Two days later, our sari-fringes tied tight to our waists, our jewels hid deep beneath the earth, with men on the right and children beside us, with drum and horn and trumpet and a cart before us all adorned with lotuses and champaks and mango twigs, in which are seated Moorthy and Rangamma and Rangè Gowda and even Pariah Rachanna, we march on and on, and when we come to the village gate Seenu sounds the conch from the top of the promontory, and Vasudev, with his twenty-three Pariahs from the Skeffington Coffee Estate, breaks a coconut before us, and when the camphor is rising before the god, we all bow down in trembling prayer, and when the conch blows again we rise, and with the horn shouting and shining over the ripe valley, we turn Bhatta’s empty house and we hurry down to Boranna’s toddy grove.
We were a hundred and thirty-nine in all, and we marched out to Boranna’s toddy grove.
And men came from Tippur and Subbur and Kanthur, kumkum on their foreheads and flowers in their hair, to see us pass by, and chrysanthemums fell on us, and rice and Bengal gram, and thus we marched out, a hundred and thirty-nine in all, to Boranna’s toddy grove, our hearts round and ripe like an April pomegranate. And Puttanna made a song, and we beat our feet and we sang,
At least a toddy-pot sister,
At least a toddy-leaf, sister,
We’ll go to Boranna’s toddy grove,
We’ll go to Boranna’s toddy growth,
And procession back at least a toddy-leaf, sister,
and we marched on to Boranna’s toddy grove.
And when we were hardly at the main road corner, we saw, beyond the mango grove, the red horse of the police inspector, and our hands began to shiver, and we held our breath beneath our breasts, and we said not a word to one another, and then when Moorthy had seen it too, he got down out of the cart, and Rangè Gowda followed him and Rangamma and Pariah Rachanna, and the cart stopped and we crossed beside it with Moorthy before us, and as we neared the toddy grove we began to see by the lantana fence policeman after policeman, their lathis tight in their hands, and the police inspector going among them and bending down and whispering to this one and that, and the horse wagging its tail and brushing away the summer flies.
And when we were by the Tippur stream bridge, the police inspector comes towards us and says, ‘You are forbidden to march to the toddy grove,’ and Moorthy smiles back and says he knows that but he thanks him all the same for saying so, but that he is following the instructions of the Congress and he would follow unto death if need be. And the police inspector says, ‘I warn you for a third time, and I say that what you do is against law, and the Government is ready to use all the force it possesses to put you down,’ and Moorthy says again, ‘Thank you,’ and he moves on; and just as we are near the toddy grove, the morning carts of Santur turn round the Kenchamma hill corner, and when they see us and the crowd behind us, they stop and come down to see what is all this procession and police about, and we say, ‘Well, there will be some more people with us.’ We begin to count our beads and say Ram-Ram, and the nearer we approach the stiffer become the policemen, and as Moorthy and Rangè Gowda try to push open the gate of the grove, the police stand before them and push them back, and Pariah Rachanna cries out, ‘Say Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we all cry out too, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we say we too shall enter the toddy grove.
But the men were before us and the children huddled between us, and the police surrounded our men and tried to push them back, and suddenly Pariah Rachanna slipped out and ran and we all turned to see where he was going when he jumped across the lantana fence — with one leap he had crossed the ditch and the fence — and he fell and he rose, and as he rushed to climb a toddy tree the police made towards him, but he was already halfway up the tree when the lathis banged against his legs. And the cartmen, who had gathered round us, began to shout, and we cried out, ‘Vandè Mataram!’ and somebody began to clap hands and push forward, and we all clapped hands too and began to sing, and the police began to push us this way and that. When Pariah Rachanna was torn down from the toddy tree, our hearts began to beat so fast that we cried out, ‘Hoye-Hoye!’ and we pushed forward with the men. And the police inspector this time shouted out, ‘Attack!’ and they lifted the lathis and bang-bang they brought them down on us, and the lathis caught our hair and rebounded from our backs, and Pariah Ningamma beat her mouth and wailed, ‘Oh, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone,’ and we say to ourselves, ‘Oh, how inauspicious!’ and we shout out, ‘Mataram Vandè!’ with all our breath, and the children are so frightened now that they take it up and shout and shout and shout, and the police break through us and, one here and one there, they catch the children by the hair and by the ear and by the jacket, and the mothers sob behind them and the cartmen cry out, ‘Shame, shame,’ and the lathis still shower down upon us. Then suddenly there is a cry, and we raise our heads and see the red horse of the police inspector charging upon the cartmen, and the cartmen spit and howl and rush for their lives to the mango grove, and there is another cry, and somebody says Pariah Lingayya has jumped over the fence, too, and the police leave us and rush at him and more and more men jump over and they tear down the lantana fence. And the police inspector gallops across the road and brings down Chandrayya and Ramayya with the knob of his cane, and they roll over and fall into the ditch, and we say, ‘Now, Rangamma, we’ll go forward,’ and just then, as though in answer, Moorthy shrieks out across the fence, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we see his lips split and four policemen around him, and somehow our eyes turn all to the Kenchamma hill and as we say, ‘goddess, goddess,’ we see the scattered crowd of children rushing here, rushing there, and mothers, aunts, sisters, grandmothers rushing behind them. And Rangamma cries out, ‘Now, sisters, forward!’ and we all cry out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jail Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we deafen ourselves before the onslaught, and we rush and we crawl, and swaying and bending and crouching and rising, we move on and on, and the lathis rain on us, and the cartmen have come back again and they feel so angry that they, too, cry out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and they, too, rush behind us, and we feel a new force in us and we say we shall enter the toddy grove and tear out at least a toddy branch and break at least a toddy pot. And there are shrieks and shouts and cries and sobs, and the more we are beaten the more we get used to it and we say, ‘After all it is not bad — after all it is not so bad,’ and our bangles break and our saris tear and yet we huddle and move on. Then once again Rangamma shouts, ‘Gandhi Mahatma ki jai!’ and we all rush forward and the crowd rushes behind us and the gate creaks and breaks and we all rush towards the trees, one to this and one to that, to saplings and twisted trees and arched trees and anthills crumble beneath our feet, and the leaves tear and crunch, and the lathis break on our backs and hands and heads. And stones are thrown at the tree trunks, and pots break and spatter down, and someone cries out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and we rise with it, and we see up there on the top of the toddy tree is someone, and he is cutting down branch after branch of the toddy tree and the men gather them like sanctified flowers and women slip in here and crouch along there, and policeman after policeman tries to climb the tree, and one falls and everybody laughs, and another goes up proudly but he slips down again, and the police inspector says, ‘Moti Khan, you’d better try,’ and as he is trying to go up the other policemen fall on us again, and we rush to this side and that, while somebody pulls down Moti Khan and the man on the top spits down on him, and a wave of laughter whirls up the toddy grove. But we never saw what came of it, for one by one they took us to the road, and there we stood huddled together between policemen, and we said the work of the day is done, and wives searched for their husbands and mothers for their sons, and brother searched for brother and sister-in-law for sister-in-law. And when the calm had flowed back to our hearts, we touched our bones and our knuckles and our joints, feeling the wounds fresh as burns, and when we saw all the people gathered to see us, there was something in us that said, ‘You’ve done something big,’ and we felt as though we had walked the holy fire at the harvest festival, and, policeman on the right and policeman on the left, we marched down to the Santur police outpost.