a little as he walked. The limp made him imagine he had been hit.

How can he get away limping like this? Blood will spurt from the wound. He would like to reach the schoolhouse before he dies. Another bullet. He will drop to the ground. The bullet will travel through him, back to front. The policemen will stand around a jeep watching their handiwork. The sub-inspector will see him fall and casually light a cigarette.

He will drag himself to the