Qasim Ali saw Johnny Cigar standing close to the hut, and pushed his way through the silent crowd to join him.
"What's happening?" he demanded.
"Joseph is drunk," Johnny replied sourly, spitting noisily in the direction of the hut. "The bahinchudh has been bashing his wife all morning."
"All morning? How long has this been going on?"
"Three hours, maybe longer. I just got here myself. The others told me about it. That's why I sent for you, Qasimbhai."
Qasim Ali drew his brows together in a fierce frown, and stared angrily into Johnny's eyes.
"This is not the first time that Joseph has beaten his wife. Why didn't you stop it?"
"I..." Johnny began, but he couldn't hold the stare, and he looked down at the stony ground at their feet. There was a kind of rage in him, and he looked close to tears. "I'm not afraid of him! I'm not afraid of any man here! You know that! But, they are ... they are... she is his wife..."
The slum-dwellers lived in a dense, crowded proximity. The most intimate sounds and movements of their lives entwined, constantly, each with every other. And like people everywhere, they were reluctant to interfere in what we usually call domestic disputes, even when those so-called disputes became violent.
Qasim Ali reached out and put a compassionate hand on Johnny's shoulder to calm him, and commanded that he stop Joseph's violence at once. Just then a new burst of shouting and blows came from the house, followed by a harrowing scream.
Several of us stepped forward, determined to put a stop to the beating. Suddenly, the flimsy door of the hut crashed open, and Joseph's wife fell through the doorway and fainted at our feet.
She was naked. Her long hair was wildly knotted and matted with blood. She'd been cruelly beaten with some kind of stick, and blue-red welts crossed and slashed her back, buttocks, and legs.
The crowd flinched and recoiled in horror. They were as affected by her nakedness, I knew, as they were by the terrible wounds on her body. I was affected by it myself. In those years, nakedness was like a secret religion in India. No-one but the insane or the sacred was ever publicly naked. Friends in the slum told me with unaffected honesty that they'd been married for years and had never seen their own wives naked. We were all stricken with pity for Joseph's wife, and shame passed among us, burning our eyes.
A shout came from the hut then, and Joseph stumbled through the doorway. His cotton pants were stained with urine, and his T-shirt was torn and filthy. Wild, stupid drunkenness twisted his features. His hair was dishevelled, and blood stained his face.
The bamboo stick he'd used to beat his wife was still in his hands. He squinted in the sunlight, and then his blurred gaze fell on his wife's body, lying face down between himself and the crowd. He cursed her, and took a step forward, raising the stick to strike her again.
The shock that had paralysed us escaped in a collective gasp, and we rushed forward to stop him. Surprisingly, little Prabaker was the first to reach Joseph, and he grappled with the much bigger man, pushing him backwards. The stick was wrenched from Joseph's hand, and he was held down on the ground. He thrashed and screamed, a string of violent curses spilling with the drool from his lips. A few women came forward, wailing as if in mourning.
They covered Joseph's wife with a yellow silk sari, lifted her, and carried her away.
The crowd might've become a lynch mob, then, but Qasim Ali took charge of the scene immediately. He ordered the people to disperse, or stand back, and he told the men who were holding Joseph to keep him pinned on the ground. His next command astonished me. I thought he might call for the police, or have Joseph taken away. Instead, he asked what alcohol Joseph had been drinking, and demanded that two bottles of it be brought to him.
He also called for charras and a chillum, and told Johnny Cigar to prepare a smoke. When the rough, home-brewed alcohol, known as daru, was produced, he instructed Prabaker and Jeetendra to force Joseph to drink.
They sat Joseph in a circle of strong, young men, and offered him one of the bottles. He glared at them suspiciously for a few moments, but then snatched the bottle and took a long, greedy swig. The young men around him patted him on the back, encouraging him to drink more. He gulped down more of the extremely powerful daru and then tried to push it away, saying that he'd had enough. The young men became forceful in their coaxing. They laughed and joked with him, holding the bottle to his lips and driving it between his teeth. Johnny Cigar lit the chillum, and passed it to Joseph. He smoked and drank and smoked again. Then, some twenty minutes after he'd first stumbled from the hut with the bloody stick in his hand, Joseph dipped his head and passed out cold on the rubble-strewn path.
The crowd watched him snore for a while, and then they gradually drifted away to their huts and their jobs. Qasim told the group of young men to stay in their circle around Joseph's body, and watch him closely. He left for about half an hour to perform the mid-morning prayer. When he returned, he ordered tea and water.
Johnny Cigar, Anand, Rafiq, Prabaker, and Jeetendra were in the watchful circle. A strong, young fisherman named Veejay was also in the group, and a lean, fit cart-pusher known as Andhkaara, or Darkness, because of his luminously dark skin. They talked quietly while the sun rose to its zenith, and the sweltering humidity of the day clamped a moist grip on us all.
I would've left then, but Qasim Ali asked me to stay, so I sat down under the shade of a canvas veranda. Veejay's four-year-old daughter, Sunita, brought me a glass of water, without my asking for it. I sipped the lukewarm liquid gratefully.
"Tsangli mulgi, tsangli mulgi," I thanked her, in Marathi. Good girl, good girl.
Sunita was delighted that she'd pleased me, and stared back at me with a furious little smiling-frown. She wore a scarlet dress with the words MY CHEEKY FACES printed in English across the front. I noticed that the dress was torn, and too tight for her, and I made a mental note to buy some clothes for her and a few of the other kids in the cheap clothing bazaar, known as Fashion Street. It was the same mental note I made every day, every time I talked to the clever, happy kids in the slum. She took the empty glass and skipped away, the metal bells of her ankle bracelets jingling their small music, and her tiny, bare feet tough against the stones.
When all the men had taken tea, Qasim Ali ordered them to wake Joseph. They began to prod and poke him roughly, shouting at him to wake up. He stirred, and grumbled resentfully, waking very slowly. He opened his eyes and shook his groggy head, calling petulantly for water.
"Pani nahin," Qasim said. No water.
They forced the second bottle on him, roughly insistent, but cajoling him with jokes and pats on the back. Another chillum was produced, and the young men smoked with him. He growled repeatedly for water. Every time, he found the strong alcohol thrust into his mouth instead. Before a third of the bottle was finished, he fainted again, collapsing to the side with his head lolling at an awkward angle. His face was bare to the climbing sun. No-one made any attempt to shade him.
Qasim Ali allowed him a mere five minutes to doze before ordering that he be woken. Joseph's grumbling was angry as he woke, and he began to snarl and curse. He tried to raise himself to his knees, and crawl back to his hut. Qasim Ali took the bloodied bamboo stick, and handed it to Johnny Cigar. He spoke one word of command. Begin!
Johnny raised the stick, and brought it down on Joseph's back with a resounding smack. Joseph howled, and tried to crawl away, but the circle of young men pushed him back to the centre of their group. Johnny struck him with the stick again. Joseph screamed angrily, but the young men slapped at him and shouted for silence. Johnny raised the stick, and Joseph cowered, trying to focus his bleary eyes.
"Do you know what you have done?" Johnny demanded harshly. He brought the stick down with a whack on Joseph's shoulder. "Speak, you drunken dog! Do you know what a terrible thing you have done?"
"Stop hitting me!" Joseph snarled. "Why are you doing this?"
"Do you know what you have done?" Johnny repeated. The stick struck again.
"Ow-ah!" Joseph shrieked. "What? What have I done? I've done nothing!"
Veejay took the stick, and beat Joseph on the upper arm.
"You beat your wife, you drunken pig! You beat her, and maybe she will die!"
He passed the stick to Jeetendra, who used it to smack Joseph on the thigh.
"She's dying! You are a murderer! You murdered your own wife."
Joseph tried to shield himself with his arms, casting his eyes about feverishly for some escape. Jeetendra lifted the stick again.
"You beat your wife all morning, and threw her naked from the hut. Take that, you drunkard! And that! Just as you beat her. How do you like it, you murderer?"
The slow creep of a foggy comprehension stiffened Joseph's face into a terrified anguish. Jeetendra passed the stick to Prabaker, and the next blow brought tears.
"Oh, no!" he sobbed. "It's not true! I haven't done anything! Oh, what will happen to me? I didn't mean to kill her! God in heaven, what will happen to me? Give me water. I need water!"
"No water," Qasim Ali said.
The stick came down again and again. It was in Andhkaara's hand.
"Worrying about yourself, dog? What about your poor wife? You didn't worry when you beat her. This is not the first time you took this stick to her, is it? Now it is finished. You killed her. You can never beat her again, not her or anyone. You will die in the jail."
Johnny Cigar took the stick again.
"Such a big, strong fellow you are! So brave to beat your wife, who is half your size. Come on and beat me, hero! Come on, take this stick of yours, and beat a man with it, you cheap goonda."
"Water..." Joseph blubbered, collapsing to the ground in tears of self-pity.
"No water," Qasim Ali said, and Joseph drifted into unconsciousness once more.
When they woke him the next time, Joseph had been in the sun for almost two hours, and his distress was great. He shouted for water, but they offered him only the daru bottle. I could see that he wanted to refuse it, but his thirst was becoming desperate. He accepted the bottle with trembling hands. Just as the first drops touched his parched tongue, the stick came down again. Daru spilled over his stubbled chin, and ran from his gaping mouth. He dropped the bottle. Johnny picked it up and poured the remaining alcohol over his head. Joseph shrieked and tried to scramble away on his hands and knees, but the circle of men wrestled him back to the centre. Jeetendra wielded the stick, smacking it onto his buttocks and legs. Joseph whined and wept and moaned.
Qasim Ali was sitting to one side, in the shaded doorway of a hut. He called Prabaker to him, and gave orders that a number of Joseph's friends and relatives should be sent for, as well as relatives of Maria, Joseph's wife. As the people arrived, they took the places of the young men in the circle, and Joseph's torment continued. For several hours, his friends and relatives and neighbours took turns to vilify and accuse him, beating him with the stick he'd used to assault his wife so savagely. The blows were sharp, and they hurt him, but they weren't severe enough to break the skin.
It was a measured punishment that was painful, but never vicious.
I left the scene, and returned a few times during the afternoon.
Many of the slum-dwellers who were passing that way stopped to watch. People joined the circle around Joseph, or left it, as they wished. Qasim Ali sat in the doorway of the hut, his back straight and his expression grave, never taking his eyes from the circle. He directed the punishment with a quiet word or a subtle gesture, keeping a relentless pressure on the man, but preventing any excesses.
Joseph passed out twice more before he finally broke down. When the end came, he was crushed. All the spite and defiance in him were defeated. He sobbed the name of his wife over and over again. Maria, Maria, Maria...
Qasim Ali stood, and approached the circle. It was the moment he'd waited for, and he nodded to Veejay, who brought a dish of warm water, soap, and two towels from a nearby hut. The same men who'd been beating Joseph cradled him in their arms, then, and washed his face, neck, hands, and feet. They gave him water. They combed his hair. They soothed him with hugs and the first kind words he'd heard since the beginning of his chastisement. They told him that if he were genuinely sorry he would be forgiven, and given help. Many people were brought forward, myself included, and Joseph was made to touch our feet. They dressed him in a clean shirt, and propped him up, their arms and shoulders supporting him tenderly. Qasim Ali squatted close to him, and stared into his bloodshot eyes.
"Your wife, Maria, is not dead," Qasim Ali said softly.
"Not... not dead?" he mumbled.
"No, Joseph, she is not dead. She is very badly injured, but she is alive."
"Thank God, thank God."
"The women of your family, and Maria's family, have decided what is to be done," Qasim said slowly, firmly. "Are you sorry-do you know what you have done to your wife, and are you sorry for it?"
"Yes, Qasimbhai," Joseph wept. "I'm so sorry, so sorry."
"The women have decided that you must not see Maria for two months. She is very ill. You almost killed her, and she must take two months to recover. In this time, you will work every day. You will work long hours and hard. You will save your money. You will not drink even one drop of daru or beer or anything but water. Do you understand? No chai or milk or anything but water. You must observe this fast, as part of your punishment."
Joseph wagged his head feebly.
"Yes, yes. I will."
"Maria may decide not to take you back. You must know this also.
She may want to divorce you, even after the two months-and if she does, I will help her in this. But at the end of two months, if she wants to accept you again, you will use the money you have saved by this extra hard work, and you will take her on a holiday to the cool mountains. During retreat in that place, with your wife, you will face this ugliness in yourself, and you will try to overcome it. Inshallah, you will make a happy and virtuous future, for your wife and yourself. This is the decision. Go now.