Dahanu Road: A novel (10 page)

“Speak,” he said.

She could not understand the tone of his voice. Even though her eyes were on the ground, she knew that he had gotten off his cycle and was standing right next to her. Then, the strange one did something truly strange. He crouched down beside her.

“Were you going to eat this?” he asked.

She nodded fast-fast-fast because she wanted him to go. She wanted him to get on that witch doctor cycle of his and leave.

He was going to strike her. She was about to eat his lilies, and he had to be a witch doctor otherwise how would he know she was going to eat
all
of them?

“Lilies are used in weddings,” he said. “We put them on strings and hang them all over the wedding hall to make things look pretty.”

Then he picked up the lily she had torn, the one she had tried to steal-eat.

He was keeping it as proof. He would take it to his elders and that would be the end of her. She would be beaten, or thrown into a pot and made into the colour blue. Oh, that was how he did it. The sparkle in the blue was brought by dead Warli children like her.

“You can also put it in your hair,” he said in his best broken Marathi.

He brought his hand close to her and her eyelashes flittered a thousand times because he was going to slap her.

He tried to stick the lily in her hair, but he could not find a way. He almost touched her face, but then decided not to. Instead, he just left the lily on
top
of her head and she stayed crouched in that position for a long time, afraid that if she dropped the lily he would come back. After a while, her eyelashes continued to flitter, but it was not out of fear anymore, it was something else, and now, years later, Kusum realized she had never felt anything like it again.

That night, as Aspi Irani sang “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Mithoo, dear Mithoo” to distract his wife from studying for her Montessori teacher training exam, Zairos sat on the porch and had a glass of whiskey.

He understood a man’s desire for whiskey. It was, after all, an antiseptic. As it slid down a man’s throat, it numbed his internal cuts and wounds. But Zairos did not understand his own need for whiskey. He had not undergone trauma or loss of any kind. Still, wounds opened up inside him naturally, like flowers did on grass.

He listened to the sounds the night brought him—the howl of dogs, the blare of the train as it sped past, the cough of a sick man in the darkness, the prattle of a thousand crickets. He picked up the flashlight that lay next to him on the floor. A thick, steady beam of light travelled towards the stars. For once someone was sending light to them. Mosquitoes spun in and out of that light wondering where it led. He thought of searchlights in war movies and how to prisoners light meant death, a reversal of laws.

What if that was the case with Ganpat’s suicide?

In all probability, it was a simple act of desperation, the only swan song Ganpat was capable of. The only statement of revolt the poor could make was to put an end to their own misery. It happened all the time—men lay themselves on train tracks, hanged themselves from trees, consumed rat poison, and women set their kerosene-soaked bodies alight in front of their husbands. These were blazing ends to insignificant journeys. But in all this, there was always one man who, in that final gush of blood, in that final breaking of neck and bone, set things in motion.

Zairos knew it was the guilt talking.

But it had no business being there in the first place.

It was not up to him, or his grandfather, to submit to the demands of every single Warli. How was his grandfather to know that his refusal would result in asphyxiation?

Zairos followed the beam from his flashlight as far as he could. A Zoroastrian priest had once told him that prayers were rays of light that travelled upwards. Up and up they went, beams full of hope and desire, until the light hit an angel’s wings, made them flutter, so the angel had no choice but to pay attention.

But Zairos had absolutely no idea what to pray for.

The sun created a furnace that burned the workers’ skin while Zairos stood in the shade and smoked. It was noon, the only time of day when the Iranis took any interest whatsoever in farming, a time all farm owners cheerfully referred to as “bathtub time.” Each day, after the chickoos had been plucked, they were washed in bathtubs. Old, grimy bathtubs, the kind that were found in American motels. The chickoos made a
dub-dub-dub
sound as they hit the bottom of the empty tubs. Then, a thick pipe spurted water into these tubs, covering the chickoos, until they floated around like naughty children in a swimming pool. That was when the fun began. That was when Aspi Irani made a statement that would, in his opinion, have filled any Greek philosopher with pride. “Poverty’s greatest gift to the rich,” he declared, “is no bra.”

Warli women could not afford bras, much to the delight of every farm owner in Dahanu. However, they did wear a blouse,
a cheap, handmade version, which benevolently displayed their breasts. As they bent down and pushed the chickoos to and fro creating waves in the tub, the Iranis went into waves of ecstasy. Such was their fervour that they praised Ahura Mazda for this great mercy. Apart from Ahura Mazda, they praised one mortal—Aspi Irani.

He was the first to use bathtubs because he knew it would make the women bend low, and all the Iranis grudgingly admitted that it was a stroke of genius, and Aspi Irani, who lacked humility in the way people lacked calcium, accepted the compliment and threw it back in their faces by saying, “Someday you too will get a stroke.”

But as Zairos watched the women wash the fruit, he realized that while their breasts brought a song to Irani lips, the workers themselves never sang. They did not speak much either. He wondered if the silence symbolized something—the women were reminding the chickoo that they were not its friend. He had once asked Damu if the Warlis ever ate chickoos, and Damu had replied, “Rarely.” Damu was going to say something else, but stopped. It was clear that the chickoo was the fruit of his bondage.

Just then Damu showed up with Kusum. In the sunlight, his salty stubble acquired the sparkle of diamonds. The moment Zairos saw him, Damu went his way.

As Kusum walked towards Zairos, he could tell from the sway of her hips that this was no ordinary woman. She was an enchantress in command of her skin, and of the moment. The closer she came, the more he sensed his own lust. Pure, unadulterated, it was honey straight from the hive. His eyes navigated every surface of her, from the blossom of her lips to
that flat, smooth belly, until he noticed something that should not have been there, something that disrupted the sweet brown of her skin.

A blue-black mark on her rib cage.

“Seth,” she said. “I …”

She put her head down, more than usual, and touched the sole of one foot to the instep of the other. This was one of the signs Zairos had learned to read. Whenever the Warlis did this, it meant they wanted something, something they were ashamed to ask for. In most cases, it was money.

At the funeral, he had already given her some. She was here to extort more.

“Seth,” she said. “I want work.”

Once again, he was taken by surprise. But, unlike at the funeral, she was in his territory now.

“What kind of work?” he asked.

“I will work on the farm.”

“You want to work on the same farm on which your father killed himself?”

It made no sense, her wanting to see those trees again. Or even him.

“Seth, we all have to work and we all have to die,” she said.

Reminders existed everywhere. A few trees could do nothing. He could do nothing.

“But you must be having a job already,” he said.

“At a balloon factory, seth. But I lost that job a week ago.”

“I have enough workers,” he said.

She kept quiet but did not leave. For a while, both of them listened to the flutter of sparrows, that fast whipping of wings, the futility of small creatures trying to put their stamp on the
world. Zairos did not like these silences, this lull in power. If his words stopped, and neither of them spoke, the silences seemed to be supporting her.

“Seth,” she said again.

The softness in her tone was a way of asking for permission to speak. He raised his head, just a fraction, which allowed her to carry on.

“My father wanted money to free me from my husband,” she said.

The mention of her husband made him feel clumsy. But it was not something he would allow her to detect.

“My husband beats me, seth. For me to leave him, I have to give him whatever he spent on our marriage.”

The blue-black mark was the handiwork of her husband. That did not surprise him. He knew that these women were beaten by their men. It was inevitable, like gravity. Hands rained down on these women. Some of the women struck back. When the men were drunk and weak, unable to speak or strike, the women beat them with sticks.

Maybe she had children too, but he was not going to ask. The children would assume this was how life worked. Man beats woman, woman beats man, man beats woman again, stronger, harder, woman understands the futility of fighting back and waits for her face to be slit by lines of age, line after line etched deeper with each beating so that when man and wife reach the heavens a count has been kept, and final retribution begins. At least that is the woman’s only hope.

“Seth,” she said. “I just wanted you to know why my father was asking for money.”

She turned, started walking away.

He let her go. He wanted those hips to get away from him. They were made of a substance that drove men to the edge of madness.

And that blue-black mark was not his problem. It was just a mark, no more, a blow to the ribs the gods had to stop. It had nothing to do with him or his grandfather or his chickoo trees.

He was glad that she did not turn back to look at him. She did not beg or cajole.

The further she walked away from him, the more uneasy he got. A few seconds more and she would go out of view; then he would never have to see her again.

The very shape of her made him believe that she would be better off away from him.

He wished she had begged for a job; some histrionics, even a tear or two.

He went behind her, dragging his slippers through the grass, ensuring that she would hear him and turn.

Slow, wasteful, still mulling over how to say it.

“You can start work” was all he said.

Even in her grief she was striking. Her hair, raven black, her poise, that of a dancer. He wondered how hot her breath would be as it came through those slightly parted lips.

Later that afternoon, as Zairos rode towards Anna’s, he spotted his father in jeans and white sudreh, hiding in the tall bush of dried grass just opposite the train tracks, with a wooden slingshot in his hand.

Aspi Irani was squatting, peering this way and that, and before Zairos could stop his motorcycle and approach his father, Aspi Irani took aim, and with a healthy
twang
let go of the thick black rubber band and disappeared. A yelp came from that same bush, from a man who was clearly disoriented, scared stiff in fact, because he had been stung by a stone in his naked bottom. The man was not a tribal but a bhaiyya from Uttar Pradesh who sold coconuts at Dahanu station. Even though the station had a toilet, the man was defecating in the bush, and since there was no government regulation against this, at least none that could be enforced, Aspi Irani had decided to take matters into his own hands. He continually complained about this “special brand of manure” that would one day be the downfall of his fortunes if he ever wanted to sell his home. “How can I call it Aspi Villa?” he screamed one day. “What kind of villa carries the aroma of shit?”