“What is ailing him? What have you done to him, my poor little laughing-playing child?”
Narayan explained how they had spent the morning, and Dukhi laughed to hear it. The entire episode made Radha furious. “Why must you torment the boy? There is no need to make my Om do such dirty work!”
“Dirty work? You, a Chamaar’s daughter! Saying it is dirty work!”
She was startled by the outburst. It was the first time Narayan had shouted at her. “But why does he — ”
“How will he appreciate what he has if he does not learn what his forefathers did? Once a week he will come with me! Whether he likes it or not!”
Radha silently appealed to her father-in-law and began mopping up the coconut oil. Dukhi acknowledged her by tilting his head. Later, when he and Narayan were alone, he said, “Son, I agree with you. But no matter what we think, once a week is only a game. It will never be for him like it was for us. And thank God for that.”
Omprakash spent the rest of the day in misery, in the kitchen, clinging to his mother. Radha kept patting his head while doing her work. “Won’t only leave me alone,” she grumbled happily to her mother-in-law. “I still have to chop the spinach and make the chapatis. God knows when I’ll finish.”
Roopa crinkled her forehead. “When sons are unhappy, they remember their mothers.”
In the evening, while his father was relaxing on the porch, his eyes closed, Omprakash crept out and began massaging his feet, the way he had seen his mother do it. Narayan started, and opened his eyes. He looked down, saw his son and smiled. He held out his arms to him.
Omprakash leapt into them, flinging his hands round his father’s neck. They stayed hugging for a few minutes without speaking a word. Then Narayan pried the child’s fingers loose and sniffed them. He offered his own to him. “See? We both have the same smell. It’s an honest smell.”
The child nodded. “Bapa, shall I do some more chumpee for your feet?”
“Okay.” He watched fondly as his son squeezed the heel, rubbed the arch, kneaded the sole, and massaged each toe, copying Radha’s methodical manner. Roopa and Radha stood concealed in the doorway, beaming at each other.
The weekly leather-working lessons continued for the next three years. Omprakash was taught how to pack the skins with salt to cure them. He collected the fruit of the myrobalan tree to make tannin solution. He learned to prepare dyes, and how to impress the dye in the leather. This was the filthiest task of them all, and it made him retch.
The ordeal ended when he was eight. He was sent to his uncle Ishvar for exposure to a wider range of sewing skills at Muzaffar Tailoring Company. Besides, the school in town now accepted everyone, high caste or low, while the village school continued to be restricted.
Radha and Narayan were not as desolate as Roopa and Dukhi had been when their sons had left to apprentice with Ashraf Chacha. A new road and bus service had shrunk the gap between village and town. They could look forward to frequent visits from Omprakash; besides, they had their two little daughters at home.
Still, Radha felt unjustly deprived of her son’s presence. A popular song about a bird that was the singer’s constant companion, but which for some inexplicable reason had decided to fly away, became Radha’s favourite. She ran to their new Murphy transistor and turned up the volume, shushing everyone when the familiar introduction trickled forth. When her son was home, the song meant nothing to her.
Omprakash’s sisters resented his visits. No one paid attention to Leela and Rekha if their brother was in the house. It started as soon as he stepped in the door.
“Look at my child! How thin he has become!” complained Radha. “Is your uncle feeding you or not?”
“He looks thin because he has grown taller,” was Narayan’s explanation.
But she used the excuse to lavish on him special treats like cream, dry fruits, and sweetmeats, bursting with pleasure while he ate. Now and then her fingers swooped into his plate, scooped up a morsel and tenderly transported it to his mouth. No meal was complete unless she had fed him something with her own hands.
Roopa, too, relished the sight of her lunching, munching grandson. She sat like a referee, reaching to wipe away a crumb from the corner of his mouth, refilling his plate, pushing a glass of lussi within his reach. A smile appeared on her wrinkled face, and the sharp light of her memory flickered over those pitch-dark nights from many years ago when she would creep out into enemy territory to gather treats for Ishvar and Narayan.
Omprakash’s sisters were silent spectators at the mealtime ritual. Leela and Rekha watched enviously, knowing better than to protest or plead with the adults. During rare moments when no one was around, Omprakash shared the delicacies with them. More often, though, the two girls wept quietly in their beds at night.
Narayan sat on the porch at dusk with his father’s aged feet in his lap, massaging the cracked, tired soles. Omprakash, fourteen now, was expected home tomorrow on a week-long visit.
“Ah!” sighed Dukhi with pleasure, then asked if he had checked on the newborn calf.
There was no answer. He repeated his question, nudging Narayan’s chest with the big toe. “Son? Are you listening?”
“Yes Bapa, I was just thinking.” He resumed the massage, staring into the dusk. His fingers worked with extra vigour to make up for his silence.
“What is it, what’s bothering you?”
“I was just thinking that… thinking how nothing changes. Years pass, and nothing changes.”
Dukhi sighed again but not with pleasure. “How can you say that? So much has changed. Your life, my life. Your occupation, from leather to cloth. And look at your house, your — ”
“Those things, yes. But what about the more important things? Government passes new laws, says no more untouchability, yet everything is the same. The upper-caste bastards still treat us worse than animals.”
“Those kinds of things take time to change.”
“More than twenty years have passed since independence. How much longer? I want to be able to drink from the village well, worship in the temple, walk where I like.”
Dukhi withdrew his foot from Narayan’s lap and sat up. He was remembering his own defiance of the caste system, when he had sent his little sons to Ashraf. He felt pride at Narayan’s words, but also fear. “Son, those are dangerous things to want. You changed from Chamaar to tailor. Be satisfied with that.”
Narayan shook his head. “That was your victory.”
He resumed massaging his father’s feet while the dusk deepened around them. Inside, Radha was lost in happy preparations for her son’s arrival the next day. By and by, she brought a lamp to the porch. Within seconds it attracted a cluster of midges. Then a brown moth arrived to keep its assignation with the light. Dukhi watched it try to beat its fragile wings through the lamp glass.
That week, parliamentary elections were being conducted, and the district was under siege by politicians, sloganeers, and sycophants. As usual, the assortment of political parties and their campaigning antics assured lively entertainment for the village.
Some people complained that it was difficult to enjoy it all properly, with the air hot enough to sear the lungs — the government should have waited for the rains to come first. Narayan and Dukhi attended the rallies with their friends, taking Omprakash along to see the fun. Roopa and Radha resented the time stolen from the boy’s brief visit.
The speeches were crammed with promises of every shape and size: promises of new schools, clean water, and health care; promises of land for landless peasants, through redistribution and stricter enforcement of the Land Ceiling Act; promises of powerful laws to punish any discrimination against, and harassment of, backward castes by upper castes; promises to abolish bonded labour, child labour, sati, dowry system, child marriage.